byuu says:
Changelog:
- main menu renamed again (Library→System→Systems)
- the 'Hidden' checkbox on system properties was moved to the main
list as a 'Show' checkbox instead
- the move up/move down buttons on the systems panel now function
- added icons to indicate 'system' versus 'game boot' entries in the
systems list
I still didn't add ComboEdit to the Windows hiro port, so once again
this will be Linux/BSD only.
I polished the browse button for selecting a boot game. It'll use a list
of all bootable media file extensions, so that if you double-click any
supported game, it'll select it instead of going inside the folder. If
you pick a non-bootable folder, like say a Sufami Turbo cartridge, it
will go inside the folder instead, because it will treat it like any
other regular folder.
Having a checkbox next to text in the same cell doesn't work so well on
lists that have an onActivate action. Say you tried to double-click the
“Name” field on the Systems tab, it would toggle the checkbox twice
before popping open the system properties editor window. So because of
this, I made the show checkbox its own column. And for consistency, I
did the same for the slot# on the cheat editor window.
As a bit of really pedantic polish: if there are no systems enabled,
then the main menu won't show the separator before the “Load ROM Image”
option anymore.
I think something is wrong with the Markup::Node::insert syntax, but I
realized I have Markup::Node::swap, and just used that for the up/down
arrows on the systems panel for now. But we should probably fix insert()
at some point ... sigh.
byuu says:
Changelog:
- Super Game Boy: fixed loading of boot ROM
- hiro: added ComboEdit::setEditable(bool = true);
- tomoko: added new systems settings panel
Note!!: this release will not compile on Windows or macOS due to the
missing ComboEdit control! I'll try to merge in hex's implementation
for the Windows release here soon. macOS users will probably be out of
luck for a while, sorry.
The new systems panel is an idea I've been meaning to implement for
quite a while, but finally got around to starting on it. It's still
fairly unpolished, but the basic idea is there for Linux/BSD users to
try out now.
So imagine the Super Game Boy, BS-X Satellaview, Sufami Turbo, and the
associated BS Memory Pack-slotted SNES cartridges. To play any of those,
you needed to choose Nintendo→Super Famicom, and then select the
relevant cartridge, and then select any slotted cartridges to play with
it.
This was acceptable-ish, if not ideal. But now imagine in the future if
we wanted to support the Famicom Disk System, which is technically a
cartridge that plugs into the Famicom deck. Or the PC Engine CD, which
has one of three special HuCards that must be inserted (ignoring the
Turbo Duo where it's built-in—I'm going to be emulating the Super CD
as if you're using a stock PCE CD.) Or the Mega CD, where there are
probably a half dozen or more BIOS + hardware revisions that are
region-specific, which connect to an expansion port that is identical to
the cartridge port save for the Mega Drive seeing an I/O register bit
toggled here.
In all of these cases, it's going to be a real pain to have to choose
the 'BIOS' every time you want to play a game for them.
I can't distribute these BIOSes with higan due to copyright
restrictions, and trying to ship dummy folders for every possible
combination would become quite odious, and difficult for people to use
(compare to setting up the Game Boy Advance system BIOS.)
And so I've created the new systems settings panel. Here, you can manage
a list of systems that show up under the higan library menu (now renamed
to “System”), where each entry contains name, boot, and hidden
parameters.
The name parameter is what shows up in the system menu. You can call any
system higan emulates whatever you like here. Don't like “Super
Famicom”? Change it to “SNES”, then.
The boot parameter is a combo edit with a dropdown for all of the
systems higan emulates. If you choose one of these, then the higan
system menu option will work exactly like in previous releases, and
prompt you for a cartridge. But if you choose the browse button next to
the combo edit control, you'll get to pick any gamepak from the higan
library of your choosing.
So you could choose the SGB2 BIOS, and name the menu option “Super Game
Boy 2”, and when you choose the menu option, it will load the SFC core,
load the SGB2 BIOS, and only prompt you for the Game Boy game you wish
to play on it. The same deal goes for the FDS, PCE-CD, Mega CD, Mega
Drive Sonic & Knuckles lock-on cartridge, BS-X Satellaview, SD Gundam
G-Next, etc. Whatever you want to be in the menu, you can put in there
by pointing higan at the appropriate 'BIOS' gamepak to load.
