Went through all my other posts and re-tested everything.
Here are the issues that still persist.
EDIT -SEE SECOND POST IF YOU SAW WHAT I PUT HERE, I WAS WRONG-
-Jeopardy Teen Tournament has weird behavior where the music pauses when the screen draws an update in the intro. Gambatte handles it the same as real hardware whereas it manifests as stutters in GBHawk
New issues:
There's one frame of sprite corruption in HAL Wrestling when you start a match (this is different than the previous graphics corruption with this game I mentioned)
Gambatte and Sameboy don't experience this.
GBHawk: https://streamable.com/wviji
Gambatte: https://streamable.com/nir2t
Sameboy: https://streamable.com/ml6w2
There's a few frames of the title screen being drawn in Kirby's Dreamland before it's supposed to be drawn. It's also slightly corrupted during this time. https://streamable.com/4rmxp
Lot's of new fixes just committed.
Fixed: Malibu Beach Volleyball, Castle Quest, Double Dragon 3, F1 pole poisition.
Working on: Goal!, Roger Rabbit, The Final Fantasy Legend
As usual, games are using all kinds of different tricks to do things, so I'm getting a lot of good test cases out of all of this.
Those two commits fixed all of the games in that list that didn't boot. I'll go through the rest of the romset and get back with results on boot status.
Edit:
Things that are most likely just PPU timing:
-Super Hunchback's title screen is glitchy
Gambatte: https://streamable.com/joqtk
GBHawk: https://streamable.com/65hjr
-The Takara logo in World Heroes 2 Jet is buggy: https://streamable.com/n5i78
The following games have high pitched squeals
-Marble Madness
-Paperboy II
-Pit Fighter
-The Ren & Stimpy Show - Space Cadet Adventures
-The Simpsons - Bart vs. the Juggernauts
The following games don't boot
-Samurai Shodown (01h ROM+MBC1):
-X (USA) (Proto) MD5:9BFA774D2474D63FDACDBE951573375A (03h ROM+MBC1+RAM+BATTERY). The Japanese version boots fine. The USA Prototype displays the Nintendo logo, some corrupted text, then goes to a white screen with some sustained audio output.
That's it for the GB_US-EU_Romset of the No-Intro v1.0 GB Romset. I'll hit the Japanese games later
Zerd No Densetsu (JP) (03h ROM+MBC1+RAM+BATTERY) crashes while the title screen draws: https://streamable.com/qjt02
I'm assuming you don't want any unlicensed stuff for now, right?
-In Wario Blast featuring Bomberman! I'm unable to move right. I can move right in other games and it works fine in Gambatte
-Malibu Beach Vollyball doesn't boot (01h ROM+MBC1)
-In the intro sequence to Link's Awakening, when the logo appears there's a flickering around the edges (doesn't exist in Gambatte) https://streamable.com/vjml3
I committed another round of updates that fixes Wario Blast as well as Bomberman and mortal kombat.
Malibu Beach Volleyball looks interesting, thanks for pointing that out, might provide a hint for Roger Rabbit as well.
Link's awakening is probably a PPU timing bug that will have to wait all the basics are done and I can focus on the minute details.
Sounds good.
I originally edited this into the other post but for clarity's sake, here's it as its own post (as you responded to the original post before the edit was posted)
These were all on commit 63f8fc0d9011d48681bf81fda696013304b9cb8f (the one before that round of fixes)
The following games don't boot (ROM+MBC1)
-Malibu Beach Volleyball
-The Adventures of Star Saver
-Amazing Penguin
-Boomer's Adventure in ASMIK World
-Castle Quest
-Double Dragon 3 - The Arcade Game
-F1 Pole Position
-F-15 Strike Eagle II (Unknown) (Proto). This one is ROM+MBC1 but it's also a prototype. The full release of the game boots fine. MD5:83D20A9C3F88F9FAA27C076CEFD38BC1
-Fish Dude
-Heavyweight Championship Boxing
-In Your Face
-Jimmy Connors Tennis
-King of Fighters, The - Heat of Battle
-The Lawnmower Man
-Lethal Weapon (goes to a black screen compared to a solid white screen like most have)
This is when I got bored. This is the results of every game officially released in the US/EU through the letter L. I'll do the M-Z at some point after these boot (as they probably share similar issues)
-Goal! boots but only plays audio. No video is output. If you press start a few times you get some corrupted video output. (01h ROM+MBC1)
-The Takara logo in the intro to Battle Arena Toshiden glitches out
-The main menu for The Final Fantasy Legend is completely corrupted (06h ROM+MBC2+BATTERY) https://narry.land/cWAJ8y.png (MBC2 unimplemented?)
