Commit Graph

141 Commits

Author SHA1 Message Date
byuu 9133129209 Update to bsnes v033 release.
This release adds SPC7110 emulation, without the need for graphics packs!!, and a rewritten S-RTC (real-time clock) emulator.
SPC7110 support means that Far East of Eden Zero, FEoEZ: Shounen Jump Edition, Momotarou Dentetsu Happy and Super Power League 4 are now all fully playable. I will warn you, the emulation is very slow in this version -- while most areas of each game will run at the same speed as other games, there are a few peak moments where speed will drop by up to ~50%. The reason for the slow-down is that I am currently uncertain how to determine the amount of data to decompress in advance, so I default to the maximum amount possible. The reason I am releasing now anyway, is because I beleive in the "release early, release often" paradigm. It will likely take me a few weeks to finish researching this chip, and I didn't want to keep the work I had private during that time. But rest assured, bsnes v034 should feature much faster SPC7110 emulation.
neviksti, Andreas Naive and jolly_codger worked non-stop on the SPC7110 decompression algorithm for the past two weeks. caitsith2 provided valuable data to the effort. I only wish that I could've been of some use, but alas, I had no role in this. In the end, it was neviksti who managed to crack all three(!!) compression modes of this chip, which turned out to be a customized 8-bit QM-coder with a prediction model. You can read more about this here. I would also like to thank Dark Force and John Weidman (aka The Dumper) for their research notes on the SPC7110 register interface.
For those who don't understand the hoopla about figuring out this compression algorithm when we already had graphics pack simulation, I should note that we have since found a few errors in these packs. Not to mention, you no longer need ~4-16MB packs for each game you wish to run. They work like any other game now. Better still, the chip can now be used to compress new graphics, eg for any future translation efforts on these titles.
The real-time clocks in both Far East of Eden Zero and Dai Kaijuu Monogatari 2 will now save a ".rtc" file in your save folder, which contains the clock as set by the video game, as well as a timestamp from your computer when the time was last updated. It uses the difference between the saved timestamp and current time to update the time. This allows you to specify any time you like, whereas previously bsnes would just use your computer's current time, ignoring the time you set in-game. It also allows the "round clock by 30 seconds" option in both games to work. I avoided this before because this method makes supporting daylight savings time and such impractical, although I should note that the original hardware did not support DST, either. This method was required to pass the SPC7110 tests, and is overall much more faithful to how the original chips worked.
Once again, I'd really like to personally thank neviksti for his tireless efforts. Eliminating graphics packs from SNES emulation was one of my primary reasons for getting involved in the SNES emulation scene. That neviksti managed to crack this algorithm means a lot to me. Thank you so much, neviksti. This release is dedicated to you, now go get some sleep Wink
2008-07-20 00:06:28 +00:00
byuu 7d83cde40a Update to bsnes v032r01? release.
This worked great, thank you. libao is now tolerable on ALSA. Now I
just need to add support for disabling "Audio::Synchronize" (by
disabling sound output, since libao is a blocking API.)

---

EDIT: posted a new WIP, with RedDwarf's ALSA and libao fixes. Both
work very well for me, your mileage may vary.

No Windows binary, as it would be exactly the same as v032a, anyway.
This one's mainly for Linux users who can compile from source.

[No archive available]
2008-06-02 02:00:00 +00:00
byuu bbc77a6cf2 Update to bsnes v032a release.
- Windows: file open filters are now working once again
    - All ports: emulation speed setting is now properly restored at startup
2008-05-26 08:46:05 +00:00
byuu ebb9367c68 Update to bsnes v032 release.
- Core: simplified CPU / SMP flag calculations
    - Added ALSA audio output driver to Linux port [Nach]
    - Improved font handling for Windows and Linux ports
    - Greatly cleaned up the user interface
    - Windows port now uses Unicode instead of ANSI
    - Added localization support
    - Config and locale files can now be placed inside bsnes executable directory for single-user mode, if desired
    - Fixed crashing bug with HQ2x on Linux/amd64 port [RedDwarf, Nach]
    - Hid "Power Cycle" option by default, as it is too similar to "Reset"
    - Slighty tweaked program icon [FitzRoy]
    - Minor code cleanups -- replaced union bitfields with templates, improved memory allocation, etc
2008-05-25 18:45:59 +00:00
byuu 96fe8f760d Update to bsnes v031r08? release.
Thank you everyone for the translations! I've also posted a new WIP,
with an improved Japanese locale. No changes to the strings that
anyone has to worry about with theirs.

To strike a compromise, I've removed power cycle from the menu by
default, and added a new config file option, "advanced.enable". Set to
false initially, but if you set it to true and restart, power cycle
will re-appear. I intend to use this option to hide the debugger
functionality if and when that gets re-added, as well. Plus we can
remove other questionably useful / confusing stuff this way. The key
binding for it still shows up (removing it there would be tricky), but
it's not bound to anything by default, either. Sound fair?

Also, something I've been meaning to do for a while now ...
unload/reset/power cycle are now disabled when a cartridge is not
loaded.

[No archive available]
2008-05-22 09:18:00 +00:00
byuu 8abd1b2dfe Update to bsnes v031r07? release.
Okay, new WIP. Couple of changes.

One, I was displaying the warning message about unsupported chips no
matter what. Oops, fixed.

Two, removed the "Select Folder" text. The dialog looks a bit empty
now, but oh well.

Three, added "Ok" to the warning message box strings.

Four, added "Enabled" to the cheat editor strings. You'll notice that
"Disabled" is not there -- it's shared by the speed regulation
setting. I know, sharing strings sucks, but that's pretty much how the
localization system works, sorry. You can use something simple like
"On" / "Off" in place of "Enabled" / "Disabled", if necessary.

Also updated the locale.cfg file for everyone:
http://byuu.cinnamonpirate.com/temp/locale.cfg

[No archive available]
2008-05-20 07:02:00 +00:00
byuu f6efcbe6fd Update to bsnes v031r06? release.
Okay, I've posted a new WIP, which has a completed locale.cfg file.
Well, it's completed for v032, at least. All translations are going to
have to be updated for every release, sadly.

For those interested in translating it, I'm looking to only have
native speakers perform translations. I don't care if things aren't a
perfect literal translation, so long as the general idea gets across.
But I don't want anyone using machine translation tools, either.
They're very unprofessional, better to wait until someone fluent comes
along. Yes, I know that's ironic given my translation to Japanese:
hoping someone will re-do that one.

The reference locale file is here:
http://byuu.cinnamonpirate.com/temp/locale.cfg

Format is obviously UTF-8. Yours will need to be in this format as
well. Any local encodings will fail miserably.

You can see most of the options in bsnes v031 to see where they come
into play. I have them mostly sorted per window. Some windows share
the same string. I doubt that's going to be a problem, but we'll see.

If you have access to the WIPs, be sure to get the latest one to test
with. If not, and you're willing to translate the UI, feel free to PM
me and I'll happily send you a link to it.

I've added a "Localization by:" field to the about screen. Please feel
free to add your name there.

Next up, I'm trying something a bit different for the config files,
and I've updated readme.txt to reflect this:

bsnes will now check in the same folder as the executable for
bsnes.cfg and locale.cfg. If they're found, bsnes will use these
files. If they are not found, it will use your user profile folder for
storage.

So, if you want bsnes to run in single-user mode, just make sure
bsnes.cfg and/or locale.cfg exist. If not, you can create a blank file
and bsnes will use that next time you run it. If you want multi-user
mode, delete the files. If you want multiple profiles, use single-user
mode and multiple copies of the executable.

I'll be distributing future Windows binaries with blank bsnes.cfg and
locale.cfg files, so that single-user mode is the default. Just delete
them to switch to the old method if you prefer. Hopefully this pleases
everyone.

[No archive available]
2008-05-19 08:48:00 +00:00
byuu 36859ea52c Update to bsnes v031r05? release.
Well, that was certainly a pain in the ass ...

Image

Had to port hiro to full-on Unicode / UTF-16. But the GUI API still
takes UTF-8, it's all converted internally now, bidirectionally.

Oh, and don't make fun of my Japanese :P

---

As for the new WIP, I've included my example locale.cfg. No other
lines will translate, so don't try yet. You need to put it in the
.bsnes folder next to bsnes.cfg. And don't try it unless you have
Japanese fonts, obviously.

[No archive available]
2008-05-15 07:51:00 +00:00
byuu 64589148d4 Update to bsnes v031r04? release.
New WIP.

This one adds DPI-independent font sizing for both Windows and Linux.
With that, I've reduced the font size back down to "Tahoma 8" on
Windows, and "Sans 8" on Linux.

Because of that, I was able to reduce textbox and button height from
30 to 25, and label, checkbox and radiobox height from 20 to 18. In
other words, the UI looks like it did back with v019.

There's only one tiny flaw with the Linux port, I'm unable to change
the font face for the listbox column header. It's not actually a
widget, so it ignores my gtk_container_foreach ->
gtk_widget_modify_font() calls. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I've also added FitzRoy's new icon. It seems to only have 32-bit
icons, and no 256-color icons ... I guess we'll see how that looks on
Win2k soon enough.

Lastly, statusbar toggle was broken in the last WIP, that's fixed now.

[No archive available]
2008-05-12 05:26:00 +00:00
byuu 89ae1101ee Update to bsnes v031r03? release.
Another WIP. This one changes the GUI toolkit to not invoke callbacks
when the API is used to set the state of widgets. With that it was
really easy to get the speedreg / frameskip checks to update when
using the keyboard controls.

What I really need for this WIP is testing to see if any UI elements
are now broken as a result of the change. For example, try and get a
checkbox to not represent the actual state of something. Eg a
frameskip of 2 but the checkbox is on 0. Also check startup states and
that sort of thing.

The UI code really needs to be cleaned up at this point ...

[No archive available]
2008-05-07 06:30:00 +00:00
byuu 340d86845a Update to bsnes v031r02? release.
New WIP. Please be sure to test a few games with this one to look for
regressions.

I got tired of using bit packing for CPU / SMP register flags, because
they do not mask the upper bits properly.

In other words, (assume big endian) if you have struct { uint8_t n:1,
v:1, m:1, x:1, d:1, i:1, z:1, c:1; } p; and you set p.m = 7; it will
set p.v and p.n as well. It doesn't cast the type to bool.

