WinArcadia 11.92 (Windows): 1 August 2009

AmiArcadia 11.92 (AmigaOS 3): 1 August 2009

AmiArcadia 8.3 (AmigaOS 4): 29 October 2008

AmiArcadia 4.81 (MorphOS): 6 December 2007

Super Bug Advance 1.2 (GBA): 14 July 2009

AmiArcadia and WinArcadia are multi-emulators of these Signetics-based

machines:

* the Emerson Arcadia 2001 console family (Bandai, Emerson,

Grandstand, Intervision, Leisure-Vision, Leonardo, MPT-03, Ormatu,

Palladium, Poppy, Robdajet, Tele-Fever, Tempest, Tryom, Tunix,

etc.) (1982);

* the Interton VC 4000 console family (Acetronic, Fountain, Hanimex,

Interton, Prinztronic, Radofin, Rowtron, Soundic, Voltmace,

Waddington, etc.) (c. 1978);

* the Elektor TV Games Computer (1979);

* PIPBUG-based machines (EA 77up2, EA 78up5, Signetics Adaptable Board

Computer, Eurocard 2650, etc.) (c. 1977-1978);

* the Signetics Instructor 50 trainer (1978);

* the Central Data 2650 computer (1977);

* the Malzak 1 and 2 coin-ops by Kitronix (c. 1980) (preliminary); and

* the Galaxia and Astro Wars coin-ops by Zaccaria (1979-1980)

(preliminary).

Features include: ReAction GUI, load/save snapshots, windowed and full-

screen modes, CPU tracing, trainer, drag and drop support, graphics

scaling, automatic load/save of configuration/game, keyboard/joystick/

gamepad/paddle/mouse/trackball support, autofire, turbo mode, gameplay

recording/playback, PAL/NTSC modes, sprite demultiplexing, help windows,

source code, debugger, frame skipping, redefinable keys, save screenshots

(4 supported formats), ARexx port, network play, real-time monitor, locale

support, game selection sidebar, text-to-speech, printer output,

undithering, support for ZIPped games, clipboard support, palette editor,

tone retuning, high score management.

Changes since V11.91:

. "Log|Log console to file?" option.

. Debugger CLI: added BASE command.

. Miscellaneous improvements and bug fixes.

http://amigan.1emu.net/releases/

http://amigan.yatho.com/

Get it HERE

Makaron website -> http://dknute.livejournal.com/

Dreamcast side of Makaron is now available for download.

 

It's pretty much the same code as NAOMI version released earlier, with some minor modifications. From the top of my head:

- "clockmin" is now 100 by default

- accepted clock values are now in 10 to 400 range

- "pixelcenter" is zero by default (ATI users with problems please set it to -0.1)

- first gamepad can be configured by selecting "Settings" in the menu (this is just a hack for now, and let me remind you that X360 controllers don't need configuration)

 

As usual, keep copy of of your INI files from earlier versions (Maple.ini, MakaronPAD.ini and MakaronVMU.ini). You'd be surprised just how many people overwrite these and then come here complaining about gamepad / memory cards related issues.

These INI files will be removed soon anyway, once I get the GUI more functional.

 

If you spot a game that has worked in T11 but not in T12 please report it. There are some bugs that I'm already aware of:

- "Stupid Invaders" not booting (I know how to fix it just not sure if I should, it could be a side effect of another bug somewhere else)

- "Looney Tunes Space Race" sound issues (still need to find the real source of this problem)

- "Shenmue II" not booting (should work on SSE2 capable systems, works on mine but it was reported broken on some AMD CPUs)

- some games require a certain video cable to work properly (mostly JP/USA games, doing weird stuff or hanging with RGB cable)

- "Yu Suzuki Game Works Vol. 1" (sorta works but the way this is coded really upsets Makaron)

- some WinCE games like "Marionette Company" have really broken graphics (mostly extreme cases of Z-buffer abuse)

- demo/attract modes on some games are broken due to imperfect FPU emulation, the most serious case being "Aero Dancing" where the tutorial crashes the plane

- and tons of other stuff

NES emulator. Get it HERE.

