byuu says:
I reworked the video sizing code. Ended up wasting five fucking hours
fighting GTK. When you call `gtk_widget_set_size_request`, it doesn't
actually happen then. This is kind of a big deal because when I then go
to draw onto the viewport, the actual viewport child window is still the
old size, so the image gets distorted. It recovers in a frame or so with
emulation, but if we were to put a still image on there, it would stay
distorted.
The first thought is, `while(gtk_events_pending())
gtk_main_iteration_do(false);` right after the `set_size_request`. But
nope, it tells you there's no events pending. So then you think, go
deeper, use `XPending()` instead. Same thing, GTK hasn't actually issued
the command to Xlib yet. So then you think, if the widget is realized,
just call a blocking `gtk_main_iteration`. One call does nothing, two
calls results in a deadlock on the second one ... do it before program
startup, and the main window will never appear. Great.
Oh, and it's not just the viewport. It's also the widget container area
of the windows, as well as the window itself, as well as the fullscreen
mode toggle effect. They all do this.
For the latter three, I couldn't find anything that worked, so I just
added 20ms loops of constantly calling `gtk_main_iteration_do(false)`
after each one of those things. The downside here is toggling the status
bar takes 40ms, so you'll see it and it'll feel a tiny bit sluggish.
But I can't have a 20ms wait on each widget resize, that would be
catastrophic to performance on windows with lots of widgets.
I tried hooking configure-event and size-allocate, but they were very
unreliable. So instead I ended up with a loop that waits up to a maximm
of 20ms that inspects the `widget->allocation.(width,height)` values
directly and waits for them to be what we asked for with
`set_size_request`.
There was some extreme ugliness in GTK with calling
`gtk_main_iteration_do` recursively (`hiro::Widget::setGeometry` is
called recursively), so I had to lock it to only happen on the top level
widgets (the child ones should get resized while waiting on the
top-level ones, so it should be fine in practice), and also only run it
on realized widgets.
Even still, I'm getting ~3 timeouts when opening the settings dialog in
higan, but no other windows. But, this is the best I can do for now.
And the reason for all of this pain? Yeah, updated the video code.
So the Emulator::Interface now has this:
struct VideoSize { uint width, height; }; //or requiem for a tuple
auto videoSize() -> VideoSize;
auto videoSize(uint width, uint height, bool arc) -> VideoSize;
The first function, for now, is just returning the literal surface size.
I may remove this ... one thing I want to allow for is cores that send
different texture sizes based on interlace/hires/overscan/etc settings.
The second function is more interesting. Instead of having the UI trying
to figure out sizing, I figure the emulation cores can do a better job
and we can customize it per-core now. So it gets the window's width and
height, and whether the user asked for aspect correction, and then
computes the best width/height ratio possible. For now they're all just
doing multiples of a 1x scale to the UI 2x,3x,4x modes.
We still need a third function, which will probably be what I repurpose
videoSize() for: to return the 'effective' size for pixel shaders, to
then feed into ruby, to then feed into quark, to then feed into our
shaders. Since shaders use normalized coordinates for pixel fetching,
this should work out just fine. The real texture size will be exposed to
quark shaders as well, of course.
Now for the main window ... it's just hard-coded to be 640x480, 960x720,
1280x960 for now. It works nicely for some cores on some modes, not so
much for others. Work in progress I guess.
I also took the opportunity to draw the about dialog box logo on the
main window. Got a bit fancy and used the old spherical gradient and
impose functionality of nall/image on it. Very minor highlight, nothing
garish. Just something nicer than a solid black window.
If you guys want to mess around with sizes, placements, and gradient
styles/colors/shapes ... feel free. If you come up with something nicer,
do share.
That's what led to all the GTK hell ... the logo wasn't drawing right as
you resized the window. But now it is, though I am not at all happy with
the hacking I had to do.
I also had to improve the video update code as a result of this:
- when you unload a game, it blacks out the screen
- if you are not quitting the emulator, it'll draw the logo; if
you are, it won't
- when you load a game, it black out the logo
These options prevent any unsightliness from resizing the viewport with
image data on it already
I need to redraw the logo when toggling fullscreen with no game loaded
as well for Windows, it seems.
byuu says:
(Windows users may need to include <sys/time.h> at the top of
nall/chrono.hpp, not sure.)
