10.  Plugins

Plugins are programs that Rockbox can load and run. Only one plugin can be loaded at a time. Plugins have exclusive control over the user interface. This means you cannot switch back and forth between a plugin and Rockbox. When a plugin is loaded, you need to exit it to return to the Rockbox interface. Most plugins will not interfere with music playback but some of them will stop playback while running. Plugins have the file extension .rock. Most of them can be started from Browse Plugins in the Main Menu.

Viewer plugins get started automatically by opening an associated file (i.e. text files, chip8 games), or from the Open with option on the Context Menu.

10.1.  Games

See also the Chip-8 emulator in section 10.3.2 and Rockboy in section 10.3.7.

10.1.1.  Blackjack

Blackjack, a game played in casinos around the world, is now available in the palm of your hand! The rules are simple: try to get as close to 21 without going over or simply beat out the dealer for the best hand. Although this may not seem difficult, blackjack is a game renowned for the strategy involved. This version includes the ability to split, buy insurance, and double down.

For the full set of rules to the game, and other facinating information visit
http://www.blackjackinfo.com/blackjack-rules.php

10.1.2.  BrickMania

BrickMania is a clone of the classic game Breakout. The aim of the game is to destroy all the bricks by hitting them with the ball once or more. Sometimes a special item falls down when you destroy a brick. For a special item to take effect, you must catch it with the paddle. Look out for the bad ones.

Special items

10.1.3.  Bubbles

The goal of the game is to beat each level as quickly as possible by clearing the board of all bubbles. Bubbles are removed from the board when a cluster of three of more of the same type is formed. The game is over when any bubbles on the board extend below the bottom line. To make things more difficult, the entire board is shifted down every time a certain number of shots have been fired. Points are awarded depending on how quickly the level was completed.

10.1.4.  Chessbox

Chessbox is a one-person chess game with computer artificial intelligence. The chess engine is a port of GNU Chess 2 by John Stanback.

It also works as a PGN file viewer. Instead of executing the game from the plugin menu, look for any file with .pgn extension in the file browser and execute it. Chessbox will show the list of matches included in the file and allow you to select the one you want to watch. After that, you can scroll back and forth through the moves of the game. If the menu is invoked while in the viewer, the user is allowed to select a new match from the same file or quit the game.

“Force play” while the computer is thinking will cause it to make its move immediately. If done while it’s your turn, the computer will move for you and flip the board so that you are playing from the other side. If you want, you can force play an entire game and watch the artificial intelligence fight against itself.

When you quit the game the current state will be saved and restored when you resume the game. The menu also allows the user to reload the last game saved, save the current position and start a new game without having to quit the game.

Keys

10.1.5.  Chopper

Navigate a cavernous maze without banging into walls, the ceiling, or the floor. How long can you fly your chopper?

10.1.6.  Dice

Dice is a simple dice rolling simulator. Select number and type of dice to roll in a menu and start by choosing “Roll Dice”. The result is shown as individual numbers as well as the total of the rolled dice.

10.1.7.  Doom

This is the famous Doom game.

Getting started

For the game to run you need .wad game files located in /.rockbox/doom/ on your player. Create the directory and save the following files there:

rockdoom.wad.

The Rockbox .wad, based on prboom.wad from prboom-2.2.6

Your wad files.

Copy all Doom wads you wish to play into that directory.

The needed files can be found at PluginDoom

To play addon wads create the addons directory within the doom directory. Place wad files in this directory. Currently doom only supports a maximum number of 10 addons.

A free alternative for Doom 2 is FreeDoom ( http://freedoom.sourceforge.net). This can be used in place of doom2.wad, or it may be used as an addon in Doom, by placing it in the addons directory.

Menus

Rockdoom Menu.

The Rockdoom menu is shown when Doom is first launched. This is the only time it can be accessed (before starting the game). To re-adjust Rockdoom options, you will need to quit your current game and restart the plugin.

Main Menu.

The Doom plugin has a main menu, which is brought up before a game is started. It has the following entries:

Game. Select which (official) wad to launch
Addon. Select which unofficial addon wad to launch (From /.rockbox/doom/addons directory)
Demos. Select which demo file to play on game start
Options. Configure low-level Doom options
Play Game. Launch the wad/addon/Demo chosen

Options Menu.

This menu has the following options:

Sound. Enable or Disable sound in Doom
Set Keys. Change the game key configuration
Time Demo. Run a timed demo, to test game speed on a player (Only runs on Doom Shareware)
Player Bobbing. Enable or Disable player up/Down movement
Translucency. Enable or Disable sprite translucency (Fireballs, Plasma...)
Fake Contrast. Enable or Disable modified game lighting
Always Run. Make the player always run
Headsup Display. Show the player status when in fullscreen
Statusbar Always Red. Disable color response statusbar

InGame Main Menu.

This menu can only be accessed from within a running game, and is displayed by flipping your hold switch a couple of times

New Game. Start a new game
Options. In game options
Load Game. Load a saved game
Save Game. Save the current game
Quit. Quit the game

InGame Options Menu.

