Is there any way to add a different Gameboy Advanced Emulator on V90?

[mejasiu]

I have been looking all over the internet and just cannot seem to find any instructions on how to add a different emulator than the one that comes with MiyooCFW. I tried to add RGBA but with no success. The GPSP emulator works fine but when taking save states the screenshot isn't clear and it doesn't really let you know if you saved or not which has caused some missed saved states. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[MiyanoOsu]

You can add another emulator gba by compile it by yoursefl, you will need toolchain for miyoo, source code of gba emulator, then create make file, add keymap and optimize something on emulator to run better... Or simple way is download retroarch from their offical web site and make some setting, load core and play.

[Apaczer]

From what I'm aware of, the gpSP is the fastest of all available options there (and you will need all the power there is to run those games fluidly).
RetroArch have gpSP and mGBA but the frontend's UI (rgui) does not support savestate Thumbnails.

[mejasiu]

Thanks, everyone for your input. Overall gpSP works fine but every so often I have weird issues with saves states. The other day my daughter was playing and it would not allow me to save the state which caused her to lose all her progress. My son has been playing on a PocketGo V2 and also had the same gpSP with similar save state issues. I ended uploading mGBA and have not had any issues since. @Apaczer I will give RetroArch a try to see how that works and worst-case I will give compiling a try myself. Thanks!

[Rezzy-dev]

Yep, gpSP is quite buggy, but it's all we've got running smoothly in terms of GBA emulation on the Miyoo. Both VBA-Next (VBA-M), and mGBA run incredibly slow (unplayable). gpSP is at least optimised for ARM, even if it still has a lot of bugs, and won't run every game.

Miyoo is not (yet) really for GBA emulation. It runs GB and GBC games just fine (in either OhBoy or Gambatte -- you have a choice between two emulators), and other main consoles like the NES and Sega Mega Drive (Genesis) wonderfully, but it (still) lacks when it comes to dependable GBA emulation.

[Rezzy-dev]

Here's VBA-Next (VBA-M), from RetroArch, compiled for the Miyoo: https://github.com/TriForceX/MiyooCFW/files/7876558/vbanext.zip

But I think you'll find the performance less than satisfactory, as I did. I had high hopes for VBA-M, but nope -- these mainstream GBA emulators were not meant/optimised for ARM.

[MiyanoOsu]

@Rezzy-dev mgba is an opensource and may it will run well on miyoo devices, but idk how it work, so nothing is done, hope you take a look with it.

[Rezzy-dev]

It's not optimised for ARM, @MiyanoOsu. It will require a complete rewrite to get it to work fast on ARM devices -- the same as VBA-M (which is open source, too: https://github.com/visualboyadvance-m/visualboyadvance-m/).

The big difference between these emulators and gpSP is that gpSP was written with ARM in mind. So until the Miyoo devices get a lot better/faster with their hardware, these old and well recognised GBA emulators, VBA-M and mGBA, will not work well on the Miyoo platform. They will be quite slow with their emulation compared to software like gpSP and PicoDrive, as they were designed with higher specs/hardware in mind (PCs) -- more resources to work with.

[Rezzy-dev]

If you are (or anyone is) interested to have a look at it, @gameblabla has ported VBA-Next to Miyoo:

https://github.com/gameblabla/vba-next-portable

(This is the source I've compiled the above linked binary from.)

mGBA and VBA-Next (and its successor, VBA-M), are actually about the same in terms of performance overall. They differ in how they approach the emulation, with VBA aiming to provide better game compatibility with less focus on accuracy, and mGBA aiming to be authentic in its emulation (high accuracy) at the cost of game compatibility and performance.

Both are much more stable than gpSP, but also run a lot-lot slower on ARM (neither is optimised for ARM).