[Feature request] Support for the game Legacy, by Redshift

[gab]

Running on Retroarch 1.10.3 with Mu 1.3.0 1361da0. palmos41-en-m515.rom checksum is 83CB1D1C76E568B916DC2E7C0BF669F6

The Legacy demo (Legacy.prc) downloaded from here doesn't work properly: http://www.redshift.hu/legacypalm.htm The game starts and you see a garbled load screen, then it crashes.

I can attest that the game works properly on the StyleTap emulator demo on older versions of Android, and on the Palm Simulator on Windows.

The game supports Palm OS 4.1, but only hi-res devices, so I presume it crashes because the 160x160 screen is simply too small.

As far as options for solving this go, I see the following possibilities:

• Invent some kind of hack to let games render outside the m515 normal screen size.
• Add support for a fictional m515 with a larger screen - assuming the software in the ROM wouldn't freak out. In this case you could let us configure the size through some config file so we can try 320x480 and 480x320 ratios.
• Add support for another Palm OS 4.1 device that happens to have a hi-res screen, such as the Tungsten W, Sony Clie or Acer S50/55.
• Finish Palm OS 5 support (which I hope would target some device with a larger screen and Landscape mode like Tungsten T3)

To add support for the numerous expansions/DLCs, it would be very nice to also implement loading a .zip with multiple .prc, .pdb and other supported file types - a possibility that was mentioned in another issue. At the moment the only way I found to load multiple .prc files is through the Ram Builder (a.k.a. the emulator running on Qt?) available on the repo you forked this one from. Retroarch doesn't even understand that .prc files are compatible with the Mu core, let alone let you load another one without restarting the emulator.

It was probably the most popular RPG on Palm with hundreds of hours of gameplay to offer, and it would be a good flagship game for Mu to emulate - current emulation options on Windows for this game don't even support resizing/upscaling the game window, resulting in a microscopic playing area, and the only Android option costs 50$ and isn't maintained for Android 12 and 13

[gingerbeardman]

Mu would need support added for an extra device, a big ask

[gab]

I discovered another emulation alternative, Cloudpilot, that does Palm OS 4.1. It supports both the Tungsten W and Sony Clie NR70v - unfortunately, with no sound. But the game Legacy works properly on both.

AFAIK Cloudpilot is open source so might provide some inspiration on how to extend support for other devices.

Mu would beed support added for an extra device, a big ask

That's a pretty generic comment. If you have facts backed by Mu code and target hardware knowledge that would help determine the scope of the task, please do share.

[gingerbeardman]

The original developer of Mu is deceased, you can find their historic opinion of the work involved on the Mu discord