What do you mean by this? Currently the scale is ..., 25%, 50%, 100%, 200%, 400%, ... i.e. powers of 2. Do you mean there should be more choices? I don't particularly see the value of letting the user fine tune this.
Oh, sorry, I was a bit inattentive while examining that function. Well, I suppose it wouldn't hurt to have a bit finer scale (with 75% and 150%, for example), but it isn't necessary. What is necessary, though, is graphical indication of the current speed, be it constant or temporary. Also, I find input display pretty unreadable on light background. Some form of shading or outline for it would be appreciated.
Btw, is it just me, or the status bar is totally empty? Isn't it supposed to… umm, show something? :P
Also, thanks for taking my comments seriously. I appreciate it when a tool is easy to use, it helps concentrating on the task instead of the tool itself.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
is playback broken ? I launched wb3, tried to run OgreSlayer's testrun, but to no avail, just an ironic "movie playback started" message on the status bar. retro compatibility problem perhaps ?
I never sleep, 'cause sleep is the cousin of death - NAS
Yeah I couldn't play my movie. I made a quick test movie and it played back ok so I guess my old movie isn't compatible. I didn't do much so I can always start over if need be.
It looks like that particular movie has had its first 4 bytes corrupted (this doesn't seem to have happened to any other movies people have posted, so I don't know what is going on there). The problem occurred because the new version is more strict about the file format. If you hexedit 'MMV\0' onto the first 4 bytes of the file it should still play.
moozooh, most of your usability comments make sense. I'd like any more comments from anyone else regarding usability.
moozooh wrote:
Speedup/slowdown should change the speed in fixed increments instead, be it percent scale (10%, 25%, 33%, 50%, 66%, 75%, 100%, 150%, 200%, 300%, 400%, etc.), or fps scale (5, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 90, 120, 180, 240, etc.), or any other you can come up with
What do you mean by this? Currently the scale is ..., 25%, 50%, 100%, 200%, 400%, ... i.e. powers of 2. Do you mean there should be more choices? I don't particularly see the value of letting the user fine tune this.
Does this work with vista? It worked on my xp computer fine, but when i load rom, the music plays but the video is still blank.
On my computer with Windows XP, if I use Switch User, then when I log back in, Dega is blank until I load another ROM. Probably not related, but whatever.
the bar shows but the lists won't : impossible to select any option, it's ultra super slow.
Can you see if changing the "overlay" option or making the window smaller helps? Failing that, can you check if the problem occurs with the original dega 1.12 so I can see if it's something I've done? I admittedly don't have a great deal of access to windows and do most Windows testing using wine or a slow rdesktop session (I don't have any access to vista at all) so I don't know if I can help with those bugs.
Joined: 3/30/2004
Posts: 359
Location: Borlänge - Sweden
Nice work Pcc. :) Love it.
Got another feature that makes stuff easier, ROM history and is it possible for the emulator to remember what options you had last time you ran it, like Show frame counter and key pressings or if you can add Hotkey mappings for them so you can easily put them on and off by pressing a key. :)
Thanks :D
I now have the newest WIP ready.
I thought the feature described here was rather cute, so the main new feature here is a Python scripting interface. Currently you can frame advance and inspect/change RAM using the interface, but I also plan to add state loading/saving and movie record/playback capabilities.
The Python interface can either be used in standalone mode where the emulator is loaded as a Python module, or in embedded mode where scripts are loaded from within the emulator and have access to the current emulator state.
For the interface to work you will need Python 2.4 installed, else the Python menu option will be unavailable.
Example of how to use the interface:
from pydega import *
XPOS = 100 # we want to get to this X position
dega.input[0] = BTN_RIGHT # joypad right
while dega.ram[1234] < XPOS: # read ram address 1234 (note: dega.ram[0] corresponds to $C000)
dega.frame_advance()
dega.input[0] = 0 # joypad neutral
As an example Python script I have included a memory watcher/trainer tool. The user interface is a bit rough at the moment and includes the following caveats:
- you cannot perform most emulator actions while a script is running c.f. the memory watcher/trainer is open, instead you can use the buttons provided on the tool itself. You can however use the keyboard to control the game (make sure the dega window has focus) while the trainer is in "Run" mode
- no sound while the trainer is open
- game might run slowly while trainer is open because frameskip is disabled
Most of these stem from the fact that the script 'drives' the emulator while it is running. I'm thinking about ways around this problem.
Source code: http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~pcc03/dega/wip/dega-1.14-wip20070717.tar.gz
Win32 binary: http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~pcc03/dega/wip/dega-1.14-wip20070717-win32.zip
I have another WIP ready. It adds state saving/loading and movie record/playback capabilities to the Python interface, and adds hotkeys and ini-file entries for the OSD options, but perhaps more urgently, fixes a potential desync bug.
