byuu says:
Warning: this is not for the faint of heart. This is a very early,
unpolished, buggy release. But help testing/fixing bugs would be greatly
appreciated for anyone willing.
Requirements:
- Mac OS X 10.7+
- Xcode 7.2+
Installation Commands:
cd higan
gmake -j 4
gmake install
cd ../icarus
gmake -j 4
gmake install
(gmake install is absolutely required, sorry. You'll be missing key
files in key places if you don't run it, and nothing will work.)
(gmake uninstall also exists, or you can just delete the .app bundles
from your Applications folder, and the Dev folder on your desktop.)
If you want to use the GBA emulation, then you need to drop the GBA BIOS
into ~/Emulation/System/Game\ Boy\ Advance.sys\bios.rom
Usage:
You'll now find higan.app and icarus.app in your Applications folders.
First, run icarus.app, navigate to where you keep your game ROMs. Now
click the settings button at the bottom right, and check "Create
Manifests", and click OK. (You'll need to do this every time you run
icarus because there's some sort of bug on OSX saving the settings.) Now
click "Import", and let it bring in your games into ~/Emulation.
Note: "Create Manifests" is required. I don't yet have a pipe
implementation on OS X for higan to invoke icarus yet. If you don't
check this box, it won't create manifest.bml files, and your games won't
run at all.
Now you can run higan.app. The first thing you'll want to do is go to
higan->Preferences... and assign inputs for your gamepads. At the very
least, do it for the default controller for all the systems you want to
emulate.
Now this is very important ... close the application at this point so
that it writes your config file to disk. There's a serious crashing bug,
and if you trigger it, you'll lose your input bindings.
Now the really annoying part ... go to Library->{System} and pick the
game you want to play. Right now, there's a ~50% chance the application
will bomb. It seems the hiro::pListView object is getting destroyed, yet
somehow the internal Cocoa callbacks are being triggered anyway. I don't
know how this is possible, and my attempts to debug with lldb have been
a failure :(
If you're unlucky, the application will crash. Restart and try again. If
it crashes every single time, then you can try launching your game from
the command-line instead. Example:
open /Applications/higan.app \
--args ~/Emulation/Super\ Famicom/Zelda3.sfc/
Help wanted:
I could really, really, really use some help with that crashing on game
loading. There's a lot of rough edges, but they're all cosmetic. This
one thing is pretty much the only major show-stopping issue at the
moment, preventing a wider general audience pre-compiled binary preview.
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:
Note: you will need the new icarus (and please use the "no manifest"
system) to run GBA games with this WIP.
Changelog:
- fixed caching of r(d) to pass armwrestler tests [Jonas Quinn]
- DMA to/from GBA BIOS should fail [Cydrak]
- fixed sign-extend and rotate on ldrs instructions [Cydrak]
- fixed 8-bit SRAM reading/writing [byuu]
- refactored GBA/cartridge
- cartridge/rom,ram.type is now cartridge/mrom,sram,eeprom,flash
- things won't crash horribly if you specify a RAM size larger than
the largest legal size in the manifest
- specialized MROM / SRAM classes replace all the shared read/write
functions that didn't work right anyway
- there's a new ruby/video.glx2 driver, which is not enabled by default
- use this if you are running Linux/BSD, but don't have OpenGL 3.2 yet
- I'm not going to support OpenGL2 on Windows/OS X, because these OSes
don't ship ancient video card drivers
- probably more. What am I, clairvoyant? :P
For endrift's tests, this gets us to 1348/1552 memory and 1016/1260
timing. Overall, this puts us back in second place. Only no$ is ahead
on memory, but bgba is even more ahead on timing.
byuu says:
Aspect correction is fixed now. Works way better than in v095 official.
It's still force-enabled in fullscreen mode. The idea of disabling it is
that it looks bad at 2x scale. But when you're fullscreen with a minimum
of 4x scale, there's no reason not to enable it.
It won't turn on at all for GB/C/A anymore. And I dropped the cute
attempt at making the aspect prettier on 2560x1600 monitors, so it'll be
the stock 8:7 across the board now for S/NES.
