Dknute hat News von seinem Dreamcast Emulator: Es gibt die ersten Screenshots von der NAOMI Emulation. NAOMI ist ein auf dem Dreamcast basierendes Arcade System.
Zitat:
"I can boot a few games (both cart and GD-based - assuming I have the GD decryption key), but there are some serious Maple <-> JVS translation issues. This protocol differs a bit from what I found in the JAMMA docs and without access to the hardware there is little chance of me figuring out what exactly is broken.
Not to mention some games require special input devices - like a bat :) I wonder if it's based on fishing pole hardware (which will be next to impossible to properly emulate anyway)..."
Vom Dreamcast Emulator gibts folgende Neuigkeiten:
"Yesterday I fixed one of the few long outstanding bugs in TA/PVR core. You should have no problems discerning the "before" and "after" from pictures below :)
There's a new feature in T10/2: degenerated geometry. Usually that is something you'd want to avoid but in this case I'm injecting it into vertex streams on purpose.
Why? On Dreamcast the polygons have to be arranged in short triangle strips for TA/PVR to process them. Very short actually, one strip can have at most 6 triangles in it. If you need to draw something larger you must first partition the data, and then register it as a set of strips. It keeps PVR sorting lists short but for the emulator it means drawing each and every strip as a separate entity. For games with lots of 3D geometry details or objects (like Dead or Alive 2 or Trigger Heart Exelica) that means up to some 8000 Draw calls - per frame! This is very time consuming.
I modified my rendering system - it now creates additional triangles to connect the separate strips together, so they could be drawn all at once with single call. Of course those triangles can't be visible or else the whole scene would become a mess, so I make them degenerated. In the end there's more triangles to process but it all happens faster anyway :)
This scheme cuts the number of Draw calls down by factor of 2-2.7 for those most intensive 3D scenes. There are still almost 3500 calls per frame in some places but that's more managable than it was up until now. Any further optimizations would require some serious pre-processing of the data, tieing down CPU. I'll think about it but I suspect it's just not worth it.
As for the surprise I promised... here it is (along with some pictures of my new scope). I'd like to thank ElSemi for the help he provided, this would not be possible so soon without him."
Dknute hat eine weitere Testversion seines Dreamcastemulators Makaron freigegeben.
T9/4 and T10 were rather unstable but this time around I'm more happy with both GD and DMA code. It's not just bugfixes though, there are several new features in this version:
- support for VMU sounds
- improved Z-buffering
- fully functional DSP
- experimental anisotropic filtering
...
Vom Dreamcast Emulator Makaron gibts neue Infos und Screenshots:
F355 Challenge works again.
The Skies of Arcadia bug is still there, unfortunately.
Marionette Company boots now, though there seem to be some geometry missing because I don't get text in dialog boxes at all... It's a WinCE game so maybe it's the Sort-DMA thing again?
Vom DC Emulator Makaron gibts neue WIP News und eine neue Version T10:
I think I've finally got the DMA code working. Well, for me at least :) It needs to be tested further on variety of hardware - and that's where you people come in. Expect T10 soon.
Some loose thoughts I feel like voicing:
1) T10 might be a bit slower than T9 series. It'll most likely affect only lo...
Vom DC Emulator Makaron gibts neue WIP News und Screenshots.
I found and squashed a bug in new GD code. Not only Elemental Gimmick Gear boots again but it also cured Street Fighter Zero 3, which now seems to work just fine.
Zum Sega Dreamcast Emulator Makaron gibt es folgende WIP News.
Remember that tune
Yuki swamped me with GDs again :) This time I'm going to take it slow and test just a few games a day - it takes way too much time otherwise.
There's a BGM player in Super Robot Wars. And guess what, I found tunes from Gundam W and Evangelion on the list :)
And this little bugger is known as Soukou no Kihei - Space Griffon. Gave me some trouble, trying to execute a write past end of VRAM. That kept crashing Makaron and I had hard time figuring out the cause.
