jEnesisDS 0.6

[dhgctc]

Thanx for not letting this project go downhill like so many others have ... Lovin' the sound ! great work.

[TaN00Ki]

Also "Streets of Rage 2" (which was and IS AGAIN my favorite game of all-time from the 16-bit era) WORKS FABULOUSLY!!! THINKS!!!!!!!

Sure is!

My image was working on pc emu but not on jEnesisDS, then I got myself another copy of it and works great, except a few slow downs.

YAY :thumbup:

[Homerun]

Blank screen means, it can't access your cards file system.
What flashcard are you trying it on, and did you DLDI-patch the binary?

Trying on MMD worked for me with previous versions.
and Yes.



Edit: Weird Tried again and it worked
Great Emulator!

[Homerun]

It did freeze after I beat Sonic The Hedgehog Green Hill Act 1............But otherwise great!

[Vixtro]

It did freeze after I beat Sonic The Hedgehog Green Hill Act 1............But otherwise great!

Strange that, Sonic 1 is one of the games I've had no problems with. But then none of the games I have tried so far (many) have crashed on me yet unless I mess about with the emulator settings in-game, a few have on me then but that is understandable.

Sonic 1 works nearly spot on for me with only a few sound errors graphic problems in the Labyrinth Zone. Seems every Sonic level with water has some sort of problem with it.

BTW, Try Sonic 1 Megamix. I was really surprised to find that it works with this emulator flawlessly! I can't find anything wrong with the graphics or sound and it's a fan made game!

[Lordus]

Thanks for the awesome release, Lordus! I was amazed when I watched the video of the beta. After running the final version on my DS, I have to say I am amazed again at how much the sound has improved since then.

After putting it through its paces through various games, in addition to what has been said already, I noticed some minor quirks that occurred. I don't know if these are fixable or not, but I would like to point them out.

• In Sonic & Knuckles, being in a special stage for so long can sometimes garble up the sound a bit which can only be fixed by reloading the game.

• Puyo Puyo doesn't seem to have any sound playing at all for some reason. Dr Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine, which is basically a modified version of this game doesn't have any problems however, neither does Puyo Puyo Tsu, a sequel to the game.

• In Road Rash, the theme seems to be missing some of the melody. However, start a race and then finish it or get wrecked/busted to return to the track selection and the missing melody now seems to be playing fine.

• Gunstar Heroes has some areas of the game which seems to run rather slowly, notably in the Dice Maze. I would disregard this since a Genesis/Megadrive emulator on the DS is demanding. But the odd thing is jEnesisDS is still reporting it to be playing at 60 FPS.

• After loading a saved state, the music from before the state was loaded continues to play.

Anyway, I hope I don't sound like I'm complaining about it. This is an excellent release that not only makes jEnesisDS hands down the best Genesis/Megadrive emulator for the DS, but one of the best homebrew software for it imo, and I'm loving it. I'm actually using jEnesisDS even more than I play DS games. I mean, this is a Genesis/Megadrive emulator running on the DS at full speed and with sound! I can't say it is anything less than it being made of win.

Keep up the good work!

About the sound problems: it's just not perfect yet, and if the ARM7 which handles the sound is not fast enough, some commands sent to the sound chips can be missed. This doesn't always have to happen at the same spot, or at all. I'll be working on that. In fact i already have a version here, that doesn't have this issue anymore and has much cleaner sound all together, but other problems.. Will most likely be fixed in the next release.
I have to look into the games having no sound, but i am pretty sure i know what causes it, just that it wouldn't have been a fast fix for this release.

I couldn't really reproduce the Gunstar Heroes issue, and I've already played through it several times before without seeing it. Can anyone else confirm this?
I also couldn't really think about anything that could cause it.

The problem with savestates is simply, that i didn't change them. Meaning the state of the Z80 and the sound chips is not saved. I am so lazy, am i not?

I see, so rendering was definitely already a challenge... and from what I've seen, the screen resolution also don't suit very well to the most common genesis resolution (vertical scaling seems to throw some lines and horizontal scaling seems not possible)

If you don't have any way to do tile priority, that means you have to emulate priority of Window/A/B/ Sprite planes through software and so can't take any advantage of the DS ability to manage 4 layers?
I imagine the 3 other layers can be used to address the 1024 higher patterns and deals with 32x128 or 128x32 scrolling planes...

Have you already read the rendering code of genesis plus ? Charles Mc Donald has really wrotten a smart designed and fast engine to deal with layer priority, so far the best I have seen in any opensource genesis emulator

PS: Btw, is anything like fullscreen quad texturing using the 3D hardware possible ?



Anyway, I just finished playing with some games and I must say that even if you can not be as accurate as you would like, rendering/sound/speed as they are actually make the perfect compromise and already a pretty enjoyable experience

No, i don't have to emulate anything in software, because the DS has 4 BGs, that i can use to emulate the tile priority. The difficulty is just, that you have to track tile mappings, because there are just 1024 tile indices you can use on the DS.
It also wouldnt be easy to use 2 BGs to emulate the 128 cell mode, because they need to wrap.
But as i said, i have ideas and i will try to solve the issues as good as i can.

Maybe i am strange, but i don't like to use nor even look at any other code, but do this all by myself based on documentation and tests. And i think i managed quite well so far.
There is a Genesis Plus port for the DS out already as far as i know, and i think it's doing like 5fps? Maybe someone knows, i didn't really try it.

I don't think you will get very far with any kind of software rendering, no matter how optimized. I had an ARM asm software renderer before, that was in my opinion already quite optimized (maybe not as good as the Genesis Plus renderer, i don't know), but could not achieve more than 30fps in average.

[ChaoticanarchyX]

I can't get it to work. I've tried two diffrent DLDI patchers and its not playing a thing. it gets past the first screen and then freezes with i get to the second screen. I used Dldinoap and Dldino-apatch to try and patch them with the DLDI for MMD.
Any suggestions
Oh yeah im using a Max Media Dock with a 1 gig CF in it with the 1.22 boot me

[Drego]

WOOT!
That is all that is needed...

[Petmetroid]

This is great! Before I always had to hum the Sonic songs, now no one has to listen to me hum to myself and think I'm a freakin' weirdo, lol.

I have one request, however. How come you have not integrated the ability to scale horizontally? There are many games, like Columns for instance, that I cannot play because I cannot see everything on the screen.
Other than that, the emulator is looking great. You should find the code to put the emulator in sleep mode (when closing the DS.) Keep up the good work!

[utz030303]

My first post here:
Thanks Lordus!! Your jEnesis is the best thing to have on my R4DS! It really brings back all the sweet and nostalgic memory.
Keep it up, and should you need any help in any kind, please just post it on your site. I'm sure many people would be keen to help as much as we could (not sure I can be much of a help, but in case I can do something, I definitely will).

Cheers