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30th January, 2007 - GameEx 7.50

I'm pleased to present the first GameEx release of 2007. There has been a lot of fixes and optimisations and the entire project has been upgraded to .net framework 2.0. Because of .net 2.0, auto update will not work until you upgrade manually to this version or future versions. You obviously need .net 2.0 installed but the setup will automatically download it for you.

 

The main new features and enhancments are as follows:

* Setup wizard now features a search for setting feature.

* Includes Ben Bakers LCD/LED Plugin

* Plugin system 1.3 with included .net 2.0 source code templates

* Speech plugin now speaks game descriptions

* New plugn - random arcade sound

* For registered users theres a PDF game manual viewer for MAME and emulators

* New setting to disable the game information page at the emulator level

* New setting to have gameex not hide the windows taskbar

* Picture and slideshows now show the GameEx toolbar when the mouse is active

* The progress dialog bar when playing videos and dvds now takes up less screen space

* GameEx should startup and run faster

* Fixes menu crash issue with certain themes

* Fixes games not launching when game information page is disabled in certain configurations

* Fixes display issues with certain fonts

* There's more but that's the main changes

 

Coming soon is search functionality and a new additional theme/interface style.

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The PSP® system software version 3.10 update includes the following:

 

* Game

o Support for PLAYSTATION®Network titles has been expanded.

* Network

o You can now play MPEG-4 AVC format video files under [LocationFree™ Player].

* A LocationFree™ Base Station (a Sony product sold separately) with model number LF-B20 or LF-B10 is required.

*For details on the LocationFree™ Player, visit http://www.sony.net/Products/LocationFree/psp/.

o [Conserve Memory] has been added as an option in [View Settings] under [internet Browser].

* Settings

o [Dynamic Normalizer] has been added as a feature under [sound Settings].

As usual: Do NOT update to this firmware if you want to be able to run homebrew on your PSP!

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Note:You can also update your firmware by running the Network Update feature on your PSP.

There have been some fairly major updates to libnds this time round. These include gabebear's gl patch, improvements to the exception handler and interrupt dispatcher as well as some housekeeping and general tidying.

Applied gabebear patch # 1632896

fix gluPickMatrix()

- no float / f32 version because all the parameters will always be regular ints

- it actually works now

 

fix gluFrustrumf32() and gluFrustum()

- rename to glFrustrum because this is a GL function, not GLU (I'm breaking stuff...)

- no longer changes matrix mode to projection (it's useful for more than projection)

- multiplies instead of loads

 

fix glOrthof32()

- no longer changes matrix mode to projection (it's useful for more than projection)

- multiplies instead of loads

 

fix glGetFixed()

- correctly waits for graphics engine to stop before getting any matrix

- added ability to get projection and modelview matrices

- fixed projection matrix get (it was grabbing modelview)

- getting projection or position matrices now uses the matrix stack to preserve the other matrix.

 

Updated the glTexCoord2f() to pull texture size from state...texture sizes other than 128x128 should now work with the floating point version.

 

Added gluPickMatrix... (untested)

 

 

The helper macros for VRAM mapping have been updated and extended, leading zeroes are now used on macros which include addresses in their naming schemes. The default mappings now reflect sequential use of VRAM banks.

 

The default exception handler has had some small improvements. The program counter is now saved properly on entry to the handler.

 

The interrupt dispatcher has now returned to the older method of acknowledging before entering the user handler. The convoluted method was based on a misunderstanding of a situation where it appeared user data was lost if the interrupt flag was cleared first.

 

The Personal Data struct has been extended with known values from gbatek.

 

Added DS motion card functionality to libnds!

 

Anonymous structs and unions have now been named for use with -std=c99 by request.

 

The bus owner functions have been changed to static inline - setCartOwner, setCardOwner and setBusOwners.

 

In our ongoing attempt to bring register naming in line with gbatek WAIT_CR changes to REG_EXEMEMCNT/REG_EXEMEMSTAT and POWER_CR changes to REG_POWERCNT. The old names have been moved to nds/registers_alt.h.

 

registers_alt.h has been updated to avoid multiple definition warnings when included. Many of the old names are now defined to their new names here.

 

The timer macros now do not enable the timers by default. TIMER_ENABLE should be set manually.

 

The bogus fixed types have been removed from libnds due to problems with some C++ standard libraries. Fixed point numbers are ints which are treated specially by the programmer, define your own types if you really must.

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This long awaited toolchain update brings the much requested directory functions to libfat.

devkitARM release 20 has been updated with newlib 1.15.0 and the completed stdio patches for directory related functions. Example code will be added to the nds examples later.

 

Cearn's Gameboy Image Transmogrifier joins the tools available in the devkit. This image processing tool should provide you with a simpler way to add graphics to your projects. Again sample projects will be added to the nds and gba examples over the next few days.

 

Chishm's dlditool is now included as well as the dldi linkscript for added convenience. A dldi template is available in the examples.

 

The included makefile rulesets have been reordered so that .itcm/.iwram/.arm.c/cpp files should work as intended.

 

dswifi 0.3d now uses closesocket rather than close for sockets. The old function was overriding an important function of the same name in newlib and interfering with some aspects of stdio. The hitherto unannounced 0.3c brought support for newer wifi hardware in recent DS units as well as some bugfixes related to UDP.

 

The latest libfat merely enables the long awaited directory related functions, devkitARM release 20 is a requirement for this build.

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