Genplus DC Q

[quzar]

So I've been working on gpdc for a while, and havn't in a bit so I'm gonna make sure to release what I have before it gets lost or something. This is a private bin intended to be used as a test.

There are multiple bug fixes and whatnot, but the biggest user end thinger is the ability to have spaces in filenames. Included in the zip is a copy of a new version of smurph's romlist creation tool that now has a switch for "Q" that enables my version (which allows spaces).

Any feedback on games that have any sort of different experience between this and the last version released by warmtoe would be appreciated.

edit: reuploaded newer one with sound fixes.

[Zion]

nice one Q, il test this out later :)

[Cap'n 1time]

I've never had any luck burning genplus.. this isnt an exception.. odd.

[Kaiser]

I'll definatley give this a go once I get the some more CD-R's. Ran out the other night trying to burn Sonic-Retro DC. Sadly wasted my last three as none of my burns proved successful. :o

[shadowprophet]

If I only had a dc.

Im gonna download this anyway and see what I can learn from its source :D

[quzar]

Source isn't in there. =P When I do a real release the source will be part of it.

[shadowprophet]

Source isn't in there. =P When I do a real release the source will be part of it.

Yeah I just discovered this ;(

[quzar]

You couldn't have possibly. The thing says it's only been viewed once ;)

[shadowprophet]

You couldn't have possibly. The thing says it's only been viewed once ;)
Shadow would never lie to a bro ;)

[quzar]

oh noes! the forums lie to me!

[shadowprophet]

oh noes! the forums lie to me!

:rofl: :p

[Cap'n 1time]

Do explain how im supposed to burn this. I used fackue's tool and it outputs a cdi file just fine. when i boot it, it starts to load but just takes me back to the DC menu. When i try to use the rom listing program it outputs nothing.
As i said, ive never had any luck wiht burning genplus... could someone explain it to me?

[quzar]

scramble it first, and make sure you have an ip.bin

[Christuserloeser]

Dl'd and buning it right now. Boy my heart is pumping to my neck.

[Christuserloeser]

Streets of Rage 2 seems to be broken with FAME, runs flawless with C68K tho. Controls do not respond in Ultimate MKIII and Street Fighter II CE when using FAME, but work with C68K.

Sound in Castle of Illusion is way too fast, same for Quackshot with either FAME or C68K.
Same for ThunderForce IV, same for all other Technosoft games (Herzog, Devil Crash, etc). - With BlackAura's last build there was no sound at all, so the good news is that at least there now actually is sound playing.

All other games I tested ran great.

Hm, is it just me or is auto region detection broken ?

Anyway, I'd say release it right now.

Here's a mirror with my iplogo included. The source is still that from BlackAura's previous release but I've also updated BA & Warmtoe's release notes with your readme:

http://www.dcevolution.net/dsdevelopment/large/CE/gwpt18012007+romlister+iplogo+source.rar

[quzar]

Fox already knows about streets of rage 2 and it's a bug in fame that he's trying to fix. eke-eke posted some comments on how to possibly fix the sound problems, but i dunno wether or not i'm going to do that first.

if i release it with an ip.bin included it will be with screamcast's offical one, no offense ;).

[Christuserloeser]

Ok, no prob. Hope you also include a more complete readme then =P

...so no release tonite ?

(Guess I gotta newspost about the current update on cfiles with my MR logo then.)

[quzar]

http://www.dcemu.co.uk/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=50025

[Christuserloeser]

I've made an SBI from your release to be hosted at http://dchelp.net/sbi

Let me know if we can put it up. We got a download tracker too.

[quzar]

Go for it, as long as you include all the stuff that I included with mine (and just has an sbi instead of plainfiles).

[Cap'n 1time]

I've made an SBI from your release to be hosted at http://dchelp.net/sbi

Let me know if we can put it up. We got a download tracker too.

Thanks for that. Maybe people (including me) who are having a problem burning this will have better luck with an sbi.

[Christuserloeser]

Go for it, as long as you include all the stuff that I included with mine (and just has an sbi instead of plainfiles).


If you provide me with the Screamcast MR logo =P

[quzar]

I'm pretty sure that's it. If not, I think you can extract it from the ip.bin? Unless I'm thinking of something else.

[Christuserloeser]

Thanks a lot. Looks good btw :)

[quzar]

New build, now sound seems to work perfectly.
Someone please test it for me so that I can release it publicly (without debacle this time preferrably =P).

[Christuserloeser]

New build, now sound seems to work perfectly.
Someone please test it for me so that I can release it publicly (without debacle this time preferrably =P).

I'll do my best ^^

(sorry again)

[Christuserloeser]

Posted my results here:
http://dcemulation.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?p=940113#940113

My thoughts are: Release it as is, but keep working on it.

[Christuserloeser]

Next steps on the list for me would be:


- Kick out C68k & ask Fox to implement the missing IRQs:


There are some problems running GPDC with FAME. Those are related with the way GPDC treats IRQs. I managed to see this debugging an original GP build.
FAME leaves IRQs activated until they are attended or deactivated but some IRQs raised by GP are not attended immediately after activation. They could be incorrectly attended anytime as soon as it gets unmasked.
While i could fix the problem in there (making possible to run SOR2 and others), i do not with the lastest GPDC sources Quzar sent me sometime ago.

- Implement MAMEZ80 and FAZE, selectable via switch. See if that allows 24khz sound emulation.

- Auto-Frameskip for software renderer so it attempts to keep 60Hz/50Hz, depending on the region setting in GPDC.

