byuu says:
Lots of phoenix issues fixed, especially for Windows and GTK+.
NES emulation passes all ten ppu_vbl_nmi tests from blargg.
Sprite timing is nowhere near accurate yet (always consumes four clocks
per sprite), but oh well.
byuu says:
This adds Bisqwit's NES palette generation code:
http://nesdev.parodius.com/bbs/viewtopic.php?p=85060#85060
I set the saturation to 2.0 to closer match the existing "bright"
palette, although it still has a greater contrast range (some colors are
darker.) The gamma ramp option works now. Like SNES, best to also set
gamma to 0.8 afterward. Once I think of a good way to expose the
saturation/hue settings, I'll do so.
I've also merged in the updated nall. Adds Cygwin uname check, and
replaces linear_vector with vector in lstring and the GUI.
byuu says:
This release adds preliminary Nintendo / Famicom emulation. It's only
a week or two old, so a lot of work still needs to be done before it can
compete with the most popular NES emulators.
It's important to clarify: bsnes is primarily an SNES emulator. That
will always be its forte and my core focus. I have added Game Boy
support previously for Super Game Boy emulation, and I've added NES
support mostly for something fun to work on to break up the monotony of
working on one system for seven years now. Obviously, I'd like the
emulation to be accurate and highly compatible, but I simply cannot
afford to invest the same amount of time and money into any other
systems.
Still, either way the NES and GB emulation serve as fun side-diversions,
and allow for a unified emulator interface with all of bsnes' unique
features applied to all systems. My personal favorite feature is
mightymo's extended built-in cheat code database that now also includes
NES and Game Boy codes. And it even works in Super Game Boy mode now,
too!
I'm also not worried about speed at all: so long as NES/GB are faster
than SNES/compatibility, it's fine by me. Note that due to the NES audio
running at 1.78MHz, and Game Boy audio at 4MHz stereo, a more
sophisticated audio resampler was needed: Ryphecha (Mednafen author) has
graciously written a first-rate resampler: it is a band-limited
Kaiser-windowed polyphase sinc resampler. It is combined with two
highpass filters to remove DC bias. The filter itself is SSE optimized,
but even still, approximately 50% of CPU usage for NES/GB emulation goes
to the audio filtering alone. However, you now have the best sound
possible for NES and Game Boy emulation as a result.
The GUI has also been heavily re-structured to accommodate multiple
emulators from the same interface. As such, it's quite likely a few bugs
are still lurking here and there. Please report them and I'll iron them
out for the next release.
Changelog:
- license is now GPLv3
- re-structured GUI as a multi-system emulator
- added NES emulation [byuu, Ryphecha]
- added NES ICs: MMC1, MMC2, MMC3, MMC4, MMC5, VRC4, VRC6+audio, VRC7,
Sunsoft-5B+audio, Bandai-LZ93D50
- added NES boards: AxROM, BNROM, CNROM, ExROM, FxROM, GxROM, NROM,
PxROM, SxROM, TxROM, UxROM
- Game Boy emulation improvements [Jonas Quinn]
- SNES core outputs full 19-bit color (4-bit luma included) for more
accurate color reproduction (~5% speed hit)
- audio resampler is now a band-limited polyphase resampler [Ryphecha]
- cheat database includes NES+GB codes as well [mightymo, tukuyomi]
- lots of other changes
byuu says:
Added MMC2, MMC4, VRC4, VRC7 (no audio.)
Split NES audio code up into individual modules.
Fixed libsnes to compile: Themaister, can you please test to make sure
it works? I don't have a libsnes client on my work PC to test it.
Added about / license information to bottom of advanced settings screen
for now (better than nothing, I guess.)
Blocked PPU reads/writes while rendering for now, easier than coming up
with a bus address locking thing :/
I can't seem to fix MMC5 graphics during the intro to Uchuu Keibitai.
Without that, trying to implement vertical-split screen mode doesn't
make sense.
So as far as special audio chips go ...
* VRC6 is completed
* Sunsoft 5B has everything the only game to use it uses, but there are
more unused channels I'd like to support anyway (they aren't
documented, though.)
* MMC5 audio unsupported for now
* VRC7 audio unsupported, probably for a long time (hardest audio driver
of all. More complex than core NES APU.)
* audio PCM games (Moero Pro Yakyuu!) I probably won't ever support
(they require external WAV packs.)
byuu says:
Added delay to MMC1 register writes, to fix Bill & Ted's Godawful
Adventure.
Fixed up MMC5 RAM+fill mode, and added EXRAM mode support (8x8
tiles/attributes.)
Just Breed is fully playable now.
MMC5 is a total pain in the ass, the documentation on it is just
terrible. I basically just tried seven hundred variations until
something worked.
