byuu says:
I've completed moving all the class objects from `unique_pointer<T>` to
just T. The one exception is the Emulator::Interface instance. I can
absolutely make that a global object, but only in bsnes where there's
just the one emulation core.
I also moved all the SettingsWindow and ToolsWindow panels out to their
own global objects, and fixed a very difficult bug with GTK TabFrame
controls.
The configuration settings panel is now the emulator settings panel. And
I added some spacing between bold label sections on both the emulator
and driver settings panels.
I gave fixing ComboButtonItem my best shot, given I can't reproduce the
crash. Probably won't work, though.
Also made a very slight consistency improvement to ruby and renamed
driverName() to driver().
...
An important change ... as a result of moving bsnes to global objects,
this means that the constructors for all windows run before the
presentation window is displayed. Before this change, only the
presentation window was constructed first berore displaying it, followed
by the construction of the rest of the GUI windows.
The upside to this is that as soon as you see the main window, the GUI
is ready to go without a period where it's unresponsive.
The downside to this is it takes about 1.5 seconds to show the main
window, compared to around 0.75 seconds before.
I've no intention of changing that back. So if the startup time becomes
a problem, then we'll just have to work on optimizing hiro, so that it
can construct all the global Window objects quicker. The main way to do
that would be to not do calls to the Layout::setGeometry functions for
every widget added, and instead wait until the window is displayed. But
I don't have an easy way to do that, because you want the widget
geometry values to be sane even before the window is visible to help
size certain things.
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:
I stand corrected, I managed to create and even larger diff than ever.
This one weighs in at 309KiB `>__>`
I'll have to create a changelog later, I'm too tired right now to go
through all of that.
byuu says:
I failed to complete a WIP, have five of eight cores updated with some
major changes to Emulator::Interface. I'll just post a quick temporary
WIP in the off chance someone wants to look over the new interface and
comment on it.
Also implemented screen saver suppression into hiro/GTK.
I should also add ... a plan of mine is to develop target-bsnes into a
more generic user interface, with the general idea being that
target-higan is for multiple Emulator::Interface cores at the same time,
and target-bsnes is for just one Emulator::Interface core.
The idea being that if one were to compile target-bsnes with the GBA
core, it'd become bgba, for instance.
I don't plan on releasing single-core emulators like this, but ... I don't see any downsides to being more flexible.
byuu says:
Changelog:
- emulator/video,audio: various cleanups
- emulator/audio: removed reverb effect (it breaks very badly on
high-frequency systems)
- emulator/audio: the Nyquist anti-aliasing lowpass filter is now
generated automatically instead of set per-core
- at 44.1KHz output, it's set to 22KHz; at 48KHz, it's set to
22KHz; at 96KHz, it's set to 25KHz
- this filter now takes the bsnes emulation speed setting into
account
- all system/video.cpp files removed; inlined in System::power() and
Interface::set() instead
- sfc/cpu: pre-compute `HTIME` as `HTIME+1<<2` for faster comparisons of
HIRQs
- sfc/cpu: re-add check to block IRQs on the last dot of each frame
(minor speed hit)
- hiro/gtk3: fixed headers for Linux compilation finally
- hiro/gtk,qt: fixed settings.cpp logic so initial values are used
when no settings.bml file exists
- hiro/gtk: started a minor experiment to specify theming information
in settings.bml files
- nall/dsp: allow the precision type (double) to be overridden (to
float)
- nall: add some helpers for generating pre-compiled headers
- it was a failure to try using them for higan, however ...
- nall: add some helpers for reading fallback values from empty
`Markup::Node[search]` statements
Todo:
- CRITICAL: a lot of my IRQ/NMI/HDMA timing tests are failing with the
fast PPU ... need to figure out why
- space between Emulator::video functions and Emulator::audio
functions in gb/system/system.cpp
- remove Audio/Reverb/Enable from settings.bml in target-bsnes
byuu says:
The problems with the Windows and Qt4 ports have all been resolved,
although there's a fairly gross hack on a few Qt widgets to not destruct
once Application::quit() is called to avoid a double free crash (I'm
unsure where Qt is destructing the widgets internally.) The Cocoa port
compiles again at least, though it's bound to have endless problems. I
improved the Label painting in the GTK ports, which fixes the background
color on labels inside TabFrame widgets.