So I rewrote the old template struct trick, but bound it with a
reference rather than relying upon union alignment. Looks something
like this:

    template<int mask>
    struct CPUFlag {
      uint8 &data;

      inline operator bool() const { return data & mask; }
      inline CPUFlag& operator=(bool i) { data = (data & ~mask) | (-i
    & mask); return *this; }

      CPUFlag(uint8 &data_) : data(data_) {}
    };

    class CPURegFlags {

    public:
      uint8 data;
      CPUFlag<0x80> n;
      CPUFlag<0x40> v;
    ...
      CPURegFlags() : data(0), n(data), v(data), m(data), x(data),
    d(data), i(data), z(data), c(data) {}

    };


Surprisingly, benchmarks show this method is ~2x faster, but flags
were never a bottleneck so it won't affect bsnes' speed.

Anyway, with this, I decided to get rid of the confusing and stupid
!!() stuff all throughout the CMP and SMP opfn.cpp files. It's no
longer needed since the template assignment takes only a boolean
argument. Anything not zero becomes one with that.

So code such as this:

    uint8 sSMP::op_adc(uint8 x, uint8 y) {
    int16 r = x + y + regs.p.c;
      regs.p.n = !!(r & 0x80);
      regs.p.v = !!(~(x ^ y) & (y ^ (uint8)r) & 0x80);
      regs.p.h = !!((x ^ y ^ (uint8)r) & 0x10);
      regs.p.z = ((uint8)r == 0);
      regs.p.c = (r > 0xff);
      return r;
    }


Now looks like this:

    uint8 sSMP::op_adc(uint8 x, uint8 y) {
      int r = x + y + regs.p.c;
      regs.p.n = r & 0x80;
      regs.p.v = ~(x ^ y) & (x ^ r) & 0x80;
      regs.p.h = (x ^ y ^ r) & 0x10;
      regs.p.z = (uint8)r == 0;
      regs.p.c = r > 0xff;
      return r;
    }


I also took the time to figure out how the hell the overflow stuff
worked. Pretty neat stuff.

Essentially, overflow is set when you add/subtract two positive or two
negative numbers, and the result ends up with a different sign. Hence,
the sign overflowed, so your negative number is now positive, or vice
versa.

A simple way to simulate it is:
int result = (int8_t)x + (int8_t)y;
bool overflow = (result < -128 || result > 127);

But there's no reason to perform signed math, since the result can't
be used for anything else, not even any other flags, as the opcode
math is always unsigned.

So to implement it with this:
int result = (uint8_t)x + (uint8_t)y;

We just verify that both signs in x and y are the same, and that their
sign is different from the result to set overflow, eg:
bool overflow = (x & 0x80) == (y & 0x80) && (x & 0x80) != (result &
0x80);

But that's kind of slow. We can test a single bit for equality and
merge the &0x80's by using a XOR table:
0^0=0, 0^1=1, 1^0=1, 1^1=0
The trick here is that if the two bits are equal, we get 0, if they
are not equal, we get one.

So if we want to see if x&0x80 == y&0x80, we can do:
!((x ^ y) & 0x80);

... or we can simply invert the XOR result so that 1 = equal, 0 =
different, eg ~(x ^ y) & 0x80;

The latter is nice because it keeps the bit positions in-tact. Whereas
the former reduces to 1 or 0, the latter remains 0x80 or 0x00. This is
good for chaining, as I'll demonstrate below.

Do the same for the second test and we get:
bool overflow = ~(x ^ y) & 0x80 && (x ^ result) & 0x80;

We complement the former because we want to verify they are the same,
we don't for the latter because we want to verify that they have
changed.

Now we can basically use one more trick to combine the two bit masks
here. We want to return 1 when overflow is set, so we can look for a
pattern that will only return one when both the first and second tests
pass.

An AND table works great here. 0&0=0, 0&1=0, 1&0=0, 1&1=1. Only if
both are true do we end up with 1.

So this means we can AND the two results, and then mask the only bit
we care about once to get the result, eg:
bool overflow = ~(x ^ y) & (x ^ result) & 0x80;

And there we go, that's where that bizarre math trick comes from. I
realized while doing this something that bugged me in the past.

I used to think that for some reason, the S-SMP add overflow test
required x^y & y^r, whereas S-CPU add overflow used x^y & x^r.
Probably because I read the algorithm from Snes9x's sources or
something.

But that was flawed -- since addition is commutative, it doesn't
matter whether the latter is x^result or y^result. Only in subtraction
does the order matter, where you must always use x^result to test the
initial value every time.

Subtraction switches up things a little. It sets overflow only when
the signs of x and y are _different_, and when x and the result are
also different, eg:
bool overflow = (x ^ y) & (x ^ result) & 0x80;

Fun stuff, huh?

So I was wanting this tested thoroughly, just in case there was a typo
or something when updating the opfn.cpp files.

---

That said, I also polished up the UI a bit. Moved disabled to the
bottom of the speed regulation list, and added key / joypad bindings
for "exit emulator", "speed regulation increase / decrease" and
"frameskip increase / decrease".

I know these key bindings do not update the menubar radiobox positions
yet. I'll get that taken care of shortly.

[No archive available]
2008-04-19 12:03:00 +00:00
byuu b895f29bed Update to bsnes v031r01? release.
New WIP posted.

Not much to this one.

- added FitzRoy's updated program icon
- removed safe_free / safe_delete / safe_release template functions
- replaced nearly all malloc / free calls with new / delete[]

And lastly ... long ago, I used "File / Edit / Help" to conform to
standard UI design. I quickly replaced Edit with Settings, and later
Help with Misc. Lately, the last one has been bugging me ... "File"?
File what? Why is there a reset system option under file?

So, it may be somewhat controversial, but I renamed File to System,
and dropped the now superfluous " System" from Reset / Power Cycle.

I'd honestly like to remove "Exit" from that menu as well, but I know
I'd be pushing it then.

What I want to do next is move "Disabled" in speed regulation to the
bottom of the list, and add key bindings to increase / decrease speed
regulation. I'd like the step after fastest to be disabled. It makes
sense, as fastest can never be faster than disabled, but disabled can
be faster than fastest.

Other nice ideas would be: a cartridge info option under the system
menu somewhere, frameskip +/- key bindings, an exit emulator key
binding, a new GUI panel with options to warn on reset / unload /
exit, and cleaning up of the event namespace for the UI. Specifically,
start working on a more advanced status panel that can display five-
second alerts that override the normal output.

[No archive available]
2008-04-16 12:59:00 +00:00
byuu 1ef279cb83 Update to bsnes v031 release.
New release posted. Perhaps the most important change was fixing a bug in the Windows port when the keyboard was used for input. For some reason, the IsDialogMessage() function I use for tab key support was causing the main window to emit the Windows error beep every time a key was pressed after a few minutes of use. I do not know why this is, so I have simply disabled the tab key support to prevent this from happening.
Other than that, lots of polishing went into this release. UPS soft-patching will work with the recently released Der Langrisser v1.02 translation, for those curious. You can also store the UPS patches in GZ/ZIP/JMA support, and bsnes will detect this and decompress the patches first. Use the same ".ups" file extension for this, as it detects via file header.
If you wish to try out the newly added OpenGL support: start bsnes, go to Settings->Configuration->Advanced and set system.video to "wgl" (or "glx" for Linux users), and then restart the emulator. Please bear in mind that ATI's OpenGL drivers are an industry-wide joke, so I'd only recommend trying this on an nVidia or Intel video card.
Changelog:
    - Fixed bug and re-enabled HDMA bus sync delays
    - Emulated newly discovered IRQ timing edge case
    - Optimized offset-per-tile rendering
    - Added state-machine implementation of S-DSP core, ~5% speedup
    - Added SPC7110 detection, will now warn that this chip is unsupported
    - Fixed very annoying Windows port OS beeping noise when using keyboard for input
    - Linux port will now save most recent folder when no default ROM path is selected
    - Added OpenGL rendering support to Windows port [krom]
    - Fixed Direct3D pixel mode scaling bug [krom, sinamas, VG]
    - Improved SNES controller graphic [FitzRoy]
    - Added UPS (not IPS) soft-patching support; UPS patch must be made against unheadered ROM
    - As always, cleaned up source code a bit
2008-04-13 23:40:08 +00:00
byuu 0241dd78b7 Update to bsnes v030r08? release.
New WIP posted, which adds the immediate-mode opcode IRQ delay
findings from this past week. Doesn't have any visible effects on
anything. I also went back to a switch table for the CPU / SMP opcodes
instead of the jump table. Shaves ~100kb off the object files and
compiles faster with no speed loss. I used the jump table before to
simplify PGO, but since that's been broken for at least a year now
anyway ...

Fes, thanks for the temporary workaround. I'll try and get a new
release out this weekend if possible. I'd like to have UPS soft-
patching in before the next release, though, hence the delay.

[No archive available]
2008-04-10 11:05:00 +00:00
byuu a13c3aece6 Update to bsnes v030r07? release.
New WIP.

Direct3D driver: removed diffuse color vertex information, and made
driver re-initialize whenever window size changes. Should fix ATI
resize in pixel scale mode bug once and for all. Confirmation would be
appreciated. Speed will still be bad on some cards that can't handle
large textures, and I don't really want to implement StretchRect()
profiling, so that's still an issue.

Windows/hiro: disabled IsDialogMessage(). This will prevent the tab
key from working in the configuration panel, but will also stop the
main window from beeping every time you push a key -- the lesser of
two evils. Blame Microsoft for this bullshit. IsDialogMessage() should
empty the key buffer, but it doesn't when there are no tabbed controls
on a window. I'll rig something up in the future for this.

Linux/hiro: GTK+ file open / file save / folder select dialogs will
now save the path if you selected a valid file, so that next time you
will start in that folder. This didn't matter if you set hard-coded
paths in bsnes, but it makes a positive difference if you did not.

[No archive available]
2008-04-07 03:34:00 +00:00
byuu 20977817ae Update to bsnes v030r06? release.
New WIP up.

This one fixes HDMA bus sync timing. I verified this was correct per
hardware with the HDMA test sync ROM. It was definitely wrong before.

Secret of Mana, Street Racer and Jumbo Ozaki no Hole in One all work.
Yes, they worked in the official v030 release, but that release had
HDMA sync disabled and rounded.

Mecarobot is improved greatly, but still flickers when the golf course
is moving. If you're as desperate as I am to play this amazing
masterpiece _right now_, you can always hex edit the ROM and change
offset 0x1c6f from 0x40 to 0x80 :)

I'm still investigating that issue more before I start running
hardware tests. I want to rule out things that can't be the cause of
the bug first.

