byuu says:
It took several hours, but I've rebuilt much of the SNES' bus memory
mapping architecture.
The new design unifies the cartridge string-based mapping
("00-3f,80-bf:8000-ffff") and internal bus.map calls. The map() function
now has an accompanying unmap() function, and instead of a fixed 256
callbacks, it'll scan to find the first available slot. unmap() will
free slots up when zero addresses reference a given slot.
The controllers and expansion port are now both entirely dynamic.
Instead of load/unload/power/reset, they only have the constructor
(power/reset/load) and destructor (unload). What this means is you can
now dynamically change even expansion port devices after the system is
loaded.
Note that this is incredibly dangerous and stupid, but ... oh well. The
whole point of this was for 21fx. There's no way to change the expansion
port device prior to loading a game, but if the 21fx isn't active, then
the reset vector hijack won't work. Now you can load a 21fx game, change
the expansion port device, and simply reset the system to active the
device.
The unification of design between controller port devices and expansion
port devices is nice, and overall this results in a reduction of code
(all of the Mapping stuff in Cartridge is gone, replaced with direct bus
mapping.) And there's always the potential to expand this system more in
the future now.
The big missing feature right now is the ability to push/pop mappings.
So if you look at how the 21fx does the reset vector, you might vomit
a little bit. But ... it works.
Also changed exit(0) to _exit(0) in the POSIX version of nall::execute.
[The _exit(0) thing is an attempt to make higan not crash when it tries
to launch icarus and it's not on $PATH. The theory is that higan forks,
then the child tries to exec icarus and fails, so it exits, all the
unique_ptrs clean up their resources and tell the X server to free
things the parent process is still using. Calling _exit() prevents
destructors from running, and seems to prevent the problem. -Ed.]
byuu says:
Changelog:
- SFC: balanced profile removed
- SFC: performance profile removed
- SFC: code for handling non-threaded CPU, SMP, DSP, PPU removed
- SFC: Coprocessor, Controller (and expansion port) shared Thread code
merged to SFC::Cothread
- Cothread here just means "Thread with CPU affinity" (couldn't think
of a better name, sorry)
- SFC: CPU now has vector<Thread*> coprocessors, peripherals;
- this is the beginning of work to allow expansion port devices to be
dynamically changed at run-time
- ruby: all audio drivers default to 48000hz instead of 22050hz now if
no frequency is assigned
- note: the WASAPI driver can default to whatever the native frequency
is; doesn't have to be 48000hz
- tomoko: removed the ability to change the frequency from the UI (but
it will display the frequency used)
- tomoko: removed the timing settings panel
- the goal is to work toward smooth video via adaptive sync
- the model is broken by not being in control of the audio frequency
anyway
- it's further broken by PAL running at 50hz and WSC running at 75hz
- it was always broken anyway by SNES interlace timing varying from
progressive timing
- higan: audio/ stub created (for now, it's just nall/dsp/ moved here
and included as a header)
- higan: video/ stub created
- higan/GNUmakefile: now includes build rules for essential components
(libco, emulator, audio, video)
The audio changes are in preparation to merge wareya's awesome WASAPI
work without the need for the nall/dsp resampler.
byuu says:
Changelog:
- fixed nall/windows/guard.hpp
- fixed hiro/(windows,gtk)/header.hpp
- fixed Famicom PPU OAM reads (mask the correct bits when writing)
[hex_usr]
- removed the need for (system := system) lines from higan/GNUmakefile
- added "All" option to filetype dropdown for ROM loading
- allows loading GBC games in SGB mode (and technically non-GB(C)
games, which will obviously fail to do anything)
- loki can load and play game folders now (command-line only) (extremely
unimpressive; don't waste your time :P)
- the input is extremely hacked in as a quick placeholder; not sure
how I'm going to do mapping yet for it
byuu says:
Changelog:
- fixed SNES sprite priority regression from r17
- added nall/windows/guard.hpp to guard against global namespace
pollution (similar to nall/xorg/guard.hpp)
- almost fixed Windows compilation (still accuracy profile only, sorry)
- finished porting all of gba/ppu's registers over to the new .bit,.bits
format ... all GBA registers.cpp files gone now
- the "processors :=" line in the target-$(ui)/GNUmakefile is no longer
required
- processors += added to each emulator core
- duplicates are removed using the new nall/GNUmakefile's $(unique)
function
- SFC core can be compiled without the GB core now
- "-DSFC_SUPERGAMEBOY" is required to build in SGB support now (it's
set in target-tomoko/GNUmakefile)
- started once again on loki (higan/target-loki/) [as before, loki is
Linux/BSD only on account of needing hiro::Console]
loki shouldn't be too horrendous ... I hope. I just have the base
skeleton ready for now. But the code from v094r08 should be mostly
copyable over to it. It's just that it's about 50KiB of incredibly
tricky code that has to be just perfect, so it's not going to be quick.
