Commit Graph

14 Commits

Author SHA1 Message Date
Tim Allen 8af3e4a6e2 Update to v102r22 release.
byuu says:

Changelog:

  - higan: Emulator::Interface::videoSize() renamed to videoResolution()
  - higan: Emulator::Interface::rtcsync() renamed to rtcSynchronize()
  - higan: added video display rotation support to Video
  - GBA: substantially improved audio mixing
      - fixed bug with FIFO 50%/100% volume setting
      - now properly using SOUNDBIAS amplitude to control output
        frequencies
      - reduced quantization noise
      - corrected relative volumes between PSG and FIFO channels
      - both PSG and FIFO values cached based on amplitude; resulting in
        cleaner PCM samples
      - treating PSG volume=3 as 200% volume instead of 0% volume now
        (unverified: to match mGBA)
  - GBA: properly initialize ALL CPU state; including the vital
    prefetch.wait=1 (fixes Classic NES series games)
  - GBA: added video rotation with automatic key translation support
  - PCE: reduced output resolution scalar from 285x242 to 285x240
      - the extra two scanlines won't be visible on most TVs; and they
        make all other cores look worse
      - this is because all other cores output at 240p or less; so they
        were all receiving black bars in windowed mode
  - tomoko: added "Rotate Display" hotkey setting
  - tomoko: changed hotkey multi-key logic to OR instead of AND
      - left support for flipping it back inside the core; for those so
        inclined; by uncommenting one line in input.hpp
  - tomoko: when choosing Settings→Configuration, it will
    automatically select the currently loaded system
      - for instance, if you're playing a Game Gear game, it'll take you
        to the Game Gear input settings
      - if no games are loaded, it will take you to the hotkeys panel
        instead
  - WS(C): merged "Hardware-Vertical", "Hardware-Horizontal" controls
    into combined "Hardware"
  - WS(C): converted rotation support from being inside the core to
    using Emulator::Video
      - this lets WS(C) video content scale larger now that it's not
        bounded by a 224x224 square box
  - WS(C): added automatic key rotation support
  - WS(C): removed emulator "Rotate" key (use the general hotkey
    instead; I recommend F8 for this)
  - nall: added serializer support for nall::Boolean (boolean) types
      - although I will probably prefer the usage of uint1 in most cases
2017-06-09 00:08:02 +10:00
Tim Allen 0bf2c9d4e1 Update to v102r13 release.
byuu says:

Changelog:

  - removed Emulator::Interface::videoFrequency(), audioFrequency()¹
  - (MS,GG,MD)/PSG: removed inversion on noise channel LFSR update
    [mic_]
  - MD/PSG: lowered volume to match YM2612 volume
  - MD/YM2612: added Cydrak's emulation of FM channels and LFO²

¹: These were no longer used by the UI. The video frequency is
adaptive on many systems. And the audio frequency is meaningless due to
Emulator::Audio always outputting a consistent frequency specified by
the UI. Plus, take the Genesis where there's two sound chips running at
different frequencies. So, these had to go.

²: Due to some lurking bugs, the audio is completely broken
unfortunately. Will need to be debugged :(

First pass looking for any typos didn't yield any obvious results.
2017-03-02 07:40:55 +11:00
Tim Allen 68f04c3bb8 Update to v102r10 release.
byuu says:

Changelog:

  - removed Emulator::Interface::Capabilities¹
  - MS: improved the PSG emulation a bit
  - MS: added cheat code support
  - MS: added save state support²
  - MD: emulated the PSG³

¹: there's really no point to it anymore. I intend to add cheat codes
to the GBA core, as well as both cheat codes and save states to the Mega
Drive core. I no longer intend to emulate any new systems, so these
values will always be true. Further, the GUI doesn't respond to these
values to disable those features anymore ever since the hiro rewrite, so
they're double useless.

²: right now, the Z80 core is using a pointer for HL-\>(IX,IY)
overrides. But I can't reliably serialize pointers, so I need to convert
the Z80 core to use an integer here. The save states still appear to
work fine, but there's the potential for an instruction to execute
incorrectly if you're incredibly unlucky, so this needs to be fixed as
soon as possible. Further, I still need a way to serialize
array<T, Size> objects, and I should also add nall::Boolean
serialization support.

