SMS_SDL(1)

NAME
sms_sdl - Sega Master System and Game Gear emulator.

SYNOPSIS
sms_sdl [--options] <filename.<SMS|GG>>

DESCRIPTION
SMS Plus/SDL v0.9.4aR7
(C) Charles Mac Donald in 1998, 1999, 2000
SDL Version by Gregory Montoir (cyx@frenchkiss.net)

OPTIONS

Note: The filename may appear anywhere on the command line.

--fm
    Enable YM2413 sound.

--japan
    Set the machine type as DOMESTIC instead of OVERSEAS.

--usesram
    Load/save SRAM contents before starting/exiting.

--fskip <n>
    Specify the number of frames to skip.

--fullspeed
    Do not limit to 60 frames per second.

--fullscreen
    Start in fullscreen mode.

--joystick
    Use joystick.

--nosound
    Disable sound.

--filter <mode>
    Render using a filter. Available modes:

    2xsai
    super2xsai
    supereagle
    advmame2x
    tv2x
    2x
    bilinear
    dotmatrix

CONFIG FILE
sms_sdl is launched by a shell script wrapper which reads the file ~/.sms_sdl/config if it exists. Any of the options above may be placed in this file (one option per line, with or without the leading -- characters). These options will be passed as command-line arguments to the real sms_sdl binary every time it runs.

See /usr/doc/sms_sdl-@VERSION@/sample_config for further information.

KEYBOARD

F1  Screenshot in BMP format

F2  Save state

F3  Load state

F4/F5
    Dec/inc frame skip value

F6/F7
    Dec/inc state slot

1..8
    Switch rendering filter

C   Button 1

V   Button 2

ENTER
    Start (GG) / pause (SMS)

ARROWS
    Directional pad

TAB Console hard reset

The key bindings may not be remapped.

FILES

ROM image files may be in raw dump format, or may have a header (details are system-specific). Also, ROM images may be zipped (not gzipped), in which case the first file in the zip file's directory must be the ROM image (any other files are ignored).

sms_sdl looks at the filename to determine the type of ROM image in use. Any file whose name ends in .gg (case-insensitive match) is considered to be a Game Gear ROM. Any other file is treated as a Sega Master System ROM. In the case of a zipped image, this refers to the file inside the zip file; the zip file itself doesn't have any special naming requirements.

Screenshot filenames (F1 key) are generated by replacing the filename extension with -NNN.bmp, where NNN is a 3-digit number (000 for the first screenshot, 001 for the second, etc). The numbering starts at 000 every time the emulator is started, and existing files will be overwritten without confirmation.

State save filenames (F2 key) are generated by replacing the filename extension with .stN, where N is the number of the save slot (one or more digits). Again, existing files are overwritten without confirmation.

For both types of file, the filename is considered to be the entire path to the ROM image file. This means that the emulator expects to be able to write savestate and screenshot files in the directory where the ROM files reside. If the directory is not writable, no files will be created.

BUGS

sms_sdl will exit with failure status if it's given a filename that contains no . (dot/period) characters (in other words, a filename without an extension). So don't do that. (This applies to the file inside the zip file, for zipped images)

Screenshot and state-save files should really be written in the current directory, or else a hypothetical ~/.sms_sdl directory.

There should be a config file, so the user doesn't have to pass his favorite set of options on the command line every time (of course, a shell alias, wrapper script, or GUI file manager can work around this easily enough).

AUTHORS

(C) Charles Mac Donald in 1998, 1999, 2000
SDL Version by Gregory Montoir (cyx@frenchkiss.net)