byuu says:
These WIPs-within-WIPs are getting more and more broken ... this isn't
going the way I wanted.
But ... this time around, I've revamped the entire ruby API again, to
solve a bunch of tough problems that have always made using ruby really
clunky.
But there are *so many* ruby drivers that it's going to take a long
time to work through them all. This WIP is only going to run bsnes, and
only on FreeBSD, and only with some drivers.
hiro's Application::initialize() now calls hiro::initialize(), which you
define inside of your hiro apps. This lets you call
Application::setName(...) before anything else in hiro runs. This is
essential on Xorg to set program icons, for instance.
With the ruby rewrite and the change to hiro, I can get away from the
need to make everything in bsnes/higan pointers to objects, and can now
just declare them as regular objects.
byuu wrote:
Sigh ...
asio.hpp needs #include <nall/windows/registry.hpp>
[Since the last WIP, byuu also posted the following message. -Ed.]
ruby drivers have all been updated (but not tested outside of BSD), and
I redesigned the settings window. The driver functionality all exists on
a new "Drivers" panel, the emulator/hack settings go to a
"Configuration" panel, and the video/audio panels lose driver settings.
As does the settings menu and its synchronize options.
I want to start pushing toward a v107 release. Critically, I will need
DirectSound and ALSA to support dynamic rate control. I'd also like to
eliminate the other system manifest.bml files. I need to update the
cheat code database format, and bundle at least a few quark shaders --
although I still need to default to Direct3D on Windows.
Turbo keys would be nice, if it's not too much effort. Aside from
netplay, it's the last significant feature I'm missing.
I think for v107, higan is going to be a bit rough around the edges
compared to bsnes. And I don't think it's practical to finish the bsnes
localization support.
I'm thinking we probably want another WIP to iron out any critical
issues, but this time there should be a feature freeze with the next
WIP.
byuu says:
Sigh, I seem to be spiraling a bit here ... but the work is very
important. Hopefully I can get a solid WIP together soon. But for now...
I've integrated dynamic rate control into ruby::Audio via
setDynamic(bool) for now. It's very demanding, as you would expect. When
it's not in use, I realized the OSS driver's performance was pretty bad
due to calling write() for every sample for every channel. I implemented
a tiny 256-sample buffer and bsnes went from 290fps to 330fps on my
FreeBSD desktop. It may be possible to do the same buffering with DRC,
but for now, I'm not doing so, and adjusting the audio input frequency
on every sample.
I also added ruby::Video::setFlush(bool), which is available only in the
OpenGL drivers, and this causes glFinish() to be called after swapping
display buffers. I really couldn't think of a good name for this, "hard
GPU sync" sounds kind of silly. In my view, flush is what commits queued
events. Eg fflush(). OpenGL of course treats glFlush differently (I
really don't even know what the point of it is even after reading the
manual ...), and then has glFinish ... meh, whatever. It's
setFlush(bool) until I come up with something better. Also as expected,
this one's a big hit to performance.
To implement the DRC, I started putting helper functions into the ruby
video/audio/input core classes. And then the XVideo driver started
crashing. It took hours and hours and hours to track down the problem:
you have to clear XSetWindowAttributes to zero before calling
XCreateWindow. No amount of `--sync`, `gdb break gdk_x_error`, `-Og`,
etc will make Xlib be even remotely helpful in debugging errors like
this.
The GLX, GLX2, and XVideo drivers basically worked by chance before. If
the stack frame had the right memory cleared, it worked. Otherwise it'd
crash with BadValue, and my changing things broke that condition on the
XVideo driver. So this has been fixed in all three now.
Once XVideo was running again, I realized that non-power of two video
sizes were completely broken for the YUV formats. It took a while, but I
managed to fix all of that as well.
At this point, most of ruby is going to be broken outside of FreeBSD, as
I still need to finish updating all the drivers.
byuu says:
Once again, I wasn't able to complete a full WIP revision.
This WIP-WIP adds very sophisticated emulation of the Sega Genesis
Lock-On and Game Genie cartridges ... essentially, through recursion and
a linked list, higan supports an infinite nesting of cartridges.
