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.
ananke has been superseded by icarus.
The new tomoko UI does not support shaders, and if it ever does it will
probably use another format, so not much point keeping the old files
around.
byuu says:
- fixes checkboxes (-again- again [*again*])
- won't check folders with select all / unselect all
- won't crash anymore if the SNES ROM image is too small (Saturday Night
Slam Masters was crashing it before due to DB size error)
- corrected heuristics for Sufami Turbo base cart (mirrors the
absurdities of the real cart precisely, since it's one of a kind)
- corrected a few DB issues (BS-X name + PSRAM (again [*again*]), SNSM,
LAH) (_again_)
- these are temporary. Monkey patched in the generated .hpp source
rather than the actual DB
- not going to fix the SFT sizes because I want to verify what
happened there first
byuu says:
With any luck, this will be the final WIP before v095. If all looks
good, this will be identical to v095. But if we hit some major issues,
I'll try and fix those first.
The most notable part of this release is probably Jonas Quinn's fix for
the unmapped regions of the GBA memory map. This allows games like Mario
& Luigi and Zelda: Minish Cap to (hopefully) be fully playable now.
icarus now supports my game database, so all games I've dumped will be
emulated with bit-perfect memory maps and native-language game titles.
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:
- 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:
Changelog:
- GBA emulation accuracy has been substantially improved [Cydrak]
- GBA ldm bug fixed [jchadwick]
- SNES SuperFX timing has been improved [AWJ, ARM9, qwertymodo]
- SNES accuracy profile is now ~8% faster than before
- you no longer need to copy the .sys profile folders to
~/Emulation/System
- you still need to put bios.rom (GBA BIOS) into Game Boy
Advance.sys to use GBA emulation!!
- you no longer need to pre-configure inputs before first use
- loading games / changing window size won't recenter window
- checkboxes in cheat editor update correctly
- can't type into state manager description textbox on an empty slot
- typing in state manager description box works correctly; and updates
list view correctly
- won't show files that match game extensions anymore (only game folders
show up)
- libco Win64 port fixes with FPU^H^H^H XMM registers
- libco ARM port now available; so you too can play at 15fps on an RPi2!
[jessedog3, Cydrak]
- controller selection will check the default item in the menu now on
game load
- as usual, a whole lot of other stuff I'm forgetting
Known issues:
- type-ahead find does not work in list views (eg game selection
dialog); I don't know how to fix this
- there's no game file importer yet
- there's no shader support yet
- there's no profiler available for the timing panel, you need to adjust
values manually for now
byuu says:
GBA timings are *almost* perfect now. Off by 1-3 cycles on each test,
sans a few DMA ones that seem to not run at all according to the numbers
(crazy.)
byuu says:
Fixes SuperFX fmult, lmult timings; rambr, bramr and clsr assignment
masking. Implements true GBA ROM prefetch (buggy, lower test score, but
runs Mario & Luigi without crashing on battles anymore.)
byuu says:
Small WIP, just fixes the timings for GSU multiply.
However, the actual product may still be wrong when CLSR and MS0 are
both set. Since I wasn't 'corrupting' the value in said case before,
then this behavior can only be better than before.
Turned the (cache,memory)_access_timing into functions that compute the
values; and pulled "clockspeed" into GSU.
Also, I'm thinking it might be kind of pointless to have clockspeed at
all. Supposedly even the Mario Chip can run at 21.48MHz anyway.
Enforcing 10.74MHz mode seems kind of silly. If we change it to just be
a "default value for CLSR", then we can just inline the memory access
tests without the need for the access_timing functions (literally just
clsr?2:1 then)
Slight compilation bug: go to processor/gsu/registers.hpp:33 and add
reg16_t() = default;
I missed it due to a partial recompile. Too lazy to upload another WIP
just for that.
Probably not worth doing much SuperFX testing just yet, as it looks like
they're doing some other tests at the moment on NESdev.
byuu says:
Lots more timing improvements to GBA emulation. We're now ahead of
everything but mGBA.
Mario & Luigi is still hanging in battles, so I guess my prefetch
simulation isn't as good as Cydrak's previous attempt, no surprise.
byuu says:
This WIP scores 448/920 tests passed.
