Some questions/thoughts about the circuit gem software
Posted: Mon Aug 05, 2019 1:40 am
I successfully built my circuit gem build a while ago now and I'm very happy with it (https://pasteboard.co/IrfGD1W.jpg), it's certainly a conversation piece when people see it. Now that I have had it a while and it hasn't fallen to bits or exploded thanks to my build skillz, I would like to modify it a bit more.
First thing I would really like to do is modify the system menu a bit , but I am not really sure where to look, can any one point me in the right direction? There are several usability improvements I would like to add, mainly a quick way to save and load , possibly rewind and fast forward emulation. There are of course only four buttons on the device, but it strikes me that half the system menu options I could easily live without. Wifi options aren't really that useful when you have already loaded up your games, the keyboard is cute but mainly only needed for entering your wifi password, and the emergency shutdown could probably be dispensed with if there was a trigger to shut down on low battery. So perhaps I could have left/right as select state slot, a to save and b to load.
The other thing I was wondering is, how to fiddle with the screen, is there anyway to customise it at all, eg tweak the aspect ratio or change the scaling filter or anything else interesting like that? I'd like to see what it would look like if mega drive games were stretched to fill the whole screen, I can't imagine it being too terrible and I've never been a fan of screen borders.
Finally, maybe its a bit of a stretch, but what are the chances of enabling system hibernation on this little gadget? It would be a lot nicer than waiting for raspbian to boot every time. Although I suppose I could alternatively take an axe to the underlying system and rip anything out that doesn't really need to be there...
Oh yeah, and of course thanks Kite for making such great board. It's really been a dream to have some sort of super vmu ever since I first saw the things in 1999, it hasn't stopped being surreal to actually hold one in my hands!
First thing I would really like to do is modify the system menu a bit , but I am not really sure where to look, can any one point me in the right direction? There are several usability improvements I would like to add, mainly a quick way to save and load , possibly rewind and fast forward emulation. There are of course only four buttons on the device, but it strikes me that half the system menu options I could easily live without. Wifi options aren't really that useful when you have already loaded up your games, the keyboard is cute but mainly only needed for entering your wifi password, and the emergency shutdown could probably be dispensed with if there was a trigger to shut down on low battery. So perhaps I could have left/right as select state slot, a to save and b to load.
The other thing I was wondering is, how to fiddle with the screen, is there anyway to customise it at all, eg tweak the aspect ratio or change the scaling filter or anything else interesting like that? I'd like to see what it would look like if mega drive games were stretched to fill the whole screen, I can't imagine it being too terrible and I've never been a fan of screen borders.
Finally, maybe its a bit of a stretch, but what are the chances of enabling system hibernation on this little gadget? It would be a lot nicer than waiting for raspbian to boot every time. Although I suppose I could alternatively take an axe to the underlying system and rip anything out that doesn't really need to be there...
Oh yeah, and of course thanks Kite for making such great board. It's really been a dream to have some sort of super vmu ever since I first saw the things in 1999, it hasn't stopped being surreal to actually hold one in my hands!