This menu has the folloing options:

End Game. Ends the current game
Messages. Enable or Disable in game messages
Screen Size. Shrink or Enlarge the displayed portion of the game
Gamma. Change the brightness (Gamma) of the game
Sound Volume. Change the sound, music and system volume

Note: In game music is not currently supported

Keys

Playing the game

After installation of the wad files is complete you can start the game. more description is needed

10.1.8.  Flipit

Flipping the colour of the token under the cursor also flips the tokens above, below, left and right of the cursor. The aim is to end up with a screen containing tokens of only one colour.

10.1.9.  Jewels

Jewels is a simple yet addicting game which involves swapping pairs of jewels in order to form connected segments of three or more of the same type.

The goal of the game is to score as many points as possible before running out of available moves. Higher points are awarded to larger combos. The game advances to the next level after every one hundred points and randomly clears several jewels.

To exit the game, bring up the in-game menu and select Exit Jewels.

10.1.10.  MazezaM

The goal of this puzzle game is to escape a dungeon consisting of ten “mazezams”. These are rooms containing rows of blocks which can be shifted left or right. You can move the rows only by pushing them and if you move the rows carelessly, you will get stuck. You can have another go by selecting “retry level” from the menu, but this will cost you a life. You start the game with three lives. Luckily, there are checkpoints at levels four and eight.

10.1.11.  Minesweeper

The classic game of minesweeper. Use Scroll Forward/Scroll Backward to select the required percentage of mines to set the difficulty then press the Select key to begin.

The aim of the game is to uncover all of the squares on the board. If a mine is uncovered then the game is over. If a mine is not uncovered, then the number of mines adjacent to the current square is revealed. The aim is to use the information you are given to work out where the mines are and avoid them. When the player is certain that they know the location of a mine, it can be tagged to avoid accidentally “stepping” on it.

10.1.12.  Pacbox

Pacbox is an emulator of the Pacman arcade machine hardware. It is a port of PIE – Pacman Instructional Emulator ( http://www.ascotti.org/programming/pie/pie.htm).

ROMs

To use the emulator to play Pacman, you need a copy of ROMs for “Midway Pacman”.

These need to be stored in the /.rockbox/pacman/ directory on your player. In the MAME ROMs collection the necessary files can be found in pacman.zip and puckman.zip. The MAME project itself can be found at http://www.mame.net.

Keys

10.1.13.  Pegbox

To beat each level, you must destroy all of the pegs. If two like pegs are pushed into each other they disappear except for triangles which form a solid block and crosses which allow you to choose a replacement block.

10.1.14.  Pong

Pong is a simple two player “tennis game”. Whenever a player misses the ball the other scores.

10.1.15.  Robotfindskitten

In this game, you are robot (#). Your job is to find kitten. This task is complicated by the existence of various things which are not kitten. Robot must touch items to determine if they are kitten or not. The game ends when robotfindskitten.

10.1.16.  Rockblox

Rockblox is a rockbox version of the classic falling blocks game. The aim of the game is to make the falling blocks of different shapes form full rows. Whenever a row is complete it will be cleared and the game score will increase. For every ten lines completed the game level increases, making the blocks fall faster. If the pile of blocks reach the ceiling the game is over.

10.1.17.  Rockblox1d

Rockblox1d is a game for people who find rockblox too hard. In this version the second dimension is missing so the user only has to move the bricks down. No horizontal moving anymore and no need to rotate the brick!

10.1.18.  Sliding Puzzle

The classic sliding puzzle game. Rearrange the pieces so that you can see the whole picture, or switch to number tiles if you like it a little easier

Key controls:

10.1.19.  Snake

This is the popular snake game. The aim is to grow your snake as large as possible by eating the dots that appear on the screen. The game will end when the snake touches either the borders of the screen or itself.

10.1.20.  Snake 2

Another version of the Snake game. Move the snake around, and eat the apples that pop up on the screen. Each time an apple is eaten, the snake gets longer. The game ends when the snake hits a wall, or runs into itself.

In game A, the maze stays the same, in game B after an increasing number of apples eaten the maze is replaced by a new one.

10.1.21.  Sokoban

The object of the game is to push boxes into their correct position in a crowded warehouse with a minimal number of pushes and moves. The boxes can only be pushed, never pulled, and only one can be pushed at a time.

Sokoban may be used as a viewer for viewing saved solutions and playing external level sets with the .sok extension. Level sets should be in the standard Sokoban text format or RLE (Run Length Encoded). For more information about the level format, see http://sokobano.de/wiki/index.php?title=Level_format

Some places where can you can find level sets:

• http://www.sourcecode.se/sokoban/levels.php
• http://sokobano.de/en/levels.php

Note that some level sets may contain levels that are too large for this version of Sokoban and are unplayable as a result.

10.1.22.  Solitaire

This is the classic Klondike solitaire game for Rockbox. This is probably the best-known solitaire in the world. Many people do not even realize that other games exist. Though the name may not be familiar, the game itself certainly is. This is due in no small part to Microsoft’s inclusion of the the game in every version of Windows. Though popular, the odds of winning are rather low, perhaps one in thirty hands.

For the full set of rules to the game, and other facinating information visit
http://www.solitairecentral.com/rules/klondike.html

10.1.23.  Spacerocks

Spacerocks is a clone of the old arcade game Asteroids. The goal of the game is to blow up the asteroids and avoid being hit by them. Once in a while, a UFO will appear – shoot this for extra points.

10.1.24.  Star

This is a puzzle game. It is actually a rewrite of Star, a game written by CDK designed for the hp48 calculator.