-The main menu for Final Fantasy Legend II is completely corrupted (03h ROM+MBC1+RAM+BATTERY) https://narry.land/tZsr6a.png
-The effect on the logo of Gremlins 2 - The New Batch doesn't work properly.
GBHawk: https://streamable.com/fkk2k
Gambatte: https://streamable.com/ftjcz
For some reasons, Pokemon Green actually runs pretty well.
Japanese versions use MBC1+RAM+BATTERY which appears to be implemented already.
Edit: Here's some more issues (all of these were on commit 63F8FC0 as I'm seeing you literally just made another commit which fixed a few of these)
-In Wario Blast featuring Bomberman! I'm unable to move right. I can move right in other games and it works fine in Gambatte
-In the intro sequence to Link's Awakening, when the logo appears there's a flickering around the edges (doesn't exist in Gambatte) https://streamable.com/vjml3
The following games don't boot (All of them are: 01 ROM+MBC1):
-Malibu Beach Volleyball
I'm seeing that one of your commits included a fix for the issue Barbie was having (unless I misread the comment) but it seems to still have the squealing.
Thanks for the continued testing everyone. I see that Samus is missing in Metroid 2, but I don't see the bugs fsvgm777 describes in mario Land 2. Is that in level 1-1 or some other level?
It's in the second level of Tree Zone, and the third left level (with the ants) in Tree Zone where I noticed the other bugs.
Going further in Mario Land 2: Only the first note of the coin-collecting and bell-ringing sound effects (possibly also the 1-up sound effect) plays. Piranha Plants and Venus Fire Traps are visible in their pipes and become invisible when they come out of their pipes. Mario remains visible inside the pipes.
I noticed hard transitions to white (like in Belmont's Revenge) are completely messed up (doesn't transition to white at all).
I've also noticed that you see the level "build up" (as in you see some kind of building transition) in Castlevania: The Adventure (original release), whereas in Gambatte, BGB and on console, the transition doesn't occur (so it's a hard transition from white). I can get a video up if I'm not clear enough. This is potentially related to the above issue I mentioned.
smellyfeetyouhave: Gambatte actually passed all audio tests and had a glaring audio issue in Belmont's Revenge (which eventually got patched).
But...yeah, pretty good work so far.
Has anyone verified the test ROMs are correct or were the issues just related to things not being tested in the test ROMs?
Also I've seen stuff similar to that "build-up" effect in a few other games I've tested (you can see it manifesting in various ways in my post on the last page) so it seems like it's probably one specific issue. Same with that one-note issue manifesting in a few other places.
Fixed the controllers, sloppy mistake by me there.
Fixed audio desync in kwirk.
Removed all BIOS code from Gambatte entirely, so I'm really hoping that fixes any random crashes.
I'll try and track down those audio bugs next (and adjust the volume, which is really just multplying the output by a larger number.)
Not sure about SGB support, it would be really nice, but the parts that need to use snes hardware would be tricky.
EDIT: Audio fixed, I think, I increased the volume too.
EDIT2: Actually I noticed the coin sound in mario land 2 is way off, I'll try to fix that next.
You said it was passing all the test roms, right? I'm surprised it was able to pass the test roms with so many audio errors in place
Edit: Going through my list from before and re-checking. I know some of these haven't been fixed but I'm going to re-list them for clarity sake.
