byuu says:
Changelog:
- Super Famicom core converted to use nall/vfs
- excludes Super Game Boy; since that's invoked from inside the GB core
This was definitely the major obstacle to test nall/vfs'
applicability. Things worked out pretty great in the end.
We went from 22.0KiB (cartridge) + 18.6KiB (interface) to 24.5KiB
(cartridge) + 11.4KiB (interface). Or 40.7KiB to 36.0KiB. This removes
a very large source of indirection. Before it was: "coprocessor <=>
cartridge <=> interface" for loading and saving data, and now it's just
"coprocessor <=> cartridge". And it may make sense to eventually turn
this into just "cartridge -> coprocessor" by making each coprocessor
class handle its own markup parsing.
It's nice to have all the manifest parsing in one location (well, sans
MSU1); but it's also nice for loading/unloading to be handled by each
coprocessor itself. So I'll have to think longer about that one.
I've also started handling Interface::save() differently. Instead of
keeping track of memory IDs and filenames, and iterating through that
vector of objects ... instead I now have a system that mirrors the markup
parsing on loading, but handles saving instead. This was actually the
reason the code size savings weren't more significant, but I like this
style more. As before, it removes an extra level of indirection.
So ... next up, I need to port over the GB, then GBA, then WS
cores. These shouldn't take too long since they're all very simple with
just ROM+RAM(+RTC) right now. Then get the SGB callbacks using vfs. Then
after that, gut all the old stream stuff from nall and higan. Kill the
(load,save)Request stuff, rename the load(Gamepak)Request to something
simpler, and then we should be good.
Anyway ... these are some huge changes.
byuu says:
Changelog:
- lots of code cleanups to processor/r6502 (the switch.cpp file is only
halfway done ...)
- lots of code cleanups to fc/cpu
- removed fc/input
- implemented fc/controller
hex_usr, you may not like this, but I want to keep the controller port
and expansion port interface separate, like I do with the SNES. I realize
the NES' is used more for controllers, and the SNES' more for hardware
expansions, but ... they're not compatible pinouts and you can't really
connect one to the other.
Right now, I've only implemented the controller portion. I'll have to
get to the peripheral portion later.
Also, the gamepad implementation there now may be wrong. It's based off
the Super Famicom version obviously. I'm not sure if the Famicom has
different behavior with latching $4016 writes, or not. But, it works in
Mega Man II, so it's a start.
Everyone, be sure to remap your controls, and then set port 1 -> gamepad
after loading your first Famicom game with the new WIP.
byuu says:
Changelog:
- emulation cores now refresh video from host thread instead of
cothreads (fix AMD crash)
- SFC: fixed another bug with leap year months in SharpRTC emulation
- SFC: cleaned up camelCase on function names for
armdsp,epsonrtc,hitachidsp,mcc,nss,sharprtc classes
- GB: added MBC1M emulation (requires manually setting mapper=MBC1M in
manifest.bml for now, sorry)
- audio: implemented Emulator::Audio mixer and effects processor
- audio: implemented Emulator::Stream interface
- it is now possible to have more than two audio streams: eg SNES
+ SGB + MSU1 + Voicer-Kun (eventually)
- audio: added reverb delay + reverb level settings; exposed balance
configuration in UI
- video: reworked palette generation to re-enable saturation, gamma,
luminance adjustments
- higan/emulator.cpp is gone since there was nothing left in it
I know you guys are going to say the color adjust/balance/reverb stuff
is pointless. And indeed it mostly is. But I like the idea of allowing
some fun special effects and configurability that isn't system-wide.
Note: there seems to be some kind of added audio lag in the SGB
emulation now, and I don't really understand why. The code should be
effectively identical to what I had before. The only main thing is that
I'm sampling things to 48000hz instead of 32040hz before mixing. There's
no point where I'm intentionally introducing added latency though. I'm
kind of stumped, so if anyone wouldn't mind taking a look at it, it'd be
much appreciated :/
I don't have an MSU1 test ROM, but the latency issue may affect MSU1 as
well, and that would be very bad.
byuu says:
Changelog:
- SFC: fixed behavior of 21fx $21fe register when no device is connected
(must return zero)
- SFC: reduced 21fx buffer size to 1024 bytes in both directions to
mirror the FT232H we are using
- SFC: eliminated dsp/modulo-array.hpp [1]
- higan: implemented higan/video interface and migrated all cores to it
[2]
[1] the echo history buffer was 8-bytes, so there was no need for it at
all here. Not sure what I was thinking. The BRR buffer was 12-bytes, and
has very weird behavior ... but there's only a single location in the
code where it actually writes to this buffer. It's much easier to just
write to the buffer three times there instead of implementing an entire
class just to abstract away two lines of code. This change actually
boosted the speed from ~124.5fps to around ~127.5fps, but that's within
the margin of error for GCC. I doubt it's actually faster this way.
The DSP core could really use a ton of work. It comes from a port of
blargg's spc_dsp to my coding style, but he was extremely fond of using
32-bit signed integers everywhere. There's a lot of opportunity to
remove red tape masking by resizing the variables to their actual state
sizes.
I really need to find where I put spc_dsp6.sfc from blargg. It's a great
test to verify if I've made any mistakes in my implementation that would
cause regressions. Don't suppose anyone has it?
[2] so again, the idea is that higan/audio and higan/video are going to
sit between the emulation cores and the user interfaces. The hope is to
output raw encoding data from the emulation cores without having to
worry about the video display format (generally 24-bit RGB) of the host
display. And also to avoid having to repeat myself with eg three
separate implementations of interframe blending, and so on.
