byuu says:
Changelog:
- MD/PSG: fixed 68K bus Z80 status read address location
- MS, GG, MD/PSG: channels post-decrement their counters, not
pre-decrement [Cydrak]¹
- MD/VDP: cache screen width registers once per scanline; screen
height registers once per frame
- MD/VDP: support 256-width display mode (used in Shining Force, etc)
- MD/YM2612: implemented timers²
- MD/YM2612: implemented 8-bit PCM DAC²
- 68000: TRAP instruction should index the vector location by 32 (eg
by 128 bytes), fixes Shining Force
- nall: updated hex(), octal(), binary() functions to take uintmax
instead of template<typename T> parameter³
¹: this one makes an incredible difference. Sie noticed that lots of
games set a period of 0, which would end up being a really long period
with pre-decrement. By fixing this, noise shows up in many more games,
and sounds way better in games even where it did before. You can hear
extra sound on Lunar - Sanposuru Gakuen's title screen, the noise in
Sonic The Hedgehog (Mega Drive) sounds better, etc.
²: this also really helps sound. The timers allow PSG music to play
back at the correct speed instead of playing back way too quickly. And
the PCM DAC lets you hear a lot of drum effects, as well as the
"Sega!!" sound at the start of Sonic the Hedgehog, and the infamous,
"Rise from your grave!" line from Altered Beast.
Still, most music on the Mega Drive comes from the FM channels, so
there's still not a whole lot to listen to.
I didn't implement Cydrak's $02c test register just yet. Sie wasn't 100%
certain on how the extended DAC bit worked, so I'd like to play it a
little conservative and get sound working, then I'll go back and add a
toggle or something to enable undocumented registers, that way we can
use that to detect any potential problems they might be causing.
³: unfortunately we lose support for using hex() on nall/arithmetic
types. If I have a const Pair& version of the function, then the
compiler gets confused on whether Natural<32> should use uintmax or
const Pair&, because compilers are stupid, and you can't have explicit
arguments in overloaded functions. So even though either function would
work, it just decides to error out instead >_>
This is actually really annoying, because I want hex() to be useful for
printing out nall/crypto keys and hashes directly.
But ... this change had to be made. Negative signed integers would crash
programs, and that was taking out my 68000 disassembler.
byuu says:
Changelog:
- added \~130 new PAL games to icarus (courtesy of Smarthuman
and aquaman)
- added all three Korean-localized games to icarus
- sfc: removed SuperDisc emulation (it was going nowhere)
- sfc: fixed MSU1 regression where the play/repeat flags were not
being cleared on track select
- nall: cryptography support added; will be used to sign future
databases (validation will always be optional)
- minor shims to fix compilation issues due to nall changes
The real magic is that we now have 25-30% of the PAL SNES library in
icarus!
Signing will be tricky. Obviously if I put the public key inside the
higan archive, then all anyone has to do is change that public key for
their own releases. And if you download from my site (which is now over
HTTPS), then you don't need the signing to verify integrity. I may just
put the public key on my site on my site and leave it at that, we'll
see.
byuu says:
Changelog:
- Emulator: use `(uintmax)-1 >> 1` for the units of time
- MD: implemented 13 new 68K instructions (basically all of the
remaining easy ones); 21 remain
- nall: replaced `(u)intmax_t` (64-bit) with *actual* `(u)intmax` type
(128-bit where available)
- this extends to everything: atoi, string, etc. You can even
print 128-bit variables if you like
22,552 opcodes still don't exist in the 68K map. Looking like quite a
few entries will be blank once I finish.
byuu says:
(Windows users may need to include <sys/time.h> at the top of
nall/chrono.hpp, not sure.)
Unchangelog:
- forgot to add the Scheduler clock=0 fix because I have the memory of
a goldfish
Changelog:
- new icarus database with nine additional games
- hiro(GTK,Qt) won't constantly write its settings.bml file to disk
anymore
- added latency simulator for fun (settings.bml => Input/Latency in
milliseconds)
So the last one ... I wanted to test out nall::chrono, and I was also
thinking that by polling every emulated frame, it's pretty wasteful when
you are using Fast Forward and hitting 200+fps. As I've said before,
calls to ruby::input::poll are not cheap.
So to get around this, I added a limiter so that if you called the
hardware poll function within N milliseconds, it'll return without
doing any actual work. And indeed, that increases my framerate of Zelda
3 uncapped from 133fps to 142fps. Yay. But it's not a "real" speedup,
as it only helps you when you exceed 100% speed (theoretically, you'd
need to crack 300% speed since the game itself will poll at 16ms at 100%
speed, but yet it sped up Zelda 3, so who am I to complain?)
I threw the latency value into the settings file. It should be 16,
but I set it to 5 since that was the lowest before it started negatively
impacting uncapped speeds. You're wasting your time and CPU cycles setting
it lower than 5, but if people like placebo effects it might work. Maybe
I should let it be a signed integer so people can set it to -16 and think
it's actually faster :P (I'm only joking. I took out the 96000hz audio
placebo effect as well. Not really into psychological tricks anymore.)
But yeah seriously, I didn't do this to start this discussion again for
the billionth time. Please don't go there. And please don't tell me this
WIP has higher/lower latency than before. I don't want to hear it.
The only reason I bring it up is for the fun part that is worth
discussing: put up or shut up time on how sensitive you are to
latency! You can set the value above 5 to see how games feel.
I personally can't really tell a difference until about 50. And I can't
be 100% confident it's worse until about 75. But ... when I set it to
150, games become "extra difficult" ... the higher it goes, the worse
it gets :D
For this WIP, I've left no upper limit cap. I'll probably set a cap of
something like 500ms or 1000ms for the official release. Need to balance
user error/trolling with enjoyability. I'll think about it.
[...]
Now, what I worry about is stupid people seeing it and thinking it's an
"added latency" setting, as if anyone would intentionally make things
worse by default. This is a limiter. So if 5ms have passed since the
game last polled, and that will be the case 99.9% of the time in games,
the next poll will happen just in time, immediately when the game polls
the inputs. Thus, a value below 1/<framerate>ms is not only pointless,
if you go too low it will ruin your fast forward max speeds.
I did say I didn't want to resort to placebo tricks, but I also don't
want to spark up public discussion on this again either. So it might
be best to default Input/Latency to 0ms, and internally have a max(5,
latency) wrapper around the value.
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:
- 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:
- int_t<bits> replaced with Integer<bits>
- uint_t<bits> replaced with Natural<bits>
- fixed "Synchronize Audio" menu option that broke recently
- all of sfc/performance ported to "auto function() -> return;" syntax
With this WIP, all of higan is finally ported over to the new function
declaration syntax. Thank the gods.
There's still going to be periodic disruption for diffs from porting
over signed->int, unsigned->uint, and whatever we come up with for the
new Natural<> and Integer<> classes. But the worst of it's behind us
now.
byuu says:
Changelog:
- entire GBA core ported to auto function() -> return; syntax
- fixed GBA BLDY bug that was causing flickering in a few games
- replaced nall/config usage with nall/string/markup/node
- this merges all configuration files to a unified settings.bml file
- added "Ignore Manifests" option to the advanced setting tab
- this lets you keep a manifest.bml for an older version of higan; if
you want to do regression testing
Be sure to remap your controller/hotkey inputs, and for SNES, choose
"Gamepad" from "Controller Port 1" in the system menu. Otherwise you
won't get any input. No need to blow away your old config files, unless
you want to.
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:
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:
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:
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:
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.
Tim Allen