- Atm, disabling sound doesn't have any affect on speed, but it should have (that'd be great for games that don't run properly with the hardware renderer)

[quzar]

Umm... that's because games run at full speed with the hardware renderer. regardless of what you me 'feel' the speed is, turn on the FPS meter and see what the actual fps is. Every game I test with maintains 58/59fps thoughout play.

There is no way c68k will be kicked out. period. At the moment c68k is considered perfectly stable, whereas FAME is not. The biggest problem is CZ80, but FAZE certainly isn't going to make that any better.

[Christuserloeser]

Umm... that's because games run at full speed with the hardware renderer.

I meant with the software renderer ;)


Every game I test with maintains 58/59fps thoughout play.

I've had 20fps with C68k, 30fps with FAME in your previous build, even with sound disabled...

Btw, I just found out that in you current build disabling the sound results in black screen of death for all games...


There is no way c68k will be kicked out. period. At the moment c68k is considered perfectly stable, whereas FAME is not.

Np. My point was to ask Fox to enable the IRQs to improve FAME.

Atm, C68k is pretty much closed source (discontinued) where FAME has an enourmous potential and is still under active developement.



The biggest problem is CZ80, but FAZE certainly isn't going to make that any better.

Why would you say that ? I mean, I'm sure no one has yet tried to get FAZE to work in GP/DC.

[quzar]

Btw, I just found out that in you current build disabling the sound results in black screen of death for all games...

I posted that exact thing on dcemulation.


Np. My point was to ask Fox to enable the IRQs to improve FAME.
He's working on it. It's not like me bothering him over and over can make him work faster.


Why would you say that ? I mean, I'm sure no one has yet tried to get FAZE to work in GP/DC.
I've tried it elsewhere and it's barely better if at all. Also, the API is so radically different it's a pain to work with.

[Christuserloeser]

He's working on it.

I see. Great news that is ! :)

I'd say release this build. It's a big improvement over the previous build. BlackAura's build still is a tiny little bit better because of a few problems with FAME (controls do not respond in some games), but the working sound emulation should make up for that :)

Edit: Maybe you should keep working on improving the software renderer side of the emulator. There actually are some games that likely never will be emulated via the HW renderer, and there are games that could be playable already via the SW renderer if sound emulation is disabled, although I hope they also will be supported by the HW renderer soon.

Edit2: I've uploaded the source code of GenesisPlusDC v01. I hope it would be helpful if you would be interested in improving the software renderer side of the emulator. See my DCEmulation.com post.

[Neoblast]

Well, sound is messed up in this version, sometimes desynced and with weird noises and slowdowns, you should leave sound as is on blackaura's build...
And improve the graphic stuff which works quite bad at some scrolling games like outrun, roadrash and hangon

[quzar]

It's been brought to my attention that BA is still doing something with GenPlus at dcemulation.com. If he wants my help, he knows I'd be glad to contribute my changes. I only started on this under the assumption he was done, so that's all for me.

[Neoblast]

Okay, good to hear there is still some work on gen plus. I'll contact BA in order to offer my help in the project

[BlackAura]

I wouldn't call it "work" just yet, but it might be a something.

Mekanizer asked if he could do some work on the thing, and if I could send him a copy of my last source release. Fine, no problem. He's currently fiddling around getting his toolchain and so forth back up and running, has posted a binary of GP/DC with an updated copy of FAME, and was looking into the IRQ problem with GP/DC and FAME.

In terms of actually doing something, I've been looking into gutting the sound system and rewriting it, with speed (on an SH-4) in mind rather than absolute accuracy. I've started designing and implementing a YM2612 emulator on those lines.

Basically, the goal is to get a YM2612 emulator running at 48KHz (4x that of MAME's), using around 12% of the total CPU time (probably something like 1/2 that of MAME's). To do that, I'm ignoring some features of the chip (LFO and SSG-EG modes, basically), simplifying others (like the envelope generator, which accounts for nearly a third of the work the emulator has to do), and trying to keep the main synthesis code as small and fast as possible, keeping the SH-4's cache requirements in mind.

I have the core of the FM operators written, and it works pretty well if you set it's parameters manually. Since this is the bit where 99% of the work is being done, it'll need a lot of tweaking to make it run fast enough on a Dreamcast, but it's doable. Now all I have to do is write the code to take the FM registers, and generate parameters for the synthesizer - that turns out to be where 99% of the programming works needs to be done.

Aside from that, I think it'd be a good idea to set up a Subversion repository somewhere. One of the problems we've had is that there hasn't been a central copy to contribute changes to. Everyone's been hacking on their own private version (myself included), and actually getting changes between branches is tricky, so just doesn't happen. This way, if anyone has some improvements to contribute, they can do so, and progress can be made.

I know that I've made some improvements that have been lost for various reasons - that's part of the reason I've done so little on GP/DC lately. That, and the number of times I irreparably broke the thing, and the sheer number of bugs in there that I just don't have the ability to debug. CZ80, for example - it's fast, but seems to cause no end of problems, and I wouldn't have a clue where to even start fixing it.

To that end, I just created a project over at Google Code, called genplus-dc. Nothing in it yet, but I'll upload something later. If anyone wants to join in, just ask.

[quzar]

I would love to join in. If it's ok I had four things that I think are worthwhile (and I'm sure are not broken): multilingual menu, assembly tweaked twiddling function (still has some room for speedup but I was never sure about the assumptions I could make on the ordering of tiles and such), a modular switching ... thing... for using multiple z80 cores (current just cz80 and CrabZ80, but could add mame's and raze), and the new romlist format that allows for spaces in filenames (just uses the pipe character '|' to tokenize game name | filename).

I'm glad that you're back to doing any DC stuff.

[quzar]

Finally got around to putting together a patch against the SVN to incorporate my best additions (just like you suggested Christus!!).

Hopefully this helps something...