Fixed!

I'm very pleased to be able to say that I've finally managed to fix the nasty bug I blogged about on Thursday.

I'll go into more details in a later post, but in essence the problem was due to very rare situations where the trace recorder would exit a trace when there was still a branch delay instruction pending. This caused the fragment generator to inadvertently skip the branch instruction, causing the odd behaviour I was seeing.

For reference, here are some updated figures for Super Mario 64 and Mario Kart (initial results are from a previous post). Generally the current changes seem to indicate an overall speedup of 20%-25%, which is great for a few days work. What's even better is that I've still not implemented all the optimisations that I have planned for R7, so hopefully these numbers will look even better soon.

Managed to squeeze some time in to do some map editor work. My job has been quite demanding lately so I've not had time to do any code on this, but I have spent some time thinking about the best way to do certain things, hence the post asking for interface feedback below (please continue to discuss ideas in the comments of the below post! You've had some great input so far).

The editor is now exporting map files (hoorah) so the next step is to load them in to the game. This should just be another afternoons of coding Hopefully I'll get scrolling with the D-Pad put in at the same time. Next I will have to explore the limits of the memory requirements - I need to find what the absolute maximum number of unique tiles I could use are, then apply that limit to the map editor so you cannot go over budget. I hope the limit doesn't prevent some of the original C&C maps being converted, but we'll see. I'll have to post in the forums when I come to this point on the best way to store extra tile graphics. The basic limit is under 64kb per layer, and if a C&C map uses all the possible tiles it needs something like 450kb... a little increase in memory! The DS does have 4mb though so I'm sure I can find somewhere to store it. I may have to just copy the tiles over for the portion of screen I want to draw as needed. Might cause a slight performance hit but we'll see. Any ideas let me know.

Here's a quick screenie of the map editor - very basic right now but pretty easy to expand. C&C templates aren't being used, so you have to place each tile by hand right now. It's pretty tedious because you have to find all the right bits of cliff to line them up etc. Don't worry the final map editor will use templates and be very friendly I didn't bother to match up all the tiles 100% so it looks a little weird in places, but oh well ;p

Heres the info:

This is a five level puzzle game that is very simple, yet very hard later on. Just try to get the yellow ball through the maze by clicking the arrows to shift the walls, but don't push the gray ball out or its game over.

How to use:

Download the swf file. Then make a folder in the ROOT of your PSP memory stick (where the MP_ROOT and PSP folders are.) and title it "flash" or whatever you'd like.

Next, place the swf file in that folder. Go to your PSP web browser and type file:/flash/game.swf and away you go!

Note that you MUST have 2.7 firmware installed on your PSP, and have activated flash in your browser.

Hi, finally got some time before my trip again ()


Project 1: GBA for PSP

Lot of code had change from the last release, mainly on mode0/1/2/3/4/5 and code CPU emulation.

Speed wise, increase greatly about 2.8 time.

Sound are better now but still got a lots of pop pop sound

Maybe when there is no more room for improvement, I will use the second CPU.


Project 2: PMP Simple Converter

All the code almost complete, need to do a bit more debug before release. Stay Tune...

new feature

1: Add a multi-pass encoding mode
2: Add a direct DVD video to PMP format (help those with DVD disc)
3: Add a aspect ratio converter (optional)
4. Add a sub title support
5: Completely New 3D Style GUI
6: Add audio enhancement mode (optional)
7: New skin resolution 600x520 pixel
8: Add an Advance video cropping and resize option


Project 3: Secret 3D Emulator

Guess from spec below....
SONY ZN-1/2

HARDWARE DESCRIPTION:
Main CPU : R3000A 32 bit RISC processor, Clock - 50MHz?, Operating performance - 30 MIPS, Instruction Cache - 4KB
BUS : 132 MB/sec.
OS ROM : 512 Kilobytes
Sound CPU : Z80 (Encrypted Kabuki Model)
Sound Chips : Capcom Q Sound (PSX Sound chip is ignored)
Main RAM: 2/4/8 Megabytes depending on game.
Video RAM: 2/4/8 Megabytes depending on game.
Sound RAM : 512 Kilobytes
Graphical Processor : 360,000 polygons/sec, Sprite/BG drawing, Adjustable frame buffer, No line restriction, 4,000 8x8 pixel sprites with individual scaling and rotation, Simultaneous backgrounds (Parallax scrolling)
Sprite Effects : Rotation, Scaling up/down, Warping, Transparency, Fading, Priority, Vertical and horizontal line scroll
Resolution : 256x224 - 740x480
Colours : 16.7 million colors, Unlimited CLUTs (Color Look-Up Tables)

This program lets you flash a background , font, gameboot and bootsound to the psp version 1.50

STEPS
1. put the PSP folder in the root of your memory stick (ms0:/)
2. put your ltn0.pgf-ltn15.pgf/gameboot.pmf/01.bmp-12.bmp/opening_plugin.rco In a folder called moose

(ms0:/moose/
3. then you click on MooseFlash
4. You will be brought to the menu
5. and select what you want with X and Restore that(whats highlighted)With CIRCLE

Credit:
mooser
PSP-Maniac for compiling my source and editing 1 error
Kozine For menu snippets from his source

*****Note: even though confirmed working flashing can always brick your psp*****

To play Stereotype Volleyball, you will need a second person, one for either end of the PSP. The objective of the game is to reach 10 points, which
means that your opponent will have none. To gain a point, defeat your opponent by making it land on the ground. As you play more, you will develop more tactics into the best ways to do this and how to control for such a move. You can also gain a point if your opponent mucks up a shot, resulting in them dropping the ball. Watch out however! If you
are scored against, or you too muck up a shot, you will lose a point. When one player gains a point, the other will lose. This means that to win, one player needs to reach 10, and the other 0, as both players start on 5 points each.

What is that I here you all cry...? What do you mean portable...? Well, I mean a full on homebrew version of the ever so popular online tool with all the online features and more (apart from percent submerged which didn't do anything anyway by the way)...

That's right, all you lucky PSP owners with firmware 1.5 can now pimp out cars (for Grand Theft Auto LCS) to your hearts content without ever having to use that pesky USB cable because this version runs straight off your PSP...
On top of all that you can have customizable colour palettes and even choose your background music as it also double as a basic MP3 player...

If that isn't enough for you i've provided you with 4 save slots to save work in progress... If you get bored working on one car then just save it and load up another one you were working on... When done, Export to the game, load up LCS and try it out... Still not right, hard reset, load up Pimp My Garage Portable again and fix it... It will remember where you were up to...