Rules: Take all of the “o”s to go to the next level. You can switch control between the filled circle, which can take “o”s, and the filled square, which is used as a mobile wall to allow your filled circle to get to places on the screen it could not otherwise reach. The block cannot take “o”s.

10.1.25.  Sudoku

Sudoku in Rockbox is implemented as both a plugin and a viewer. When you start Sudoku in plugin mode from the Browse Plugins menu, a random game will be generated automatically, and an estimate of its difficulty (very easy, easy, medium, hard or fiendish) will be displayed on the screen. New games can be generated from the Generate menu option.

When you use Sudoku as a viewer for playing pre-generated Sudoku games. You need sudoku games stored (one game per file) in text files with the .ss extension (see links below). You then browse these games using the normal File Browser, and open the file to launch Sudoku.

You can create and save your own grids under the New menu option. Enter the menu (as described in the key table below) when you have finished and enter the full path to save to including the .ss extension (e.g. /sudoku/new.ss).

The thing on the left (AKA the scratchpad)

When you play Sudoku on paper most people like to mark numbers in cells that are possible candidates for the cells. This can be done with the column on the left. Change the number under the cursor to a number which might be valid and press the scratchpad button, the number will then be added on the left. The column is stored seperatly for every cell on the board. These are NOT saved when saving the game.

Some places where can you can find .ss files:

• Simple Sudoku (Advanced Puzzle Packs 1 and 2 located near the bottom of that page): http://www.angusj.com/sudoku/
• Kjell’s Sudoku generator/solver: http://kjell.haxx.se/sudoku/

10.1.26.  Wormlet

Wormlet is a multi-worm game on a multi-threaded multi-functional Rockbox console. You navigate a hungry little worm. Help your worm to find food and to avoid poisoned argh-tiles. The goal is to turn your tiny worm into a big worm for as long as possible.

Menu controls:

Game controls:

The game

Use the control keys of your worm to navigate around obstacles and find food. Worms do not stop moving except when dead. Dead worms are no fun. Be careful as your worm will try to eat anything that you steer it across. It won’t distinguish whether it is edible or not.

Food.

The small square hollow pieces are food. Move the worm over a food tile to eat it. After eating the worm grows. Each time a piece of food has been eaten a new piece of food will pop up somewhere. Unfortunately for each new piece of food that appears two new “argh” pieces will appear, too.

Argh.

An “argh” is a black square poisoned piece - slightly bigger than food - that makes a worm say “Argh!” when run into. A worm that eats an “argh” is dead. Thus eating an “argh” must be avoided under any circumstances. “Arghs” have the annoying tendency to accumulate.

Worms.

Thou shall not eat worms. Neither other worms nor thyself. Eating worms is blasphemous cannibalism, not healthy and causes instant death. And it doesn’t help anyway: the other worm isn’t hurt by the bite. It will go on creeping happily and eat all the food you left on the table.

Walls.

Don’t crash into the walls. Walls are not edible. Crashing a worm against a wall causes it a headache it doesn’t survive.

Game over.

The game is over when all worms are dead. The longest worm wins the game.

Pause the game.

Press Select to pause the game. Press Select again to resume the game.

Stop the game.

There are two ways to stop a running game.

• If you want to quit Wormlet entirely simply hit Menu+Select . The game will stop immediately and you will return to the game menu.
• If you want to stop the game and still see the screen hit Select+ButtonPlay . This freezes the game. If you hit Select+Play button again a new game starts with the same configuration. To return to the games menu you can hit Menu+Select . A stopped game can not be resumed.

The scoreboard

On the right side of the game field is the score board. For each worm it displays its status and its length. The top most entry displays the state of worm 1, the second worm 2 and the third worm 3. When a worm dies its entry on the score board turns black.

Len:

Here the current length of the worm is displayed. When a worm is eating food it grows by one pixel for each step it moves.

Hungry:

That’s the normal state of a worm. Worms are always hungry and want to eat. It is good to have a hungry worm since it means that your worm is alive. But it is better to get your worm growing.

Growing:

When a worm has eaten a piece of food it starts growing. For each step it moves over food it can grow by one pixel. One piece of food lasts for 7 steps. After your worm has moved 7 steps the food is used up. If another piece of food is eaten while growing it will increase the size of the worm for another 7 steps.

Crashed:

This indicates that a worm has crashed against a wall.

Argh:

If the score board entry displays “Argh!” it means the worm is dead because it tried to eat an “argh”. Until we can make the worm say “Argh!” it is your job to say “Argh!” aloud.

Wormed:

The worm tried to eat another worm or even itself. That’s why it is dead now. Making traps for other players with a worm is a good way to get them out of the game.

Hints

• Initially you will be busy with controlling your worm. Try to avoid other worms and crawl far away from them. Wait until they curl up themselves and collect the food afterwards. Don’t worry if the other worms grow longer than yours - you can catch up after they’ve died.
• When you are more experienced watch the tactics of other worms. Those worms controlled by artificial stupidity head straight for the nearest piece of food. Let the other worm have its next piece of food and head for the food it would probably want next. Try to put yourself between the opponent and that food. From now on you can ’control’ the other worm by blocking it. You could trap it by making a 1 pixel wide U-turn. You also could move from food to food and make sure you keep between your opponent and the food. So you can always reach it before your opponent.

