What is TextNES?
TextNES is a color, text-mode NES emulator, based on the DarcNES source code, of which the only existing code left is the mapper and sound generation code, the overall structure of the emulator (which has been GUTTED to only NES emulation), and the Marat emulation core, which will be replaced in the first "real" release with Niel Bradley's Make6502 multi-6502 assembly emulation core. For those of you that think I'm joking about this being a text-mode NES emulator, download it, try it on a few ROM's, and become a believer my friends.
Revision History
v0.0.1
First public release, beta, no sound output but full sound emulation already intact.
v0.1.0
Second public release, beta, same as last version but available in 132x60 and 80x25 versions.
Click here for a screenshot in 132x60 mode
Colored sample image can be found here :
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http://web.archive.org/web/20010728090044/http://muq.org/~wolfwngs/textnes/ss.html
Manual
Okay, random information in no particular order, some of it, especially
later, pending until the code is working to my satisfaction before I'll
enable it in the release version.
Yes, this is a bit of a novelty emulator. No, I don't intend for it to fall
behind, but in some ways to perhaps set a new standard for what an emulator
is capable of, and how well it performs. That, and I just feel it's something
of a tribute to classic video games, being able to play them on video cards
from the era, and still make sense of the graphics, and still have the
graphics *GASP* look good!
It used a great library called AA-Lib for the brunt of the work originally.
Now, well, AA-Lib has been gutted for the good parts, optimized to a
fare-thee-well, had it's tables precalculated and compressed, and it's
pretty much been left for dead at this point.
It now uses a mutant twistwith NRV compression here and there, and is in fact fully integrated into
the main InfoNES code as of now. It's had support for things like funky
combinations of reverse video and bright/dark colors, stuff like that,
although I still think it looks best, personally, with nothing but black
background colors being allowed, and that is the table packaged into the
executable. In fact, I originally had coded something very similair to
AA-Lib myself when I was about 6, on my Tandy 1000EX, when trying to
convert a couple GIF animations to ANSI animations. AA-Lib thought of one
thing mine didn't, using the character cells in quarters instead of pixel-
by-pixel as my routines did, so while mine was wonderful for fine detail,
AA-Lib is ideal for real-time low-res gaming and graphics.
Speaking of NRV, I'm using it to compress the executable via UPX v1.01.
Should help keep it nice and tiny, able to keep a ROM and the executable on
a 360k disk. Soon as I add ZIP support, even the largest ROM's should fit,
and many should fit on a lowly 160k disk. Yes, Virginia, they made 160k
disks. The old 8" ones. And yes, I actually have an old, and still working,
8" drive and floppies to test it on.
AMD K6-2 500Mhz system with an 8"floppy drive stacked on the case, always good for some funny looks. >^.^<
Also, I might simply add a different sort of support for "compressed" ROM
images, namely a simple NRV-compressor, which would result in far less
code needed at my end.
Yes, I will be adding a GUI like ZSNES or Nesticle, but, as with the rest of
it, fully text-mode only. It will support a mouse, or a mouseless environment
just peachy, BTW. I might see if I can add Zapper support as well if I can
find a Zapper ROM to test with, let the mouse act as the targetting. Oh, and
there's going to be support for the Power Glove. I have one, it plugs right
into a serial port with minimal work. And I'm going to support this lovely
item as fully as I possible can, including in the GUI. If you can, pick up a
Power Glove off E-Bay for like $25 and just wait. You'll like it.
Finally, regarding trying to read the text of a game in, say, 40x25 or 80x25
mode, which is currently an exercise in futility, to say the least, well, I
hate to say this, but wait and live with it for now. A solution is in the
works, but will have to wait until after the GUI is finished.
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http://muq.org/~wolfwngs/textnes/
This is a simple placeholder web-page. TextNES is actually not dead, I've resumed work on it recently, and will be improving the visual quality as well as the graphics quality, such as it was, as far as possible.
For anyone that wonders... the emulator was based on various cobbled-together pieces of source code from many other emulators, along with an independant implementation of a graphics library similair, but far superior to, AALib. My implementation dates back to the early 1980s on my Tandy 1000EX as part of my quest to display high-resolution graphics on the limited screen by using the alphabet (both the default one and custom ones) to display graphics that couldn't otherwise be supported.
The new version will be built as I have the time, but due to newer video cards I'm going to scale back support for DOS, re-writing it as a 'server' for Windows, Linux, and other systems. Yes, my previous claims of playing NES games over a Telnet window will be proven. And yes, this means you could play NES games over your cell phone, if you used it to 'dial into' your home computer running the next revision of TextNES.
By the way... there's actually THREE versions of TextNES floating around. One of them runs at 80x25 and looks rather poor, but works on ANY system. Another runs only at 132x66, the most commonly-found version, and works on fewer and fewer modern systems. The last, and most rare as I don't even have a copy any longer, was a version I released shortly before initially removing this web site that supported 132, 80, and 40 columns, and 66, 50, and 25 line displays, both settings being supported independantly. Good luck finding that version, I don't even think anyone ever downloaded it before I deleted it.
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http://muq.org/%7Ewolfwngs/textnes/
Author: Unknown
And for your edification and enjoyment, I present you TextNes :
TextNES.7z- (71.27 KiB) Downloaded 284 times
I apologize for what seems like an obsession of mine of trolling Wayback, but cut an old guy some slack, as he was not involved in " back in the day "and who is now fascinated with what I see as the genius of minds in creating their works. Just a tad