I've also added (hopefully) proper SPC7110 detection. If anyone wants
to test all of them to make sure it works, great. It should give you a
popup now saying that it's unsupported. Down to just needing ST-011
detection now.

[No archive available]
2008-04-03 11:50:00 +00:00
byuu ba25c82939 Update to bsnes v030r05? release.
New WIP posted, which adds:
- krom's Direct3D fix; point mode at multiples of 3x and higher
without aspect ratio correction is no longer blurry
- FitzRoy's updated SNES controller graphic
- glX improvement for Linux, window will clear to black on startup for
ATI cards now too, but it still doesn't redraw when the window is
damaged because I can't trap the exposure events
- tiny clarification to S-DSP emulator source (use echo_hist_pos enum
instead of just "8")
- started to add SPC7110 _detection_ for the sole purpose of advising
that the chip isn't supported. Not finished yet. Also need to fix
ST-011 detection while I'm at it (it's detected as ST-010 now; they
share ROM type and mapper IDs), and all special chip games should be
covered.
- re-added the slightly incorrect HDMA sync timing. It helps (but
doesn't fix) Mecarobot, it breaks the SoM intro again; but Street
Racer and Jumbo Ozaki are still working right -- looks like other
timing improvements since then were enough for those titles

For those asking for WIP access, I'm really sorry but I have way too
many testers now. It's extremely hard for me to even keep track
anymore. I just don't have the bandwidth.

If you absolutely need a specific WIP, I'll stick it on a file sharing
site or something for you. Otherwise, my apologies for not sending you
the link. I absolutely do appreciate the offers to help beta test,
though.

[No archive available]
2008-04-02 05:41:00 +00:00
byuu 3babe932fd Update to bsnes v030r04? release.
One thing we can always do is add some platform-specific profiling
code. Have bsnes try and determine what the fastest driver is upon
first run. As if I don't have enough to do already, heh.

New WIP, which converts the S-DSP ring buffers to an internal class
object. Surprisingly, it actually does make the code a bit nicer to
look at, although it's kind of unfortunate I can't hijack operator[]=,
heh. I'd be forced to use modulus for that.

Even more surprising, it's about ~2% faster than before. Even though
it's technically even more complex now with three writes instead of
two. Makes no sense at all, but I won't complain. Getting 122fps now
on Zelda 3 load screen.

---

ATI Radeon X300LS:
Direct3D = 64fps
OpenGL = 24(!!)fps

... as if we needed _another_ reason not to buy ATI products. What the
hell was AMD thinking, buying them?
Better yet, why do people buy ATI products? Laptops, I can understand.
But for desktops?? Seriously. That performance is so terrible, you
couldn't even play OpenGL games with that. We really need more OGL
titles to rape ATI on benchmark tests, so that they'll get their heads
out of their asses.

[No archive available]
2008-03-26 08:58:00 +00:00
byuu 6bdeaef0f4 Update to bsnes v030r03 release.
v030 wip3 posted.

This one add's krom's ruby changes, meaning Windows OpenGL support.

For consistency, I changed the Windows system.video setting to "wgl",
and Linux OpenGL to "glx". Linux users should be sure to update that
to avoid SDL video output.

I get ~119fps with OpenGL, and ~120fps with Direct3D. I'd appreciate
if everyone else would test OpenGL support. If it works everywhere
that D3D works, and avoids that texture size slowdown issue, then we
should make it the default driver.

The only issue I see with the driver now is that vsync is enabled no
matter what. You can turn it off in eg the nVidia control panel by
overriding the setting. I also recommend enabling triple buffering.
With that, video is perfectly smooth and audio is ~99.5% perfect. So,
so close. A slight cpu.freq change and you can probably get it
perfect.

God, it's so nice having perfect video and audio. I really wish that
worked across the board. It's absolute euphoria playing games like
that.

[No archive available]
2008-03-26 07:10:00 +00:00
byuu 9e3827e2a2 Update to bsnes v030 release.
I didn't want to release a new version so soon, however there is a rather serious bug in bsnes v029 where the path information for the save RAM files is discarded when one has not selected a default save RAM / cheat path from the path settings tab in the configuration settings window. Because of this, it gets stored to the base directory. For Windows users, this is c:\, and for Linux users, this is /
This bug forced my hand, so I'm releasing v030 to correct this issue. I also cleaned up the S-DSP emulation code to be more consistent with my programming style -- it gets bit-perfect matches to v029's wave output, so I don't foresee there being any problems.
2008-03-24 12:43:32 +00:00
byuu e499670ad9 Update to bsnes dsp release.
Okay, it's just blargg's. I hope he doesn't mind ...

I rewrote his S-DSP emulator in pure C++. Only took me seven hours,
not bad. anomie's took a few days.

Now, given, it's extremely similar of course. First, the algorithms
are going to be mostly the same regardless of who writes the code.
Second, I really didn't see a reason to waste too much time on this
reverse engineering a bunch of stuff myself, so I pretty much just
took the code and "rewrote" (read: copied) it in my unique style, and
changed a few things here and there. Code flow, variable names,
tables, exact algorithms, etc were blatant, direct copies.

Things I did change:
- counter rate 0 is now hardcoded to not ever hit zero
- counter read is now boolean instead of unsigned short
- a lot of multiplication was converted to shifts
- broke up the program into ~9 source files
- no more global functions anywhere, all in one class
- removed the hooks for things like external channel muting -- will
re-add if I ever add an option like that to bsnes
- modified VREG to not need the voice regs handle passed to it
- all voice functions take a reference instead of pointer to the voice
structs now
- packed 32-line timing table expanded to multi-line
- left everything in their own small chunk functions ... kind of torn
on whether I want to merge that with the main timing function. I like
the encapsulation, but it would remove the need to keep so many
struct-based state variables
- added a few more comments on parts that confused me at first
- removed assignment inside conditional stuff; even though I do that
myself on occasion in other code I write, heh
- yadda yadda, more minor stuff like that

Going to keep working at it -- wanted to get it working now, so that
finding regressions will be easier. I want to remove the double writes
for the ring buffer, make a decision on whether I want to rely on sign
extension, or use sclip<> for that, implement a compile-time option to
bypass libco (will save 2.048 million co_switch calls a second) since
the S-DSP's entire operation fits into a single switch table quite
easily, convert a lot of the mul / div stuff to shifts, convert those
clever split up branches in the envelope and BRR decoding routines to
switch / case tables, remove the shift tables from the BRR decoding,
and try and figure out what's going on with some of the code so that I
can try and document it :)

I'll see if I can contribute something back, too. Perhaps I can look
into what happens when you enable mute or something.

New WIP up which has the new core enabled by default. For those
without WIP access, I've posted the new source for reference. Comments
welcome.

    byuu.org/files/bsnes_dsp.zip


... man, feels weird posting a new topic.

[No archive available]
2008-03-22 15:37:00 +00:00
byuu 805398e5a8 Update to bsnes v029 release.
A new version of bsnes has been released. It contains a few minor emulation fixes, as well as user interface improvements. Behind the scenes, the source has been cleaned up more in preparation for running the CPU and PPU (video processor) separately from each other (eg with no enslavement.) This is required for implementing a clock cycle based PPU renderer.
    - Greatly improved invalid DMA transfer behavior, should be nearly perfect now
    - Major code cleanup -- most importantly, almost all PPU timing-related settings moved back to PPU, from CPU
    - Added option to auto-detect file type by inspecting file headers rather than file extensions
    - Rewrote video filter system to move it out of the emulation core -- HQ2x and Scale2x will work even in hires and interlace modes now, 50% scanline filter added
    - Re-added bsnes window icon
    - Added new controller graphic when assigning joypad keys [FitzRoy]
    - Redundant "Advanced" panel settings which can be configured via the GUI are no longer displayed
    - Improved speed regulation settings
    - XP and Vista themes will now apply to bsnes controls
    - Added "Path Settings" window to allow easy selection of default file directories
    - Tab key now mostly works throughout most of the GUI (needs improvement)
    - Main window will no longer disappear when setting a video multipler which results in a window size larger than the current desktop resolution
    - Added two new advanced options: one to control GUI window opacity, and one to adjust the statusbar text
2008-03-18 06:19:43 +00:00
byuu 7e6e3e3a69 Update to bsnes v028r16? release.
Lots of talking.

 As I've said many times before, I typically don't like working on fan
translations. The programmers are almost always far less skilled than
professional developers, and they almost always test on emulators
rather than hardware.

 I may look into this when I'm feeling particularly bored, though I
don't know how you could have possibly picked a worse game for me to
be caught debugging at work. Well, maybe those "Adult Manga" PD ROMs
...

 EDIT: New WIP. This one adds IsDialogMessage() support. It isn't
perfect, the test apps get the highlighted dots around the active
controls, but bsnes isn't for some reason. Don't know why that is yet.
And it seems once tab enters into a child window, you can't get back
to the outer window. But otherwise, it's better than nothing. I even
got the z-order thing down so tab works in the right direction.

[No archive available]
2008-03-16 05:36:00 +00:00
byuu 16ba1d1191 Update to bsnes v028r15? release.
Thanks, FitzRoy. The controller graphic looks really amazing. I have
two very minor changes to request if you don't mind.

 First, I had to increase the size to 372x178 (Windows BMP format adds
alignment if width is not a multiple of 4 -- this makes it a real
bitch to convert the image to my UI wrapper pixel format), and shift
the actual image one pixel left to center the gradient fade.

 Second, and more importantly, could you store the controller graphic
in 32-bit format with alpha? Rather than using a white or gray
background, if I could get the full alpha channel information, then I
can adjust the background color to anything I like in the future.
Depending on how it looks, maybe I can just let the controller blend
against the window background itself.

 And thank you, King of Chaos, as well. It was extremely difficult to
choose one over the other. I wish I could use just both so as not to
offend anyone. But I kind of like FItzRoy's more. I was kind of going
for that pristine, "cleaner than real life" look. Still, I really
appreciate your help in making a controller graphic.

             ---

             New WIP.

 I've added FitzRoy's controller graphic to the input capture window.
It will only display when configuring joypad buttons, not when
configuring UI buttons.

