CaSTaway/GP 13.2 released :)

[skeezix]

As of 13.2 and later, theres now two applications included in the GP distribution; the regular Castaway.fxe is the normal and fast one you've come to love; works great, but has crappy sampled-audio playback. The Castawa+.fxe version is much better sampled-audio playback, but at the cost of a tiny fraction of speed, and perhaps a touch less responsive regular ST ("YM") audio playback.

Which you chose is up to you; try them both. Castawa+.fxe should be better for games...

Let me know, I've not had time to test these at all Wink

See the website..
http://www.codejedi.com/shadowplan/gp32.html

jeff

I only tested against Xenon 2: Megablast opening demo and music; the sampled music at the beginnign is actually pretty good now

 

[Hooka]

Cool, good work. I'm glad to see that even though the emulator is pretty complete your still tweaking it to your liking

 

[Thyphoid]

CaSTaway is so great. I'll try the new sound-functionality this evening at the Temple of Thieves in Skara Brae.

 

[Tobriand]

Now the question is whether its possible to integrate both into the same .fxe with a selection for sound processing options in the menu...?

If so, that would be kind of cool. Its so nice to see this still going on towards sample-completeness (since sample sounds are one of the few areas that *all* the emus for GP pretty much fail on atm).

Alternatively, an "auto" mode that switched over to the sample method of processing whenever a sample was called for, and stuck with the YM-speedy version otherwise... Although I doubt that would be feasible.

 

[skeezix]

I've narrowed in on the source of my issues and its the infamous GP32 hardware audio bug

I could make the setting config-filable perhaps, or perhaps eliminate it entirely, now that I've narrowed into it exactly -- theres 4 or 5 lines that cause the GP32 hardware to do its little bug dance during sample playback for higher quality samples. If I can eliminate that, then I can eliminate the second build. (The second build is just a build with no optimization options on the compiler for the piece of code in question; if I leave it optimized, then it makes noise like mad). Furthermore, the + version also uses much larger audio buffers and such to better handle the quantity of audio data for samples.. that coudl be done at config time, or perhaps through menus.

So I'll see if I can work around the hardware bug (again.. remember the first few Castaway/GP versions that made noises like nuts? ,a nd if so, expect a 13.3 release

jeff

Hope everyone likes this.. it sounds *much* better when samples are going off

 

[skeezix]

Actually, to me, it really does seem like the regular version is the way to go; its about 5% faster or so I'd say, and it sounds better most of the time, since most ST audio is YM audio and not sample playback; the accurate audio is the way to go. But samples are just brutal on it.

You can't switch back and forth between the modes in real time, since many gamnes use really brief samples.. like an explosion say whern you shoot an enemy.. so you get YM audio all the time, with very brief samples. Thats handled best as is, I think. Goign to the lesser audio model makes the samples crisper in that case, but makes the YM audio sludgey the rest of the time.

I can likely combine the two into one, and make it a menu choice which model you use, if I can work around the hardware issue. But I imagine most will use the regular audio anyway..

jeff

 

[The Wub]

Llamatron rules with castaway+ @ 166!!

Thanks Jeff

now to check csb... "what we got here?"

 

[craigix]

Any chance of an auto frame skip yet? (set to PAL please) I've been waiting since you had that conversation with yourself on here and worked out how to do it

If it is infact in there I should probably update my version, but i've not seen anything mentioned about it since, its all I ask for

-Craig

www.gbax.com

 

[skeezix]

Any chance of an auto frame skip yet? (set to PAL please) I've been waiting since you had that conversation with yourself on here and worked out how to do it

If it is infact in there I should probably update my version, but i've not seen anything mentioned about it since, its all I ask for

-Craig

www.gbax.com

Theres many ways of doing it, but I never got to them yet I'm working out a way to do it in Palm OS (its a bigger issue there, since my T|T3 runs clocked up to 600MHz half the time, and things run freaky fast there , and I intend on adding it to both GP32 and Palm OS versions at the same time, so hopefully soonish, time permitting

jeff

 

[Tobriand]

Any chance of an auto frame skip yet? (set to PAL please) I've been waiting since you had that conversation with yourself on here and worked out how to do it

If it is infact in there I should probably update my version, but i've not seen anything mentioned about it since, its all I ask for

-Craig

www.gbax.com

Theres many ways of doing it, but I never got to them yet I'm working out a way to do it in Palm OS (its a bigger issue there, since my T|T3 runs clocked up to 600MHz half the time, and things run freaky fast there , and I intend on adding it to both GP32 and Palm OS versions at the same time, so hopefully soonish, time permitting

jeff

cool

 

[frolik]

Castaway is all I've been using lately and I notice the sound/music often changes speed. Not so bad when the game has bad sound- just turn it off and speed up the emulation, but would an auto-frameskip feature sort this out? Would be good...

Also I have been looking through the readme (manual?) and it says that you can use zipped disk images, but that it will not read the disk menu's to see whats on them.... is this something that's likely to be done?

One more! - A few of the RPG's I've tried (ishar, knightmare, and some others) load fine but the mouse pointer locks up but the keyboard works fine - is this a known prob?

Cheers, and thanks for all your hard work!

 

[papapopalung]

Llamatron rules with castaway+ @ 166!!

Thanks Jeff

now to check csb... "what we got here?"

/me thanks both jeffs

 

[scottm]

Okay firstly great emulator - playing it all the time

medium resolution much improved!

Now on to my minor gripes:

screen seems to be too dark (using a flu) gamma doesn't really help that much (lvl1 is okay)

A few Fusion games don't seem to be working (probably not related to new version) - vroom crashes before menu appears - anyone got a working copy of this?

Fusion lemmings loads okay but I can't move the cursor up/down with mouse,cursor or keys

Fusion way of the samurai crashes before the menu loads

Leaderboard - can't get the cursor to move with any of the controls

games tested okay are:
Buggy Boy, Bionic Commando, Bubble bobble, commando, civilization, dungeon master, elite, ferrari formula 1, footballer of the year, Giana Sisters, Ghouls & Ghosts, Goldenaxe, Head over heels, Microprose Soccer, New Zealand Story, Outrun, Paradroid 90, Prince of Persia, Pirates, Rick Dangerous, Return of the Jedi, Rocket Ranger, Run the Gauntlet, summer games, slap fight, sorcerer lord, speedball2, super sprint, stuntcar racer, super cars 1 & 2, switchblade, Times of lore, uridium, war in middle earth, world games, xenon 2

chatboard support would be excellent

Also slightly off topic but I've registered on Jeff's FTP site twice now (over a week ago) and I still haven't got an email to say my account is active. Anyone know if something is wrong with his register program or site?

keep up the good work skeezix - did I mention chatboard support would be cool (oh I did, okay I'll shut up then :rolleyes: )

 

[scottm]

Also slightly off topic but I've registered on Jeff's FTP site twice now

doh! of course I meant "Joe's"

 

[carlgeorge]

Scottm,

Try here for Vroom

ftp://ftp.net-partner.pl/atari/atari%2016...20from%200.22)/

One of the four work! But the sound is a bit iffy.

Regards
Carlos