10.1.27.  Xobox

Xobox is a simple clone of the well known arcade game Qix. The aim of the game is to section off parts of the arena with your trail in order to remove that section from the game. Be careful not to get in the way of enemy balls because, if they hit you or your trail, you lose a life. To finish a level you have to section off more than 75%.

10.2.  Demos

10.2.1.  Bounce

This demo is of the word “Rockbox” bouncing across the screen. There is also an analogue clock in the background. In Scroll mode the bouncing text is replaced by a different one scrolling from right to left.

Available options are:

Xdist/Ydist.

The distance to X axis and Y axis respectively

Xadd/Yadd.

How fast the code moves on the sine curve on each axis

Xsane/Ysane.

Changes the appearance of the bouncing.

10.2.2.  Credits

The credits plugin scrolls the entire list of the names of all the Rockbox contributors after displaying the Rockbox logo and version. This plugin is called when selecting Rockbox Info from the Info section of the Rockbox main menu.

10.2.3.  Cube

This is a rotating cube screen saver in 3D.

10.2.4.  Demystify

Demystify is a screen saver like demo.

10.2.5.  Fire

Fire is a demo displaying a fire effect.

10.2.6.  Logo

Demo showing the Rockbox logo bouncing around the screen.

10.2.7.  Mandelbrot

This demonstration draws fractal images from the Mandelbrot set .

10.2.8.  Mosaique

This simple graphics demo draws a mosaic picture on the screen of the player. Press Menu to quit.

10.2.9.  Oscilloscope

This demo shows the shape of the sound samples that make up the music being played. At faster speed rates, the player is less responsive to user input and music may start to skip.

Keys

10.2.10.  Plasma

Plasma is a demo displaying a 80’s style retro plasma effect.

10.2.11.  Snow

This demo replicates snow falling on your screen. If you love winter, you will love this demo. Or maybe not. Press Menu to quit.

10.2.12.  Starfield

Starfield simulation (like the classic screensaver).

10.2.13.  VU meter

This is a VU meter, which displays the volume of the left and right audio channels. There are 3 types of meter selectable. The analogue meter is a classic needle style. The digital meter is modelled after LED volume displays, and the mini-meter option allows for the display of small meters in addition to the main display (as above). From the settings menu the decay time for the meter (its memory), the meter type and the meter scale can be changed.

10.3.  Viewers

Viewers are plugins which are associated with specific file extensions. They cannot be run directly but are started by “playing” the associated file. Viewers are stored in the /.rockbox/viewers/ directory.

10.3.1.  Shortcuts

The Shortcuts Plugin allows you to jump to places within the file browser without having to navigate there manually. The plugin works with .link files. A .link file is just a text file with every line containing the name of the file or the directory you want to quickly jump to. All names should be full absolute names, i.e. they should start with a /. Directory names should also end with a /.

How to create .link files

You can use your favourite text editor to create a .link file on the PC an then copy the file to the player. Or you can use the context menu on either a file or a directory in the file browser tree, and use the “Add to shortcuts” menu option. This will append a line with the full name of the file or the directory to the shortcuts.link file in the root directory of the player. (The file will be created if it does not exist yet.) You can later rename the automatically created shortcuts.link file or move it to another directory if you wish. Subsequent calls of the context menu will create it again.

How to use .link files, i.e. jump to desired places

To use a .link file just “play” it from the file browser. This will show you a list with the entries in the file. Selecting one of them will then exit the plugin and leave you within the directory selected, or with the file selected in the file browser. You can then play the file or do with it whatever you want. The file will not be “played” automatically.

If the .link file contains only one entry no list will be shown, you will directly jump to that location. The file shortcuts.link in the root directory is an exception. After “playing” it, the list will be shown even if the file contains just one entry.

If the list you are seeing is from shortcuts.link in the root directory, you can delete the selected entry by pressing Menu. Deleting entries from other .link files is not possible.

Advanced Usage

Placing the line “#Display last path segments=n” (where n is a number) in the beginning of a .link file will leave just the last n segments of the entries when they are shown. For example, if n is chosen to be 1, then the entry /MyMusic/collection/song.mp3 will be shown as song.mp3. This allows you to hide common path prefixes.

You can also provide a custom display name for each entry individually. To do so, append a tabulator character after the entry’s path followed by your custom name. That name will then be used for showing the entry. For example:

10.3.2.  Chip-8 Emulator

Chip8 is a kind of assembly language for a long-gone architecture. This plugin runs games written using the chip8 instructions. To start a game open a .ch8 file in the File Browser

There are lots of tiny Chip8 games (usually only about 256 bytes to a couple of KB) which were made popular by the HP48 calculator’s emulator for them. The original Chip8 had 64x32 pixel graphics, and the new superchip emulator supports 128x64 graphics.

The only problem is that they are based on a 4x4 keyboard, but since most games do not use all of the buttons, this can easily be worked around.

To do this, one may put a .c8k file with the same name as the original program which contains new key mappings (for BLINKY.ch8, one writes a BLINKY.c8k file). That .c8k file contains 16 characters describing the mapping from the Chip8 keyboard to the default key mapping (that way, several Chip8 keys can be pressed using only one Rockbox key). For example, a file containing the single line:

would correspond to the following non-default mappings:

3 → 2, 6 → 8, 7 →4, 8 → 6.

