New GenesisPlus: GPDCQ-01202007

[Christuserloeser]

The latest version does not. There were two Q releases the one in the title of this thread, and one released a week later. Only the first had sound problems (as far as has been reported to me).

Yeah, the second release works as it should and fixes sound problem in games that had no sound in BlackAura's build (everything Technosoft, Sega's Disney games, etc.). However, it also runs noticably slower if you use C68k. This fact makes your build the second choice next to BA's build for many games as there are quite a few that need C68K and don't work with the current implementation of FAME.

Btw, it's good to hear you're still working on GPDC

[Arron Munroe]

When I'm fixing a checksum do I simply click "new checksum" and can I know what games need it?

[Driimer]

Hi all, Driimer here, this is a nice community here and I'm having a blast with Gen+. I really LOVE this emu, but anyway- to those who hate that nasty glitch in Sonic 1, I found a work-around that might hold you guys and TechnoWolf down until this odd problem is fixed. (You can tell I love Sonic 1, lol )
At the title screen,(using the Dreamcast's layout here) press D pad up, D pad down, D pad left, D pad right, (you should hear a ring sound to confirm you did it right) now press and hold X while pressing start and you should see a level select screen. Now you can get around the boss glitch! (You might have to try this a few times before you get it right like I did. I found this out just randomly sifting through Gamefaqs.com in the case you're wondering how I figured it out.)
That's all I got right now.
Long live the DC! (Hugs Dreamcast)
EDIT: Oh, on a side note, watch out in the Labyrinth zone! There are a few glitches in the walls and occasionally the water that killed me just like the first boss did!

[Dreamcast4life]

I'd love to try quzars build of the emulator but the problem is that the first release I used the Snes rom lister and when I try to copy the Roms.txt and SNS games on the newest build it won't read the roms on the disc and Frankly I don't feel like downloading a trillion roms like before and burning it. I am sure his build is good though.

[Quzar]

I'd love to try quzars build of the emulator but the problem is that the first release I used the Snes rom lister and when I try to copy the Roms.txt and SNS games on the newest build it won't read the roms on the disc and Frankly I don't feel like downloading a trillion roms like before and burning it. I am sure his build is good though.

That's weird, nobody's reported problems with the whole romlist thing. When testing I use warmtoe's format. (interleaved with some entries in my own format).

[TechnoWolf]

I'd love to try quzars build of the emulator but the problem is that the first release I used the Snes rom lister and when I try to copy the Roms.txt and SNS games on the newest build it won't read the roms on the disc and Frankly I don't feel like downloading a trillion roms like before and burning it. I am sure his build is good though.

Hmmm......
Did you follow these steps concerning the roms.lst?? viewtopic.php?t=89720&highlight=gpwt
I've found it's usually 1 stupid little step you miss that can yield lot of coasters.
_____________________________________________________________

I found a work-around that might hold you guys and TechnoWolf down until this odd problem is fixed. (You can tell I love Sonic 1, lol )
At the title screen,(using the Dreamcast's layout here) press D pad up, D pad down, D pad left, D pad right, (you should hear a ring sound to confirm you did it right) now press and hold X while pressing start and you should see a level select screen. Now you can get around the boss glitch!

Thanks Driimer! I'll try it!

[Driimer]

I'm Glad someone replied, thx TechnoWolf.
It was very nice of Sonic Team to include a level select feature, considering they didn't bother with a save feature at all until Sonic 3.(I think they REALLY should've done it in Sonic 2,lol ) But anyways, here's what I bumped into of Sonic 1 so far.
Sonic 1 is somewhat littered with these glitches and all of the bosses so far, (including the Marble hill zone boss) cause me to die in the same manner as the first boss, and I tried using the invinsibility code but the same thing happens. Act 2 of the Labyrinth zone is almost unplayable, but spring hills zone and the star light zone seem ok so far.
I tried using the c68k core to play Sonic 1 using Black aura's build, and the glitch isn't there, but ALL of the tiles are messed up and it crashes after I finish act three of zone 1. only the FAME core seems to work.
Well... there are still some stuff to iron out here, but MUCH better than being stuck just playing the Green Hills zone . And the parts that do work play better than the port in Sonic Jam. I hope Quzar's build works better at least in the case of the glitches in some of the terrain.
That's all I got right now, later.

[Dreamcast4life]

I'd love to try quzars build of the emulator but the problem is that the first release I used the Snes rom lister and when I try to copy the Roms.txt and SNS games on the newest build it won't read the roms on the disc and Frankly I don't feel like downloading a trillion roms like before and burning it. I am sure his build is good though.