I still need to add MMC5 vertical split screen (for one single game's
attract screen, ugh), and the extra sound channels.
Would like to rework the NES APU first. Since the pulse channels are
identical sans sweep, it'd be nice to just inherit those and mask out
the sweep register bit writes.
So that probably won't make it into the first release, at least.
Still, overall I think it'll be an impressive showing of complex mappers
for a first release: MMC3, MMC5, VRC6 and 5B. The latter two with full
audio. The only other really, really hard bit is the VRC7 audio,
supposedly.
byuu says:
Enable Overscan->Mask Overscan [best I'm doing]
Video settings -> Overscan mask: (horizontal, vertical: 0-16 on each
side) [only works on NES+SNES]
BPS patching works for NES+SNES+GB; note that long-term I want BPS to
only patch headerless PRG+CHR files, but we'll need a database
/ completed board mapping system first.
MMC1 splits the board/chip markups a bit better. My attempts to emulate
the extra CHR bits per hardware fail repeatedly. Docs do not explain how
it works at all.
Emulated enough of the MMC5 to play Castlevania 3.
The MMC5 is easily the most complicated mapper the NES has to offer, and
of course, has the most pitifully vague and difficult documentation of
any mapper around.
It seems the only way anyone is able to emulate this chip is
empirically.
Everyone else apparently hooks the MMC5 right into the PPU core, which
I of course cannot do. So I had to come up with my own (probably wrong)
way to synchronize the PPU simply by observing CHR bus accesses.
I must say, I over-estimated how well fleshed out the NES hardware
documentation was. Shit hits the fan right after MMC3.
It's miles beyond the GB scene, but I find myself wanting for someone
with the technical writing ability of anomie.
I can't find anything at all on how we're supposed to support the $2007
port reads/writes without it extra-clocking the PPU's bus, which could
throw off mapper timing.
Absolutely nothing at all on the subject anywhere, something everybody
is required to do for all cycle-based emulators and ... nada.
Anyway, I'd like to refine the MMC5 a bit, getting Just Breed playable
even without sound would be really nice (it's a fun game.)
Then we need to get libsnes building again (ugh, getting worn out in
backporting changes to it.)
Once v083 is public, we can start discussing a new API for multiple
emulators.
byuu says:
cheats.xml -> cheats.bml, includes NES+SNES+GB codes now. Absolutely
awesome, thanks to mightymo and tukuyomi.
I also added Sunsoft-FME7/5B (with sound) emulation. Really only useful
for playing the Japanese release of Gimmick!
Fun game, but balls to the wall hard.
byuu says:
I doubt anyone is going to like these changes, but oh well.
The base height output for NES+SNES is now always 256x240. The Enable
Overscan option blanks out borders around the screen. This eliminates
the need for an overscan software filter. For NES, it's 16px from the
top and bottom, and 8px from the left and right. Anything less and you
get scrolling artifacts in countless games. For the SNES, it's only 16px
from the top and bottom. Main point is that most NTSC SNES games are
224-height games, so you'll have black borders. Oh well, hack the source
if you want. Game Boy overscan option does nothing.
Everything except for the cheats.xml file now uses BML markup. I need to
write a converter for cheats.xml still. Cut the SNES board parsing code
in half, 30KB->16KB. Much cleaner now.
Took the opportunity to fix a mistake I made back with the XML spec: all
numbers are integers, but can be prefixed with 0x to become hexadecimal.
Before, offset/size values defaulted to hex-mode even without a prefix,
unlike frequency/etc values.
The XML shaders have gone in their own direction anyway, with most being
multi-pass and incompatible with bsnes. So that said, please don't
extend the BML functionality from your end. But f eel free to add to the
XML spec, since other emulators now use that as well. And don't
misunderstand, I love the work that's being done there. It's pretty
awesome to see multi-pass shader capabilities, and the RAM watching
stuff is just amazing.
If there are any really awesome single-pass shaders that people would
like, I can convert it from XML and include it with future releases.
On that topic, I removed the watercolor/hdr-tv ones from the binary
packages (still in the source archive) ... they are neat, but not very
useful for actual gaming.
If we had more than one, I'd remove the Direct3D sepia one. Not going to
use shaders from a certain bipolar manic, because I'd never hear the end
of it if I did :/
Oh, one change I think people will like: MSU1 no longer requires
a memory map specification, so MSU1 authors won't have to keep updating
to my newer revisions of board markups. Basically, if there's not
a board with an msu1 section, it'll check if "gamename.msu" exists. If
it does, MSU1 gets mapped to 00-3f,80-bf:2000-2007. If all you want is
music, make a blank, zero-byte gamename.msu file.
byuu says:
Was mostly working on BML. Still working on the spec.