The default keymappings are:

Some places where can you can find .ch8 files:

• The PluginChip8 page on www.rockbox.org has several attached: PluginChip8
• Check out the HP48 chip games section: http://www.hpcalc.org/hp48/games/chip/
• PC emulator by the guy who wrote the HP48 emulator: http://www.pdc.kth.se/~lfo/chip8/CHIP8.htm
• Links to other chip8 emulators: http://www.zophar.net/chip8.html

10.3.3.  JPEG viewer

Open a JPEG file in the File Browser to view it.

Note: When an audio file is playing the size of the image is limited as the decoding process needs to share memory with audio tracks. To be able to view a bigger file you may need to stop playback.

The menu has the following entries.

Quit.

Quits the viewer and returns to the File Browser.

Toggle Slideshow Mode.

Enables or disables the slideshow mode.

Change Slideshow Timeout.

You can set the timeout for the slideshow between 1 second and 20 seconds.

Show Playback Menu.

From the playback menu you can control the playback of the currently loaded playlist and change the volume of your player.

Return.

Returns you to the image

Note: Progressive scan and other unusual JPEG files are not supported, and will result in various “unsupported xx” messages. Processing could also fail if the image is too big to decode which will be explained by a respective message.

10.3.4.  Midiplay

To get MIDI file playback, a patchset is required. This file contains the instruments required to synthesize the music. A sample patchset is available through the wiki at PluginMidiPlay, and needs to be extracted to the .rockbox directory in the root of your player. There should now be a /.rockbox/patchset/ directory, with the patchset directory containing several .pat files and two .cfg files. Just select a MIDI file with either the .mid or .midi extension in the file browser to start playback.

Note: Currently playing MIDI files is still in its early stages and you might experience “Buffer miss!” with many files, except simple ones.

10.3.5.  MPEG Player

The Mpeg Player is a video player plugin capable of playing back MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 video streams with MPEG audio multiplexed into .mpg files.

To play a video file, you just select it in the Rockbox File Browser. If your file does not have the .mpg extension but is encoded in the supported format, you will need to use the Open With... context menu option and choose mpegplayer.

When a video file is selected, the start Menu will be displayed, unless it is disabled via the option ”start menu” (see below). In the latter case the video will start playing immediately - unless a resume point is found, in which case the resume menu is presented.

Start Menu

Play from beginning

Resume information is discarded and the video plays from the start.

Resume time (min): x.x

Resume video playback at stored resume time x.x (start of the video if no resume time is found).

Set start time (min)

A preview screen is presented consisting of a thumbnail preview and a progress bar where the user can select a start time by ’seeking’ through the video. The video playback is started by pressing the select button.

Quit mpegplayer

Exit the plugin.

Resume Menu

Yes (min): x.x

Resume video playback at stored resume time x.x.

No

Play video from the beginning.

Main Menu

Display Options

Opens ”Display Options” submenu - see below.

Start Menu

(default: on) Enable/disable the start menu.

Clear all resumes: x

Discard all x resume points.

Quit mpegplayer

Exit the plugin.

Display Options Menu

Dithering

(default: off) Prevent banding effects in gradients by blending of colours. (only available on Sansa e200, Sansa c200 and Gigabeat F/X)

Show FPS

(default: off) This option displays (once a second - if your video is full-screen this means it will get overwritten by the video and appear to flash once per second) the average number of frames decoded per second, the total number of frames skipped (see the Skip Frames option), the current time (in 100Hz ticks) and the time the current frame is due to be displayed.

Limit FPS

(default: on) With this option disabled, mpegplayer will display the video as fast as it can. Useful for benchmarking.

Skip frames

(default: on) This option causes mpegplayer to attempt to maintain realtime playback by skipping the display of frames - but these frames are still decoded. Disabling this option can cause loss of A/V sync.

See this page in the Rockbox wiki for information on how to encode your videos to the supported format. PluginMpegplayer

10.3.6.  PPM viewer

Open a PPM file in the File Browser to view it.

ppmviewer exits when any button is pressed.

Note: Both ASCII PPM (P3) and raw PPM (P6) files are supported.

For more information about PPM files, see http://netpbm.sourceforge.net/doc/ppm.html

10.3.7.  Rockboy

Rockboy is a Nintendo Game Boy and Game Boy Color emulator for Rockbox based on the gnuboy emulator. To start a game open a ROM file saved as .gb or .gbc in the file browser.

Within Rockboy the wheel is used as a touchpad. It is split into 8 sections that when tapped correspond to 8 buttons as detailed in the table below.

Default keys

Rockboy menu

Load Game…

Loads a previously saved game.

Save Game…

Saves your current state.

Options…

Max Frameskip.

Change frameskip setting to improve speed.

Sound.

Toggle sound on or off.

Stats.

Toggle showing fps and current frameskip.

Set Keys (BUGGY)

Select this option to set a new keymapping.

Screen Size.

Chose whether the original aspect ratio should be kept when scaling the picture to the screen or whether it should be displayed unscaled.

Screen Rotate.

Rotate the displayed picture by 90 percent.

Set Palette.

Pick one of a few predefined colour palettes.

Quit RockBoy.

Quits the Rockboy plugin.

