byuu says:
Changelog:
- emulator/random: new array function with more realistic RAM
initializations
- emulator/random: both low and high entropy register initializations
now use PCG
- gba/player: rumble will time out and disable after being left on for
500ms; fixes Pokemon Pinball issue
- ruby/input/udev: fixed rumble effects [ma\_rysia]
- sfc/system: default to low-entropy randomization of memory
The low-entropy memory randomization is modeled after one of my SHVC
2/1/3 systems. It generates striped patterns in memory, using random
inputs (biased to 0x00/0xff), and has a random chance of corrupting 1-2
bits of random values in the pool of memory (to prevent easy emulator
detection and to match observed results on hardware.)
The reasoning for using PCG on register initializations, is that I don't
believe they're going to have repeating patterns like RAM does anyway.
And register initializations are way more vital.
I want to have the new low-entropy RAM mode tested, so at least for the
next few WIPs, I've set the SNES randomization over to low-entropy.
We'll have to have a long discussion and decide whether we want official
releases to use high-entropy or low-entropy.
Also, I figured out the cause of the Prince of Persia distortion ... I
had the volume under the audio settings tab set to 200%. I didn't
realize there were SNES games that clipped so easily, given how
incredibly weak SNES audio is compared to every other sound source on my
PC. So with no entropy or low-entropy, indeed the game now sounds just
fine.
I can't actually test the udev fixes, so I guess we'll see how that goes
for Screwtape and ma\_rysia.
byuu says:
Changelog:
- higan/emulator: added new Random class with three entropy settings:
none, low, and high
- md/vdp: corrected Vcounter readout in interlace mode [MoD]
- sfc: updated core to use the new Random class; defaults to high
entropy
No entropy essentially returns 0, unless the random.bias(n) function is
called, in which case, it returns n. In this case, n is meant to be the
"logical/ideal" default value that maximizes compatibility with games.
Low entropy is a very simple entropy modeled after RAM initialization
striping patterns (eg 32 0x00s, followed by 32 0xFFs, repeating
throughout.) It doesn't "glitch" like real hardware does on rare
occasions (parts of the pattern being broken from time to time.) It also
only really returns 0 or ~0. So the entropy is indeed extremely low, and
not very useful at all for detecting bugs. Over time, we can try to
improve this, of course.
High entropy is PCG. This replaces the older, lower-entropy and more
predictable, LFSR. PCG should be more than enough for emulator
randomness, while still being quite fast.
Unfortunately, the bad news ... both no entropy and low entropy fix the
Konami logo popping sound in Prince of Persia, but all three entropy
settings still cause the distortion in-game, especially evident at the
title screen. So ... this may be a more serious bug than first
suspected.
byuu says:
Changelog:
- I caved on the `samples[] = {0.0}` thing, but I'm very unhappy about it
- if it's really invalid C++, then GCC needs to stop accepting it
in strict `-std=c++14` mode
- Emulator::Interface::Information::resettable is gone
- Emulator::Interface::reset() is gone
- FC, SFC, MD cores updated to remove soft reset behavior
- split GameBoy::Interface into GameBoyInterface,
GameBoyColorInterface
- split WonderSwan::Interface into WonderSwanInterface,
WonderSwanColorInterface
- PCE: fixed off-by-one scanline error [hex_usr]
- PCE: temporary hack to prevent crashing when VDS is set to < 2
- hiro: Cocoa: removed (u)int(#) constants; converted (u)int(#)
types to (u)int_(#)t types
- icarus: replaced usage of unique with strip instead (so we don't
mess up frameworks on macOS)
- libco: added macOS-specific section marker [Ryphecha]
So ... the major news this time is the removal of the soft reset
behavior. This is a major!! change that results in a 100KiB diff file,
and it's very prone to accidental mistakes!! If anyone is up for
testing, or even better -- looking over the code changes between v102r01
and v102r02 and looking for any issues, please do so. Ideally we'll want
to test every NES mapper type and every SNES coprocessor type by loading
said games and power cycling to make sure the games are all cleanly
resetting. It's too big of a change for me to cover there not being any
issues on my own, but this is truly critical code, so yeah ... please
help if you can.
We technically lose a bit of hardware documentation here. The soft reset
events do all kinds of interesting things in all kinds of different
chips -- or at least they do on the SNES. This is obviously not ideal.
