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.
byuu says:
Changelog:
- higan/profile/ => higan/systems/ [temporary; unless we can't think of
a better base folder name]
- god-damn-better-have fixed the input polling bug
- re-added command-line and drag-and-drop loading
- command-line loading can now load multiple folders at once (SGB+GB
game; Sufami Turbo+Slot A+Slot B; etc)
- if you load just the base cart, it'll present you with a dialog to
optionally load slotted cart(s)
- MSU1 now goes through nall/vfs instead of directly accessing the
filesystem
- Famicom Cartridge, PPU cores updated to newer programming style
- there's countless opportunity for BitField and .bits() in the PPU
... but I'm worried about breaking things
If anyone has a working MSU1 game and can test the changes out, that'd
be appreciated. I still don't have a test ROM on my dev box.
I wouldn't worry too much about extensively testing the Famicom PPU
changes just yet ... I'm still struggling with what to name the structs
inside the classes between all of my emulators, and the BitField/.bits()
changes will be much more important to test at a later date.
The only use case left for Emulator::Interface::path(uint id) is for
21fx emulation. This peripheral loads a DLL/SO via LoadLibrary/dlopen,
which do not have any official ways to open a file in RAM. I'm
very hesitant to use the portable trick of writing the memory to a
temporary file, loading it, and deleting the temporary file once done
... it's a real waste of disk activity. I might make something like
vfs::file::isVirtual->bool,path()->string to get around this. But even
once I do, the underlying LoadLibrary/dlopen call is still going to be
direct disk access.
byuu says:
Changelog:
- GNUmakefile: reverted $(call unique,) to $(strip)
- processor/r6502: removed templates; reduces object size from 146.5kb
to 107.6kb
- processor/lr35902: removed templates; reduces object size from 386.2kb
to 197.4kb
- processor/spc700: merged op macros for switch table declarations
- sfc/coprocessor/sa1: partial cleanups; flattened directory structure
- sfc/coprocessor/superfx: partial cleanups; flattened directory structure
- sfc/coprocessor/icd2: flattened directory structure
- gb/ppu: changed behavior of STAT IRQs
Major caveat! The GB/GBC STAT IRQ changes has a major bug in it somewhere
that's seriously breaking most games. I'm pushing the WIP anyway, because
I believe the changes to be mostly correct. I'd like to get more people
looking at these changes, and also try more heavy-handed hacking and
diff comparison logging between the previous WIP and this one.
byuu says:
Changelog:
- WS/WSC: re-added support for screen rotation (code is inside WS core)
- ruby: changed sample(uint16_t left, uint16_t right) to sample(int16_t
left, int16_t right);
- requires casting to uint prior to shifting in each driver, but
I felt it was misleading to use uint16_t just to avoid that
- ruby: WASAPI is now built in by default; has wareya's improvements,
and now supports latency adjust
- tomoko: audio settings panel has new "Exclusive Mode" checkbox for
WASAPI driver only
- note: although the setting *does* take effect in real-time, I'd
suggest restarting the emulator after changing it
- tomoko: audio latency can now be set to 0ms (which in reality means
"the minimum supported by the driver")
- all: increased cothread size from 512KiB to 2MiB to see if it fixes
bullshit AMD driver crashes
- this appears to cause a slight speed penalty due to cache locality
going down between threads, though
byuu says:
Changelog:
- SFC: balanced profile removed
- SFC: performance profile removed
- SFC: code for handling non-threaded CPU, SMP, DSP, PPU removed
- SFC: Coprocessor, Controller (and expansion port) shared Thread code
merged to SFC::Cothread
- Cothread here just means "Thread with CPU affinity" (couldn't think
of a better name, sorry)
- SFC: CPU now has vector<Thread*> coprocessors, peripherals;
- this is the beginning of work to allow expansion port devices to be
dynamically changed at run-time
- ruby: all audio drivers default to 48000hz instead of 22050hz now if
no frequency is assigned
- note: the WASAPI driver can default to whatever the native frequency
is; doesn't have to be 48000hz
- tomoko: removed the ability to change the frequency from the UI (but
it will display the frequency used)
- tomoko: removed the timing settings panel
- the goal is to work toward smooth video via adaptive sync
- the model is broken by not being in control of the audio frequency
anyway
- it's further broken by PAL running at 50hz and WSC running at 75hz
- it was always broken anyway by SNES interlace timing varying from
progressive timing
- higan: audio/ stub created (for now, it's just nall/dsp/ moved here
and included as a header)
- higan: video/ stub created
- higan/GNUmakefile: now includes build rules for essential components
(libco, emulator, audio, video)
The audio changes are in preparation to merge wareya's awesome WASAPI
work without the need for the nall/dsp resampler.
byuu says:
Changelog:
- fixed nall/windows/guard.hpp
- fixed hiro/(windows,gtk)/header.hpp
- fixed Famicom PPU OAM reads (mask the correct bits when writing)
[hex_usr]
- removed the need for (system := system) lines from higan/GNUmakefile
- added "All" option to filetype dropdown for ROM loading
- allows loading GBC games in SGB mode (and technically non-GB(C)
games, which will obviously fail to do anything)
- loki can load and play game folders now (command-line only) (extremely
unimpressive; don't waste your time :P)
- the input is extremely hacked in as a quick placeholder; not sure
how I'm going to do mapping yet for it
byuu says:
Changelog:
- fixed SNES sprite priority regression from r17
- added nall/windows/guard.hpp to guard against global namespace
pollution (similar to nall/xorg/guard.hpp)
- almost fixed Windows compilation (still accuracy profile only, sorry)
- finished porting all of gba/ppu's registers over to the new .bit,.bits
format ... all GBA registers.cpp files gone now
- the "processors :=" line in the target-$(ui)/GNUmakefile is no longer
required
- processors += added to each emulator core
- duplicates are removed using the new nall/GNUmakefile's $(unique)
function
- SFC core can be compiled without the GB core now
- "-DSFC_SUPERGAMEBOY" is required to build in SGB support now (it's
set in target-tomoko/GNUmakefile)
- started once again on loki (higan/target-loki/) [as before, loki is
Linux/BSD only on account of needing hiro::Console]
loki shouldn't be too horrendous ... I hope. I just have the base
skeleton ready for now. But the code from v094r08 should be mostly
copyable over to it. It's just that it's about 50KiB of incredibly
tricky code that has to be just perfect, so it's not going to be quick.
