byuu says:
Changelog:
- nall/vfs work 100% completed; even SGB games load now
- emulation cores now call load() for the base cartridges as well
- updated port/device handling; portmask is gone; device ID bug should
be resolved now
- SNES controller port 1 multitap option was removed
- added support for 128KiB SNES PPU VRAM (for now, edit sfc/ppu/ppu.hpp
VRAM::size=0x10000; to enable)
Overall, nall/vfs was a huge success!! We've substantially reduced
the amount of boilerplate code everywhere, while still allowing (even
easier than before) support for RAM-based game loading/saving. All of
nall/stream is dead and buried.
I am considering removing Emulator::Interface::Medium::id and/or
bootable flag. Or at least, doing something different with it. The
values for the non-bootable GB/BS/ST entries duplicate the ID that is
supposed to be unique. They are for GB/GBC and WS/WSC. Maybe I'll use
this as the hardware revision selection ID, and then gut non-bootable
options. There's really no reason for that to be there. I think at one
point I was using it to generate library tabs for non-bootable systems,
but we don't do that anymore anyway.
Emulator::Interface::load() may not need the required flag anymore ... it
doesn't really do anything right now anyway.
I have a few reasons for having the cores load the base cartridge. Most
importantly, it is going to enable a special mode for the WonderSwan /
WonderSwan Color in the future. If we ever get the IPLROMs dumped ... it's
possible to boot these systems with no games inserted to set user profile
information and such. There are also other systems that may accept being
booted without a cartridge. To reach this state, you would load a game and
then cancel the load dialog. Right now, this results in games not loading.
The second reason is this prevents nasty crashes when loading fails. So
if you're missing a required manifest, the emulator won't die a violent
death anymore. It's able to back out at any point.
The third reason is consistency: loading the base cartridge works the
same as the slot cartridges.
The fourth reason is Emulator::Interface::open(uint pathID)
values. Before, the GB, SB, GBC modes were IDs 1,2,3 respectively. This
complicated things because you had to pass the correct ID. But now
instead, Emulator::Interface::load() returns maybe<uint> that is nothing
when no game is selected, and a pathID for a valid game. And now open()
can take this ID to access this game's folder contents.
The downside, which is temporary, is that command-line loading is
currently broken. But I do intend on restoring it. In fact, I want to do
better than before and allow multi-cart booting from the command-line by
specifying the base cartridge and then slot cartridges. The idea should
be pretty simple: keep a queue of pending filenames that we fill from
the command-line and/or drag-and-drop operations on the main window,
and then empty out the queue or prompt for load dialogs from the UI
when booting a system. This also might be a bit more unorthodox compared
to the traditional emulator design of "loadGame(filename)", but ... oh
well. It's easy enough still.
The port/device changes are fun. We simplified things quite a bit. The
portmask stuff is gone entirely. While ports and devices keep IDs,
this is really just sugar-coating so UIs can use for(auto& port :
emulator->ports) and access port.id; rather than having to use for(auto
n : range(emulator->ports)) { auto& port = emulator->ports[n]; ... };
but they should otherwise generally be identical to the order they appear
in their respective ranges. Still, don't rely on that.
Input::id is gone. There was no point since we also got rid of the nasty
Input::order vector. Since I was in here, I went ahead and caved on the
pedantics and renamed Input::guid to Input::userData.
I removed the SNES controller port 1 multitap option. Basically, the only
game that uses this is N-warp Daisakusen and, no offense to d4s, it's
not really a good game anyway. It's just a quick demo to show 8-players
on the SNES. But in the UI, all it does is confuse people into wasting
time mapping a controller they're never going to use, and they're going
to wonder which port to use. If more compelling use cases for 8-players
comes about, we can reconsider this. I left all the code to support this
in place, so all you have to do is uncomment one line to enable it again.
We now have dsnes emulation! :D
If you change PPU::VRAM::size to 0x10000 (words), then you should now
have 128KiB of VRAM. Even better, it serializes the used-VRAM size,
so your save states shouldn't crash on you if you swap between the two
(though if you try this, you're nuts.)
Note that this option does break commercial software. Yoshi's Island in
particular. This game is setting A15 on some PPU register writes, but
not on others. The end result of this is things break horribly in-game.