But at least with the skeleton, it'll be a lot easier to pick away at it
as I want.
Windows compilation fix: move hiro/windows/header.hpp line 18 (header
guard) to line 16 instead.
byuu says:
Changelog:
- ruby: if DirectSoundCreate fails (no sound device present), return
false from init instead of crashing
- nall: improved edge case return values for
(basename,pathname,dirname,...)
- nall: renamed file_system_object class to inode
- nall: varuint_t replaced with VariadicNatural; which contains
.bit,.bits,.byte ala Natural/Integer
- nall: fixed boolean compilation error on Windows
- WS: popa should not restore SP
- GBA: rewrote the CPU/APU cores to use the .bit,.bits functions;
removed registers.cpp from each
Note that the GBA changes are extremely major. This is about five hours
worth of extremely delicate work. Any slight errors could break
emulation in extremely bad ways. Let's hold off on extensive testing
until the next WIP, after I do the same to the PPU.
So far ... endrift's SOUNDCNT_X I/O test is failing, although that code
didn't change, so clearly I messed up SOUNDCNT_H somehow ...
To compile on Windows:
1. change nall/string/platform.hpp line 47 to
return slice(result, 0, 3);
2. change ruby/video.wgl.cpp line 72 to
auto lock(uint32_t*& data, uint& pitch, uint width, uint height) -> bool {
3. add this line to the very top of hiro/windows/header.cpp:
#define boolean FuckYouMicrosoft
byuu says:
Changelog:
- higan now uses Natural<Size>/Integer<Size> for its internal types
- Super Famicom emulation now uses uint24 instead of uint for bus
addresses (it's a 24-bit bus)
- cleaned up gb/apu MMIO writes
- cleaned up sfc/coprocessor/msu1 MMIO writes
- ~3% speed penalty
I've wanted to do that 24-bit bus thing for so long, but have always
been afraid of the speed impact. It's probably going to hurt
balanced/performance once they compile again, but it wasn't significant
enough to harm the accuracy core's frame rate, thankfully. Only lost one
frame per second.
The GBA core handlers are clearly going to take a lot more work. The
bit-ranges will make it substantially easier to handle, though. Lots of
32-bit registers where certain values span multiple bytes, but we have
to be able to read/write at byte-granularity.
byuu says:
Got it. Wow, that didn't hurt nearly as much as I thought it was going
to.
Dropped from 127.5fps to 123.5fps to use Natural/Integer for
(u)int(8,16,32,64).
That's totally worth the cost.
byuu says:
This is a few days old, but oh well.
This WIP changes nall,hiro,ruby,icarus back to (u)int(8,16,32,64)_t.
I'm slowly pushing for (u)int(8,16,32,64) to use my custom
Integer<Size>/Natural<Size> classes instead. But it's going to be one
hell of a struggle to get that into higan.
byuu says:
Nothing WS-related this time.
First, I fixed expansion port device mapping. On first load, it was
mapping the expansion port device too late, so it ended up not taking
effect. I had to spin out the logic for that into
Program::connectDevices(). This was proving to be quite annoying while
testing eBoot (SNES-Hook simulation.)
Second, I fixed the audio->set(Frequency, Latency) functions to take
(uint) parameters from the configuration file, so the weird behavior
around changing settings in the audio panel should hopefully be gone
now.
Third, I rewrote the interface->load,unload functions to call into the
(Emulator)::System::load,unload functions. And I have those call out to
Cartridge::load,unload. Before, this was inverted, and Cartridge::load()
was invoking System::load(), which I felt was kind of backward.
The Super Game Boy really didn't like this change, however. And it took
me a few hours to power through it. Before, I had the Game Boy core
dummying out all the interface->(load,save)Request calls, and having the
SNES core make them for it. This is because the folder paths and IDs
will be different between the two cores.
I've redesigned things so that ICD2's Emulator::Interface overloads
loadRequest and saveRequest, and translates the requests into new
requests for the SuperFamicom core. This allows the Game Boy code to do
its own loading for everything without a bunch of Super Game Boy special
casing, and without any awkwardness around powering on with no cartridge
inserted.