01-july-2009 - adelikat - win32 - texthooker - drag & drop for table files

01-july-2009 - adelikat - win32 - drag & drop for cheat (.cht) files

25-jun-2009 - qeed - sound/ppu - fixed the noise value, it seems that the noise logic was shifting the values to the left by 1 when reloading, but this doesnt work for PAL since one of the PAL reload value is odd, so fix the logic and used the old tables. Revert a stupid CPU ignore logic in PPU. Sorry about that.

25-jun-2009 - adelikat - Win32 - CD Logger - Drag and Drop for .cdl files

24-jun-2009 - qeed - sound/ppu - reverted to old noise table value since this seems to get correct sound for double

dragon 2. Also added experimental $2004 reading support to play micro machines with (little) shakes, and fixed some

timing in the new PPU.

24-jun-2009 - adelikat - win32 - memory watch - option to bind to main window, if checked it gives GENS dialog style control, where there is no extra task bar item, and it minimizes when FCEUX is minimized

24-jun-2009 - adelikat - win32 - palette commandline options

24-jun-2009 - adelikat - win32 - Sound Dialog - cleanup, when sound is off, all controls are grayed out

24-jun-2009 - adelikat - win32 - Hex Editor - Drag & Drop for .tbl files

24-jun-2009 - adelikat - win32 - Drag & Drop for .fcm, it converts and then loads the converted movie automatically

24-jun-2009 - adelikat - win32 - Drag & Drop support for palette files

23-jun-2009 - adelikat - win32 - Drag & Drop support for savestates

22-jun-2009 - qeed - Revert IRQ inhibit fix, since this seems to break Dragon

Warrior 4, added palette reading cases for the new PPU.

21-jun-2009 - adelikat - win32 - memwatch - save menu item is grayed if file hasn't changed

20-jun-2009 - adelikat - win32 - memwatch - fixed a regression I made in 2.0.1 that broke the Save As menu item

17-jun-2009 - qeed - Sound core fix, updated with the correct values for the noise and DMC table,

and also fixed the IRQ inhibit behavior for register $4017. Also fixed the CPU

unofficial opcode ATX, ORing with correct constant $FF instead of $EE, as tested

by blargg's. These fixes passes the IRQ flags test from blargg, and also one more

opcode test from blargg's cpu.nes test.

16-jun-2009 - adelikat - sound core fix - square 1 & square 2 volume controls no longer backwards

11-jun-2009 - zeromus - sound core fix, length counters for APU now correct variables

11-jun-2009 - adelikat - Win32 - Hex Editor - changed ROM values again dsiplay as red, saved in the config as RomFreezeColor

06-jun-2009 - rheiny - Fixed reported issue 2746924 (md5_asciistr() doesn't produce correct string)

23-may-2009 - adelikat - win32 - hex editor - freeze/unfreeze ram addresses now causes the colors to update immediately, but only with groups of addresses highlighted at once (single ones still don't yet update)

23-may-2009 - adelikat - win32 - context menu - Save Movie As... menu item (for when a movie is loaded in read+write mode)

23-may-2009 - adelikat - win32 - added opton to remove a recent item to the roms, lua, and movie recent menus

23-may-2009 - adelikat - win32 - Added a remove recent item function and hooked it up to memwatch recent menu, now if a bad recent item is clicked, the user has a choice to remove it from the list

23-may-2009 - adelikat - win32 - Load Last Movie context menu item added

23-may-2009 - adelikat - win32 - Recent Movie Menu added

22-may-2009 - adelikat - win32 - "Disable screen saver" gui option now also diables the monitor powersave

22-may-2009 - adelikat - win32 - Debugger - Step type functions now update other dialogs such as ppu, nametable, code/data, trace logger, etc.