Also, the aspect correction will affect the window even when a game's
not loaded now, so the size won't bounce around as you change games in
windowed mode between GB/C/A and S/NES.
...
I also enhanced the ruby/glx driver. It won't crash if OpenGL 3.2 isn't
available anymore (fails safely ... had to capture the Xlib error
handler to suppress that), and it defaults to the MESA glXSwapInterval
before the SGI version. Because apparently the MESA version defines the
SGI version, but makes it a no-op. What. The. Fuck. right? But whatever,
reordering the enumerations fixes the ability to toggle Vsync on AMD
GPUs now.
...
Video shaders are back again. If you are using the OpenGL driver, you'll
see a "Video Shaders" menu beneath the "Video Filters" menu (couldn't
merge it with the filters due to hiro now constructing menu ordering
inside the header files. This works fine though.)
You want either "higan.exe" + "Video Shaders/" or "~/.local/bin/tomoko"
+ "~/.local/tomoko/Video Shaders/"
byuu says:
Changelog:
- synchronizes lots of nall changes
- changes displayed program title from tomoko to higan(*)
- browser dialog sort is case-insensitive
- .sys folders look at user-selected library path; no longer hard-coded
Tried to get rid of the file modes from the Windows browser dialog, but
it was being a bitch so I left it on for now.
- The storage locations and binary still use tomoko. I'm not really sure
what to do here. The idea is there may be more than one "higan" UI in
the future, but I don't want people to go around calling the entire
program by the UI name. For official Windows releases, I can rename
the binaries to "higan-{profile}.exe", and by putting the config files
with the binary, they won't ever see the tomoko folder. Linux is of
course trickier.
Note: Windows users will need to edit hiro/components.hpp and comment
out these lines:
#define Hiro_Console
#define Hiro_IconView
#define Hiro_SourceView
#define Hiro_TreeView
I forgot to do that, and too lazy to upload another WIP.
byuu says:
This WIP scores 448/920 tests passed.
Gave a shot at ROM prefetch that failed miserably (ranged from 409 to
494 tests passed. Nowhere near where it would be if it were implemented
correctly.)
Three remaining issues:
- ROM prefetch
- DMA timing
- timers (I suspect it's a 3-clock delay in starting, not a 3-clock into
the future affair)
Probably only going to be able to get the timers working without heroic
amounts of effort.
MUL timing is fixed to use idle cycles.
STMIA is fixed to set sequential at the right moments.
DMA priority support is added, so DMA 0 can interrupt DMA 1 mid-transfer.
In other news ...
I'm calling gtk_widget_destroy on the GtkWindow now, so hopefully those
Window_configure issues go away.
I realize I was leaking Display* handles in the X-video driver while
I was looking at it, so I fixed those.
I added DT_NOPREFIX so the Windows ListView will show & characters
correctly now.
byuu says:
Note: for Windows users, please go to nall/intrinsics.hpp line 60 and
correct the typo from "DISPLAY_WINDOW" to "DISPLAY_WINDOWS" before
compiling, otherwise things won't work at all.
This will be a really major WIP for the core SNES emulation, so please
test as thoroughly as possible.
I rewrote the 65816 CPU core's dispatcher from a jump table to a switch
table. This was so that I could pass class variables as parameters to
opcodes without crazy theatrics.
With that, I killed the regs.r[N] stuff, the flag_t operator|=, &=, ^=
stuff, and all of the template versions of opcodes.
I also removed some stupid pointless flag tests in xcn and pflag that
would always be true.
I sure hope that AWJ is happy with this; because this change was so that
my flag assignments and branch tests won't need to build regs.P into
a full 8-bit variable anymore.
It does of course incur a slight performance hit when you pass in
variables by-value to functions, but it should help with binary size
(and thus cache) by reducing a lot of extra functions. (I know I could
have used template parameters for some things even with a switch table,
but chose not to for the aforementioned reasons.)