 I've also added the new UI settings panel. This lets you control
window translucency for all but the main bsnes window. I capped
opacity to 50% minimum, because I don't want to hear bug reports when
people slide it to 0% and can't find the config window anymore :P
 Works on Windows and Linux. If you lack a compositor on Linux, it'll
just stay a solid color. If you have Compiz / Beryl and the blur
filter, use it with gaussian alpha blur. Then you can set opacity all
the way down to 50% and it will still look amazing. I want to post a
screenshot of it, but the image is ~3MB. Maybe later I'll post it to
one of those file hosting sites.

 There's also a setting here to control what gets written to the
statusbar. I went back to just displaying the raw ROM title. So you
can use %t for that, %n for the filename, and %f for the frame rate.
Still working on this feature. Plan to keep the game name visible when
pausing, add some additional info that can be output here, etc. It may
be better to keep this setting in the advanced panel, as it's not the
most user friendly thing in the world. Up to you guys, I guess.

             Need more settings here, though. Need to fill out that
window more.

[No archive available]
2008-03-09 06:01:00 +00:00
byuu 29c871ef62 Update to bsnes v028r14? release.
New WIP. Adds Win2k alpha adjust (against black background), some
minor code cleanups, LZSS compression / decompression for storing
graphics, and puts the program icon onto the about screen, which has
been shrunk down a bit again.

             So, too late mudlord, the answer was LZSS :P
 I wanted to just go with RLE for simplicity, but the compression
ratio sucked. LZSS is the same number of lines of code, yet is three
times more efficient with the icon. And something like a controller
with much more repetition will probably make an even bigger
difference. Meh, the code's easy enough. I wrote it for clarity over
speed, and decompression is always lightning fast with LZ anyway.

             Good job decoding the base64 portion, though. Very useful
routine for a library.

 As for the controller graphics, wow ... I'm really torn. I really
love how clean FitzRoy's version looks, yet at the same time King of
Chaos' version is so lifelike it's scary. I dislike the "flaws",
though. The scratches on the X, the dot on the bottom right, and the
off-center buttons ... since it's digital anyway, I'd prefer it to
appear perfect, if at all possible.

             But it's a tough call. I'll have to hold a vote or
something :)
             Thanks a million for helping with the controller graphic,
both of you!

[No archive available]
2008-03-03 09:24:00 +00:00
byuu 42f1d08c02 Update to bsnes v028r13? release.
New WIP.

 Adds a base64 encoder, which zaps the ~21kb icon down to ~5kb. With
the extra space, I used the 48x48 icon instead. It should look a tiny
bit better, but it still obviously can't beat a non-resampled icon.
Also added Linux icon support. That turned out to be a royal pain, as
the gdk-pixbuf library documentation was separate from the GDK
documentation. Tried finding visuals, to make colormaps, to get GCs,
to create pixmaps to blit onto as drawables, to create pixbufs with,
to attach to the window. Turns out, gdk-pixbuf has a function to turn
raw data into a pixbuf.







> Could we have an option to disable this effect in advanced settings
> so that the mode can appear "crisp" as it does in other emulators?




               This blurring is required for pseudo-hires to operate
properly, eg in Jurassic Park.

 Nonetheless, if you guys really want the option to disable the
blurring, I can add it. Just keep in mind that we're opening up a can
of worms. People will then want an option to disable the sprite
drawing limit, to add hi-res mode7, etc etc. Harder to draw a line in
the sand when you aren't all or nothing.







> This is a problem? If it's a question of storing them all in an ico,
> why not simply say "Here's a nicer ico set seperately, DL if you
> want'.




 I'm not going to put resources external to the executable, unless I
absolutely have to. Thus, I have to put all of these icons inside the
source code, and I have to modify the GUI API wrapper to handle this.







> I was thinking, you know, one of you could report it to them.




               "Hi, uh, Microsoft? Yeah, your compiler is erroring out
when I compile my emulator with it and PGO enabled."
               "Sure, as that's a $12,000 Team Suite Edition feature,
if I could just get your serial number, that'd be great."
               "Oh, uh ... I think I left that at home. I'll call you
right back with it, okay?"
               "Oh, no problem. If I can just get your full name, I'll
pull you up in our system ... ... hello? Sir?"
               ::dial tone::

               And for the _official_ legal record, I only used the
free trial and express editions :)







> Yeah, one issue they can fix is maybe implement blargg's spc core;
> then again, I thought Snes9x was dead.




 Not dead, but on severe life support. Same for SNEeSe and Super
Sleuth. anomie, TRAC and Overload have minimal presence anymore. A
damn shame. The SNES scene is in worse shape than most people realize
at the moment. NES emulators have had dot-based PPU renderers for
years now.

[No archive available]
2008-02-28 18:39:00 +00:00
byuu 521f4f6952 Update to bsnes v028r12? release.
New WIP.

 vcounter / hclock / hcounter renamed to vcounter / hcounter / hdot. I
think it's more clear this way. Fixed up the v/hc stuff to v/h in
bppu_mmio.cpp to match.

 Instead of building each driver for ruby independently, I grouped
them all together into one object file. I know everyone else hates
that, but too bad -- that's the way I program. No sense building ~10
object files when one will do just as well. I was able to cut out ~20
lines from the Makefile as a result of this.

 I added CB_SETITEMHEIGHT magic to actually set combo box to requested
height. Neat. Of course, bsnes doesn't currently use any combo boxes
in the UI, but it'll be nice when it does, at least.

             Lastly, I added something new to the Windows port (that
used to be there a long time ago), just for FitzRoy :P
             I'll go over that in more detail tomorrow. For now,
consider it a surprise.

[No archive available]
2008-02-27 05:55:00 +00:00
byuu 92cfb1268a Update to bsnes v028r11? release.
New WIP up.

             I was a little too busy to work on bsnes this weekend,
but I got some work done tonight.

             First, I moved the field / interlace / overscan status
functions over to the PPU, where they belong.

 This led me to kill a lot of extra CPU timing variables, such as
vblstart and vnmi_trigger_pos. The latter I had to kill because I can
no longer call sCPU::update_interrupts() when the PPU changes the
overscan setting. You may be wondering about interlace toggle -- well,
it can only take effect at the start of a new frame anyway, and the
timing for scanline 0 is the same regardless of interlace setting, so
it doesn't really need to call update_interrupts() anyway.

 With this moved back to the PPU, I was able to clean up the PPU
functions a bit, too. Before, I had PPU::scanline_is_hires() and
CPU::interlace(), and then a function called PPU::get_scanline_info()
that would read the previous two functions and copy them into a
struct. What an odd construct, I'm sure it was more complex in the
past. Cruft, basically. I just killed that, renamed scanline_is_hires
to just hires, and now SNES::Video just queries ppu.hires() and
ppu.interlace() directly. Much nicer.

 I didn't lose any speed here, either. I made up the difference by
force inlining the PPU states in the bPPU header file.

 I ran all my IRQ and NMI tests again, I didn't see any regressions.
Testing of games that use interlace and overscan, as well as of IRQ-
sensitive games, would be appreciated.

 While cleaning up the PPU, I had some code that would flush the PPU
buffer when disabling interlace. I removed that as it looked rather
ugly. Don't really have a clean way of handling that. Not like any
game out there toggles interlace every frame anyway.

 I went through and killed a bunch of config file options that don't
actually do anything anymore, such as audio.frequency and
video.use_vram.

 Lastly, I rewrote the advanced panel code finally. All options that
can be controlled through the UI have been removed. The list is ~80%
smaller now. I also improved a lot of the descriptions. I think it
looks a lot better now, at least. I went with a blacklist, rather than
whitelist. I figure, better to have extra options if I forget to
filter them out; than to have missing options if I forget to add them.

 Before the next release, I'd like to add back default_height() stuff
to get the textboxes and buttons smaller on the Windows port. Maybe
revert that back to Tahoma 8. I should also add descriptions to the
last few advanced panel options missing them. Other than that -- just
regression testing, I suppose. I can't break up the PPU enslavement
any more without adversely affecting performance at this point.

 Hmm, would also be nice to rename vcounter / hclock / hcounter to
vcounter / hcounter / hdot. Afraid of missing a reference somewhere
and screwing up the timing, heh.

 I tried to get the icon working again on the Windows port. But using
LoadImage or CreateIconIndirect doesn't handle the alpha level of
bsnes' icon properly. It ends up as a 1-bit transparency that looks
terrible in the titlebar, as well as the taskbar. The only way I can
get it to look good is with LoadIcon and grabbing the icon from the
resource file. The reason I don't want to do this is because it's not
at all portable to GTK+. Sigh. Tested this on Win2k, by the way. Win2k
isn't supposed to support the alpha channel in icons at all, but it
sure the hell does on the taskbar.

 I even tried GetIconInfo() on the icon returned from LoadIcon(), and
then CreateIconIndirect on that, and it crushes the translucency
again. So it isn't a problem with the format of hbmMask and hbmColor
in my ICONINFO struct.

[No archive available]
2008-02-26 04:07:00 +00:00
byuu 4d922ba17c Update to bsnes v028r10? release.
New WIP.

 This one nukes the region, region_scanlines, prev_line_clocks and
prev_field_lines variables, and removes timeshift.cpp; replaced with
the new history ring buffer. It doesn't appear to affect speed at all,
which is fine by me. Next up, I want to move interlace and overscan
settings back to the PPU.

 All of my NMI and IRQ test ROMs, even the absolutely insane clock-
perfect ones, still pass. So there shouldn't be any regressions. But
if you feel like testing any IRQ sensitive games, that's cool.

 More visibly, I've bound the .cht path to the selection in the path
settings window. So all three paths actually work now. I tested it by
sorting all of my images by ROM, SRAM and Cheat ... have to say, the
folder looks a whole hell of a lot nicer now. I can see why this
feature is so popular.







> Mainly, there needs to be mechanisms to capture the current frames,
> like through render targets.




               Well, I guess if you don't mind writing up a small
example I could work on porting the current code over.

[No archive available]
2008-02-22 15:05:00 +00:00
byuu 3b2918791c Update to bsnes v028r09? release.
New WIP with XP / Vista theming and cheat path selection. Note that
cheat selection is just a placeholder. It still saves in the same
folder as the ROM for now.

I also spent about four hours trying to get the dual counter into a
fork of bsnes ... and had my ass handed to me. Rigging something up
really quickly that will break every last timing test I have is easy.
But it looks like doing this properly is going to be an extreme
undertaking that will take at least a few weeks. The code is just too
old and too hardcoded.