BTW - if you haven't noticed, there's VMU LCD display support now. See, that's the reason why you should wait patienly rather then press me into releasing stuff. Now you'll have to wait for T10 to get that :)
I need to finish GDMT (it's really breaking games now), re-structure AICA a bit to allow for DSP in future, make render to texture work and perhaps add vibration/force feedback. Not to mention DMA engine still has some issues...
Makaron WIP + mkfro Build 26.02.2008 um 08:18:38 von kallez
slrhui hat eine neue Version seines Frontends für den Dreamcast Emulator Makaron freigegeben, zudem gibt es neue Screenshots von dknute auf seiner Seite.
Fishing controller is something else. In addition to buttons there's analog stick, reel handle, and a full 3D motion sensor. And two vibration motors for the fun of it. I really don't see how that could be emulated with a mouse or a pad :) Even with Wiimote I'd still lack one more analog input to emulate the reel...
Since I'm posting lots of pictures recently I guess it won't hurt to add few more :)
dknute hat eine neue Testversion des Sega Dreamcast Emulators Makaron freigegeben.
With addition of full MMU support I introduced a bug into Makaron - games that were previously playable with simple SQ remapping would now require slower MMU recompiler. Fixed. This means only games based on Windows CE will require proper address translation, the rest will happily run on faster recompiler. I guess there is no "SEGA multitasking OS" for Dreamcast after all :)
As for MIL-CDs, those don't even use address translation at all. They wouldn't work on normal recompiler because it was too fast. Again, due to the bug mentioned I was led to belive MMU was being used - while it was not. Seems like lowering SH4 speed to about 160 MIPS gets those to run, not yet sure why. Could be another DMA issue, all those use the same software MPEG player and it gave me some troubles before on other games as well.
I've tried to investigate the cause of WinCE games breaking TA geometry registration process - without much luck so far. Also many games complain about VMU not having enough free space on it (but some would still create a good save later). Suddenly it seems like a good idea to quickly release T9/2 to just see how frequently it crashes and if that coincides with emulation speed.
I'm done merging the MMU version with the main source branch, seems to work. I've also tried several things to speed up the address translation - again, not much luck there. The lookup tables I'm using now seem to be the limit of what can be done in that aspect. Gee, I almost wish I could make use of x86 paging unit (and yes, I know how complicated that would be - pretty fast though).
In short: unless I discover something obviously wrong for me to fix, I'm going to release T9/2 later today (or so).
UPDATE: Here's Makaron Test 9/2 with MMU support in recompiler.
If you have any problems with it, go back to T9/1. This version is pretty broken (lots of unfinished modifications) but I want to know how badly :)
Again, too many changes to list. Some bug fixes (to SH4 recompiler as well). PAD plugin now enforces 5% dead zone in analog stick center position - this should cure "cursor keeps running away" problem in some games. New AICA/ARM code (back to interpreter for now) sounds much better, no DSP yet. More messages will now appear in English, in future it will be possible to support many languages (via translation files or something like that).
There's new system of identifying GD-ROMs and MIL-CDs - it's main purpose is to enable MMU where necessary. The database is far from complete though, so some GDs will not be recognized. Please report those, but do make sure to provide proper title, MD5 sum computed by Makaron, region, and whether it is Windows CE game or normal one. DO NOT REPORT PIRATED SOFTWARE. I will ignore/delete such reports on sight. Same goes for dubious ones, with spelling errors and such.
If you happen to stumble upon WinCE game that is not recognized you'll need to enable MMU manualy in the ini file. And let me repeat that again - MMU requires a damn fast CPU. 2,4GHz Core2 Duo is the absolute minimum - the faster the better.
The multi-threaded GD reading is not yet finished. You might want to enable it anyway, see GDROM.ini for that, but be advised that some games will refuse to boot or hang with this option enabled. Most should work.
dknute hat eine neue Testversion des Sega Dreamcast Emulators Makaron freigegeben.
