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Open Emu
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Open Emu - Game emulation for Mac OS X

Core Animation iconOpen Emu is an open source project to bring game emulation to OS X as a first class citizen, leveraging modern OS X technologies such as Cocoa, Core Animation and Quartz, and 3rd party libraries like Sparkle for auto-updating. Open Emu is based on a modular architecture, allowing for game-engine plugins, this means Open Emu can support a host of different emulation engines and back-ends while retaining a familiar OS X native front-end.

Currently Open Emu incorporates the following game engines as plugins:

  • CrabEmu
    adds support for Sega Master System, Game Gear, SG - 1000
  • Gambatte
    adds support for Game Boy and Game Boy Color
  • Gens/GS
    adds support for Sega Genesis, Sega CD and Sega 32x
  • Nestopia
    adds support for NES/Famicom
  • SNES9x
    adds support for SNES and Super Famicom
  • Visualboy
    adds support for Game Boy Advance

Open Emu also supports high quality scaling using Open GL, multithreaded video and audio playback as well as individual features and preferences per game engine, such as NTSC video signal emulation for the Nestopia Core.

Screenshots

Scaling Scaling Plugins Plugins
Open Emu QC
Open Emu QC

Open Emu QC

QC iconOpen Emu-QC leverages the modularity and plugin architecture of Open Emu and brings it to Quartz Composer, Apple's graphical programming environment. You can now bring your favorite ROMs into Quartz Composer (and any application that supports Quartz Composer documents) allowing you to post-process, add effects and play your ROMs in new and interesting ways.

  • Use audio or MIDI input to drive game characters and input
  • Use the same input signals to control multiple ROMs at once from the same joystick/gamepad
  • Add 3D effects or image processing to the game image for interactive 8bit visuals
  • VJ with your favorite games, in realtime, with effect responding to game input

Open Emu QC includes a separate plugin just for the Nestopia engine, which supports extended features, such as rom glitching, cheat codes and game rewinding. You can now software 'bend' a virtual NES, in realtime, with your favorite Quartz Composer compatible VJ applications.

More info coming soon - stay tuned!

Screenshots

Quartz Composer Quartz Composer Quartz Composer NES glitching in action Quartz Composer

News

06.24.09 : 1.0.0b4 - Installer tweaks, QC enabled by default, fix for QCNes plugin being corrupt in installer.

06.22.09 : 1.0.0b2 - is a ground up re-write of Open Emu, with a more modular architecture and refined user interface. This release also adds more emulation cores as well as a Quartz Composer interface for Open Emu.

01.14.09 : Open Emu project releases Beta 1 of Open Emu

Documentation

All docs live on our Sourceforge wiki.

License and contact

You can contact the Open Emu project at openemu@gmail.com, and on irc at #openemu on freenode, or on twitter via @openemu.

Open Emu is open source software licensed under BSD License.

The latest source code is available in our SVN repository, and on our Sourceforge.net Project page

Authors

  • Josh Weinberg - Lead programmer
  • Ben Decavel - Lead programmer
  • Anton Marini - Quartz Composer plugin, OpenGL
  • Dan Winckler - Quartz Composer plugin
  • Remy Demarest - Lead programmer