unityGB - Emulator Game Boy for Unity [RELEASED]

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unityGB allows you to run a Game Boy ROM in your Unity project. Globally, it's a Game Boy emulator written for Unity and it's totally free and open-source.
It has been written in C# and is only using Mono allowing you to export the project to any platform supported by Unity. Also, unityGB has been released as Open Source software under the GNU General Public Licence. This means that you can download the source code, find out how it works, and contributing.

unityGB is still in alpha version, many bugs and glitches can occur. Also, the code is far from being perfect and needs a lot of optimization. Any and all help welcome! Please feel free to contribute to this project.

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What is supported:

• Game Boy games
• Input
• Sound
• Save

Game Boy Color games are not supported yet.

With unityGB, you can easily script by yourself how to manage inputs (joypad) and outputs (audio, video).
Demo: Try our demo to see some scenes with unityGB.
Video: Watch on Youtube
Repository: Help us by contributing to this project
Wiki: Visit unityGB wiki for further information.

>>> DOWNLOAD UNITYGB PACKAGE HERE <<<​

 

i totally don't know what situation i need this. But IT'S AWESOME!!!!

 

AWESOME! Takohi, you're a GOD!

 

Here it is running in the Rift:

Edit: here is a build http://shaneobrien.ie/prog/oculusGameboy.zip

 

Wow! Very Impressive! =)
It would be viable to create a MSX emulator?

 

Absolutely surprising, in the most positive kind of way!

 

ignore this message please

 

Everybody, thank you a lot!

I'm so glad you all like it, and FinsternIRL, thank you for your video, it's awesome.
Can I share it on the wiki page of unityGB?

I made this emulator just for fun, I was always curious about making an emulator and specially for Game Boy.
When I got some first results, I was like "wow, it's awesome, but... what could we do with it?!", so I decided to share it with you, hoping you will get idea for me.
Now I can see some people are interested with, I will definitively try to improve this emulator. I don't have so much time so don't expect updates so often. I work on it during my free time. So I also need you to help me and improve this emulator!

FinsternIRL, and others, could you please make a list of problems you noticed during testing unityGB?
I have spent a lot of time for fixing the audio but couldn't make it. I don't have to much experience in audio... I would be happy if someone can help me to fix this issue.

Again, thank you everybody!

 

Please, be my guest and post the video, I'm glad you like it =D. I did run into one error, but I'll post it on the bitbucket page. I'll try contribute what I can to the project as I love the idea for VR purposes!

 

I created this some time back. I'm wondering if I could use this to put a game on it?



Here it is running in a webplayer.
http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/16956434/SuperMarioLand_Web/WebPlayer.html

 

Hello JamesArndt,

I'm sorry I can't run your webpage

But of course it is possible, look at our demo, we are approximately doing the same.
What you have to do is to map the texture generated in DefaultVideoOutput.cs to the material of your Game Boy screen model.
You should also use a shader like this one to have a better effect.

I also got an advice from reddit (david_is_neato):

Share with us your results!

 

Fixed the link.

Here it is running in a webplayer.
http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/16956434/SuperMarioLand_Web/WebPlayer.html

I am going to follow your advice on the point filtering so it will have that pixel perfect look. This should be really neat once it's set up. The cool thing is the model is physically accurate, so the actual screen is under the plastic cover glass, should look pretty convincing.

 

Hi Takohi,

So I took your awesome script, added the Super Mario Land gameboy rom , integrated it into a small room environment, and modded to run in android for the Durovis Dive headset.. end result , really cool

The only problem that i'm having is the script causes my framerate to drop to at least 40-45fps at most times and sometimes slower (running on Galaxy S5 and HTC One) . Without the gameboy script running the room runs at 60fps always , but once enabled it slows considerably. I've tried a few other roms and it doesn't seem to make a difference.

any mobile optimization tips?

https://mega.co.nz/#!uphQXDwR!w9De6Jmy3zgd9JqgLNz5DFXOKrCYGGHdmMuX4PayWj0

Thanks
Mark

 

First of all, that is absolutely amazing, nice work!

Secondly, how would one go about improving it? Surely you didn't write that all from you head . There must be some spec somewhere that says how that cpu "X80" works.

 

Wow, I want to try pokemon on it!

 

Thank you a lot! Unfortunately, I don't have mobile optimization tips right now, I'm sorry.
But in the future, I'm planning to review and optimize the code in order to make the emulator running much faster.
In the meanwhile, don't hesitate to share with me all your tips!

