This frequently aked questions page answers everything you'd never wanted to know about JavaBoy.
Q: What does JavaBoy actually do?
Q: What do I need to run JavaBoy?
Q: How do I start JavaBoy?
Q: Then what do I do?
Q: What are the keys?
Q: Why is everything so slow?
Q: How do I use JavaBoy as an applet on a web page?
Q: Can JavaBoy load compressed ROM images?
Q: Can I use JavaBoy on my web page?
Q: How do I use the networking feature?
Q: What do the colour schemes do?
Q: Why won't my game work?
Q: How do I save my game when running JavaBoy on a web site?
Q: How do I compile JavaBoy?
Q: What's the debugger for?
Q: What's the meaning of life, the universe, and everything?
Q: What does JavaBoy actually do?
A: JavaBoy is an emulator. An emulator is a piece of software which performs tasks usually
done by hardware. In this case, the emulator allows you to play games written for the
Gameboy or Gameboy Color on the PC (or any other platform)
Q: What do I need to run JavaBoy?
A: JavaBoy requires at least a Pentium II/266 processor to run, and a Pentium II/600 is reccommended for Colour Gameboy games. You will also need to have a Java Virtual Machine installed. You can download this from Sun or IBM, although the IBM one will provide much better
performance.
Q: How do I start JavaBoy?
A: To run JavaBoy, once you have installed your Virtual Machine, simply unzip the ZIP file
into any directory, start a DOS prompt, and type
when you are in the relevant directory, remebering to ensure the capitalization is correct.
If this doesn't work, make sure that the Java Virtual Machine is on your path, and that
you are in the correct directory.
Q: Then what do I do?
A: You need a ROM for the game you want to play. This is an image of a Gameboy cartridge.
There are several freeware ROMS available on this site. ROMs for commercial games are
under copyright. You might be able to find them on the net somewhere, but please
don't ask me for them. It's only legal to own a ROM image if you also own the original
game cartridge.
Once you've got your ROM, click 'File', 'Open ROM...', and then select your ROM file.
Then click 'File', 'Emulate'. The game should run.
Q: What are the keys?
A: Use the cursor arrows for the D-pad. 'Z' for the A button, 'X' for the B button, Return
for the start button, and backspace for the select button. You can change these keys using the 'Define Controls..' option on the file menu.
Q: Why is everything so slow?
A: Java programs are interpreted, so the speed is less than ideal. To speed up the emulator,
you can use a smaller window from the 'View' menu. You can also force it to display less frames. The action is more jerky, but the game will run faster. To adjust frame skip, press F1 and F2 on your keyboard.
Q: How do I use JavaBoy as an applet on a web page?
A: First, create an HTML file with the following tag:
Q: Can JavaBoy load compressed ROM images?
A: Yes, ROMs can be loaded in ZIP/JAR or GZip format. In the application version, just select the name of the Zip file when you choose File/Open.
For the applet version, use the name of the Zip file in the "ROMIMAGE" parameter to the applet. For ZIP/JAR files, the first .GB or .GBC file in the Zip will be used.
GZip files cannot be Tarred, or they won't work.
Q: Can I use JavaBoy on my web page?
A: That depends. If you page is non-commercial, then you can use JavaBoy all you want.
If your page is commercial, then you ned to email me to discuss licencing conditions.
Q: How do I use the networking feature?
Networking allows you to play certain games against other players on a LAN or the Internet.
This feature is very much in it's infancy, and it has only been shown to work with three
games, (Tetris, Dr Mario, and Dynablaster) so you may not have much luck with any others.
To use the feature, you need two machines on the same TCP/IP network. Run JavaBoy on
both machines, and load the same ROM. On one machine, choose 'Allow connections' from the
'Network' menu. On the other machine, choose 'Connect to client' from the 'Network' menu.
Enter the IP address of the other machine in the box and click ok. You will be notified
when the connection is made. Then start the two player game as if you were running on
two linked Gameboys. Be patient, as games are often punctuated by long pauses as the
machines communicate.
Q: What do the colour schemes do?
A: The colour schemes can be found at the bottom of the 'View' menu. These alow black &
white games to be given a kind of 'false colour'. Select one of the options to see
what it's like. The 'LCD Shades' option tries to reproduce the yellow shades on the
original Gameboy. This will have no effect on colour games.
