byuu says:
Changelog:
- fc/apu: improved phase duty cycle emulation (mode 3 is 25% phase
inverted; counter decrements)
- md/apu: power/reset do not cancel 68K bus requests
- md/apu: 68K is not granted bus access on Z80 power/reset
- md/controller: replaced System::Peripherals with ControllerPort
concept
- md/controller: CTRL port is now read-write, maintains value across
controller changes (and soon, soft resets)
- md/psg: PSG sampling rate unintentionally modified¹
- processor/spc700: improve cycle timing of (indirect),y instructions
[Overload]
- processor/spc700: idle() cycles actually read from the program
counter; much like the 6502 [Overload]
- some of the idle() cycles should read from other addresses; this
still needs to be supported
- processor/spc700: various cleanups to instruction function naming
- processor/z80: prefix state (HL→IX,IY override) can now be
serialized
- icarus: fix install rule for certain platforms (it wasn't buggy on
FreeBSD, but was on Linux?)
¹: the clock speed of the PSG is oscillator/15. But I was setting the
sampling rate to oscillator/15/16, which was around 223KHz. I am not
sure whether the PSG should be outputting at 3MHz or 223KHz. Amazingly
... I don't really hear a difference either way `o_O` I didn't actually
mean to make this change; I just noticed it after comparing the diff
between r01 and r02. If this turns out to be wrong, set
stream = Emulator::audio.createStream(1, frequency() / 16.0);
in md/psg.cpp to revert this change.
byuu says (in the WIP forum):
Changelog:
- higan: cheat codes accept = and ? separators now
- the new preferred code format is: address=value or
address=if-match?value
- the old code format of address/value and address/if-match/value
will continue to work
- higan: cheats.bml is no longer included with the base distribution
- mightymo stopped updating it in 2015, and it's not source code;
it can still be pulled in from older releases
- fc: improved PAL mode timing; use PAL APU timing tables; fix PAL
noise period table [hex\_usr]
- md: support aborting a Z80 bus wait in order to capture save states
without freezing
- note that this will violate accuracy; but in practice a slight
desync is better than an emulator deadlock
- sfc: revert DSP ENDX randomization for now (want to research it more
before deploying in an official release)
- sfc: fix Super Famicom.sys/manifest.bml APU RAM size [hex\_usr]
- tomoko: cleaned up make install rules
- hiro/cocoa: use ABGR for pixel data [Sintendo]
Note: I forgot to change the command-line and drag-and-drop separator
from : to | in this WIP. However, it is corrected in the v103 official
binary and source published on download.byuu.org. Sorry about that, I
know it makes the Git repository history more difficult. I'm not
concerned whether the : → | change is part of v103 or v103r01 in the
repository, and will leave this to your discretion, Screwtape.
I also still need to set the VDP bit to indicate PAL mode in the Mega
Drive core. This is what happens when I have 47 things I have to do,
given how lousy my memory is. I miss things.
byuu says:
Changelog:
- processor/gsu: minor code cleanup
- processor/hg51b: renamed reg(Read,Write) to register(Read,Write)
- processor/lr35902: minor code cleanup
- processor/spc700: completed code cleanup (sans disassembler)
- no longer uses internal global state inside instructions
- processor/spc700: will no longer hang the emulator if stuck in a WAI
(SLEEP) or STP (STOP) instruction
- processor/spc700: fixed bug in handling of OR1 and AND1 instructions
- processor/z80: minor code cleanup
- sfc/dsp: revert to initializing registers to 0x00; save for
ENDX=random(), FLG=0xe0 [Jonas Quinn]
Major testing of the SNES game library would be appreciated, now that
its CPU cores have all been revised.
We know the DSP registers read back as randomized data ... mostly, but
there are apparently internal latches, which we can't emulate with the
current DSP design. So until we know which registers have separate
internal state that actually *is* initialized, I'm going to play it safe
and not break more games.
Thanks again to Jonas Quinn for the continued research into this issue.