But at least with the skeleton, it'll be a lot easier to pick away at it
as I want.
Windows compilation fix: move hiro/windows/header.hpp line 18 (header
guard) to line 16 instead.
byuu says:
Lots of improvements. We're now able to start executing some V30MZ
instructions. 32 of 256 opcodes implemented so far.
I hope this goes without saying, but there's absolutely no point in
loading WS/WSC games right now. You won't see anything until I have the
full CPU and partial PPU implemented.
ROM bank 2 works properly now, the I/O map is 16-bit (address) x 16-bit
(data) as it should be*, and I have a basic disassembler in place
(adding to it as I emulate new opcodes.)
(* I don't know what happens if you access an 8-bit port in 16-bit mode
or vice versa, so for now I'm just treating the handlers as always being
16-bit, and discarding the upper 8-bits when not needed.)
byuu says:
So, this WIP starts work on something new for higan. Obviously, I can't
keep it a secret until it's ready, because I want to continue daily WIP
releases, and of course, solicit feedback as I go along.
byuu says:
Note: balanced/performance profiles still broken, sorry.
Changelog:
- added nall/GNUmakefile unique() function; used on linking phase of
higan
- added nall/unique_pointer
- target-tomoko and {System}::Video updated to use
unique_pointer<ClassName> instead of ClassName* [1]
- locate() updated to search multiple paths [2]
- GB: pass gekkio's if_ie_registers and boot_hwio-G test ROMs
- FC, GB, GBA: merge video/ into the PPU cores
- ruby: fixed ~AudioXAudio2() typo
[1] I expected this to cause new crashes on exit due to changing the
order of destruction of objects (and deleting things that weren't
deleted before), but ... so far, so good. I guess we'll see what crops
up, especially on OS X (which is already crashing for unknown reasons on
exit.)
[2] right now, the search paths are: programpath(), {configpath(),
"higan/"}, {localpath(), "higan/"}; but we can add as many more as we
want, and we can also add platform-specific versions.
byuu says:
A minor WIP to get us started.
Changelog:
- System::Video merged to PPU::Video
- System::Audio merged to DSP::Audio
- System::Configuration merged to Interface::Settings
- created emulator/emulator.cpp and accompanying object file for shared
code between all cores
Currently, emulator.cpp just holds a videoColor() function that takes
R16G16B16, performs gamma/saturation/luma adjust, and outputs
(currently) A8R8G8B8. It's basically an internal function call for cores
to use when generating palette entries. This code used to exist inside
ui-tomoko/program/interface.cpp, but we have to move it internal for
software display emulation. But in the future, we could add other useful
cross-core functionality here.
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:
Warning: this is not for the faint of heart. This is a very early,
unpolished, buggy release. But help testing/fixing bugs would be greatly
appreciated for anyone willing.
Requirements:
- Mac OS X 10.7+
- Xcode 7.2+
Installation Commands:
cd higan
gmake -j 4
gmake install
cd ../icarus
gmake -j 4
gmake install
(gmake install is absolutely required, sorry. You'll be missing key
files in key places if you don't run it, and nothing will work.)
(gmake uninstall also exists, or you can just delete the .app bundles
from your Applications folder, and the Dev folder on your desktop.)
If you want to use the GBA emulation, then you need to drop the GBA BIOS
into ~/Emulation/System/Game\ Boy\ Advance.sys\bios.rom
Usage:
You'll now find higan.app and icarus.app in your Applications folders.
First, run icarus.app, navigate to where you keep your game ROMs. Now
click the settings button at the bottom right, and check "Create
Manifests", and click OK. (You'll need to do this every time you run
icarus because there's some sort of bug on OSX saving the settings.) Now
click "Import", and let it bring in your games into ~/Emulation.
Note: "Create Manifests" is required. I don't yet have a pipe
implementation on OS X for higan to invoke icarus yet. If you don't
check this box, it won't create manifest.bml files, and your games won't
run at all.
Now you can run higan.app. The first thing you'll want to do is go to
higan->Preferences... and assign inputs for your gamepads. At the very
least, do it for the default controller for all the systems you want to
emulate.
Now this is very important ... close the application at this point so
that it writes your config file to disk. There's a serious crashing bug,
and if you trigger it, you'll lose your input bindings.
Now the really annoying part ... go to Library->{System} and pick the
game you want to play. Right now, there's a ~50% chance the application
will bomb. It seems the hiro::pListView object is getting destroyed, yet
somehow the internal Cocoa callbacks are being triggered anyway. I don't
know how this is possible, and my attempts to debug with lldb have been
a failure :(
If you're unlucky, the application will crash. Restart and try again. If
it crashes every single time, then you can try launching your game from
the command-line instead. Example:
open /Applications/higan.app \
--args ~/Emulation/Super\ Famicom/Zelda3.sfc/
Help wanted:
I could really, really, really use some help with that crashing on game
loading. There's a lot of rough edges, but they're all cosmetic. This
one thing is pretty much the only major show-stopping issue at the
moment, preventing a wider general audience pre-compiled binary preview.
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.
Tim Allen