Of course, on real hardware, after you stack more than three or four
cartridges, the power draw gets too high and things start glitching out
more and more as you keep stacking. I've heard that someone chained up
to ten Sonic & Knuckles cartridges before it finally became completely
unplayable.
And so of course, higan emulates this limitation as well ^-^. On the
fourth cartridge and beyond, it will become more and more likely that
address and/or data lines "glitch" out randomly, causing various
glitches. It's a completely silly easter egg that requires no speed
impact whatsoever beyond the impact of the new linked list cartridge
system.
I also designed the successor to Emulator::Interface::cap,get,set. Those
were holdovers from the older, since-removed ruby-style accessors.
In its place is the new Emulator::Interface::configuration,configure
API. There's the usual per-property access, and there's also access to
read and write all configurable options at once. In essence, this
enables introspection into core-specific features.
So far, you can control processor version#s, PPU VRAM size, video
settings, and hacks. As such, the .sys/manifest.bml files are no longer
necessary. Instead, it all goes into .sys/configuration.bml, which is
generated by the emulator if it's missing.
higan is going to take this even further and allow each option under
"Systems" to have its own editable configuration file. So if you wanted,
you could have a 1/1/1 SNES menu option, and a 2/1/3 SNES menu option.
Or a Model 1 Genesis option, and a Model 2 Genesis option. Or the
various Game Boy model revisions. Or an "SNES-Fast" and "SNES-Accurate"
option.
I've not fully settled on the syntax of the new configuration API. I
feel it might be useful to provide type information, but I really quite
passionately hate any<T> container objects. For now it's all
string-based, because strings can hold anything in nall.
I might also change the access rules. Right now it's like:
emulator→configure("video/blurEmulation", true); but it might be nicer
as "Video::Blur Emulation", or "Video.BlurEmulation", or something like
that.
byuu says:
Changelog:
- bsnes, higan: simplified make output; reordered rules
- hiro: added Window::set(Minimum,Maximum)Size() [only implemented in
GTK+ so far]
- bsnes: only allow the window to be shrunk to the 1x multiplier size
- bsnes: refactored Integral Scaling checkbox to {Center, Scale,
Stretch} radio selection
- nall: call fflush() after nall::print() to stdout or stderr [needed
for msys2/bash]
- bsnes, higan: program/interface.cpp renamed to program/platform.cpp
- bsnes: trim ".shader/" from names in Settings→Shader menu
- bsnes: Settings→Shader menu updated on video driver changes
- bsnes: remove missing games from recent files list each time it is
updated
- bsnes: video multiplier menu generated dynamically based on largest
monitor size at program startup
- bsnes: added shrink window and center window function to video
multiplier menu
- bsnes: de-minimize presentation window when exiting fullscreen mode
or changing video multiplier
- bsnes: center the load game dialog against the presentation window
(important for multi-monitor setups)
- bsnes: screenshots are not immediate instead of delayed one frame
- bsnes: added frame advance menu option and hotkey
- bsnes: added enable cheats checkbox and hotkey; can be used to
quickly enable/disable all active cheats
Errata:
- hiro/Windows: `SW_MINIMIZED`, `SW_MAXIMIZED `=> `SW_MINIMIZE`,
`SW_MAXIMIZE`
- hiro/Windows: add pMonitor::workspace()
- hiro/Windows: add setMaximized(), setMinimized() in
pWindow::construct()
- bsnes: call setCentered() after setMaximized(false)
byuu says:
Changelog:
- bsnes: added video settings panel
- bsnes: added audio settings panel
- bsnes: disable assign/clear buttons at startup for hotkeys panel
- bsnes: program initialization restructured: drivers initialize last
- this lets me reinitialize the settings panel values on driver
changes
- so eg things like input/hotkey remappings should work after
input driver changes now
- ... but I had to disable the window icon for this ... it takes
too long to show up this way
- bsnes: added synchronize video/audio options to settings menu
- bsnes: added audio skew slider for video/audio synchronization
- bsnes: state manager edit/remove works on game ROM .bsz archives now
- bsnes: removed View→Color Emulation; default to 150% gamma instead
(it's a touch brighter but similar)
At this point, I'm pretty much ready to make an initial beta release for
wider testing.
Please use this WIP to indicate any must-fix issues before I do so.
Tim Allen