EDIT: that said ... `MD works if((ENDX&0x30) > 0)` is only a 3:4 chance
that the game will work. That seems pretty unlikely that the odds of it
working are that low, given hardware testing by others in the past :/ I
thought if worked if `PITCH != 0` before, which would have been way more
likely.
The two remaining CPU cores that need major cleanup efforts are the
LR35902 and ARM cores. Both are very large, complicated, annoying cores
that will probably be better off as full rewrites from scratch. I don't
think I want to delay v103 in trying to accomplish that, however.
So I think it'll be best to focus on allowing the Mega Drive core to not
lock when processors are frozen waiting on a response from other
processors during a save state operation. Then we should be good for a
new release.
byuu says
Changelog:
- FC: fixed three MOS6502 regressions [hex\_usr]
- GBA: return fetched instruction instead of 0 for unmapped MMIO
(passes all of endrift's I/O tests)
- MD: fix VDP control port read Vblank bit to test screen height
instead of hard-code 240 (fixes Phantasy Star IV)
- MD: swap USP,SSP when executing an exception (allows Super Street
Fighter II to run; but no sprites visible yet)
- MD: grant 68K access to Z80 bus on reset (fixes vdpdoc demo ROM from
freezing immediately)
- SFC: reads from $00-3f,80-bf:4000-43ff no longer update MDR
[p4plus2]
- SFC: massive, eight-hour cleanup of WDC65816 CPU core ... still not
complete
The big change this time around is the SFC CPU core. I've renamed
everything from R65816 to WDC65816, and then went through and tried to
clean up the code as much as possible. This core is so much larger than
the 6502 core that I chose cleaning up the code to rewriting it.
First off, I really don't care for the BitRange style functionality. It
was an interesting experiment, but its fatal flaw are that the types are
just bizarre, which makes them hard to pass around generically to other
functions as arguments. So I went back to the list of bools for flags,
and union/struct blocks for the registers.
Next, I renamed all of the functions to be more descriptive: eg
`op_read_idpx_w` becomes `instructionIndexedIndirectRead16`. `op_adc_b`
becomes `algorithmADC8`. And so forth.
I eliminated about ten instructions because they were functionally
identical sans the index, so I just added a uint index=0 parameter to
said functions. I added a few new ones (adjust→INC,DEC;
pflag→REP,SEP) where it seemed appropriate.
I cleaned up the disaster of the instruction switch table into something
a whole lot more elegant without all the weird argument decoding
nonsense (still need M vs X variants to avoid having to have 4-5
separate switch tables, but all the F/I flags are gone now); and made
some things saner, like the flag clear/set and branch conditions, now
that I have normal types for flags and registers once again.
I renamed all of the memory access functions to be more descriptive to
what they're doing: eg writeSP→push, readPC→fetch,
writeDP→writeDirect, etc. Eliminated some of the special read/write
modes that were only used in one single instruction.
I started to clean up some of the actual instructions themselves, but
haven't really accomplished much here. The big thing I want to do is get
rid of the global state (aa, rd, iaddr, etc) and instead use local
variables like I am doing with my other 65xx CPU cores now. But this
will take some time ... the algorithm functions depend on rd to be set
to work on them, rather than taking arguments. So I'll need to rework
that.
And then lastly, the disassembler is still a mess. I want to finish the
CPU cleanups, and then post a new WIP, and then rewrite the disassembler
after that. The reason being ... I want a WIP that can generate
identical trace logs to older versions, in case the CPU cleanup causes
any regressions. That way I can more easily spot the errors.
Oh ... and a bit of good news. v102 was running at ~140fps on the SNES
core. With the new support to suspend/resume WAI/STP, plus the internal
CPU registers not updating the MDR, the framerate dropped to ~132fps.
But with the CPU cleanups, performance went back to ~140fps. So, hooray.
Of course, without those two other improvements, we'd have ended up at
possibly ~146-148fps, but oh well.
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.