Hello, and thank you !
I made a page on the unityGB wiki that includes all links that could help to make a Game Boy emulator.
https://bitbucket.org/takohi/unitygb/wiki/Documentation

There are also many open source Game Boy emulator already available in many languages (c, c++, java, javascript...).
If you are interested to make your own emulator, here is a tutorial (it's in javascript): http://imrannazar.com/GameBoy-Emulation-in-JavaScript:-The-CPU

Pokemon is working fine on it! Please try!

 

Thanks for the link.

 

Are you still working on it?

 

would love to see a nes one

 

I just got my PSM Publisher license and decided to try this out on the PSVita, I didn't quite get it to work after loading a rom from the streamingassets folder, it seems like the PSV just isn't compatible. I would love to help you debug and try to fix this problem if you want unityGB to have support for PSV.

 

I don't have so much time now but yeah, in the future, I will try to improve it.

Me too, but you will have to be patient.

As I said to you on Facebook, I will of course help you to fix this problem.
I'm waiting for your post here: https://bitbucket.org/takohi/unitygb/issues

 

I get this on a few roms during it running through its demo and the rom freezes up. Anyone know maybe why and what to do?

Also is there a way to call a restart of the script if the emu freezes up in game?

Thanks!

IndexOutOfRangeException: Array index is out of range.
UnityGB.MBC1.ReadByte (Int32 address) (at Assets/unityGB/Scripts/unityGB/ROM.cs:351)
UnityGB.X80.ReadByte (Int32 address) (at Assets/unityGB/Scripts/unityGB/CPU.cs:3298)
UnityGB.X80.ReadByte (System.Int32& r, Int32 ah, Int32 al) (at Assets/unityGB/Scripts/unityGB/CPU.cs:2698)
UnityGB.X80.Step () (at Assets/unityGB/Scripts/unityGB/CPU.cs:575)
UnityGB.Emulator.ExecuteProcessor (Int32 maxTicks) (at Assets/unityGB/Scripts/unityGB/Emulator.cs:415)
UnityGB.Emulator.UpdateModel (Boolean updateBitmap) (at Assets/unityGB/Scripts/unityGB/Emulator.cs:369)
UnityGB.Emulator.RunNextStep () (at Assets/unityGB/Scripts/unityGB/Emulator.cs:62)
DefaultEmulatorManager+<Run>c__Iterator4.MoveNext () (at Assets/unityGB/Scripts/DefaultEmulatorManager.cs:98)

 

Interesting. Could you tell me wich rom are you using?
I think it's something about the rom that is maybe not supported yet.

 

If you let the demo run to the third land on Super Mario Land,

Also revenge of the gator has some issues, I can try that again and get you more detail.

 

Fun project and great work you guys.

I created a small front-end for BlackBerry 10 users: https://github.com/KermEd/Unity and made it semi-simple for using on mobile devices.

http://www.filearchivehaven.com/201...eboy-emulator-for-blackberry-10-unitygb4bb10/

It has been running quite well and I love playing Dr Mario on it myself Great work!

 

I'll get a Vita build of this over the next few days and upload a package file, thanks for the hard work you put into this

 

We tried to push again unityGB on the Asset Store but it was declined because of "legalities issues".
However, an emulator is perfectly legal ; downloading and having copyrighted ROMs is not.
I don't know if the Unity team will see this post but in case, is it possible to get more information?

 

The emulator itself may not be illegal, but is made for playing illegal software, so my guess is that this is why it got rejected.

Which is sad of course, since this would be a very cool asset

 

Absolutely this!

Aaaand this may very well be the most meta thing I've seen this month.

I could just open the drawer a few feet behind me and pull out my real and actual gameboy from the 90s (working condition with fixed screen) but I also could buy and use a Rift

Also: When will there be the "play GameBoy on the toilet VR simulator"? For all the people who did not grow up in the 80/90s

 

Yeah, that's very sad and there is nothing I can do I think.
Anyway, the emulator is still available on the repository.

Thank you! Great idea by the way, I will think about it (seriously! lol).

 

First off thanks so much for this! This is really awesome!
Im desperatly trying to figure out how to get a gamepad's dpad or analog sticks mapped to allow movment for the emulator. I have been able to remap the regular buttons but not the Up, Down, Left, Right as No KeyCode exists for the gamepad's Axis's that i can change in the keycode mappings. Any tips on how i might get a gamepad to work would be greatly appreciated! (an xbox 360 one connected to pc).