Unchangelog:
- forgot to add the Scheduler clock=0 fix because I have the memory of
a goldfish
Changelog:
- new icarus database with nine additional games
- hiro(GTK,Qt) won't constantly write its settings.bml file to disk
anymore
- added latency simulator for fun (settings.bml => Input/Latency in
milliseconds)
So the last one ... I wanted to test out nall::chrono, and I was also
thinking that by polling every emulated frame, it's pretty wasteful when
you are using Fast Forward and hitting 200+fps. As I've said before,
calls to ruby::input::poll are not cheap.
So to get around this, I added a limiter so that if you called the
hardware poll function within N milliseconds, it'll return without
doing any actual work. And indeed, that increases my framerate of Zelda
3 uncapped from 133fps to 142fps. Yay. But it's not a "real" speedup,
as it only helps you when you exceed 100% speed (theoretically, you'd
need to crack 300% speed since the game itself will poll at 16ms at 100%
speed, but yet it sped up Zelda 3, so who am I to complain?)
I threw the latency value into the settings file. It should be 16,
but I set it to 5 since that was the lowest before it started negatively
impacting uncapped speeds. You're wasting your time and CPU cycles setting
it lower than 5, but if people like placebo effects it might work. Maybe
I should let it be a signed integer so people can set it to -16 and think
it's actually faster :P (I'm only joking. I took out the 96000hz audio
placebo effect as well. Not really into psychological tricks anymore.)
But yeah seriously, I didn't do this to start this discussion again for
the billionth time. Please don't go there. And please don't tell me this
WIP has higher/lower latency than before. I don't want to hear it.
The only reason I bring it up is for the fun part that is worth
discussing: put up or shut up time on how sensitive you are to
latency! You can set the value above 5 to see how games feel.
I personally can't really tell a difference until about 50. And I can't
be 100% confident it's worse until about 75. But ... when I set it to
150, games become "extra difficult" ... the higher it goes, the worse
it gets :D
For this WIP, I've left no upper limit cap. I'll probably set a cap of
something like 500ms or 1000ms for the official release. Need to balance
user error/trolling with enjoyability. I'll think about it.
[...]
Now, what I worry about is stupid people seeing it and thinking it's an
"added latency" setting, as if anyone would intentionally make things
worse by default. This is a limiter. So if 5ms have passed since the
game last polled, and that will be the case 99.9% of the time in games,
the next poll will happen just in time, immediately when the game polls
the inputs. Thus, a value below 1/<framerate>ms is not only pointless,
if you go too low it will ruin your fast forward max speeds.
I did say I didn't want to resort to placebo tricks, but I also don't
want to spark up public discussion on this again either. So it might
be best to default Input/Latency to 0ms, and internally have a max(5,
latency) wrapper around the value.
byuu says:
Changelog:
- nall::lstring -> nall::string_vector
- added IntegerBitField<type, lo, hi> -- hopefully it works correctly...
- Multitap 1-4 -> Super Multitap 2-5
- fixed SFC PPU CGRAM read regression
- huge amounts of SFC PPU IO register cleanups -- .bits really is lovely
- re-added the read/write(VRAM,OAM,CGRAM) helpers for the SFC PPU
- but they're now optimized to the realities of the PPU (16-bit data
sizes / no address parameter / where appropriate)
- basically used to get the active-display overrides in a unified place;
but also reduces duplicate code in (read,write)IO
byuu says:
Changelog:
- fixed major nall/vector/prepend bug
- renamed hiro/ListView to hiro/TableView
- added new hiro/ListView control which is a simplified abstraction of
hiro/TableView
- updated higan's cheat database window and icarus' scan dialog to use
the new ListView control
- compilation works once again on all platforms (Windows, Cocoa, GTK,
Qt)
- the loki skeleton compiles once again (removed nall/DSP references;
updated port/device ID names)
Small catch: need to capture layout resize events internally in Windows
to call resizeColumns. For now, just resize the icarus window to get it
to use the full window width for list view items.
byuu says:
New update. Most of the work today went into eliminating hiro::Image
from all objects in all ports, replacing with nall::image. That took an
eternity.