I'm still shotgunning more games and checking for extremely obvious issues that manifest within the first minute or two. I'll test more in-depth against games I know better later on.
New issues I've found:
-If emulation is paused for any reason, the audio gets messed up slightly at unpause (then fixes itself). https://streamable.com/bst5h
-Mario's jump noise is completely wrong in Super Mario Land. https://streamable.com/m0rxu
-Jeopardy Teen Tournament has weird behavior where the music pauses when the screen draws an update in the intro. Gambatte handles it the same as real hardware whereas it manifests as crackles in GBHawk
-The end of the Green Greens intro in Kirby's Dreamland speeds up dramatically when the screen fade occurs. https://streamable.com/zc0jh
-Metroid II has some graphical issues (garbage showing during the screen transition and Samus just not appearing until I walk past a certain point): https://streamable.com/qzyfu
-The vibrato effect seems to sound off in general. I can't figure out how exactly to describe it but once you hear it you'll hear it. One of the best examples I could find was Star Wars
Gambatte: https://streamable.com/1nz7a
GBHawk: https://streamable.com/bt993
Outstanding issues:
-Barbie Game Girl still has horrible audio squealing. https://streamable.com/zv0qm
-The Pokemon games don't boot (mapper?)
-Who Framed Roger Rabbit has a myriad of issues (mapper?). https://streamable.com/391ie
-HAL Wrestling gives a screen full of random garbage during its transition screens (doesn't do this on Gambatte). https://streamable.com/d163r
Controls seem to be messed up in all games. I guess it's a controller initialization thing?
Metroid 2 has glitchy graphics.
BTW, are there any chances for a new SGB core based on GBhawk in the future?
Can also confirm that the update which added the controller initialization broke the controls all together (Up is Right, A is Start, etc).
Also the volume levels output by GBHawk are basically the quietest of any core. Could the output volume be bumped up to match the other cores a bit better? I know there's no standard volume (in my opinion there really needs to be) but getting it closer to the other cores would at least help with the issue.
Dang still crashes? That's annoying.
I think I'll have to burn down all my Gambatte changes (they aren't relevent at this point anyway.)
That will teach me to try to modify code that I only vaguely understand.
This crash was only occurring after I swapped from GBHawk and reloaded the core (it was happening during my testing) but I can't prove it was linked to the core swap as it was somewhat random. I couldn't get it to happen standalone and I couldn't get it to happen reliably.
Also does ANYONE understand the Gambatte code?
In the latest dev builds, if you use GBHawk, swap to Gambatte, then reboot the core a few times, Bizhawk will occasionally crash (no visible exception thrown).
I haven't found reliable steps to reproduce the crash, but it's happened more than once. If I can get more reliable steps, I'll post them here.
Thanks for the testing. Yeah any reports are helpful, don't assume I know anything! 8D
I fixed the BIOS and controller initialization issues.
Hmmm, I'll have to look into those audio issues, the test ROM tested everything except the volume envelope pretty thoroughly, so maybe I messed up something there.
Sounds good. I also edited that post and added a few more issues. Once you fix those audio issues, I'll go looking again. I don't want to plague you with things related to the same core audio issues as it meant a bunch of extra testing.
Also is there any easy way to tell with GB if it's just an unimplemented mapper issue? I don't know much about the Gameboy itself and a quick google search wasn't revealing much info on various Gameboy mappers
There's no way built in to balance the volume so different cores output at around the same volume, right? There's a massive difference in volume levels between some cores (gambatte is super loud, bsnes is fairly quiet, GBHawk is really quiet, etc) which can get quite irritating when streaming or recording using external software as you have to re-balance the audio around the core (and if you don't do it ahead of time, you can blow your ears out from the volume differences).
Things I've found so far (this post is going to be edited as I go along). I'm not sure how much you already know about so I'm just going to post everything I run into. I'm just going to be picking random games and looking for obvious issues.
