Boytacean

A Game Boy emulator that is written in Rust 🦀.

This emulator has been written for educational purposes and shouldn't be taken too seriously. But yeahh it plays most Game Boy games, which is cool... 🕹️

Features

Game Boy (DMG) and Game Boy Color (CGB) emulation
Simple navigable source-code
Web, SDL and Libretro front-ends
Audio, with a pretty accurate APU
Serial Data Transfer (Link Cable) support
Game Boy Printer emulation
Support for multiple MBCs: MBC1, MBC2, MBC3, and MBC5
Save state support using the BESS Specification for cross-compatibility with other emulators
Cheat support using Game Genie and GameShark codes
Variable CPU clock speed
Accurate PPU - passes dmg-acid2 and cgb-acid2 tests

For the Web front-end...

Mobile first experience
Transparent RAM saving using Web Storage API
GamePad support using Web Gamepad API
Unobstructive and effective on-screen GamePad
Rumble emulation and haptic feedback
Cool bespoke display palettes built by TheWolfBunny64.
Fullscreen browser mode
Debug mode - VRAM and registers

What's still missing...

Low-level cycle accurate system emulation
Game Boy Camera emulation
NetPlay gaming support

Deployments

Provider	Stable	URL
Cloudflare	`True`	boytacean.joao.me
Cloudflare	`True`	boytacean.pages.dev
Cloudflare	`True`	prod.boytacean.pages.dev
Cloudflare	`True`	stable.boytacean.pages.dev
Cloudflare	`False`	master.boytacean.pages.dev

Build

Library

cargo build

Python Library

pip install .

python setup.py install

WASM for Node.js

cargo install wasm-pack
wasm-pack build --release --target=nodejs -- --features wasm

WASM for Web

cargo install wasm-pack
wasm-pack build --release --target=web --out-dir=frontends/web/lib -- --features wasm
cd frontends/web
npm install && npm run build
cd dist && python3 -m http.server

Web front-end

The Web front-end makes use of EmuKit which is a UI toolkit that provides the required infrastructure for the creation of interfaces for emulation in a Web context.

Configuration

You can use some GET parameters to control the initial behavior of the emulator.

Parameter	Type	Description
`rom_url`	String	The URL from which the initial ROM is going to be loaded, should support CORS.
`url`	String	The same as `rom_url`.
`fullscreen`	Boolean	If the emulator should start in fullscreen mode.
`fs`	Boolean	The same as `fullscreen`.
`debug`	Boolean	If the "debugger" should start visible and information shown in `verbose` mode.
`verbose`	Boolean	If information should be shown in verbose mode.
`keyboard`	Boolean	If the on-screen keyboard should start visible.
`palette`	String	The name of the palette to be set at startup( eg: `christmas`, `hogwards`, `mariobros`, etc.).

Palettes

The palettes offered in the web version were provided by TheWolfBunny64.

Inspiration

To get some information about the resources that inspired me through the emulation creation journey check Inspiration.

Contributing

Love Gameboy emulation? Want to contribute to Boytacean? That's awesome! Your contributions are what make the open-source community such an amazing place to learn, inspire, and create.

To get started, please take a look at our Contributing Guidelines. Whether you're fixing bugs, adding new features, or helping with documentation, every contribution is valuable and greatly appreciated!

Don't hesitate to reach out if you have any questions. Join us in making Boytacean the best Gameboy emulator out there!

License

Boytacean is currently licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0.

joamag / boytacean

readme