Commit Graph

5 Commits

Author SHA1 Message Date
Tim Allen 186f008574 Update to v102r03 release.
byuu says:

Changelog:

  - PCE: split VCE from VDC
  - HuC6280: changed bus from (uint21 addr) to (uint8 bank, uint13 addr)
  - added SuperGrafx emulation (adds secondary VDC, plus new VPC)

The VDC now has no concept of the actual display raster timing, and
instead is driven by Vpulse (start of frame) and Hpulse (start of
scanline) signals from the VCE. One still can't render the start of the
next scanline onto the current scanline through overly aggressive
timings, but it shouldn't be too much more difficult to allow that to
occur now. This process incurs quite a major speed hit, so low-end
systems with Atom CPUs can't run things at 60fps anymore.

The timing needs a lot of work. The pixels end up very jagged if the VCE
doesn't output batches of 2-4 pixels at a time. But this should not be a
requirement at all, so I'm not sure what's going wrong there.

Yo, Bro and the 512-width mode of TV Sports Basketball is now broken as
a result of these changes, and I'm not sure why.

To load SuperGrafx games, you're going to have to change the .pce
extensions to .sg or .sgx. Or you can manually move the games from the
PC Engine folder to the SuperGrafx folder and change the game folder
extensions. I have no way to tell the games apart. Mednafen uses CRC32
comparisons, and I may consider that since there's only five games, but
I'm not sure yet.

The only SuperGrafx game that's playable right now is Aldynes. And the
priorities are all screwed up. I don't understand how the windows or the
priorities work at all from sgxtech.txt, so ... yeah. It's pretty
broken, but it's a start.

I could really use some help with this, as I'm very lost right now with
rendering :/

-----

Note that the SuperGrafx is technically its own system, it's not an
add-on.

As such, I'm giving it a separate .sys folder, and a separate library.

There's debate over how to name this thing. "SuperGrafx" appears more
popular than "Super Grafx". And you might also call it the "PC Engine
SuperGrafx", but I decided to leave off the prefix so it appears more
distinct.
2017-01-24 08:18:54 +11:00
Tim Allen 0ad70a30f8 Update to v101r30 release.
byuu says:

Changelog:

  - SMS: added cartridge ROM/RAM mirroring (fixes Alex Kidd)
  - SMS: fixed 8x16 sprite mode (fixes Wonder Boy, Ys graphics)
  - Z80: emulated "ex (sp),hl" instruction
  - Z80: fixed INx NF (should be set instead of cleared)
  - Z80: fixed loop condition check for CPxR, INxR, LDxR, OTxR (fixes
    walking in Wonder Boy)
  - SFC: removed Debugger and sfc/debugger.hpp
  - icarus: connected MS, GG, MD importing to the scan dialog
  - PCE: added emulation skeleton to higan and icarus

At this point, Master System games are fairly highly compatible, sans
audio. Game Gear games are running, but I need to crop the resolution
and support the higher color palette that they can utilize. It's really
something else the way they handled the resolution shrink on that thing.

The last change is obviously going to be the biggest news.

I'm very well aware it's not an ideal time to start on a new emulation
core, with the MS and MD cores only just now coming to life with no
audio support.

But, for whatever reason, my heart's really set on working on the PC
Engine. I wanted to write the final higan skeleton core, and get things
ready so that whenever I'm in the mood to work on the PCE, I can do so.

The skeleton is far and away the most tedious and obnoxious part of the
emulator development, because it's basically all just lots of
boilerplate templated code, lots of new files to create, etc.

I really don't know how things are going to proceed ... but I can say
with 99.9% certainty that this will be the final brand new core ever
added to higan -- at least one written by me, that is. This was
basically the last system from my childhood that I ever cared about.
It's the last 2D system with games that I really enjoy playing. No other
system is worth dividing my efforts and reducing the quality and amount
of time to work on the systems I have.

In the future, there will be potential for FDS, Mega CD and PCE-CD
support. But those will all be add-ons, and they'll all be really
difficult and challenge the entire design of higan's UI (it's entirely
cartridge-driven at this time.) None of them will be entirely new cores
like this one.
2017-01-12 07:27:30 +11:00
Tim Allen 043f6a8b33 Update to v101r08 release.
byuu says:

Changelog:

  - 68K: fixed read-modify-write instructions
  - 68K: fixed ADDX bug (using wrong target)
  - 68K: fixed major bug with SUB using wrong argument ordering
  - 68K: fixed sign extension when reading address registers from
    effective addressing
  - 68K: fixed sign extension on CMPA, SUBA instructions
  - VDP: improved OAM sprite attribute table caching behavior
  - VDP: improved DMA fill operation behavior
  - added Master System / Game Gear stubs (needed for developing the Z80
    core)
2016-08-17 22:31:22 +10:00
Tim Allen 3dd1aa9c1b Update to v100r02 release.
byuu says:

Sigh ... I'm really not a good person. I'm inherently selfish.

My responsibility and obligation right now is to work on loki, and
then on the Tengai Makyou Zero translation, and then on improving the
Famicom emulation.

