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:
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:
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:
Changelog:
- nall: fixed major memory leak in string class
- ruby: video shaders support #define-based settings now
- phoenix/GTK+: support > 256x256 icons for window / task bar / alt-tab
- sfc: remove random/ and config/, merge into system/
- ethos: delete higan.png (48x48), replace with higan512.png (512x512)
as new higan.png
- ethos: default gamma to 100% (no color adjustment)
- ethos: use "Video Shaders/Display Emulation/" instead of "Video
Shaders/Emulation/"
- use g++ instead of g++-4.7 (g++ -v must be >= 4.7)
- use -std=c++11 instead of -std=gnu++11
- applied a few patches from Debian upstream to make their packaging job
easier
So because colors are normalized in GLSL, I won't be able to offer video
shaders absolute color literals. We will have to perform basic color
conversion inside the core.
As such, the current plan is to create some sort of Emulator::Settings
interface. With that, I'll connect an option for color correction, which
will be on by default. For FC/SFC, that will mean gamma correction
(darker / stronger colors), and for GB/GBC/GBA, it will mean simulating
the weird brightness levels of the displays. I am undecided on whether
to use pea soup green for the GB or not. By not doing so, it'll be
easier for the display emulation shader to do it.
byuu says:
Changelog:
- added SA-1 MDR; fixes bug in SD Gundam G-Next where the main
battleship was unable to fire
- added out-of-the-box support for any BSD running Clang 3.3+ (FreeBSD
10+, notably)
- added new video shader, "Display Emulation", which changes the shader
based on the emulated system
- fixed the home button to go to your default library path
- phoenix: Windows port won't send onActivate unless an item is selected
(prevents crashing on pressing enter in file dialog)
- ruby: removed vec4 position from out Vertex {} (helps AMD cards)
- shaders: updated all shaders to use texture() instead of texture2D()
(helps AMD cards)
The "Display Emulation" option works like this: when selected, it tries
to load "<path>/Video Shaders/Emulation/<systemName>.shader/"; otherwise
it falls back to the blur shader. <path> is the usual (next to binary,
then in <config>/higan, then in /usr/share/higan, etc); and <systemName>
is "Famicom", "Super Famicom", "Game Boy", "Game Boy Color", "Game Boy
Advance"
To support BSD, I had to modify the $(platform) variable to
differentiate between Linux and BSD.
As such, the new $(platform) values are:
win -> windows
osx -> macosx
x -> linux or bsd
I am also checking uname -s instead of uname -a now. No reason to
potentially match the hostname to the wrong OS type.
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 describes the changes since v067:
This release officially introduces the accuracy and performance cores,
alongside the previously-existing compatibility core. The accuracy core
allows the most accurate SNES emulation ever seen, with every last
processor running at the lowest possible clock synchronization level.
The performance core allows slower computers the chance to finally use
bsnes. It is capable of attaining 60fps in standard games even on an
entry-level Intel Atom processor, commonly found in netbooks.
The accuracy core is absolutely not meant for casual gaming at all. It
is meant solely for getting as close to 100% perfection as possible, no
matter the cost to speed. It should only be used for testing,
development or debugging.
The compatibility core is identical to bsnes v067 and earlier, but is
now roughly 10% faster. This is the default and recommended core for
casual gaming.
The performance core contains an entirely new S-CPU core, with
range-tested IRQs; and uses blargg's heavily-optimized S-DSP core
directly. Although there are very minor accuracy tradeoffs to increase
speed, I am confident that the performance core is still more accurate
and compatible than any other SNES emulator. The S-CPU, S-SMP, S-DSP,
SuperFX and SA-1 processors are all clock-based, just as in the accuracy
and compatibility cores; and as always, there are zero game-specific
hacks. Its compatibility is still well above 99%, running even the most
challenging games flawlessly.
If you have held off from using bsnes in the past due to its system
requirements, please give the performance core a try. I think you will
be impressed. I'm also not finished: I believe performance can be
increased even further.
I would also strongly suggest Windows Vista and Windows 7 users to take
advantage of the new XAudio2 driver by OV2. Not only does it give you
a performance boost, it also lowers latency and provides better sound by
way of skipping an API emulation layer.
Changelog:
- Split core into three profiles: accuracy, compatibility and
performance
- Accuracy core now takes advantage of variable-bitlength integers (eg
uint24_t)
- Performance core uses a new S-CPU core, written from scratch for speed
- Performance core uses blargg's snes_dsp library for S-DSP emulation
- Binaries are now compiled using GCC 4.5
- Added a workaround in the SA-1 core for a bug in GCC 4.5+
- The clock-based S-PPU renderer has greatly improved OAM emulation;
fixing Winter Gold and Megalomania rendering issues
- Corrected pseudo-hires color math in the clock-based S-PPU renderer;
fixing Super Buster Bros backgrounds
- Fixed a clamping bug in the Cx4 16-bit triangle operation [Jonas
Quinn]; fixing Mega Man X2 "gained weapon" star background effect
- Updated video renderer to properly handle mixed-resolution screens
with interlace enabled; fixing Air Strike Patrol level briefing screen
- Added mightymo's 2010-08-19 cheat code pack
- Windows port: added XAudio2 output support [OV2]
- Source: major code restructuring; virtual base classes for processor
- cores removed, build system heavily modified, etc.
Tim Allen