Astute readers have probably already noticed, but you can technically
use this on non-slotted games as well, thus creating instant boot
options for your absolute favorite games, if you so wanted. Point it at
Zelda 3, and you can boot it instantly from the main menu, without any
need for file selection.
The hidden option is a way to hide the system entries from the system
menu. Primarily this would be a fast way for users to disable emulation
cores they never use in higan, without having to remove the options.
The major concession with this change is the collapsing of the
per-manufacturer submenus. What this means is you will now have all
twelve higan emulated systems in the main menu by default. This makes
the list rather long, but ... oh well. I may try to offer some form of
grouping in the future, but the grouping defeats the “list order =
display order” design, and I'm not willing to auto-sort the list. I want
people to be able to control the ordering of the system menu, and have
added (as yet non-functional) sorting arrows for that purpose. I also
don't have a combined tree+table view widget in higan to try to and
group things. But ... we'll see how things go in the future.
Another idea is to add a specialty load option that opens up the user's
Emulation library path, and lets you pick a gamepak for any system,
which would boot the same way as when you drop a gamepak onto the higan
executable or main window. So say you almost never play Wonderswan
games, this would be a way to play them without them cluttering your
system menu list.
The “import ROM files” option has been removed. All it does is launch
icarus directly. I would rather users become familiar with using icarus.
The “load ROM file” option remains.
Anyway, this is all still a work in progress, so please give it time and
don't overload me with too many suggested changes right now, thanks :3
byuu says:
Changelog:
- game/memory/type/battery → game/memory/volatile
- (manufacturer.)content.type → (architecture.)content.type
- nall: Markup::find() strips spaces from values in comparisons
- higan: updated game manifest loading/saving code for all cores
- GBA: flash memory ID is internally selected based on the
manufacturer and memory size
- SFC: ST018 (ARM6) frequency can be modified via game manifest now
- WS: EEPROM::name removed (not useful)
- icarus, genius: battery→volatile updates
I did my best to look over the diff between r13 and r14, but it's 84KiB
excluding the game database changes. It's just too much for me. I'd
greatly appreciate if someone could look over it and check for any
errors in this update. But more than likely, I suppose we'll iron out
any issues by determining which games fail to load.
Right now, I know the Super Game Boy support doesn't seem to work. But
all non-SFC cores should work fully, and all normal + NEC DSP SFC games
should work as well. Unsure about the rest.
Also, I'm planning to change the Game Boy “MBC1M” mapper to “MBC1#A” to
indicate it's an alternate wiring configuration of the stock MBC1, and
not a new mapper type.
byuu says:
Changelog:
- game/memory/category → game/memory/content
- game/memory/model → game/memory/architecture
- game/memory/identity → game/memory/identifier
- Super Famicom: memory/content=Bitmap → memory/content=Save
- Super Famicom: memory/architecture=DMG,MGB →
memory/architecture=LR35902
The game manifest field names are now officially set in stone. I won't
change them again, I'll only add new fields if required.
As for the values in the field, I'm still undecided on the manufacturer
of the ST018, and I could be talked into different identifiers for the
Super Game Boy (SGB1/SGB2, DMG/MGB, or just ICD(2)?)
The board manifest format is still in flux, as is the choice of what to
name firmware files (it's between manufacturer and architecture, where
I'm leaning toward the latter currently.)
Board memory to Game memory mappings will require both the manufacturer
and architecture fields to match.
I'll be updating doc.byuu.org soon with the finalized game manifest
format.
byuu says:
Changelog:
- Emulator: update to final manifest syntax
- Super Famicom: new board syntax (still experimental)
- Super Famicom: match (manufacturer.)category.type instead of
(model.)category.type
Errata:
- Markup::Node::find() needs to be extended to support multiple
subtype matches
- Sufami Turbo ROM/RAM nodes are part of separate gamepaks; need to
refactor this
Lothar Serra Mari