³: I don't have a system in place to share identical sound chips. But
this chip is so incredibly simple that it's not really much trouble to
duplicate it. Further, I can strip out the stereo sound support code
from the Game Gear portion, so it's even tinier.

Note that the Mega Drive only just barely uses the PSG. Not at all in
Altered Beast, and only for a tiny part of the BGM music on Sonic 1,
plus his jump sound effect.
2017-02-23 08:25:01 +11:00
Tim Allen d76c0c7e82 Update to v102r08 release.
byuu says:

Changelog:

  - PCE: restructured VCE, VDCs to run one scanline at a time
  - PCE: bound VDCs to 1365x262 timing (in order to decouple the VDCs
    from the VCE)
  - PCE: the two changes above allow save states to function; also
    grants a minor speed boost
  - PCE: added cheat code support (uses 21-bit bus addressing; compare
    byte will be useful here)
  - 68K: fixed `mov *,ccr` to read two bytes instead of one [Cydrak]
  - Z80: emulated /BUSREQ, /BUSACK; allows 68K to suspend the Z80
    [Cydrak]
  - MD: emulated the Z80 executing instructions [Cydrak]
  - MD: emulated Z80 interrupts (triggered during each Vblank period)
    [Cydrak]
  - MD: emulated Z80 memory map [Cydrak]
  - MD: added stubs for PSG, YM2612 accesses [Cydrak]
  - MD: improved bus emulation [Cydrak]

The PCE core is pretty much ready to go. The only major feature missing
is FM modulation.

The Mega Drive improvements let us start to see the splash screens for
Langrisser II, Shining Force, Shining in the Darkness. I was hoping I
could get them in-game, but no such luck. My Z80 implementation is
probably flawed in some way ... now that I think about it, I believe I
missed the BusAPU::reset() check for having been granted access to the
Z80 first. But I doubt that's the problem.

Next step is to implement Cydrak's PSG core into the Master System
emulator. Once that's in, I'm going to add save states and cheat code
support to the Master System core.

Next, I'll add the PSG core into the Mega Drive. Then I'll add the
'easy' PCM part of the YM2612. Then the rest of the beastly YM2612 core.
Then finally, cap things off with save state and cheat code support.

Should be nearing a new release at that point.
2017-02-20 19:13:10 +11:00
Tim Allen 7c9b78b7bb Update to v102r07 release.
byuu says:

Changelog:

  - PCE: emulated PSG volume controls (vastly enhances audio quality)
  - PCE: emulated PSG noise as a square wave (somewhat enhances audio
    quality)
  - PCE: added save state support (currently broken and deadlocks the
    emulator though)

Thankfully, MAME had some rather easy to read code on how the volume
adjustment works, which they apparently ripped out of expired patents.
Hooray!

The two remaining sound issues are:

1. the random number generator for the noise channel is definitely not
hardware accurate. But it won't affect the sound quality at all. You'd
only be able to tell the difference by looking at hex bytes of a stream
rip.
2. I have no clue how to emulate the LFO (frequency modulation). A comment
in MAME's code (they also don't emulate it) advises that they aren't
aware of any games that even use it. But I'm there has to be at least one?

Given LFO not being used, and the RNG not really mattering all that much
... the sound's pretty close to perfect now.
2017-02-13 10:09:03 +11:00
Tim Allen bf70044edc Update to v102r05 release.
byuu says:

Changelog:

  - higan: added Makefile option,
    `build=(release|debug|instrument|optimize)` , defaults to release
  - PCE: added preliminary PSG (sound) emulation

The Makefile thing is just to make it easier to build debug releases
without having to hand-edit the Makefile. Just say "gmake build=debug"
and you'll get -g, otherwise you'll get -O3 -s. I'll probably start
adding these build= blocks to my other projects. Or maybe I'll put it
into nall, in which case release will need a different name ... a stable
-01, and a fast -03 mode. I also want to add a mode to generate
profiling information (via gprof.)

Unfortunately, the existing documentation on the PCE's PSG is as
barebones as humanly possible.

