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GJTASer2018 wrote:
So will this core be in the next stable release of BizHawk? (2.3.3, 2.4, whatever number you guys decide on :P)
Yes, but it's available right now in the dev build if you want to try it out.
I've only one more known issue that i need to check before I can set this to released, hopefully by the end of this week I can track down the problem.
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Vectrex is more or less done at this point. Working on the MC6800 actually led me to discover another couple MC6809 bugs which I sorted out. Menus are now available, even though there are no real choices at the moment. Virtual Pad is up and running, but there is an error in virtual pad that i need to fix before it's useful.
I probably won't do overlays just due to the tedium. If anyone else is interested feel free to take a stab at it.
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Not sure anyone will be interested, but as an offshoot of my vectrex work I'm putting together an MC6800 cpu core. It can be used for such things as some Atari Arcade machines.
May or may not see any use, but since it's basically a stripped down version of the MC6809 that I already had to build for Vectrex, I figured I'd have it available while all the working knowledge was still fresh in my mind, and it would be faast to get going.
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I've made pretty good progress cleaning up the remaining Vectrex bugs. I've implemented interrupts now so Bedlam works, which is one of the only games that make extensive use of interrupts. This was a good exercise because it revealed several bugs in the MC6809 core. This core is heading towards a releasable state.
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Alright I got controller reading implemented, so now games are playable. Things seem to be working pretty well for the most part, so if anyone wants to try out the dev build and start bug hunting please do so. There are a couple bugs I'm aware of but surely more testers will uncover more.
Overall though things are progressing pretty nicely.
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I liked the Mario Kart Wii TAS, Celeste was a little long for me so I skipped around but had some good stuff in it. Commentary was also really good this time around.
dwangoAC wrote:
No meaningful progress has been made in years to resolve this ongoing problem and I don't anticipate that changing until some new force comes in to shake things up with a different perspective on how to represent event content that isn't strictly fastest-to-the-finish content. Thoughts?
You TASBot folks are clearly the spearhead of TAS development at this point, why not make a TASBot site to have a centralized place to showcase stuff? I think this might also help bring in more innovation from people who aren't really interested in making traditional TAS content to begin with.
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dekutony wrote:
The game Spike has some voice clips. Do those work correctly in this new core? I remember the vecx libretro core didn't play those voice clips correctly, or not at all, at least on BizHawk anyways.
Nope they don't play yet. That's one of the remaining bugs I'm aware of that needs to be sorted out.
EDIT:
So if you look at this schematic, you can clearly see there is an output line from the multiplexer directly into the sound output line:
https://console5.com/techwiki/images/9/9a/Vectrex---Block-Diagram.png
So when I implement that you get the voices in Spike, pretty simple. Fixed.
The text in Spike still isn't centered properly. It seems like there is a delay to the ramp enable under certain conditions. One such condition at least is when PB7 control is turned off from the timer. My speculation is that this leaves the pin undriven and thus takes time to assume a value once written too. This centers the VECTREX text on the BIOS screen, but it's not the complete picture since there are some other scenarios, like the one in spike, where it should also occur.
The vectrex developers seem to have known something was up, since in the BIOS there are places where the multiplexer is written to twice in succession for no other obvious reason.
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Vectrex is coming along. I fixed up numerous cpu and display bugs.
I also tried to add some brightness glow to make it look more authentic.
Only major thing left is analog stick controls. Maybe I'll try to add in overlays but not sure yet.
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image uploader
I'm finally starting to make decent progress on the vectrex core. Even though there are a couple other vectrex emulators to reference, it still took several hours of trace logs to figure out exactly what the system is trying to do to actually draw stuff.
It doesn't help that the system uses the 6522 controller which has a lot of little tricks in it. Of course at the same time I also had to sort out the bugs of the new CPU core, so that slowed things down as well.
Overall though it's getting there. I think the CPU core is pretty strong now, but the Vectrex doesn't seem to use the interrupt capabilities of the 6809 so that is untested.
Incidentally the 6809 is also used in some arcade machines like Simpsons, so it's theoretically possible to have a native version of that built as well, but I doubt that would ever happen.
Anyway there are still quite a few bugs to work out and a lot of cleanup to do. But, now that I can see things on the screen, I'm hoping things will move a bit quicker.
The next main things are sorting out remaining graphics bugs and getting control stick input working. maybe after that I can do some stuff to improve the display, but I'm not sure how much I can do without slowing things way way down.
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That's an interesting mystery, maybe the bsnes core within lsnes just needs to be updated. Pretty fascinating whatever the cause. Hopefully it can be resolved some day.