Added NES-BNROM, NES-GNROM/NES-MHROM boards. I don't even know why. The
latter games do not work very well without Zapper support.
byuu says:
Finished porting over all mappers to board/chip disambiguations. Had to
nearly rewrite the MMC1 code to do it, but all variants should be
supported.
iNES1 is too stupid to express them all, so you'll need a board markup
if you want to play the >8KB PRG RAM games.
For whatever reason, they call VRC6's memory WRAM, and MMC1's PRG RAM.
I am calling them all PRG RAM, since it's the same damn thing.
Board spec is not going to be stable until I have a hell of a lot more
mappers implemented, so be wary of that.
Anyway, at this time, all games can be loaded sans iNES header, if you
have the board markup. I'd also like to have a board database for all
commercial titles.
I'm treating *.fc as PRG-ROM(+CHR-ROM). Will work on loading the split
files later possibly.
byuu says:
.cht files now use BML-formatted data. I'm still going to request the
cheats.xml file as-is, and will write my own converter for embedding
during releases.
This is where parsing 2MB markup files in 10ms is really going to be
nice. Had to use an evil hack before for actually searching for games.
This has the start of the board/chip separation from mappers for NES,
and it has a barebones iNES->board markup converter.
You can specify your own board markup and bypass the need for an iNES
header, so in other words it will load No-Intro style games with
a proper board file.
Long-term, we'll have an internal database for commercial boards, and
probably folder.fc/prg.rom{,chr.rom} loading support.
Since they can't co-exist, the mappers are currently disabled, and I've
only ported the easy ones. So no MMC1/MMC3/VRC6 in this release. I need
to make them into chips first.
byuu says:
Ryphecha fixed Gun Nac, it was some sort of problem with blank sprite
address fetching messing with the MMC3
I've started on an XML parser for iNES-free loading, but it's pretty
barebones right now. Only NROM-256 loads, and you have to make it
a compile-time thing (so other games work for now.)
Updated nall with nullptr stuff.
nall/detect is now nall/intrinsic and has both #defines + static
constants that can be used to detect the platform (allows for run-time
platform checks where practical.)
ruby has a Makefile now, that makes using it in other projects a lot
easier
byuu says:
Upgraded to GCC 4.6.1.
Removed nall/foreach and nall/concept, upgraded iterator support on all
of my containers, and replaced everything with range-for.
Fixed up Qt geometry a good bit, should at least create windows now without bouncing around.
Added some initial nullptr / constexpr changes.
Some other minor cleanups ... removing foreach() took about 6-8 hours
alone.
byuu says:
Ryphecha fixed the FF1 glitch, added two highpass filters to NES audio
output (still working on a lowpass), and fixed VRC6 audio issues.
I reduced the complexity of all eight supported mapping modes, and
standardized them; and added in an overscan filter (not in archive) for
chopping off all the NES edge garbage (8 pixels on the left and right,
16 on the top and bottom.)
It's extreme, but anything less shows junk. I may make this part of the
menu option, just clip off more on NES mode than SNES mode.
byuu says:
Mappers are now optionally threaded.
Fixed up MMC3 emulation, SMB3 and MM3-6 are all fully playable. However,
many unusual variants of this chip are not supported still.
Added UNROM+UOROM for Contra and MM1, allowing all six MM games to play
now.
Added VRC6 with sound emulation, because I wanted to get audio mixing in
place.
Chose VRC6 because it has Esper Dream 2, which is an absolutely amazing
game that everyone should play :D
The game didn't use sawtooth, and I didn't test any other VRC6 games, so
hopefully that is emulated passably well enough.
byuu says:
2-6% speed hit in SNES core for outputting 19-bit (rounded to 32-bit ...
sigh) video, so that luma non-linearity can eventually be emulated
properly.
Now using sinc audio resampler, massive speed hit of course to NES+GB
only, but it's required to get rid of aliasing (buzzing) present in
many, many games otherwise.
Fixed fast forward and none/blur select.
Finally fixed texture clearing for changing pixel shaders and video
filters.
Some realllly basic NES MMC3, extremely broken so don't bug me about it.
Other stuff, probably.
byuu says:
NES now has save state support.
NES A/B buttons were indeed swapped, so that's fixed now.
nall/dsp now puts resamplers into separate classes, so that each can
have their own state information.
opengl.hpp uses GL_RGBA internal format and doesn't regenerate textures
on resize. No speedup, no fix to junk on resize, so I will be very
unhappy if this breaks things for anyone.
GLSL shaders use <fragment filter="nearest/point"> as you guys wanted.
ui-snes was removed.
