Unreleased Android version of B-Em

[tricky]

I was given access to an unreleased version of b-em for Android and asked not to share it as the author couldn't promise to support it and didn't want to let people down.
The author of this great version of b-em was our very own Grunty, who was responsible for adding the PC graphics to the beeb version of the Hobbit along with a few other great projects.

I have recently come to believe that Grunty (Kieran) is no longer with us and wanted to share his work.
https://www.clactonandfrintongazette.co ... _Mockford/
Kieran Paul Mockford
An Incredible Man Kieran Paul Mockford 1971 - 2018 The Shining Star of Microsoft In Seattle, USA, Dear Son of Ann and Charles. Wonderful Husband of Joanne, kindest of Fathers to Zoe and Holly. Loyal Brother to Darren, and Brother in Law to Paula, Special Uncle to Sam and Alex. Kieran "The Last Jedi".
Published in the Clacton and Frinton Gazette on 22nd February 2018
1050 views
I really hope that I have this correct and don't upset anyone. I have spent quite a while checking as best I can.

I have corresponded with SarahWalker who wrote the excellent b-em and although it goes against the license, she agrees with me that this version of b-em should be available.
As the .apk is nearly 30MB and the .zip 15MB, I have uploaded it to my DropBox. You should be able to get it with this link without needing an account.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/vovwav75vmbhx ... k.zip?dl=0
Download and unzip to get the .apk and then follow whatever method your Android phone requires to install it.
The first run can take a few seconds to open and on a couple of occasions I got an exception but this didn't stop it working perfectly for me on my old low powered cheap Chinese Android 4.4.2 phone.

There is no support for this emulator, but it seems to work well for me and my games

You can add your own disc images, swap keyboards and choose what sort of beeb to emulate.

[Coeus]

Nice to see this released but so sad to hear of Keiran's passing. Was this the same Keiran who contributed the VideoNuLA code to the PC version of B-Em as I think he worked for Microsoft, or a different one?

[VectorEyes]

No, that's a different Kieran. He's active on here quite a bit.

[paulj]

Hi

Great to see this emulator, is there any chance source code could be released ?

We could build on his work

[KenLowe]

This is awesome. Successfully installed on my Galaxy S7 Edge. It stuck at 'Initialising' for a bit on first startup, but subsequent start ups are a lot faster. Haven't done much with it yet, other than get to the > prompt. Time to dig out some disk images...

Edit: Just found the 'Local discs'. Brilliant!

[vanekp]

Ohh thanks for releasing that version it's a lot better then the beebdroid version, it works very well.

[Stainy]

Just been watching some Bitshifters demos. Mentions Kieran ( code ) a lot... is this the same guy that passed away?

[tricky]

Bitshifters Kieran is still active here.

[Stainy]

Tis is great!! tonnes better than the play store version. It works well on my GPDXD+. I have to tilt it 45' when I want to assign keys to my physical controls but that`s not a biggie. Great to have my most remembered emulators running well on my handheld ( C64, Spectrum and Beeb )

Thanks again..

oh and seconded for the source.. so some clever chaps can improve on his wonderful work.

[leenew]

Hi,
When using BEEB X on my phone, I browse bbcmicro.co.uk ... choose a game ... click download... my phone asks "Download, or open with BEEB X" .. I click Open with BEEB X and it plays. Happy days.
However, doing the same actions on my Android tablet just downloads the file.
What settings may be causing this difference? As I would like my tablet to behave as my phone does.
Thanks

Lee.

[RobC]

That's very sad news about Kieran - he did the DCBeeb interface too.

Thanks for releasing this.

[andrewvideo]

Has anyone tried on a android TV Box? and if its see a USB keyboard and mouse plug in?

RIP Kieran

[Stainy]

I could try it.. I`ll do that tomorrow.

[Warwick]

Sorry to hear of Kieran's passing, though I'm not active on this board.

My recent fork of Beebdroid under 'sleekweasel' compiles under Gradle/Android Studio, has position-independent libraries, ASCII-based (Bluetooth/Android) keyboard support when you're in 'no keyboard' mode, and saves/restores machine images. There's a 'released' APK on the releases tab too - it's just a debug APK, not signed.

I'm currently running it on an Amazon Fire TV Stick, and it works nicely. My daughter thought my 10-line falling rocks MODE 7 game was 'awesome', but she's only five.

The Fire's controller D-pad shows up as the cursor keys and copy, though I should work out how to make it use the 'controller' key mappings for games.

[marcelaj1]

Been playing with this.
Is it me? I get "No such variable" when using the EVAL() statement.

Scratch that I fell foul of the minus and hyphen symbols

Ashley.

[kevinlingley]

I've been enjoying beeb-x for the last few days with my new Odin 2 (https://www.ayntec.com/products/odin-2) and although a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 is way overkill for this use case, it's the best handheld Beeb experience I've come across. The controller works with the touchstick setting well; the only thing I could do with is being able to map more buttons than the d-pad and the four front, making a max of 8. The Odin has at least another 8 possible buttons, or more if you include the analogue sticks, which would be amazing for games like Exile or even Elite. Has anyone managed to map more than 8 using this emulator successfully? or could suggest anything I could try?

Thanks!