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Patashu wrote:
I think the most notable use of peripheral hotplugging - that allows for a novel strat, rather than just skipping text - is in Secret of Mana [SNES], where AI controlled characters have different behaviours (such as not activating triggers) to player controlled ones, so at one point you unplug one of your three players, manipulate the AI to walk past a guard, then plug the controller back in to skip a trigger.
Thats actually pretty cool. I hope it can be supported some day.
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The A7800 firmware listed is a fast load custom bios that I forgot to switch back to the official one. you can find it pretty easily by googling "atari 7800 homebrew bios". I fixed this issue in master.
Maybe we can get a hotfix patch that fixes this issue fir rekease, sorry!
Vectrex is work in progress so things are still being built.
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Have GBHawk selected as you GB core, then just load a daul GB xml.
FFMPEG seems to be working fine for me for avi though. I don't know how to get to VFW.
EDIT: regular avi reorder works fine for me (uncompressed frames)
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Yellow is basically a different game then red /blue. Just look at the visuals, yellow is made to take advantage of GBC capabilities. It's like how we have TASes for donkey kong country on different platforms. In this case it's less apparent since red / blue is allowed to be played on GBC hardware for console verification.
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GamersTavern wrote:
In Sonic Chaos for both the Game Gear and Master System, the SFX for Tails' flight doesn't play, whereas it does in other emulators such as Kega Fusion. This was tested on version 2.3.1 of BizHawk.
Sorry for not responding to this for so long. This is working in the Dev Build. Not sure exactly where it was fixed but it now sounds correct.
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What bugs need to be fixed feos? I can focus my attention on them if it means getting a release build out, we've accumulated tons of changes it seems about time.
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Lobsterzelda wrote:
Alyosha wrote:
I'll add it to the list for A2600. Most likely it just needs a database flag.
What is a database flag?
In your BizHawk folder you will find a folder called gamedb.
In that folder you will find various lists of games for different consoles.
In the A2600 file the entry for haunted house is this:
sha1:1476c869619075b551b20f2c7f95b11e0d16aec1 Haunted House (1981) (Atari) A26 m=4K;NTSC=true
A database flag would modify this entry to tell the emulator to do different things with the game while loading.
The two flags are
SP_RESET=true;
and
SP_FRAME=true;
So, just to be extra clear, the above entry for Haunted House would become either:
sha1:1476c869619075b551b20f2c7f95b11e0d16aec1 Haunted House (1981) (Atari) A26 SP_RESET=true;m=4K;NTSC=true
sha1:1476c869619075b551b20f2c7f95b11e0d16aec1 Haunted House (1981) (Atari) A26 SP_FRAME=true;m=4K;NTSC=true
If you want to test and see which one works give it a try.
If neither of those things work the mapper (m=4k) is probably wrong but that's much less likely.
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I made a brief TAS of the first game just to pass some time:
http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/55667676554537417
The game is incomplete compared to the second game so it probably isn't really worth submitting, but here it is anyway.
I did 3 loops because the record on speedrun.com did 3 loops, not sure what the justification is I didn't look into it. The second loop at least has a few extra enemies.
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Awesome! I like seeing this kind of technological progress, keep pushing the limits!
Hopefully we can get a new BizHawk release ready for the new submission.
I've made pretty good progress cleaning up the remaining Vectrex bugs. I've implemented interrupts now so Bedlam works, which is one of the only games that make extensive use of interrupts. This was a good exercise because it revealed several bugs in the MC6809 core. This core is heading towards a releasable state.
Vectrex is coming along. I fixed up numerous cpu and display bugs.
I also tried to add some brightness glow to make it look more authentic.
Only major thing left is analog stick controls. Maybe I'll try to add in overlays but not sure yet.
image uploader
I'm finally starting to make decent progress on the vectrex core. Even though there are a couple other vectrex emulators to reference, it still took several hours of trace logs to figure out exactly what the system is trying to do to actually draw stuff.
It doesn't help that the system uses the 6522 controller which has a lot of little tricks in it. Of course at the same time I also had to sort out the bugs of the new CPU core, so that slowed things down as well.
Overall though it's getting there. I think the CPU core is pretty strong now, but the Vectrex doesn't seem to use the interrupt capabilities of the 6809 so that is untested.
Incidentally the 6809 is also used in some arcade machines like Simpsons, so it's theoretically possible to have a native version of that built as well, but I doubt that would ever happen.
Anyway there are still quite a few bugs to work out and a lot of cleanup to do. But, now that I can see things on the screen, I'm hoping things will move a bit quicker.
The next main things are sorting out remaining graphics bugs and getting control stick input working. maybe after that I can do some stuff to improve the display, but I'm not sure how much I can do without slowing things way way down.