And yet ... it's not what I really want to do. That shouldn't matter;
I should work on my responsibilities first.

Instead, I'm going to be a greedy, self-centered asshole, and work on
what I really want to instead.

I'm really sorry, guys. I'm sure this will make a few people happy,
and probably upset even more people.

I'm also making zero guarantees that this ever gets finished. As always,
I wish I could keep these things secret, so if I fail / give up, I could
just drop it with no shame. But I would have to cut everyone out of the
WIP process completely to make it happen. So, here goes ...

This WIP adds the initial skeleton for Sega Mega Drive / Genesis
emulation. God help us.

(minor note: apparently the new extension for Mega Drive games is .md,
neat. That's what I chose for the folders too. I thought it was .smd,
so that'll be fixed in icarus for the next WIP.)

(aside: this is why I wanted to get v100 out. I didn't want this code in
a skeleton state in v100's source. Nor did I want really broken emulation,
which the first release is sure to be, tarring said release.)

...

So, basically, I've been ruminating on the legacy I want to leave behind
with higan. 3D systems are just plain out. I'm never going to support
them. They're too complex for my abilities, and they would run too slowly
with my design style. I'm not willing to compromise my design ideals. And
I would never want to play a 3D game system at native 240p/480i resolution
... but 1080p+ upscaling is not accurate, so that's a conflict I want
to avoid entirely. It's also never going to emulate computer systems
(X68K, PC-98, FM-Towns, etc) because holy shit that would completely
destroy me. It's also never going emulate arcade machines.

So I think of higan as a collection of 2D emulators for consoles
and handhelds. I've gone over every major 2D gaming system there is,
looking for ones with games I actually care about and enjoy. And I
basically have five of those systems supported already. Looking at the
remaining list, I see only three systems left that I have any interest
in whatsoever: PC-Engine, Master System, Mega Drive. Again, I'm not in
any way committing to emulating any of these, but ... if I had all of
those in higan, I think I'd be content to really, truly, finally stop
writing more emulators for the rest of my life.

And so I decided to tackle the most difficult system first. If I'm
successful, the Z80 core should cover a lot of the work on the SMS. And
the HuC6280 should land somewhere between the NES and SNES in terms of
difficulty ... closer to the NES.

The systems that just don't appeal to me at all, which I will never touch,
include, but are not limited to:
* Atari 2600/5200/7800
* Lynx
* Jaguar
* Vectrex
* Colecovision
* Commodore 64
* Neo-Geo
* Neo-Geo Pocket / Color
* Virtual Boy
* Super A'can
* 32X
* CD-i
* etc, etc, etc.

And really, even if something were mildly interesting in there ... we
have to stop. I can't scale infinitely. I'm already way past my limit,
but I'm doing this anyway. Too many cores bloats everything and kills
quality on everything. I don't want higan to become MESS v2.

I don't know what I'll do about the Famicom Disk System, PC-Engine CD,
and Mega CD. I don't think I'll be able to achieve 60fps emulating the
Mega CD, even if I tried to.

I don't know what's going to happen here with even the Mega Drive. Maybe
I'll get driven crazy with the documentation and quit. Maybe it'll end
up being too complicated and I'll quit. Maybe the emulation will end up
way too slow and I'll give up. Maybe it'll take me seven years to get
any games playable at all. Maybe Steve Snake, AamirM and Mike Pavone
will pool money to hire a hitman to come after me. Who knows.

But this is what I want to do, so ... here goes nothing.
2016-07-09 14:21:37 +10:00
Tim Allen a816998122 Update to v099r10 release.
byuu says:

Changelog:
- higan/profile/ => higan/systems/ [temporary; unless we can't think of
  a better base folder name]
- god-damn-better-have fixed the input polling bug
- re-added command-line and drag-and-drop loading
  - command-line loading can now load multiple folders at once (SGB+GB
    game; Sufami Turbo+Slot A+Slot B; etc)
  - if you load just the base cart, it'll present you with a dialog to
    optionally load slotted cart(s)
- MSU1 now goes through nall/vfs instead of directly accessing the
  filesystem
- Famicom Cartridge, PPU cores updated to newer programming style
  - there's countless opportunity for BitField and .bits() in the PPU
    ... but I'm worried about breaking things

If anyone has a working MSU1 game and can test the changes out, that'd
be appreciated. I still don't have a test ROM on my dev box.

I wouldn't worry too much about extensively testing the Famicom PPU
changes just yet ... I'm still struggling with what to name the structs
inside the classes between all of my emulators, and the BitField/.bits()
changes will be much more important to test at a later date.

The only use case left for Emulator::Interface::path(uint id) is for
21fx emulation. This peripheral loads a DLL/SO via LoadLibrary/dlopen,
which do not have any official ways to open a file in RAM. I'm
very hesitant to use the portable trick of writing the memory to a
temporary file, loading it, and deleting the temporary file once done
... it's a real waste of disk activity. I might make something like
vfs::file::isVirtual->bool,path()->string to get around this. But even
once I do, the underlying LoadLibrary/dlopen call is still going to be
direct disk access.
2016-06-26 18:54:12 +10:00