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.
byuu says:
Changelog:
- SMS: fixed controller connection bug
- SMS: fixed Z80 reset bug
- PCE: emulated HuC6280 MMU
- PCE: emulated HuC6280 RAM
- PCE: emulated HuCard ROM reading
- PCE: implemented 178 instructions
- tomoko: removed "soft reset" functionality
- tomoko: moved "power cycle" to just above "unload" option
I'm not sure of the exact number of HuC6280 instructions, but it's less
than 260.
Many of the ones I skipped are HuC6280-originals that I don't know how
to emulate just yet.
I'm also really unsure about the zero page stuff. I believe we should be
adding 0x2000 to the addresses to hit page 1, which is supposed to be
mapped to the zero page (RAM). But when I look at turboEMU's source, I
have no clue how the hell it could possibly be doing that. It looks to
be reading from page 0, which is almost always ROM, which would be ...
really weird.
I also don't know if I've emulated the T mode opcodes correctly or not.
The documentation on them is really confusing.
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.
byuu says:
Changelog:
- SMS: background VDP clips partial tiles on the left (math may not be
right ... it's hard to reason about)
- SMS: fix background VDP scroll locks
- SMS: fix VDP sprite coordinates
- SMS: paint black after the end of the visible display
- todo: shouldn't be a brute force at the end of the main VDP
loop, should happen in each rendering unit
- higan: removed emulator/debugger.hpp
- higan: removed privileged: access specifier
- SFC: removed debugger hooks
- todo: remove sfc/debugger.hpp
- Z80: fixed disassembly of (fd,dd) cb (displacement) (opcode)
instructions
- Z80: fix to prevent interrupts from firing between ix/iy prefixes
and opcodes
- todo: this is a rather hacky fix that could, if exploited, crash
the stack frame
- Z80: fix BIT flags
- Z80: fix ADD hl,reg flags
- Z80: fix CPD, CPI flags
- Z80: fix IND, INI flags
- Z80: fix INDR, INIT loop flag check
- Z80: fix OUTD, OUTI flags
- Z80: fix OTDR, OTIR loop flag check
byuu says:
Changelog:
- SMS: emulated the remaining 240 instructions in the (0xfd, 0xdd)
0xcb (displacement) (opcode) set
- 1/8th of these were "legal" instructions, and apparently games
use them a lot
- SMS: emulated the standard gamepad controllers
- reset button not emulated yet
The reset button is tricky. In every other case, reset is a hardware
thing that instantly reboots the entire machine.
But on the SMS, it's more like a gamepad button that's attached to the
front of the device. When you press it, it fires off a reset vector
interrupt and the gamepad polling routine lets you query the status of
the button.
Just having a reset option in the "Master System" hardware menu is not
sufficient to fully emulate the behavior. Even more annoying is that the
Game Gear doesn't have such a button, yet the core information structs
aren't flexible enough for the Master System to have it, and the Game
Gear to not have it, in the main menu. But that doesn't matter anyway,
since it won't work having it in the menu for the Master System.
So as a result, I'm going to have to have a new "input device" called
"Hardware" that has the "Reset" button listed under there. And for the
sake of consistency, I'm not sure if we should treat the other systems
the same way or not :/
byuu says:
Changelog:
- SMS: emulated the generic Sega memory mapper (none of the more
limited forms of it yet)
- (missing ROM shift, ROM write enable emulation -- no commercial
games use either, though)
- SMS: bus I/O returns 0xff instead of 0x00 so games don't think every
key is being pressed at once
- (this is a hack until I implement proper controller pad reading)
- SMS: very limited protection against reading/writing past the end of
ROM/RAM (todo: should mirror)
- SMS: VDP background HSCROLL subtracts, rather than adds, to the
offset (unlike VSCROLL)
- SMS: VDP VSCROLL is 9-bit, modulates voffset+vscroll to 224 in
192-line mode (32x28 tilemap)
- SMS: VDP tiledata for backgrounds and sprites use `7-(x&7)` rather
than `(x&7)`
- SMS: fix output color to be 6-bit rather than 5-bit
- SMS: left clip uses register `#7`, not palette color `#7`
- (todo: do we want `color[reg7]` or `color[16 + reg7]`?)