Furthermore, the idea is that the user interface can configure its side
of the settings, and the emulation cores can configure their sides.
Thus, neither has to worry about the other end. And now we can spin off
new user interfaces much easier without having to mess with all of these
things.
Right now, I've implemented color emulation, interframe blending and
SNES horizontal color bleed. I did not implement scanlines (and
interlace effects for them) yet, but I probably will at some point.
Further, for right now, the WonderSwan/Color screen rotation is busted
and will only show games in the horizontal orientation. Obviously this
must be fixed before the next official release, but I'll want to think
about how to implement it.
Also, the SNES light gun pointers are missing for now.
Things are a bit messy right now as I've gone through several revisions
of how to handle these things, so a good house cleaning is in order once
everything is feature-complete again. I need to sit down and think
through how and where I want to handle things like light gun cursors,
LCD icons, and maybe even rasterized text messages.
And obviously ... higan/audio is still just nall::DSP's headers. I need
to revamp that whole interface. I want to make it quite powerful with
a true audio mixer so I can handle things like
SNES+SGB+MSU1+Voicer-Kun+SNES-CD (five separate audio streams at once.)
The video system has the concept of "effects" for things like color
bleed and interframe blending. I want to extend on this with useful
other effects, such as NTSC simulation, maybe bringing back my mini-HQ2x
filter, etc. I'd also like to restore the saturation/gamma/luma
adjustment sliders ... I always liked allowing people to compensate for
their displays without having to change settings system-wide. Lastly,
I've always wanted to see some audio effects. Although I doubt we'll
ever get my dream of CoreAudio-style profiles, I'd like to get some
basic equalizer settings and echo/reverb effects in there.
byuu says:
I refactored my schedulers. Added about ten lines to each scheduler, and
removed about 100 lines of calling into internal state in the scheduler
for the FC,SFC cores and about 30-40 lines for the other cores. All of
its state is now private.
Also reworked all of the entry points to static auto Enter() and auto
main(). Where Enter() handles all the synchronization stuff, and main()
doesn't need the while(true); loop forcing another layer of indentation
everywhere.
Took a few hours to do, but totally worth it. I'm surprised I didn't do
this sooner.
Also updated icarus gmake install rule to copy over the database.
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:
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:
- 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:
- added Cocoa target: higan can now be compiled for OS X Lion
[Cydrak, byuu]
- SNES/accuracy profile hires color blending improvements - fixes
Marvelous text [AWJ]
- fixed a slight bug in SNES/SA-1 VBR support caused by a typo
- added support for multi-pass shaders that can load external textures
(requires OpenGL 3.2+)
- added game library path (used by ananke->Import Game) to
Settings->Advanced
- system profiles, shaders and cheats database can be stored in "all
users" shared folders now (eg /usr/share on Linux)
- all configuration files are in BML format now, instead of XML (much
easier to read and edit this way)
- main window supports drag-and-drop of game folders (but not game files
/ ZIP archives)
- audio buffer clears when entering a modal loop on Windows (prevents
audio repetition with DirectSound driver)
- a substantial amount of code clean-up (probably the biggest
refactoring to date)
One highly desired target for this release was to default to the optimal
drivers instead of the safest drivers, but because AMD drivers don't
seem to like my OpenGL 3.2 driver, I've decided to postpone that. AMD
has too big a market share. Hopefully with v093 officially released, we
can get some public input on what AMD doesn't like.
byuu says:
This will be another massive diff from the previous version.
All of higan was updated to use the new foo& bar syntax, and I also
updated switch statements to be consistent as well (but not in the
disassemblers, was starting to get an RSI just from what I already did.)
phoenix/{windows, cocoa, qt} need to be updated to use "string foo"
instead of "const string& foo", and after that, the major diffs should
be finished.
This archive is the first time I'm posting my copy-on-write,
size+capacity nall::string class, so any feedback on that is welcome as
well.
In the release thread, byuu says:
The first official release of higan has been posted. higan is the
new name for bsnes, and it continues with the latter's version
numbering.
Note that as of now, bsnes still exists. It's a module distributed
inside of higan. bsnes is now specific to my SNES emulator.
Due to last minute changes to the emulator interface, and missing
support in ananke, I wasn't able to include Cydrak's Nintendo DS
emulator dasShiny in this build, but I hope to do so in the next
release.
http://code.google.com/p/higan/downloads/list
For both new and experienced users, please read the higan user guide
first:
http://byuu.org/higan/user-guide
In the v091 WIP thread, byuu says:
r15->r16:
- BS-X MaskROM handling (partial ... need to split bsx/flash away
from sfc/chip, restructure code - it requires tagging the base
cart markup for now, but it needs to parse the slotted cart
markup)
- phoenixflags / phoenixlink += -m32
- nall/sort stability
- if(input.poll(scancode[activeScancode]) == false) return;
- MSU1 / USART need to use interface->path(1)
- MSU1 needs to use Markup::Document, not XML::Document
- case-insensitive folder listings
- remove nall/emulation/system.hpp files (move to ananke)
- remove rom/ram id= checks with indexing
X have cores ask for manifest.bml (skipped for v092's release, too
big a change)
- rename compatibility profile to balanced (so people don't assume
it has better compatibility than accuracy)
byuu says:
Basically just a project rename, with s/bsnes/higan and the new icon
from lowkee added in.
It won't compile on Windows because I forgot to update the resource.rc
file, and a path transform command isn't working on Windows.
It was really just meant as a starting point, so that v091 WIPs can flow
starting from .00 with the new name (it overshadows bsnes v091, so
publicly speaking this "shouldn't exist" and will probably be deleted
from Google Code when v092 is ready.)
Tim Allen