byuu says:
Changelog:
- added 30 new PAL games to icarus (courtesy of Mikerochip)
- new version of libco no longer requires mprotect nor W|X permissions
- nall: default C compiler to -std=c11 instead of -std=c99
- nall: use `-fno-strict-aliasing` during compilation
- updated nall/certificates (hopefully for the last time)
- updated nall/http to newer coding conventions
- nall: improve handling of range() function
I didn't really work on higan at all, this is mostly just a release
because lots of other things have changed.
The most interesting is `-fno-strict-aliasing` ... basically, it joins
`-fwrapv` as being "stop the GCC developers from doing *really* evil
shit that could lead to security vulnerabilities or instabilities."
For the most part, it's a ~2% speed penalty for higan. Except for the
Sega Genesis, where it's a ~10% speedup. I have no idea how that's
possible, but clearly something's going very wrong with strict aliasing
on the Genesis core.
So ... it is what it is. If you need the performance for the non-Genesis
cores, you can turn it off in your builds. But I'm getting quite sick of
C++'s "surprises" and clever compiler developers, so I'm keeping it on
in all of my software going forward.
byuu says:
Changelog:
- (u)int(max,ptr) abbreviations removed; use _t suffix now [didn't feel
like they were contributing enough to be worth it]
- cleaned up nall::integer,natural,real functionality
- toInteger, toNatural, toReal for parsing strings to numbers
- fromInteger, fromNatural, fromReal for creating strings from numbers
- (string,Markup::Node,SQL-based-classes)::(integer,natural,real)
left unchanged
- template<typename T> numeral(T value, long padding, char padchar)
-> string for print() formatting
- deduces integer,natural,real based on T ... cast the value if you
want to override
- there still exists binary,octal,hex,pointer for explicit print()
formatting
- lstring -> string_vector [but using lstring = string_vector; is
declared]
- would be nice to remove the using lstring eventually ... but that'd
probably require 10,000 lines of changes >_>
- format -> string_format [no using here; format was too ambiguous]
- using integer = Integer<sizeof(int)*8>; and using natural =
Natural<sizeof(uint)*8>; declared
- for consistency with boolean. These three are meant for creating
zero-initialized values implicitly (various uses)
- R65816::io() -> idle() and SPC700::io() -> idle() [more clear; frees
up struct IO {} io; naming]
- SFC CPU, PPU, SMP use struct IO {} io; over struct (Status,Registers) {}
(status,registers); now
- still some CPU::Status status values ... they didn't really fit into
IO functionality ... will have to think about this more
- SFC CPU, PPU, SMP now use step() exclusively instead of addClocks()
calling into step()
- SFC CPU joypad1_bits, joypad2_bits were unused; killed them
- SFC PPU CGRAM moved into PPU::Screen; since nothing else uses it
- SFC PPU OAM moved into PPU::Object; since nothing else uses it
- the raw uint8[544] array is gone. OAM::read() constructs values from
the OAM::Object[512] table now
- this avoids having to determine how we want to sub-divide the two
OAM memory sections
- this also eliminates the OAM::synchronize() functionality
- probably more I'm forgetting
The FPS fluctuations are driving me insane. This WIP went from 128fps to
137fps. Settled on 133.5fps for the final build. But nothing I changed
should have affected performance at all. This level of fluctuation makes
it damn near impossible to know whether I'm speeding things up or slowing
things down with changes.
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:
- 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:
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:
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:
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:
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