I've optimized the Makefile system even further.
I added a "redo state" command to bsnes, which is created whenever you
load the undo state. There are also hotkeys for both now, although I
don't think they're really something you want to map hotkeys to.
I moved the nall::Locale object inside hiro::Application, so that it can
be used to translate the BrowserDialog and MessageDialog window strings.
I improved the Super Game Boy emulation of `MLT_REQ`, fixing Pokemon
Yellow's custom border and probably more stuff.
Lots of other small fixes and improvements. Things are finally stable
once again after the harrowing layout redesign catastrophe.
Errata:
- ICD::joypID should be set to 3 on reset(). joypWrite() may as well
take uint1 instead of bool.
- hiro/Qt: remove pWindow::setMaximumSize() comment; found a
workaround for it
- nall/GNUmakefile: don't set object.path if it's already set (allow
overrides before including the file)
byuu says:
This is probably the largest code-change diff I've done in years.
I spent four days working 10-16 hours a day reworking layouts in hiro
completely.
The result is we now have TableLayout, which will allow for better
horizontal+vertical combined alignment.
Windows, GTK2, and now GTK3 are fully supported.
Windows is getting the initial window geometry wrong by a bit.
GTK2 and GTK3 work perfectly. I basically abandoned trying to detect
resize signals, and instead keep a list of all hiro windows that are
allocated, and every time the main loop runs, it will query all of them
to see if they've been resized. I'm disgusted that I have to do this,
but after fighting with GTK for years, I'm about sick of it. GTK was
doing this crazy thing where it would trigger another size-allocate
inside of a previous size-allocate, and so my layouts would be halfway
through resizing all the widgets, and then the size-allocate would kick
off another one. That would end up leaving the rest of the first layout
loop with bad widget sizes. And if I detected a second re-entry and
blocked it, then the entire window would end up with the older geometry.
I started trying to build a message queue system to allow the second
layout resize to occur after the first one completed, but this was just
too much madness, so I went with the simpler solution.
Qt4 has some geometry problems, and doesn't show tab frame layouts
properly yet.
Qt5 causes an ICE error and tanks my entire Xorg display server, so ...
something is seriously wrong there, and it's not hiro's fault. Creating
a dummy Qt5 application without even using hiro, just int main() {
TestObject object; } with object performing a dynamic\_cast to a derived
type segfaults. Memory is getting corrupted where GCC allocates the
vtables for classes, just by linking in Qt. Could be somehow related to
the -fPIC requirement that only Qt5 has ... could just be that FreeBSD
10.1 has a buggy implementation of Qt5. I don't know. It's beyond my
ability to debug, so this one's going to stay broken.
The Cocoa port is busted. I'll fix it up to compile again, but that's
about all I'm going to do.
Many optimizations mean bsnes and higan open faster. GTK2 and GTK3 both
resize windows very quickly now.
higan crashes when you load a game, so that's not good. bsnes works
though.
bsnes also has the start of a localization engine now. Still a long way
to go.
The makefiles received a rather substantial restructuring. Including the
ruby and hiro makefiles will add the necessary compilation rules for
you, which also means that moc will run for the qt4 and qt5 targets, and
windres will run for the Windows targets.
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:
- emulator: added `Thread::setHandle(cothread_t)`
- icarus: added special heuristics support for the Tengai Maykou Zero
fan translation
- board identifier is: EXSPC7110-RAM-EPSONRTC (match on SPC7110 +
ROM size=56mbit)
- board ROM contents are: 8mbit program, 40mbit data, 8mbit
expansion (sizes are fixed)
- bsnes: show messages on game load, unload, and reset
- bsnes: added support for BS Memory and Sufami Turbo games
- bsnes: added support for region selection (Auto [default], NTSC,
PAL)
- bsnes: correct presentation window size from 223/239 to 224/240
- bsnes: add SA-1 internal RAM on cartridges with BS Memory slot
- bsnes: fixed recovery state to store inside .bsz archive
- bsnes: added support for custom manifests in both game pak and game
ROM modes
- bsnes: added icarus game database support (manifest → database →
heuristics)
- bsnes: added flexible SuperFX overclocking
- bsnes: added IPS and BPS soft-patching support to all ROM types
(sfc,smc,gb,gbc,bs,st)
- can load patches inside of ZIP archives (matches first “.ips” or
“.bps” file)
- bsnes/ppu: cache interlace/overscan/vdisp (277 → 291fps with fast
PPU)
- hiro/Windows: faster painting of Label widget on expose
- hiro/Windows: immediately apply LineEdit::setBackgroundColor changes
- hiro/Qt: inherit Window backgroundColor when one is not assigned to
Label
Errata:
- sfc/ppu-fast: remove `renderMode7Hires()` function (the body isn't in
the codebase)
- bsnes: advanced note label should probably use a lighter text color
and/or smaller font size instead of italics
I didn't test the soft-patching at all, as I don't have any patches on
my dev box. If anyone wants to test, that'd be great. The Tengai Makyou
Zero fan translation would be a great test case.
