byuu says:
This WIP finally achieves the vision I've had for icarus.
I also fixed a mapping issue with Cx4 that, oddly enough, only caused
the "2" from the Mega Man X2 title screen to disappear.
[Editor's note - "the vision for icarus" was described in a separate,
public forum post: http://board.byuu.org/phpbb3/viewtopic.php?p=20584
Quoting for posterity:
icarus is now a full-fledged part of higan, and will be bundled with
each higan WIP as well. This will ensure that in the future, the
exact version of icarus you need to run higan will be included right
along with it. As of this WIP, physical manifest files are now truly
and entirely optional.
From now on, you can associate your ROM image files with higan's
main binary, or drop them directly on top of it, to load and play
your games.
Furthermore, there are two new menu options that appear under the
library menu when icarus is present:
- "Load ROM File ..." => gives you a single-file selection dialog to
import (and if possible) run the game
- "Import ROM Files ..." => gives you a multi-file import dialog
with checkboxes to pull in multiple games at once
Finally, as before, icarus can generate manifest.bml files for
folders that lack them.
For people who like the game folder and library system, nothing's
changed. Keep using higan as you have been.
For people who hate it, you can now use higan like your classic
emulators. Treat the "Library->{System Name}" entries as your
"favorites" list: the games you actually play. Treat the
"Library->Load ROM" as your standard open file dialog in other
emulators. And finally, treat "Advanced->Game Library" as your save
data path for cheat codes, save states, save RAM, etc.
]
byuu says:
higan supports Event mapping again.
Further, icarus can now detect Event ROMs and MSU1 games.
Event ROMs must be named "program.rom", "slot-(1,2,3).rom" MSU1 games
must contain "msu1.rom"; and tracks must be named "track-#.pcm"
When importing the CC'92, PF'94 ROMs, the program.rom and
slot-(1,2,3).rom files must be concatenated. The DSP firmware can
optionally be separate, but I'd recommend you go ahead and merge it all
to one file. Especially since that common "higan DSP pack" floating
around on the web left out the DSP1 ROMs (only has DSP1B) for god knows
what reason.
There is no support for loading "game.sfc+game.msu+game-*.pcm", because
I'm not going to support trying to pull in all of those files through
importing. Games will have to be distributed as game folders to use
MSU1. The MSU1 icarus support is simply so your game folders won't
require an unstable manifest.bml file to be played. So once they're in
there, they are good for life.
Note: the Event sizes in icarus' SFC heuristics are wrong for appended
firmware. Change from 0xXX8000 to 0xXX2000 and it works fine. Will be
fixed in r18.
Added Sintendo's flickering fixes. The window one's a big help for
regular controls, but the ListView double buffering does nothing for me
on Windows 7 :( Fairly sure I know why, but too lazy to try and fix that
now.
Also fixes the mMenu thing.
byuu says (in the WIP forum):
Changelog:
- satellaviewcartridge/SatellaviewCartridge is now bsmemory/BSMemory
- Emulation/BS-X Satellaview/ is now Emulation/BS Memory/
- masking is in for MCC's mcu (awful hack in the code, but that's
temporary)
- BS Memory types are now "flash" or "mrom"
- fixed loading Same Game - Tengai Hen
- icarus fixed up a lot; can load database entries for any supported
media type now (only the SFC DB exists currently)
mMenu::remove() fix will be in the next WIP.
byuu says (in the public beta thread):
Changelog:
- GBA emulation accuracy improved quite a bit
- video shaders are supported once again
- icarus shares settings.bml with higan; changing library path in
one now affects the other
- icarus manifest generation now uses my SNES game dumping database
for perfect mapping of US games
- major overhaul to manifest file format. As long as you have
v095-style folders without manifest.bml, you will be fine
- if not, go to higan->settings->configuration->advanced and check
"Ignore Manifests" before loading your first game
- new "Manifest Viewer" tool (not really meant for regular users;
more of a developer tool)
- experimental (but disabled in the binary) WASAPI driver. Help
stabilizing it would be *greatly* appreciated!