22-may-2009 - adelikat - win32 - Hex Editor - Save Rom As... menu option enabled and implemented

22-may-2009 - adelikat - win32 - Window caption shows the name of the ROM loaded

22-may-2009 - adelikat - win32 - Hex Editor - allowed the user to customize the color scheme by use of RGB values stored in the .cfg file

21-may-2009 - adelikat - win32 - reverted fixedFontHeight to 13 instead of 14. Gave the option of adjusting the height by modifying RowHeightBorder in the .cfg file

21-may-2009 - adelikat - win32 - made fullscreen toggle (Alt+Enter) remappable

15-may-2009 - shinydoofy - sdl - added --subtitles

10-may-2009 - shinydoofy - sdl - fixed Four Score movie playback

02-may-2009 - adelikat - win32 - stop movie at frame x feature - fixed off by 1 error

23-apr-2009 - shinydoofy - sdl - added --ripsubs for converting fm2 movie subtitles to an srt file

15-apr-2009 - shinydoofy - sdl - Lua is optional again, fixed the real issue

14-apr-2009 - punkrockguy - sdl - LUA is NO longer optional, so the SConscripts have been updated to reflect that change. This fixes the mysterious non-working input issue.

12-apr-2009 - shinydoofy - sdl - implemented saving/loading a savestate from a specific file on Alt+S/L

11-apr-2009 - shinydoofy - sdl - implemented starting an FM2 movie on Alt+R

11-apr-2009 - adelikat - made default save slot 0 instead of 1, Win32 - remember last slot used

11-apr-2009 - shinydoofy - sdl - added --pauseframe to pause movie playback on frame x

11-apr-2009 - shinydoofy - sdl - dropped UTFConverter.c from SDL build and added hotkey Q for toggling read-only/read+write movie playback

Genesis emulator. Get it HERE.

Release 7 introduces the following new features:

 

Mega Drive Plugins v1.0.0. This major update to the plugins system adds support for external plugins (.dll on Windows, .so on Linux), as well as support for more than just rendering plugins.

doc/mdp/ contains the MDP Interface Specifiction Version 1.0.0. This document is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License v1.3.

A new manual for Gens/GS has been created. It is available in doc/manual/.

The Game Genie functionality has been moved to an MDP plugin. It now supports 8-bit, 16-bit, and 32-bit patch codes, and uses a new patch code file format. Old patch code files are supported for loading; however, they will be written in the new format when saved. Later versions will add support for patching CPU address spaces other than the main MC68000.

New MDP Plugin: VDP Layer Options. This lets you adjust the visible layers on screen, so e.g. you can hide sprites, swap scroll priorities, and lock the palette to prevent color changes.

New MDP Plugin: Sonic Gens. This lets you view various information in memory in several Sonic games. Sonic Gens was originally written by LOst as a standalone version of Gens.

New renderers:

EPX (ported from Gens Rerecording)

EPX Plus (ported from Gens Rerecording)

Super 2xSaI (ported from Gens Plus)

Super Eagle (ported from Gens Plus)

Blargg's NTSC filter for MD

[Win32] Ported the GDI video backend from Gens Plus. It still has a few bugs, but it mostly works.

Extended controller configuration format. The new configuration format allows for up to 128 axes, 256 buttons, and 64 POV hats, whereas the old configuration format only allowed for 6 axes [5 axes on Win32], 112 buttons, and 4 POV hats. This mainly affects the Linux version, since Linux usually reports all axes as axes instead of mapping some axes to POV hats, and some newer controllers (e.g. the Xbox 360 controller) have more than 6 axes. Older configurations are automatically updated to use the new controller configuration format.

The reverse-engineered 32X firmware, written by DevSter, is now included in Gens/GS. If you do not have the original Sega 32X firmware files, the reverse-engineered ones are used instead.

Added SH2 DMA support for PWM audio. Thanks to Joseph Fenton for submitting a patch.

[Win32] Joysticks connected after loading Gens/GS will now be detected in the Controller Configuration dialog.

WAV dumping has been reimplemented.

ROM History now caches the ROM type (MD/MCD/32X), so it doesn't have to check the ROM type every time the ROM History menu is rebuilt. This improves performance significantly if some ROM images were loaded from network shares.

ROM History now keeps track of compressed files inside of multi-file archives. For example, if you have a 7z archive containing several different versions of a game, selecting version 1 will result in a ROM History entry for that specific version, and selecting version 2 will result in another ROM History entry.