- SMS: refined handling of 0xcb, 0xed prefixes in the Z80 core and its
disassembler
- SMS: emulated (0xfd, 0xdd) 0xcb opcodes 0x00-0x0f (still missing
0x10-0xff)
- SMS: fixed 0xcb 0b-----110 opcodes to use direct HL and never allow
(IX,IY)+d
- SMS: fixed major logic bug in (IX,IY)+d displacement
- (was using `read(x)` instead of `operand()` for the displacement
byte fetch before)
- icarus: fake there always being 32KiB of RAM in all SMS cartridges
for the time being
- (not sure how to detect this stuff yet; although I've read it's
not even really possible `>_>`)
TODO: remove processor/z80/dissassembler.cpp code block at line 396 (as it's unnecessary.)
Lots of commercial games are starting to show trashed graphical output now.
byuu says:
Changelog:
- Makefile: added $(windres), -lpthread to Windows port
- GBA: WAITCNT.prefetch is not writable (should fix Donkey Kong: King
of Swing) \[endrift\]
- SMS: fixed hcounter shift value \[hex\_usr\]
- SMS: emulated interrupts (reset button isn't hooked up anywhere, not
sure where to put it yet)
This WIP actually took a really long time because the documentation on
SMS interrupts was all over the place. I'm hoping I've emulated them
correctly, but I honestly have no idea. It's based off my best
understanding from four or five different sources. So it's probably
quite buggy.
However, a few interrupts fire in Sonic the Hedgehog, so that's
something to start with. Now I just have to hope I've gotten some games
far enough in that I can start seeing some data in the VDP VRAM. I need
that before I can start emulating graphics mode 4 to get some actual
screen output.
Or I can just say to hell with it and use a "Hello World" test ROM.
That'd probably be smarter.
byuu says:
Changelog:
- SMS: extended bus mapping of in/out ports: now decoding them fully
inside ms/bus
- SMS: moved Z80 disassembly code from processor/z80 to ms/cpu
(cosmetic)
- SMS: hooked up non-functional silent PSG sample generation, so I can
cap the framerate at 60fps
- SMS: hooked up the VDP main loop: 684 clocks/scanline, 262
scanlines/frame (no PAL support yet)
- SMS: emulated the VDP Vcounter and Hcounter polling ... hopefully
it's right, as it's very bizarre
- SMS: emulated VDP in/out ports (data read, data write, status read,
control write, register write)
- SMS: decoding and caching all VDP register flags (variable names
will probably change)
- nall: \#undef IN on Windows port (prevent compilation warning on
processor/z80)
Watching Sonic the Hedgehog, I can definitely see some VDP register
writes going through, which is a good sign.
Probably the big thing that's needed before I can get enough into the
VDP to start showing graphics is interrupt support. And interrupts are
never fun to figure out :/
What really sucks on this front is I'm flying blind on the Z80 CPU core.
Without a working VDP, I can't run any Z80 test ROMs to look for CPU
bugs. And the CPU is certainly too buggy still to run said test ROM
anyway. I can't find any SMS emulators with trace logging from reset.
Such logs vastly accelerate tracking down CPU logic bugs, so without
them, it's going to take a lot longer.
byuu says:
This is a really tiny WIP. Just wanted to add the known fixes before I start debugging it against Mednafen in a fork.
Changelog:
- Z80: fixed flag calculations on 8-bit ADC, ADD, SBC, SUB
- Z80: fixed flag calculations on 16-bit ADD
- Z80: simplified DAA logic \[AWJ\]
- Z80: RETI sets IFF1=IFF2 (same as RETN)
byuu says:
Changelog:
- Z80: emulated 83 new instructions
- Z80: timing improvements
DAA is a skeleton implementation to complete the normal opcode set. Also
worth noting that I don't know exactly what the hell RETI is doing,
so for now it acts like RET. RETN probably needs some special handling
besides just setting IFF1=IFF2 as well.
