http://www.gagaplay.com/jemu2/va.png
Just walk around an arcade featuring 20 machines, insert a virtual coin and start playing right there.
It’s like a 3D front end for JEmu2.
Wow… that is… really cool. At first when I got in I just sorta walked around for a while and thought “cool, little videos of games” and then when I clicked one I thought it had crashed (I probably neglected to read some readily available instructions on your site, sorry for laziness), because it wouldn’t let my mouse move, and seemed to not want to initialize the game :). I was pleasantly surprised when I started mashing random buttons and hit 5 and realized I could actually play the game sitting right there. And then when I walked away it kept playing! If that’s not the best way to present a set of games to the user (who may or may not be familiar with them) I don’t know what is. Very clever, I’m impressed.
Only minor issue was if the game had sound it sometimes seemed to linger with some strange noises for a while, and when I exited the application it made my whole screen turn black and force me to turn off the computer >_< (though right before it shut down it regained all of it’s color, of course).
Thanks for the comments, I appreciate it 
[quote]Only minor issue was if the game had sound it sometimes seemed to linger with some strange noises for a while, and when I exited the application it made my whole screen turn black and force me to turn off the computer >_< (though right before it shut down it regained all of it’s color, of course).
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I also noticed that problem with the sound. I’ve got the feeling it’s a JavaSound bug because I do shut down all sound processing, audio lines etc when you stop playing a game but somehow there still seems to be some garbage going to the audio card.
About the screen turning black, what’s your set-up (mainly your video card)? When the screen turned black, did you still hear the strange audio lingering on like you described?
Sorry for delayed response. The day after my computer decided it was going to go kaput and delete my hard drive. >_< Didn’t lose much though.
Anyway, I think the black screen was silent, and it as sort of as if it had exited completely except without giving me my screen visibility back (I think I could open start menu and stuff). This card has a 6600gt, usually works well with java games (also, I’m running Windows XP). But later on I tried your application on my other, usually more problematic computer (Windows 98, and a semi-broken Ti-4200) and it ran pretty good except much slower (processor is only 850 mhz). Exited just fine. If it interests you to know (you might know already), the program seemed to slow down entirely rather than just reduce framerate. So everything moved a bit slower and even the sounds played at a slower speed (thought this was unusual). Maybe you could have an option of turning machines off or selecting which ones to initialize at the beginning?
I might try it again later on the other computer.
Very cool! I love to just walk around and see the games in action before I play… really gives an arcade feeling
I know it would be a very difficult feature to implement, but making it a multi-user environment where you can play against each other over the net would be just awesome!
[quote]Anyway, I think the black screen was silent, and it as sort of as if it had exited completely except without giving me my screen visibility back (I think I could open start menu and stuff). This card has a 6600gt, usually works well with java games (also, I’m running Windows XP).
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I also ran it from xp on a 6600GT and had the same problem: the indicator led of my monitor turned to idle (orange) and the screen stayed black. I first thought my computer crashed but I heard the harddisk loading something, so i let it rattle…after a minute or so VirtuArcade appeared on my screen without any problems. When I excited the indicator led stayed orange though.
[quote] So everything moved a bit slower and even the sounds played at a slower speed (thought this was unusual). Maybe you could have an option of turning machines off or selecting which ones to initialize at the beginning?
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Right now, only visible arcade machines are running so as soon as one gets out of view, it should stop running. Maybe need to double check if this really works as expected because 850 MHz should be enough for playing a game.
There’s still a lot I can do to optimize though, especially in the 3D part (right now, no VBOs or even display lists are used, so it’s slow), but also in the emulation there’s room for improvement in some games.
Eventually there will be an option to choose which games you want in VirtuArcade, but there are still some arcade drivers that don’t behave well in it (mainly with turning sound on/off). For example, After Burner II needs the sound CPU to be running from the start for the sound to work and if I activate it later, sound won’t work at all. Games like that really eat CPU cycles and memory too, so if I fill the arcade with them, it will slow everything down or even throw OutOfMemoryError.
The black screen problem is a bit weird, although in the 1st run it’s to be expected (I need to add a ‘Loading…’ screen).