This was released beside bsnes v082r19. byuu didn't mention it in the
v082r19 release notes, but in a previous post mentioned that a number of
filters stopped working when bsnes switched to using RGB555 for all its
internal data.
byuu says:
This will be the last release with the ui-snes folder (it's broken now
anyway.)
Re-added cheat code database searching + add window. It hashes
NES+SNES+GB images now and will look them up in the database.
Re-added filter support, all filters now output at RGB555. Stacking is
possible, but I don't currently allow it.
Removed mouse capture + test options from tools menu.
Removed smooth video output from settings menu.
There are now two built-in "shaders": "None" (point filtering) and
"Blur" (linear filtering).
OpenGL shaders can now use <shader language="GLSL" filter="point"> (or
"linear") to specify their filtering mode.
Individual emulator versions are gone, and names are hidden from the
GUI: you just see bsnes v082.19 now. A new release bumps all core
versions.
I cannot for the life of me get the video to clear properly when
toggling the shaders. Say you set pixellate2x filter, then turn on
curvature shader, then turn off the filter, you get junk at the bottom
right.
I have tried clearing and flipping the OpenGL surface 64x in a row ...
I don't know where the hell it's getting the data from. If anyone can
make a small patch to fix that, I'd greatly appreciate it.
byuu says:
There we go, the GUI is nearly feature-complete once again.
All cores now output their native video format (NES={emphasis}{palette},
SNES=BGR555, GameBoy={ bright, normal, darker, darkest }), and are
transformed to RGB555 data that is passed to the video renderer.
The video renderer then uses its internal palette to apply
brightness/contrast/gamma/ramp adjustments and outputs in RGB888 color
space.
This does add in another rendering pass, unfortunately, but it's
a necessary one for universal support.
The plan is to adapt all filters to take RGB555 input, and output RGB555
data as well. By doing this, it will be possible to stack filters.
However, it's a bit complicated: I need to plan how the stacking should
occur (eg we never want to apply scanlines before HQ2x, etc.)
Added input frequency adjustments for all three systems. I can easily
get perfect video/audio sync on all three now, hooray.
Long-term, it seems like we only really need one, and we can do
a video/audio delta to get an adjusted value. But for now, this gets the
job done.
Added audio volume adjust. I left out the balance for now, since it's
obviously impossible to balance the NES' single channel audio (I can
duplicate the channel, and do twice the filtering work, but ... why?)
I replaced NTSC/PAL TV mode selection with an "Enable Overscan"
checkbox. On, you get 240 lines on NES+SNES. Off, you get 224 lines on
NES+SNES.
Also added aspect correction box back. I don't do that gross PAL
distortion shit anymore, sorry PAL people. I just scale up the
54/47*(240/224) aspect correction for overscan off mode.
All memory is loaded and saved now, for all three systems (hooray, now
you can actually play Zelda 1&2.)
Added all of the old bsnes hotkeys, with the exception of capture
screenshot. May add again later. May come up with something a bit
different for extra features.
Re-added the NSS DIP switch setting window. Since geometry is saved,
I didn't want to auto-hide rows, so now you'll see all eight possible
DIPs, and the ones not used are grayed out.
Ultimately, nobody will notice since we only have DIPs for ActRaiser
NSS, and nobody's probably even using the XML file for that anyway.
Whatever, it's nice to have anyway.
Took FitzRoy's advice and single-item combo boxes on the input selection
are disabled, so the user doesn't waste time checking them.
I wanted to leave text so that you know there's not a problem. Qt
disabled radio box items look almost exactly like enabled ones.
Fixed lots of issues in phoenix and extended it a bit. But I was still
having trouble with radio box grouping, so I said fuck it and made the
panels show/hide based instead of append/remove based.
That's all for stuff off the checklist, I did a bunch of other things
I don't recall.
So yeah, I'd say the GUI is 100% usable now. This is my opinion on how
multi-platform GUIs should be done =)
Oh, I figure I should mention, but the NES core is GPLv3, and all future
SNES+GB releases will be as well. It's a move against Microsoft's Metro
store.
byuu says:
Adds BS-X/Slotted/SufamiTurbo/SGB cartridge loading. Calling it
Satellaview as I'm more partial to that at the moment.
FileBrowser now remembers your folders per filter type like before, and
will keep your place in the list if you don't switch away.
I wanted there to be ONE slot loader, so the loader will show a grayed
out secondary slot on non-ST loading, but it's more consistent to only
have one window instead of two for geometry placement.
Removed help menu. Will try and work it in somewhere unobtrusive later
on I suppose.
Added timed messages and the usual "no cart loaded / paused" messages
and such.
byuu says:
Binary output is once again called bsnes. No versioning on the title
without a system cartridge loaded. Still saving config files to
.config/batch for now.