byuu says:
Changelog:
- hiro: added Label::set(Background,Foreground)Color (not implemented
on Cocoa backend)
- hiro: added (Horizontal,Vertical)Layout::setPadding()
- setMargin(m) is now an alias to setPadding({m, m, m, m})
- hiro/Windows: update Label rendering to draw to an offscreen canvas
to prevent flickering
- sfc: reverted back to 224/240-line height (from 223/239-line height
in earlier v106 WIPs)
- bsnes: new multi-segment status bar added
- bsnes: exiting fullscreen mode will resize and recenter window
- this is required; the window geometry gets all scrambled when
toggling fullscreen mode
- bsnes: updated to a new logo [Ange Albertini]
Errata:
- hiro/Windows: try to paint Label backgroundColor quicker to avoid
startup flicker
- `WM_ERASEBKGND` fallthrough to `WM_PAINT` seems to work
- hiro/Qt: use Window backgroundColor for Label when no Label
backgroundColor set
- bsnes: update size multipliers in presentation.cpp to 224/240 (main
window size is off in this WIP)
byuu says:
Changelog:
- hiro: added Qt5 support
- hiro: added GTK3 support (currently runs very poorly)
- bsnes: number of recent games and quick state slots can be changed
programmatically now
- I may expose this as a configuration file setting, but probably
not within the GUI
- nall: use -Wno-everything when compiling with Clang
- sorry, Clang's meaningless warning messages are just endless ...
byuu says:
Changelog:
- nall/GNUmakefile: fixed findstring parameter arguments [Screwtape]
- nall/Windows: always include -mthreads -lpthread for all
applications
- nall/memory: code restructuring
I really wanted to work on the new PPU today, but I thought I'd spend a
few minutes making some minor improvements to nall::memory, that was
five and a half hours ago. Now I have a 67KiB diff of changes. Sigh.
byuu says:
Changelog:
- nall: merged Path::config() and Path::local() to Path::userData()
- ~/.local/share or %appdata or ~/Library/ApplicationSupport
- higan, bsnes: render main window icon onto viewport instead of
canvas
- should hopefully fix a brief flickering glitch that appears on
Windows
- icarus: improved Super Famicom heuristics for Starfox / Starwing RAM
- ruby/Direct3D: handle viewport size changes in lock() instead of
output()
- fixes icon disappearing when resizing main window
- hiro/Windows: remove WS_DISABLED from StatusBar to fix window
resize grip
- this is experimental: I initially used WS_DISABLED to work
around a focus bug
- yet trying things now, said bug seems(?) to have gone away at
some point ...
- bsnes: added advanced settings panel with real-time driver change
support
I'd like feedback on the real-time driver change, for possible
consideration into adding this to higan as well.
Some drivers just crash, it's a fact of life. The ASIO driver in
particular likes to crash inside the driver itself, without any error
messages ever returned to try and catch.
When you try to change a driver with a game loaded, it gives you a scary
warning, asking if you want to proceed.
When you change a driver, it sets a crash flag, and if the driver
crashes while initializing, then restarting bsnes will disable the
errant driver. If it fails in a recoverable way, then it sets the driver
to “None” and warns you that the driver cannot be used.
What I'm thinking of further adding is to call emulator→save() to
write out the save RAM contents beforehand (although the periodic
auto-saving RAM will handle this anyway when it's enabled), and possibly
it might be wise to capture an emulator save state, although those can't
be taken without advancing the emulator to the next frame, so that might
not be a good idea.
