So with the release yesterday Minus4j is actually in pretty reasonable shape. Sure it needs the source cleaned a little - theres loads of commented out crap in there, but on the whole not bad. So as I was adding another paramater to it (allowing you to specify the initial frame skip - since Xeo3 runs at 25Hz, you never NEED 50fps drawing), I suddenly realised that these days, Java probably provides image scaling as part of the API!
And sure enough.... there it is. So, I've now removed the software scale I was using and now use the API. This is of couse good for 2 reasons. One... being part of the API means it might be assembler optimised, and not just some tacky code I did, and second it reduces the code I've to maintain. Its all good.
Before I set it all aside again, I'm going to look into sound. I do this every 3 years or so to see how much effort it would be to add sound to Minus4j. When I started, you just couldn't, but there are now a few apps which do what I need to, so chances are its not too hard. All I really need is a buffer or two that plays music at a specific rate through a software buffer. I can then fill this up as I emulate things. This would let me plug in TED and SID music - not to mention samples that Minus4w can play. That would be cool - then all I'd need is some basic D64 support!
Oh... and while I won't release all these little bits, I will update both my blog and Plus4world to use all the latest stuff, then release it when theres enough to package it all up.
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