 I've started cleaning up that code to match my modern programming
style. It seems the only way to really tackle this is going to be very
slowly moving variable by variable to a separate class/struct
somewhere (and running my regression test ROMs each time), and then
once the entire thing is moved out of the CPU, try and clone it and
fork off the PPU to its own thread.

 By my estimates, it appears that simply splitting the CPU and PPU,
and giving the PPU its own cothread, is eating ~8% of performance. The
good news though is that if and when I succeed, it's quite possible I
can emulate the OAM cache behavior, which would fix the black
scanlines in Dr Franken and Winter Olympics.

 Some other good news ... I decided there was really no sane reason to
have different clock frequencies for the CPU<>PPU and SMP<>DSP, since
the real SNES only has two crystal clocks anyway. A novelty, sure, but
that would complicate the fuck out of dual counters. With that gone, I
can avoid a 64-bit multiplication during each SMP/DSP addclocks call.
That gives a modest ~2% speedup -- possibly placebo.

 Looks like a ring buffer for timeshifting backwards isn't going to
help much. I only notice a ~1-2fps difference even when disabling
timeshifting completely. Not surprising, timeshifting really doesn't
have that much overhead to it.

 Oh yeah, it seems I disabled the code that set the hclock to 186 upon
reset a while back, which was causing some of my oldest tests to fail.
I can't remember why I disabled that (maybe something to do with
cothreads), and enabling it didn't seem to cause any problems, so ...
I left it enabled. Let me know if anything screwy happens.

[No archive available]
2008-02-21 05:34:00 +00:00
byuu b7d34a8aa3 Update to bsnes v028r08? release.
New WIP.

 Fixed the frameskipping bug, fixed the DirectDraw renderer. I also
added a new folder_select function to both ports of hiro (Windows and
GTK+), and with that, I added a new path settings panel to the
configuration window.

               You can see how it looks here:






    http://byuu.cinnamonpirate.com/images/bsnes_20080219.png




 Also, I compiled the Windows binary with Direct3D support omitted.
tetsuo55, please grab this version, as I intend to compile with
Direct3D support for subsequent WIPs.

[No archive available]
2008-02-19 14:28:00 +00:00
byuu 8fd90cc123 Update to bsnes v028r07? release.
New WIP adds an option to enable or disable filetype
detection by reading the format header. I received no feedback, so I'm
defaulting to this behavior being off. In other words, I'm defaulting
to requiring the file extension to be correct to properly handle the
file. This is because there's no reason a real SNES would behave
different just because $8000 = 'P' and $8001 = 'K', and with the
option enabled by default, you wouldn't be able to get such a game to
run. But the option is there for those who want it.

I've also added bumpers to everything but the core (cpu, smp, ppu,
dsp) and some of the library stuff and platform-specific stuff (hiro,
libfilter, libco, ui) -- really can't add them to libco as I want each
individual file to compile on its own if the user wants. But overall,
it should make things a lot easier for those trying to build bsnes
without using my Makefile.

               Not in the WIP, I just fixed a frameskipping bug. It
was broken in the last few WIPs, including the most recent.







> You'd be best off reading 7 bytes, and then memcmp()'ing them.




 Can't memcmp() the low five bits of the GZ flags byte. I'm not
concerned about rigid speed here anyway. It's just file type
detection. I changed it to fread() the bytes, that's good enough.

               Thanks for the information, I've extended JMA to a
40-bit check.







> Anyway, the -mdynamic-no-pic option does work and is likely the
> better solution, since it apparently continues to allow linking to
> dynamic libraries, whereas -static apparently does not.




 Well, we use -static only when building libco.c. I like -static more,
because it exists in all versions of GCC. I will mention -mdynamic-no-
pic in the libco documentation for v0.13 official.







> Well, turns out the CGRAM content is the same... Surprised
>                    bsnes, ZSNES and vSNES show 8/16/24, so it's
> something to do with SNES9x.




               Thank you for testing! If only all beta testers had
your technical prowess :D

               Glad to see it's not a bug on my side. Not really in
the mood to track down bugs at the moment, heh.







> You obviously haven't been around here very long. Razz
>                    Believe me, someone has or will try it.




 I've actually been very fortunate in that regard. At least 95%, if
not all, of bsnes users have been very intelligent and well spoken :)







> Another small issue could be adding a list of recently loaded ROMs
> to the menu.




               Not a chance. I can't _stand_ recently opened document
lists.







> now I'll leave you all to this medical hijacking of the thread,
> while waiting for richard bannister to successfully compile and
> release a new bsnes




               He has. Get it here. Be sure to send him thanks, please
:)







> byuu's been planning to write documentation for ages, he's just
> never gotten around to it. Perhaps all the experience he's gained
> restructuring bsnes will help him plan out the documentation when he
> does, though




 I won't start on docs until I have a functional CPU<>PPU cycle-level
emulation model. I'll try documenting the PPU as I work on cycle
timing, and I can expand upon the documentation from there.

[No archive available]
2008-02-18 17:02:00 +00:00
byuu e651beb72e Update to bsnes v028r06? release.
New WIP.

 Richard Bannister asked me a year ago to add support to detect the
file compression type by reading the header, as apparently Mac users
can't be bothered to use proper file extensions.

               In an act of extreme expediency, I've added his request
in record time :P

               Here's the detection code I wrote:







    Reader::Type Reader::detect(const char *fn) {
                       FILE *fp = fopen(fn, "rb");
                       if(!fp) return Unknown;

                       fseek(fp, 0, SEEK_END);
                       unsigned size = ftell(fp);
                       rewind(fp);

                       uint8_t a = size >= 1 ? fgetc(fp) : 0;
                       uint8_t b = size >= 2 ? fgetc(fp) : 0;
                       uint8_t c = size >= 3 ? fgetc(fp) : 0;
                       uint8_t d = size >= 4 ? fgetc(fp) : 0;
                       fclose(fp);

                       if(a == 0x1f && b == 0x8b && c == 0x08 && d <=
    0x1f) return GZIP;
                       if(a == 0x50 && b == 0x4b && c == 0x03 && d ==
    0x04) return ZIP;
                       if(a == 0x4a && b == 0x4d && c == 0x41 && d ==
    0x00) return JMA;
                       return Normal;
                       }




 If anyone sees any problems, please let me know. And unless your name
is Nach, I expect you to read and cite official documentation to point
out any problems.

 Note: I need more than 16-bit accuracy to avoid false positives, so I
read the compression type and flags for GZIP. Compression type should
always be 0x08 according to my understanding of GZ. Flag top 3 bits
are always 0 per spec. I guessed with JMA's fourth byte. I hope it's
always zero, but I don't know that for certain.

 The new WIP has GZ/ZIP/JMA support built-in, so testing would be
appreciated, though I doubt you'll hit any false positives.

               Now, a more important question. Should I enable this
detection by default in bsnes, or go by filename? It's _possible_ an
SNES ROM could have these headers, despite not being compressed at
all. One could even add these signatures intentionally if they really
wanted. A real SNES game could have these bytes at the top of the
file, quite obviously.

So, is it better to cater to people who misname extensions, or to the
possibility that a game might have these bytes in the signature (a one
in four billion chance of happening accidentally. One in 500 million
for GZ false detection.)

               ---

 Also, I added some changes by KarLKoX to allow OpenAL to build on
Windows. Namely, I removed the unused ALut dependency, and added
support to the makefile to include openal32. I don't intend to build
OpenAL into the default Windows binaries (because I don't want extra
DLL dependencies that most people do not have; and because OpenAL
support sucks on Windows for non-Creative cards), but perhaps in the
future I'll offer more than one version for download.







> The "almost black" color below the door is 8/16/24 in bsnes
> (standard preset) and 0/16/16 in SNES9x. It's best to see on a black
> background.

>                    EDIT: This might be due to the RGB565 format.




 Wow, that's quite a difference. If you have bsnes v013-v019, you can
dump the palette through the memory viewer. Perhaps see what SNES9x
has from its savestate, and if it's different -- one of us has an
emulation bug.

               Not an RGB565 problem, or the colors would match when
ignoring the low three bits (two for green.)

               bsnes:
               00001000
               00010000
               00011000

               SNES9x:
               00000000
               00010000
               00010000

[No archive available]
2008-02-17 16:49:00 +00:00
byuu 4cbba77fc7 Update to bsnes v028r05? release.
New WIP up. This one re-adds HQ2x and NTSC, so all
filters from v028 are back, plus there's the new scanline filter.

 So all of that code is now out of the core. It was pretty silly that
eg the S-SMP core was dependent upon the SNES class, which depended on
the VideoFilter class, which depended upon the HQ2x class, which
depended upon the ~50kb HQ2x blending tables. Well, no longer.

 While I didn't make V-only HQ2x and Scale2x filters (yet?), I did add
some code to make it fallback on the direct renderer if hires or
interlace is being used. This means the issues with hires games (eg
DKC intro) should be gone. Let me know if you find any problems.

 I also re-added DMPSDisable to the GTK+ screensaver disable code,
since that was triggering after ~30 minutes or so still. It probably
won't even work, but whatever.







> Why default to a crippled renderer to save those people a few
> clicks?




               First impressions and all that, mostly.







> I have an Intel Mac with OS X 10.4 (no Leopard, sorry, but it
> shouldn't be that different yet) I can test whatever on




               Thank you! :D

               Okay, first thing would be to make sure libco itself
works. Please download this:







    http://byuu.cinnamonpirate.com/files/libco_v13_rc2.zip




               You can compile the test program like this:







    g++ -O3 -fomit-frame-pointer -c test_timing.cpp
                       gcc -O3 -fomit-frame-pointer -o libco.o -c
    ../libco.c
                       g++ -O3 -fomit-frame-pointer test_timing.o
    libco.o -o test_timing




               Then just run test_timing that is produced, and let me
know what the output is, or if it segfaults.







> Really, you want a first-gen Core 2 Duo or newer.




               Yeah, it's pretty slow. Especially since v018. It used
to be easy to get 80-100fps with a 3500+.

[No archive available]
2008-02-14 13:54:00 +00:00
byuu 1194d3f9dc Update to bsnes v028r04? release.
New WIP. Windows binary included. I've added back
Scale2x support, and I also added a scanline filter for Snark. No, I
don't plan on combining them so you can do things like Scale2x +
scanlines. It's a 50% scanline filter. I may add 75% and 100% in the
future.

               Ah, and a while back I mentioned a certain software
filter I saw. Here is that picture:







    http://byuu.cinnamonpirate.com/temp/PhosphorSimTest1.jpg




 Unfortunately, I don't even remember where I found the image anymore,
let alone who made it. Does anyone here know how to recreate the
filtered image from the source image?

