Regen 0.93 Beta 4 + new Debuggers

AamirM's Regen forum

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eighty5cacao
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Post by eighty5cacao » Sun Oct 12, 2008 12:55 am

One thing I noticed (this has actually been present since at least version 0.85):

Only one unlicensed game with a protection chip works correctly per Regen session. That is, if you play one such unlicensed game, close it, then some time later (possibly with some licensed games in the meantime) load another unlicensed game with a protection chip, the first unlicensed game will work correctly, but the second unlicensed game will show glitches resulting from the protection chip not working.
The games I have tested this with include Elf Wor (Unl), Smart Mouse (Unl) and Squirrel King (R) [!]. Autofix Checksum is enabled as is required by all these games.

Also:
AamirM wrote:Noted down. A dirty way to turn off overclocking is to restart the emu :) .
Actually, does the default of 488 cycles/line correspond to no overclocking at all? Is 488 cycles/line correct for NTSC, PAL, or both? Sorry I don't really know a lot about the Genesis internals.

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Post by AamirM » Sun Oct 12, 2008 7:15 am

Hi,
eighty5cacao wrote: Only one unlicensed game with a protection chip works correctly per Regen session. That is, if you play one such unlicensed game, close it, then some time later (possibly with some licensed games in the meantime) load another unlicensed game with a protection chip, the first unlicensed game will work correctly, but the second unlicensed game will show glitches resulting from the protection chip not working.
The games I have tested this with include Elf Wor (Unl), Smart Mouse (Unl) and Squirrel King (R) [!]. Autofix Checksum is enabled as is required by all these games.
Thanks for testing. I'll look at this problem. Most probably will be a problem in checksum matching routine.
eighty5cacao wrote: Actually, does the default of 488 cycles/line correspond to no overclocking at all? Is 488 cycles/line correct for NTSC, PAL, or both? Sorry I don't really know a lot about the Genesis internals.
Yes. For completness, for NTSC its 487.94 and for PAL its 487.21. So both have been approximated to 488 since its not possible to run CPU for fractional cycles.

stay safe,

AamirM

Eke
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Post by Eke » Sun Oct 12, 2008 2:28 pm

AamirM wrote: Yes. For completness, for NTSC its 487.94 and for PAL its 487.21. So both have been approximated to 488 since its not possible to run CPU for fractional cycles.
actually, this would be right if framerate was exactly 60hz for NTSC and 50Hz for PAL but it is not

What gives you the exact framerate is the number of lines per frame and the number of pixels per line, so, theorically, in line-based emulators, the number of CPU cycles per line should be related to the number of pixels per line, which means:
342 * 10 / 7 = 488.57 CPU clks
342 * 10 / 15 = 228 Z80 clks exacty

PAL or NTSC, CPU and VDP clocks are related the same way since it's just a matter of clock dividers

some page to read: http://www.smspower.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=8161

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Post by AamirM » Sun Oct 12, 2008 5:35 pm

Hi,
Nice stuff. Will help me on SMS/GG emulation a lot that I am trying to get into Regen. But since I never had a SMS/GG I can never really make an accurate emulator for those :( .

stay safe

AamirM

Christuserloeser
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Post by Christuserloeser » Sun Oct 12, 2008 9:06 pm

You could just stick with MD/G emulation for now. ;)


Anyway, just droppin' by to post that I noticed that Super Street Fighter II isn't supported yet (like in GenesisPlus).
http://www.DCEvolution.net - Gigabytes of free Dreamcast software for you

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King Of Chaos
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Post by King Of Chaos » Sun Oct 12, 2008 10:36 pm

It should be. I remember AamirM supporting it earlier this year.

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Post by AamirM » Mon Oct 13, 2008 5:25 am

Hi,
Christuserloeser wrote:You could just stick with MD/G emulation for now. ;)


Anyway, just droppin' by to post that I noticed that Super Street Fighter II isn't supported yet (like in GenesisPlus).
It is, just disable autofix checksum.

stay safe,

AamirM

SmartOne
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Post by SmartOne » Wed Oct 15, 2008 3:49 am

The ring sound seems too loud in the Sonic games. It hurts my ears. :( The lowpass filter doesn't seem to help (not to mention that the filter itself is probably inaccurate anyway. :P )

I've been casually perusing the YM2612 thread and docs. It makes my head spin. All of you who are doing this work and understanding that garbled mess of code and pseudo-code are geniuses. Keep being amazing.

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Post by King Of Chaos » Wed Oct 15, 2008 3:16 pm

If you listen closely, the ring sound makes a popping sound slightly, especially when you run into a line of rings. :)

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Post by AamirM » Sat Oct 18, 2008 8:08 pm

Hi,
If you listen closely, the ring sound makes a popping sound slightly, especially when you run into a line of rings.
No, not again :X . Wasn't it fixed? (and I remember both of you confirming it being fixed). But anyways, I will look at it again.

stay safe,

AamirM

King Of Chaos
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Post by King Of Chaos » Sat Oct 18, 2008 8:50 pm

It was before, but it came back with the latest beta.

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Post by King Of Chaos » Mon Oct 27, 2008 8:50 pm

Found something new.

-Messages nor FPS appear after you go into full screen and back to windowed mode, even if both are checked. If you try to uncheck both and recheck them, they don't work.

-Messages and FPS do not work while in full screen.

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Post by AamirM » Tue Oct 28, 2008 6:18 am

Hi,

Yeah, I am aware of those.

stay safe,

AamirM

King Of Chaos
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Post by King Of Chaos » Tue Oct 28, 2008 4:11 pm

Another thing, you might want to look into DirectX9 for Windows Vista. Vista dislikes DX7 so emulators using it will stutter, and Regen does, unable to hold a 60.0fps (typically 59.6 and upwards to 60.7).

Strange thing is, it doesn't on my other computer, but it does on this one. Going into fullscreen does seem to address this issue.

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Post by AamirM » Tue Oct 28, 2008 5:25 pm

Hi,
Another thing, you might want to look into DirectX9 for Windows Vista. Vista dislikes DX7 so emulators using it will stutter, and Regen does, unable to hold a 60.0fps (typically 59.6 and upwards to 60.7).

Strange thing is, it doesn't on my other computer, but it does on this one. Going into fullscreen does seem to address this issue.
You mean DX10, cause thats what Vista uses :P . I assume you are using Vsync option. I noticed this stuttering quite a while a go on Vista and I concluded that its either Vista thats not returning vblank status correctly or its my drivers which are causing it. It could be the monitor too but I doubt it because it works fine on XP.

Just writing D3D 10 (or 9) support isn't too hard. The hard part is to integrate it into Regen :) . Video part in Regen is a total nightmare. Ugly stuff put together quickly. But yeah, I know I have to rewrite this video code someday so why not do it now.

stay safe,

AamirM

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