Finally fixed NES APU frame IRQ clearing on $4015 reads.
Added mouse button/axis binding through buttons on the input capture
window.
Added advanced settings window with driver selection and focus policy
settings. Will show your default driver properly if none are selected
now, unlike old bsnes.
That exposed a small bug where phoenix isn't removing widgets on
Layout::remove, worked around it for now by hiding the panels. Damn,
sick of working on phoenix.
Added all missing input controllers, which can all now be mapped, and
bound them to the main menu, and added NES support for selecting "no
connected controller."
Added mouse capture and the requisite tools menu option for it.
Added WindowManager class that keeps track of both position and size now
(eg full geometry), so now you can resize your windows and save the
settings, unlike old bsnes.
WindowManager has more stringent geometry checks. The *client area* (not
the window border) can't be below 0,0 or above the width/height of three
30" monitors. If you have 4+ 30" monitors, then fuck you :P
settings.cfg is now also saved, captures all currently available
settings. Right now, there's only one path for the file browser to
remember. I will probably make this per-system later.
FileBrowser has been made a bit more friendly. The bottom left tells you
what type of files the list is filtered by (so you see "*.sfc" for
SNES), and the bottom right has an open button that can enter folders or
load files.
Added video shader support.
Fixed nall/dsp variadic-channel support, was only outputting the left
channel.
byuu says:
7.5 hours of power coding. Das Keyboard definitely helped (but didn't
eliminate) RSI, neato.
Okay, the NES resampler was using 315 / 88.8 by mistake, so the output
rate was wrong, causing way more video/audio stuttering than necessary.
STILL forgot the NES APU frame IRQ clear thing on $4015 reads, blah. Why
do I always remember things right after uploading the WIPs?
Recreated the input manager with a new design, works much nicer than the
old one, a whole lot less duplicated code.
Recreated the input settings window to work with the new multi-system
emulation.
All input settings are saved to their own configuration file, input.cfg.
Going to batch folder for now.
Okay, so the new input settings window ... basically there are now three
drop-downs, and I'm not even trying to label them anymore.
They are primary, secondary, tertiary selectors for the listed group
below. Examples:
"NES -> Controller Port 1 -> Gamepad"
"SNES -> Controller Port 2 -> Super Scope"
"User Interface -> Hotkeys -> Save States"
I am aware that "Clear" gets disabled when assigning. I will work on
that later, being lazy for now and disabling the entire window. Have to
add the mouse binders back, too.
Escape and modifiers are both mappable as individual keys now. If you
want to clear, click the damn clear button :P
Oh, and all input goes to all windows for now. That'll be fixed too when
input focus stuff is re-added.
byuu says:
Emulates DMC channel (sound effect when Link gets hit in Zelda 1, for
instance), fixes up bugs in rectangle/sweep and triangle channels, adds
DMC/frame APU IRQs, adds proper stalling for DMC ROM reads (should even
be cycle accurate, but has one extra cycle when triggered during OAM
DMA, I think), but forgets the frame IRQ acknowledge clear on $4015 read
(will fix next WIP.) All sound courtesy of Ryphecha.
Made template configuration settings window (empty for now.) Simplified
SNES cheat.cpp code. Some other stuff.
Further developed RSI.
byuu says:
I've updated the {System}::Interface classes to encapsulate all common
functionality, so they are C++ equivalents of libsnes now.
The idea being, use the interface class and you'll never have to reach
into core objects (unless you really want to.)
Not guaranteeing as stable an API as I do with libsnes for that, though.
C++ doesn't make for nice dynamic libraries, anyway.
Added back the state manager, and it now works for both SNES and Game
Boy. NES save states aren't in yet.
Anyway, this should give you a pretty good feel for what the combined UI
is going to be like: same as before, everything works the same. Only
difference is the dynamic system menu and cartridge menu with more load
options. The settings window will be mostly the same as well, but will
obviously have options that only apply to some systems.
byuu says:
Merged Ryphecha's APU emulation, so NES has sound output now. We are
still missing the DMC memory fetch, so there will be missing sound
effects here and there.
byuu says:
Emulated the Game Genie for the NES and Game Boy, and wrote a new cheat
editor that doesn't reach into specific emulation cores so that it would
work.
Before you ask: yes, long-term I'd like Super Game Boy mode to accept
Game Boy codes. But that's not high on the priority list.
Renamed the mappers toward board names, LZ...->BandaiFCG,
LS161...->AOROM, added CNROM emulation (Adventure Island, Gradius, etc.)
Added the tools menu load/save state stuff, but note that the NES
doesn't have save state support yet (waiting for the interface to
stabilize a bit more first.)
