byuu says:
Changelog:
- sfc/ppu-fast:
- don't use mosaicSize unless mosaicEnable is set
- fix background tiles that aren't 8x8 in size
- flush (render) queued lines whenever VRAM or OAM are modified
mid-frame
- queue tile outputs to buffer for object rendering final pass
- fix object window mask indexing
- disable color bleed when output width is 256 pixels
- handle reset(bool) events
- implemented save states
- icarus: fixed SPC7110-RAM-EPSONRTC mapping typo [hex_usr]
- bsnes: fixed overscan masking mode when output height is 240
Todo:
- sfc/ppu-fast: should not have deleted the tilecache freeing in
~PPU()
- ruby/input/carbon: change setPath() call to setPathID()
Errata:
- Rendering Ranger R2 crashes at startup, seems to be an issue with
the expansion port device
Bug reports on the new fast SNES PPU are now welcome.
byuu says:
Changelog:
- bsnes: work on the new GUI; can load games now, but no input support
yet
- icarus: heuristics game/label uses filename instead of internal
header name
byuu says:
Changelog:
- created new bsnes target (it currently does nothing)
- Super Famicom: fixed BS Memory pack support in the MCC emulation
- icarus: fixed manifest-free support for BS Memory flash-based
cartridges
- icarus: database improvements
byuu says:
Changelog:
- higan: target-tomoko has been renamed to target-higan
- Super Famicom: event has been renamed to
processor(architecture=uPD78214)
- Super Famicom: SNES-EVENT supported once more; under board IDs
EVENT-CC92 and EVENT-PF94
- Super Famicom: SNES-EVENT preliminarily set up to use DIP switch
settings ala the Nintendo Super System (incomplete)
- Super Famicom: MCC PSRAM moved inside the MCU, as it is remappable
- Super Famicom: MCC emulation rewritten from scratch; it is now
vastly more accurate than before
- Super Famicom: added BSC-1A5B9P-01 board definition to database;
corrected BS-MCC-RAM board definition
- Super Famicom: moved SHVC-LN3B-01 RAM outside of
processor(identifier=SDD1)
- higan: when selecting a default game to load for a new system entry,
it will change the system option to match the media type
- higan: the load text box on the system entry window is now editable;
can be used to erase entries
- icarus: fixed bug in Famicom importing
- icarus: importing unappended SNES coprocessor firmware will now
rename the firmware properly
- hiro/GTK,Qt: WM_CLASS is now set correctly in `argv[0]`, so
applications should show “higan”, “icarus” instead of “hiro” now
Note: if you wish to run the BS-X town cartridge, the database currently
lists the download RAM as type “PSRAM”. This needs to be changed to
“RAM” in order to load properly. Otherwise, the emulator will bomb
out on the load window, because BSC-1A5B9P-01 expects PSRAM to always be
present, but it won't find it with the wrong memory type. I'll correct
this in the database in a later release. For now, you can copy the game
portion of the manifest to a new manifest.bml file and drop it into the
gamepak folder until I fix the database.
byuu says:
Changelog:
- Super Famicom: everything outside of Nintendo Super System, Campus
Challenge '92 and Powerfest '94 should play
- Super Famicom: removed RAM from coprocessor/event (should use global
RAM)
- Super Famicom: removed RAM from SDD1 (should use global RAM)
- icarus: fixed Super Famicom game importing [hex_usr]
Also worth reminding that you'll need to disable database lookup in
order to run the BS-X Town cartridge right now. Plus, Star Ocean's
database entry still has the RAM in the wrong spot. The MSU1 code is not
looking at the right locations for data, so it's not going to work in
this release either.
I need to figure out what to call coprocessor/event and coprocessor/nss,
as neither are slots or processors like everything else.
Outside of those issues, all games for all systems should be playable,
at least to the extent they were in v106.
byuu says:
Changelog:
- major restructuring of board manifests
- cleanup of generic board names
- Super Famicom: updates to SA1, SuperFX, Cx4, SPC7110, EpsonRTC,
SharpRTC load/save code
- Super Famicom: added experimental SuperFX plot dithering fix
[qwertymodo]
- higan, icarus: rename shared folders to lowercase names; put .sys
folders into new subfolder
- Video Shaders/ → shaders/
- Database/ → database/
- Firmware/ → firmware/
- \*.sys/ → systems/\*.sys/
So right now, only standard SNES games, SA-1, SuperFX, and Cx4 games
load. I have not tested SPC7110 or RTC support, because icarus import
seems to be completely broken? It's creating blank folders when I try it
now. I'll have to fix that ...
Since we are now up to thirteen systems, I've put the .sys folders into
a subfolder. This should declutter the main higan-windows release folder
a good deal. Linux users will need to re-run make install, or manually
move things into a new systems/ subfolder.