This also lets the SNES side of things simply call into higher-level
GameBoy::interface->load,save(id, stream) functions instead of stabbing
at the raw underlying state inside of various Game Boy core emulation
classes. So things are a lot better abstracted now.
byuu says:
All 256 instructions implemented fully. Fixed a major bug with
instructions that both read and write to ModRM with displacement.
Riviera now runs into an infinite loop ... possibly crashed, possibly
waiting on interrupts or in to return something. Added a bunch of PPU
settings registers, but nothing's actually rendering with them yet.
byuu says:
Note: balanced/performance profiles still broken, sorry.
Changelog:
- added nall/GNUmakefile unique() function; used on linking phase of
higan
- added nall/unique_pointer
- target-tomoko and {System}::Video updated to use
unique_pointer<ClassName> instead of ClassName* [1]
- locate() updated to search multiple paths [2]
- GB: pass gekkio's if_ie_registers and boot_hwio-G test ROMs
- FC, GB, GBA: merge video/ into the PPU cores
- ruby: fixed ~AudioXAudio2() typo
[1] I expected this to cause new crashes on exit due to changing the
order of destruction of objects (and deleting things that weren't
deleted before), but ... so far, so good. I guess we'll see what crops
up, especially on OS X (which is already crashing for unknown reasons on
exit.)
[2] right now, the search paths are: programpath(), {configpath(),
"higan/"}, {localpath(), "higan/"}; but we can add as many more as we
want, and we can also add platform-specific versions.
byuu says:
A minor WIP to get us started.
Changelog:
- System::Video merged to PPU::Video
- System::Audio merged to DSP::Audio
- System::Configuration merged to Interface::Settings
- created emulator/emulator.cpp and accompanying object file for shared
code between all cores
Currently, emulator.cpp just holds a videoColor() function that takes
R16G16B16, performs gamma/saturation/luma adjust, and outputs
(currently) A8R8G8B8. It's basically an internal function call for cores
to use when generating palette entries. This code used to exist inside
ui-tomoko/program/interface.cpp, but we have to move it internal for
software display emulation. But in the future, we could add other useful
cross-core functionality here.
byuu says:
Changelog:
- configuration files are now stored in localpath() instead of configpath()
- Video gamma/saturation/luminance sliders are gone now, sorry
- added Video Filter->Blur Emulation [1]
- added Video Filter->Scanline Emulation [2]
- improvements to GBA audio emulation (fixes Minish Cap) [Jonas Quinn]
[1] For the Famicom, this does nothing. For the Super Famicom, this
performs horizontal blending for proper pseudo-hires translucency. For
the Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance, this performs
interframe blending (each frame is the average of the current and
previous frame), which is important for things like the GBVideoPlayer.
[2] Right now, this only applies to the Super Famicom, but it'll come to
the Famicom in the future. For the Super Famicom, this option doesn't
just add scanlines, it simulates the phosphor decay that's visible in
interlace mode. If you observe an interlaced game like RPM Racing on
a real SNES, you'll notice that even on perfectly still screens, the
image appears to shake. This option emulates that effect.
Note 1: the buffering right now is a little sub-optimal, so there will
be a slight speed hit with this new support. Since the core is now
generating native ARGB8888 colors, it might as well call out to the
interface to lock/unlock/refresh the video, that way it can render
directly to the screen. Although ... that might not be such a hot idea,
since the GBx interframe blending reads from the target buffer, and that
tends to be a catastrophic option for performance.
Note 2: the balanced and performance profiles for the SNES are
completely busted again. This WIP took 6 1/2 hours, and I'm exhausted.
Very much not looking forward to working on those, since those two have
all kinds of fucked up speedup tricks for non-interlaced and/or
non-hires video modes.
Note 3: if you're on Windows and you saved your system folders somewhere
else, now'd be a good time to move them to %localappdata%/higan
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:
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:
- restructured the project and removed a whole bunch of old/dead
directives from higan/GNUmakefile
- huge amounts of work on hiro/cocoa (compiles but ~70% of the
functionality is commented out)
- fixed a masking error in my ARM CPU disassembler [Lioncash]
- SFC: decided to change board cic=(411,413) back to board
region=(ntsc,pal) ... the former was too obtuse
If you rename Boolean (it's a problem with an include from ruby, not
from hiro) and disable all the ruby drivers, you can compile an
OS X binary, but obviously it's not going to do anything.
