DS2x86 version 0.33 released!

via http://dsx86.patrickaalto.com/DSblog.html



This version has the following changes and improvements:

• Fixed a real-mode FS and GS segment handling bug introduced in version 0.23. This bug caused Elder Scrolls: Arena to drop back to DOS with a "Memory list blown" error message, and caused severe screen corruption in Chaos Engine. Other games might have been affected as well.
• Improved graphics blitting speed in all standard graphics modes.
• Added new "Zoom/2" scaling mode for 640-pixel wide graphics modes. This mode first scales the screen horizontally to half resolution (320 horizontal pixels), and if the vertical resolution is >200, also vertically down to 200 or 240 rows. You can then scroll around this 320x240 (or smaller) area. The idea is to have most of the screen visible at once, but with better readability than what scaling all the way down to 256x192 resolution would achieve.

I did not have enough time to work on the SoundBlaster emulation rewrite, so I plan to focus on that during the next two-week period. After that I have plans to at least experiment with adding some VESA SVGA graphics modes, mainly 640x400 and 640x480 with 256 colors. Many games seem to require the presence of a VESA BIOS, and if the game would otherwise work, there is no reason to not support those graphics modes. Playability might suffer due to the small physical screen resolution, but I hope the new Zoom/2 scaling mode helps with this potential problem.
I have also studied a few misbehaving games, but did not yet manage to find out why they don't work. I plan to continue debugging them also while rewriting the SB code, hoping to make a few more games playable in the next version. Please send me the debug logs again from this version, those will help me in finding out the problems in the code!