I'm also thinking we should show some kind of message somewhere when a
driver is set to “None”. The status bar can be hidden, so perhaps on the
title bar? Or maybe just a warning on startup that a driver is set to
“None”.
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:
- manifest: memory/battery now resides under type at
memory/type/battery
- genius: volatile option changed to battery; auto-disables when not
RAM or RTC type
- higan: added new Emulator::Game class to parse manifests for all
emulated systems consistently
- Super Famicom: board manifest appended to manifest viewer now
- Super Famicom: cartridge class updated to use Emulator::Game objects
- hiro: improve suppression of userland callbacks once
Application::quit() is called
- this fixes a crash in genius when closing the window with a tree
view item selected
My intention is to remove Emulator::Interface::sha256(), as it's not
really useful. They'll be removed from save states as well. I never
bothered validating the SHA256 within them, because that'd be really
annoying for ROM hackers.
I also intend to rename Emulator::Interface::title() to label() instead.
Most everything is still broken. The SNES still needs all the board
definitions updated, all the other cores need to move to using
Emulator::Game.
byuu says:
Changelog:
- Emulator::Interface::videoResolution() -\> VideoResolution renamed
to videoInformation() -\> VideoInformation
- added double VideoInformation::refreshRate
- higan: added `binary := (application|library)` — set this to
`library` to produce a dynamic link library
- higan: removed `-march=native` for macOS application builds; and for
all library builds
- higan: removed `console` build flag; uncomment `link += -mwindows`
instead
- nall/GNUmakefile: `macosx` platform renamed `macos`
- still need to do this for nall/intrinsics.hpp
- Game Gear: return region=NTSC as the only option, so that the system
frequency is always set correctly
- hiro/cocoa: fixed typo [Sintendo]
- hiro/Windows: removed GetDpiForMonitor, as it's Windows 8+ only; DPI
is no longer per-monitor aware
- icarus: core Icarus class now has virtual functions for
directory::create, <file::exists>, <file::copy>, <file::write>
- icarus: Sufami Turbo can import save RAM files now
- icarus: setting `ICARUS_LIBRARY` define will compile icarus without
main(), GUI components
- ruby/video/Direct3D: choose the current monitor instead of top-left
monitor for fullscreen exclusive [Cydrak]
- ruby/video/Direct3D: do not set `WS_EX_TOPMOST` on fullscreen
exclusive window [Cydrak]
- this isn't necessary for exclusive mode, and it just makes
getting out of the application more difficult
byuu says:
Changelog:
- nall/GNUmakefile: build=release changed to -O2, build=optimize is
now -O3
- hiro: added Monitor::dpi(uint index) → Position [returns logical
DPI for x, y]
- Position is a bad name, but dpi(monitor).(x,y)() make more sense
than .(width,height)()
- hiro: Position, Size, Geometry, Font changed from using signed int
to float
- hiro: Alignment changed from using double to float
- hiro: added skeleton (unused) Application::scale(), setScale()
functions
Errata:
- hiro/cocoa's Monitor::dpi() is untested. Probably will cause issues
with macOS' automatic scaling.
- hiro/gtk lacks a way to get both per-monitor and per-axis (x,y) DPI
scaling
- hiro/qt lacks a way to get per-monitor DPI scaling (Qt 5.x has this,
but I still use Qt 4.x)
- and just to get global DPI, hiro/qt's DPI retrieval has to use
undocumented functions ... fun
The goal with this WIP was basically to prepare hiro for potential
automatic scaling. It'll be extremely difficult, but I'm convinced that
it must be possible if macOS can do it.
By moving from signed integers to floats for coordinates, we can now
scale and unscale without losing precision. That of course isn't the
hard part, though. The hard part is where and how to do the scaling. In
the ideal application, hiro/core and hiro/extension will handle 100% of
this, and the per-platform hiro/(cocoa,gtk,qt,windows) will not be aware
of what's going on, but ... to even make that possible, things will need
to change in every per-platform core, eg the per-platform code will have
to call a core function to change geometry, which will know about the
scaling and unscale the values back down again.