Overall, it's about a ~1% speedup from the previous build. The CPU core
instructions were never a bottleneck, but I did want to fix the P flag
building stuff because that really was a dumb mistake v_v'
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:
The library window is gone, and replaced with
hiro::BrowserWindow::openFolder(). This gives navigation capabilities to
game loading, and it also completes our slotted cart selection code. As
an added bonus, it's less code this way, too.
I also set the window size to consistent sizes between all emulated
systems, so that switching between SFC and GB don't cause the window
size to keep changing, and so that the scaling size is consistent (eg at
normal scale, GB @ 3x is closer to SNES @ 2x.) This means black borders
in GB/GBA mode, but it doesn't look that bad, and it's not like many
people ever use these modes anyway.
Finally, added the placeholder tabs for video, audio and timing. I don't
intend to add the timing calculator code to v095 (it might be better as
a separate tool), but I'll add the ability to set video/audio rates, at
least.
Glitch 1: despite selecting the first item in the BrowserDialog list, if
you press enter when the window appears, it doesn't activate the item
until you press an arrow key first.
Glitch 2: in Game Boy mode, if you set the 4x window size, it's not
honoring the full requested height because the viewport is smaller than
the window. 8+ years of trying to get GTK+ and Qt to simply set the god
damned window size I ask for, and I still can't get them to do it
reliably.
Remaining issues:
- finish configuration panels (video, audio, timing)
- fix ruby driver compilation on Windows
- add DIP switch selection window (NSS) [I may end up punting this one
to v096]
byuu says:
This updates higan to use the new Markup::Node changes. This is a really
big change, and one slight typo anywhere could break certain classes of
games from playing.
I don't have ananke hooked up again yet, so I don't have the ability to
test this much. If anyone with some v094 game folders wouldn't mind
testing, I'd help out a great deal.
I'm most concerned about testing one of each SNES special chip game.
Most notably, systems like the SA-1, HitachiDSP and NEC-DSP were using
the fancier lookups, eg node["rom[0]/name"], which I had to convert to
a rather ugly node["rom"].at(0)["name"], which I'm fairly confident
won't work. I'm going to blame that on the fumes from the shelves I just
stained >.> Might work with node.find("rom[0]/name")(0) though ...? But
so ugly ... ugh.
That aside, this WIP adds the accuracy-PPU inlining, so the accuracy
profile should run around 7.5% faster than before.
byuu says:
Changelog:
* added driver selection
* added video scale + aspect correction settings
* added A/V sync + audio mute settings
* added configuration file
* fixed compilation bugs under Windows and Linux
* fixed window sizing
* removed HSU1
* the system menu stays as "System", because "Game Boy Advance" was too
long a string for the smallest scale size
* some more stuff
You guys probably won't be ecstatic about the video sizing options, but
it's basically your choice of 1x, 2x or 4x scale with optional aspect
correction. 3x was intentionally skipped because it looks horrible on
hires SNES games. The window is resized and recentered upon loading
games. The window doesn't resize otherwise. I never really liked the way
v094 always left you with black screen areas and left you with
off-centered window positions.
I might go ahead and add the pseudo-fullscreen toggle that will jump
into 4x mode (respecting your aspect setting.)
Short-term:
* add input port changing support
* add other input types (mouse-based, etc)
* add save states
* add cheat codes
* add timing configuration (video/audio sync)
* add hotkeys (single state)
We can probably do a new release once the short-term items are
completed.
Long-term:
* add slotted cart loader (SGB, BSX, ST)
* add DIP switch selection window (NSS)
* add cheat code database
* add state manager
* add overscan masking
Not planned:
* video color adjustments (will allow emulated color vs raw color; but
no more sliders)
* pixel shaders
* ananke integration (will need to make a command-line version to get my
games in)
* fancy audio adjustment controls (resampler, latency, volume)
* input focus settings
* relocating game library (not hard, just don't feel like it)
* localization support (not enough users)
* window geometry memory
* anything else not in higan v094
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.
byuu says:
Lots of changes this time around. FreeBSD stability and compilation is
still a work in progress.
