Red Panda GB/GBC Emulator

This is a Nintendo GameBoy / GameBoy Color emulator written in C++.

Features

• Emulates Gameboy / Gameboy Color within a WxWidgets / SDL2 based application.
• Uses the PortAudio API to play audio.
• Support for memory controllers (a large portion of all games only use the following):
  • No Controller
  • MBC1
  • MBC3
  • MBC5
• Supports emulated battery saves along with save states.
• Support for MBC3's real-time battery-backed clock.
• Visualizer for:
  • Cartridge Specifications
  • CPU State
  • Memory
  • Palettes
  • Tile Set
  • Background / Window Maps
• Basic debugger with support for adding breakpoints within GB/GBC ROMs and stepping the emulated hardware for either a cycle or for a frame.

Controls

Start e Select q A enter B rShift

Up w Down s Left a Right d

Dependencies

To compile, you will need:

• Visual Studio Community 2022
• Within the VS Community installer, select and install Desktop development with C++
  • Ensure MSVC v143 - VS 2022 C++ x86/x64 build tools is selected. Note other versions may work but are untested.
• Add C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\2022\Community\MSBuild\Current\Bin to the PATH environment variable.

Build and Run Instructions

VSCode

Simply run the run (release) task via the command palette.

CMD

Run the following commands:

msbuild gb-gbc_emu.sln /property:Configuration=Release /property:Platform=x64
./dlls/copyDLLs.bat Release 
./x64/Release/gb-gbc_emu.exe

Future Work / Known Issues

• Fix minor graphics / audio bugs
  • The first scanline is slightly offset during some instances
• Add some high pass audio filtering to the APU for cleaner audio
• Overall optimizations / improvements
• Add additional visualization windows
• Add support for the more obscure memory controllers.
• Kirby's Dream Land crashes after loading the first level.

Resources

• GB Dev Pandocs
• gameboy_opcodes
• gbops
• gbz80 - CPU opcode reference
• GitHub - Baekalfen-PyBoy
• GitHub - geaz-emu-gameboy
• javidx9 - NES Emulator From Scratch youtube series
• The Cycle-Accurate Game Boy Docs
• Writing a Game Boy emulator, Cinoop
• codeslinger.co.uk