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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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
byuu says:
This WIP removes nall/input.hpp entirely, and implements the new
universal cheat format for FC/SFC/GB/GBC/SGB.
GBA is going to be tricky since there's some consternation around
byte/word/dword overrides.
It's also not immediately obvious to me how to implement the code search
in logarithmic time, due to the optional compare value.
Lastly, the cheat values inside cheats.bml seem to be broken for the
SFC. Likely there's a bug somewhere in the conversion process. Obviously
I'll have to fix that before v094.
I received no feedback on the universal cheat format. If nobody adds
anything before v094, then I don't want to hear any complaining about
the formatting :P
Tim Allen