Also, this option is causing a very tiny speed hit for obvious reasons
with the variable masking value (I'm even using size-1 for now.) Given
how niche this is, I may just leave it a compile-time constant to avoid
the overhead cost. Otherwise, if we keep the option, then it'll go into
Super Famicom.sys/manifest.bml ... I'll flesh that out in the near-future.
----
Finally, some fun for my OCD ... my monitor suddenly cut out on me
in the middle of working on this WIP, about six hours in of non-stop
work. Had to hit a bunch of ctrl+alt+fN commands (among other things)
and trying to log in headless on another TTY to do issue commands,
trying to recover the display. Finally power cycled the monitor and it
came back up. So all my typing ended up going to who knows where.
Usually this sort of thing terrifies me enough that I scrap a WIP and
start over to ensure I didn't screw anything up during the crashed screen
when hitting keys randomly.
Obviously, everything compiles and appears to work fine. And I know
it's extremely paranoid, but OCD isn't logical, so ... I'm going
to go over every line of the 100KiB r07->r08 diff looking for any
corruption/errors/whatever.
----
Review finished.
r08 diff review notes:
- fc/controller/gamepad/gamepad.cpp:
use uint device = ID::Device::Gamepad; not id = ...;
- gb/cartridge/cartridge.hpp:
remove redundant uint _pathID; (in Information::pathID already)
- gb/cartridge/cartridge.hpp:
pull sha256 inside Information
- sfc/cartridge/load/cpp:
add " - Slot (A,B)" to interface->load("Sufami Turbo"); to be more
descriptive
- sfc/controller/gamepad/gamepad.cpp:
use uint device = ID::Device::Gamepad; not id = ...;
- sfc/interface/interface.cpp:
remove n variable from the Multitap device input generation loop
(now unused)
- sfc/interface/interface.hpp:
put struct Port above struct Device like the other classes
- ui-tomoko:
cheats.bml is reading from/writing to mediumPaths(0) [system folder
instead of game folder]
- ui-tomoko:
instead of mediumPaths(1) - call emulator->metadataPathID() or something
like that
byuu says:
Changelog:
- (hopefully) fixed BS Memory and Sufami Turbo slot loading
- ported GB, GBA, WS cores to use nall/vfs
- completely removed loadRequest, saveRequest functionality from
Emulator::Interface and ui-tomoko
- loadRequest(folder) is now load(folder)
- save states now use a shared Emulator::SerializerVersion string
- whenever this is bumped, all older states will break; but this makes
bumping state versions way easier
- also, the version string makes it a lot easier to identify
compatibility windows for save states
- SNES PPU now uses uint16 vram[32768] for memory accesses [hex_usr]
NOTE: Super Game Boy loading is currently broken, and I'm not entirely
sure how to fix it :/
The file loading handoff was -really- complicated, and so I'm kind of
at a loss ... so for now, don't try it.
Everything else should theoretically work, so please report any bugs
you find.
So, this is pretty much it. I'd be very curious to hear feedback from
people who objected to the old nall/stream design, whether they are
happy with the new file loading system or think it could use further
improvements.
The 16-bit VRAM turned out to be a wash on performance (roughly the same
as before. 1fps slower on Zelda 3, 1fps faster on Yoshi's Island.) The
main reason for this was because Yoshi's Island was breaking horribly
until I changed the vramRead, vramWrite functions to take uint15 instead
of uint16.
I suspect the issue is we're using uint16s in some areas now that need
to be uint15, and this game is setting the VRAM address to 0x8000+,
causing us to go out of bounds on memory accesses.
But ... I want to go ahead and do something cute for fun, and just because
we can ... and this new interface is so incredibly perfect for it!! I
want to support an SNES unit with 128KiB of VRAM. Not out of the box,
but as a fun little tweakable thing. The SNES was clearly designed to
support that, they just didn't use big enough VRAM chips, and left one
of the lines disconnected. So ... let's connect it anyway!
In the end, if we design it right, the only code difference should be
one area where we mask by 15-bits instead of by 16-bits.
byuu says:
Got it. Wow, that didn't hurt nearly as much as I thought it was going
to.
Dropped from 127.5fps to 123.5fps to use Natural/Integer for
(u)int(8,16,32,64).
That's totally worth the cost.