It's a boring WIP, I just wanted to push out the project structure
change now at the start of this WIP cycle.
byuu says:
Changelog:
- replaced popen() with execvp() / CreateProcess()
- suppressed (hid) controllers with no mappable inputs from the input
settings panel
This gets rid of the window flashing when loading games with
higan+icarus. And hiding of empty devices should be a huge usability
improvement, especially since "None" was appearing at the top of the
list before for the SNES.
byuu says:
Got it. They broke in r05.
Changelog:
- fixed typo in sfc/cpu/timing.cpp that was breaking coprocessor games
with clocks
- updated sfc/coprocessor/hitachidsp to not access Bus directly
byuu says:
Changelog:
- SFC: "uint8 read(uint addr)" -> "uint8 read(uint addr, uint8 data)"
- hiro: mHorizontalLayout::setGeometry() return value
- hiro/GTK: ListView,TreeView::setFocused() does not grab focus of first
item
Notes:
- nall/windows/utf8.hpp needs using uint = unsigned; at the top to
compile
- sfc/balanced, sfc/performance won't compile yet
Seems Cx4 games broke a while back. Not from this WIP, either. I'll go
back and find out what's wrong now.
byuu says:
Changelog:
- int_t<bits> replaced with Integer<bits>
- uint_t<bits> replaced with Natural<bits>
- fixed "Synchronize Audio" menu option that broke recently
- all of sfc/performance ported to "auto function() -> return;" syntax
With this WIP, all of higan is finally ported over to the new function
declaration syntax. Thank the gods.
There's still going to be periodic disruption for diffs from porting
over signed->int, unsigned->uint, and whatever we come up with for the
new Natural<> and Integer<> classes. But the worst of it's behind us
now.
byuu says:
Changelog:
- all of fc/ ported to "auto function() -> return;" syntax
- (includes all of cartridge/board and cartridge/chip as well; even
though they're all deprecated)
- sfc balanced profile ported to "auto function() -> return;" syntax
- sfc balanced and performance profiles compile again
- Linux always gets -ldl
- removed arch=x86 logic from nall/GNUmakefile, as TDM/GCC64 can't
produce bug-free 32-bit binaries anyway
The only code that continues to use the old function syntax is the SFC
performance core, obscure parts of nall that higan doesn't use, and the
pieces of code that weren't written by me (blargg's SFC-DSP, Ryphecha's
sinc resampler, and OV2's xaudio2 header file.)
I was too burned out to finish it tonight. The above was about four
hours straight of non-stop typing. Really can't wait to be done with
this once and for all.
byuu says:
Changelog:
- added preliminary WASAPI driver (it's really terrible, though. Patches
most welcome.)
- all of processor/ updated to auto fn() -> ret syntax
- all of gb/ updated to auto fn() -> ret syntax
If you want to test the WASAPI driver, then edit ui-tomoko/GNUmakefile,
and replace audio.xaudio2 with audio.wasapi Note that the two drivers
are incompatible and cannot co-exist (yet. We can probably make it work
in the future.)
All that's left for the auto fn() -> ret syntax is the NES core and the
balanced/performance SNES components. This is kind of a big deal because
this syntax change causes diffs between WIPs to go crazy. So the sooner
we get this done and out of the way, the better. It's also nice from
a consistency standpoint, of course.
byuu says:
Changelog:
- entire GBA core ported to auto function() -> return; syntax
- fixed GBA BLDY bug that was causing flickering in a few games
- replaced nall/config usage with nall/string/markup/node
- this merges all configuration files to a unified settings.bml file
- added "Ignore Manifests" option to the advanced setting tab
- this lets you keep a manifest.bml for an older version of higan; if
you want to do regression testing
Be sure to remap your controller/hotkey inputs, and for SNES, choose
"Gamepad" from "Controller Port 1" in the system menu. Otherwise you
won't get any input. No need to blow away your old config files, unless
you want to.
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:
Changelog:
- GBA: lots of emulation improvements
- PPU PRAM is 16-bits wide
- DMA masks &~1/Half, &~3/Word
- VRAM OBJ 8-bit writes are ignored
- OAM 8-bit writes are ignored
- BGnCNT unused bits are writable*
- BG(0,1)CNT can't set the d13
- BLDALPHA is readable (fixes Donkey Kong Country, etc)
- SNES: lots of code cleanups
- sfc/chip => sfc/coprocessor
- UI: save most recent controller selection
GBA test scores: 1552/1552, 37/38, 1020/1260
(* forgot to add the value to the read function, so endrift's I/O tests
for them will fail. Fixed locally.)
