RockBoy ROM. Compatibility.

[Reece]

Rockboy can only run GB. and GBC. ROM's. And this is fine for me because GB and GBC don't use L or R buttons, but there are some GBA games witch don't use L or R or they serve little to no purpose. Is there a way to run GBA. ROM's on RockBoy?

[saratoga]

Not without adding a GBA emulator.

[Reece]

Ok. Are you (the developers) going to add that? Or are you going to stick with the gb and gbc compatibility because of the L & R problem with most mp3 players?
b.t.w. I will be educating myself by reading the entire manual for Sansa Fuze so that I don't have to ask so many questions. Also please link me to any other essential resources you think I should read.

[saratoga]

No one has worked on the gameboy emulator in many years but I guess if someone were interested they could start whenever they wanted.

[Reece]

Ok. If they do add gba compatibility, I have a few suggestions for mp3 players that don't have 10+ buttons.
1: (I like this one the best) Add external button support. For instance, I have a pare of apple ear-buds, witch have two volume buttons on them. Those external buttons could be used as controls. This could also apply to external controllers. Using the existing cord that comes with the device, you can plug it into a controller or mini keyboard that you could buy at RadioShack. This would greatly extend the usability of programs such as text editor also. Instead of using a virtual keyboard, and having to individually select the letter/number you want you can use a mini keyboard. So basically add controller compatibility or at least add earphone volume control compatibility with rock-boy.
2: (Add this, especially if the top one doesn't work) Add combined key functions. So in the controls settings you can combine 2 controls to one button. Such as combining A with R, or whatever. (make key functions separate with each game.) For most games this will not cause problems, because some buttons are only used in the menu screen, and not in the emediate game-play. Also functions like menu use up buttons that are needed for game-play functions. In my case start and select are used open menus, when I could use them for game-play functions like L & R. So, I am thinking you could add button functions such as start to the rock-boy menu. So when you open the rock-boy menu (power button) you can select the "start" function from that menu, and it would activate the function of "start" in the game, and bring you back to the game. Sure you have to go through the rock-boy menu, but it is worth considering if the other suggestion doesn't work, or as an addition to the rock-boy update.

As a side note. Do you (you and other developers) have to have more than one request to add gba. compatibility to rock-boy? Or is it easy enough that just one request (my request) is enough do it?

Please give me feedback on my ideas for rockboy compatibility. Is it realistic? or just way out there and not possible?

[saratoga]

We don't consider requests and no one is working on this.

[Reece]

 :'(

[torne]

The Gameboy and GBA have very little in common other than the name, so this is not a matter of upgrading Rockboy but writing an entirely new emulator. Rockboy already does not work very well on most devices because the vast majority of MP3 players are not powerful enough to fully emulate the Gameboy in realtime. The GBA is many times more expensive to emulate and there is very little chance that any player we support would be able to play even the simplest games at more than slideshow speed without a huge amount of work.

[Reece]

Ok. Thank you for the clarification.