10.3.8.  Search

This plugin can be used on playlists. It searches through the playlist that it opened on looking for any occurrences of the string entered by the user. The results of this search are saved to a new playlist, search_results.m3u, within the same directory as the original playlist.

10.3.9.  Sort

This plugin takes a file and sorts it in ascending alphabetical order. Case is ignored. This is useful for ordering playlists generated by the Create Playlist menu option (see section 5.9).

10.3.10.  Text Viewer

This is a Viewer for text files with word wrap. Just open a .txt file to display it. The text viewer features controls to handle various styles of text formatting, has top-of-file and bottom-of-file buttons. You can view files without a .txt extension by using Open with from the Context Menu (see section 4.1.2).

Mode settings

Word mode

toggles between Wrap and Chop.

Wrap

breaks lines at white space or hyphen.

Chop

breaks lines at the maximum column limit.

Line mode

cycles through Normal, Join and Expand.

Normal

breaks lines at newline characters.

Join

ignores unpaired newline characters (i.e., joins lines). Useful for adopting the orphans that occur with e-mail style (i.e.,pre-wrapped) text files.

Expand

doubles unpaired newlines (i.e., adds a blank line). Useful for making the paragraphs clearer in some book style text files.

View mode

toggles between Narrow and Wide.

Narrow

sets maximum column to the screen width.

Wide

sets maximum column to 114. Useful for navigating large files. (Currently, Wide and Join cannot be selected together.)

Page mode

toggles between Normal and Overlap.

Normal

sets page-down/page-up to one full screen.

Overlap

tells page-down/page-up to retain one line from previous screen.

Scrollbar mode

toggles scrollbar for the current View mode.

Narrow mode

has no scrollbar by default, until toggled.

Wide mode

has a scrollbar by default, until toggled.

Settings are not remembered after the viewer has been exited. If file fits on one screen, there is no scrollbar and toggling Scrollbar mode has no effect.

Compatibility

• Correctly reads plain text files in Unix, Win/DOS, or Macintosh format. Latin-alphabet Unicode files are almost readable.
• Currently prefers fixed-width fonts. With proportional fonts, pretends all characters are the width of a lower-case ‘o’.
• Currently messages are in English
• Does not currently support right-to-left languages.

10.3.11.  VBRfix

This function scans a VBR (Variable Bitrate) MP3 file and updates/creates the Xing VBR header. The Xing header contains information about the VBR stream used to calculate average bit rate, time information and to more accurately fwd/rew in the stream. This function is especially useful when the playback of a file skips, fwd/rew does not work correctly or the time display is incorrect.

Note: VBRfix can only run when music is turned off (since it uses the same memory as the player) and can take a while to complete if run on big files.

10.3.12.  ZXBox

ZXBox is a port of the “Spectemu” ZX Spectrum 48k emulator for Rockbox (Zproject’s homepage). To start a game open a tape file or snapshot saved as .tap, .tzx, .z80 or .sna in the file browser.

Note: As ZXBox is a 48k emulator only loading of 48k z80 snapshots is possible.

Default keys

The emulator is set up for 5 different buttons: Up, Down, Left, Right and Jump/Fire. Each one of these can be mapped to one key of the Spectrum Keyboard or they can be used like a “Kempston” joystick. Per default the buttons, including an additional but fixed menu button, are assigned as follows:

ZXBox menu

Vkeyboard.

This is a virtual keyboard representing the Spectrum keyboard. Controls are the same as in standard Rockbox, but you just press one key instead of entering a phrase.

Play/Pause Tape.

Toggles playing of the tape (if it is loaded).

Save Quick Snapshot.

Saves snapshot into /.rockbox/zxboxq.z80.

Load Quick Snapshot.

Loads snapshot from /.rockbox/zxboxq.z80.

Save Snapshot.

Saves a snapshot of the current state. You would enter the full path and desired name - for example /games/zx/snapshots/chuckie.sna. The snapshot format will be chosen after the extension you specified, per default .z80 will be taken in case you leave it open.

Toggle Fast Mode.

Toggles fastest possible emulation speed (no sound, maximum frameskip etc.). This is Useful when loading tapes with some specific loaders.

Options.

Map Keys To Kempston.

Controls whether the player’s buttons should simulate a “Kempston” joystick or some assigned keys of the Spectrum keyboard.

Display Speed.

Toggle displaying the emulation speed (in percent).

Invert Colors.

Inverts the Spectum colour palette, sometimes helps visibility.

Frameskip

Sets the number of frames to skip before displaying one. With zero frameskip ZXBox tries to display 50 frames per second.

Sound.

Turns sound on or off.

Volume.

Controls volume of sound output.

Predefined Keymap

Select one of the predefined keymaps. For example 2w90z means: map ZXBox’s Up to 2, Down to w, Left to 9, Right to 0 and Jump/Fire to z. This example keymap is used in the “Chuckie Egg” game.

Custom Keymap

This menu allows you to map one of the Spectrum keys accessible through the plugin’s virtual keyboard to each one of the buttons.

Quit.

Quits the emulator..

See also the plugin’s wiki page PluginZXBox.