But in the process of removing these portions of code, I found a few
mistakes I had made previously. It simplifies resetting the system state
a lot when not trying to have all the power() functions call the reset()
functions to share partial functionality.
In the future, the goal will be to come up with a way to add back in the
soft reset behavior via keyboard binding as with the Master System core.
What's going to have to happen is that the key binding will have to send
a "reset pulse" to every emulated chip, and those chips are going to
have to act independently to power() instead of reusing functionality.
We'll get there eventually, but there's many things of vastly greater
importance to work on right now, so it'll be a while. The information
isn't lost ... we'll just have to pull it out of v102 when we are ready.
Note that I left the SNES reset vector simulation code in, even though
it's not possible to trigger, for the time being.
Also ... the Super Game Boy core is still disconnected. To be honest, it
totally slipped my mind when I released v102 that it wasn't connected
again yet. This one's going to be pretty tricky to be honest. I'm
thinking about making a third GameBoy::Interface class just for SGB, and
coming up with some way of bypassing platform-> calls when in this
mode.
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:
Changelog:
- fixed FC AxROM / VRC7 regression
- BitField split to BooleanBitField/NaturalBitField (in preparation
for IntegerBitField)
- BitFieldReference removed
- GB CPU cleaned up
- GB Cartridge + Mappers cleaned up
- SFC CGRAM is now emulated as uint15[256] instead of uint[512]
- sfc/ppu/memory.cpp no longer needed; removed
- purged SFC Debugger hooks for now (some of the operator[] calls were
bypassing them anyway)
Unfortunately, for reasons that defy all semblance of logic, the CGRAM
change caused a slight speed hit. As have the last few changes. We're
now down to around 129.5fps compared to 123.fps for v099 and 134.5fps
at our peak (v099r01-r02).
I really like the style I came up with for the Game Boy mappers to settle
the purpose(ROM,RAM) vs (rom,ram)Purpose naming convention. If I ever get
around to redoing the NES mappers, that's likely the approach I'll take.
byuu says:
Changelog:
- massive cleanups and optimizations on the PPU core
- ~9% speedup over v099 official
This is pretty much it for the low-hanging fruit of speeding up higan. Any
more gains from this point will be extremely hard-fought, unfortunately.
byuu says:
Changelog:
- higan/video: added support for Emulator::Sprite
- higan/resource: a new system for accessing embedded binary files
inside the emulation cores; holds the sprites
- higan/sfc/superscope,justifier: re-enabled display of crosshairs
- higan/sfc/superscope: fixed turbo toggle (also shows different
crosshair color when in turbo mode)
- higan/sfc/ppu: always outputs at 512x480 resolution now
- causes a slight speed-hit from ~127fps to ~125fps;
- but allows high-resolution 32x32 cursors that look way better;
- also avoids the need to implement sprite scaling logic
Right now, the PPU code to always output at 480-height is a really gross
hack. Don't worry, I'll make that nicer before release.
Also, superscope.cpp and justifier.cpp are built around a 256x240
screen. But since we now have 512x480, we can make the cursor's movement
much smoother by doubling the resolution on both axes. The actual games
won't see any accuracy improvements when firing the light guns, but the
cursors will animate nicer so I think it's still worth it. I'll work on
that before the next release as well.
The current 32x32 cursors are nicer, but we can do better now with full
24-bit color. So feel free to submit alternatives. I'll probably reject
them, but you can always try :D
The sprites don't support alpha blending, just color keying (0x00000000
= transparent; anything else is 0xff......). We can revisit that later
if necessary.
The way I have it designed, the only files that do anything with
Emulator::Sprite at all are the superscope and justifier folders.
I didn't have to add any hooks anywhere else. Rendering the sprite is
a lot cleaner than the old code, too.
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:
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.
byuu says:
Changelog:
- merged AWJ's hires color blending improvements (most notably: fixes
Marvelous' text)
- created sfc/base/ to store base unit (expansion port device) emulation
- synchronized the markup of Satellaview and Sufami Turbo cartridge
slots in the board markup
- fixed "Initializing ..." typo in timing settings
If at all possible, I'd really like to have heavy testing of games that
use hires graphics to check for any regressions.
I trust AWJ's code, and all of the test ROMs I have thrown at it all
appear to work great. But better safe than sorry. Same deal for any core
changes, it's a lot better to catch it now than after v093 is released.
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