FreeBSD 10 + Clang 3.3 = 108fps
FreeBSD 10 + GCC 4.7 = 130fps
Errata 1: I've been fighting that god-damned endian.h header for the
past nine WIPs now. The above WIP isn't building now because FreeBSD
isn't including headers before using certain types, and you end up with
a trillion error messages. So just delete all the endian.h includes from
nall/intrinsics.hpp to build.
Errata 2: I was trying to match g++ and g++47, so I used $(findstring
g++,$(compiler)), which ends up also matching clang++. Oops. Easy fix,
put Clang first and then else if g++ next. Not ideal, but oh well. All
it's doing for now is declaring -fwrapv twice, so you don't have to fix
it just yet. Probably just going to alias g++="g++47" and do exact
matching instead.
Errata 3: both OpenGL::term and VideoGLX::term are causing a core dump
on BSD. No idea why. The resources are initialized and valid, but
releasing them crashes the application.
Changelog:
- nall/Makefile is more flexible with overriding $(compiler), so you can
build with GCC or Clang on BSD (defaults to GCC now)
- PLATFORM_X was renamed to PLATFORM_XORG, and it's also declared with
PLATFORM_LINUX or PLATFORM_BSD
- PLATFORM_XORG probably isn't the best name ... still thinking about
what best to call LINUX|BSD|SOLARIS or ^(WINDOWS|MACOSX)
- fixed a few legitimate Clang warning messages in nall
- Compiler::VisualCPP is ugly as hell, renamed to Compiler::CL
- nall/platform includes nall/intrinsics first. Trying to move away from
testing for _WIN32, etc directly in all files. Work in progress.
- nall turns off Clang warnings that I won't "fix", because they aren't
broken. It's much less noisy to compile with warnings on now.
- phoenix gains the ability to set background and foreground colors on
various text container widgets (GTK only for now.)
- rewrote a lot of the MSU1 code to try and simplify it. Really hope
I didn't break anything ... I don't have any MSU1 test ROMs handy
- SNES coprocessor audio is now mixed as sclamp<16>(system_sample
+ coprocessor_sample) instead of sclamp<16>((sys + cop) / 2)
- allows for greater chance of aliasing (still low, SNES audio is
quiet), but doesn't cut base system volume in half anymore
- fixed Super Scope and Justifier cursor colors
- use input.xlib instead of input.x ... allows Xlib input driver to be
visible on Linux and BSD once again
- make install and make uninstall must be run as root again; no longer
using install but cp instead for BSD compatibility
- killed $(DESTDIR) ... use make prefix=$DESTDIR$prefix instead
- you can now set text/background colors for the loki console via (eg):
- settings.terminal.background-color 0x000000
- settings.terminal.foreground-color 0xffffff
byuu says:
Changelog:
- port: various compilation fixes for OS X [kode54]
- nall: added programpath() function to return path to process binary
[todo: need to have ethos use this function]
- ruby: XAudio2 will select default game sound device instead of first
sound device
- ruby: DirectInput device IDs are no longer ambiguous when VID+PID are
identical
- ruby: OpenGL won't try and terminate if it hasn't been initialized
- gb: D-pad up+down/left+right not masked in SGB mode
- sfc: rewrote ICD2 video rendering to output in real-time, work with
cycle-based Game Boy renderer
- sfc: rewrote Bus::reduce(), reduces game loading time by about 500ms
- ethos: store save states in {game}/higan/* instead of {game}/bsnes/*
- loki: added target-loki/ (blank stub for now)
- Makefile: purge out/* on make clean
byuu says:
This WIP removes nall/input.hpp entirely, and implements the new
universal cheat format for FC/SFC/GB/GBC/SGB.
GBA is going to be tricky since there's some consternation around
byte/word/dword overrides.
It's also not immediately obvious to me how to implement the code search
in logarithmic time, due to the optional compare value.
Lastly, the cheat values inside cheats.bml seem to be broken for the
SFC. Likely there's a bug somewhere in the conversion process. Obviously
I'll have to fix that before v094.