10.4.  Applications

10.4.1.  Battery Benchmark

The Battery Benchmark Plugin enables you to test your battery’s performance, while making normal use of your player. Once loaded it will run in the background (TSR plugin), reading various info about your battery while you use it. Once you finish your session you can find the benchmark output data in a file on your player /battery_bench.txt. Please submit your results to the Rockbox wiki. BatteryRuntime

How it works

After you load the plug-in the operation of your player continues as normal. You can do whatever you could do before loading the plugin except loading another plugin. If you happen to load a plugin while benchmarking, a splash screen will inform you about the termination of the benchmark. While you operate it will log various battery related information every time the disk is activated by external causes, (buffer refill, open directory, USB mode) or an hour passes without updating the log file.
The plugin will continue to log info until:

• Another plugin is loaded.
• The player is shut down.
• The battery is empty.

Between disk activity (or an hour), it will log info in memory (every measurement is captured when the voltage changes). If there are too many measurements older entries will be deleted and the log file will inform the user about the interval where entries were lost. Benchmarks can be resumed if you accidentally load a plugin, or turn off your player, as long as the log file /battery_bench.txt is not deleted.

Information explained

On the top of the file you will see various info on how to use the plugin.

Time

This column reports the total time of operation of the player. It is not the time that you started the plug-in. If you have your player on for 5 minutes and then start the plugin, it will start measuring from 5 minutes.

Seconds

As time, it shows time passed in seconds. Nothing special, it is there because it is free and maybe someone might want to make graphs with seconds.

Level

The percent level of the battery estimated by Rockbox. This is an estimation and not an accurate result. Using the real percentage (current battery voltage / top battery voltage) * 100) we can calculate the difference between the estimation. Goal of this column is to make the estimation algorithm of Rockbox more accurate.

Time Left

It shows the estimated (by Rockbox) remaining time until shutdown. Again, as with Level(above), this column can be used to see differences between real time left and estimated time left. This could help make time left more accurate.

Voltage

The battery voltage, the moment the measurement was captured. Measurements are captured when this number changes while benchmarking. This column can be used to give quite interesting graphs in a spreadsheet program. (Excel, Calc, e.t.c)

M/DA

(Measurements per Disk Activity) The number of measurements stored temporarily in memory, before written on the log file. This can give you an idea of how many voltage changes there are between disk activity (or one hour).

C

Stands for Charger. An ”A” in that column shows if there was the power adapter attached to the unit, at the time of the measurement.

S

The ”S” column shows the state of the device (Charging, or not). The ”C” indicated that the unit was charging when the measurement was captured.

U

USB powered. Only for targets that support this. A ”U” will indicate if the unit was using the USB port for powering.

Making graphs

While you can tell how long your battery lasted, with a single look at the last line of the battery log (/battery_bench.txt), the most useful purpose of Battery Benchmark is to make graphs using a spreadsheet program like Excel or Calc. The battery log (/battery_bench.txt) is in CSV format (comma separated) so you can quite easily import it to a spreadsheet program.

10.4.2.  Calculator

This is a simple scientific calculator for use on the player. It works like a standard calculator. Pressing the “1st” and “2nd” buttons will toggle between other available math functions.

10.4.3.  Chess Clock

The chess clock plugin is designed to simulate a chess clock, but it can be used in any kind of game with up to ten players.

Setup

• First enter the number of players (1–10)
• Then set the total game time in mm:ss
• Then the maximum round time is entered. For example, this could be used to play Scrabble for a maximum of 15 minutes each, with each round taking no longer than one minute.
• Done. Player 1 starts in paused mode.

While playing

The number of the current player is displayed on the top line. The time below is the time remaining for that round (and possibly also the total time left if different).

Keys are as follows:

From the menu it is possible to delete a player, modify the round time for the current player or set the total time for the game. When the round time is up for a player the message “ROUND UP!” is shown (press NEXT to continue). When the total time is up for a player the message “TIME UP!”is shown. The player will then be removed from the timer.

10.4.4.  Clock

This is a fully featured analogue and digital clock plugin.

Key configuration

Clock Menu

View Clock

Exits the menu and returns to the current clock mode display.

Mode Selector

Opens a menu from which you can select a clock mode to view.

Counter Settings

Opens a menu from which you can adjust settings pertaining to the counter.

Mode Settings

Opens a menu from which you can adjust settings pertaining to the current clock mode.

General Settings

Reset Settings

Reset all settings to their default values.

Save Settings

Save all settings to disk.

Show Counter

Toggle Counter display.

Save

Choose whether to disable automatic saving, saving to disk on exit, or saving to disk every settings change.

Backlight

Choose whether to disable the backlight, use the user’s timeout setting, or keep the backlight on.

Idle Poweroff

Toggle Idle Poweroff.

Note: This setting is not saved to disk.

Help

Opens a brief help screen with key mappings and functionality.

Credits

Displays a credits roll.

Analog mode

Small, round, analog clock is displayed in the middle of the LCD. Time readout, if enabled, is displayed at the upper left. If Time readout is in 12-hour (“12h”) mode, AM or PM will be displayed at the upper right. The Date readout, if enabled, is displayed at the lower left. The Counter, if enabled, is displayed at the lower right. The second hand, if enabled, is displayed along with the hour and minute hands. Digit display, if enabled, places “12”, “3”, “6”, and “9” around the face of the clock in their respective positions.

