(r02 was not posted to the WIP thread)
byuu says:
Internally, all color is processed with 30-bit precision. The filters
also operate at 30-bit depth.
There's a new config file setting, video.depth, which defaults to 24.
This causes the final output to downsample to 24-bit, as most will
require.
If you set it to 30-bit, the downsampling will not occur, and bsnes will
ask ruby for a 30-bit surface. If you don't have one available, you're
going to get bad colors. Or maybe even a crash with OpenGL.
I don't yet have detection code to make sure you have an appropriate
visual in place.
30-bit mode will really only work if you are running Linux, running Xorg
at Depth 30, use the OpenGL or XShm driver, have an nVidia Quadro or AMD
FireGL card with the official drivers, and have a 30-bit capable
monitor.
Lots of planning and work for very little gain here, but it's nice that
it's finally finished.
Oh, I had to change the contrast/brightness formulas a tiny bit, but
they still work and look nice.
byuu says:
Added frequency, latency, resampler selection to the audio settings
panel (I really only wanted it there for resampler selection ... having
three options matches the driver selection style though, so whatever.)
The linear/hermite sampler will double the framerate when running Game
Boy games, and sounds the same. Same framerate and sound quality on
SNES. But it will cause buzzing in many NES titles.
Also re-added the composition { never, fullscreen, always } modes.
I think that option is clutter, but it's just impossible to get good
audio+video on Windows 7 without it ...
Lastly, HQ2x was ported over, but not very well. I just convert source
pixels from RGB888 to RGB555, and output pixels in the opposite
direction.
Need someone good to port the diff() and blend functions over to RGB888
in a way that's not terribly slow.
byuu says:
This release adds preliminary Nintendo / Famicom emulation. It's only
a week or two old, so a lot of work still needs to be done before it can
compete with the most popular NES emulators.
It's important to clarify: bsnes is primarily an SNES emulator. That
will always be its forte and my core focus. I have added Game Boy
support previously for Super Game Boy emulation, and I've added NES
support mostly for something fun to work on to break up the monotony of
working on one system for seven years now. Obviously, I'd like the
emulation to be accurate and highly compatible, but I simply cannot
afford to invest the same amount of time and money into any other
systems.
Still, either way the NES and GB emulation serve as fun side-diversions,
and allow for a unified emulator interface with all of bsnes' unique
features applied to all systems. My personal favorite feature is
mightymo's extended built-in cheat code database that now also includes
NES and Game Boy codes. And it even works in Super Game Boy mode now,
too!
I'm also not worried about speed at all: so long as NES/GB are faster
than SNES/compatibility, it's fine by me. Note that due to the NES audio
running at 1.78MHz, and Game Boy audio at 4MHz stereo, a more
sophisticated audio resampler was needed: Ryphecha (Mednafen author) has
graciously written a first-rate resampler: it is a band-limited
Kaiser-windowed polyphase sinc resampler. It is combined with two
highpass filters to remove DC bias. The filter itself is SSE optimized,
but even still, approximately 50% of CPU usage for NES/GB emulation goes
to the audio filtering alone. However, you now have the best sound
possible for NES and Game Boy emulation as a result.
The GUI has also been heavily re-structured to accommodate multiple
emulators from the same interface. As such, it's quite likely a few bugs
are still lurking here and there. Please report them and I'll iron them
out for the next release.
Changelog:
- license is now GPLv3
- re-structured GUI as a multi-system emulator
- added NES emulation [byuu, Ryphecha]
- added NES ICs: MMC1, MMC2, MMC3, MMC4, MMC5, VRC4, VRC6+audio, VRC7,
Sunsoft-5B+audio, Bandai-LZ93D50
- added NES boards: AxROM, BNROM, CNROM, ExROM, FxROM, GxROM, NROM,
PxROM, SxROM, TxROM, UxROM
- Game Boy emulation improvements [Jonas Quinn]
- SNES core outputs full 19-bit color (4-bit luma included) for more
accurate color reproduction (~5% speed hit)
- audio resampler is now a band-limited polyphase resampler [Ryphecha]
- cheat database includes NES+GB codes as well [mightymo, tukuyomi]
- lots of other changes
Tim Allen