Right now, I support waveform mode, direct D/A mode, and noise
generation mode. However for noise, I'm not actually generating a proper
square wave, and I don't know the PRNG algorithm used for choosing the
random values. So for now, I'm just feeding in nall::random() values to
it.

I'm also not sure about the noise mode's frequency counter. Magic Kit is
implying it's 64*~frequency, but that results in an 11-bit period. It
seems only logical that we'd want a 12-bit period. So my guess is that
it's actually 12-bit, and halfway through it alternates between two
randomly generated values every 32 samples, and the two values are
generated every time the period hits zero.

Next up, it's not clear when the period counter is reloaded, either for
the waveform or the noise mode. So for now, when enabling the channel, I
reload the waveform period. And when enabling noise mode, I reload the
noise period. I don't know if you need to do it when writing to the
frequency registers or not.

Next, it's not clear whether the period is a decrement-and-compare, or a
compare-and-decrement, and whether we reload with frequency,
frequency-1, or frequency+1. There's this cryptic note in
pcetext.txt:

> The PSG channel frequency is 12 bits, $001 is the highest frequency,
> $FFF is the next to lowest frequency, and $000 is the lowest frequency.

As best I can tell, he's trying to say that it's decrement-and-compare.

Whatever the case, there's periodic popping noises every few seconds. I
thought it might be because this is the first system with a fractional
sampling rate (~3.57MHz), but rounding the frequency to a whole number
doesn't help at all, and emulator/audio should be able to handle
fractional resampling rates anyway.

The popping noises could also be due to PSG writes being cycle-timed,
and my HuC6280 cycle timings not being very great yet. The PSG has no
kind of interrupts, so I think careful timing is the only way to do
certain things, especially D/A mode.

Next up, I really don't understand the frequency modulation mode at all.
I don't have any idea whatsoever how to support that. It also has a
frequency value that we'll need to understand how the period works and
reloads. Basic idea though is the channel 1 output turns into a value to
modulate channel 0's frequency by, and channel 1's output gets muted.

Next up, I don't know how the volume controls work at all. There's a
master volume left+right, per-channel volume left+right, and per-channel
overall volume. The documentation lists their effects in terms of
decibels. I have no fucking clue how to turn decibels into multiply-by
values. Let alone how to stack THREE levels of audio volume controls
>_>

Next, it looks like the output is always 5-bit unsigned per-channel, but
there's also all the volume adjustments. So I don't know the final
bit-depth of the final output to normalize the value into a signed
floating point value between -1.0 and +1.0. So for now, half the
potential speaker range (anything below zero) isn't used in the
generated output.

As bad as all this sounds, and it is indeed bad ... the audio's about
~75% correct, so you can definitely play games like this, it just won't
be all that much fun.
2017-02-10 08:56:59 +11:00
Tim Allen ee7662a8be Update to v102r04 release.
byuu says:

Changelog:
  - Super Game Boy support is functional once again
  - new GameBoy::SuperGameBoyInterface class
  - system.(dmg,cgb,sgb) is now Model::(Super)GameBoy(Color) ala the PC
    Engine
  - merged WonderSwanInterface, WonderSwanColorInterface shared
    functions to WonderSwan::Interface
  - merged GameBoyInterface, GameBoyColorInterface shared functions to
    GameBoy::Interface
  - Interface::unload() now calls Interface::save() for Master System,
    Game Gear, Mega Drive, PC Engine, SuperGrafx
  - PCE: emulated PCE-CD backup RAM; stored per-game as save.ram (2KiB
    file)
      - this means you can now save your progress in games like Neutopia
      - the PCE-CD I/O registers like BRAM write protect are not
        emulated yet
  - PCE: IRQ sources now hold the IRQ line state, instead of the CPU
    holding it
      - this fixes most SuperGrafx games, which were fighting over the
        VDC IRQ line previously
  - PCE: CPU I/O $14xx should return the pending IRQ bits even if IRQs
    are disabled
  - PCE: VCE and the VDCs now synchronize to each other; fixes pixel
    widths in all games
  - PCE: greatly increased the accuracy of the VPC priority selection
    code (windows may be buggy still)
  - HuC6280: PLA, PLX, PLY should set Z, N flags; fixes many game bugs
    [Jonas Quinn]

The big thing I wanted to do was enslave the VDC(s) to the VCE. But
unfortunately, I forgot about the asynchronous DMA channels that each
VDC supports, so this isn't going to be possible I'm afraid.