- lots of other stuff
r13 and r14 weren't posted as individual releases, but their changelogs
were posted.
byuu says about r13:
I'm not going to be posting WIPs for r13 and above for a while.
The reason is that I'm working on the major manifest overhaul I've
discussed previously on the icarus subforum.
I'm recreating my boards database from scratch using the map files
and the new map analyzer. The only games that will load are ones
I've created board definitions for, and updated
sfc/cartridge/markup.cpp to parse. Once I've finished all the
boards, then I'll update the heuristics.
Then finally, I'll sync the syntax changes over to the fc, gb, gba
cores.
Once that's done, I'll start posting WIPs again, along with a new
build of icarus.
But I'll still post changelogs as I work through things.
Changelog (r13):
- preservation: created new database-builder tool (merges
region-specific databases with boards)
- icarus: support new, external database format
(~/.config/icarus/Database/(Super Famicom.bml, ...)
- added 1A3B-(10,11,12); 1A3B-20
byuu says about r14:
r14 work:
I successfully created mappings for every board used in the US set.
I also updated icarus' heuristics to use the new mappings, and
created ones there for the boards that are only in the JP set.
Then I patched icarus to support pulling games out of the database
when it's used on a game folder to generate a manifest file.
Then I updated a lot of code in higan/sfc to support the new mapping
syntax. sfc/cartridge/markup.cpp is about half the size it used to
be with the new mappings, and I was able to kill off both map/id and
map/select entirely.
Then I updated all four emulated systems (and both subsystems) to
use "board" as the root node, and harmonized their syntax (made them
all more consistent with each other.)
Then I added a manifest viewer to the tools window+menu. It's kind
of an advanced user feature, but oh well. No reason to coddle people
when the feature is very useful for developers. The viewer will show
all manifests in order when you load multi-cart games as well.
Still not going to call any syntax 100% done right now, but
thankfully with the new manifest-free folders, nobody will have to
do anything to use the new format. Just download the new version and
go.
The Super Famicom Event stuff is currently broken (CC92/PF94
boards). That's gonna be fun to support.
byuu says about r15:
EDIT: small bug in icarus with heuristics. Edit
core/super-famicom.cpp line 27:
if(/*auto*/ markup = cartridge.markup) {
Gotta remove that "auto" so that it returns valid markup.
Resolved the final concerns I had with the new manifest format.
Right now there are two things that are definitely broken: MCC (BS-X
Town cart) and Event (CC '92 and PF'94).
And there are a few things that are untested: SPC7110, EpsonRTC,
SharpRTC, SDD1+RAM, SufamiTurbo, BS-X slotted carts.
byuu says:
This release adds a settings dialog that lets you control the library
path, optionally generate manifest.bml files, and optionally bypass the
internal games database (so far this is only the US SNES set.)
Also, the settings.bml file can exist in the same folder as the binary
now (portable mode). Plus it can share the same config file as
higan/tomoko itself does. This will allow you to change the library
location in either program and have it affect the other program as well.
It's a bit hackish, but it works >_>
Note: don't use this with higan v095.06 or earlier, or bad things will
happen.
byuu says:
- fixes checkboxes (-again- again [*again*])
- won't check folders with select all / unselect all
- won't crash anymore if the SNES ROM image is too small (Saturday Night
Slam Masters was crashing it before due to DB size error)
- corrected heuristics for Sufami Turbo base cart (mirrors the
absurdities of the real cart precisely, since it's one of a kind)
- corrected a few DB issues (BS-X name + PSRAM (again [*again*]), SNSM,
LAH) (_again_)
- these are temporary. Monkey patched in the generated .hpp source
rather than the actual DB
- not going to fix the SFT sizes because I want to verify what
happened there first
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.
Tim Allen