Gonna be a lot of work, but ... it's a start.
byuu says:
Changelog:
- gb/interface: fix Game Boy Color extension to be "gbc" and not "gb"
[hex\_usr]
- ms/interface: move Master System hardware controls below controller
ports
- sfc/ppu: improve latching behavior of BGnHOFS registers (not
hardware verified) [AWJ]
- tomoko/input: rework port/device mapping to support non-sequential
ports and devices¹
- todo: should add move() to inputDevice.mappings.append and
inputPort.devices.append
- note: there's a weird GCC 4.9 bug with brace initialization of
InputEmulator; have to assign each field separately
- tomoko: all windows sans the main presentation window can be
dismissed with the escape key
- icarus: the single file selection dialog ("Load ROM Image...") can
be dismissed with the escape key
- tomoko: do not pause emulation when FocusLoss/Pause is set during
exclusive fullscreen mode
- hiro/(windows,gtk,qt): implemented Window::setDismissable() function
(missing from cocoa port, sorry)
- nall/string: fixed printing of largest possible negative numbers (eg
`INT_MIN`) [Sintendo]
- only took eight months! :D
¹: When I tried to move the Master System hardware port below the
controller ports, I ran into a world of pain.
The input settings list expects every item in the
`InputEmulator<InputPort<InputDevice<InputMapping>>>>` arrays to be
populated with valid results. But these would be sparsely populated
based on the port and device IDs from inside higan. And that is done so
that the Interface::inputPoll can have O(1) lookup of ports and devices.
This worked because all the port and device IDs were sequential (they
left no gaps in the maps upon creating the lists.)
Unfortunately by changing the expectation of port ID to how it appears
in the list, inputs would not poll correctly. By leaving them alone and
just moving Hardware to the third position, the Game Gear would be
missing port IDs of 0 and 1 (the controller ports of the Master System).
Even by trying to make separate MasterSystemHardware and
GameGearHardware ports, things still fractured when the devices were no
longer contigious.
I got pretty sick of this and just decided to give up on O(1)
port/device lookup, and moved to O(n) lookup. It only knocked the
framerate down by maybe one frame per second, enough to be in the margin
of error. Inputs aren't polled *that* often for loops that usually
terminate after 1-2 cycles to be too detrimental to performance.
So the new input system now allows non-sequential port and device IDs.
Remember that I killed input IDs a while back. There's never any reason
for those to need IDs ... it was easier to just order the inputs in the
order you want to see them in the user interface. So the input lookup is
still O(1). Only now, everything's safer and I return a
maybe<InputMapping&>, and won't crash out the program trying to use a
mapping that isn't found for some reason.
Errata: the escape key isn't working on the browser/message dialogs on
Windows, because of course nothing can ever just be easy and work for
me. If anyone else wouldn't mind looking into that, I'd greatly
appreciate it.
Having the `WM_KEYDOWN` test inside the main `Application_sharedProc`, it
seems to not respond to the escape key on modal dialogs. If I put the
`WM_KEYDOWN` test in the main window proc, then it doesn't seem to get
called for `VK_ESCAPE` at all, and doesn't get called period for modal
windows. So I'm at a loss and it's past 4AM here >_>
byuu says:
Changelog:
- added \~130 new PAL games to icarus (courtesy of Smarthuman
and aquaman)
- added all three Korean-localized games to icarus
- sfc: removed SuperDisc emulation (it was going nowhere)
- sfc: fixed MSU1 regression where the play/repeat flags were not
being cleared on track select
- nall: cryptography support added; will be used to sign future
databases (validation will always be optional)
- minor shims to fix compilation issues due to nall changes
The real magic is that we now have 25-30% of the PAL SNES library in
icarus!
Signing will be tricky. Obviously if I put the public key inside the
higan archive, then all anyone has to do is change that public key for
their own releases. And if you download from my site (which is now over
HTTPS), then you don't need the signing to verify integrity. I may just
put the public key on my site on my site and leave it at that, we'll
see.
byuu says:
(Windows users may need to include <sys/time.h> at the top of
nall/chrono.hpp, not sure.)
Unchangelog:
- forgot to add the Scheduler clock=0 fix because I have the memory of
a goldfish
Changelog:
- new icarus database with nine additional games
- hiro(GTK,Qt) won't constantly write its settings.bml file to disk
anymore
- added latency simulator for fun (settings.bml => Input/Latency in
milliseconds)
So the last one ... I wanted to test out nall::chrono, and I was also
thinking that by polling every emulated frame, it's pretty wasteful when
you are using Fast Forward and hitting 200+fps. As I've said before,
calls to ruby::input::poll are not cheap.