Note: SNES is the only system with multiple controller/expansion port
options, and as such is the only one with a "None" option. Because it's
shared by the controller and expansion port, it ends up sorted first in
the list. This means that on your first run, you'll need to go to Super
Famicom->Controller Port 1 and select "Gamepad", otherwise input won't
work.
Also note that changing the expansion port device requires loading a new
cart. Unlike controllers, you aren't meant to hotplug expansion port
devices.
Changelog:
- S-SMP core code style updated
- S-SMP loads reset vector from IPLROM ($fffe-ffff)
- sfc/base => sfc/expansion
- system/input => system/device
- added expansion/eBoot (simulation of defparam's SNES-Boot device)
- expansion port device can now be selected from Super Famicom menu
option
- improved GBA MROM/SRAM reading
endrift's memory test is up to 1388/1552.
Note: I added the expansion port devices to the same group as controller
ports. I also had to move "None" to the top of the list. Before v096,
I am going to have to add caching of port selections to the
configuration file, check the proper default item in the system menu,
and remove the items with no mappings from the input configuration
window. Lots of work >_>
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:
After 20 months of development, higan v095 is released at long last!
The most notable feature is vastly improved Game Boy Advance emulation.
With many thanks to endrift, Cydrak, Jonas Quinn and jchadwick, this
release contains substantially improved CPU timings and many bugfixes.
Being one of only two GBA emulators to offer ROM prefetch emulation,
higan is very near mGBA in terms of accuracy, and far ahead of all
others. As a result of these fixes, compatibility is also much higher
than in v094.
There are also several improvements to SNES emulation. Most
significantly is support for mid-scanline changes to the background mode
in the accuracy profile.
Due to substantial changes to the user interface library used by higan,
this release features yet again a brand-new UI. With the exception of
video shaders and NSS DIP switch selection, it is at feature-parity with
the previous UI. It also offers some new features that v094 lacked.
The cheat code database has also been updated to the latest version by
mightymo.
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:
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:
- SNES mid-scanline BGMODE fixes finally merged (can run
atx2.zip{mode7.smc}+mtest(2).sfc properly now)
- Makefile now discards all built-in rules and variables
- switch on bool warning disabled for GCC now as well (was already
disabled for Clang)
- when loading a game, if any required files are missing, display
a warning message box (manifest.bml, program.rom, bios.rom, etc)
- when loading a game (or a game slot), if manifest.bml is missing, it
will invoke icarus to try and generate it
- if that fails (icarus is missing or the folder is bad), you will get
a warning telling you that the manifest can't be loaded
The warning prompt on missing files work for both games and the .sys
folders and their files. For some reason, failing to load the DMG/CGB
BIOS is causing a crash before I can display the modal dialog. I have no
idea why, and the stack frame backtrace is junk.
I also can't seem to abort the failed loading process. If I call
Program::unloadMedia(), I get a nasty segfault. Again with a really
nasty stack trace. So for now, it'll just end up sitting there emulating
an empty ROM (solid black screen.) In time, I'd like to fix that too.
Lastly, I need a better method than popen for Windows. popen is kind of
ugly and flashes a console window for a brief second even if the
application launched is linked with -mwindows. Not sure if there even is
one (I need to read the stdout result, so CreateProcess may not work
unless I do something nasty like "> %tmp%/temp") I'm also using the
regular popen instead of _wpopen, so for this WIP, it won't work if your
game folder has non-English letters in the path.
byuu says:
I'll post more detailed changes later, but basically:
- fixed Baldur's Gate bug
- guess if no flash ROM ID present (fixes Magical Vacation, many many
others)
- nall cleanups
- sfc/cartridge major cleanups
- bsxcartridge/"bsx" renamed to mcc/"mcc" after the logic chip it uses
(consistency with SGB/ICD2)
- ... and more!
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 does substantially better on endrift's GBA timing tests. Still
not perfect, though. But hopefully enough to get me out of dead last
place. I also finally fixed the THUMB-mode ldmia bug that jchadwick
reported.
So, GBA emulation should be improved quite a bit, hopefully.
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:
I fixed the hiro layout enable bug, so when you go to assign joypad
input, the window disables itself so your input doesn't mess with the
controls.
I added "reset" to the hotkeys, in case you feel like clearing all of
them at once.
I added device selection support and the ability to disable audio
synchronization (run > 60fps) to the ruby/OSS driver. This is exposed in
tomoko's configuration file.
