The future of Amstrad

[ronaldo]

Last days I've been thinking of ideas on how to promote Amstrad. I'm thinking mainly of getting more users and players. The reason is simple: more users and players means more public for our productions and greater opportunities for all our community.

After thinking, I've come to a plan and want to share it with you:

   
• Have an embedded emulator for Android
• Integrate the emulator in CPCtelera building system
• Make CPCtelera generate single APKs for Android including Game+Emulator

With these first steps, every new production could be played on Real Amstrad CPCs, on PC (emulators) and on Mobile Phones directly. Optionally, windows EXE files including game+emulator could also be generated.

This production chain would give a potentially enormous audience for games with a single-step build process, without requiring much effort from developers.
Additionally, if the embedded emulator includes emulation of latest hardware developments (M4 board, Albireo, X-MEM, etc) games developed could use this hardware and advanced features would be available for the bast majority of people. This would also promote development of hardware devices, as people wanting to play on real hardware would demand them.
I personally think it would be really interesting to follow a path like this. @arnoldemu , do you think we can easily compile and adapt your emulator for generating single-game emulation by embedding it?

[mahlemiut]

MAME has an Android target, although I don't know just how well it works or if it can even be built (it's still fairly new), it certainly, from memory, lacks touch support, but anyone willing to work on it would be helpful.

[reidrac]

AFAIK there's no competent CPC emulator for Android (and you know that things could be better in Linux and Mac OS, @arnoldemu is working on it and there are interesting efforts like Caprice32's port to the Raspberry Pi).

About packaging one single game with an emulator, it sounds interesting. Some people like RGCD do it when they release a new C64 game (cartridge, digital download and a CD I think with an emulator); but at the end of the day it is a CPC game, no matter how is packaged. But that's only my opinion, not sure if that would be a factor for me to use the CPCTelera.

Re: promotion of the CPC, I think we need better emulators available for as much platforms as possible, perhaps to get to a situation similar to what I see in the speccy world (probably thanks to FUSE and its libraries).

If getting started with an emulator is easy, we may get attention from old CPC users and perhaps with more promotion (CPC Retro Dev is brilliant, but we could have more YouTube content for example), people into other retro systems may get interested in the CPC.

My 2 cents

[MacDeath]

What about a good iOS amstrad CPC emulator ?

[Carnivius]

AFAIK there's no competent CPC emulator for Android

I've used Droid-CPC (on google play) and CPCDroid FMSDevel - CPCDroid - Amstrad CPC on Android phone  and they're fine.  Main reason I don't use them much is cos gaming on a touchscreen (especially retro-gaming that was never designed for such things) sucks.   I have a bluetooth gamepad phone holder thingy for my phone but I don't carry it about with me.  It's more for testing my own mobile game development.

[reidrac]

I've used Droid-CPC (on google play) and CPCDroid FMSDevel - CPCDroid - Amstrad CPC on Android phone  and they're fine.  Main reason I don't use them much is cos gaming on a touchscreen (especially retro-gaming that was never designed for such things) sucks.   I have a bluetooth gamepad phone holder thingy for my phone but I don't carry it about with me.  It's more for testing my own mobile game development.

I knew about Droid-CPC but the mixed reviews put me off to try it. Didn't know about  CPCDroid (the other one, what's up with the names?). Neither seem too active or updated.

I'll give them a go, thanks for the pointers!

[Carnivius]

I knew about Droid-CPC but the mixed reviews put me off to try it. Didn't know about  CPCDroid (the other one, what's up with the names?). Neither seem too active or updated.

I'll give them a go, thanks for the pointers!

CPCDroid is by the same guy who did the PSP version that I use a lot too (thaaat's my portable emulator machine y'see) so I have no problems using the emulator itself but yeah again it's touchscreens that put me off.

[||C|-|E||]

I did not have time to reply yesterday, and neither now, but still 

I think that overall trying to have our games working with embedded emulators in different systems could actually be a great idea. I was actually considering to do the same with our adventure in order to let the people play it on PC without having to install an emu and configure it. We have a lot of Amstrad games that work very well with joystick only (at least those converted to the GX4000) and they would be a great match for a portable machine with a similar setup. I do not know about touch screens, probably too difficult to play in this case. However, having then running in the PC in a way that everybody can launch them from Windows with a single executable file would be awesome. I know many people that do not play retro games because setting them up is just "too complicate", believe it or not.

[arnoldemu]

@ronaldo:

I don't have an Android version of Arnold. This would take time to develop but it is something I did think about.

Embedding a game within the Windows version of the emulator is not yet possible, here i mean a single exe containing emulator, roms, game and dependencies but it's certainly possible and would be quicker to implement than an Android version.

What would your expectation be?

I expect you would need a method to define the default configuration and a file to autorun? What would you require for GUI?

I will take a look at this because I do need to make similar changes to the emulator to support configurations better so this work would suite the emulator with embedded game.

[TFM]

IMHO it would be better to use time and resources to work on CPC for the CPC - instead of outsourcing everything to the PC.

[AMSDOS]

Last days I've been thinking of ideas on how to promote Amstrad. I'm thinking mainly of getting more users and players. The reason is simple: more users and players means more public for our productions and greater opportunities for all our community.

After thinking, I've come to a plan and want to share it with you:

   
• Have an embedded emulator for Android
• Integrate the emulator in CPCtelera building system
• Make CPCtelera generate single APKs for Android including Game+Emulator[/l][/l]

Perhaps a cash strap contest to write the best emulator for Android next year instead of a games compo?[/list]

[Vicente Simon]

I really like this idea. I think it would be an easy to point to destination for newbies.
And for new games, it would make things simple for programmers to show others. A good incentive.

Go for it!

[ivarf]

Why not an Amstrad CPC emulator on one of the later Gameboys or consoles?

(For me later is PlayStation 2, Gameboy Advance, Xbox and Dreamcast. I have always been slow on buying new hardware. 😄 But newer machines should probably be the target.)

[ronaldo]

@ivarf any emulator that could be made to embed games and produce standalones would be valid and useful. However, I'm not sure that distributing a game to new consoles is easy enough to represent an advantage. Don't get me wrong: it would also be nice to have this, but I think mobile and PC platforms should be the first priority.

[AMSDOS]

I'm confused, the Emulator Page on the wiki documents Emulators galore for the likes of Playstation 2, Xbox and Dreamcast. I didn't see any for Gameboy, but Nintendo DS has a couple.


Though I'm not sure how advanced they are.

[CraigsBar]

Arnold-x for the Xbox is really very good. Full plus emulation, accurate enough to run pang and prehistoric 2. Although I guess demos will make it stutter.

[Gryzor]

I always like it a lot when someone releases a game on a platform packaged with an emulator. It makes things so much easier and enjoyable if you're not familiar with the platform, or are on a machine with no set up...


But indeed, retro gaming on touch screens plain sucks. I only do it with BT controllers - either a keyboard or a joypad...