I'm now missing 24 ED-prefix instructions, plus DAA, for a total of 25
opcodes remaining. And then, of course, several weeks worth of debugging
all of the inevitable bugs in the core.
byuu says:
Changelog:
- Z80: added most opcodes between 0x00 and 0x3f (two or three hard
ones missing still)
- Z80: redid register declaration *again* to handle AF', BC', DE',
HL' (ugggggh, the fuck? Alternate registers??)
- basically, using `#define <register name>` values to get around
horrendously awful naming syntax
- Z80: improved handling of displace() so that it won't ever trigger
on (BC) or (DE)
byuu says:
Changelog:
- Z80: implemented 113 new instructions (all the easy
LD/ADC/ADD/AND/OR/SBC/SUB/XOR ones)
- Z80: used alternative to castable<To, With> type (manual cast inside
instruction() register macros)
- Z80: debugger: used register macros to reduce typing and increase
readability
- Z80: debugger: smarter way of handling multiple DD/FD prefixes
(using gotos, yay!)
- ruby: fixed crash with Windows input driver on exit (from SuperMikeMan)
I have no idea how the P/V flag is supposed to work on AND/OR/XOR, so
that's probably wrong for now. HALT is also mostly a dummy function for
now. But I typically implement those inside instruction(), so it
probably won't need to be changed? We'll see.
byuu says:
Changelog:
- added (poorly-named) castable<To, With> template
- Z80 debugger rewritten to make declaring instructions much simpler
- Z80 has more instructions implemented; supports displacement on
(IX), (IY) now
- added `Processor::M68K::Bus` to mirror `Processor::Z80::Bus`
- it does add a pointer indirection; so I'm not sure if I want to
do this for all of my emulator cores ...
byuu says:
Changelog:
- rewrote the Z80 core to properly handle 0xDD (IX0 and 0xFD (IY)
prefixes
- added Processor::Z80::Bus as a new type of abstraction
- all of the instructions implemented have their proper T-cycle counts
now
- added nall/certificates for my public keys
The goal of `Processor::Z80::Bus` is to simulate the opcode fetches being
2-read + 2-wait states; operand+regular reads/writes being 3-read. For
now, this puts the cycle counts inside the CPU core. At the moment, I
can't think of any CPU core where this wouldn't be appropriate. But it's
certainly possible that such a case exists. So this may not be the
perfect solution.
The reason for having it be a subclass of Processor::Z80 instead of
virtual functions for the MasterSystem::CPU core to define is due to
naming conflicts. I wanted the core to say `in(addr)` and have it take
the four clocks. But I also wanted a version of the function that didn't
consume time when called. One way to do that would be for the core to
call `Z80::in(addr)`, which then calls the regular `in(addr)` that goes to
`MasterSystem::CPU::in(addr)`. But I don't want to put the `Z80::`
prefix on all of the opcodes. Very easy to forget it, and then end up not
consuming any time. Another is to use uglier names in the
`MasterSystem::CPU` core, like `read_`, `write_`, `in_`, `out_`, etc. But,
yuck.
So ... yeah, this is an experiment. We'll see how it goes.
byuu says:
Changelog:
- MS: added ms/bus
- Z80: implemented JP/JR/CP/DI/IM/IN instructions
- MD/VDP: added window layer emulation
- MD/controller/gamepad: fixed d2,d3 bits (Altered Beast requires
this)
The Z80 is definitely a lot nastier than the LR35902. There's a lot of
table duplication with HL→IX→IY; and two of them nest two levels deep
(eg FD CB xx xx), so the design may change as I implement more.
byuu says:
Changelog:
- 68K: MOVEQ is 8-bit signed
- 68K: disassembler was print EOR for OR instructions
- 68K: address/program-counter indexed mode had the signed-word/long
bit backward
- 68K: ADDQ/SUBQ #n,aN always works in long mode; regardless of size
- 68K→VDP DMA needs to use `mode.bit(0)<<22|dmaSource`; increment by
one instead of two
- Z80: added registers and initial two instructions
- MS: hooked up enough to load and start running games
- Sonic the Hedgehog can execute exactly one instruction... whoo.
byuu says:
Sigh ... I'm really not a good person. I'm inherently selfish.