Note: this will be the last release to have the ui-gameboy folder, it's
been deleted locally from my end, as the new multi-GUI does all that it
does and more now.
byuu says:
Fixed up the PPU to be as close to cycle-perfect as possible. Fixed RMW
to write twice instead of read twice. Ryphecha added AOROM and fixed up
MMC1. Have CNROM too, but I need to rethink the mapper/board
distinction. Apparently the same logic IC is used in both AOROM and
CNROM, and it's just a matter of routing the pins to it. I need to
consider how crazy it'd be to emulate the logic IC and have boards
simply reroute pins to it. If it's too much work, we'll just treat
mappers as board + logic IC combinations. We'll see.
byuu says:
Emulated MMC1, currently defaults to B2 configuration. Fixed a whole
bunch of timing things, render things, nametable mirroring things, etc.
Zelda and Mega Man II are fully playable, but they have odd vertical
scrolling issues that make it a not so fun experience.
Not sure what the problem is there, yet. The Y scroll register writes
seem to be wonky ... I don't know.
Keeping the Cartridge menu always visible now, so it's faster to load
carts, but I am still hiding the non-loaded system menus.
byuu says:
Okay, I fixed up many outstanding phoenix issues.
* Windows/GTK+ fixed by using processEvents instead of main(); Windows can run unthrottled, and GTK+ shows the window contents now
* fixed keyboard beeping once and for all on Windows: I now whitelist tabbable controls
* fixed main menubar setVisible calls
* Qt and GTK+ now allow you to resize windows smaller than they initially were
Both Qt and GTK+ still fuck up the geometry a bit when toggling fullscreen mode. I have tried, and tried, and tried and tried and tried to fix it all. Nothing works. I give up.
Easier to destroy and recreate the fucking window than figure out how to resize it on Linux (and no, I can't do that. ruby would not like the handle changing.)
As for the GUI:
* file browser is back in, still need remember place and open folder code; that needs to be extended to handle multiple systems now
* shrink window command added to tools menu.
byuu says:
So, here's the deal. I now have three emulators. I don't think the
NES/GB ones are at all useful, but I do want them to be eventually. And
having them have those pathetic little GUIs like ui-gameboy, and keeping
everything in separate project folders, just doesn't work well for me.
I kind of "got around" the issue with the Game Boy, by only allowing SGB
mode emulation. But there is no "Super Nintendo" ... er ... wait ...
uhmm ... well, you know what I mean anyway.
So, my idea is to write a multi-emulator GUI, and keep the projects
together. The GUI is not going to change much. The way I envision this
working:
At startup, you have a menubar with: "Cartridge, Settings, Tools, Help".
Cartridge has "Load NES Cartridge", "Load SNES Cartridge", etc.
When you load something, Cartridge is replaced with the appropriate
system menu, eg "SNES". Here you have all your regular items: "power,
reset, controller port selection, etc." There is also a new "Unload
Cartridge" option, which is how you restore the "Cartridge" menu again.
I have no plans to emulate any other systems, but if I ever do emulate
something that doesn't take cartridges, I'll change the name to just
"Load" or something.
The cheat editor / state manager will look and act exactly the same. The
settings panel will look exactly the same. I'll simply show/hide
system-specific options as needed, like NES/SNES aspect ratio
correction, etc. The input mapping window will just have settings for
the currently loaded system. Video and audio tweaking will apply
cross-system, as will hotkey mapping.
The GUI stuff is mostly copy-paste, so it should only take me a week to
get it 95% back to where it was, so don't worry, this isn't total GUI
rewrite #80.
I am, however, making all the objects pointers, so that I can destruct
them all prior to main() returning, which is certainly one way of fixing
that annoying Windows/Qt crash.
Please only test on Linux. The Windows port is broken to hell, and will
give you a bad impression of the idea:
- menu groups are not hiding for some reason (all groups are showing, it
looks hideous)
- Timer interval(0) is taking 16ms per call, capping the FPS to ~64 tops
[FWIW, bsnes/accuracy gets 130fps, bgameboy gets 450fps, bnes gets
800fps; all run at lowest possible granularity]
- the OS keeps beeping when you press keys (AGAIN)
Of course, Qt and GTK+ don't let you shrink a window from the requested
geometry size, because they suck. So the video scaling stuff doesn't
work all that great yet.
Man, a metric fuckton of things need to be fixed in phoenix, and
I really don't know how to fix any of them :/
byuu says:
Couple more fixes to audio from Jonas, and I converted all types from
"unsigned" to the smallest sizes possible, which simplified a bit of the
code. Love variable-length integers.