Gave a shot at ROM prefetch that failed miserably (ranged from 409 to
494 tests passed. Nowhere near where it would be if it were implemented
correctly.)
Three remaining issues:
- ROM prefetch
- DMA timing
- timers (I suspect it's a 3-clock delay in starting, not a 3-clock into
the future affair)
Probably only going to be able to get the timers working without heroic
amounts of effort.
MUL timing is fixed to use idle cycles.
STMIA is fixed to set sequential at the right moments.
DMA priority support is added, so DMA 0 can interrupt DMA 1 mid-transfer.
In other news ...
I'm calling gtk_widget_destroy on the GtkWindow now, so hopefully those
Window_configure issues go away.
I realize I was leaking Display* handles in the X-video driver while
I was looking at it, so I fixed those.
I added DT_NOPREFIX so the Windows ListView will show & characters
correctly now.
byuu says:
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:
Obviously, this is a fairly major WIP. It's the first public release in
17 months. The entire UI has been rewritten (for the 74th time), and is
now internally called tomoko. The official releases will be named higan
(both the binaries and title bar.)
Missing features from v094:
- ananke is missing (this means you will need v094 to create game
folders to be loaded)
- key assignments are limited to one physical button = one mapping (no
multi-mapping)
- shader support is missing
- audio/video profiling is missing
- DIP switch window is missing (used by NSS Actraiser with a special
manifest; that's about it)
- alternate paths for game system folders and configuration BML files
There's some new stuff, but not much. This isn't going to be an exciting
WIP in terms of features. It's more about being a brand new release with
the brand new hiro port and its shared memory model. The goal is to get
these WIPs stable, get v095 out, and then finally start improving the
actual emulation again after that.
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:
Finished the cheat code system, it'll now load and save cheats.bml to
disk.
Also hooked up overscan masking. But for now you can only configure the
amount it clips via the configuration file, since I don't have a video
settings dialog anymore.
And that's the last of the low-hanging fruit. The remaining items are
all going to be a pain in the ass for one reason or another.
Short-term:
- add input port changing support
- add other input types (mouse-based, etc)
Long-term:
- add slotted cart loader (SGB, BSX, ST)
- add DIP switch selection window (NSS)
- 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
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
byuu says:
Man, over five weeks have passed without so much as touching the
codebase ... time is advancing so fast it's positively frightening. Oh
well, little by little, and we'll get there eventually.
Changelog:
- added save state slots (1-5 in the menu)
- added hotkeys settings dialog + mapping system
- added fullscreen toggle (with a cute aspect correction trick)
About three hours of work here.
Short-term:
- add input port changing support
- add other input types (mouse-based, etc)
- add cheat codes
- add timing configuration (video/audio sync)
Long-term:
- add slotted cart loader (SGB, BSX, ST)
- add DIP switch selection window (NSS)
- add cheat code database
- add state manager
- add overscan masking
Not planned:
- video color adjustments (will allow emulated color vs raw color; but
no more sliders)
- pixel shaders
- ananke integration (will need to make a command-line version to get my
games in)
- fancy audio adjustment controls (resampler, latency, volume)
- input focus settings
- relocating game library (not hard, just don't feel like it)
- localization support (not enough users)
- window geometry memory
- anything else not in higan v094
byuu says:
This version polishes up the input dialogue (reset, erase, disable
button when item not focused, split device ID from mapping name), adds
color emulation toggle, and add dummy menu items for remaining features
(to be filled in later.)
Also, it now compiles cleanly on Windows with GTK.
I didn't test with TDM-GCC-32, because for god knows what reason, the
32-bit version ships with headers from Windows 95 OSR2 only. So I built
with TDM-GCC-64 with arch=x86.
