PHP Gameboy Emulator: Emulate Gameboy console in a terminal in pure PHP

<p align="center"><img src="https://cloud.githubusercontent.com/assets/2197005/13260438/2f6e96ac-da3a-11e5-86cf-bbfa15083f74.gif" width="560" alt="PHP Terminal GameBoy Emulator" /></p>

Want to play Dr Mario or Pokémon on your server terminal? That's for you!

Table of Contents

• Why
• Requirements
• Running
• Controls
• Tests
• TO-DO
• Credits
• Legal

Why

Some people will ask me: _"Why you did that?"_

Well, a friend asked me _"What PHP can do?"_. I thought about that awhile and the idea came up. With PHP7's performance improvement now it's possible to emulate some systems :smile: and, come on, that's funny! :dancers:

It's based on the GameBoy JS Emulator.

Requirements

The following PHP versions are supported:

• PHP 5.6
• PHP 7
• HHVM

You will need a good terminal! I've tested only on MacOSX and Linux. I'm sorry about that Windows guys :disappointed:

Installation

Using composer:

$ composer g require gabrielrcouto/php-terminal-gameboy-emulator:dev-master

Using PHAR:

$ wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/gabrielrcouto/php-terminal-gameboy-emulator/master/bin/php-gameboy.phar
$ chmod +x php-gameboy.phar
$ mv php-gameboy.phar /usr/local/bin/php-gameboy

Running

Your roms are loaded from the directory you are running the php-gameboy command.

$ php-gameboy drmario.gb
$ php-gameboy pokemon.gbc

If you like to run this emulator locally, simple clone the repository:

$ git clone https://github.com/gabrielrcouto/php-terminal-gameboy-emulator.git
$ cd php-terminal-gameboy-emulator
$ composer install -o

For running roms, pass the full path to your rom or put then in the php-terminal-gameboy-emulator folder:

$ bin/php-gameboy pokemon.gbc
$ bin/php-gameboy /full/path/to/your/rom/drmario.gb

Controls

_n_________________
|_|_______________|_|
|  ,-------------.  |
| |  .---------.  | |
| |  |         |  | |
| |  |         |  | |
| |  |         |  | |
| |  |         |  | |
| |  `---------'  | |
| `---------------' |
|   _               |
| _|W|_         ,-. |
||A   D|   ,-. "._,"|
|  |S|    "._," Dot |
|    _  _ Comma     |
|   // //           |
|  // //    \\\\\\  |
|  N  M      \\\\\\ ,
|________...______,"

• Left = A
• Up = W
• Down = S
• Right = D
• A = Comma (,)
• B = Dot (.)
• Select = N
• Start = M

Tests

You can use the following command to run the most common checks, such as php -l, phpcs:

$ ant check

TO-DO

Converting from the JS paradigm was a lot of work, and I still need to adapt somethings like:

• [x] Code standard - PSRs, please!
• [x] Array of functions - Maybe in PHP it's not the best approach
• [x] Pixel auxiliary array - Very CPU intensive to convert RGBA every time
• [ ] Classes - Core is too big!
• [ ] Profiling and otimizing - XHProf to find the most intensive functions
• [ ] Save/Restore - I need to save my Pokémon, please!

Credits

@gabrielrcouto

Legal

The purpose of this project was to study all the capabilities of PHP.

It does not have any commercial or profitable intentions.

The user is responsible to use this code and its content in the terms of the law.

The author is completely against piracy and respects all the copyrights, trademarks and patents of Nintendo.