In the most demanding case, Daimakaimura in-game, we're looking at 85fps
on my Xeon E3 1276v3. So ... not great, and we don't even have sound
connected yet.

We are going to have to profile and optimize this code once sound
emulation and save states are in.

Basically, think of it like this: the VCE, VDC0, and VDC1 all have the
same overhead, scheduling wise (which is the bulk of the performance
loss) as the dot-renderer for the SNES core. So it's like there's three
bsnes-accuracy PPU threads running just for video.

-----

Oh, just a fair warning ... the hooks for the SGB are a work in
progress.

If anyone is working on higan or a fork and want to do something similar
to it, don't use it as a template, at least not yet.

Right now, higan looks like this:

  - Emulator::Video handles the platform→videoRefresh calls
  - Emulator::Audio handles the platform→audioSample calls
  - each core hard-codes the platform→inputPoll, inputRumble calls
  - each core hard-codes calls to path, open, load to process files
  - dipSettings and notify are specialty hacks, neither are even hooked
    up right now to anything

With the SGB, it's an emulation core inside an emulation core, so
ideally you want to hook all of those functions. Emulator::Video and
Emulator::Audio aren't really abstractions over that, as the GB core
calls them and we have to special case not calling them in SGB mode.

The path, open, load can be implemented without hooks, thanks to the UI
only using one instance of Emulator::Platform for all cores. All we have
to do is override the folder path ID for the "Game Boy.sys" folder, so
that it picks "Super Game Boy.sfc/" and loads its boot ROM instead.
That's just a simple argument to GameBoy::System::load() and we're done.

dipSettings, notify and inputRumble don't matter. But we do also have to
hook inputPoll as well.

The nice idea would be for SuperFamicom::ICD2 to inherit from
Emulator::Platform and provide the desired functions that we need to
overload. After that, we'd just need the GB core to keep an abstraction
over the global Emulator::platform\* handle, to select between the UI
version and the SFC::ICD2 version.

However ... that doesn't work because of Emulator::Video and
Emulator::Audio. They would also have to gain an abstraction over
Emulator::platform\*, and even worse ... you'd have to constantly swap
between the two so that the SFC core uses the UI, and the GB core uses
the ICD2.

And so, for right now, I'm checking Model::SuperGameBoy() -> bool
everywhere, and choosing between the UI and ICD2 targets that way. And
as such, the ICD2 doesn't really need Emulator::Platform inheritance,
although it certainly could do that and just use the functions it needs.

But the SGB is even weirder, because we need additional new signals
beyond just Emulator::Platform, like joypWrite(), etc.

I'd also like to work on the Emulator::Stream for the SGB core. I don't
see why we can't have the GB core create its own stream, and let the
ICD2 just use that instead. We just have to be careful about the ICD2's
CPU soft reset function, to make sure the GB core's Stream object
remains valid. What I think that needs is a way to release an
Emulator::Stream individually, rather than calling
Emulator::Audio::reset() to do it. They are shared\_pointer objects, so
I think if I added a destructor function to remove it from
Emulator::Audio::streams, then that should work.
2017-01-26 12:06:06 +11:00
Tim Allen 186f008574 Update to v102r03 release.
byuu says:

Changelog:

  - PCE: split VCE from VDC
  - HuC6280: changed bus from (uint21 addr) to (uint8 bank, uint13 addr)
  - added SuperGrafx emulation (adds secondary VDC, plus new VPC)

The VDC now has no concept of the actual display raster timing, and
instead is driven by Vpulse (start of frame) and Hpulse (start of
scanline) signals from the VCE. One still can't render the start of the
next scanline onto the current scanline through overly aggressive
timings, but it shouldn't be too much more difficult to allow that to
occur now. This process incurs quite a major speed hit, so low-end
systems with Atom CPUs can't run things at 60fps anymore.