And uh, apparently, moving or resizing a window causes a Visual C++
runtime exception in the GTK+ DLLs. This doesn't happen with trance or
renshuu built with TDM-GCC-32. So, yeah, like I said, don't use -m32.
byuu says:
Changelog:
* added driver selection
* added video scale + aspect correction settings
* added A/V sync + audio mute settings
* added configuration file
* fixed compilation bugs under Windows and Linux
* fixed window sizing
* removed HSU1
* the system menu stays as "System", because "Game Boy Advance" was too
long a string for the smallest scale size
* some more stuff
You guys probably won't be ecstatic about the video sizing options, but
it's basically your choice of 1x, 2x or 4x scale with optional aspect
correction. 3x was intentionally skipped because it looks horrible on
hires SNES games. The window is resized and recentered upon loading
games. The window doesn't resize otherwise. I never really liked the way
v094 always left you with black screen areas and left you with
off-centered window positions.
I might go ahead and add the pseudo-fullscreen toggle that will jump
into 4x mode (respecting your aspect setting.)
Short-term:
* add input port changing support
* add other input types (mouse-based, etc)
* add save states
* add cheat codes
* add timing configuration (video/audio sync)
* add hotkeys (single state)
We can probably do a new release once the short-term items are
completed.
Long-term:
* add slotted cart loader (SGB, BSX, ST)
* add DIP switch selection window (NSS)
* add cheat code database
* add state manager
* add overscan masking
Not planned:
* video color adjustments (will allow emulated color vs raw color; but
no more sliders)
* pixel shaders
* ananke integration (will need to make a command-line version to get my
games in)
* fancy audio adjustment controls (resampler, latency, volume)
* input focus settings
* relocating game library (not hard, just don't feel like it)
* localization support (not enough users)
* window geometry memory
* anything else not in higan v094
byuu says:
I've hooked up the input subsystem, and the input manager to assign
hotkeys.
So far I only have digital buttons working (keyboard only), and I'm not
planning on supporting input groups again (mapping multiple physical
buttons to one emulated button), but it's progress. As with the rest of
tomoko, the code's a lot more compact. The nice thing about redoing code
so many times is that each time you get a little bit better at it.
The input configuration is saved to ~/.config/tomoko/settings.bml (just
realized that I'm an idiot and need to rename it to input.bml)
Also hooked up game saves and cartridge unloading. Active controller
changing isn't hooked up yet, and I'll probably do it differently.
Oh, and I declared the ruby lines for other platforms.
Still need to add Cydrak's Windows compilation fixes. I am nothing if
not lazy :P
byuu says:
This starts the tomoko UI. So far I have basic library loading and
video+audio output. Basically just enough to take the below screenshot.
(aside from Library, the menus are empty stubs.)
The .sys (system) game folders are now going under ~/Emulation/System,
to avoid needing root privileges to stick them into /usr/share. The game
library now shows all bootable media types, and the drop-down subtype is
gone. I'm going to display a separate modal dialog for loading slotted
games this time around. Much cleaner this way, less clutter.
tomoko's starting off a lot cleaner than ethos was, and I'm scaling back
the number of abstracted classes. What was Utility, Interface, etc are
now being merged all into Program. Of course, the real hell is the input
system. That has so many layers of bullshit that there's really no sane
way to write it.
byuu says:
This will easily be the biggest diff in the history of higan. And not in
a good way.
* target-higan and target-loki have been blown away completely
* nall and ruby massively updated
* phoenix replaced with hiro (pretty near a total rewrite)
* target-higan restarted using hiro (just a window for now)
* all emulation cores updated to compile again
* installation changed to not require root privileges (installs locally)
For the foreseeable future (maybe even permanently?), the new higan UI
will only build under Linux/BSD with GTK+ 2.20+. Probably the most
likely route for Windows/OS X will be to try and figure out how to build
hiro/GTK on those platforms, as awful as that would be. The other
alternative would be to produce new UIs for those platforms ... which
would actually be a good opportunity to make something much more user
friendly.
Being that I just started on this a few hours ago, that means that for
at least a few weeks, don't expect to be able to actually play any
games. Right now, you can pretty much just compile the binary and that's
it. It's quite possible that some nall changes didn't produce
compilation errors, but will produce runtime errors. So until the UI can
actually load games, we won't know if anything is broken. But we should
mostly be okay. It was mostly just trim<1> -> trim changes, moving to
Hash::SHA256 (much cleaner), and patching some reckless memory copy
functions enough to compile.