 I'd prefer to avoid baseless speculation, if you know how it is done
-- and better yet, if you can duplicate it -- please let me know. I
really, really like the filter and would love to add it to bsnes.

[No archive available]
2008-02-13 14:09:00 +00:00
byuu 89a1b3d65f Update to bsnes v028r03? release.
Posted a new WIP, which cleans up src/snes. I've completely killed all
the video filtering stuff, and cleaned up the rest. Only the audio WAV
logger remains. Didn't feel like moving that to the UI tonight.

 So far, I have the colortable and a direct filter moved to libfilter.
I'll probably just add Scale2X and a simple scanline filter for the
time being, but HQ2x and NTSC will have to be re-added before another
official release can happen.

[No archive available]
2008-02-12 13:45:00 +00:00
byuu 5a82cdf978 Update to bsnes v028r02? release.
Okay, I've posted a new WIP. Windows binary included.

             Changes:
             - Video output uses RGB888, rather than RGB565
 - Removed RGB modes from Xv. They're a major hassle, I can't test
them, and they didn't even work right. Maybe I'll try again in the
future
             - $(DESTDIR) added to Makefile
             - Increased Linux usleep idle delay from 20 to 20,000, so
bsnes appears to consume 0% CPU time when idle
             - Started moving src/snes/video to src/lib/libfilter. So
far, only the colortable has been moved over

 I held off on actually using libfilter's colortable. I'm intending to
break things completely here very shortly by eliminating
src/snes/video stuff, but I wanted to get a WIP out before doing so,
so that people could mess around with RGB888.

 Speed is going to be a little slower for Linux users who use the GLX
or Xv video driver. Very sorry about this. If you need to, stick with
v0.028 official for the time being.

             ---

 By the way, RGB888 is the bottom row. Thanks for playing. RGB888
doesn't make bright colors darker or vice versa, it avoids rounding
errors. It has the biggest effect on near-black colors, as before they
were getting crushed badly by the exponential curve gamma adjust. But
don't be fooled: really dark colors will still be much harder to see
than with the gamma curve turned off.

             Anyway, if you liked the top row more, then just adjust
the settings slightly on the raster settings tab :)

             EDIT: Neat, fglrx driver goes from 57.5fps to 59.5fps
with GLX. YMMV.

[No archive available]
2008-02-11 10:14:00 +00:00
byuu 52be510d2b Update to bsnes v028r01? release.
New WIP posted, Linux only. Need all the testers I can
get on this one, please.

 First and foremost, I spent about four hours figuring out how to
disable the screensaver on Linux. I tried XSetScreensaver,
XResetScreenSaver, XScreenSaverSuspend, DPMSDisable, synthetic
XSendEvent, and all of them failed miserably. I ended up getting it to
work with only one thing: XTestFakeKeyEvent. I send a fake keypress
every ~20 seconds. The key send is keycode (not keysym) 255. I don't
know of many 256-key keyboards, so I think that should be fine.

 Anyway, testing would be greatly appreciated. Please make sure the
synthetic key events do not interfere with your applications in any
way. Technically, the fake key send goes to whatever the active app
is. It shouldn't matter as the keycode used is undefined. I haven't
seen any GTK+ or Qt apps do anything with it, they just ignore it. If
any issues come up, then the best I can do is enable the screensaver
whenever bsnes doesn't have focus, and disable when it does have
focus. I think it should be fine, though. Totem uses the same trick
and nobody seems to mind. mplayer tries all of my above methods plus
bizarre fake messages and dbus commands to try and stop the
screensaver, and it still fails for a lot of people.

 Next up, I've extended the Xv renderer. It can handle RGB15, 16, 24,
32 and YUY2 formats now. It defaults to RGB ones if you have them. I'd
like if all of them could be tested. RGB15 and 16 should be perfect,
24 and 32 will likely have bad pointer arithmetic, but will hopefully
work.

 Need to set driver to "xv", and check what you have with "xvinfo". It
defaults to RGB16, then RGB15, then RGB32, then RGB24, then YUY2, then
it gives up and fails. In the future we can see about letting the
encoding be user-selectable.







> if your repository-maintaining friend doesn't have an amd64 install
> with which to build packages




               That's exactly it, sorry. Plus I don't want to burden
him more than I do already.

[No archive available]
2008-02-08 10:33:00 +00:00
byuu 8b7219bdef Update to bsnes v028 01 release.
[No changelog available]
2008-02-06 22:58:42 +00:00
byuu 926ffd9695 Update to bsnes v028 release.
Changelog:
    - OpenGL (with hardware filter mode support) and SDL video drivers added to Linux port
    - OpenAL (with speed regulation disable support) and OSS audio drivers added to Linux port [Nach]
    - SDL input driver (with joypad support) added to Linux port
    - Emulator pause option added
    - Added option to select behavior of bsnes when idle: allow input, ignore input or pause emulator
    - Added support to remap common GUI actions to key/joypad presses on the "Input Configuration" screen
    - bsnes will now clamp the video output size when it is larger than the screen resolution
    - GUI library has been enhanced, and renamed to hiro
    - Fullscreen mode now always centers video, rather than approximates
    - Fullscreen mode now works correctly on Linux/Openbox
    - Extra layer of abstraction in src/ui has been removed, as GUI lib unifies all ports anyway
    - Video, audio and input drivers unified into standard library, named ruby
    - All custom headers have been merged into a new template library, named nall
    - Makefile rewritten, vastly improved. Allows quick toggling of compiled-in drivers
    - Makefile: all object files now placed in /src/obj, binary placed in /
    - libco greatly enhanced, no longer requires an assembler to build [byuu, blargg, Nach]
    - libco SJLJ driver added; bsnes should now build on any Unix-derivative now (Solaris, OS X, PS3, etc) [Nach]
    - Fixed register $213e.d4 PPU1 open bus behavior [zones]
    - Windows port will not activate screensaver while bsnes is running [Nightcrawler]
    - Visual C++ target no longer requires stdint.h
    - And lots more -- mostly code refactoring related
2008-02-04 16:16:34 +00:00
byuu a1389a2ba3 Update to bsnes v027r14? release.
> Anything is better than re-using an already well-established name
> (even a short acronym like "vai"), but that's just me.




               I was asking about eliminating the extra layer of
abstraction in the UI.

 But since you brought it up ... I'm sure vai has been taken before.
Quark certainly has been. Hell, BSNES was taken by some people trying
to port ZSNES to BeOS (they gave up). Given, none of those have
anywhere near the popularity of the programming language. But eh, I
_really_ don't care. I like the name, and nobody else in the world is
ever going to use any of my software libraries anyway, so I'll use it.

               Speaking of which, I hate the name miu for the GUI
library, it sounds stupid. So in the spirit of selecting **totally
random names** that are _certainly not associated with any licensed /
trademarked / copyrighted proper nouns_, **especially** not from any
_video games_ or somesuch; I've renamed miu to the **completely
arbitrary** name of hiro. Boy, I'm so creative and original with
naming.

               ---

               That said, new WIP up, with Windows binary.

 Windows users, be sure to set system.video to "direct3d",
system.audio to "directsound", system.input to "directinput".

               Linux users, "opengl", "openal" and "sdl" are
preferred. "xv", "ao" and "x" are safer fallbacks.

               Changes:

               - Finally found a problem with dots in folder names, it
screws with GNU make. So foo.bar has been renamed foo_bar.
 - Decided to drop the pointless duplications of folder names into
file names, such as miu.gtk/miu.gtk.button.cpp -> hiro_gtk/button.cpp.
Same for libco.
 - ruby is completed, all 13 drivers are in the ruby namespace, and
bound to the base ruby.cpp file. The UI just calls
ruby::video.driver("name"); to select a driver. Before v028's release,
omitting the name will select the default best-case driver. ruby is no
longer dependent on anything besides nall (the template library, for
those losing track in the sea of _arbitrary_ names.)
 - miu became hiro, as mentioned above. Like ruby, I wanted to remove
the need for platform-specific tests inside the UI for it. There's now
a base hiro.cpp file that will auto-select the best implementation and
compile it. Just build hiro.cpp on whatever platform you want and it
does the rest.
 - UI platform abstraction removed. src/ui/miu was moved to src/ui.
The two main.cpp files were merged into one. With the GUI wrapper and
hardware drivers moved out of this folder, it's quite orderly there
now.
 - More improvements to the Makefile system. New folder obj/
accumulates all of the object files now. Added streq(al) and
strn(ot)e(qual) to Makefile.string library. Improved the delete
command to support deleting from either obj/*.$(obj) with rm, or
obj\*.$(obj) with del. bsnes executable is moved up one folder above
src/ for both Windows and Linux now. The batch file doesn't perform
this copy anymore.
               - Killed the doc/ folder. Just a pointless, out of date
.dia file there anyway.

               Future plans:
 - I want to make ruby take advantage of nall/config.hpp, and output
to ~/.bsnes/ruby.cfg. This file will contain driver-specific
configuration settings. I may or may not add editing support for them
to the advanced window. Or maybe I'll be lazy and just throw
everything into bsnes.cfg.
               - Really need to add automatic driver selection to
ruby. Can't release it with "" defaulting to no driver.
 - I'd like to replace the god-awful GTK+ video driver (that spawns a
new window) with SDL video. Yeah, I know. At least with SDL_WINDOWID
environment variable hack, it will go into the main window. I'll
probably make this the default driver on Linux, since ATI can't even
seem to get X-Video right with their drivers.

[No archive available]
2008-02-03 10:12:00 +00:00
byuu 5263ffb7aa Update to bsnes v027r13? release.
Yeah, I'll probably worry about the axis stuff later. I didn't intend
to spend a ton of time on adding SDL input support like this, to be
honest. Though I guess I should have known better with SDL and Linux.

 Okay, new WIP with no Windows binary. There's really no reason to get
the WIP. The only change is renaming vai to ruby. That's right matz,
ruby. Deal.

 Moved the folder to lib/ruby from ui/vai. The main point is trying to
make it easier to use for other applications. Instead of having each
app include all sorts of platform-specific header files and manually
create the objects at runtime, it's all done for you now. Just
#include <ruby/ruby.h>, call ruby::input.init(const char *driver = "")
and use it. So far, only the input driver has been ported in this way.

