Make Meboy Emulator Run Faster (in 2 STEPS!), well it worked for me Options

[chunsiang]

yeah i found some workaround to make gameboy color games run faster on Meboy.

heres the basis i worked on.

found on MeBoy official site

Max number of 16 kB banks to load - Gameboy games are divided into parts (called "banks"), each 16 kB in size. By default up to 64 banks (1 MB) are kept in memory at once, but if your phone reports memory errors you can lower this value. However, if the whole ROM does not fit in memory, performance will suffer as individual banks are loaded during gameplay (instead of all banks being preloaded during startup). Due to such performance concerns, 20 is the lowest value.

found on some forum

..then i suppose we shld do a ram check on all the phones...
anyone have the mjinfotool to check ur ram with?

hey guys...i found the reason...its because of something called heap memory..nothing to do with the ram of the phone...
w810i and k700i k750i all possesses a heap mem of maximum 1.5mb
however, the k800 possesses a max heap mem of 3mb...thats why it is able to run stuff we cant...finally...check out this site if interested..
http://developer.sonyericsson.com/s...w810/p_w810.jsp
thus..this game is only playable on heap mems 3.0 mb and up...

and from this i deduce that by utilising ALL ram (or heap memory) available, the game will run at optimum speed. this means that we needa increases the number of banks to load into MeBoy to achieve optimum speed. HOWEVER, if the max number of banks being loaded exceeds the ram of the phone, well, it jus make your phone extremely lag and may crash your phone.

now technical details aside. heres the instruction. sorry i din included any screenshots

FIRST and foremost,
obviously you must download the latest MeBoyBuilder version. (current version 1.4, download here)
dump ur rom into the builder, transfer the end product into your phone and install.

STEP 1:
test out your phone's ram using mjInfoTool
heres the link to the jad and jar file

mjInfoTool.jar
mjInfoTool.jad

install the program, run it. then press test. the first value shows you the current ram of the phone. it can range from 1mb(old phones) to around 6mb(more recent phones). mine is a w850i and i got arnd 5mb ram.

NOTE: It is advisable to close all running application before testing ram for more accurate results.
NOTE 2: RAM value may change each time u benchmark your phone. try to take it to the nearest MB/KB.

STEP 2
this involves usage of a brain or a calculator

using the RAM value (in KB), divide it by 16. that will be the max number of 16kb banks to load for MeBoy. Key in the value and compare it to your previous one.

it is advisable to reduce your actual value to prevent cases where there is not enough ram and it will hanging up of phone. (in such cases, jus remove the battery and put it in again)

after this, save the settings and run the game. see if theres any difference

TIPS
you may also tweak the frame skip. it helps a bit.
i set mine to 10. recommended would be less than 15.

DISCLAIMER
well, i tot i shld inculded this. i did this and got a decent speed up on my phone (w850i) running pokemon silver. compared to the default 64 max banks, my custom banks (170) gave me better speed. i dun know if this will work for you people. jus thought i'd shared it as it seems beneficial to me. whatever that happen to your phone (be it not working, phone being dead, memory corrupt) after trying out this tweak will not be held responsible by me

let me know if this works. or maybe im wrong.

cheers

This post has been edited by chunsiang: 2007-07-25 14:51

[qwerty12]

Nice . It is also worth mentioning that a smaller theme uses less memory in the phone.

[Wally_Dog]

Chunsiang, I would like to actually first get MeBoy Roms that aren't corrupt!!! I tried POkemon Gold, Pokemon Yellow, and Pokemon Red. I ran MeBoy builder, selected add rom, and it says these roms are corrupt and will not be added to the builder. Please upload some for me to use!

[chunsiang]

@wally

uh i tot its against the rule to post legalized roms on this forum???

well, u can find more roms by using google

[Stonos]

Thanks for the tip
I tried it and it seemed to make Pokemon Crystal to run faster when you are about to enter a battle, however, the battle is much slower....

[qwerty12]

Have you tried turning off the animation option in pokemon?

[Stonos]

Have you tried turning off the animation option in pokemon?

Yep, I already did that, however the problem seems to be when my pokemon comes out of its pokeball and the smoke appears.
MeBoy seems to freeze for a minute there.
Also, even with animations disabled, the battle is very slow...

Maybe it's a problem with Crystal? I shall try Gold or Silver and see if I still have this problem...

[qwerty12]

Thats a shame

You might have better luck with silver. It uses different animations afaik

[Stonos]

Yep, silver seems to run faster

I can run it almost fine with frame skip set to 1

This post has been edited by Stonos: 2007-07-29 10:50

[qwerty12]

Yay! Thanks for that. Time to collect some :cough: roms :cough:

[enfinitzero]

Nice..this'll keep me entertained while sound tripping.
metal and screamo plus pokemon, wonder what t'll be like

[Stonos]

A tip: I recommend you to turn on the "Show Framerate" option. It seems that when I have that enabled, Pokemon runs faster and doesn't freeze


Offtopic: I can't seem to clone in Pokemon Silver with MeBoy... I deposit the Pokemon I want to clone and then I save my game, and while my game is being saved, I use the exit option on MeBoy. However, I don't find my cloned Pokemon on the PC
Anybody else has cloning problems with MeBoy?

[Naidu]

Offtopic: I can't seem to clone in Pokemon Silver with MeBoy... I deposit the Pokemon I want to clone and then I save my game, and while my game is being saved, I use the exit option on MeBoy. However, I don't find my cloned Pokemon on the PC
Anybody else has cloning problems with MeBoy?

Dudez i think doing cloning is to select "unload cart" in MeBoy, btw, can I ask u somethin' Stonos? (offtopic)
have u tried playing Pokemon gold instead of silver? I've got problems while playing it, as Im buying
pokeballs at violet city's mart, a strange patterns have spotted then it whiteouts and hangs,, did you
experienced something problems at your pokemon silver??

-sorry for my english!

[Nabillionaire]

I'm using a K608i and this didn't seem to work.. Thanks anyways.

[koneki1]

All pokemon versions from gameboy color down to the original gameboy work on w580 ^_^

[toyds]

i try this in my K810i and it didn't work.wohoho

[Blu3D]

Works as a charm on my k810i. Selecting "show framerate" reduced lag even more. With banks at 260 and frame skip at 10 it runs almost like on a gameboy

[Corman]

And how do you save game in Pokémon?

[cool3ni]

Maybe this has been discussed here already,but where do I get games for meboy,I have it an it only came with one game which was pokemon crystal an I'd like to get some more

[MetroidJunkie200...]

Man, my phone sucks. Only 1344 KB of RAM. Thanks for the instructions, though. The test game is running noticeably smoother.