-You may already know this one, but at the moment you're not opening the BIOS dialog if the bios file is missing (it says the bios couldn't be found but it doesn't give the normal prompt to set the bios). The core attempts to run without the bios and crashes as you'd expect.
-There's also no default controller mapping but I'm assuming you also know that one as well. Just posting it in-case you manually set your controls and forgot about the auto-config.
-Having some weird issues with the sound in Kirby's Dream Land. Just load the game and play the Green Greens intro sequence. You should hear the issue right away. There's an extra note thrown in there, a note isn't cut-off, and the timing at the end gets funky and it speeds up a bunch.
Gambatte: https://streamable.com/9rubp
GBHawk: https://streamable.com/k60pe
BSnes SGB: https://streamable.com/rbtze
Sameboy SGB (this is pitched up a semitone for some reason): https://streamable.com/gew79
I don't have any hardware on-hand to test against but it's clear it's incorrect.
-Tetris has a note on the intro text that shouldn't be there. https://streamable.com/trdwz
-Super Mario Land 2 has the same issue (as well as some other audio issues). https://streamable.com/mbyuj
-Many other games have that same issue (seems like one of the channels just isn't properly getting cut off if nothing else plays in that channel?)
-Barbie Game Girl has some horrible audio squeals that don't exist in other cores. https://streamable.com/ps2hk
-The Pokemon games don't boot (mapper?)
-Who Framed Roger Rabbit has a myriad of issues (mapper?). https://streamable.com/391ie
-HAL Wrestling gives a screen full of random garbage during its transition screens (doesn't do this on Gambatte). https://streamable.com/d163r
-Rewinding in Kwirk's menu breaks the audio https://streamable.com/w8s9k
-The same issue applies to Tom & Jerry
Is this about recording?
A 60fps TAS of 30 minutes has 108,000 frames, and at an uncapped framerate of 300fps it would still take only 6 minutes to record a video dump, which seems fast enough for me.
Nah. While I do have an interest in both speedrunning and TASing, my main usage of Bizhawk is through my work on and my usage of the Real Time Corrupter mod. Recently I've been working on a little project to build blacklists which involves iterating through every single possible one-byte corruption for a game and checking for a crash.
I've been building up lists of single address/value combos that guarantee a crash for specific games (primarily the most popular games on the simpler systems) so I can then play around with creating a blacklist system.
Once it reached a more mature state, I was interested in running GBHawk through on a few games I've already run Gambatte through as I wanted to see how it would handle them compared to each Gambatte (NESHawk and QuickNES will sometimes handle the same corruption in VERY different ways).
The limiting factor in my current approach (which is just iterate through every possible single-byte corruption possible within the main ram, so 2088960 iterations per run) is the speed of emulation as I have to let the game progress a few frames to detect if a crash occurs. I also have to run it with multiple states to test if it's a guaranteed crash or dependent on what else is loaded into memory. I was hoping GBHawk would be relatively fast so I could do a larger comparison than I was able to with NESHawk vs QuickNES without waiting forever.
What kind of performance can we expect at an unlocked framerate compared to Gambatte?
Currently I can get about 300 fps for GBHawk and 1700 fps for Gambatte. Once audio is added I would expect it to be closer to 270 fps.
On the title screen for Kirby's Dream Land, I get around 370 in GBHawk and around 3000 from Gambatte. I know scaling isn't perfect, but I doing the math, that's around 5.6x faster for you and and 8.1x faster for me. That's a pretty significant difference in scaling.
Also, would you be able to expose more memory domains from GBHawk at some point later on? I know my use case is pretty specific but it'd suck to lose all the domains that Gambatte offers over GBHawk (especially the ROM domain as File on Disk doesn't work for my usage).
I probably should have phrased that question as "are there any plans to make it more user friendly" rather than "will it be made more user friendly".
Anyways, thanks for the response.
I had looked into it a bit but setting it up required setting up midipix which appears to be an obscure cross-compiler. You then needed to merge in Natt's fork of mmglue and build the entire compiler.