First I'd like to dedicate these two picture to people who claim that so-called 2D games should run better and require less resources to emulate than 3D ones. This is Bangai-O:
As you can see, if there is a 3D hardware then 2D games will use it. Why? Because it's faster to have another processor (GPU in that case) rasterize things for you - with alpha blending and transparency, and even filtering if needed. This is full-blown 3D, just that the third dimension is used for composing multiple layers, including background and text messages.
Many such games not only use 3D - they abuse it. Use thousands of small triangles with most of those having individual, unique textures (which are probably not only palletized, but also compressed in some way). And change that a lot every frame - that is 50/60 times per second. Now try to keep up with that!
This is not an 8-bit console calculating and writing every pixel to VRAM (although it does happen, true 2D is still used from time to time; SEGA logo is one example). I may not need to keep things cycle-correct here, but I've my own problems handling graphics.
Okay, now some more fog (you'll find it's used in quite many places actually):
Ah, but that's not all. Here are some more interesting uses of fogging:
Case 1 - fog used as a special effect to light up parts of objects that are being hit by player. And yes, that could've been done in several other (easier?) ways...
Case 2 - now this is grand, Bangai-O uses fogging to show selected buttons :)
There's a special today - a frontend to Makaron donated by slrhui - you can get it here. Please contact the author about it should you need any changes done. And be sure to thank him if you find it usefull.
Here's Makaron Test 9/1. The main purpose of this release it to fix some issues T9 had, but there are other changes as well.
Firstly there's the new AEG code in AICA - not entierly correct mind you, but it will get better in time. I belive I've explained it enough before but just to be sure: It makes AICA module somewhat slower. Nothing is free you know. It should be offset by ARM7 code being recompiled this time.
Second major change is the addition of fog processing. You will need at least Pixel Shader 2.0 for this to work, and it better be fast (worst case scenario, that is palletized & filtered texture with fog and color clamping, is 9 textures lookups + some 50 other instructions per pixel).
This also causes Makaron to lag a bit at startup now, as it has to recreate some 200 PS programs to cover all possible cases.
I tried not to touch SH4 code much, but I did change how HOLLY handles DMA transfers. This might break quite a number of things but was necessary to fix couple of games. Mostly CAPCOM ones, go figure. Some people out there should really learn how to use DMA... There are games that start the DMA and assume it's going to finish before the program advances to the point where it has to use the transferred data - without actually checking that. The easiest way around this problem is to complete the transfers the moment they are started - but of course there are other games that get confused by immediate end-of-transfer interrupt, or miss it, and hang. Yet other games require that the transfer at least advances a bit once started, or the unchaged counter will make them think it's already done. All this is also very timing-related, might work or not depending how fast the emulator goes and when the interrupts actually arrive. Not funny.
I solved this by forcing DMA transfers to take time to finish - just like on the real hardware. The difference is a DMA in progress will slow SH4 (because it's blocking memory bus or HOLLY) and Makaron doesn't account for that. Not to mention I can't exactly check for interrupts every instruction, like SH4, as this would kill performance. I came up with timings that should work well on both slow and fast systems - but it might still need some tweaking.
As a side effect you now get to experience loading times. Just like on your good old Dreamcast. Yay! :) So be patient when staring at blank or "Please wait" / "Now loading" screens. I know this feature will not get good press but I like it. So it stays :)
By the way, fixes to DMA engine (although not timing-related) made "Soul Calibur" and "Dead or Alive 2" dialogs re-appear.
Emulation speed/statistics information is no longer displayed. If you want it, re-enable it in F12 menu.
On a special request from Yuki I've looked into MakaronPAD plugin. It is now possible to assign normal digital buttons to POV directional pad. The plugin version has been bumped up - not a big deal, but it won't work in T8/T9 unless you hex-edit it. You shouldn't be using those anymore :)
Enough Makaron for this year. Silmeria still needs to be rescued and I want some strong monsters to test out triple Nibelung Valesti combo (Hrist->Lenneth->Alicia) :]
Zum Sega Dreamcast Emulator Makaron gibt es folgende WIP News.