That's weird, nobody's reported problems with the whole romlist thing. When testing I use warmtoe's format. (interleaved with some entries in my own format).

I swear that I keep making coasters. See, I copy the Txt file from the previous version on yours and I also copy the roms they are labeled "SNS_001,SNS_002,ETC" then I burned it like the previous versions and the emu worked but the roms wouldn't appear. I'll try again later, luckly I just bought some CD-Rs because I need to back up stuff and try to get this to work.

to Technowolf : man, I SWEAR I did everything I was suppose to. Maybe I am just stupid....I will try to get it to work later since i just bought CD-Rs.I'll write back if I can get it to work.

[Neoblast]

any news on this one?

[TechnoWolf]

to Technowolf : man, I SWEAR I did everything I was suppose to. Maybe I am just stupid....I will try to get it to work later since i just bought CD-Rs.I'll write back if I can get it to work.

Old(er) topic, but did you ever get this sorted out DC4Life??

[Dreamcast4life]

Yeah, I got it up and running. I completed Phantasy star III and IV recently. Great games!

[nevets934]

Sweet. Im going to burn this as soon as i get some blanks.

[RMD]

So when is this project gonna be counted as abbandoned just like dreamsnes?

Has a single author finshed there emulator beside scherzo on NesterDC SE? Yet he did quit on his snes emulator though.

[DuffMan]

So when is this project gonna be counted as abbandoned just like dreamsnes?

Has a single author finshed there emulator beside scherzo on NesterDC SE? Yet he did quit on his snes emulator though.

He has stated that the Dreamcast isn't powerful enough to run a port of SNES9x. It can come very close, but doesn't have the last oomph to do the job. It would require major rewrite's. It would be easier to simply start from scratch and make one, which, he has considered, but who knows if he has time/desire to. But it would be awesome if he did

[Quzar]

So when is this project gonna be counted as abbandoned just like dreamsnes?

Has a single author finshed there emulator beside scherzo on NesterDC SE? Yet he did quit on his snes emulator though.

I've kept on working on it bit by bit, although I'm far from BA. I was extremely dissapointed by my attempts at it though because I was pressured to release a version by someone testing because they said it was great, and it turned out that they themselves renounced it for being broken.

After I released the fixed version, I never got good confirmation that it was in fact fixed so I don't trust my modifications anymore. Anyone want to do actual testing? Be my guest. It is named GPDCQ-012707 (January 27th 2007).

Hrm. Just noticed a bunch of little typos in the readme. Oh well.

[Christuserloeser]

That "someone" would be me. And yes, the sound problems from your beta are fixed as is the missing BGM with the Disney and Technosoft games (big thanks to eke-eke!). Allow me to explain why I still recommend BlackAura's build, and not yours:

One thing is that in your release, C68k performs noticeably slower than in BA's. That's a big problem as your build is using a beta version of FAME from 2006 that doesn't work half as good as the earlier one used in BA's build (Fox68k explained why here: viewtopic.php?p=938607#p938607). So, games that now do require C68k to run at all, do perform worse in your release as they did in BA's build; and those that already required C68k in BA's build now run slower. Plus some games don't run at all because neither C68k nor that beta of FAME seem to work with them.


C68k itself was already way too slow in comparision with FAME (I got a 20fps difference when testing in BA's build!), and on top of that, both cores also depend on CZ80 which likely is the reason for most of the incompatibility issues with many games in BA's build, as Neo4All, which is using FAME and FAZE only, does not have these problems and perfectly runs the entire NeoGeoCD library.


So all in all, your version isn't that bad but it doesn't fix the issues that BA's "official" release had, broke most of those games that needed FAME to work at all, and introduced a slight decrease in C68k's performance (no idea why, maybe because of something simple as slightly different compiler flags).

[RMD]

So when is this project gonna be counted as abbandoned just like dreamsnes?

Has a single author finshed there emulator beside scherzo on NesterDC SE? Yet he did quit on his snes emulator though.

I've kept on working on it bit by bit, although I'm far from BA. I was extremely dissapointed by my attempts at it though because I was pressured to release a version by someone testing because they said it was great, and it turned out that they themselves renounced it for being broken.

After I released the fixed version, I never got good confirmation that it was in fact fixed so I don't trust my modifications anymore. Anyone want to do actual testing? Be my guest. It is named GPDCQ-012707 (January 27th 2007).

Hrm. Just noticed a bunch of little typos in the readme. Oh well.

