[crazyelectron]

Gambatte-K2: Game Boy Emulator for Kindle (GTK2/FBInk)

Gambatte-K2 is a Game Boy / Game Boy Color (.gb, .gbc ROMS) emulator frontend for Kindle e-ink devices, built with performance in mind. It uses the gambatte-libretro core and provides a GTK2 interface, as well as direct framebuffer rendering mode via FBInk

Usage

Grab the zip (gambatte-k2.zip), unpack on /mnt/us/extensions as any other extension:

Launch via KUAL and/or copy the shortcut (shortcut_gambatte-k2.sh) to /mnt/us/documents so it shows on your library.

Open a game/ROM using the Open button.

TL-DR Technical Features

Spoiler:

- Fast, Lightweight UI:
Minimal dependencies (`2.5Mb` binary), runs pretty well on low-RAM e-ink Kindles using around `15Mb` of RAM.
- Two Rendering Modes:
- GTK2:Standard X11/GTK2 drawing mode using the OS e-ink refreshing.
- FBInk:Direct framebuffer output for maximum speed, a little quirky, with more ghosting.
- Performance-Oriented Design:
- Only one main loopin the frame processing path doing scaling and dithering at once.
- Ordered dithering (BW)(Bayer 4x4) applied during a first scaling stage for improved frame speed processing.
- Nearest-neighbor scalingin the second stage for fast upscaling.
- Single GdkPixbufreused for all frames to minimize RAM usage and allocations.
- LUT (Lookup Table):Precomputed 65536-entry lookup table with RGB565→RGB888→grayscale conversion for fast pixel processing.
- Touch & Multi-Touch Controls:
- On-screen virtual Game Boy like buttons with ad-hoc multi-touch support (up to 2 touches) listening directly on the /dev/input/eventX device events.
- Dynamic Quality/Size Controls:
- Toggle between some scaling/quality presets.
- Threaded Frame Processing:
- Frame conversion and drawing are offloaded to a worker thread to keep the UI responsive.
- Minimal External Dependencies:
- Only needs GTK2, GDK-Pixbuf, and FBInk (for direct mode).

Download: gambatte-k2.zip

https://github.com/crazy-electron/gambatte-k2