Wonders never cease
You folks noticing anyting of interest on the pictures below? :)
This will so not fit into PS 1.4 though. And yes, "Deep Figher" and "Cosmic Smash" show graphics now - I've fixed TA registering process. It should be good up to 8 continuations of any list.
In other news: "Project Justice" has BGM now - although not exactly on every run (I hate timing-related bugs). "Giga Wing 2" shows intro movie, and has more sound as well. All this thanks to FPU fixes on SH4 part - FTRC mostly.
I could release T9/1 as a quick fix to T9 in few days... It would include the new AICA code, but probably not fog support. That's kinda stopgap right now.
Become my Soul Reaver
I found few bugs in T9, here's quick summary:
- T9 actually reports itself as Test 8/3, my bad. The EXE file info should be correct though.
- Due to small changes in SH4 recompiler it may now trip on illegal opcodes, including ones that real hardware would ignore (like 0x0000 in delay slot). That breaks "Tokyo Highway Battle 2" and some "backups". I've already fixed that.
- "Street Fighter Alpha 3" freezes when entering attract mode. Cause yet unknown.
- SH4 fast interpreter is very slow, I was testing something and forgot to undo the changes. And there's a key that will break it even further if pressed :) Fixed.
- ARM7 was set to normal interpreter rather then fast one and this will add a bit to CPU usage. Fixed. Actually, I've finally completed the ARM recompiler - not very sophisticated but it is somewhat faster. And is default now.
Somehow - thanks to the free time perhaps - I was also able to come up with several improvements to the AICA module. I got more things done in past 2 days that in last 3 months... Anyway:
- There are two types of ADPCM streams on DC, and both can be looped even if only one is supposed to be used that way. But that didn't stop people from trying... Long story short, background music in Soul Reaver sounds fine now. Also, ADPCM samples don't like simple linear interpolation it seems so I've removed it. Trust me, it's better this way.
- I've implemented the Amplitude Envelope Generator (AEG in short). There's very little information on how it works, not to mention several special cases that I found got me scratching my head for a while. It has to be recalculated per-sample, though on the bright side I've designed it to use integer math only. Makes "Gundam Side Story 0079" and "Gun Bird 2" BGM nicer.
I think I could now try to add FEG and LFO too, but before I do I might need to redesign the module so it's more clear what's happening and where. In other words: it will take time.
dknute hat eine neue Testversion des Sega Dreamcast Emulators Makaron freigegeben.
Here is Makaron Test 9 for your pleasure. There are lots of internal changes, but nothing revolutionary - so don't expect it to be much better/faster compared to earlier versions. From user point of view, it's almost the same as T8. Quite frankly the only reason I'm releasing it is to test ...
Zum Sega Dreamcast Emulator Makaron gibt es folgende WIP News.
TAKE ON THE WORLD!
Okay, so most of SEGA Mega Drive (Genesis for you US folks) aren't that playable. Too many graphics bug for one - the emulator makes heavy use of PVR OIT capability. Sound will usually get ugly when heavy action starts even though it's fine in menus. And there are other nasty problems as well, like falling through floors in alternate Prince of Persia.
But some games do work well enough (too bad Lotus 2 RECS is not one of them :)
By the way, I can't shake that crazy idea of connecting a hard drive to Dreamcast off my mind. I'm pretty sure it can be done. Basically all that's needed is some hardware to translate SEGA Packet Interface commands into HDD reads, and that's exactly what Makaron's GD module is doing. Right now there is logical link on register level but I'm confident I can extend it to handle singal layer as well. I do have some experience with ATA/ATAPI hardware.
At first I was thinking of FPGA to handle the ATA part, but perhaps a fast clocked ARM7 would suffice - I need research it some more and see what kind of latency I can expect. I really don't have time for this though... but if there's anyone out there with the money, skills and time and wants to try - contact me. I'll help :)
I feel like I could...
ScummVM works now (except the newest 0.10 version which is known to have sound problems on the Dreamcast port). Thanks to it crashing frequently on T8 I managed to nail down a bug in the MT version of Makaron.