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:
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:
higan changelog:
- generates title displayed in emulator window by asking the core
- core builds title solely from "information/title" ... if it's not
there, you don't get a title at all
- sub-system load menu is gone ... since there are multiple revisions of
the SGB, this never really worked well anyway
- to load an SGB, BS-X or ST cartridge, load the base cartridge first
- "File->Load Game" moved to "Load->Import Game" ... may cause a bit of
confusion to new users, but I don't like having a single-item menu,
we'll just have to explain it to new users
- browser window redone to look like ananke
- home button here goes to ~/Emulation rather than just ~ like ananke,
since this is the home of game folders
- game folder icon is now the executable icon for the Tango theme
(orange diamond), meant to represent a complete game rather than
a game file or archive
ananke changelog:
- outputs GBC games to "Game Boy Color/" instead of "Game Boy/"
- adds the file basename to "information/title"
Known issues:
- using ananke to load a GB game trips the Super Famicom SGB mode and
fails (need to make the full-path auto-detection ignore non-bootable
systems)
- need to dump and test some BS-X media before releasing
- ananke lacks BS-X Satellaview cartridge support
- v092 isn't going to let you retarget the ananke/higan game folder path
of ~/Emulation, you will have to wait for a future version if that
bothers you so greatly
[Later, after the v092 release, byuu posted this additional changelog:
- kill laevateinn
- add title()
- add bootable, remove load
- combine file, library
- combine [][][] paths
- fix SFC subtype handling XML->BML
- update file browser to use buttons
- update file browser keyboard handling
- update system XML->BML
- fix sufami turbo hashing
- remove Cartridge::manifest
]
[r07 and r08 were not posted to the WIP thread. -Ed.]
byuu says:
I'd appreciate it if you guys wouldn't mind testing out the database
functionality.
Save this file as database.bml (remove the date) inside
~/.config/higan/Super Famicom.sfc/ or %APPDATA%/higan/Super Famicom.sfc/
http://byuu.org/snes/database/database_2012-10-21.bml
Now load any of the 20 games in the database from the file dialog. They
need to be named *.sfc, have no copier header, and have firmware
appended (for Mario Kart only so far.)
If anyone actually does test it, please let me know how it goes for you
and what you think. Note that future versions of higan will have the
database.bml file included with the release.
[No prior releases were posted to the WIP thread. -Ed.]
byuu says:
Super Famicom mapping system has been reworked as discussed with the
mask= changes. offset becomes base, mode is gone. Also added support for
comma-separated fields in the address fields, to reduce the number of
map lines needed.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<cartridge region="NTSC">
<superfx revision="2">
<rom name="program.rom" size="0x200000"/>
<ram name="save.rwm" size="0x8000"/>
<map id="io" address="00-3f,80-bf:3000-32ff"/>
<map id="rom" address="00-3f:8000-ffff" mask="0x8000"/>
<map id="rom" address="40-5f:0000-ffff"/>
<map id="ram" address="00-3f,80-bf:6000-7fff" size="0x2000"/>
<map id="ram" address="70-71:0000-ffff"/>
</superfx>
</cartridge>
Or in BML:
cartridge region=NTSC
superfx revision=2
rom name=program.rom size=0x200000
ram name=save.rwm size=0x8000
map id=io address=00-3f,80-bf:3000-32ff
map id=rom address=00-3f:8000-ffff mask=0x8000
map id=rom address=40-5f:0000-ffff
map id=ram address=00-3f,80-bf:6000-7fff size=0x2000
map id=ram address=70-71:0000-ffff
As a result of the changes, old mappings will no longer work. The above
XML example will run Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island. Otherwise,
you'll have to write your own.
All that's left now is to work some sort of database mapping system in,
so I can start dumping carts en masse.
The NES changes that FitzRoy asked for are mostly in as well.
Also, part of the reason I haven't released a WIP ... but fuck it, I'm
not going to wait forever to post a new WIP.
I've added a skeleton driver to emulate Campus Challenge '92 and
Powerfest '94. There's no actual emulation, except for the stuff I can
glean from looking at the pictures of the board. It has a DSP-1 (so
SR/DR registers), four ROMs that map in and out, RAM, etc.
I've also added preliminary mapping to upload high scores to a website,
but obviously I need the ROMs first.
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