Audio core should be really good now. Not perfect, but pretty close for
99% of games. Also fixed the window stuff for Cool World and such.
byuu says:
Has Jonas Quinn's many Game Boy APU fixes, and two more from blargg's
notes that I added.
It also has the new dynamic phoenix. So yeah, it'll crash on bsnes/Qt
exit. If anyone can fix it *properly* and wants the money, I'll pay them
$20 for the trouble =)
byuu says:
Changelog:
- if config file window coordinates are >= 30000, it snaps them back to
128,128; should end the "why aren't windows visible?" posts
- updated GUI code to match new phoenix changes
- phoenix: Layout and Widget inherit from Sizable; directional layouts
make no distinction between widgets and layouts
- phoenix: individual widgets / layout can maintain visible/hidden
status in spite of their parents' visibility
byuu says:
This release features many substantial Game Boy emulation improvements
(all courtesy of Jonas Quinn), a new audio DSP class, and BPS patching
support.
Changelog (since v081):
- added new DSP audio engine; supports sample-averaging for the Game
Boy's high frequency rate
- GB: MMM01 images with boot loader at bottom of ROM can now be loaded
- GB: EI is delayed one cycle; fixes Bubble Bobble [Jonas Quinn]
- GB: fixed window -7 offset behavior; fixes Contra 3 first boss [Jonas
Quinn]
- GB: disable LCD interrupts when rendering is off; fixes Super Mario
Land 2 [Jonas Quinn]
- GB: fixed noise channel LFSR; fixes Zelda: LA lightning sound [Jonas
Quinn]
- GB: square channels use initial_length like the noise channel [Jonas
Quinn]
- UI: added BPS patching support; removed UPS patching support
- UI: when loading BS-X/Sufami Turbo/Game Boy games; display game title
instead of BIOS title
- UI: modified timestamps on screenshots for Windows/NTFS (which
disallows use of ':')
byuu says:
- GB: square channels cache initial_length and invert the length value
on writes [Jonas Quinn]
- GB: updated LCD disable to just ignore interrupts and pixel writes,
fixes Contra
- BPS patch information and cartridge sections are now copied from the
patch metadata, if it is present
- fixed bpslinear out-of-bounds issue, which will be in snespurify v11
official [Danish]
- simplified Makefile again since command-line trumps manual assignments
byuu says:
- GameBoy: fixed window behavior for Contra 3 first boss [Jonas Quinn]
- GameBoy: fixed noise channel for Zelda: LA intro [Jonas Quinn]
- GameBoy: completely disable LCD when turned off, no interrupts; fixes
Super Mario Land 2 [thanks to Jonas Quinn]
- GameBoy: keep track of where pixels come from for OBJ priority mode
[Jonas Quinn]
- updated mode+slot-dependent name handling: simplifies Path class,
allows SGB/BSX/ST games to show the slot title (instead of BIOS name)
on the title bar
- Makefile allows command-line definitions for ui and profile now (make
profile=compatibility ui=ui-libsnes)
- Makefile now allows (make pgo=instrument) and (make pgo=optimize)
- added BPS patching support, removed UPS patching support
byuu says:
This release adds nall/dsp, which is a new framework for audio DSP
effects. It currently supports the usual fractional hermite resampling
and volume adjustments from ruby; but it also adds balance, and
arbitrary precision input and output (still limited to two channels, and
still signed audio [just subtract 1<<(bits-1) from an unsigned value.])
Internally, all samples are converted to doubles in the range of -1.0 to
+1.0, to allow for far greater precision with the hermite resampler and
volume/balance/etc adjustments.
As a result of this, all of the extra resampling/volume code from
ruby::audio has been removed. bsnes pulls in a copy of nall::dsp to
handle that stuff now.
byuu says:
- EI takes an extra cycle to raise IME; fixes Bubble Bobble [for the
Gameboy], and likely many more games [Jonas Quinn]
- nall/gameboy/cartridge.hpp descrambles MMM01 images (header can be at
top or bottom of image now)
- screenshot timestamps use filename-yyyy-mm-dd hh.mm.ss.bmp format; so
that they can save on Windows
- closing the emulator will switch to windowed mode first, so that
geometry is preserved
byuu says:
This release polishes up the GUI, adds some more features, and fixes
a few minor issues.