I received no feedback on the universal cheat format. If nobody adds
anything before v094, then I don't want to hear any complaining about
the formatting :P
byuu says:
Not an official WIP (a WIP WIP? A meta-WIP?), just throwing in the new
fullscreen code, and I noticed that OpenGL colors in 30-bit mode are all
fucked up now for some strange reason. So I'm just using this snapshot
to debug the issue.
byuu says:
Updated to support latest phoenix changes.
Converted Settings and Tools to TabFrame views.
Errata:
- phoenix/Windows ComboButton wasn't calling parent
pWidget::setGeometry() [fixed locally]
- TRACKBAR_CLASS draws COLOR_3DFACE for the background even when its
parent is a WC_TABCONTROL
byuu says:
Changelog:
- nall: fixed major memory leak in string class
- ruby: video shaders support #define-based settings now
- phoenix/GTK+: support > 256x256 icons for window / task bar / alt-tab
- sfc: remove random/ and config/, merge into system/
- ethos: delete higan.png (48x48), replace with higan512.png (512x512)
as new higan.png
- ethos: default gamma to 100% (no color adjustment)
- ethos: use "Video Shaders/Display Emulation/" instead of "Video
Shaders/Emulation/"
- use g++ instead of g++-4.7 (g++ -v must be >= 4.7)
- use -std=c++11 instead of -std=gnu++11
- applied a few patches from Debian upstream to make their packaging job
easier
So because colors are normalized in GLSL, I won't be able to offer video
shaders absolute color literals. We will have to perform basic color
conversion inside the core.
As such, the current plan is to create some sort of Emulator::Settings
interface. With that, I'll connect an option for color correction, which
will be on by default. For FC/SFC, that will mean gamma correction
(darker / stronger colors), and for GB/GBC/GBA, it will mean simulating
the weird brightness levels of the displays. I am undecided on whether
to use pea soup green for the GB or not. By not doing so, it'll be
easier for the display emulation shader to do it.
byuu says:
Changelog:
- added SA-1 MDR; fixes bug in SD Gundam G-Next where the main
battleship was unable to fire
- added out-of-the-box support for any BSD running Clang 3.3+ (FreeBSD
10+, notably)
- added new video shader, "Display Emulation", which changes the shader
based on the emulated system
- fixed the home button to go to your default library path
- phoenix: Windows port won't send onActivate unless an item is selected
(prevents crashing on pressing enter in file dialog)
- ruby: removed vec4 position from out Vertex {} (helps AMD cards)
- shaders: updated all shaders to use texture() instead of texture2D()
(helps AMD cards)
The "Display Emulation" option works like this: when selected, it tries
to load "<path>/Video Shaders/Emulation/<systemName>.shader/"; otherwise
it falls back to the blur shader. <path> is the usual (next to binary,
then in <config>/higan, then in /usr/share/higan, etc); and <systemName>
is "Famicom", "Super Famicom", "Game Boy", "Game Boy Color", "Game Boy
Advance"
To support BSD, I had to modify the $(platform) variable to
differentiate between Linux and BSD.
As such, the new $(platform) values are:
win -> windows
osx -> macosx
x -> linux or bsd
I am also checking uname -s instead of uname -a now. No reason to
potentially match the hostname to the wrong OS type.
byuu says:
Changelog:
- added Cocoa target: higan can now be compiled for OS X Lion
[Cydrak, byuu]
- SNES/accuracy profile hires color blending improvements - fixes
Marvelous text [AWJ]
- fixed a slight bug in SNES/SA-1 VBR support caused by a typo
- added support for multi-pass shaders that can load external textures
(requires OpenGL 3.2+)
- added game library path (used by ananke->Import Game) to
Settings->Advanced
- system profiles, shaders and cheats database can be stored in "all
users" shared folders now (eg /usr/share on Linux)
- all configuration files are in BML format now, instead of XML (much
easier to read and edit this way)
- main window supports drag-and-drop of game folders (but not game files
/ ZIP archives)
- audio buffer clears when entering a modal loop on Windows (prevents
audio repetition with DirectSound driver)
- a substantial amount of code clean-up (probably the biggest
refactoring to date)
One highly desired target for this release was to default to the optimal
drivers instead of the safest drivers, but because AMD drivers don't
seem to like my OpenGL 3.2 driver, I've decided to postpone that. AMD
has too big a market share. Hopefully with v093 officially released, we
can get some public input on what AMD doesn't like.