So to get around this, I added a limiter so that if you called the
hardware poll function within N milliseconds, it'll return without
doing any actual work. And indeed, that increases my framerate of Zelda
3 uncapped from 133fps to 142fps. Yay. But it's not a "real" speedup,
as it only helps you when you exceed 100% speed (theoretically, you'd
need to crack 300% speed since the game itself will poll at 16ms at 100%
speed, but yet it sped up Zelda 3, so who am I to complain?)
I threw the latency value into the settings file. It should be 16,
but I set it to 5 since that was the lowest before it started negatively
impacting uncapped speeds. You're wasting your time and CPU cycles setting
it lower than 5, but if people like placebo effects it might work. Maybe
I should let it be a signed integer so people can set it to -16 and think
it's actually faster :P (I'm only joking. I took out the 96000hz audio
placebo effect as well. Not really into psychological tricks anymore.)
But yeah seriously, I didn't do this to start this discussion again for
the billionth time. Please don't go there. And please don't tell me this
WIP has higher/lower latency than before. I don't want to hear it.
The only reason I bring it up is for the fun part that is worth
discussing: put up or shut up time on how sensitive you are to
latency! You can set the value above 5 to see how games feel.
I personally can't really tell a difference until about 50. And I can't
be 100% confident it's worse until about 75. But ... when I set it to
150, games become "extra difficult" ... the higher it goes, the worse
it gets :D
For this WIP, I've left no upper limit cap. I'll probably set a cap of
something like 500ms or 1000ms for the official release. Need to balance
user error/trolling with enjoyability. I'll think about it.
[...]
Now, what I worry about is stupid people seeing it and thinking it's an
"added latency" setting, as if anyone would intentionally make things
worse by default. This is a limiter. So if 5ms have passed since the
game last polled, and that will be the case 99.9% of the time in games,
the next poll will happen just in time, immediately when the game polls
the inputs. Thus, a value below 1/<framerate>ms is not only pointless,
if you go too low it will ruin your fast forward max speeds.
I did say I didn't want to resort to placebo tricks, but I also don't
want to spark up public discussion on this again either. So it might
be best to default Input/Latency to 0ms, and internally have a max(5,
latency) wrapper around the value.
byuu says:
Changelog:
- nall::lstring -> nall::string_vector
- added IntegerBitField<type, lo, hi> -- hopefully it works correctly...
- Multitap 1-4 -> Super Multitap 2-5
- fixed SFC PPU CGRAM read regression
- huge amounts of SFC PPU IO register cleanups -- .bits really is lovely
- re-added the read/write(VRAM,OAM,CGRAM) helpers for the SFC PPU
- but they're now optimized to the realities of the PPU (16-bit data
sizes / no address parameter / where appropriate)
- basically used to get the active-display overrides in a unified place;
but also reduces duplicate code in (read,write)IO
byuu says:
Changelog:
- fixed major nall/vector/prepend bug
- renamed hiro/ListView to hiro/TableView
- added new hiro/ListView control which is a simplified abstraction of
hiro/TableView
- updated higan's cheat database window and icarus' scan dialog to use
the new ListView control
- compilation works once again on all platforms (Windows, Cocoa, GTK,
Qt)
- the loki skeleton compiles once again (removed nall/DSP references;
updated port/device ID names)
Small catch: need to capture layout resize events internally in Windows
to call resizeColumns. For now, just resize the icarus window to get it
to use the full window width for list view items.
byuu says:
Changelog:
- fixed icarus to save settings properly
- fixed higan's full screen toggle on OS X
- increased "Add Codes" button width to avoid text clipping
- implemented cocoa/canvas.cpp
- added 1s delay after mapping inputs before re-enabling the window
(wasn't actually necessary, but already added it)
- fixed setEnabled(false) on Cocoa's ListView and TextEdit widgets
- updated nall::programpath() to use GetModuleFileName on Windows
- GB: system uses open collector logic, so unmapped reads return 0xFF,
not 0x00 (passes blargg's cpu_instrs again) [gekkio]
byuu says:
New update. Most of the work today went into eliminating hiro::Image
from all objects in all ports, replacing with nall::image. That took an
eternity.