Progress isn't going to be like it was before: I'm now dividing my time
much thinner between studying and other hobbies.
My aim this time is not to produce a binary for everyone to play games
on. Rather, it's to keep the emulator alive. I want to be able to apply
critical patches again. And I would also like the base of the emulator
to live on, for use in other emulator frontends that utilize higan.
byuu says:
Lots of changes this time around. FreeBSD stability and compilation is
still a work in progress.
FreeBSD 10 + Clang 3.3 = 108fps
FreeBSD 10 + GCC 4.7 = 130fps
Errata 1: I've been fighting that god-damned endian.h header for the
past nine WIPs now. The above WIP isn't building now because FreeBSD
isn't including headers before using certain types, and you end up with
a trillion error messages. So just delete all the endian.h includes from
nall/intrinsics.hpp to build.
Errata 2: I was trying to match g++ and g++47, so I used $(findstring
g++,$(compiler)), which ends up also matching clang++. Oops. Easy fix,
put Clang first and then else if g++ next. Not ideal, but oh well. All
it's doing for now is declaring -fwrapv twice, so you don't have to fix
it just yet. Probably just going to alias g++="g++47" and do exact
matching instead.
Errata 3: both OpenGL::term and VideoGLX::term are causing a core dump
on BSD. No idea why. The resources are initialized and valid, but
releasing them crashes the application.
Changelog:
- nall/Makefile is more flexible with overriding $(compiler), so you can
build with GCC or Clang on BSD (defaults to GCC now)
- PLATFORM_X was renamed to PLATFORM_XORG, and it's also declared with
PLATFORM_LINUX or PLATFORM_BSD
- PLATFORM_XORG probably isn't the best name ... still thinking about
what best to call LINUX|BSD|SOLARIS or ^(WINDOWS|MACOSX)
- fixed a few legitimate Clang warning messages in nall
- Compiler::VisualCPP is ugly as hell, renamed to Compiler::CL
- nall/platform includes nall/intrinsics first. Trying to move away from
testing for _WIN32, etc directly in all files. Work in progress.
- nall turns off Clang warnings that I won't "fix", because they aren't
broken. It's much less noisy to compile with warnings on now.
- phoenix gains the ability to set background and foreground colors on
various text container widgets (GTK only for now.)
- rewrote a lot of the MSU1 code to try and simplify it. Really hope
I didn't break anything ... I don't have any MSU1 test ROMs handy
- SNES coprocessor audio is now mixed as sclamp<16>(system_sample
+ coprocessor_sample) instead of sclamp<16>((sys + cop) / 2)
- allows for greater chance of aliasing (still low, SNES audio is
quiet), but doesn't cut base system volume in half anymore
- fixed Super Scope and Justifier cursor colors
- use input.xlib instead of input.x ... allows Xlib input driver to be
visible on Linux and BSD once again
- make install and make uninstall must be run as root again; no longer
using install but cp instead for BSD compatibility
- killed $(DESTDIR) ... use make prefix=$DESTDIR$prefix instead
- you can now set text/background colors for the loki console via (eg):
- settings.terminal.background-color 0x000000
- settings.terminal.foreground-color 0xffffff
byuu says:
Changelog for loki:
- added command aliases (match with * [sorry, regex lib isn't available
everywhere yet], replace with {1}+)
- added command hotkeys
- added window geometry saving
- added save state support
- added power/reset commands
- added an input manager, so you can remap keys (limiting it to the
keyboard for now though)
The combination of aliases and hotkeys really makes things shine. Save
states will temporarily disable your breakpoints (run/step are
technically temporary breakpoints) so as to ensure the state is captured
at a good time. In practice, this should pose about as much of a problem
as higan desyncing and breaking when capturing states ... should be
exceedingly rare to ever even notice this behavior at all, with 99.9% of
state captures happening in half an instruction boundary. But still,
keep it in mind, as you might see the CPU step one instruction ahead.
Tracing and usage map functionality is still enabled during state
synchronization.
