Timeline
In the very beginning of Delta’s known existence, we first found it in the GBA4iOS 2 year anniversary video. Before this, Delta was only a pet project, a way to learn the new Swift programming language.
It was discovered that within the video, a clip of the SNES game Chrono Trigger was used, hinting towards what Delta might be. It was also discovered that the ending melody in the last seconds of the video, a slowed down version of The Forest Maze from Super Mario RPG (SNES) was played. Of course, it was all speculation until Riley Testut released the teaser homepage of Delta, deltaemulator.com, which featured images of GBC, GBA, SNES and N64. Later it was revealed that Delta had been in progress since March of 2015. When he first started accepting beta applications in December of 2016, they quickly started pouring in.
And the Beta Testers Are... https://t.co/FvJmVRJWhY
— Riles 🤷♂️ (@rileytestut) December 19, 2016
When the beta was first released to testers later that month, Twitter exploded with praise for the beta, from several different countries.
Finally getting to play Delta. @rileytestut I must say. Everything I loved about GBA4iOS just got 9001X better. pic.twitter.com/9urCRTRlnb
— Tyler Livingston (@The120thWhisper) December 21, 2016
Naplno testuji emulátor Delta od @rileytestut Tohle je panečku retro Mário a na sedmičce podporuje i Taptic Engine více brzy na @Jablickar pic.twitter.com/26WEfpqQA2
— Filip Brož (@Broz1k) December 21, 2016
The first beta was "butter smooth" and well received by all who were in the beta. Several of the beta testers considered it one of their favorite christmas presents. Beta 2 contained a small list of features and enhancements, but mostly important bug fixes.
[Upcoming] Delta Beta #3 Released! from r/jailbreakThere is a new option to select the game cover art from an online database, the GBA and SNES skins have been reworked to be more modern (pics coming in the morning), and a whole bunch of bug fixes. Riley has promised (bamboozle free) that the next beta will be a big one. Like GBC support big.
Beta 3 was rather quietly released, but told of bigger features to come.
Beta 4...soon 👀 #delta pic.twitter.com/6afsXl5W7K
— Caroline Moore (@1CarolineMoore) April 11, 2017
Surprise! Press beta testers check your inboxes; Delta beta 4 has arrived with Game Boy (Color) support 🎉 pic.twitter.com/MspprUEEHw
— Riles 🤷♂️ (@rileytestut) May 3, 2017
The release of Beta 4, was the biggest beta of Delta yet, it added an entirely new system to the mix: Game Boy Color. With this release, only a few major features remained to be seen in the emulator. Cloud Syncing and N64.
Playing the best Zelda game ever made on the go is pretty great…and I’m not talking about Breath of the Wild 😉 https://t.co/jbNwRc8nDE
— Riles 🤷♂️ (@rileytestut) July 2, 2017
Delta core frameworks are now open source!
— Riles 🤷♂️ (@rileytestut) September 14, 2017
Under the GNU licensing, the source code of Delta was to be released and available to the open public. This meant that “technically” Delta just entered an open beta stage. If you had the tools to download and compile the source code for Delta and install to your device, you could use it.
B5 focuses on under the hood changes (to support external controllers + eventually keyboards), but some new features such as game search! pic.twitter.com/iKSCY2zf21
— Riles 🤷♂️ (@rileytestut) October 16, 2017
FINALLY finished Delta beta 6. What started as a small update to add iPhone X support ended up containing *lots* of fixes and improvements that have been on the todo list for a while 🎉 pic.twitter.com/mlVavoTL5b
— Riles 🤷♂️ (@rileytestut) January 4, 2018
With slow, and steady improvements in the background of the app, the foundations and structure of the app became more and more bug free. Still, the biggest features remaining since beta 4, continued to lurk around the corner.
However, in order for Riley to keep working on Delta in his free time, he had to actually have time. Between senior year classes and interning as a software developer, there was little time to be had. In his blog post he explained the delay but promised that Delta would be released in the summer of 2018.
