Paula32 ~ CD32 Emulator

About

Paula32 (previously known as Pond32) is the largest and most complex project I’ve worked on. It began as a simple experiment and gradually evolved into a focused low‑level effort to explore the architecture and behaviour of the Amiga CD32, especially in relation to its Kickstart ROMs. Despite the demanding structure of the system and the technical challenges involved in reproducing its behaviour accurately, development has been steady and progressing well.

Development

Development of Paula32 began in October 2024 and from January 2025 I started working on it much more intensively. The project is entirely independent and not based on any Commodore sources or existing emulators. Ιits architecture is authentic and has not been influenced by other attempts found online. Although it initially started with the intention of becoming open‑source, the rapid growth of its codebase and the amount of personal effort invested led me to keep it closed‑source (for now) but fully freeware. I may open it in the future once the codebase is properly cleaned and structured. At this stage, the emulator uses Cloanto Kickstart and Extended ROMs but these ~ along with any game files ~ will never be distributed. Development is highly demanding, as Kickstart requires strict alignment with its internal expectations, often forcing me to revisit and refine large parts of the code which naturally slows progress but ensures correctness.

Current State & Future Plans

Paula32 is currently in an active development phase with steady progress across the core Kickstart execution pipeline, task scheduling, intuition initialization and the CD32 display chain. Although several low‑level challenges remain ~especially around strict Kickstart alignment and timing sensitive behaviour~, the emulator continues to advance reliably and consistently.

Future plans focus on completing full bootmenu rendering, stabilizing the display subsystem, refining the scheduler, improving internal correctness and maintainability and enhancing the UI which currently lacks several important features.

Once the codebase reaches a mature and polished state, I intend to release Paula32 on indie platforms such as itch.io.

Screenshots

Selected screenshots from the development process. The green screen shows the current state (exec alert). Right click on 'em for a bigger size.

Project Links

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