Same goes for icarus: lowercase the database/ and firmware/ folders or
re-run make install.
I don't know if qwertymodo's SuperFX fix is exactly correct or not.
Hopefully it is, but I didn't write a test ROM or anything to be
certain. Since SuperFX games should run, if people could please play
through some of them and look for any regressions, that'd be very much
appreciated.
byuu says:
Changelog:
- tomoko: the library menu is now called the systems menu (even in
code)
- tomoko: added icons to menus (disambiguates systems menu entries)
- icarus: added missing .ws, .wsc extensions to scan dialog search
list
- higan: added Benesse - Pocket Challenge V2 emulation¹
¹: the Benesse - Pocket Challenge V2 is a WonderSwan (ASWAN) SoC
inside a custom designed shell. Games made for the WonderSwan (mostly)
run on the Pocket Challenge V2 and vice versa. The big difference is
that the Benesse has a different number of input buttons, that are also
named differently. Of course, right now, I don't know what the buttons
are named or where they're mapped on the 16-input keypad matrix I/O
port. It's also possible that the internal EEPROM doesn't exist, it
definitely has a unique (and also undumped) IPLROM, and other things.
The ROMs have their own .pc2 file extension. So it's getting its own
system entry.
What I'm going to do for v107 and above is utilize the new systems
configuration to mark the Benesse as hidden by default from the main
menu. I don't think anyone in the world will actually care or want to
play this, but there was really no reason not to add it.
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
byuu says:
Changelog:
- higan, icarus, genius: new manifest syntax (work in progress)
Pretty much only LoROM and HiROM SNES games will load right now, and RAM
will only work right if the save.ram file already exists to pull its
file size from (a temporary cheap hack was used.)
Basically, I'm just getting this out there for evaluation.
One minor errata is that I switched icarus to using “memory/battery” to
indicate battery-backed RAM, whereas genius still uses “memory/volatile”
to indicate non-battery-backed RAM.
I intend to make it “memory/battery” in genius, and have the field
auto-enable when RAM or RTC is selected for type (obviously allowing it
to be unchecked for volatile memory.)
I need to update all 64 production boards, and 25 of 29 generic boards,
to use the new slot syntax; and I also need to update every single core
in higan to use the new manifest game syntax. I want to build out a
generic manifest game parser that all emulation cores will use.
Once I finish this, I'll also need to write a database converter to
update all of my licensed game dumps to the new database syntax.
I also need to write up something for doc.byuu.org explaining the new
manifest game syntax. The manifest board syntax will still be “internal”
and subject to revisions, but once v107 is out, the gamepak manifest
format will be set in stone sans extensions.
byuu says:
Changelog:
- Game Boy: fixed RAM/RTC saving¹
- Super Famicom: ICD2 renamed to ICD (there exists an SGB prototype
with a functionally identical ICD1)
- Sufami Turbo: removed short-circuiting when loading an unlinkable
cartridge into slot A²
- Super Game Boy: the 20971520hz clock of the SGB2 is now emulated
- Super Famicom: BSC-1Lxx (SA1) boards now prompt for BS memory
cartridges; and can make use of them³
- Super Famicom: fixed a potential for out-of-bounds reads with BS
Memory flash carts
¹: I'm using a gross hack of replacing `type: ` with `type:` so that
`memory(type=...)` will match without the extra spaces. I need to
think about whether I want the BPath query syntax to strip whitespace or
not. But longer term, I want to finalize game/memory's design, and build
a higan/emulation/manifest parser that produces a nicer interface to
reading manifests for all cores, which will make this irrelevant for
higan anyway.
²: I don't think it's appropriate for higan to enforce this. Nothing
stops you from inserting games that can't be linked into a real Sufami
Turbo. I do short-circuit if you cancel the first load, but I may allow
loading an empty slot A with a populated slot B. I think the BIOS does
something when you do that. Probably just yells at you.
³: I know it's emulated correctly now, but I still don't know what
the heck changes when you load the SD Gundam G Next - Unit & Map
Collection BS Memory cartridge with SD Gundam G Next to actually test
it.
byuu says:
Changelog:
- icarus: new Firmware/ folder, which is used to import external
firmware when it's missing from the ROM image
- icarus: improved Super Famicom heuristics; including Shift-JIS to
UTF-8 encoding of game titles
Errata:
- if firmware isn't appended, it still cuts out the size from the
memory/program.rom file
- boards.bml is still missing the new Japanese production boards
byuu says:
Changelog:
- Super Famicom: added remaining generic board types
- icarus: improved Super Famicom heuristics
- icarus: reworked BS Memory heuristics
- icarus: reworked Sufami Turbo heuristics
Notes: this is really complicated, and is going to take a long time to
work 100% smoothly again.