 

Sorry, I can't help you for that.

 

No bid deal but I decided to move the repository on GitHub for better visibility!
Here is the repository:
https://github.com/Takohi-Jona/unity-gb

 

Still trying to find out, why its slow on android. Il dont think its the cpu/gpu power. Since my actual mobile device is faster than my home pc. (got an very old pc).
Could it may an issue on how android is limiting framerates in combination with UnityGB?

 

Love it, I'll link it in my bitbucket

Its been a while ... but if you take a look at the script: Assets / Scripts / Presses / pressButton.cs

It looks like it enables the buttons using something like

Code (CSharp):

1. _buttonstmp [hitObj.name] = true;

So, you could loop through a class to extend the controller to reach the button ...

Under Edit > Project Settings > Input, under Axes you can see a list of Axis that you've customized. This needs the appropriate settings for the controller you are using - there are paid assets that make this easier. Or google around for the appropriate settings to use on this panel.

Next, You can create an input class if some kind and have it check the Axis direction of the thumbstick... Something like below (I haven't tested this code)

Code (CSharp):

1. using UnityEngine;
2.  
3. public class InputManager
4. {
5.   public GameObject DragButtonObjectOnTopInEditor;
6.   const float minPush = 0.1f;
7.  
8.   public void Update()
9.   {
10.   float hAxis = Input.GetAxis("Horizontal");
11.   float vAxis = Input.GetAxis("Vertical");
12.   var bl = false;
13.  
14.   DragButtonObjectOnTopInEditor._buttonstmp["RT"] = hAxis > minPush;
15.   DragButtonObjectOnTopInEditor._buttonstmp["LT"]  = hAxis < -minPush;
16.   DragButtonObjectOnTopInEditor._buttonstmp["UP"]  = vAxis > minPush;
17.   DragButtonObjectOnTopInEditor._buttonstmp["DN"]  = vAxis < -minPush;
18.   }
19. }

• Note #1: Make sure _buttonstmp is exposed as a public variable in the pressButton script. In which case, personally, I'd probably rename it to ButtonStmp.

• Note #2: Now, assign that InputManager to anything. When it is enabled and on the screen, it will send those true/false flags when the button is held down. I've added a min value, so that if the joypad is "resting" but not quite "0" it won't give you a false reading.

• Note #3: I personally don't use Update's much myself, I prefer to offload to a slower processed Coroutine. This reduces unnecessary CPU load - however it might be a bit much to go into here

In Android builds, there is a checkbox to enable multi core processing. Make sure that's enabled. It runs buttery smooth on my BlackBerry devices, should be fine on Android. You also might want to add the following..

Code (CSharp):

1. Input.gyro.enabled = false;
2. Application.targetFrameRate = 60;

 

Takohi hi!

You planned to create a SNES emulator?

 

No, but someone on Reddit who liked my Unity emulator started working on a GBA and SNES emulator.
Take a look here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/emulation/comments/3u5u1c/emunity_new_unity3d_libretro_frontend_25d3d_gba/

 

I worked on a Libretro Unity VR frontend last year:

It features NES,SNES, GBA & Megadrive emulation. It's pretty basic and straigthforward, but works fine.
I've not tried yet to implement a libretro android core.
Would be fun to see if it works fast enough on a GearVR.

 

Hi, its great!

So through this, can I make original NES, Gameboy game by unity engine and c#?

 

Hi.

I made this with your emulator:-

Gvrgb- Gear VR gb emulator.

https://www.reddit.com/r/gearvr/comments/5s8myc/_/

Thanks!

 

Hi,
thank you for your anwesome work !
I would to know how people (@atreu69 and @128bit) clear to import this on android, because as far i know, android doesn't support move texture, and if i don't mistaken, it's a sort of it that you use in your emulator
Someone can help me please ?
Thank you

 

Sorry for ask here but did anybody got LibRetro Arcade ( Mame ) Running?

 

is it possible to use Unity gb to make ROM hacks to gameboy games?
Also, can make one for the N64?

 

How do you emulate retro game systems for Unity? I would like to know so I can make games for my retro consoles

 

Hi,
thank you for your anwesome work !!
I find that "Emulator.UpdateModel()" call many times of "ExecuteProcessor()",and in this fuction "x80.Step()" execute more than 40000 times, it cost a lot of time every frame. Is there anyway to solve this problem?