preview of incoming f-day (c) 2003,2004,2005 by rlyeh.
proudly featuring today fMSX32, fGB32, fCOL32 and fZX32 :-)

Here you have four work-in-progress examples of what I'm cooking for the f-day.

I have been improving greatly the GUI and all the ports were coded from scratch once more.

The common four features of these ports are the new good-looking GUI, the exact speed measurement, the graphics smoothness
and the audio crystalness.

More even, they're almost ready for cross-porting, so we'll have dozens of new binaries for other platforms soon :-)



What's new
==========

I'm not going to include a history/whatsnew of each emulator because that would be too long and boring.
Just wait for the f-day to see the *pages* of changes :-)

Anyways, I'd like to remark the following characteristics just to name a few:

* fGB32 makes finally GB/GBC playable on your GP32!
  I've been optimizing the source code for a long time, and here's the result. Mario Tennis never was so enjoyable :-)

* fCOL32 is probably the best colecovision emulator for any platform. It's by far the most compatible colecovision emulator you'll find.
  It runs problematic games like Buck Rogers, Bump 'n Jump, Fathom and The Heist with no problems, and features no glitches in Christmas Demo, DigDug or Tank Wars!! :-)
  Try the 50/60 Hz setting... it works like a charm.

* fMSX32 features now a rewritten graphics core and an excellent sound emulation, closest as possible as the original.
  Just listen to Ark-a-noah/Moskow 2084 for the new PSG emulation or Salamander/F1 Spirit for the new SCC emulation.
  The compatibility has been greatly improved and now you can run newer games like R-Type or Hole in One. 
  Try the 50/60 Hz setting too! :-)

* fZX32, the most complete Spectrum emulator for your GP32.
  Tons of options, 16/48/128/+2/+2A/+3, memory contention, beeper and AY-3-8912 emulation.
  Now more stable, smoother, stereo ABC, new mapped keys, and exactly 50 Hz sync'ed :-)


All them feature no more de-syncs, no more screen splitting, no more saving troubles! rocks!
Forgot to tell you that there is a new option to colour the rom list to mark the bugs you find, and there is an option (import ROMs) to convert the GP32 in an USB mass storage device (windows NT/XP and linux 2.6.10 or higher only).


Installation and usage
======================

* fGB32

  put roms in GPMM\GB in .gz, .rar (v2), .zip or uncompressed file format.
  preferredly zipped, and include only one game per compressed file.

  custom keys:  L+R brings the menu, and START/SELECT mapped as same buttons on real gameboy.


* fCOL32

  put roms in GPMM\COL in .gz, .rar (v2), .zip or uncompressed file format.
  preferredly zipped, and include only one game per compressed file.

  custom keys:  L+R brings the menu, and START should start most games nicely in easy level.


* fMSX32

  put roms in GPMM\MSX in .gz, .rar (v2), .zip or uncompressed file format.
  preferredly zipped, and include only one game per compressed file.

  custom keys:  L+R brings the menu, and here you have some shorcuts:

                L+UP     = presses 1 and F1
                L+DOWN   = presses 2 and F2
                L+LEFT   = presses 3 and F3
                L+RIGHT  = presses 4 and F4
                L+SELECT = presses 5 and F5
                L+START  = presses 5 and F5


* fZX32

  put roms in GPMM\ZX in .gz, .rar (v2), .zip or uncompressed file format.
  preferredly zipped, and include only one game per compressed file.

  custom keys:  L+R brings the menu, SELECT brings up a virtual keyboard, START is mapped as a quick ENTER.



What's missing
==============

Lots of new options and improvements which are being worked on!
f-day won't dissapoint you! :-)



Greetings
=========

I'd like to greet/credit all people which made the f-day preview a reality, in no particular order:

Marat Fayzullin, Jarek Burczynski, Mitsutaka Okazaki,Laguna,James McKay,Santiago Romero,Alvaro Alea,Kak,Philip Kendall,Russell Marks and Sergey Bulba for their emulators.

Cowering and TOSEC team for their game CRC databases.

Antiriad for his cool artwork! you rule man! :-)

Squidge for his USB mass storage driver. yay! 

Robster for his DMA sound library, rocks! :-)

Mr. Spiv for his b2fxec compressor, and his technical resources :-)

Reesy for his friendly mails and screen-splitting fix code :D

Mirko for his open source SDK routines :D

All my translators who have been translating the f-day menu texts to 16 languages.
I know it is a pity that f-day preview only supports English but people have to wait :-)

All the betatesters at my boards, and specially TheNestruo who did an incredible work on inital stages of fMSX32.

And my girlfriend because she's soooo patient with me, luv u honey! :-)




Last words
==========

Please, don't hassle about releasing f-day sooner, as it is not finished yet. This is only a preview and f-day will be out when it's done.
Just guys consider the fact I'm spending around 8 hours daily on this *big* project since more than a year, for free :-)
That's all, God bless bits.