So at this point, I have 100% of the essential stuff in. All that's left
now is to add polish / wishlist features like bass and mosaic
integration.
byuu says:
New terminal is in. Much nicer to use now. Command history makes a major
difference in usability.
The SMP is now fully traceable and debuggable. Basically they act as
separate entities, you can trace both at the same time, but for the most
part running and stepping is performed on the chip you select.
I'm going to put off CPU+SMP interleave support for a while. I don't
actually think it'll be too hard. Will get trickier if/when we support
coprocessor debugging.
Remaining tasks:
- aliases
- hotkeys
- save states
- window geometry
Basically, the debugger's done. Just have to add the UI fluff.
I also removed tracing/memory export from higan. It was always meant to
be temporary until the debugger was remade.
byuu says:
Commands can be prefixed with: (cpu|smp|ppu|dsp|apu|vram|oam|cgram)/ to
set their source. Eg "vram/hex 0800" or "smp/breakpoints.append execute
ffc0"; default is cpu.
These overlap a little bit in odd ways, but that's just the way the SNES
works: it's not a very orthogonal system. CPU is both a processor and
the main bus (ROM, RAM, WRAM, etc), APU is the shared memory by the
SMP+DSP (eg use it to catch writes from either chip); PPU probably won't
ever be used since it's broken down into three separate buses (VRAM,
OAM, CGRAM), but DSP could be useful for tracking bugs like we found in
Koushien 2 with the DSP echo buffer corrupting SMP opcodes. Technically
the PPU memory pools are only ever tripped by the CPU poking at them, as
the PPU doesn't ever write.
I now have run.for, run.to, step.for, step.to. The difference is that
run only prints the next instruction after running, whereas step prints
all of the instructions along the way as well. run.to acts the same as
"step over" here. Although it's not quite as nice, since you have to
specify the address of the next instruction.
Logging the Field/Vcounter/Hcounter on instruction listings now, good
for timing information.
Added in the tracer mask, as well as memory export, as well as
VRAM/OAM/CGRAM/SMP read/write/execute breakpoints, as well as an APU
usage map (it tracks DSP reads/writes separately, although I don't
currently have debugger callbacks on DSP accesses just yet.)
Have not hooked up actual SMP debugging just yet, but I plan to soon.
Still thinking about how I want to allow / block interleaving of
instructions (terminal output and tracing.)
So ... remaining tasks at this point:
- full SMP debugging
- CPU+SMP interleave support
- aliases
- hotkeys
- save states (will be kind of tricky ... will have to suppress
breakpoints during synchronization, or abort a save in a break event.)
- keep track of window geometry between runs
byuu says:
Changelog:
- target-ethos/ is now target-higan/ (will unfortunately screw up diffs
pretty badly at this point.)
- had a serious bug in nall::optional<T>::operator=, which is now fixed.
- added tracer (no masking just yet, I need to write a nall::bitvector
class because I don't want to hard-code those anymore.)
- added usage logging (keep track of RWX/EP states for all bus
addresses.)
- added read/write to poke at memory (hex also works for reading, but
this one can poke at MMIO regs and is for one address only.)
- added both run.for (# of instructions) and run.to (program counter
address.)
- added read/write/execute breakpoints with counters for a given
address, and with an optional compare byte (for read/write modes.)
About the only major things left now for loki is support for trace
masking, memory export, and VRAM/OAM/CGRAM access.
For phoenix/Console, I really need to add a history to up+down arrows,
and I should support left/right insert-at.
byuu says:
Changelog:
- ethos: use nall::programpath() instead of realpath(argv[0]) to get
executable path
- loki: add presentation window
- loki: add terminal window
- loki: add interface to emulation core
- loki: add ruby
- loki: add enough support to run games and save data on exit
- load game folders via command-line (or drop folder onto binary),
use "r" to start, "p" to pause ... temporary command names
I'll probably have to say this several times, but for now, loki is only
available on Linux/GTK+, due to the use of the Console widget. Support
for other platforms can come later easily enough.