byuu describes the changes since v067:
This release officially introduces the accuracy and performance cores,
alongside the previously-existing compatibility core. The accuracy core
allows the most accurate SNES emulation ever seen, with every last
processor running at the lowest possible clock synchronization level.
The performance core allows slower computers the chance to finally use
bsnes. It is capable of attaining 60fps in standard games even on an
entry-level Intel Atom processor, commonly found in netbooks.
The accuracy core is absolutely not meant for casual gaming at all. It
is meant solely for getting as close to 100% perfection as possible, no
matter the cost to speed. It should only be used for testing,
development or debugging.
The compatibility core is identical to bsnes v067 and earlier, but is
now roughly 10% faster. This is the default and recommended core for
casual gaming.
The performance core contains an entirely new S-CPU core, with
range-tested IRQs; and uses blargg's heavily-optimized S-DSP core
directly. Although there are very minor accuracy tradeoffs to increase
speed, I am confident that the performance core is still more accurate
and compatible than any other SNES emulator. The S-CPU, S-SMP, S-DSP,
SuperFX and SA-1 processors are all clock-based, just as in the accuracy
and compatibility cores; and as always, there are zero game-specific
hacks. Its compatibility is still well above 99%, running even the most
challenging games flawlessly.
If you have held off from using bsnes in the past due to its system
requirements, please give the performance core a try. I think you will
be impressed. I'm also not finished: I believe performance can be
increased even further.
I would also strongly suggest Windows Vista and Windows 7 users to take
advantage of the new XAudio2 driver by OV2. Not only does it give you
a performance boost, it also lowers latency and provides better sound by
way of skipping an API emulation layer.
Changelog:
- Split core into three profiles: accuracy, compatibility and
performance
- Accuracy core now takes advantage of variable-bitlength integers (eg
uint24_t)
- Performance core uses a new S-CPU core, written from scratch for speed
- Performance core uses blargg's snes_dsp library for S-DSP emulation
- Binaries are now compiled using GCC 4.5
- Added a workaround in the SA-1 core for a bug in GCC 4.5+
- The clock-based S-PPU renderer has greatly improved OAM emulation;
fixing Winter Gold and Megalomania rendering issues
- Corrected pseudo-hires color math in the clock-based S-PPU renderer;
fixing Super Buster Bros backgrounds
- Fixed a clamping bug in the Cx4 16-bit triangle operation [Jonas
Quinn]; fixing Mega Man X2 "gained weapon" star background effect
- Updated video renderer to properly handle mixed-resolution screens
with interlace enabled; fixing Air Strike Patrol level briefing screen
- Added mightymo's 2010-08-19 cheat code pack
- Windows port: added XAudio2 output support [OV2]
- Source: major code restructuring; virtual base classes for processor
- cores removed, build system heavily modified, etc.
byuu says:
This fixes libsnes and debugger builds, and collapses bsnes/ppu/bppu to
bsnes/ppu and bsnes/dsp/sdsp to bsnes/dsp. It also introduces
bsnes/sync.sh, which will synchronize all of asnes/ with bsnes/,
excepting the custom speed-focused modules. So far, that's bsnes/ppu
(scanline renderer) and bsnes/dsp (state machine.)
Should make keeping the two ports in sync much, much easier. It's
basically the same thing as before, only you run sync.sh and have a few
duplicated folders now. May make it clearer by creating a stub/ or src/
folder inside bsnes to do all of the copying, so that you only see the
custom folders in bsnes/' root directory.
Tim Allen