Q: Why won't my game work?
A: The compatibility of the emulator is not 100%, and there are several known games which
don't work, or display major faults. If you find a game which is not listed on the
compatibility page which doesn't work, email me and I may fix it in a later version.
No promises though, as these things are notoriously hard to track now.
Q: How do I save my game when running JavaBoy on a web site?
A: In version 0.91 and above, JavaBoy supports sending save data to a website.
The data is sent as an HTTP post request to a specified URL.
What this means is that you need a server which supports some form of
scripting, and to write a script which performs the saving. Sample PHP
script is included in this archive which will do the job. The script
was kindly contributed by Daniel Fisher. This script saves text files
for each user. They are called 'saveram.php' and 'loadram.php'.
If your server doesn't support PHP, or you want to save in a different
way (perhaps to a database) you will have to write your own script. You
will need programming knowledge for this.
If you're using free web space, you're probably out of luck, as these almost
never support scripting. You can still use JavaBoy, but you won't be able
to save your game.
To set the URL used for saves, include the following in your <APPLET> tag:
The Username allows you to keep several user's saves private. The username
is passed to the url to allow the server to determine who's save is in use.
THis is entirely optional though, you may prefer to generate a user id and
append it to the base urls.
When enabled, two extra options appear on JavaBoy's applet menu, Save
and Load.
When Save is selected, JavaBoy opens a connection to the SaveRamURL.
The POST section of the request contains the folllowing fields:
'romname' - The filename of the ROM being played
The applet doesn't require any particular response from the server.
When Loading data, a similar process occurs. This time, the user variable
is passed on the GET method of the URL, which lets the server determine
which user is performing the load. The 'gamename' variable and the
'romname' variable is sent via the POST method. The server must respond
with the 'data0' field which was sent to it when the game was saved.
If there was no save data, the user should return with the string
'NOSAVERAM'. A general error condition can be indicated by returning
'ERROR' followed on the same line with details of the error. The
details will be shown to the user.
Please note that to save, JavaBoy must be loaded from the same server
that is used to save the data. If these differ, Java will throw a security
exception. This is because all unsigned Java apps on a web page run in
a sandbox that doesn't allow them to contact servers other than the one
they were loaded from.
Q: How do I compile JavaBoy?
A: To compile JavaBoy, you will need the source archive, which can be found on the
downloads page. You will also need a compiler which supports Java 1.2 (Java2 Revision 1.2). You can find this on Sun's site, amoung others. Once you have this, simply
type:
The necessary .class files will then be created.
java JavaBoy
<APPLET CODE="JavaBoy.class" WIDTH=320 HEIGHT=288>
Then, place the HTML file, the ROM image, and all the emulator files (*.class), and open the HTML file in a browser. You should be able to play the game in the browser, after clicking on the applet window to give it the keyboard focus. A reduced feature set is available when JavaBoy is running as an applet. Black and white games can only be played with the standard colours. The applet width and height must be a multiple of the GameBoy screen's width and height, to allow the applet to stretch the image to the right size.
Once started, you can click the applet to get a menu that allows you to choose your options. You will only be able to resize the image smaller than it is already, or the edges of the image will be clipped out. A larger image makes it easier to see the game on large screens, but also makes the emulator run slower if your PC is not up to the task.
<PARAM NAME="ROMIMAGE" VALUE="*Enter name of ROM image here*">
<PARAM NAME="SOUND" VALUE="ON">
</APPLET>
<PARAM NAME="SAVERAMURL" VALUE="[Your URL Here]">
The SaveRamURL is the address that save data is submitted to, and the
LoadRamURL is the address that data is loaded from. Any parameters included
in the urls are sent to the script as well.
<PARAM NAME="LOADRAMURL" VALUE="[Your URL Here]">
<PARAM NAME="USERNAME" VALUE="[Your user here]">
'gamename' - The name of the game being played (internal ROM name)
'user' - The user that was passed to the applet as the 'USERNAME' parameter.
'datalength' - The number of bytes that need to be saved.
'data0' - The save data itself, a long string, the length of which is equal
to 'datalength'.
javac -O *.java