Genesis Plus - Help!

**BlackAura** · November 18th, 2004, 07:09

I've been working on Genesis Plus again. Since I managed to make a complete mess of the previous set of sources, and I hadn't made many useful modifications anyway, I've started again from the original source. Don't worry - most of the hard work is separate from the main part, and can be dropped in once I have a working base. No DC version yet - just the Linux/SDL version, although it also compiles in MinGW or Cygwin if you have it set up right, and don't mind modifying the Makefiles.

Anyway, aside from stripping out the entire sound system and replacing it with the one from Gens (it sounds much, much better now, and should be a bit faster), I've been trying to get FAME working. So far, no luck.

I initially rearranged the calls made to the M68K emulator, and moved everything specific to Musashi into a separate file. That worked fine. I then added another one for C68K. Works fine (although it crashes on Sonic 1 for some reason). C68K is similar to Musashi, so that wasn't hard.

Next up, the assembly cores. First off, I tried FAME. No go. The emulated system keeps crashing, doing nothing, or crashing the entire emulator. Happens on both Linux and Windows.

So, I tried with StarScream, which has a very similar interface to FAME. Worked first time, almost perfectly.

So, I have a chunk of code that doesn't work, I'm damned sure it should work, the StarScream code is almost identical and it works, and I'm running out of brain power. Some fresh perspectives might help.

So, if anyone wants to have a look at it, and see if you can find something wrong with it, please do.

http://files.frashii.com/~sp00nz/Doo...us-005.tar.bz2

**Christuserloeser** · November 20th, 2004, 01:39

Hope they are of any use for what you have in mind...

Chris

***quzar*** · November 20th, 2004, 04:42

The released versions of FAME do not work in real situations, its not your fault. Ask fox68k for a newer version, as he has been debuggin FAME with Chui and NeoCD

**BlackAura** · November 20th, 2004, 18:46

Oh, so it's not just me then. This was getting somewhat annoying.

Christuserloeser - nice. There's a lot of it though...

**BlackAura** · November 22nd, 2004, 01:20

Anyone know how to contact fox68k? I PMed him ages ago, but no response to anything, and he appears to have vanished off the face of the planet.

Until I get that working, I can't really do any more work on the sound system (the rest of the emulator needs to be running at full speed for that to work). So that leaves the menu system (which I'm kinda bored with at the moment - I hate GUI programming almost as much as I hate sound stream programming), bugfixing the emulator itself, copying features and bugfixes from Gens (

) and the hardware VDP emulator...

***wraggster*** · November 22nd, 2004, 12:21

Black Aura PM Chui he can give you any info on Fox68

**Christuserloeser** · November 26th, 2004, 19:32

I had a thought about your great ideas of the GUI for GPDC: You got a lot of brilliant ideas for it! Maybe it's good to apply some of them to later versions if you got stuck or similar

http://www.dcemulation.com/phpBB/vie...t=ideas#563266

My idea was - allow the emulator to display loads of information, but leave it up to whoever's creating the disc to compile it. Basically, you can select games based on the games themselves, not by file name, and you can put a load of additional information in there. At last count...

Can store multiple versions of a game under the same name
Game information
Name of game
Mutiple languages, chosen based on the Dreamcast's language setting, or a menu option.
Different names for different regions if applicable (like Contra, or Streets of Rage), again based on the Dreamcast's region/language setting or a menu option
Image of games logo (again, multiple versions if applicable)
List of supported languages in-game
Release date (in multiple regions if applicable)
Developer, Publisher (with logos)
Supported peripherals
Other information (like number of players, game rating if it had one)
Graphics
Screenshots (multiple, can be region or language based)
Box scans (multiple regions again), which are displayed in 3D wrapped around an actual box
Custom background image for info screen
Scanned manuals (different langauges/regions if you want)
Other scanned documents (magazine reviews, previews, adverts, posters)
Extra stuff
Game reviews
Hint + tips
Cheats (both in-game and codes)
Passwords
Save games if the game itself supports them
Game soundtrack (probably Ogg Vorbis or VGM/GYM/similar)
Any other text that might be interesting, like game history, walkthrough, whatever)

The idea is that you could write a disc with a few of your favourite games, and put in as much additional information as you like. For example, you could put all the Sonic games onto one CD, along with every piece of information you could find, alternate versions, complete box art and manuals from all regions, and as much else as you want. Or, if you like, you could just stick the raw games on a CD and go with that.