The timing needs a lot of work. The pixels end up very jagged if the VCE
doesn't output batches of 2-4 pixels at a time. But this should not be a
requirement at all, so I'm not sure what's going wrong there.

Yo, Bro and the 512-width mode of TV Sports Basketball is now broken as
a result of these changes, and I'm not sure why.

To load SuperGrafx games, you're going to have to change the .pce
extensions to .sg or .sgx. Or you can manually move the games from the
PC Engine folder to the SuperGrafx folder and change the game folder
extensions. I have no way to tell the games apart. Mednafen uses CRC32
comparisons, and I may consider that since there's only five games, but
I'm not sure yet.

The only SuperGrafx game that's playable right now is Aldynes. And the
priorities are all screwed up. I don't understand how the windows or the
priorities work at all from sgxtech.txt, so ... yeah. It's pretty
broken, but it's a start.

I could really use some help with this, as I'm very lost right now with
rendering :/

-----

Note that the SuperGrafx is technically its own system, it's not an
add-on.

As such, I'm giving it a separate .sys folder, and a separate library.

There's debate over how to name this thing. "SuperGrafx" appears more
popular than "Super Grafx". And you might also call it the "PC Engine
SuperGrafx", but I decided to leave off the prefix so it appears more
distinct.
2017-01-24 08:18:54 +11:00
Tim Allen bdc100e123 Update to v102r02 release.
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.
2017-01-23 08:04:26 +11:00
Tim Allen c40e9754bc Update to v102r01 release.
byuu says:

Changelog:

  - MS, MD, PCE: remove controllers from scheduler in destructor
    [hex_usr]
  - PCE: no controller should return all bits set (still causing errant
    key presses when swapping gamepads)
  - PCE: emulate MDR for hardware I/O $0800-$17ff
  - PCE: change video resolution to 1140x242
  - PCE: added tertiary background Vscroll register (secondary cache)
  - PCE: create classes out of VDC VRAM, SATB, CRAM for cleaner access
    and I/O registers
  - PCE: high bits of CRAM read should be set
  - PCE: partially emulated VCE display registers: color frequency, HDS,
    HDW, VDS, VDW
  - PCE: 32-width sprites now split to two 16-width sprites to handle
    overflow properly
  - PCE: hopefully emulated sprite zero hit correctly (it's not well
    documented, and not often used)
  - PCE: trigger line coincidence interrupts during the previous
    scanline's Hblank period
  - tomoko: raise viewport from 320x240 to 326x242 to accommodate PC
    Engine's max resolution
  - nall: workaround for Clang compilation bug that can't figure out
    that a char is an integral data type
2017-01-22 11:33:36 +11:00
Tim Allen b03563426f Update to v101r35 release.
byuu says:

Changelog:
  - PCE: added 384KB HuCard ROM mirroring mode
  - PCE: corrected D-pad polling order
  - PCE: corrected palette color ordering (GRB, not RGB -- yes,
    seriously)
  - PCE: corrected SATB DMA -- should write to SATB, not to VRAM
  - PCE: broke out Background, Sprite VDC settings to separate
    subclasses
  - PCE: emulated VDC backgrounds
  - PCE: emulated VDC sprites
  - PCE: emulated VDC sprite overflow, collision interrupts
  - HuC6280: fixed disassembler output for STi instructions
  - HuC6280: added missing LastCycle check to interrupt()
  - HuC6280: fixed BIT, CMP, CPX, CPY, TRB, TSB, TST flag testing and
    result
  - HuC6280: added extra cycle delays to the block move instructions
  - HuC6280: fixed ordering for flag set/clear instructions (happens
    after LastCycle check)
  - HuC6280: removed extra cycle from immediate instructions
  - HuC6280: fixed indirectLoad, indirectYStore absolute addressing
  - HuC6280: fixed BBR, BBS zeropage value testing
  - HuC6280: fixed stack push/pull direction

Neutopia looks okay until the main title screen, then there's some
gibberish on the bottom. The game also locks up with some gibberish once
you actually start a new game. So, still not playable just yet =(
2017-01-19 19:38:57 +11:00
Tim Allen f500426158 Update to v101r34 release.
byuu says:

Changelog:

  - PCE: emulated gamepad polling
  - PCE: emulated CPU interrupt sources
  - PCE: emulated timer
  - PCE: smarter emulation of ST0,ST1,ST2 instructions
  - PCE: better structuring of CPU, VDP IO registers
  - PCE: connected palette generation to the interface
  - PCE: emulated basic VDC timing
  - PCE: emulated VDC Vblank, Coincidence, and DMA completion IRQs
  - PCE: emulated VRAM, SATB DMA transfers
  - PCE: emulated VDC I/O registers

Everything I've implemented today likely has lots of bugs, and is
untested for obvious reasons.

So basically, after I fix many horrendous bugs, it should now be
possible to implement the VDC and start getting graphical output.
2017-01-17 08:02:56 +11:00
Tim Allen bf90bdfcc8 Update to v101r31 release.
byuu says:

Changelog:

  - converted Emulator::Interface::Bind to Emulator::Platform
  - temporarily disabled SGB hooks
  - SMS: emulated Game Gear palette (latching word-write behavior not
    implemented yet)
  - SMS: emulated Master System 'Reset' button, Game Gear 'Start' button
  - SMS: removed reset() functionality, driven by the mappable input now
    instead
  - SMS: split interface class in two: one for Master System, one for
    Game Gear
  - SMS: emulated Game Gear video cropping to 160x144
  - PCE: started on HuC6280 CPU core—so far only registers, NOP
    instruction has been implemented

Errata:

  - Super Game Boy support is broken and thus disabled
  - if you switch between Master System and Game Gear without
    restarting, bad things happen:
      - SMS→GG, no video output on the GG
      - GG→SMS, no input on the SMS

I'm not sure what's causing the SMS\<-\>GG switch bug, having a hard
time debugging it. Help would be very much appreciated, if anyone's up
for it. Otherwise I'll keep trying to track it down on my end.
2017-01-13 12:15:45 +11:00
Tim Allen 0ad70a30f8 Update to v101r30 release.
byuu says:

Changelog:

  - SMS: added cartridge ROM/RAM mirroring (fixes Alex Kidd)
  - SMS: fixed 8x16 sprite mode (fixes Wonder Boy, Ys graphics)
  - Z80: emulated "ex (sp),hl" instruction
  - Z80: fixed INx NF (should be set instead of cleared)
  - Z80: fixed loop condition check for CPxR, INxR, LDxR, OTxR (fixes
    walking in Wonder Boy)
  - SFC: removed Debugger and sfc/debugger.hpp
  - icarus: connected MS, GG, MD importing to the scan dialog
  - PCE: added emulation skeleton to higan and icarus

At this point, Master System games are fairly highly compatible, sans
audio. Game Gear games are running, but I need to crop the resolution
and support the higher color palette that they can utilize. It's really
something else the way they handled the resolution shrink on that thing.

The last change is obviously going to be the biggest news.

I'm very well aware it's not an ideal time to start on a new emulation
core, with the MS and MD cores only just now coming to life with no
audio support.

But, for whatever reason, my heart's really set on working on the PC
Engine. I wanted to write the final higan skeleton core, and get things
ready so that whenever I'm in the mood to work on the PCE, I can do so.

The skeleton is far and away the most tedious and obnoxious part of the
emulator development, because it's basically all just lots of
boilerplate templated code, lots of new files to create, etc.

I really don't know how things are going to proceed ... but I can say
with 99.9% certainty that this will be the final brand new core ever
added to higan -- at least one written by me, that is. This was
basically the last system from my childhood that I ever cared about.
It's the last 2D system with games that I really enjoy playing. No other
system is worth dividing my efforts and reducing the quality and amount
of time to work on the systems I have.

In the future, there will be potential for FDS, Mega CD and PCE-CD
support. But those will all be add-ons, and they'll all be really
difficult and challenge the entire design of higan's UI (it's entirely
cartridge-driven at this time.) None of them will be entirely new cores
like this one.
2017-01-12 07:27:30 +11:00