I added checks to stringify so that assigning null char* strings to
nall::string won't cause crashes anymore (technically the crash was in
strlen(), which doesn't check for null strings, but whatever ... I'll do
the check myself.)
I hooked up BrowserDialog::folderSelect() to loading slotted media for
now. Tested it by loading a Game Boy game successfully through the Super
Game Boy. Definitely want to write a custom window for this though, that
looks more like the library dialog.
Remaining issues:
- finish slotted cart loader (SGB, BSX, ST)
- add DIP switch selection window (NSS) [I may end up punting this one
to v096]
- add more configuration panels (video, audio, timing)
byuu says:
This updates ruby to return shared_pointer<HID::Device> objects instead
of HID::Device* objects. It also fixes an ID bug where joypads were
starting at ID# 2+, but mice were also set to ID# 2. I also revised
nall/hid a lot, with getters and setters instead of stabbing at internal
state. I didn't yet patch nall::string to safely consume nullptr const
char* values, though.
byuu says:
Main reason for this WIP was because of all the added lines to hiro for
selective component disabling. May as well get all the diff-noise apart
from code changes.
It also merges something I've been talking to Cydrak about ... making
nall::string::(integer,decimal) do built-in binary,octal,hex decoding
instead of just failing on those. This will have fun little side effects
all over the place, like being able to view a topic on my forum via
"forum.byuu.org/topic/0b10010110", heh.
There are two small changes to higan itself, though. First up, I fixed
the resampler ratio when loading non-SNES games. Tested and I can play
Game Boy games fine now. Second, I hooked up menu option hiding for
reset and controller selection. Right now, this works like higan v094,
but I'm thinking I might want to show the "Device -> Controller" even if
that's all that's there. It kind of jives nicer with the input settings
window to see the labels there, I think. And if we ever do add more
stuff, it'll be nice that people already always expect that menu there.
Remaining issues:
* add slotted cart loader (SGB, BSX, ST)
* add DIP switch selection window (NSS)
* add timing configuration (video/audio sync)
byuu says:
The input port menu was hooked up.
Alternate input support was added, although I wasn't able to test rumble
support because SDL doesn't support that, and I don't have XInput or
udev drivers on FreeBSD. This one's going to be tricky. Maybe I can test
via cross-compiling on Windows/GTK.
Added mouse capture hotkey, and auto capture/release on toggling
fullscreen (as a bonus it hides the mouse cursor.)
Added all possible video and input drivers to ruby for BSD systems.
Remaining issues before we can release v095:
- add slotted cart loader (SGB, BSX, ST)
- add DIP switch selection window (NSS)
- add timing configuration (video/audio sync)
- hide inapplicable options from system menu (eg controller ports and
reset button from handheld systems)
byuu says:
Okay yeah, lots of SNES coprocessor games were horribly broken. They
should be fixed now with the below changes:
Old syntax:
auto programROM = root["rom[0]/name"].text();
auto dataROM = root["rom[1]/name"].text();
load_memory(root["ram[0]"]);
New syntax:
auto rom = root.find("rom");
auto ram = root.find("ram");
auto programROM = rom(0)["name"].text();
auto dataROM = rom(1)["name"].text();
load_memory(ram(0));
Since I'm now relying on the XShm driver, which is multi-threaded, I'm
now compiling higan with -fopenmp. On FreeBSD, this requires linking
with -Wl,-rpath=/usr/local/lib -Wl,-rpath=/usr/local/lib/gcc49 to get
the right version of GOMP.
This gives a pretty nice speed boost for XShm, I go from around 101fps
to 111fps at 4x scale on the accuracy profile. The combination of
inlining the accuracy-PPU and parallelizing the XShm renderer about
evenly compensates now for the ~20% CPU overclock I gave up a while ago.
The WIP also has some other niceties from the newer version of nall.
Most noticeably, cheat code database searching is now instantaneous. No
more 3-second stall.
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:
Implemented the cheat database dialog, and most of the cheat editor
dialog. I still have to handle loading and saving the cheats.bml file
for each game. I wanted to finish it today, but I burned out. It's a ton
of really annoying work to support cheat codes. There's also some issue
with the width calculation for the "code(s)" column in hiro/GTK.
Short-term:
- add input port changing support
- add other input types (mouse-based, etc)
- finish cheat codes
Long-term:
- add slotted cart loader (SGB, BSX, ST)
- add DIP switch selection window (NSS)
- add overscan masking
- add timing configuration (video/audio sync)
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
- localization support (not enough users)
- window geometry memory
- anything else not in higan v094
Tim Allen