I found a bit of info on setting it up but it was way more effort than it was worth to submit minor bugfixes.
Hmmm, that sounds bad. I'm surprised this wasn't reported earlier. I'll try to sort it out, or maybe I'll just buckle down on GBHawk so we can deprecate Gambatte, at this point it's quite outdated anyway. Either way I'll put this on the issue tracker since it seems pretty serious.
While the Bios is supposed to be enabled for TASing based on the note, deterministic mode doesn't force the setting on like it does with some other cores.
For example, mGBA. Lets you use the core without the bios but deterministic mode requires the bios.
The fact that the setting was added relatively recently combined with the fact that the setting isn't forced on in deterministic mode is probably why it slipped by.
I actually caught the second version a few weeks ago, but I assumed it was because I was trying to load a savestate made with a mismatching setting so I didn't want to waste your time with a bug report.
I only just caught the fact that a crash can occur with the settings matching when getting the exact steps for the mismatching setting crash.
Will the environment for building Waterbox cores ever be changed to something a bit more user-friendly to configure?
I've run into few minor quirks with Waterbox cores and I'm unable to do much outside of providing reproduction steps as setting up a Waterbox build environment required obtaining and properly configuring an obscure cross-compiler with minimal documentation that you can only get access to by joining an IRC and asking.
I don't have any plans on developing cores, but it'd be nice to be able to submit minor fixes (I'm assuming Natt would still want to build the binary for security and integrity reasons, but it could at least allow for others to submit minor bugfixes)
I encountered a crash bug when rebooting core or closing emulator when running Gameboy games.
It looks like the crash happens when going from 'enable BIOS = true' to 'enable BIOS = false'. I'll look into it.
EDIT: It looks like the core is not able to properly dispose of the state pointer for some reason. I don't know why yet.
EDIT2: I don't know, now it just seems to happen randomly. I rebuilt the emulator several times, sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn't. What does this imply? Compiler bug? Memory management issue?
This might be able to get you some leads.
Here are two ways to guarantee a crash with that bios setting.
Both of these crashes have been tested across five versions. All tests were done with Kirby's Dreamland and a 100% valid bios file.
2.0 stock (first release with the bios setting)
2.20 stock
2.21 stock
The latest dev build as of writing
My current build of the RTC mod (based on 2.20 with some changes merged in, built with VS 2017. Gamebatte is based on the 2.20 release. We didn't merge in any of the gameboy changes)
One 100% reliable way to trigger a crash is:
>Enable bios in Gamebatte
>Load a game and create a savestate (bios enabled)
>Quit Bizhawk
>Restart Bizhawk
>Load the game up again
>Load the state
This should result in a crash. The settings all match so it's not a setting mis-match.
Another 100% reliable way is:
>Load the game with bios disabled
>Savestate
>Enable bios
>Reboot core
>Load the state
This one has a setting mis-match (loading a non-bios savestate with the bios setting enabled) so it may be a different crash.
Maybe one of those crashes will be able to get you a lead.
Yeah there seems to be issues with most of the plugins on Windows 7.
I don't have a Windows 7 machine so I can't test it on real hardware, but I was able to verify it in a VMWare VM when I was talking to others with the issue. (Virtualbox was crashing. I'm assuming that was just because Virtualbox's 3D acceleration is pretty shoddy)
So I was wondering what was up with this branch
https://github.com/TASVideos/BizHawk/tree/domainedmemoryhooks
The impression I'm getting is that the goal was to refactor the functionality of memory domains into "scopes" which can contain more than just memory? Just wondering what the long term plan behind this is.
He tested that build posted here and had no issues.
I also had him go back and test that old build of the mod that caused problems and he said it also no longer has issues.
He said he hasn't touched his hardware configuration at all so that's not a super helpful situation.
I can dig up a download for that old build if you want for Sonia to test and see if the issue occurs.
Here are the two states (latest commit as of writing this)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/bxweddmcymmke90/Tree%20Zone%202.State?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ie8jwoqyhk74swl/Ants.State?dl=0
