Raine 0.95 : some big optimizations for scripts in windows !

[Tux]

This one kept me busy for a few days, the windows version looses time in the conversions between double numbers and ints. It doesn't happen in linux, and I don't know the exact reason, it's probably related to mingw32, but anyway the fix is to merge muparser into raine and change its base type to "unsigned int". The consequence is that float numbers are not recognized anymore in the console, I'll just hope that no script used them, but I don't think any did.

It goes with a dll update, a few dlls were updated including sdl2, so it's advised to update for all windows users, the new packages are dlls32-0.95.7z for 32 bits and dlls64-0.95.7z for 64 bits.

The linux version didn't have this problem, but since I don't want to maintain 2 different versions the merge is done there too, and so raine doesn't need muparser to be installed anymore in linux. We get a very small speed improvement in linux too because it allowed me to make a few more optimizations since no type conversion is needed anymore now.

Except that there were a few small bug fixes for the recent 0.94.12b, but the really big thing is the merge of muparser inside raine and the gain of speed it brings.

https://raine.1emulation.com/

 

Edited February 26, 2023 by Tux

[pmc2]

Great thanks.
should make a changelog  .

 

[Tux]

There are the git changes log, a little technical but manageable...

Otherwise just the posts I make here.

[pmc2]

dll is not xp compatible again ^^(old are ok).

I think you should put the pack for xp on your site, it would be easier (and eventually I will test for you if the new ones are functional from time to time).

https://pixeldrain.com/u/npsvX5pd

Edited February 24, 2023 by pmc2

[Tux]

13 minutes ago, pmc2 said:

dll is not xp compatible again ^^(old are ok).

I think you should put the pack for xp on your site, it would be easier (and eventually I will test for you if the new ones are functional from time to time).

https://pixeldrain.com/u/npsvX5pd

Or just give up this xp compatibility for good ? Who still uses xp today, except maybe in some remote world places where they don't have much choice ?

I forgot which dll it was exactly, and I was almost sure it would be good this time.

I am tempted to just drop that, you are the only one who asked about xp, it was fun because it was not too hard to do at the beginning but it starts to be an annoyance now, and if you are the only one testing it, and just for testing, it's not worth it.

If anybody else is interested in xp support, post, and explain why you are still using xp today, otherwise I'll just drop that, and good riddance !

[Tux]

2 hours ago, pmc2 said:

Great thanks.
should make a changelog  .

 

if you were wondering what the small bug fixes were, these were :

 - an old bug in sdl2-2.0.20 which obliged me to make a workaround seems to have disappeared, the checkboxes are all green again in the windows version of raine (there was exactly 1 white line before to work around this bug, it was barely noticeable).
 - move "preload ips" to the game selection dialog, idea from mer-curious and he was right on this one.
 - the crash when there is an empty ips folder and you select anyway "preload ips dat file" and then click on the ".." which appears is fixed, you won't even see the .. now, you'll just get an error message telling the directory is empty !

[pmc2]

7 minutes ago, Tux said:

Or just give up this xp compatibility for good ? Who still uses xp today, except maybe in some remote world places where they don't have much choice ?

I forgot which dll it was exactly, and I was almost sure it would be good this time.

Excuse me but we're not going to have this debate every time, I explained to you 50x that it's a feedback I'm giving you. I don't give a damn about xp or anything else, so either you take this remark as a simple "plus" or you tell me that my remarks on xp bother you (which I can understand) and that's it haha

Now for my part I start from the same principle as retroarch and its compatibility of old systems. if it is possible (especially here it is really simple) and even if it affects a user in the universe I arrange for it to be good, I know perfectly well that at some point it is the ultimate end but in the case of raine it is not yet that moment. Moreover, contrary to what you think and beyond the risks etc, many asian still use xp, your emulator is used more than you think here too ^^
 

[Tux]

15 minutes ago, pmc2 said:

Excuse me but we're not going to have this debate every time, I explained to you 50x that it's a feedback I'm giving you. I don't give a damn about xp or anything else, so either you take this remark as a simple "plus" or you tell me that my remarks on xp bother you (which I can understand) and that's it haha

Now for my part I start from the same principle as retroarch and its compatibility of old systems. if it is possible (especially here it is really simple) and even if it affects a user in the universe I arrange for it to be good, I know perfectly well that at some point it is the ultimate end but in the case of raine it is not yet that moment. Moreover, contrary to what you think and beyond the risks etc, many asian still use xp, your emulator is used more than you think here too ^^
 

Yeah well if I had someone who took care of the windows build and wanted to fix this kind of details, it would be no problem, but as a matter of fact I have only me, and really I can't care less about xp now.

And the drawback for other users is that from memory it's the access to some function which is impossible because it's a kernel function, and of course the xp kernel hasn't been updated for ages, and this particular function is about the timing for threads if I remember correctly it's in winpthreads.dll and the said function isn't even used directly in raine, so it's minor, but now sdl2 uses threads and it's probably a good idea to let it use the time granularity it wants.

