Raine 0.43.2 !

 

8 new games (3 from Haze, thanks !), a big amount of fixes, the return of some forgotten compiler optimizations (but not all of them in windows because of gcc bugs), and some changes for the drivers devs in the way raine handles the graphics layouts.

 

Also for the linux users : I don't know of any distribution which uses allegro 4.2.0 yet, but it has a lot of improvements including better non english keyboard support and better console support (if you use fbcon). So be aware of the limitations of allegro 4.1.x or 4.0.x if you use it with your distribution.

raine (0.43.2) unstable; urgency=low

 

  * Haze added diverboy, mugsmash, cross pang.

  * I added Jumping pop, and Tetris 2+ (or fixed it since there was a preliminary driver in raine since 0.28, but it was really the begining).

    I also added the esd16 driver from mame, with multi champ, multi champ deluxe, and head panic. All of these are using lots of colors !

  * A few fixes for extreme video modes situations (linux console). WARNING: if you want to play with the frame buffer in linux, use allegro 4.2.0, frame buffer support has been broken for a very long time in allegro-4.1.x.

  * Also some fixes to really prevent raine from changing the current video mode if the user forbids it or if the current video driver can't give the list of supported video modes by the monitor (which is the case of frame buffer driver for linux).

  * Bezel fixes : when the video mode is not automatically changed, the bezel now adapts to the current mode (instead of not displaying anything).

    Also if you load a 2nd game which also uses a bezel, the 2nd bezel is now correctly handled.

  * The buffer for the history.dat is doubled (for dkong for example), I should probably use a dynamic buffer for that... maybe later.

  * Now raine supports multiple layouts / gfx layers, and is automatically calling make_solid_mask for a region when a layout is defined for it.

    gfx[n] always contains the nth layer in the layouts list, and gfx_solid[n] is the result of the call of make_solid_mask on this region, and max_sprites[n] contains the number of sprites for this area.

    Also the driver's loading function is now called BEFORE the layouts are applied, which allows to decrypt/convert the sprites and still use automatically the layers. This should have been added a long time ago, it became obvious just recently with all these drivers which needed manual graphics decoding.

  * raine does its own tests for svgalib in linux now. If it does not detect vga.h at the standard places when compiling, then svgalib support is disabled.

  * Fixed the fg layer of the 2nd tc100scn not updated in thundfox (thundfox seems to be the only game which uses a 2nd fg layer, so it escaped me !)

  * while testing stuff with the eeproms, fixed pang3j which never worked (!), and added service mode controls for the pirates driver.

  * fine tune the music of the hammer in donkey kong so that the other sounds can be heared while it's playing.

»» Official Site

Mednafen is a portable, utilizing OpenGL and SDL, argument(command-line)-driven multi-system emulator with many advanced features. The Atari Lynx, GameBoy, GameBoy Color, GameBoy Advance, NES, PC Engine(TurboGrafx 16), and SuperGrafx are emulated. Mednafen has the ability to remap hotkey functions and virtual system inputs to a keyboard, a joystick, or both simultaneously. Save states are supported, as is real-time game rewinding. Screen snapshots may be taken at the press of a button, and are saved in the popular PNG file format.

Due to the threaded model of emulation used in Mednafen, and limitations of SDL, a joystick is preferred over a keyboard to play games, as the joystick will have slightly less latency, although the latency differences may not be perceptible to most people.

 

Mednafen was previously known as "Nintencer", a NES emulator which is somewhat less CPU intensive and will run on machines without OpenGL capabilities. Downloads of Nintencer will remain on the "Releases" page, and the old Nintencer branch may periodically be updated with fixes for critical bugs.

September 20, 2005 - Mednafen 0.3.1 Released

Mednafen 0.3.1 and the Win32 binary executable package are both now released. Enjoy the insanely slow PC Engine emulation!

 

 

Fixed a bug that existed since 0.2.0 that was causing a null-pointer deference in stat().

Interesting, glibc silently ignored the error, but the error caused crashing under Windows.

 

PCE:  The HuC6280 timer latch is now loaded with an appropriate value on reset.  Fixes

"Double Dungeons".

 

PCE:  Added generic PC Engine save RAM emulation.

 

 

 

Update:

 

After realizing the PC Engine sound emulation code is much slower than I thought it was, I've rewritten it to be much faster, at about the same sound quality. Expect a release incorporating this new sound code later this week, after I do bug testing.

»» Official Site

NPlayers.ini fills the "Players" column of your favourite MAME frontend letting you know how many players the game supports and if it's simultaneous play or not. You'll find more info in the text file included in the zip archive.

 

18-09-2005 - Ready for MAME 0.100! Users of EmuLoader v4.7.2 or newer should place nplayers.ini in "ini_files\" folder.

You can get the file here.

VBA smooth v6.4

 

feature added:

- add an entry forceRenderMethod=1 in vba.ini to force using DirectDraw driver (thanks awi's suggestion)

- force to stop emulation before switching sound emulation on/off

- add an entry saveMoreCPU=1 in vba.ini for slow computer to save more CPU power

 

bug fix:

 

[mikoxc] when sound is disable, vba load a game then crashed

- fix a bug in PCM interpolation module

 

[mikoxc] VBA run a game with sound disable, after load a real-time save file, VBA crashed

- fix another bug in PCM interpolation module

 

[bohdy] 6.3 still runs at half framerate in automatic mode, just like if frameskip 1 was selected.

- fix a bug in automatic frame rate control

 

[squaresoft74] On the top and left sides of the screen i get blue lines that weren't there with previous builds.

- not crop a pixel around the border of output image.

More at the Official Site