As a hug c64 fan, i thought i would post my first impressions of frodo, step by step here as i do it.
The anticipation I felt when I got up to find that frodo was out can only be compared to a kid getting up on christmas morning.......omg what do I try first.................quick, run downstairs for coffee and sprint back up stairs......back down to refill cup after running up stairs too fast........back up.....clean up coffee on the carpet coz wife yelling at me.........finally, back to PC
The first game I copied over was Wizball - goes without saying though, doesnt it? Sent via bluetooth to my inbox, from there into my folder\c64
into frodo, launch game - wizball.t64
frodo auto types in the load"*",8,1 - nice touch ! Then auto types run
into the front screen of wizball after waiting 30 seconds or so.
Oh dear............!
It cant quite handle the nice grafix effects on the front screen of wizball and the nice music at the same time.......sounds awful and its crawling. The dulcit tones of martin galway sound awful. As I write this though, my screensaver kicks in...oops......when i move my stick (oo-er) to turn it off, the screen comes back but music playing at twice the old speed and almost normal now. Also the SID music sounds like its playing only 2 channels. hmm
turn on joystick 2 from options and click joystick to start
into wizball as normal. The screen (which I thought I would have problems getting used to isnt actually that bad. The bottom of the screen is cut off, leaving it difficult to see the icons for wizbal upgrades, but I know them off by heart now anyway.....lol Still in dire need of a landscape mode though. All of a sudden, the sound goes weird and it reaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaalllly slows down......hmmmm.
Close it down, start it back up again. this time i open a menu str8 away and close it. Menu music is almost fine now. A bit of work still to be done on this emu I fear. Onto the next game
As the joystick is a bit fiddly, i try to stay away from action games.....IK+ I fear will be well out of reach ! So I go for tetris.t64 ! THe ORIGINAL tetris for all you nintendo gameboy fanboys out there thank you very much. Up comes the token crack group scroller......(I love the c64). Music screwwed up again....into menu then cancel...........music works fine now. Cracking music this was as well. I play away.....eery minute or so, it slows right down and the music goes really slow. The menu trick sorts it out though. Thereafter, a 20 minute tetris session where the glitch doesnt come back...........the music is haunting and i love it
Next, onto another classic - boulderdash. Hmmmmmmmmm. Its not the original bouulderdash, some hack with different levels....plays fine though
right.....ill try some disk images next . Ill try deflektor, good puzzle game...good music, can't lose !
Scroller intro again....(ahh the c64 scene!). Docs are part of intro. Damn.......push run/stop to start. Grrrrr. Copy over another version of deflektor and try that. different scroller (diff group release) and straight into defloktor with that excellent music blaring out. game requires pushing 5 to start. I find that the keypad on the phone does this with no tweaking. Nice! Need to make use of the * key as a fire button for this game, as you hold fire and scroll left or right to move the mirrors.. I play this for a while then use it as an opportunity to test the quick save. I store, reboot phone, load frodo and then restore. goes right back to where i left it. it would appear that u can only do this with one game at a time. If it done the quicksave with the filename of the c64 image ie deflektr.sav etc like in goboy.
wonder if frodo supports cartridges? /me loads jack attack over to phone. Unforunately, it doesnt recognize the .crt file.....never mind.
Well, i could go on all morning doing this so I had better conclude
Frodo is a little buggy at the moment. However, with a little more development work, this could become the best thing for the 7650/3650. I mean, look at some of the c64 games out there, at a fraction of the space even the most pitiful java app takes up. Unfortunately, the 7650 will never be good for this, coz the joystick doesnt do diagonals and is a bit lame ! U can do diagonals using the keypad....but its very footery. I cant comment on the 3650 pad, as i dont have on I think the scope of this emu and this hardware is going to be other types of games because of this.
Suggestions for future versions.....
Fix the sound bug thing.
Better save states
landscape mode or true c64 ratio mode. (I guarantee that stretching the screen to the 7650 resolution is slowing this emu down!) In landscape mode, the proximity sensor could be used as a fire button! Imagine wiggling your finger rapidly over the proximity sensor, beter than any autofire out there!
If the author is reading this, don't take this badly. Please continue developing this excellent emu. At the moment is great. Thank you so much for doing this.
When my contracts up, im wiping everything from this phone and using it as a c64
lol