Regen 0.96

[AamirM]

Hi,

Finally, after a really long time, Regen 0.96 is here. Here is whats new in it:

Version 0.96
------------

* A little limitation of vcell scrolling emulated correctly. Thanks to
Steve Snake for detailed info on this. (F1 World Champioship, Kawasaki
Challenge use this)

* Changed the YM2413 emulator a little. Should sound more accurate.
(After Burner 2, Ys (J) etc..)

* Many new YM2612 improvements and upates. Thanks to the new research and testing
by Nemesis.

* Sprite masking bug in Mickey Mania fixed.

* Many improvements to renderer. Now passes all of the sprite masking and limitations
tests.

* Cheats fixed.

* Palette select bit emulated. Sik's ROM fucks up correctly now .

* Completely overhauled Z80 handling and emulation. RAZE has been removed.
It has been tested quite heavily alongside the real thing by Tiido and
is very close to the real hardware now. But this has made emulator a bit
slow as well. My thanks goes to Tiido for testing this.

* Fixed lightgun support which got broken in 0.95

* Option added to remove flickering while in interlacing mode.

* Fixed AVI recording.

* Improved stability and crashes (hopefully).

* Option added to force the output image aspect to be 4:3 (which the real hardware does).
In this mode, games with 256 pixels width will be scaled to 320.

* Ability to load SMS/GG ROMs from the command line.

Download from here.

As always, comments, suggestions, feature requests are welcomed.

Stay safe and enjoy,

AamirM

[King Of Chaos]

I've noticed sprites glitching in the Adventures Of Batman & Robin, and the sprite limit is turned off.

[AamirM]

I've noticed sprites glitching in the Adventures Of Batman & Robin, and the sprite limit is turned off.

Ahh.....due to some rewriting of the sprite drwaing stuff, I forgot to add that. I'll sliently update it later today.

[I.S.T.]

I would make a full release. I'm seeing at least one site that has picked up the current 0.96.

[AamirM]

Updated. Disabling sprite limitations should be fixed now. Re-download if you want that feature.

I would make a full release. I'm seeing at least one site that has picked up the current 0.96.

Nah, it may create more problems .

[hhub19]

Hm, when I try to extract the zip-file with 7-zip (v4.65) it just tells me "Unsupported Extraction Method" for every contained file.

[AamirM]

Somehow it got corrupted during upload. Should be fixed now. Please redownload.

[eighty5cacao]

I noticed that the NTSC filter plugin seems to have been updated since Regen v0.95. The problem is that the current version displays screwed-up colors until you open its configuration window and select one of the preset configurations. If I replace it with the NTSC plugin supplied with Regen 0.95, everything works fine.



Also, when lockup emulation is enabled, Sonic Crackers causes the emulator to quit unexpectedly at the point where the lockup should be triggered. The usual Windows error ding sound plays, and some dialog box titled "Fatal Error" flashes very briefly.
I previously hinted at two other games which trigger the lockup emulation. These are "Iraq War 2003 (Unl)" and "Deer Hunter (R)." They do not cause an unexpected exit; instead they cause the previously mentioned undesirable behavior where the "System lock-up!" message is displayed an infinite number of times and the lockup state cannot be cleared by loading another ROM. There is a new regression involving these two games, which is that they fail to produce any sound. (These two games are unlicensed games based on the Tomsoft Studio SEGA Kit, and their sound is entirely PCM.)

(As a reminder, I am the same person as 85cocoa on the ZSNES forums, where I previously mentioned my system specs. For convenience, here they are again:
2.5 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T9300, 4 GB dual channel DDR2 SDRAM, NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT, 320 GB 5400 RPM hard drive w/ SATA, Windows Vista Home Premium SP1, and the following security software: AntiVir Personal 9.0.0.394, Comodo Firewall 3.8.65951.477, and ThreatFire 4.1.0.25 - External links are provided only for informational purposes and do not constitute endorsements of any product.)

[sheath]

I just loaded it up and tested it on my "Mamebox" HTPC, excellent work! I've been having trouble getting Gens and Fusion to display full screen on my Rear Projection Toshiba without tearing. The Mamebox only has a single core Athlon 64 3200+, 2GB PC3200 DDR and a Radeon HD3850 AGP card.

I changed the following settings from the defaults: High Priority, 6-button joystick configured for my Saturn pad, and I switched full screen resolutions. Regen runs at 320x240 and 1120x630 on my Mamebox without any tearing or Vsync issues on my 40" RPTV. I tested After Burner II, Bare Knuckle III, Alisia Dragoon, Batman (Sunsoft), and MUSHA. This is the first time I've run this selection of games in emulation, especially when output to the RPTV, without running into some issue with the graphics or sound that killed the experience for me.

I tried Blarg's NTSC filter and it totally killed the performance, making the games unplayable with audio on. This is probably again caused by the Athlon 64. I was curious what the filter did though, but didn't see any noticeable difference on the RPTV. I haven't had any luck with video filters in Gens Surreal either, they all seem to kill the performance in both of my PCs.

I also tried some SMS games. Having not ever heard the YM2413 chipped games on the actual console I can't comment on audio accuracy. After Burner's title music had a very repetitive beep in the background that I haven't noticed in Fusion or Meka. I haven't tried it with SuperHQ on, if that fixes the issue I'll be using this emulator exclusively from now on. Stretching works perfectly for the video, and it is very convenient to not have to change video settings to play SMS games.

