Viktor, who has contributed numerous 4DO improvements (including core emulation fixes), has been working on an android version of the emulator. He has been hard at work and could use your help with beta testing!
Viktor has a forum thread on the topic, please get in touch with him if you’re available to help!
4DO Android: Forum Thread
If you’re unavailable to help with testing, perhaps just say hello and cheer him on!
Now with informational messages!
Changes:
If you want to try 4DO 1.3.2.2, head to to the download page:
4DO Downloads
4DO is no longer titled as “beta”. The emulation is in a good state, and the primary features of the emulator have been stable for quite a while.
It’s been a overall a quick revival since the release of the FreeDO source code, and 4DO now provides 3DO fans with a clean, functional emulator.
4DO was able to inherit many great features from FreeDO: high-definition rendering, clock speed adjustments, and the impressive emulation accuracy! The FreeDO user interface was not open-sourced, but the resulting rewrite for 4DO was an overall benefit. The development of 4DO has introduced several unique features as well:
It’s probably not commonly known that 4DO was first started about 4 and a half years ago in 2007. I had been eager to see an open-source 3DO emulator and was disappointed that there was still none available. The aim of the project was still the same as it is today: to provide a full-featured, open-source emulator for 3DO.
At the time I was attempting a high-level emulation (HLE) approach. Progress was reasonable, and I managed to get the CPU emulation concrete enough to run many of the non-Opera binary files like the mildly famous sonic example (the screenshots of this are still available on the sourceforce site, for any emulation historians interested). However, the HLE approach was proving to be too laborious without additional help. After staring at disassembly for countless hours, I cancelled the attempt in early 2010.
Note: For those interested, the Russian “Phoenix” project is also attempting HLE emulation and results so far are impressive! I believe it is in closed beta, and be aware that there are fake versions of this emulator out in the wild.
Later the same year (November 2010), FreeDO released the code to its core emulation as open source! I found out about this in July of 2011, started rebuilding the user interface, and restarted 4DO with the FreeDO core. At this time, 4DO became a low-level emulator like its ancestor. Since then 4DO has crept along introducing features up to the ones you see today!
Elsewhere in the world, and also sometime after the FreeDO source code was released, Viktor created 3DOPlay with similar hopes of improving 3DO emulation. We discovered each others’ projects about a month ago. Since then, Viktor has been contributing help, and his efforts have been improving game compatibility significantly!
I do not have particularly strong opinions of the features or changes that should be introduced into 4DO. There are a few things I would like to see added: light gun or mouse support, screenshot support, and save slot visualizations (like in NESticle).
With 4DO released, I personally am going to cut back on my involvement, and I have no expectation for how long. I am very happy to have helped the 3DO emulation and I feel that 4DO has accomplished its primary objective of providing a full-featured open-source emulator. I don’t intend to halt 4DO development; I’m still available for bug fixes to any major issues, and I intend to continue to perform any releases. I am hoping Viktor is available to continue help as well. I’ll likely be playing 3DO games too, so I can continue to add features when the desire hits me.
I would like to reiterate that anybody interested in contributing code changes to 4DO is welcome to do so! If you message me in the forums, I will be happy to help you get started.
If you aren’t interested in helping out as a developer, there’s always value in contributing updates to the Compatibility List.
3DO emulation would be in poor shape today if it weren’t for the feedback and interest from the sparse, world-wide community of 3DO fans. I’d like to thank everyone who helped identify problems, iron out issues, or just drop by for moral support!
I’d like to also thank the following contributors:
Long live 3DO!
4DO will soon support multiple languages. To support a specific language, we need the program’s resources (the textual data) to be translated.
There are already current volunteers for English, Russian, and Portuguese.
If you would like to see another language and are willing to help add translations, please head to the related forum post for instructions, and message me in there (rather than here on WordPress where your email address will be public!).
The fourdo.com site has been moved to new web space.
Now that the move is complete, I’ve added a both a forum and a wiki. I don’t have particularly grand plans for either of these, but here’s the immediate main use for each of them:
It’s been a long night. I attempted to create a setup package for 4DO, which by the looks of it will be using SlimDX. To start off, I sought out to install just two things: C++ 2010 runtimes and the .NET 4 framework. Little did I know that I was in for some real punishment when I decided I wanted to have a single all-encompassing “.exe”.