On both my computers it exits normally, so it’s a bit hard to fix but I’ll try…
wow that virtuarcade is very cool, not seen anything like it before
bloody heck mate! :o
Some serious nice shizzle there…
Black screen on exit isnt’ happening anymore. I might have just been my problem. Don’t wory about that.
Also this is probably to be expected but I tried several of the games running in VirtuArcade using the normal game start and they definately ran faster, however some games still were quite sluggish. In particular these were Afterburner and some other 3D like space game that highly resembled Afterburner (note this is with the Arcade version, not master system).
Sorry for double post but this really needs one.
Ok you know how I was saying that afterburner was running slow and everything, even on the normal emulator. Well I managed to “fix” it. The solution is called download java version 6.0 . I think that brought the game entirely up to speed, which is some 40% improvement at least. At the same time it also fixed the graphical glitches that I was having with my graphics card (which really surprised me, because as of the last half year or so it basically messes up the texture data on anything hardware accelerated, including C++ games).
Unfortunately the 3D virtuarcade thing is still slow. I’m fairly sure it doesn’t shut down all other arcade machines when you try to play one, because when I exit and look to my left/right the next 3 down either way are on, and the ones at the end are maybe off. Unless I guess you’re just pausing threads.
But anyway, I can use the normal Jemu2 now at least. Go mustang!
Edit: ok spoke a little too soon. Some of them still run slow (Strike Fighter, G-LOC) and some of them still have random glitchy effects from my broken graphics card. But it is a little better.
Yes, mustang really helps JEmu2 performance a great deal.
[quote]Unfortunately the 3D virtuarcade thing is still slow. I’m fairly sure it doesn’t shut down all other arcade machines when you try to play one, because when I exit and look to my left/right the next 3 down either way are on, and the ones at the end are maybe off. Unless I guess you’re just pausing threads.
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It’s true that they are not really shut down, but they don’t run when they’re out of view. I also have a max of simultaneous arcade machines, so it’s possible that you see some arcade machines (the farthest in view) not running if you have a lot of them in view.
[quote]Edit: ok spoke a little too soon. Some of them still run slow (Strike Fighter, G-LOC) and some of them still have random glitchy effects from my broken graphics card. But it is a little better.
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Sega Y-Board games (Strike Fighter, G-LOC, Galaxy Force II, Power Drift, Rail Chase) are the most CPU intensive machines to emulate (4 CPU’s at once, 6 math chips, sprite zooming/rotating, 16 channel stereo PCM sound, FM synthesis) so if you don’t have an up to date machine, they are most likely to be slow. The glitches of some of those game you see also happen in MAME, but I did manage to work my way around some of those glitches by overclocking 3 of 4 CPU’s. Which of course also doesn’t help performance
In any way, 850 MHz is definitely not enough to emulate Y-Board at full speed and there’s not a lot I can do about it.
Ah ok, weird thing happened.
Ok, I downloaded the java 6.0 install file and installed it like I already said, but some things seemed a bit odd, like the jnlp startup still looked the same even though there was a change on my other computer when I installed java 6.0 on it. So I’m looking through my folders and apparently there is no Java 6.0 JRE in my /Java folder.
Sooo I ran the install again (it as still on my desktop) and seemed to get a more proper installation this time, with all the icons being updated and everything. And now every single Jemu2 game runs at full speed, including G-LOC and Strike Fighter. However there is one major issue: the sound no longer works >_<. And that issue may be why it’s running at full speed.
Anyway ever heard of that happening? The sound thing not the installation thing. I have no idea what happened the first time I installed.
Hmmm. Are you really sure the ‘disable sound’ option is not ticked? (it remembers this setting so you might have ticked it in earlier sessions).
Do you have a web start log file? Which java version/release are you using exactly?
Wow!! This is seriously impressive man!! Cant even begin to think how you did this dude…
Fantastic!
Well it would seem that now all the sound on my computer has entirely ceased to function.
So maybe it may not be your fault at all.
Seriously considering reformatting hard drive right now.
My complaint is that as I started playing, sy son saw it and said “Dad, I want a turn!” This became a shove match, which ended up with him getting to play! ;D
Anyway, wow…he played for nearly 2 hours. Loved it.
I almost cried when I saw this the first time. It’s just so… beautiful…
Absolutely brilliant
Kev