Changelog:
- fixed crashing bug when loading games [thanks endrift!!]
- toggling "show status bar" option adjusts window geometry (not
supposed to recenter the window, though)
- button sizes improved; icon-only button icons no longer being cut off
byuu says:
Changelog:
- fixed I/O register reads; perfect score on endrift's I/O tests now
- fixed mouse capture clipping on Windows [Cydrak]
- several hours of code maintenance work done on the SFC core
All higan/sfc files should now use the auto fn() -> ret; syntax. Haven't
converted all unsigned->uint yet. Also, probably won't do sfc/alt as
that's mostly just speed hack stuff.
Errata:
- forgot auto& instead of just auto on SuperFamicom::Video::draw_cursor,
which makes Super Scope / Justifier crash. Will be fixed in the next
WIP.
byuu says:
Changelog:
- return open bus instead of mirroring addresses on the bus (fixes
Mario&Luigi, Minish Cap, etc) [Jonas Quinn]
- add boolean flag to load requests for slotted game carts (fixes slot
load prompts)
- rename BS-X Town cart from psram to ram
- icarus: add support for game database
Note: I didn't rename "bsx" to "mcc" in the database for icarus before
uploading that. But I just fixed it locally, so it'll be in the next
WIP. For now, make it create the manifest for you and then rename it
yourself. I did fix the PSRAM size to 256kbit.
byuu says:
Updated to compile with all of the new hiro changes. My next step is to
write up hiro API documentation, and move the API from alpha (constantly
changing) to beta (rarely changing), in preparation for the first stable
release (backward-compatible changes only.)
Added "--fullscreen" command-line option. I like this over
a configuration file option. Lets you use the emulator in both modes
without having to modify the config file each time.
Also enhanced the command-line game loading. You can now use any of
these methods:
higan /path/to/game-folder.sfc
higan /path/to/game-folder.sfc/
higan /path/to/game-folder.sfc/program.rom
The idea is to support launchers that insist on loading files only.
Technically, the file can be any name (manifest.bml also works); the
only criteria is that the file actually exists and is a file, and not
a directory. This is a requirement to support the first version (a
directory lacking the trailing / identifier), because I don't want my
nall::string class to query the file system to determine if the string
is an actual existing file or directory for its pathname() / dirname()
functions.
Anyway, every game folder I've made so far has program.rom, and that's
very unlikely to change, so this should be fine.
Now, of course, if you drop a regular "game.sfc" file on the emulator,
it won't even try to load it, unless it's in a folder that ends in .fc,
.sfc, etc. In which case, it'll bail out immediately by being unable to
produce a manifest for what is obviously not really a game folder.
byuu says:
Changelog (since the last open beta):
- icarus is now included. icarus is used to import game files/archives
into game paks (folders)
- SNES: mid-scanline BGMODE changes now emulated correctly (used only by
atx2.smc Anthrox Demo)
- GBA: fixed a CPU bug that was causing dozens of games to have
distorted audio
- GBA: fixed default FlashROM ID; should allow much higher compatibility
- GBA: now using Cydrak's new, much improved, GBA color emulation filter
(still a work-in-progress)
- re-added command-line loading support for game paks (not for game
files/archives, sorry!)
- Qt port now compiles and runs again (may be a little buggy;
Windows/GTK+ ports preferred)
- SNES performance profile now compiles and runs again
- much more
byuu says:
Changelog:
- updated to newest hiro API
- SFC performance profile builds once again
- hiro: Qt port completed
Errata 1: the hiro/Qt target won't run tomoko just yet. Starts by
crashing inside InputSettings because hiro/Qt isn't forcefully selecting
the first item added to a ComboButton just yet. Even with a monkey patch
to get around that, the UI is incredibly unstable. Lots of geometry
calculation bugs, and a crash when you try and access certain folders in
the browser dialog. Lots of work left to be done there, sadly.