Changelog:
- fixed crashing bug when loading games [thanks endrift!!]
- toggling "show status bar" option adjusts window geometry (not
supposed to recenter the window, though)
- button sizes improved; icon-only button icons no longer being cut off
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.
byuu says:
Updated to compile with all of the new hiro changes. My next step is to
write up hiro API documentation, and move the API from alpha (constantly
changing) to beta (rarely changing), in preparation for the first stable
release (backward-compatible changes only.)
Added "--fullscreen" command-line option. I like this over
a configuration file option. Lets you use the emulator in both modes
without having to modify the config file each time.
Also enhanced the command-line game loading. You can now use any of
these methods:
higan /path/to/game-folder.sfc
higan /path/to/game-folder.sfc/
higan /path/to/game-folder.sfc/program.rom
The idea is to support launchers that insist on loading files only.
Technically, the file can be any name (manifest.bml also works); the
only criteria is that the file actually exists and is a file, and not
a directory. This is a requirement to support the first version (a
directory lacking the trailing / identifier), because I don't want my
nall::string class to query the file system to determine if the string
is an actual existing file or directory for its pathname() / dirname()
functions.
Anyway, every game folder I've made so far has program.rom, and that's
very unlikely to change, so this should be fine.
Now, of course, if you drop a regular "game.sfc" file on the emulator,
it won't even try to load it, unless it's in a folder that ends in .fc,
.sfc, etc. In which case, it'll bail out immediately by being unable to
produce a manifest for what is obviously not really a game folder.
byuu says:
I imagine you guys will like this WIP very much.
Changelog:
- ListView check boxes on Windows
- ListView removal of columns on reset (changing input dropdowns)
- DirectSound audio duplication on latency change
- DirectSound crash on 20ms latency
- Fullscreen window sizing in multi-monitor setups
- Allow joypad bindings of hotkeys
- Allow triggers to be mapped (Xbox 360 / XInput / Windows only)
- Support joypad rumble for Game Boy Player
- Video scale settings modified from {1x,2x,3x} to {2x,3x,4x}
- System menu now renames to active emulation core
- Added fast forward hotkey
Not changing for v095:
- not adding input focus settings yet
- not adding shaders yet
Not changing at all:
- not implementing maximize
byuu says:
Changelog (since the last open beta):
- icarus is now included. icarus is used to import game files/archives
into game paks (folders)
- SNES: mid-scanline BGMODE changes now emulated correctly (used only by
atx2.smc Anthrox Demo)
- GBA: fixed a CPU bug that was causing dozens of games to have
distorted audio
- GBA: fixed default FlashROM ID; should allow much higher compatibility
- GBA: now using Cydrak's new, much improved, GBA color emulation filter
(still a work-in-progress)
- re-added command-line loading support for game paks (not for game
files/archives, sorry!)
- Qt port now compiles and runs again (may be a little buggy;
Windows/GTK+ ports preferred)
- SNES performance profile now compiles and runs again
- much more
byuu says:
Changelog:
- updated to newest hiro API
- SFC performance profile builds once again
- hiro: Qt port completed
Errata 1: the hiro/Qt target won't run tomoko just yet. Starts by
crashing inside InputSettings because hiro/Qt isn't forcefully selecting
the first item added to a ComboButton just yet. Even with a monkey patch
to get around that, the UI is incredibly unstable. Lots of geometry
calculation bugs, and a crash when you try and access certain folders in
the browser dialog. Lots of work left to be done there, sadly.
Errata 2: the hiro/Windows port has black backgrounds on all ListView
items. It's because I need to test for unassigned colors and grab the
default Windows brush colors in those cases.
Note: alternating row colors on multi-column ListView widgets is gone
now. Not a bug. May add it back later, but I'm not sure. It doesn't
interact nicely with per-cell background colors.
Things left to do:
First, I have to fix the Windows and Qt target bugs.
Next, I need to go through and revise the hiro API even more (nothing
too major.)
Next, I need to update icarus to use the new hiro API, and add support
for the SFC games database.
Next, I have to rewrite my TSV->BML cheat code tool.
Next, I need to post a final WIP of higan+icarus publicly and wait a few
days.
Next, I need to fix any bugs reported from the final WIP that I can.
Finally, I should be able to release v095.
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 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.
Tim Allen