In the weeks immediately following Riley Testut’s graduation, a rather unexpected version of Delta emerged.
Introducing Delta Lite: an NES emulator with all the features you love from Delta, packaged in a Swift Playground for all iPad owners to download and enjoy 🎉 https://t.co/ni3lLlQ62a pic.twitter.com/mMkhpdcHOt
— Riles 🤷♂️ (@rileytestut) June 21, 2018
Delta Lite was the familiar interface and features of Delta, but usable only within Apple’s Swift Playgrounds app which is only available for iPads. It showcased an imaginative use of the iPads retail space and interactivity with multitasking. Perhaps more importantly, Delta Lite ran only NES games. This confirmed that the full version of Delta would now include NES in addition to the others.
The end of summer shortly arrived, but there still hadn’t been any further betas, and the release of Delta v1.0 was further delayed.
It’s been a while, but new Delta blog post! tl;dr I was broke, found a job to earn money over summer, quit said job, and am now working full time on Delta with no other commitments for the first time ever 🎉 https://t.co/wGnWEzXHCj
— Riles 🤷♂️ (@rileytestut) October 1, 2018
After another great hiatus, Riley Testut created a "twitterstorm" to announce the current state of Delta.
First, syncing! Finally, after *many* busy months, I’m wrapping up work on Delta’s syncing functionality. It works just like with GBA4iOS, but with some small additions. For one, the games themselves actually sync now, not just save states and cheats! pic.twitter.com/V16tVJrvR4
— Riles 🤷♂️ (@rileytestut) January 21, 2019
The syncing function was almost complete, and included the ability to sync ROM's and saves. Riley Testut also introduced the ability to move back to previous versions of your save files. The seventh beta, including a boat load of new features was on its way. With this series of posts, Riley also announced that he was aiming to release in Spring 2019.
With a free extra weeks of work, Beta 7 was finally released to the Press Beta Testers!
New Delta beta is out (press testers). Features NES and keyboard support! pic.twitter.com/XvLRTszBZo
— Dario Sepulveda (@mithical) February 22, 2019
With this beta came a long list of new features and improvements. NES support, physical keyboard support, and the first rendition of cloud syncing. Only google drive was usable as a cloud service in this beta, with Dropbox planned for a later beta. But this did include fully functional syncing for everything and version history for everything!
Sending Delta beta 7.1 out to all beta testers! Has all the features of beta 7 as well as some new ones, such as Dropbox in addition to Google Drive for syncing, and support for WarioWare: Twisted!
— Riles 🤷♂️ (@rileytestut) March 26, 2019
Perhaps seen as a “lesser” feature, WarioWare: Twisted! support was added to Delta, before the newest beta has even been sent to all the testers. But the elegance of Delta is most certainly going to be in the details, and this one is an important detail. Not only that, but dropbox became fully supported as a service in beta 7.1, meaning that only iPad optimizations and N64 remained.
#N64 pic.twitter.com/oTZlryiPs2
— Riles 🤷♂️ (@rileytestut) April 30, 2019
Being a huge fan of teasers, Riley Testut released the above tweet with a video of Super Mario 64 running in Delta using touch controls. Noted in a reply to the original tweet, this tease became the accounts most liked tweet, clearly there is some anticipation and love for N64.
Happy June everyone! Figured I’d start the month off right by sending out Delta w/ N64 support to press testers later today 🎉
— Riles 🤷♂️ (@rileytestut) June 1, 2019
In addition to sending the 8th beta to the press testers, Riley Testut also sent the application (.ipa format) to anyone at Apple's WWDC (World Wide Developers Conference) to help entertain themselves while they were waiting around. If only we had known that we could spend $1000 on a WWDC ticket AND get a Delta beta!
After a great deal of work across the summer, Riley Testut tweeted:
this is the week y’all 🙂
— Riles 🤷♂️ (@rileytestut) September 22, 2019