Errata 2: the hiro/Windows port has black backgrounds on all ListView
items. It's because I need to test for unassigned colors and grab the
default Windows brush colors in those cases.
Note: alternating row colors on multi-column ListView widgets is gone
now. Not a bug. May add it back later, but I'm not sure. It doesn't
interact nicely with per-cell background colors.
Things left to do:
First, I have to fix the Windows and Qt target bugs.
Next, I need to go through and revise the hiro API even more (nothing
too major.)
Next, I need to update icarus to use the new hiro API, and add support
for the SFC games database.
Next, I have to rewrite my TSV->BML cheat code tool.
Next, I need to post a final WIP of higan+icarus publicly and wait a few
days.
Next, I need to fix any bugs reported from the final WIP that I can.
Finally, I should be able to release v095.
byuu says:
Changelog:
- SNES mid-scanline BGMODE fixes finally merged (can run
atx2.zip{mode7.smc}+mtest(2).sfc properly now)
- Makefile now discards all built-in rules and variables
- switch on bool warning disabled for GCC now as well (was already
disabled for Clang)
- when loading a game, if any required files are missing, display
a warning message box (manifest.bml, program.rom, bios.rom, etc)
- when loading a game (or a game slot), if manifest.bml is missing, it
will invoke icarus to try and generate it
- if that fails (icarus is missing or the folder is bad), you will get
a warning telling you that the manifest can't be loaded
The warning prompt on missing files work for both games and the .sys
folders and their files. For some reason, failing to load the DMG/CGB
BIOS is causing a crash before I can display the modal dialog. I have no
idea why, and the stack frame backtrace is junk.
I also can't seem to abort the failed loading process. If I call
Program::unloadMedia(), I get a nasty segfault. Again with a really
nasty stack trace. So for now, it'll just end up sitting there emulating
an empty ROM (solid black screen.) In time, I'd like to fix that too.
Lastly, I need a better method than popen for Windows. popen is kind of
ugly and flashes a console window for a brief second even if the
application launched is linked with -mwindows. Not sure if there even is
one (I need to read the stdout result, so CreateProcess may not work
unless I do something nasty like "> %tmp%/temp") I'm also using the
regular popen instead of _wpopen, so for this WIP, it won't work if your
game folder has non-English letters in the path.
byuu says:
This WIP substantially restructures the ruby API for the first time
since that project started.
It is my hope that with this restructuring, destruction of the ruby
objects should now be deterministic, which should fix the crashing on
closing the emulator on Linux. We'll see I guess ... either way, it
removed two layers of wrappers from ruby, so it's a pretty nice code
cleanup.
It won't compile on Windows due to a few issues I didn't see until
uploading the WIP, too lazy to upload another. But I fixed all the
compilation issues locally, so it'll work on Windows again with the next
WIP (unless I break something else.)
(Kind of annoying that Linux defines glActiveTexture but Windows
doesn't.)
byuu says:
Added AWJ's fixes for alt/cpu (Tetris Attack framelines issue) and
alt/dsp (Thread::clock reset)
Added fix so that the taskbar entry appears when the application first
starts on Windows.
Fixed checkbox toggling inside of list views on Windows.
Updated nall/image to properly protect variables that should not be
written externally.
New Object syntax for hiro is in.
Fixed the backwards-typing on Windows with the state manager.
NOTE: the list view isn't redrawing when you change the description
text. It does so on the cheat editor because of the resizeColumns call;
but that shouldn't be necessary. I'll try and fix this for the next WIP.
byuu says:
Windows port should run mostly well now, although exiting fullscreen
breaks the application in a really bizarre way. (clicking on the window
makes it sink to background rather than come to the foreground o_O)
I also need to add the doModalChange => audio.clear() thing for the
accursed menu stuttering with DirectSound.
I also finished porting all of the ruby drivers over to the newer API
changes from nall.
Since I can't compile the Linux or OS X drivers, I have no idea if there
are any typos that will result in compilation errors. If so, please let
me know where they're at and I'll try and fix them. If they're simple,
please try and fix them on your end to test further if you can.