So except if someone comes with a super new argument, we'll leave things as they are. The old dll pack, 0.92x still works with xp for those who are interested, and sdl2 isn't even too old in this one because I updated it not too long ago. There is a libmuparser.dll which is not necessary anymore but it's not a problem. So xp compatibility officially stops here because not enough people care, and it's becoming too bothersome to maintain without anybody to help.

[mer-curious]

Hello Tux! I have posted some feedback related to the IPS feature and other issues in some other threads in the forum, so here I will just quickly report some new unrelated issues I found in my recent testings.

The graphics in Agressors of Dark Combat (NEOGEO game) seems broken. Many parts in the game show completely black. Take a look:

Also, if you start the game by hitting Start it will be totally black too.

I don't know if it matters, but I'm using Unibios 4.0 in Japan/Console mode.

 

I accidentally stumbled upon this message by trying the numerous old versions I tested to figure out the sound issue I was having:

As you see, the message is not very clear and the sentence organization is confusing. If you tell me what you meant I can help you review the text.

 

Finally, the first time I tried to download the new DLL files pack Firefox refused to download it because the file could be dangerous and so I had to confirm the risk in order to download it. I think it's because they are not hosted in a HTTPS protocol, no?

Also, you could invert the order of the DLL packs in the page to match the one for the Raine versions: first the 32 bit one and then the 64 bit below. It's a tiny detail but it does help to visually localize which pack is for which version.

I guess that's it for this quick report.

Thank you so much again for your work.

[Tux]

39 minutes ago, mer-curious said:

Hello Tux! I have posted some feedback related to the IPS feature and other issues in some other threads in the forum, so here I will just quickly report some new unrelated issues I found in my recent testings.

The graphics in Agressors of Dark Combat (NEOGEO game) seems broken. Many parts in the game show completely black. Take a look:

Also, if you start the game by hitting Start it will be totally black too.

I don't know if it matters, but I'm using Unibios 4.0 in Japan/Console mode.

Looks like yet another windows specific bug ! It gets tiresome isn't it ? No idea where it comes from for now, I get different results and I don't know what changes them, sometimes the screen is all black when pressing start, sometimes it's only the sprites. No idea !

Easy solution : linux version !

I don't know what this craziness is again, it happens even in debug mode... !

Interesting question also : is it new ?

39 minutes ago, mer-curious said:

 

I accidentally stumbled upon this message by trying the numerous old versions I tested to figure out the sound issue I was having:

As you see, the message is not very clear and the sentence organization is confusing. If you tell me what you meant I can help you review the text.

The important part is "no recent game yet", this text has not been updated but there is nothing in options to change that now, it's outdated. No need to care about that, you can see it only when you have played no game or when you remove your configuration which never happens for normal players.

39 minutes ago, mer-curious said:

 

Finally, the first time I tried to download the new DLL files pack Firefox refused to download it because the file could be dangerous and so I had to confirm the risk in order to download it. I think it's because they are not hosted in a HTTPS protocol, no?

Maybe, just add https in front of the links then ? I'll change that just to be sure.

In this case it's an over reaction from firefox, the fact that it's https doesn't change its contents.

39 minutes ago, mer-curious said:

Also, you could invert the order of the DLL packs in the page to match the one for the Raine versions: first the 32 bit one and then the 64 bit below. It's a tiny detail but it does help to visually localize which pack is for which version.

I guess that's it for this quick report.

Thank you so much again for your work.

I hadn't noticed I had inverted them. It was because it's generated from a script usually, but the x at the end of 92x made things unusually complex and it didn't go as I wanted so I found it was faster to manually enter the links and here is the result...

I guess I'll spend a few minutes on this again then... !

edit : reverted to the old system, the links are relative (except to github of course), so you'll get https if you display the page in https, the problem is probably because I posted the link to the download page in http and not https, try this one instead, but it's just a stupid warning from firefox here (that's called too much security when it becomes that stupid) :

https://raine.1emulation.com/

Edited February 26, 2023 by Tux

[Tux]

It was simply because you keep on reseting your config file and you forgot to disable speed hacks.

Speed hacks are disabled by default now (for neogeo/neocd), so that I don't loose time again on something so stupid.

(and since the windows binary I use for quickly testing in linux doesn't really have a stable config, it also allowed speed hacks, and I didn't realize it was the problem here before quite a long time !).

By the way I found a small problem I didn't expect : there was no sound during the neogeo logo while the game is booting, it's related to a very old change which was not supposed to have this effect (related mainly to the 6502 !). I fixed it, hoping I didn't add more problems, but afaik it should be better. This one is quite technical, it's related to the way the scanline counter is read during a "normal" frame, that is a frame which doesn't use scanline interrupts.

Edited February 26, 2023 by Tux