Starting off, I am trying to get rid of the weird edge case zero-byte
SRAM mapping for the Cx4. It has the RAM region present, but returns
logic low (0x00) instead of open bus, when SRAM isn't present. I started
by making it `map=ram` instead of `ram/map`, which is gross, and then it ended
up detecing the map tag ending in RAM and pulling the Cx4 data RAM into that
slot. Ugh. The preservation board mapping is still as it was before and will
need to be updated once I get the syntax down.
The BS Memory and Sufami Turbo moving to the new `game/memory`
ending means I can't use the SuperFamicom::Cartridge::loadMemory
function that looks at the old-style rom/ram tags. Because I didn't
write more code, the result is those sub-carts won't load now.
The old heuristics were short-circuiting on SA1 before bothering with
BS-X slots, so that's why SD Gundam G-Next wasn't asking for a data
pack. The problem is, I don't know where the BS-X pack maps to on this
cartridge. It's at c0-ef on the other BS-X slotted cartridges, but
that's mapped to the SA1 on regular SA1 cartridges, so ... for now, it's
not actually mapped in.
I'm still struggling with naming conventions on all these boards. I'll
make a public post about that, though.
byuu says:
Changelog:
- nall: `Markup::Node::operator[]` now uses `find()` instead of `lookup()`
behind the scenes
- Super Famicom: RAM memory ordering is now independent of ROM memory
ordering
- Super Famicom: added 19 new generic board definitions
- icarus: improved Super Famicom heuristics generation
Not putting it in the changelog, but the SPC7110 RAM now has write
protection disabled again.
99% of games should now be playable with heuristics. The exceptions
should be:
- 4MB LoROM games with SRAM (Ys 3, FE: Thracia 776)
- 2MB DSP LoROM games
- BS-X Town
- BS-X slotted games
- SA1 BSX slotted games
- SPC7110 games without the RTC (Momotarou Dentetsu Happy, Super Power
League 4)
- SPC7110 7MB fan translation (wasn't supported earlier either)
- ExLoROM games (wasn't supported earlier either)
- Sufami Turbo
- Campus Challenge '92 and Powerfest '94
- ST010 is going to run at 15MHz instead of 11MHz
- MSU1 (needs to be supported in higan, not icarus)
I'll add support for most of these before the release of v107.
byuu says:
Changelog:
- Super Famicom: update to newer board markup syntax
- Super Famicom: update all mapped ROMs to be write-protected
- errata: SPC7110 set ram.writeProtect(true), I'll fix it in the
next WIP
- icarus: rewrote the Super Famicom heuristics module from scratch
Instead of icarus heuristics generating higan-specific mappings, it now
generates generic board IDs that can be used by any emulator. I had
originally planned to print out real PCB ID codes here, but these board
mappings are meant to be more generic, and I don't want them to look
real. The pseudo-codes are easy to parse, for example: `DSP-LOROM-NVRAM`
for Super Mario Kart, `SUPERFX-RAM` for Doom.
I'm going to make a `Boards (Generic).bml` file that will contain mapping
definitions for every board. Until this is done, any games not in the SNES
preservation database will fail to play because the mapping information is
now missing.
byuu says:
Changelog:
- Super Famicom: added support for loading manifests without embedded
mapping information¹
- genius: initial commit
- various Makefile cleanups
¹: so the idea here is to try and aim for a stable manifest format,
and to allow direct transposition of icarus/genius database entries into
manifest files. The exact mechanics of how this is going to work is
currently in flux, but we'll get there.
For right now, `Super Famicom.sys` gains `boards.bml`, which is the raw
database from my board-editor tool, and higan itself tries to load
`boards.bml`, match an entry to game/board from the game's `manifest.bml`
file, and then transform it into the format currently used by higan. It
does this only when the game's `manifest.bml` file lacks a board node.
When such a board node exists, it works as previous versions of higan
did.
The only incompatible change right now is information/title is now
located at game/label. I may transition window title display to just use
the filenames instead.
Longer term, some thought is going to need to go into the format of the
`boards.bml` database itself, and at which point in the process I should
be transforming things.
Give it time, we'll refine this into something nicer.