I started with the visual studio installer. I quickly discovered how very clumsy that worked, so I broke open Wix, which I hear good things about. It was long before I ran into a dilemma with x64 and x86 thanks to the C++ 2010 runtimes. I solved it by opting for a 32-bit and 64-bit installer, but I’m unhappy with this.
The real disillusionment came with the “built-in” visual studio bootstrapper. Why does their bootstrapper not gob everything into a single “.exe”? On top of that, why is there no option to do so? It’s not 1995 anymore, people are not installing from CD these days!
And then I found IExpress.exe to bootstrap the bootstrapper, which is an absolute joke, but I managed to get it “working”. In the end, there’s an installation for 4DO that both includes and installs the .NET 4 runtimes and the MS C++ 2010 runtimes. But, SlimDX is not yet included, and there’s still a 32-bit flavor and a 64-bit version of the installer. Also, thanks to those dependencies, the installer is 45 megs.
Ugh, what a nightmare! I am convinced that I need to start over and look into Inno or NSIS for creating a more reliable installer. I definitely would prefer to have a single installer for 32 and 64 bit.
Well, the good news is that I have made progress on the joystick support.
I personally have always hated it when the input configuration for an emulator is clunky or limited. The new input settings interface combines several features that I feel have been useful to me with other emulators:
Just to be clear, it still only supports one device. I will probably release 1.0.5.0 without support for additional devices.
First of all, thank you for the feedback and the friendly encouragement!
Just so you know, I intend to add joystick/controller support next. Two player support is also important to me, but I will probably be leaving that for later (at least until beta).
Currently 4DO is “alpha”, and I intend to enter “beta” after:
I have been mentally separating alpha and beta by figuring that in alpha any of your save states or settings may be lost from one version to another. Once it’s in beta, I intend to keep that to a minimum.
Today I’ve put together this simple site to help facilitate news posts and release information. I’ve imported various news posts (releases, discussions) from elsewhere for archival purposes.
Altmer provided me with some helpful information. He tells me that the FreeDO source that is available on google code includes many of the improvements from FreeDO 2.1. As far as 4DO is concerned, that’s great news.
He is also working on a “new” emulator. New as in not FreeDO. One of the things he intends to include is the hardware accelerated graphics (which I referred to on another thread). I don’t really know what else the new emulator involves other than a rewrite. He also figures it would be difficult to work together on it. Considering the language barrier, I have to agree. Altmer provided clarification that his new emulator will NOT be open source, but that the interface to it will be. He also said he could try to keep the interface similar to the one FreeDO had so that I could more easily use it with something like 4DO. That’s a minor point. But, that’s all the info I have.
So, it looks like there is no FreeDO development going on whatsoever, and FourDO is using the latest copy. Altmer is working on a new, different (low-level) emulator, and meanwhile I’m adding features to 4DO to basically produce a more swanky version of FreeDO. Hopefully some day in the future, Altmer’s new emulator is released and a clear improvement, and 4DO or something like it can help out by plugging in and padding out the interface with features. As far as I know, that sums up the only 3DO emulation development going on in the world.
Back in 4DO land, I have been working on getting CD-Rom support online. Some games load just fine. For some reason, on other games I’ll get a “give up” error visible on the screen after it fails to load. I think this may be the copy protection I’ve heard about. I have noticed that 2.1 FreeDO does not have the problem, so I am going to try to iron out what I’m missing.
I believe I figured out what’s going wrong with the XP crash reports. Turns out it was rather simple. I’m a little irked about the misleading error message we were getting 
.
On the machine I recreated it on, it actually was due to being unable to find c++ runtimes. I’ll update my original post to point this out as a dependency. You can get those here:
http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=5555
I do not have any 64 bit machines, so I’m unable to try any out myself. But, at least one chap sent me his crash details, and it should be the same. So, this may also resolve the issues on 64 bit machines.
My XP machine also got a crash on WaveLib, but I’m pretty sure I don’t have a sound card in it.