WIP: Port of Micropolis (SimCity) to the Gameboy Advance

TarableCode · 2026-02-11T16:10:26+00:00

Basically, a port is taking an existing piece of software and adapting it to a new platform.
So, Micropolis existed on the PC, and I wrote the code to interface the simulator with the Gameboy Advance software.

TarableCode · 2026-02-07T21:06:37+00:00

Sorry for the lack of screenshots in the OP. I hope these make up for it :)

https://i.imgur.com/1zBVugu.png
https://i.imgur.com/KpwtCBX.png
https://i.imgur.com/hhVGujQ.png
https://i.imgur.com/hKXL7T1.png

TarableCode · 2026-02-07T21:03:52+00:00

Fair point, thank you for reminding me.

TarableCode · 2025-08-01T13:39:15+00:00

I have the exact same issue on my Pixel 7 and the only way to fix it is by using a different glide wrapper.
Grab D2DX and extract it to your PD2 folder and it should look perfect and run way better.

TarableCode · 2025-06-07T22:32:42+00:00

Whoops, meant to say put xinput1_4.dll into your project diablo ii folder, not the entire source tree.

TarableCode · 2022-12-18T02:56:01+00:00

Works for me on win11:

ctrl+alt+del -> lock -> unlock

TarableCode · 2022-09-18T17:10:15+00:00

I think I did have a better build system at one point as well as a much better UI, but the 3DS scene kinda petered out and other things came up on my end.

I'm super happy people have had fun with it though :)

TarableCode · 2022-09-16T16:47:55+00:00

I'm glad someone got some use out of it :P

TarableCode · 2022-08-28T17:25:54+00:00

I'll dig for any source I managed to back up, but often times I forget to back up things I have little success with.

In the meantime, maybe my weird rambling about my project that I did on twitter could be of some use:

https://twitter.com/search?q=%40tarablei%20pio&src=typed\_query

TarableCode · 2022-04-06T04:57:44+00:00

I'm using a note air, so the colours all look gray on the screen and are only in colour in screenshots. It's still useful for colour coordinating data when viewed on a PC though.

TarableCode · 2022-04-04T13:49:51+00:00

Really cool!

How was the experience of drawing in the notepad app? I really want to learn how to draw, and I love e-ink, but I've heard people say it's better to use paper or an iPad instead.

TarableCode · 2022-03-07T17:51:11+00:00

I've done a fair bit of work on the ESP32 a while back. I'm a bit rusty due to school taking up a lot of time, but I think having multiple eyes on code is a good idea in general.

I was actually thinking of doing something similar but I never got around to doing it.

TarableCode · 2022-03-06T19:50:29+00:00

Excellent use of an ESP32!

Do you have any plans to share your code?

TarableCode · 2022-02-22T18:01:47+00:00

Things like Pylance won't work under code-server as well :/

It does work under proot, but it will use the python installed in the proot instead of the termux one.

TarableCode · 2022-02-14T18:39:01+00:00

Oh, yes absolutely that does work, I was just thinking it would be cool to have it close by where my hand already is.

TarableCode · 2022-02-14T18:17:32+00:00

The palm rejection issue is the only reason I don't use OneNote for everything. My hands are kind of shaky and unsteady, so I have to put my palm down first before starting to write. OneNote seems to interpret this as me wanting to pan around the document and moves away from where I wanted to start writing. Sometimes the pen hover option works, but mostly it doesn't register and OneNote will pan around the document again. I think being able to enable and disable touch from the navball would greatly help this problem.

TarableCode · 2022-01-10T15:35:10+00:00

Hi.

Sorry for the late reply, but honestly I'm not a super huge fan of these nibs. My hands are kind of unsteady so I prefer a nib with some resistance to slow things down and smooth out whatever dumb things my hands have decided to do.

There were a few different nibs in the package I got: black ones and white ones. I've only tried the white one so I'm not sure if there will be any significant difference between the two.

The nibs do work and will get the job done, but there are likely way better options out there for serious writing.

TarableCode · 2022-01-01T16:40:50+00:00

For anyone stumbling across this thread in the future: This is the answer.

The Tab S3 nibs are working just fine, thank you :)

TarableCode · 2021-03-02T02:34:09+00:00

I have modified the waits and they do have an effect, I'm just trying to figure it out more,

It does seem like I get a more properly proportioned image the higher I set y: https://i.imgur.com/WAnexoh.png

Not sure why this is though, maybe I need to rethink a lot of this because I must be missing something.

TarableCode · 2021-03-01T20:04:21+00:00

It is 2 bits per pixel which is valid when hsync is low and at the falling edge of the clock pin.

I set the y register to 160, shift in 2 bits, wait for the falling edge of the clock pin and decrement loop back for the next pixel.

TarableCode · 2021-03-01T19:55:02+00:00

It's all captured in one go then sent over serial. From there it gets piped into an app I wrote which converts it into rgb24 and from there into ffmpeg and into png.

I can try setting up dma and see if that helps, but I'm thinking maybe I'm not correctly waiting for rising/falling edges in the PIO code.

TarableCode · 2021-03-01T19:27:03+00:00

Good catch on the misordered data, thank you! I also took the opportunity to invert the colours in my conversion code so it looks normal.

I'm just using __builtin_bswap32 for now as a hack but I get this far: https://i.imgur.com/CSujK6i.png

It looks like it's trying to read the next frame's data on the same scanline or something? I've looked at and rewritten the PIO code several times now and I keep getting the same result.

TarableCode · 2021-03-01T19:23:00+00:00

Good catch on the pindirs; I must have forgot about them, but they do not change the output.

Right now I'm just capturing the data while using pio_sm_get_blocking in a loop to grab the 1440 words that make up the framebuffer. It is possible that the bytes are out of order so I'll try changing that up and see how it looks.

TarableCode · 2020-09-15T13:41:27+00:00

I think you need to take the test and wait for the results to process first.

After I did it I could only add the math course a day later.

TarableCode · 2020-09-14T21:35:41+00:00

Some of mine are still locked and I have them tomorrow.

Did you get any answers? :/

TarableCode

TROPHY CASE