Added initial support for the "Palette Select" bit in VDP register 0. If the "Palette Select" bit is cleared, only the LSBs of each color component in CRAM is used to determine the colors to display, resulting in a maximum of 8 colors onscreen. This isn't very useful, but is more accurate.

SRAM can now be disabled in the Options menu. This fixes Puggsy, which checks for the existance of SRAM and prevents the user from advancing past a certain point if it exists. (Puggsy uses a password system, not SRAM.)

Improved PWM scaling algorithm, provided by Chilly Willy on the Sonic Retro forums.

A new command line option, "--boot-cd", can be specified to tell Gens/GS to boot from an actual SegaCD CD-ROM on startup.

[unix] Improved VSync support with the OpenGL backend. Both the MESA and SGI swap control methods are now supported.

The video subsystem now supports fallbacks. For example, on the Linux version, if SDL+OpenGL is selected but OpenGL isn't available, it will simply revert back to SDL instead of crashing. As an added bonus, this allows for Gens/GS to start up properly on Windows NT 4.0, since the default backend on Win32 is DirectDraw 4, but NT4 doesn't support it. Instead of crashing, it will fall back to the GDI backend.

Gens/GS no longer changes non-alphanumeric characters in SegaCD game names to spaces. This may cause some games to have different names, which will prevent their BRAM files from being loaded properly. If you have any of these games, you will need to rename the BRAM files in order to get them to load correctly.

[unix] If a game has a Shift-JIS encoded title in the Japanese title field and the country code is set to Japan, the title will be converted to the system's native locale, e.g. UTF-8. (Win32 support for this feature will be added once Gens/GS fully supports Windows' Unicode implementation.)

 

Release 7 fixes the following bugs:

 

Dragging and dropping a ROM image onto the Gens/GS window will now synchronize the menus. This bug was reported by Tets on the Sonic Retro forums.

Loading a GSX savestate file that is not in GSX format will now show an error instead of crashing. Apparently, Gens Plus GZips its savestate files when saving by default. This bug was reported by SoNick in #retro.

[GTK+] Copied g_uri_unescape_string() (and dependent functions) from GLib 2.18.4 into Gens/GS. This function was introduced in GLib 2.16, but Gens/GS should be compatible with versions of GLib 2.4 and later.

Two VDP DMA bugs have been fixed:

Zero-length DMA operations are now handled as 65,536-word operations. This may break some poorly-written hacks.

DMA operations now wrap on a 128k boundary. This bug was reported by TmEE.

The VDP H_Int register is now initialized to 0xFF. This fixes Sik's test ROM that produced "rain" on Gens, but not on Regen or the actual hardware.

 

Release 7 has the following low-level code changes:

 

The video, audio, and input subsystems have been ported back to C. The C++ system was too awkward and had too much overhead.

Similarly, the decompression subsystem has been ported back to C. In addition, the LZMA SDK is now built into Gens/GS, so 7z archives can be read without an external 7z binary.

Initial port of the Z80 emulator to C. The Z80 emulator has been moved out of the src/gens directory and into its own directory, src/mdZ80. Currently, the only functions that have been ported to C are the helper functions. The actual emulation code is currently being worked on in the mdZ80 branch in the Gens/GS git repository.

Many assembly-language files have been converted from Intel-style (nasm) assembly to AT&T-style (GNU `as`) assembly.

Many assembler functions have been ported to C/C++, including the UPDATE_PALETTE macros and Reset_VDP() (now VDP_Reset()).

Multitap support has been ported from x86 assembler to C. In the process, both Sega Teamplayer and 4-Way Play support have been improved. Notably, Teamplayer now works on "NBA Jam" and "NBA Jam TE", and 4-Way Play now works (sometimes) on "Triple Play '96". A complete list of tested multitap games can be found in doc/teamplayer.txt .

yasm is now supported as an alternative to nasm. To use yasm, add the option --with-nasm=yasm when using the ./configure script.

Precompiled binaries are now compiled for i686 or higher. If you want to run Gens/GS on an original Intel Pentium or older, you will have to compile your own Gens/GS binary.