My responsibility and obligation right now is to work on loki, and
then on the Tengai Makyou Zero translation, and then on improving the
Famicom emulation.
And yet ... it's not what I really want to do. That shouldn't matter;
I should work on my responsibilities first.
Instead, I'm going to be a greedy, self-centered asshole, and work on
what I really want to instead.
I'm really sorry, guys. I'm sure this will make a few people happy,
and probably upset even more people.
I'm also making zero guarantees that this ever gets finished. As always,
I wish I could keep these things secret, so if I fail / give up, I could
just drop it with no shame. But I would have to cut everyone out of the
WIP process completely to make it happen. So, here goes ...
This WIP adds the initial skeleton for Sega Mega Drive / Genesis
emulation. God help us.
(minor note: apparently the new extension for Mega Drive games is .md,
neat. That's what I chose for the folders too. I thought it was .smd,
so that'll be fixed in icarus for the next WIP.)
(aside: this is why I wanted to get v100 out. I didn't want this code in
a skeleton state in v100's source. Nor did I want really broken emulation,
which the first release is sure to be, tarring said release.)
...
So, basically, I've been ruminating on the legacy I want to leave behind
with higan. 3D systems are just plain out. I'm never going to support
them. They're too complex for my abilities, and they would run too slowly
with my design style. I'm not willing to compromise my design ideals. And
I would never want to play a 3D game system at native 240p/480i resolution
... but 1080p+ upscaling is not accurate, so that's a conflict I want
to avoid entirely. It's also never going to emulate computer systems
(X68K, PC-98, FM-Towns, etc) because holy shit that would completely
destroy me. It's also never going emulate arcade machines.
So I think of higan as a collection of 2D emulators for consoles
and handhelds. I've gone over every major 2D gaming system there is,
looking for ones with games I actually care about and enjoy. And I
basically have five of those systems supported already. Looking at the
remaining list, I see only three systems left that I have any interest
in whatsoever: PC-Engine, Master System, Mega Drive. Again, I'm not in
any way committing to emulating any of these, but ... if I had all of
those in higan, I think I'd be content to really, truly, finally stop
writing more emulators for the rest of my life.
And so I decided to tackle the most difficult system first. If I'm
successful, the Z80 core should cover a lot of the work on the SMS. And
the HuC6280 should land somewhere between the NES and SNES in terms of
difficulty ... closer to the NES.
The systems that just don't appeal to me at all, which I will never touch,
include, but are not limited to:
* Atari 2600/5200/7800
* Lynx
* Jaguar
* Vectrex
* Colecovision
* Commodore 64
* Neo-Geo
* Neo-Geo Pocket / Color
* Virtual Boy
* Super A'can
* 32X
* CD-i
* etc, etc, etc.
And really, even if something were mildly interesting in there ... we
have to stop. I can't scale infinitely. I'm already way past my limit,
but I'm doing this anyway. Too many cores bloats everything and kills
quality on everything. I don't want higan to become MESS v2.
I don't know what I'll do about the Famicom Disk System, PC-Engine CD,
and Mega CD. I don't think I'll be able to achieve 60fps emulating the
Mega CD, even if I tried to.
I don't know what's going to happen here with even the Mega Drive. Maybe
I'll get driven crazy with the documentation and quit. Maybe it'll end
up being too complicated and I'll quit. Maybe the emulation will end up
way too slow and I'll give up. Maybe it'll take me seven years to get
any games playable at all. Maybe Steve Snake, AamirM and Mike Pavone
will pool money to hire a hitman to come after me. Who knows.
But this is what I want to do, so ... here goes nothing.
Tim Allen