Changelog (since v080):
- rewrote S-DD1 module to decompress individual bytes at a time
- simplified SPC7110 deinterleaving code
- OBC1 should not clear RAM on reset [Jonas Quinn]
- fixed enum-cast compilation errors with the latest GCC 4.6.x releases
- added bsnes logo to about screen
- make phoenix=gtk will now build the GTK+ port on Linux
- added settings.startFullScreen to the config file for front-end users
- added advanced settings option to disable window compositor (only
works on Windows and Xfce)
- merged settings windows into the panel approach used by bsnes/Qt in
the past
- fixed a crashing bug on input settings window
- fixed GTK+ auto-geometry sizing
- added screenshot capture capability
- added exit emulator hotkey (defaults to being unmapped)
- Xorg keyboard polling now uses cached Display variable [Bisqwit]
- cheat code database updated [mightymo]
byuu says, in a post between the v080r07 release and the v080r08
release:
phoenix/Windows:
The slider and scrollbar setParent calls setLength+setPosition, but
setLength sets position = 0 (due to new length possibly invalidating
previous position.)
Cache position first to fix this, can now reparent widgets with proper
slider/scroll positions.
ListView had a workaround where the horizontal scrollbar was always
appearing on single-column lists. The workaround was forcing the config
settings list in bsnes to only select the text portions of each item in
the list, instead of the entire lines. The workaround was needed because
without setting a single header text, the header text count was equal to
zero, causing autoSizeColumns to have no effect. Made the constructor
call setHeaderText("") to guarantee size() >= 1 always. Removes the need
for the workaround, and gives a good file browser and configuration
setting window.
phoenix/Qt:
Worked around Qt bugs #258,674+258,675: if you click a list item with
your mouse, currentItem()->isSelected() returns false. It does not
return true until you select an item with a keyboard key. I forced it to
set the selected item upon currentItemChanged() message. It was also not
sending a changed message upon clearing the selection and then selecting
the same item again. I had to do something undocumented:
setCurrentItem(nullptr) so that currentItemChanged works again.
phoenix/All:
Fonts are now initialized to the platform default settings, Tahoma or
Sans 8-point. This lets geometry on widgets not attached to windows work
better. Makes the ../... buttons smaller pretty much everywhere.
byuu says, announcing the v080r08 release:
Fixed all of the above phoenix issues, and improved the auto-disabling
of buttons on the input setting and state manager windows.
Also manually initiailized lastConfigure for Valgrind in GTK+. Windows
and GTK+ ports look a lot nicer now.
byuu says:
- fixed a long-standing crash: when you have a device index above the
range permitted by another port, the app would crash (eg Controller
Port 2 -> Mouse, then switch to Hotkeys)
- Qt bug workaround: have to use currentItemChanged signal instead of
itemSelectionChanged signal for QTreeWidget, otherwise scrolling with
mouse gives you the previous item with currentItem() ...
- added support for toggling the Xfce compositor
- added support for detecting if the compositor is enabled in the first
place on Windows, so that it won't get turned on when you had it off
permanently
- added advanced setting to toggle behavior (never disable, disable only
in fullscreen mode, disable whenever emulator is open)
- worked around GTK+ ../... button height issue
- worked around Windows slider position issue when attaching to a new
window (need to research this one more)
- fixed up input settings window more: closing window ends assignment,
custom mapping buttons hidden by default
Some of those bugs have been there since the phoenix port began, good
times.
byuu says:
Ran out of time, so this is incomplete, but ...
Windows will disable the compositor in fullscreen mode, and enable it
when switching back to windowed mode. Should help with Vsync issues, but
of course only in fullscreen mode.
I've also merged the four settings windows back into a panel with a list
view (since I have no tab control widget.) The input settings window is
a bit incomplete, need to break assignment on window close, hide the
capture buttons on first showing, etc. Will probably try and finish that
up tonight.
byuu says:
Includes updated versions of nall and phoenix, which mostly improves the
GTK+ version. However, it appears to be crashing at the moment after
loading a game. Unfortunately it works when gdb is used, so I can't
easily debug it :/
You can now build with make phoenix=gtk if you want the GTK+ version on
Linux (the Qt version is leagues better even on Gnome, please use it if
at all possible.)
There's also settings.startFullScreen, config-file only, to allow for
front-end use. Forgot to add the reset/power hotkeys.
I also fixed compilation of ui-gameboy on GCC 4.6. I hope that's the
last switch(enum) error, those are damn annoying. Can't wait to switch
to GCC 4.6 on Windows.
byuu says:
Adds nall/inflate.hpp and nall/unzip.hpp. Updates nall/resource.hpp to
encode and decode using ZIP/deflate files, rather than a much simpler
(and less powerful) LZSS implementation. Cuts the bsnes-logo.hpp file
from 270KB to 130KB, and the binary overhead from 80KB to 35KB.
byuu says:
Wow, nothing in 19 days. Anyway, I wanted to get Nick's logo back in on
the about screen. Adds 80kb to both the binary and source archive, but
eh. Gotta have some style. Nothing else new.
Tim Allen