Running emulator inside emulator is fun! Also, FreeSCI 0.3.5 port is actually performing better on Makaron than the native PC version...
SEGA Genesis emu works as well. I'll update tomorrow with some pictures.
Zum Sega Dreamcast Emulator Makaron gibt es folgende WIP News.
Sisyphus had it easy
I figured out what made most of the casted shadows look wrong. It's again the problem of 1/Z -> Z conversion, and really limited precision of 32/24 bit floating point numbers. But that doesn't mean it's resolved now I'm afraid.
Zum Sega Dreamcast Emulator Makaron gibt es folgende WIP News.
Today's experiment... FAILED as well.
A very nice person calling him/herself Yuki donated Japanese ROM set, fresh from Dreamcast. Thank you! To my suprise it's 1.01d, just as any EU/USA one... And the FLASH file is a bit different too, comparing to what I had until now. Some version strings from both BIOS images:
KABUTO Ver.1.004
GDC Version 1.01 1998-09-30 MP
syTmr Version: 0.51 / syTmr Build:Jun 23 1998 14:52:57
syRtc Ver 1.00 Build:Sep 28 1998 05:10:44
syInt Ver 1.00 Build:Sep 16 1998 14:37:57
fmMng Ver 1.00 Build:Sep 29 1998 14:42:44
SIMPLE PLAYER VER. 1.00 98/10/02
KABUTO Ver.1.01d
GDC Version 1.10 1999-03-31 MP
syTmr Version: 0.51 / syTmr Build:Jun 23 1998 14:52:57
syRtc Ver 1.00 Build:Sep 28 1998 05:10:44
syInt Ver 1.02 Build:Oct 08 1998 19:31:47
fmMng Ver 1.00 Build:Sep 29 1998 14:42:44
SIMPLE PLAYER VER. 1.00 98/10/02
Well I can't be 100% sure, as I don't really know where that 1.004 came from, but it seems there was a bug in GD handling routines. GDC module was clearly upgraded. See, the older one is a bit strange, it's trying to boot GD-ROM media even if the GD drive says it's empty. This causes BIOS to hang just after swirl logo and you can't enter console menu. There is a way around it - namely you need to use unbootable image or (preferred) GDI image for EU/USA region rather then leaving the drive "empty". This will satisfy GD library and wont boot at the same time, so BIOS menu becomes accessible. I have no idea if that's because the ROM image was modified by someone or if it's a bug in the emulator. It is also possible that the early Dreamcasts were just slightly bit different then the later ones. Maybe there was even some sort of hardware-based workaround for that BIOS or the GD firmware was different.
The point is: If you use Japanese BIOS on Makaron and are experiencing problems with 1.004 version, substitute it with EU/USA image. This might not work well with the earlier FLASH image, but it should in most cases. The earlier FLASH lacks second entry for default settings (which include TV output format), but as far as I can tell it's not really used in NTSC modes anyway.
Oh, and I forgot to make an update to my last entry, so here are some final images from the experimental depth-peeling rendering system:
In some cases it simply looks great and most of the Z-fighting is gone, but I still couldn't get around all accuracy issuses. The last image is 7-layers deep and should render text in that dialog window, but...
Also, this is way too SLOW. For example (if you want things blended properly) to render 5 layers mean 10 redraws of the entire translucency. Fourteen redraws in Evolution is still real-time, but some games are way more demanding. For example my rig (E6600+GF7900) simply cannot handle more then four layers in Ikaruga and still maintain 60RPS, and in this game even eight layers is nowhere near enough.
I'm not going to include this experimental rendered in the next release, it's simply way too... experimental :) Even for Makaron.
Zum Sega Dreamcast Emulator Makaron gibt es folgende WIP News.
Today a little something for all you shooter fans :)
Exelica works but the first thing you notice about it is that secondary accumulation buffer isnt supported. Same goes for Looney Toons Space Race...