I'm hopeful the udev crash will be gone now that nall::string checks for
null char* values passed to its stringify function. Of course, it's
a problem it's getting a null value in the first place, so it may not
work at all.
If you can compile on Linux (or by some miracle, OS X), please test each
video/audio/input driver if you don't mind, to make sure there's no
"compiles okay but still typos exist" bugs.
byuu says:
Finally!! Compilation works once again on Windows.
However, it's pretty buggy. Modality isn't really working right, you can
still poke at other windows, but when you select ListView items, they
redraw as empty boxes (need to process WM_DRAWITEM before checking
modality.)
The program crashes when you close it (probably a ruby driver's term()
function, that's what it usually is.)
The Layout::setEnabled(false) call isn't working right, so you get that
annoying chiming sound and cursor movement when mapping keyboard keys to
game inputs.
The column sizing seems off a bit on first display for the Hotkeys tab.
And probably lots more.
byuu says:
Main reason for this WIP was because of all the added lines to hiro for
selective component disabling. May as well get all the diff-noise apart
from code changes.
It also merges something I've been talking to Cydrak about ... making
nall::string::(integer,decimal) do built-in binary,octal,hex decoding
instead of just failing on those. This will have fun little side effects
all over the place, like being able to view a topic on my forum via
"forum.byuu.org/topic/0b10010110", heh.
There are two small changes to higan itself, though. First up, I fixed
the resampler ratio when loading non-SNES games. Tested and I can play
Game Boy games fine now. Second, I hooked up menu option hiding for
reset and controller selection. Right now, this works like higan v094,
but I'm thinking I might want to show the "Device -> Controller" even if
that's all that's there. It kind of jives nicer with the input settings
window to see the labels there, I think. And if we ever do add more
stuff, it'll be nice that people already always expect that menu there.
Remaining issues:
* add slotted cart loader (SGB, BSX, ST)
* add DIP switch selection window (NSS)
* add timing configuration (video/audio sync)
byuu says:
This version polishes up the input dialogue (reset, erase, disable
button when item not focused, split device ID from mapping name), adds
color emulation toggle, and add dummy menu items for remaining features
(to be filled in later.)
Also, it now compiles cleanly on Windows with GTK.
I didn't test with TDM-GCC-32, because for god knows what reason, the
32-bit version ships with headers from Windows 95 OSR2 only. So I built
with TDM-GCC-64 with arch=x86.
And uh, apparently, moving or resizing a window causes a Visual C++
runtime exception in the GTK+ DLLs. This doesn't happen with trance or
renshuu built with TDM-GCC-32. So, yeah, like I said, don't use -m32.
byuu says:
This will easily be the biggest diff in the history of higan. And not in
a good way.
* target-higan and target-loki have been blown away completely
* nall and ruby massively updated
* phoenix replaced with hiro (pretty near a total rewrite)
* target-higan restarted using hiro (just a window for now)
* all emulation cores updated to compile again
* installation changed to not require root privileges (installs locally)
For the foreseeable future (maybe even permanently?), the new higan UI
will only build under Linux/BSD with GTK+ 2.20+. Probably the most
likely route for Windows/OS X will be to try and figure out how to build
hiro/GTK on those platforms, as awful as that would be. The other
alternative would be to produce new UIs for those platforms ... which
would actually be a good opportunity to make something much more user
friendly.
Being that I just started on this a few hours ago, that means that for
at least a few weeks, don't expect to be able to actually play any
games. Right now, you can pretty much just compile the binary and that's
it. It's quite possible that some nall changes didn't produce
compilation errors, but will produce runtime errors. So until the UI can
actually load games, we won't know if anything is broken. But we should
mostly be okay. It was mostly just trim<1> -> trim changes, moving to
Hash::SHA256 (much cleaner), and patching some reckless memory copy
functions enough to compile.
Progress isn't going to be like it was before: I'm now dividing my time
much thinner between studying and other hobbies.
My aim this time is not to produce a binary for everyone to play games
on. Rather, it's to keep the emulator alive. I want to be able to apply
critical patches again. And I would also like the base of the emulator
to live on, for use in other emulator frontends that utilize higan.
Tim Allen