To use the state capabilities, the "magic" variable dega.state is exposed. Its value is the current state of the program expressed as a string (the string has the same format as dega's save state format). You can read from this variable to 'save' state, and write to it to 'load' state. You can also write this string to a file to produce a state file in the same form as dega's (under Windows, state files are gzipped, so you will need to use the Python gzip module when saving/loading states to/from files).
Movie capabilities are exposed via the dega.movie_start(movie, mode, reset) and dega.movie_stop() functions. For movie_start, movie is the movie filename, mode should be one of PLAYBACK_MODE or RECORD_MODE, and reset should be a boolean indicating whether to start recording from reset.
I found the desync bug while playing with the state and movie functionality in python. It can potentially write corrupted data to the movie file in some cases, thus causing a desync.
Source code: http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~pcc03/dega/wip/dega-1.14-wip20070718.tar.gz
Win32 binary: http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~pcc03/dega/wip/dega-1.14-wip20070718-win32.zip
I have another WIP ready. This is the 1st release candidate. I reworked the Python interface to allow scripts to run in a separate thread, so sound works while the memory viewer is open and you can perform all actions from the normal user interface. There are now two modes for running Python scripts: control (for writing bots, replaces the normal behaviour of the emulator) and viewer (for scripts that provide user interface, runs in separate thread). Also added fixed size scaling options (1x...4x) instead of the standard 3/4 of the screen.
What are people using for key assignments? I'd like to know so I can provide sensible defaults for the keys that I haven't assigned a mapping for. These will go into the final version (1.14).
Also has anyone played with the python interface so far?
As always please let me know of any bugs.
Source code: http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~pcc03/dega/wip/dega-1.14-wip20070723.tar.gz
Win32 binary: http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~pcc03/dega/wip/dega-1.14-wip20070723-win32.zip
Joined: 3/30/2004
Posts: 359
Location: Borlänge - Sweden
pcc wrote:
What are people using for key assignments? I'd like to know so I can provide sensible defaults for the keys that I haven't assigned a mapping for. These will go into the final version (1.14).
Also has anyone played with the python interface so far?
Hi there.
Man, you work fast with this.. and I like it.
Thanks for fixing the size, bugged me alittle tbh.
Havnt tested the Python yet tho. But I can give you my default key sett-up that I have on the emulators I use.
A = A
B= S
START = Enter
Frame adv: Space
State save: W
State load: E
Fast forward: §
Joined: 5/1/2004
Posts: 4096
Location: Rio, Brazil
I would recommend frame advance to be on a standard key that can be held with multiple other buttons at the same time without making most people's keyboards go crazy, like shift, ctrl or alt.
Joined: 3/30/2004
Posts: 359
Location: Borlänge - Sweden
pcc wrote:
Frenom wrote:
This happens quite often to me.
When you record a movie and try to load another movie the whole emulator shutdown/crash/quits. =/
I can't reproduce this myself. Can you give a list of steps which always crashes the emulator?
Sure, no problem.
You load a rom(lets say Psycho Fox) and then playback a movie. Now.. go to playback again and try to open the same movie or another movie. I know I cant ;)
I get to the load movie window and then it dies.
Sure, no problem.
You load a rom(lets say Psycho Fox) and then playback a movie. Now.. go to playback again and try to open the same movie or another movie. I know I cant ;)
I get to the load movie window and then it dies.
Sorry, still can't reproduce, even with the same ROM and movie. What OS are you running? Can anyone else reproduce the crash?
pcc, if it's not too much trouble, do you think you could add AVI dumping for the windows version? Whenever you have time, it would be much appreciated.
pcc, if it's not too much trouble, do you think you could add AVI dumping for the windows version? Whenever you have time, it would be much appreciated.
Whereas AVI dumping is relatively simple on *nix, AVI creation on Windows seems to be an overengineered mess. However you can use software like fraps to create rough test AVI files. If anyone can help with the windows side of things they are free to send in patches.
Since no bugs have been reported to me (apart from frenom's crash bug which I can't reproduce myself) I'm going to go ahead and make the release soon. If anyone spots any more bugs please let me know.
when i use scale 2x it always returns back to 1x later. is it a bug?
and the user interface disappears when a rom is loaded. have to push esc every time, it seems kind of unnecessary.
The revert-to-1x bug was rather intermittent. I made some changes which I think have fixed it, but I'm not sure. There's now also a menu option which lets you toggle whether the menubar auto-hides when you load a ROM.
I have released version 1.14 with these changes. Get it from the website at http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~pcc03/dega/
yup, sometimes it still returns to 1x, but it's much better now.
another weird thing is when you pause, it sometimes jumps a few frames forward, it doesn't pause exactly where you paused.
and there doesn't seem to be any limit on how much you can slow down or speed up, so if you slow down too many times, it goes back to normal speed and if you then try to speed up, it slows down. the reverse thing happens if you speed up too many times. but i don't think this bug matters anything.
The information submitted by pcc for review looks all right to me. I don't currently see a reason why movies made with this emulator could not be permitted. Does anyone else? If not, then the Rules can be updated and the site code to handle the movies for this system.