[AamirM]

I noticed that the NTSC filter plugin seems to have been updated since Regen v0.95. The problem is that the current version displays screwed-up colors until you open its configuration window and select one of the preset configurations. If I replace it with the NTSC plugin supplied with Regen 0.95, everything works fine.

Remove "ntsc.ini" from the plugins directory and try with the new plugin again. The plugin packaged with 0.96 is the one available from here. So it has been slightly updated. If all else fails, try to download and use the filter from the link above (but remove ntsc.ini as from plugins directory).

Also, when lockup emulation is enabled, Sonic Crackers causes the emulator to quit unexpectedly at the point where the lockup should be triggered. The usual Windows error ding sound plays, and some dialog box titled "Fatal Error" flashes very briefly.
I previously hinted at two other games which trigger the lockup emulation. These are "Iraq War 2003 (Unl)" and "Deer Hunter (R)." They do not cause an unexpected exit; instead they cause the previously mentioned undesirable behavior where the "System lock-up!" message is displayed an infinite number of times and the lockup state cannot be cleared by loading another ROM. There is a new regression involving these two games, which is that they fail to produce any sound. (These two games are unlicensed games based on the Tomsoft Studio SEGA Kit, and their sound is entirely PCM.)

I don't know how I missed to fix these bugs . Thanks for reporting these will be fixed for sure in the next release.

I tried Blarg's NTSC filter and it totally killed the performance, making the games unplayable with audio on. This is probably again caused by the Athlon 64. I was curious what the filter did though, but didn't see any noticeable difference on the RPTV. I haven't had any luck with video filters in Gens Surreal either, they all seem to kill the performance in both of my PCs.

That filter applies NTSC video signal processing on an image giving a result very close to a console connected to a TV. The filter is a bit heavy but it shouldn't make games unplayably slow on your configuration. Hmm....maybe Regen got more slower than I expected. I have tested it on a single core Pentium 4 2.8 Ghz (w/ onboard Intel graphics) and it runs fine. I'll research a bit more on the problem.

I also tried some SMS games. Having not ever heard the YM2413 chipped games on the actual console I can't comment on audio accuracy. After Burner's title music had a very repetitive beep in the background that I haven't noticed in Fusion or Meka. I haven't tried it with SuperHQ on, if that fixes the issue I'll be using this emulator exclusively from now on. Stretching works perfectly for the video, and it is very convenient to not have to change video settings to play SMS games.

SuperHQ won't fix it. The beep is present in Fusion though its very low. You'll have to hear closely.

And oh, thanks for the nice comments .

[edc2008]

Hi,

I posted a message on the 0.95 topic about Regen freezing up on my laptop (Pentium M 1.70GHz, Intel Extreme Graphics 2 for mobile - 82852/82855 GM/GME, Realtek AC97 Sound chip). 0.96 runs for longer but it is still freezing up after about a minutes play. Just thought you might like to know.

[TheOncleJuna]

Version 0.96
------------
* Ability to load SMS/GG ROMs from the command line.

Thanks, I will test it.

[SmartOne]

Awesome! Great to see you're still working on this.

The video output with no filters enabled is still blurry. It doesn't look as crisp and pixelated as it should, and this likely affects how filters look. Interestingly, Normal2x looks more pixelated than completely disabled filter plugins.

[AamirM]

Hi,

I posted a message on the 0.95 topic about Regen freezing up on my laptop (Pentium M 1.70GHz, Intel Extreme Graphics 2 for mobile - 82852/82855 GM/GME, Realtek AC97 Sound chip). 0.96 runs for longer but it is still freezing up after about a minutes play. Just thought you might like to know.

Ahh...I didn't research on it more, sorry. It is an absolutely strange bug. I have NO idea whats wrong. Though, keep an eye on your PM, I might send you a build to test.

Awesome! Great to see you're still working on this.

The video output with no filters enabled is still blurry. It doesn't look as crisp and pixelated as it should, and this likely affects how filters look. Interestingly, Normal2x looks more pixelated than completely disabled filter plugins.

Yep because Regen uses hardware stretching which results in bilinear filtering . Normal 2x, with "Stretch" disabled, should look exactly like Kega. I'll add the option to remove bilinear filtering (by using internal scaler) in the next version.

[sheath]

I tried Blarg's NTSC filter and it totally killed the performance, making the games unplayable with audio on. This is probably again caused by the Athlon 64. I was curious what the filter did though, but didn't see any noticeable difference on the RPTV. I haven't had any luck with video filters in Gens Surreal either, they all seem to kill the performance in both of my PCs.

That filter applies NTSC video signal processing on an image giving a result very close to a console connected to a TV. The filter is a bit heavy but it shouldn't make games unplayably slow on your configuration. Hmm....maybe Regen got more slower than I expected. I have tested it on a single core Pentium 4 2.8 Ghz (w/ onboard Intel graphics) and it runs fine. I'll research a bit more on the problem.

I have noticed that emulators that are CPU intensive, such as MAME, seem to favor Intel over AMD in the same class of processor. The Athlon 64 3200+ should be able to handle anything a Pentium 4 can, but sometimes MAME games just seem to prefer the P4. The issue I am having is both a massive dip in framerate and audio that skips so badly it couldn't possibly be considered acceptable. I wish I had a P4 handy to compare, but both of my systems are AMD.

Blargg's NTSC filter does run great on my office PC, which has an Athlon X2 4200+, I do primarily play games in front of a TV still.

[Edit]

The wife's Dell laptop, which has a Celeron 1.4Ghz and 1.24 GB RAM runs the filter perfectly...