I thought not to use the DC language settings but an menu option for the language selection like you also mentioned in that post. If u'd like to play a game (e.g. I prefer JP or US versions a lot though I got a (modified) JP DC and though I am in EU) you still can choose different versions of the MD game. We Europeans always had the worst versions of a released videogame - except some Nintendo SNES games, and DC & GC in general

Another thing: I had a thought about what if you don't have the scan of the entire box, only the front? A solution would be to wrap the front scan also to the back, using the side for the name of the ROM/game to display. If there isn't any scan, there could be a template of the box (in the suitable language version US/JP/EU) where the name displays on front and side, while the back holds some info custom text/info that the user would have to write down into a config file.

Here's a quick mock up *that I've prepared yesterday:

PSD download (incl. notes)
http://www.dcevolution.net/dsdevelop..._Templates.rar

It's a quite big PSD file due to beeing converted by Corel Photopaint (that I use still a lot).

Here are lowered quality/resized preview pics:

The sonic pic in the JP template is just there to make it look a bit more...well it's maybe a placeholder for the GPDC logos (Wack0? Politoe?) / something that applies to the default theme of GPDC...

I did these templates without any original boxes (which I still have at my parent's house). I'll have a look at scanning some of my EU/JP/US games and maybe create another bunch of new and better templates these days if you wish.

Chris

**BlackAura** · November 27th, 2004, 07:05

Maybe it's good to apply some of them to later versions if you got stuck or similar

I was thinking that too...

Although it'd be nice to have it fully themable, I think I'm going to have to settle for partly themable in this version. Having an entire scripting language built-in it likely to be too much of a pain in the butt to get working correctly, and a scripting language is really the only way to do it. I'll just implement the thing in C++, maybe using a few configuration files here and there to change the layout around a bit. That'll probably be enough.

The rest of it though... I'm pretty sure I can do most of it. Assuming, of course, I can get it to work at all...

I thought not to use the DC language settings but an menu option for the language selection like you also mentioned in that post. If u'd like to play a game

I think the best way would be to have a region setting in the emulator, which defaults to whatever the region of the Dreamcast is. So, a European console would use the European names and artwork by default, a Japanese console would use the Japanese stuff, and a NA console would use the NA stuff. You can then change this around if you want to, so you can use the Japanese stuff on a European console, for example.

I'm not sure if I should tie the system region setting into that or not. For games that use the same ROM for different regions (Super Shinobo / Revenge of Shinobo, Bare Knuckle / Streets of Rage), it'd make the game show up with the same name in the menus and in the game itself. Same deal if you have multiple ROMs of the same game, but for different regions. The catch is that some games might screw up if you set them to PAL mode, but give them a refresh rate of 60Hz. I know of no games that do this, but there might be some. It might also screw up games with region lockouts.

Simple solution to both - we could just mark that game as not supporting PAL regions, or whatever region it doesn't work on, and the emulator will simply switch to a region that does work for that ROM only. That fix all of the bugs in the region guessing, but only if we tested each and every game that has a region incompatability. And that's a lot of testing work. Might be worth having a separate MD region setting too.

Another thing: I had a thought about what if you don't have the scan of the entire box, only the front? A solution would be to wrap the front scan also to the back, using the side for the name of the ROM/game to display. If there isn't any scan, there could be a template of the box (in the suitable language version US/JP/EU) where the name displays on front and side, while the back holds some info custom text/info that the user would have to write down into a config file.

Good idea...

I think it might be generally a good idea to include some information with the emulator, so even if people don't add box scans and stuff, they can still use most of the UI features. For example, a copy of the blurb that goes on the back of the box...

For the back of the box, we could pull any screenshots we have, and composite them onto the back along with the text. If we don't have any screenshots, we just do a boring text-only back...

For the auto-generated front, we could just put a GP/DC logo there, but if we have a screenshot of the title screen we can use that instead...

Actually generating the images might be slightly painful, but probably not too hard.

Anyone happen to have measurements of an MD box?

**Christuserloeser** · November 28th, 2004, 12:06

Anyone happen to have measurements of an MD box?

Box:
Height: 17,6 cm
Lenght: 12,7cm
Side: 2,5 cm

Insert:
Height: 17,2 cm
Lenght: 12,2 cm
Side: 2,35 cm

Based on my Japanese Advanced Daisenryaku box & insert (same as other countries & companies, except EA/Accolade games)

http://www.digitpress.com/faq/megadrive.htm
http://www.consoledatabase.com/faq/s...genesisfaq.txt

**Mekanaizer** · December 1st, 2004, 20:10

Hi

BlackAura, save your time to VDP/PVR/KOS

I got FAME working with GP once and i send the source to Fox68 (anyway the source i send to Fox68 was broken),but everything is there.

ps: it run slow and with very bad sound output (got sonic1 runing)

-Mekanaizer-

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