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https://github.com/gyrovorbis/libevmu

Accurate, full-featured, cross-platform library aiming to emulate every aspect of the Sega Dreamcast's Visual Memory Unit (VMU).
https://github.com/gyrovorbis/libevmu

8-bit cpu-emulator dreamcast dreamcast-emulator dreamcast-vmu emulation emulator retrogaming sega-dreamcast visual-memory-unit vms vmu

Last synced: about 1 month ago
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Accurate, full-featured, cross-platform library aiming to emulate every aspect of the Sega Dreamcast's Visual Memory Unit (VMU).

Host: GitHub
URL: https://github.com/gyrovorbis/libevmu
Owner: gyrovorbis
License: mit
Created: 2023-07-09T18:41:08.000Z (about 1 year ago)
Default Branch: libgimbal-refactor
Last Pushed: 2024-01-10T14:30:04.000Z (8 months ago)
Last Synced: 2024-06-08T09:36:11.583Z (3 months ago)
Topics: 8-bit, cpu-emulator, dreamcast, dreamcast-emulator, dreamcast-vmu, emulation, emulator, retrogaming, sega-dreamcast, visual-memory-unit, vms, vmu
Language: C
Homepage: http://vmu.elysianshadows.com
Size: 4.75 MB
Stars: 36
Watchers: 3
Forks: 3
Open Issues: 2
Metadata Files:
- Readme: README.md
- License: LICENSE

Awesome Lists containing this project

awesome-dreamcast - libElysianVMU - Platform-independent VMU emulator core by [Falco Girgis](https://github.com/gyrovorbis) (VMU)

README

libElysianVMU

C17-Based library for emulating the Sega Dreamcast's Visual Memory Unit

Explore the docs »

Accurate
·
Full-Featured
·
Cross-Platform

# Overview #
libElysianVMU (libEVMU) is a standalone emulator core of the Sega Dreamcast's 8-bit Visual Memory Unit (VMU), written in C17. It is the core powering the ElysianVMU emulator for Windows, MacOS, and Linux, which has been separated from any platform-specific back-end or UI front-end. Several years of meticulous research and reverse engineering have gone into the creation of this core, which has now been open-sourced in hopes of benefitting the Dreamcast community at-large.

# Goals #
The primary goal of libEVMU is to provide a one-stop, all-encompassing framework exposing everything the VMU has to offer in a standard C codebase that can be ported to any platform or wrapped to any language, allowing for everyone to use it in their projects and to benefit from a common codebase. At a high-level, this goal encompasses:
- Fully and accurately emulating the VMU as a standalone gaming device
- Providing tooling and APIs around its filesystem and all relevant file formats
- Meticulously documenting every aspect of the codebase to expose everything that was previously undiscovered
- Being performant enough to be ported to a Sega Saturn, N64, or toaster oven
- Offering a high-level entity/component-based API that is intuitive and easy to work with
- Allowing for modeling exotic, customized, nonstandard VMUs with extended volumes or capabilities
- Providing low-level hooks for supporting debuggers and high-level tooling
- Rigorously unit testing all aspects of the codebase to ensure correctness

# Features #
- Battery
- Emulated low-voltage signal
- BIOS Support
- Official (US and Japanese)
- Skip directly to GAME
- Modify date/time
- Emulated Software back-end
- Buzzer
- Creates and manages PCM buffers for audio back-end
- File System
- Import + export files
- Formatting
- Defragmentation
- Unlock/lock extra flash blocks
- Diagnostics and validation
- Changing volume icons or color
- Loading custom ICONDATA
- Modifying copy protection bits
- Loading a GAME file from only a VMS and no VMI
- Recalculating checksums
- Extracting and texturing icons
- Extracting and texturing eyecatches
- Supported File Formats
- .VMI
- .VMS
- .DCI
- .DCM
- .flash
- .bin
- Gamepad
- Polling or event-driven input back-ends
- Supports turbo buttons, slow motion, and fast-forward
- LCD Screen
- Emulated pixel ghosting and grayscale effects
- Extra options for bilinear filtering, color inversion, etc
- Provides a simple virtual framebuffer abstraction for renderer back-end
- Provides asynchronous screen refresh callbacks, only when contents change

# Platforms #
libEVMU is being actively tested in CI on the following targets:
- Windows
- MacOS
- Linux
- Sega Dreamcast
- Sony PSVita
- WebAssembly
- iOS
- Android

# Compilers #
libEVMU is being built in CI with the following compilers:
- GCC
- Clang
- MinGW-w64
- Emscripten

NOTE: Microsoft Visual Studio support is currently a work in progress!

# Building #
Building is done with standard CMake. You should be able to open CMakeLists.txt directly as a project file in most IDEs such as XCode, Qt Creator, CLion, etc if you wish to build from a UI.

First, ensure submodules are installed with:
```
git submodule update --init --recursive
```

To build the project and its unit tests from the command-line, you can do the following:
```
mkdir build
cd build
cmake -DEVMU_ENABLE_TESTS=ON ..
cmake --build .
```

# Credits #
Author
- Falco Girgis

Contributors
- Colton Pawielski
- jvsTSX

Collaborators
- Andrew Apperley
- Patrick Kowalik
- Walter Tetzner
- Tulio Goncalves
- Kresna Susila
- Sam Hellawell

Special Thanks
- Marcus Comstedt
- Ruslan Rostovtsev
- Shirobon
- Deunan Knute
- Dmitry Grinberg
- RinMaru
- UltimaNumber
- Joseph-Eugene Winzer