Digital mode

An imitation of an LCD, this mode shows a Clock comprised of digital “segments”. The Date readout, if enabled, is displayed at the bottom, center. The Second readout, if in “Text” mode, is displayed at the top, center; if in “Bar” mode, is displayed as a progress bar at the top of the LCD; if in “Invert” mode, will invert the LCD left-to-right as the seconds pass (a fully-inverted LCD means the entire minute has passed). The Counter, if displayed, is shown at the upper left. The Blinking Colon, if enabled, blinks the colon once every second. 12-hour mode, if enabled, will display the time in a 12-hour format.

LCD mode

Based on the Digital Mode, the LCD mode is another imitation of an LCD. The settings available in this mode are exactly the same as Digital Mode, but they are independent of Digital Mode. For example, you can have the Date Readout enabled in Digital Mode and disabled in LCD Mode.

Fullscreen

A Fullscreen clock is displayed. Show Border, if enabled, will draw a small box at every hour position (1 through 12). Invert Seconds, if enabled, will invert the LCD as the seconds pass. Second Hand, if enabled, will draw a second hand among the hour and minute hands.

Binary mode

This mode shows a Binary clock. The hour is displayed on the top line, the minute is displayed on the middle line, and the seconds are on the last line. Circle mode, if enabled, draws empty and full circles, instead of zeros and ones. For help on reading binary, please visit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_numeral_system

Plain mode

This mode shows a “plain” clock in large text that takes up nearly the whole LCD.

10.4.5.  Disk Tidy

Disk Tidy deletes junk files left behind by Windows, Linux or OS X after a USB connection. Select the OS’s files you want to delete in the ’Files to Clean’ menu and select ’Start Cleaning’ to begin to process. The settings are stored in .rockbox/rocks/apps/disktidy.config, in a plain text file that is user-modifiable to allow more entries to be added.

Available Options

All

selects all Linux, OS X, and Windows files.

None

deselects all file options.

Linux

selects Linux files. Default files are .dolphinview, .d3lphinview, and .Trash-⋆/.

Windows

selects Windows files. Default files are Thumbs.db, RECYCLE.BIN, Desktop.ini, /Recycled and /System Volume Information.

Mac

selects OS X files. Default files are ._⋆, .DS_Store and /.Trashes.

Other

selects additional files added in by the user.

10.4.6.  Keybox

Keybox is an encrypted password storage using the “Tiny Encryption Algorithm” with a key derived using md5.

Using Keybox

To get started, start up the plugin and select Enter Keybox. The first time you enter Keybox you will be prompted for a master password and for confirmation of the master password. The master password is the password that you must use to access your stored passwords.

Once inside, enter the context menu by pressing Long Select. From the context menu you can create new entries, delete entries and edit entries. Each entry has a “title”, a “user name” and a “password”.

Selecting Reset Keybox from the main menu will delete the current list of passwords and a new, empty list will be created the next time you select Enter Keybox after prompting for a new master password. Entries are automatically saved when the plugin is exited.

10.4.7.  Lamp

Lamp is a simple plugin to use your player as a lamp (flashlight, torch). You get an empty screen with maximum brightness.

10.4.8.  md5sum

Open a file, a directory or just launch it from the plugin menu to create an md5sum of the file, the directory’s contents or the whole filesystem. If the file’s extension is .md5 or .md5sum, it will check the md5 sums in the file instead. If the file’s extension is .md5list it will compute md5 sums for all the files listed.

10.4.9.  Metronome

This plugin can be used as a metronome to keep time during music practice. Adjust the tempo through the interface or by tapping it out on the appropriate button.

10.4.10.  Random Folder Advance Configuration

This plugin is used to configure the folders which will be considered when the Auto-Change Directory feature is set to Random.

Menu

Generate Folder List

Generates a list of all folders found on the player. You can filter the directories which are scanned by creating a file called
/.rockbox/folder_advance_dir.txt. Only the directories in this file and any contained directories will be scanned. You can have up to 10 directories ignored by the scan by placing a minus sign before them in the list (i.e. -/CDs will cause everything in the /CDs directory to be ignored.). If you just want /CDs to be ignored but want to include the folders within it you need to have both -/CDs and CDs as entries.

Edit Folder List

Enter the folder list editor

Export List To Textfile

Exports the list to /.rockbox/folder_advance_list.txt

Import List From Textfile

Imports the list from /.rockbox/folder_advance_list.txt

Quit

Folder List Editor Keys

10.4.11.  Stats

The stats-plugin simply counts the number of files, music files and directories on your player. Press Menu to abort counting and exit the plugin. Press it again to quit after counting has finished.

10.4.12.  Stopwatch

A simple stopwatch program with support for saving times.

10.4.13.  Text Editor

This plugin allows you to view and edit simple text documents on your DAP. You can view files by using Open with from the Context Menu (see section 4.1.2).

Usage

If you start the Text Editor from the plugin browser you will be greeted with a blank screen. When started from the Open with menu item your file should be shown on the screen. You can now edit the file. The Text Editor is line based. This means you can edit one line at a time using the Virtual Keyboard (see section 4.1.3).

• Move the selection bar to the line you want to edit.
• Edit the highlighted text line or insert a new one using the Item Menu.
• When finished editing exit the Text Editor. You’ll be shown a list of save options.

Note: When you have not changed the file the Text Editor will quit immediately.