Well at least you put effort into it. Blackaura wasted tons of peoples time. I remember all those visuals and gui interfaces that lyrics put tons of time into just for Blackaura to waste all of his talent by doing absolutly nothing with them.

[Christuserloeser]

Well at least you put effort into it. Blackaura wasted tons of peoples time.

Yeah right.


- Ever thought about how much time and work BA put into this emulator (and still does) ? How does that compare to Quzar's or that of other people ?

Anyway, your posts are a pleasure to read! - I almost wish that the next version of GPDC would have some kind of a "RMD"-lockout mechanism, so everyone could burn it except for you.

[BlackAura]

Well at least you put effort into it. Blackaura wasted tons of peoples time.

I was going to respond to this, but... screw it. Not worth the effort.

C68k itself was already way too slow in comparision with FAME (I got a 20fps difference when testing in BA's build!),

That's surprising. On everything I've tested on, the C68k version is pretty much fast enough, frequently hitting 60FPS. Some games had some minor frameskipping in C68k mode, but that was typically no more than 1 in 5 frames or so.

What I always found even more surprising is that I've not been able to get FAME to work at all. I got pretty much the same problems you guys had with Quzar's build - virtually nothing works, and those games that do work are full of all kinds of strange bugs.

both cores also depend on CZ80 which likely is the reason for most of the incompatibility issues with many games in BA's build

Yep. Restoring MAME's CPU emulator fixes a lot of games, but causes an even bigger slowdown when sound is enabled.

was extremely dissapointed by my attempts at it though

That's pretty much how I've felt. About my own changes to it, that is. It's an absolute bastard to improve further - there's nothing that can really be sped up without rewriting huge chunks of the emulator again, it's too slow to spend extra CPU time improving video / audio quality, and it's so fiddly, brittle and difficult to debug that improving compatibility is nearly impossible. Same problem with trying to add features - even adding GUI stuff to it increases memory usage and causes random crashes as it exhausts the heap.

Not to mention that, as the codebase diverges further from the original, it becomes much more difficult to incorporate fixes from other branches (such as all the compatibility fixes from the GameCube version).

[Christuserloeser]

Well at least you put effort into it. Blackaura wasted tons of peoples time.

I was going to respond to this, but... screw it. Not worth the effort.

Yeah, I already regret I did.

C68k itself was already way too slow in comparision with FAME (I got a 20fps difference when testing in BA's build!),

That's surprising. On everything I've tested on, the C68k version is pretty much fast enough, frequently hitting 60FPS. Some games had some minor frameskipping in C68k mode, but that was typically no more than 1 in 5 frames or so.

I tested it with the software renderer in either WT's or your built. Whether it's been 10 or 20fps I can't remember, but the difference is very impressive.

What I always found even more surprising is that I've not been able to get FAME to work at all. I got pretty much the same problems you guys had with Quzar's build - virtually nothing works, and those games that do work are full of all kinds of strange bugs.

Fox mentioned it here: viewtopic.php?p=938607#p938607 - It's the way GPDC treats IRQs. I am sure that he can help with compiling if we ask him.

both cores also depend on CZ80 which likely is the reason for most of the incompatibility issues with many games in BA's build

Yep. Restoring MAME's CPU emulator fixes a lot of games, but causes an even bigger slowdown when sound is enabled.

Well, we got FAZE which we could use. It won't give us a boost as big as with FAME vs C68k but I am sure it would perform much better than MAMEZ80 and provide greatly improved compatibility compared to CZ80. I remember that Fox and Chui spend ages testing it.

It's an absolute bastard to improve further - there's nothing that can really be sped up without rewriting huge chunks of the emulator again.

I can imagine that.


- However, I would consider your release from 2006 as almost perfect. What's it missing is support for vertical scrolling in your hardware renderer and an update with the latest versions of FAME and FAZE.

Everything else would be purely cosmetical.


I don't know if you tried Neo4All RC3. It runs (extremely close to) full speed even if I overclock the 68k to 18Mhz and it's compatible to all NeoGeoCD games except for Super Sidekicks which is using raster effects. I really do think that's because it is using FAME and FAZE. Take them and combine them with your PVR hardware renderer and you got a perfect emulator.

Same problem with trying to add features - even adding GUI stuff to it increases memory usage and causes random crashes as it exhausts the heap.

A basic GUI based on Lyris artwork should be enough - I think people want a simple, good looking GUI that does its job.

An optional screenshot preview would be more than anyone could ask for, and it should probably use a similar system as SMSplusDC does, and not that of NesterDC SE.


The current GUI in GPDC by Warmtoe works great and I don't think I would replace it too soon.