byuu says:
Changelog:
- Master System: merged Bus into CPU
- Mega Drive: merged BusCPU into CPU; BusAPU into AU
- Mega Drive: added TMSS emulation; disabled by default [hex\_usr]
- VDP lockout not yet emulated
- processor/arm7tdmi: renamed interrupt() to exception()
- processor/arm7tdmi: CPSR.F (FIQ disable) flag is set on reset
- processor/arm7tdmi: pipeline decode stage caches CPSR.T (THUMB mode)
[MerryMage]
- fixes `msr_tests.gba` test F
- processor/arm7tdmi/disassembler: add PC address to left of currently
executing instruction
- processor/arm7tdmi: stop forcing CPSR.M (mode flags) bit 4 high (I
don't know what really happens here)
- processor/arm7tdmi: undefined instructions now generate Undefined
0x4 exception
- processor/arm7tdmi: thumbInstructionAddRegister masks PC by &~3
instead of &~2
- hopefully this is correct; &~2 felt very wrong
- processor/arm7tdmi: thumbInstructionStackMultiple can use sequential
timing for PC/LR PUSH/POP [Cydrak]
- systems/Mega Drive.sys: added tmss.rom; enable with cpu version=1
- tomoko: detect when a ruby video/audio/input driver crashes higan;
disable it on next program startup
v104 blockers:
- Mega Drive: support 8-bit SRAM (even if we don't support 16-bit;
don't force 8-bit to 16-bit)
- Mega Drive: add region detection support to icarus
- ruby: add default audio device information so certain drivers won't
default to silence out of the box
byuu says (in the WIP forum):
Changelog:
- higan: cheat codes accept = and ? separators now
- the new preferred code format is: address=value or
address=if-match?value
- the old code format of address/value and address/if-match/value
will continue to work
- higan: cheats.bml is no longer included with the base distribution
- mightymo stopped updating it in 2015, and it's not source code;
it can still be pulled in from older releases
- fc: improved PAL mode timing; use PAL APU timing tables; fix PAL
noise period table [hex\_usr]
- md: support aborting a Z80 bus wait in order to capture save states
without freezing
- note that this will violate accuracy; but in practice a slight
desync is better than an emulator deadlock
- sfc: revert DSP ENDX randomization for now (want to research it more
before deploying in an official release)
- sfc: fix Super Famicom.sys/manifest.bml APU RAM size [hex\_usr]
- tomoko: cleaned up make install rules
- hiro/cocoa: use ABGR for pixel data [Sintendo]
Note: I forgot to change the command-line and drag-and-drop separator
from : to | in this WIP. However, it is corrected in the v103 official
binary and source published on download.byuu.org. Sorry about that, I
know it makes the Git repository history more difficult. I'm not
concerned whether the : → | change is part of v103 or v103r01 in the
repository, and will leave this to your discretion, Screwtape.
I also still need to set the VDP bit to indicate PAL mode in the Mega
Drive core. This is what happens when I have 47 things I have to do,
given how lousy my memory is. I miss things.
byuu says:
Changelog:
- higan: `Emulator::<Platform::load>()` now returns a struct containing
both a path ID and a string option
- higan: `Emulator::<Platform::load>()` now takes an optional final
argument of string options
- fc: added PAL emulation (finally, only took six years)
- md: added PAL emulation
- md: fixed address parameter to `VDP::Sprite::write()`; fixes missing
sprites in Super Street Fighter II
- md: emulated HIRQ counter; fixes many games
- Super Street Fighter II - status bar
- Altered Beast - status bar
- Sonic the Hedgehog - Labyrinth Zone - water effect
- etc.
- ms: added PAL emulation
- sfc: added the ability to override the default region auto-detection
- sfc: removed "system.region" override setting from `Super Famicom.sys`
- tomoko: added options list to game folder load dialog window
- tomoko: added the ability to specify game folder load options on the
command-line
So, basically ... Sega forced a change with the way region detection
works. You end up with games that can run on multiple regions, and the
content changes accordingly. Bare Knuckle in NTSC-J mode will become
Streets of Rage in NTSC-U mode. Some games can even run in both NTSC and
PAL mode.
In my view, there should be a separate ROM for each region a game was
released in, even if the ROM content were identical. But unfortunately
that's not how things were done by anyone else.
So to support this, the higan load dialog now has a drop-down at the
bottom-right, where you can choose the region to load games from. On the
SNES, it defaults to "Auto", which will pull the region setting from the
manifest, or fall back on NTSC. On the Mega Drive ... unfortunately, I
can't auto-detect the region from the ROM header. $1f0 is supposed to
contain a string like "JUE", but instead you get games like Maui Mallard
that put an "A" there, and other such nonsense. Sega was far more lax
than Nintendo with the ROM header validity. So for now at least, you
have to manually select your region every time you play a Mega Drive
game, thus you have "NTSC-J", "NTSC-U", and "PAL". The same goes for the
Master System for the same reason, but there's only "NTSC" and "PAL"
here. I'm not sure if games have a way to detect domestic vs
international consoles.
And for now ... the Famicom is the same as well, with no auto-detection.
I'd sincerely hope iNES has a header bit for the region, but I didn't
bother with updating icarus to support that yet.
The way to pass these parameters on the command-line is to prefix the
game path with "option:", so for example:
higan "PAL:/path/to/Sonic the Hedgehog (USA, Europe).md"
If you don't provide a prefix, it uses the default (NTSC-J, NTSC, or
Auto.) Obviously, it's not possible to pass parameters with
drag-and-drop, so you will always get the default option in said case.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Tim Allen