byuu says:
Changelog:
- port: various compilation fixes for OS X [kode54]
- nall: added programpath() function to return path to process binary
[todo: need to have ethos use this function]
- ruby: XAudio2 will select default game sound device instead of first
sound device
- ruby: DirectInput device IDs are no longer ambiguous when VID+PID are
identical
- ruby: OpenGL won't try and terminate if it hasn't been initialized
- gb: D-pad up+down/left+right not masked in SGB mode
- sfc: rewrote ICD2 video rendering to output in real-time, work with
cycle-based Game Boy renderer
- sfc: rewrote Bus::reduce(), reduces game loading time by about 500ms
- ethos: store save states in {game}/higan/* instead of {game}/bsnes/*
- loki: added target-loki/ (blank stub for now)
- Makefile: purge out/* on make clean
byuu says:
This release adds support for game libraries, and substantially improves
Game Boy and Game Boy Color emulation with cycle-based renderers. Many
other changes are also present.
It's very important to note that this release now defaults to optimal
drivers rather than safe drivers. This is particularly important if you
do not have strong OpenGL 3.2 drivers. If performance is bad, go to
Settings -> Configuration -> Advanced, change the video driver, and
restart higan. In the rare case that you have trouble opening higan, you
can edit settings.bml directly and change the setting there. The Windows
safe driver is Direct3D, and the Linux safe driver is XShm.
Also note that although display emulation shaders are now supported,
they have not been included in this release as they are not ready yet.
The support has been built-in anyway, so that they can be tested by
everyone. Once refined, future releases of higan will come with built-in
shaders for each emulated system that simulates the unique display
characteristics of each.
Changelog (since v093):
- sfc: added SA-1 MDR support (fixes SD Gundam G-Next bug)
- sfc: remove random/ and config/, merge to system/ with better
randomization
- gb: improved color emulation palette contrast
- gbc: do not sort sprites by X-priority
- gbc: allow transparency on BG priority pixels
- gbc: VRAM DMA timing and register fixes
- gbc: block invalid VRAM DMA transfer source and target addresses
- gba: added LCD color emulation (without it, colors are grossly
over-saturated)
- gba: removed internal frame blending (use shaders to simulate motion
blur if desired)
- gba: added Game Boy Player support (adds joypad rumble support to
supported games)
- gba: SOUND_CTL_H is readable
- gb/gbc: PPU renderer is now cycle-based (major accuracy improvement)
- gb/gbc: OAM DMA runs in parallel with the CPU
- gb/gbc: only HRAM can be accessed during OAM DMA
- gb/gbc: fixed serialization of games with SRAM
- gb/gbc: disallow up+down or left+right at the same time
- gb/gbc: added weak hipass filter to remove DC bias
- gb/gbc: STAT OAM+Hblank IRQs only trigger during active display
- gb/gbc: fixed underflow in window clamping
- gb/gbc/gba: audio mixes internally at 2MHz now instead of 4MHz (does
not affect accuracy)
- gb/gbc/gba: audio volume reduced for consistency with other systems
- fc/sfc/gb/gbc/gba: cheat codes are now stored in universal, decrypted
format
- ethos: replaced file loader with a proper game library
- ethos: added display emulation shader support
- ethos: added color emulation option to video settings
- ethos: program icon upgraded from 48x48 to 512x512
- ethos: settings and tools windows now use tab frames (less wasted
screen space)
- ethos: default to optimal (video, audio, input) drivers instead of
safest drivers
- ethos: input mapping system completely rewritten to support
hotplugging and unique device mappings
- ruby: added fixes for OpenGL 3.2 on AMD graphics cards
- ruby: quark shaders now support user settings inside of manifest
- ruby: quark shaders can use integral textures (allows display
emulation shaders to work with raw colors)
- ruby: add joypad rumble support
- ruby: XInput (Xbox 360) controllers now support hotplugging
- ruby: added Linux udev joypad driver with hotplug support
- phoenix: fixed a rare null pointer dereference issue on Windows
- port: target -std=c++11 instead of -std=gnu++11 (do not rely on GNU
C++ extensions)
- port: added out-of-the-box compilation support for BSD/Clang 3.3+
- port: applied a few Debian upstream patches
- cheats: updated to mightymo's 2014-01-02 release; decrypted all Game
Genie codes
Tim Allen