 Note: if you use this WIP, you'll want to make sure system.input is
set to either "sdl"/Linux or "directinput"/Windows. It defaults to no
driver with "", for the time being.

 Once I finish the video and audio drivers in the same manner, I'm
strongly considering eliminating the "multiple UI" bindings, as my
Win32/GTK+ wrapper is pretty much meant to wrap all possible
interfaces into one. This means it would be harder to create a
standalone, GUI-less SDL or VESA2/DOS only port in the future, for
example. But I really don't have any plans to do that anyway. So it's
just needless separation of components, really.

 That extra separation layer was being blurred a lot recently anyway.
The config.cpp file was adding miu-specific GUI commands, where they
had to be to bind to interface.cpp, which binds to the core. Meh.

             So basically, I'm wanting to change the structure from:
             core <> abstracted UI <> miu, SDL, VESA2
             to:
             core <> miu

 Even with this, porting to pure SDL would still be doable in the
future, you'd just have more code to write to do it.

             Any objections?

[No archive available]
2008-02-02 11:58:00 +00:00
byuu 1744bcb99c Update to bsnes v027r12? release.
New WIP.

 I removed property.hpp, as I really didn't like it. Reverted Audio
wrappers to use cap/get/set method that Video and Input wrappers use.
Yay, consistency.

 Capped input.sdl to only poll up to six axes. I suppose if someone
really only has 2 or 4, and has phantom 5,6 axes, they'll run into
Glenn's problem. Meh. We'll wait for a way to configure vai settings
on a per-driver basis to work on that problem more. I was thinking of
just giving it the handle to either unique configuration class
objects, or to the bsnes.cfg one. Just dump all settings for all
(compiled-in) drivers in there, in case the user wants to keep
swapping between drivers.

 Added Nightcrawler's screensaver and monitorpower disable code. Happy
now? Note, I don't use screensavers, nor do I feel like playing for
ten minutes to verify. If anyone else could verify whether or not it's
working, I'd appreciate it. Note again, this won't work on X11, only
Windows.

 Improved the makefile a bit more for Visual C++. Disabled the warning
about passing "this" in a constructor. It's valid and safe C++, and
the only way to implement a bidirectional private implementation by
reference. The last warning is comparison between unsigned long long
and bool, which I can't see a problem with (it gives no warnings about
unsigned long and bool, either). Should I just disable that warning,
as well?







> It ended up being axis 6, but yes, that pinpointed it exactly.




 Oops, sorry. When there are two of something, I always have a really
hard time telling them apart (x/y, hidori/migi, edge/level
(sensitive), etc etc). Not sure why that is. Three or more choices and
it's never a problem.







> Would need porting for BSD gamepads however.




 If it doesn't support BSD, then I'm not really interested. I kind of
have to special case Windows (~95+% userbase), but I don't personally
want to waste my time writing Linux only code.

[No archive available]
2008-02-01 11:46:00 +00:00
byuu 6362044c05 Update to bsnes v027r11? release.
Alright, new WIP posted, Windows binary included.

 I've added the auto-pause setting. I removed the formerly useless
joypad selection comboboxes, as I want to stick those in the main menu
when they are ready anyway. It defaults to auto-pause, so that
discussion is moot now.

 Don't complain that three combo boxes are not natural compared to two
checkboxes -- I don't care. There are only three possible states, and
I like it the way it is. Thanks in advance.

 Nach, you have my humble thanks for your input today. This was
definitely a lot easier than I thought it would be with your help.

               For those curious, here's how things look at the
moment:

               [image]

 I also fixed up the CPU usage when paused. I tried to stress test as
many things as possible (manual pause <> auto pause conflicts,
statusbar update failures, toggling settings in real time, etc etc),
but I may have overlooked something. Rigorous testing would be
appreciated :)

               ---

 In other news, I completely rewrote the Makefile. It is now far more
advanced, and will allow you to easily remove vai modules. Once
removed, the dependencies on those modules will automatically be
removed. The source still needs to be updated to auto-detect non-
existent modules, but this is a step in the right direction.

               Take a look at some of my GNU make-fu:







    ifneq ($(findstring gcc,$(compiler)),) # GCC family
                       flags = -O3 -fomit-frame-pointer -Ilib
                       c = $(compiler) $(flags)
                       cpp = $(subst cc,++,$(compiler)) $(flags)










    ifeq ($(platform),x) # X11
                       miu = miu.gtk
                       vai = video.glx video.xv video.gtk audio.openal
    audio.oss audio.ao input.sdl input.x










    link += $(if $(findstring audio.directsound,$(vai)),$(call
    mklib,dsound))
                       link += $(if $(findstring
    audio.openal,$(vai)),$(call mklib,openal) $(call mklib,alut))
                       link += $(if $(findstring
    input.directinput,$(vai)),$(call mklib,dinput8) $(call
    mklib,dxguid))
                       link += $(if $(findstring
    input.sdl,$(vai)),`sdl-config --libs`)










    arch := $(patsubst %,$(call mkdef,%),$(arch))
                       objects := $(patsubst %,%.$(obj),$(objects))










    compile = $(strip \
                       $(if $(filter %.c,$<), \
                       $(c) $(1) $(rule), \
                       $(if $(filter %.cpp,$<), \
                       $(cpp) $(1) $(rule) \
                       ) \
                       ) \
                       )

                       %.$(obj): $<; $(call compile)










    video.glx.$(obj) : ui/vai/video/video.glx.cpp ui/vai/video/*
                       video.gtk.$(obj) : ui/vai/video/video.gtk.cpp
    ui/vai/video/*
                       $(call compile,`pkg-config --cflags gtk+-2.0`)




               Hahahahahah :)

[No archive available]
2008-01-29 07:42:00 +00:00
byuu 319b244af4 Update to bsnes v027r10? release.
New WIP posted.

 I downloaded a 64-bit Linux OS to verify that libco.x86-64.c worked
this time. Turns out the problem was that I declared "register stack =
*(long long*)to;" -- forgot the size qualifier, so it was being
truncated to 32-bits. Anyway, it works now.

 I also added two more GUI keys, one to pop open the load ROM window,
and one to pause emulation. Yes, took me eight versions, but I finally
re-added pause mode. It probably still consumes CPU time, not sure. I
don't really care, I'll fix it before release. The whole thing is
silly anyway, task scheduler is so easy to cheat. Add sleep(1) inside
the main loop and it states bsnes uses ~1-2% CPU time. As if.

               Windows binary updated, too.







> Unfortunately, it will be 64-bit and using Vista 64 Ultimate, so I'm
> not sure what all will be compatible in terms of software and
> emulators.




 32-bit software runs fine for the most part on Vista. bsnes works
there for sure. But if you want it 64-bit native, you'll have to
compile it yourself, as I have no idea how to make a 64-bit Windows
binary. Nor do I really feel like maintaining another build :/

[No archive available]
2008-01-28 06:27:00 +00:00
byuu a3f1802845 Update to bsnes v027r09? release.
New WIP. No Windows binary. This one fixes the GTK+
fullscreen issue on Openbox completely. How do I know? Because I'm
running Openbox now to verify :P
               It's pretty spiffy, whole thing is only consuming ~5mb
of memory. Total mem usage sans the 'fox is ~40mb.

 The cool part with these changes is that video no longer flickers for
one frame when you toggle the menubar in fullscreen mode anymore. Not
even on XFCE.

 Just in case, verification always helps. Hopefully it'll work on all
the esoteric window managers out there, so long as they honor the
undecorate window request. You may have some small issues if not.

 I didn't need keepabove to get on top of my XFCE panel, even when I
run the panel in Openbox. I'd like to keep it off if possible.







    void pWindow::fullscreen() {
                       if(state.is_fullscreen == true) return;
                       state.is_fullscreen = true;

                       gtk_window_fullscreen(GTK_WINDOW(window));
                       gtk_window_set_decorated(GTK_WINDOW(window),
    false);
                       gtk_widget_set_size_request(window,
    gdk_screen_width(), gdk_screen_height());
                       }

                       void pWindow::unfullscreen() {
                       if(state.is_fullscreen == false) return;
                       state.is_fullscreen = false;

                       gtk_widget_set_size_request(formcontainer,
    state.width, state.height);
                       gtk_widget_set_size_request(window, -1, -1);
                       gtk_window_set_decorated(GTK_WINDOW(window),
    true);
                       gtk_window_unfullscreen(GTK_WINDOW(window));
                       }




 I also fixed the "esc" -> "escape" keysym for menu toggle, and
updated the x86-64 target with OpenGL + SDL input stuff. Thanks
everyone for the awesome feedback!







> EDIT3: How come you haven't added the icon to the window? Need to
> write another class for handling it (for MIU)? Adding the following
> to the end of pWindow::create() in
> 'src/lib/miu.gtk/miu.gtk.window.cpp':




 Yes, I need a way to do the same in Windows. Ideally, I need a way to
embed the icon inside the EXE, and have an API that allows me to set
the icon both on Windows and Linux from it. I'd prefer to not require
another external file for bsnes binary releases.

               Thanks for the GTK+ code, though. It's a step in the
right direction.







> I tested the linux version of bsnes with my Radeon Mobility x1400,
> and I don't get any video inside the bsnes window. I'm running
> Ubuntu, and I've set up all the ATI driver stuff, AFAIK (Compiz, at
> least, works).




 Aw ... well, thanks for trying. I kind of figured it wouldn't work.
Perhaps ATI doesn't support GLX ... I honestly have no idea. I'll look
into it.







> What other package(s) do I need to install to correct these
> warnings/errors?




               libsdl1.2-dev







> My first problem when running this WIP is that my statusbar is
> black. All black. No one else has complained, so this must just be
> happening over here... any ideas why? Also, fullscreen won't work
> for me... gameplay freezes for a moment when I toggle it and then
> continues windowed, as normal.




 Sigh. I fixed this a while back. Certain GTK+ themes weren't painting
the background of statusbars, so I embedded the statusbar inside an
event box. I don't know why it still isn't working for you. It seems
to work for everyone else now ...







> Secondly, when attempting to map my gamepad, every single key logged
> correctly... except my right directional. What? Weird.




 Good question. The SDL docs say axis 0 = x, axis 1 = y. but the two
thumbs are axes 2, 3 left and 4,5 right. The left thumb uses 2 for X
and 3 for Y, but the right uses 4 for Y and 5 for X. Since the API has
no way to tell you what direction an axis is in, I decided to play it
safe and do axis&1 over all axes. I guess I'll just hardcode for D-pad
+ two thumbs in the next version by swapping 4 and 5 ... no idea how
other apps do it.