Now, this game I'm not really familiar with (I'm not a big fan of all those sms, logos and other crap) but the game seems to have a lot of fans so it wont hurt to support it :)
Under Defeat clearly suggests that SH4 core still has a big bug in it (you can also notice it in other games but this time I got a nice error message)
PS. In my previously released test build I found a few dumb errors which may seriously effect the graphics in some of the games. Those of you who happen to have GeForce FX 5xxx are in an even worse situation - the emulator wont boot :)
dknute hat eine neue Testversion des Sega Dreamcast Emulators Makaron freigegeben.
Bug in MakaronPAD 0.T.7.2 confirmed - you can't assign A, B & START buttons.
I already fixed that and here is the update. Unpack and replace, that's all.
Remember, you can enable basic shadow handling in F12 menu - it just a hack but works with some games (Soul Calibur, Virtua Fighter, ...)
And one more thing (apparently not all of you had a real Dreamcast): I've included memory card files preloaded with some saves and A1 is almost full. You can either:
* delete those files, MakaronVMU will create new ones (you need to format those in BIOS, just as with any new memory card on real hardware)
* format the existing cards in BIOS to clear them out, or simply delete few saves from them
* unpack empty and pre-formatted card images I've included in the 7z file named "Clean VMUs for dummies.7z" :]
Nach den vielen WIP News gibs nun die erste Testversion des Sega Dreamcast Emulators Makaron.
Follow the above link to download Makaron WIP version. It's just a preview of sorts, whether you'll be able to use it to run games is not really my problem. It's here just to show how far this project has advanced, nothing more. There's a ReadMe inside that package and that's it ...
Zum Sega Dreamcast Emulator Makaron gibt es folgende WIP News. (very Bad Translation :/)
All paints of rainbows
I have ended some (certain) over attendance (service activity) work week ago shader Pixel,
so, I will be praised results :) Such solution has advantages more than it seemed . Firstly, acts from the point of view of
processor " free " ( ) attendance (service activity) texture paletowych. For second (other)
better utilization of graphic card (kart) I do not know - if (or) it problem of optimization
sterownika if (or) equipment, but it acts + faster VS PS than flows let's say nieprogramowalne.
Greatest control for it over manner of generating image ( e.g. capability to blocking of channel
alpha of texture, as it is able to make ) PVR2. They are and defects it is necessary to make
filtering texture - paletowych, that costs some tens (any tens) instructions PS. It requires for
it 2.0 upwards PS - but they let's say sincerely it 1.4 only 8500 PS Radeon, support is rebuked
for already SM1. But, can not have some (certain) old invention notebookowe SM2 rally will
move on - so 1.4 Makaron PS, but without w/w filter.
On margin so sometime numerators for that - explain be as (serve) FPS and RPS. I will add to longish conclusions again not intervening only, that there is normal situation in (to) many games = RPS FPS/2. Say from pictures heavily when really, spaghetti so " " przycina, but it is felt playing. At least majority has in the course of battle particularly " " ( ) = mordobić RPS FPS and great that give effect of sailing (swimming) in tar odchyłki )
Zum Sega Dreamcast Emulator Makaron gibt es folgende WIP News. (very Bad Translation :/)
Return GD-ROM
At the end I have convened and I have hit once more time again of GD-ROM emulation. There was heavily :) but now Makaron has left on simple again, but if necessary has attendance of image write about which earlier GDI.
From this version it is possible to configure the emulation of region to EU/USA/JP. Thus, I search for images BIOS and from consoles on USA FLASH and japan! It circulates be it for network that certain domestic alteration of european version, with often break down (disable) usage else Chankastem problems are with them -. As you have it divide certain image of ROM it in noble purpose -! Otherwise, I will search enforced < self-service store >, that can expire
Certainly let's there will be example of superiority of image on pirates ( affectation not cut contents disc ) GDI Record of Lodoss War.
Pirate puts ( Makarona and not only on program ) loading, which does not act without attendance of hand memory on correctly SH4. But it walks " original " ślicznie":
So, from this moment if something will act from GDI, but from pirate not, it will sound on solution my standard answer this problem " but well, hard " :]
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