> Finally, turning on Scale2x with or without opengl as video does
> this to the Donkey Kong Country intro (note the statusbar)...




 Longstanding issue. Never modified the hq2x and scale2x filters to
support hires modes. Only direct and NTSC do. Hoping to bypass the
issue with pixel shaders in the future. That, or wait until I cleanup
the video filter code and get it out of the core.







> Does GtkSocket not do what you're looking for?
>                    http://www.gtk.org/api/2.6/gtk/GtkSocket.html




 Nah, that's for other processes. I just need to convert an X11 handle
back to a gtk_drawing_area GtkWidget. Sounds weird, but miu only has
one handle() function for cross-platform reasons. So I make that
export an X11 handle (that Xv and OGL take) rather than a GtkWidget
handle (which requires gdkx.h header to extract the X11 handle from in
a safe manner.)

[No archive available]
2008-01-22 07:37:00 +00:00
byuu 4370acae2e Update to bsnes v027r08? release.
Okay, new WIP. This time there's a Windows binary.

 I improved input.hpp a lot, and now InputManager will scan the
joypads as well. DirectInput is fixed, so the Windows port works
again. Now that the InputCaptureWindow stuff is cleaned up, I made it
only capture joypad assignment keypresses when that window has focus.

 I'm also planning to make a "fast assign all keys" button or
something, like I used to have. Not sure how I want to do that just
yet.

               I also tested triggering UI events through the joypad,
it works great :)
 Now I just need to add entries to Input Configuration window for each
UI action. Hmm, should I list the UI entries above or below the SNES
joypad entries? (eg ui.fullscreen, joypad1.up, ... or ...
joypad2.start, ui.fullscreen?)

 The rest of my time tonight I spent working on my cross assembler,
xkas. Added sublabels to it, and some more parsing improvements. It's
getting messy already, though. Trying to write complex grammar parsers
in C++ usually does. But it has to be pure C++. No yacc, flex, etc.
So, I'll have to go back through and find redundant code to factor
out. Why would you care about xkas? Well, the sooner I get that done,
the sooner I can help out the Mother 3 translation project a bit more.
GBA cross assemblers suck for ROM hacking.







> You have a big disclaimer about how it's perfectly legal to use "_0"
> as an identifier inside a namespace... and then never actually do
> it.




 I was using it for joypad button IDs, but I just decided to go with
button_0n. I removed the comment in the latest WIP. Also added a way
to index joypad IDs at runtime, and packed the enums into a linear
list.







> Apps that process input according to 'the characters printed on the
> key' are my pet hate because I the Dvorak layout, so Z and X or WASD
> are not nearly as convenient as you might otherwise expect.




 Would require supporting every keyboard in existence, and needing
some sort of lower-level stuff to translate keycodes to raw keyboard
IDs. The only issue you'll have to reassign your keys one time on
first startup :(

 I envy you though for managing to switch to dvorak. I tried for a
really long time, I could never get above ~40wpm, whereas I get
~110wpm with qwerty now. I think programming is the worst part, all of
my brackets moved? Well, that or the fact that all apps use
Ctrl+C/X/V/Z. That hack to make Ctrl+ use qwerty on dvorak doesn't
solve the underlying issue, either.







> If there is any other areas in the bsnes ppu rendering code that you
> want me to verify in a similar fashion, please tell me, so that I
> can try and code something to prove if it is right.




               Hahah, there sure are :)

 I think the biggest one is that I've yet to test setting BG3 tilesize
to 16x16 when using Mode2/4/6's offset-per-tile mode. Does it affect
indexing? I don't think that it does. May want to also toggle BG1/2
tilesize, just for fun, but I'm almost certain I have that right
already.

 Don't worry about it if you're busy. It's obviously not a big deal
since no game in the world uses the effect (that, or I already emulate
it correctly), and I'll no doubt get around to it if I ever rewrite
the PPU emulation.

               Either way, many thanks for helping me with this :D

[No archive available]
2008-01-17 06:48:00 +00:00
byuu 5a804eac58 Update to bsnes v027r07? release.
Okay, new WIP.
 But before you download it ... there's no Windows binary, because I
haven't finished porting some changes over to DirectInput yet. So it
won't compile just yet.

             But, here's the changes anyway:
             - fixed up the recursive descent math parser, it should
reject 100% of invalid math now
 - added a new header, new.hpp, by Nach. This allows for uint8_t
*buffer = new(zeromemory) uint8_t[65536]; //zeromemory ==
memset(buffer, 0, 65536);
             - updated input.hpp more, and removed keymap.hpp
completely -- this is why DirectInput is broken right now
 - rewrote all of inputmgr.cpp, and InputCaptureWindow. The really
ugly, hackish code is now gone. InputCaptureWindow no longer needs to
hijack the main UI event loop to catch keycodes. Instead, a ~20ms
polling occurs that will alert event::key(up|down) of key changes. The
really, really good news about this, is that it also catches the UI
keypresses now, too. That means that I can now map GUI events to the
joypad, or alternate keys!! Expect that within the next release or
two.
 - ran krom's mode7 test -- holy hell, he has good eyes o.O -- took me
about 20 minutes to definitively tell which output looked correct on
my SNES. He was right of course, and I trusted him, but double
verification is always nice, right? Removed TRAC's theorem from the
mode7 code, and spruced up the formatting in that file a bit.
             - **a real emulation change!!** zones recently pointed
out that anomie figured out that $213e.d4 was PPU1 open bus. I'm
pretty sure I was really thorough when I initially added PPU1+PPU2
open bus (even verified CGRAM.d15 open bus (-much- harder than it
sounds)), but I guess I missed a bit ... odd. anomie also said that
$213e.d5 is basically tied to GND, so that should mean it always
returns 0. I read previously that it was some weird "no PPU activity
for ~40 frames" bit or something, but I don't even remember where I
saw that. I trust anomie anyway, so that means all PPU register status
bits should be accounted for. Thanks for the heads up, zones! :) Now,
of course, it's _extremely_ minor and it won't fix any games (there
aren't any known bugs anyway), but it's still nice to actually fix
something in the core for a change.

[No archive available]
2008-01-16 07:59:00 +00:00
byuu 3b65b50aea Update to bsnes v027r06? release.
Double post! Better to separate this, I think.

             Okay, new WIP lacks Windows binary, and only changes one
header.

 I figured it might be fun to show you guys what I've been doing as
far as code cleanup goes, something a little different, you know?

             Okay, here was the config.hpp file from the last WIP:
             http://byuu.cinnamonpirate.com/temp/config_old.txt

             And here is the new one:
             http://byuu.cinnamonpirate.com/temp/config_new.txt

             Or for those who do not know C++ ... :)
 Like a standard library should be, I've reverted UpperCase to
lower_case, I've converted everything to const-correctness, I've
hidden everything that should not be public, improved the code
formatting, added proper casting, removed the needless template
overloads all over the place, converted the variable names from
incomprehensible gibberish (idef, ifmt?) to clean, understandable
alternatives (default_value, type), removed needless copying of const
char* data, which means no more destructors needed, and added proper
int -> unsigned types when indexing arrays.

 The only thing left is to add better-named integer->string conversion
routines to string.hpp, to get rid of the ugly sprintf code.

[No archive available]
2008-01-09 06:53:00 +00:00
byuu a85ff8c437 Update to bsnes v027r05? release.
Another WIP, this one's really just for myself to look
over at work tomorrow.

 Changed any.hpp again to not auto upcast fundamental types, as it
causes problems such as downcasting references to long doubles and
such. Sucks how limited the any type is by forced casting 100% of the
time, but whatever ... no endian issues possible now, at least.

 I added property.hpp and bound that to the Audio class (not to Video
or Input yet). It's a lot more complicated than the old integral
identifier cap/get/set functions, but I need the char*-named list
functionality to allow changing driver-specific settings from the GUI
one day. Not too much done there yet. Need to work on it more, I'd
like to make bconfig use property.hpp rather than the IntegerSetting +
StringSetting classes. Tried to make property.hpp read in a config
file without bstring, talk about pain ... ugh.

 Tried to move bstring into nall, failed miserably. When strcpy(char*,
const char*) is in the global namespace and strcpy(string&, const
char*) is not, the compiler gets angry. Not going to work. Really
should go object-oriented entirely and ditch libc functions, but ...
that's a _lot_ of code rewriting on my part. Need to think about it
more first.

 Removed bbase.h dependency from bstring, miu and xkas. Now I just
need to do something about bkeymap.h, and things will be looking a lot
better for code sanity.

               Nach wrote the _seventh(!!)_ libco driver tonight, an
implementation using setjmp / longjmp. Pretty neat, overhead is ~20x,
which puts it only slightly worse off than Windows Fibers on my
machine. Using it in bsnes slows the emulator down by <1%, but it
should be portable across all Unix-derivative systems now. This means
eg a PS3, Alpha, SPARC, etc port should be completely doable now, just
need someone to compile it.

               Planning to position libco as a competitor to GNU Pth,
so that leaves me with:

               SDL -> vai
               wxWidgets -> miu
               GNU Pth and pthreads -> libco
               boost and Loki -> nall
               std::string -> bstring

               Good times. Now I just need to register
inventedhere.org for all of these libraries.







> but it's pointless since the sound quality of the S-DSP isn't good
> enough to make a difference.




 The only thing we could possibly bypass would be the driver / API
resampling our audio (eg 32khz -> 44khz native). Running each SNES
channel through its own hardware channel is just silly. Either use an
API that bypasses the mixer, or don't.

 And yes, there's lots of ways to "enhance" the audio. Replacing
gaussian with a higher end interpolation, bypassing the clipping, etc.
But then you end up with "better" (in most cases), but less accurate
sound.







> is anyone currently working on an enhancement snes emu?




 ZSNES adds cubic spline audio interpolation, SNES9x adds "hi-res"
mode7, ZSNES/XBOX adds rumble pad support to most games.

               Other than smaller things like that, not really.

 I've talked about adding things like rumble, a new MMC to map more
than 64mbits, CD-audio and video playback capabilities. Nobody seemed
all that interested. Eh, maybe if someone finds and sends me one of
those SNES CD player addons used by that one English teaching game,
I'll add support for that to bsnes and then rig something like Der
Langrisser to use it :P

[No archive available]
2008-01-02 07:31:00 +00:00