Castaway/gp 15.3 Released

[skeezix]

Gotta keep the news moving

Release 15.3
------------
CHG: Improved audio.. better sample handling and better change from
YM to sample and back to YM .. Xenon 2 theme song is now much better
Better for Starglider theme, but still not perfect there. I think I need
to make a bass boost as well..

(You know, after listening carefully to Xenon 2's themesong several hundred times, I never need to hear it again.. at least for a few days. Hope it was worth it for everyone

Get it here:
http://www.codejedi.com/shadowplan/gp32.html

Direct link:
http://www.codejedi.com/castaway/binaries/castgp153.zip

jeff

 

[look]

woohoo.

will give it a whirl

 

[toxibunny]

heh.most GP32 projects don't even get to version 1.00... castaway's past version 15!

can't wait to try it... just need some batteries! :S

 

[look]

What disk and tos version are you using to get xenon II to work Jeff?

Sound seems clearer in some things but the same in others.

eeeeyet in barbarian(palace) is still messed up


edit

OK found working xenon II

Out of interest what clock speed is your gp32 set to?

I'm 144 max and the music is slow.

 

[TomVS]

Wow... Searching lots of time to try out this new update.... Thanks a lot....

And just because you asked for it some time ago : a quote

Eep

Assigning ST keys to chatboard keys?

Wow, thats something I never thought of. Surely is conceivable, with the current architecture being as halfway flexible as it is. (Fleible like a drunk person?

Keep reminding me and we'll see

jeff

​

 

[Steve-O]

anyone tried Jumping Jackson yet

 

[look]

anyone tried Jumping Jackson yet

​

yep its the same

 

[Antiriad]

Well Jeff its an improvement but not as good as 13.2's sampling.

I hate to keep banging on about this, but at the end of the day if the original sound core of Castaway isnt very good then no matter how good a coder you are you arent going to be able to make it perfect.

Why not ask Ron & Chui how they integrated Win'ST'on/Hatari's sound core into their port of Castaway for the Dreamcast - it cant be all ASM as otherwise it wouldnt run on the DC's SH4 CPU.

 

[skeezix]

*g* So far I'm resisting going into Hatari/WiSTon/Steem/etc for audio cores; I think this is one is pretty good.. I've got it down toa tight little small fast thing that seams pretty good for YM and not too bad for samples. (I'm running at 156MHz usually for this)

Once I get going withthe PS2 port (someone has done most of the work, but I want to lend a hand) I'll see whats up.. I think they've already started bringing in WinSTons sound code, though its really shoddy sounding so far (bzzzzzzzzzzz in background), so hopeuflly I can fix that up; if its a better sound core, maybe I'll use it.

So far, its not really the sound core itself thats a problem per se, its chosing the correct mode.. ie: I'm playing either YM or samples, which I think is correct (ST would struggle oding both..), but the trick is to know which to play. To make it sound better, I'm caching up the 'samples' themselves, so when the ST buffer gets a pile of samples in it, I cache 'em up and then as the GP32 needs them, I play them out after stretching to the right size. If I cache it up reeally bigt, then it sounds great, but then it lags everythign else out, and when quickly switching between YM and samples, it gets all lagged or weird; so I'm choosing modes trickily here.. caching up a large buffer, but trying to only use the buffer while it seams like the game wants to play samples. It may be lagging a bit, likely my fault due to the stretching to fit GP32's buffers and all that.

Still fiddling of course. Its a right pain, since to test you have to listen for a couple minutes, meaning coding is very very slow.

(Its ont so easy as "dropping in a sound core and recompiling" .. one has to tie it into the whole system, and then fiddle for 10 hours to get it halfway right..)

Getting there; I think 15.3 is a pretty solid sounder.. good YM and not bad samples; the earlier one had good samples, but totally crappy YM, so I'd say this is superior by far.

Try Automation 133 with Xenon 2; the loader is YM, and is a nice continuous wave .. you can see that it sounds good and clear in 15.3, but in 13.x with the sample improvement version it sounds like hell due to the lag by th large samples; 15.3 knows to cache up samples when they're playing, and due pure YM when it needs to, so iit sounds etter all the way through.

(I can turn the samples better in 15.3 too, but it still ikpacts things then, so its at a good point now where samples are pretty tight, but not interupting YM..)

jeff

 

[aguirrech]

thx squeezix for thge new release, so can you make an option for streech the screen? something like a streech mode. Erasing the lower black bar.

It wold be cool play xenon on full screen.

another request, can you improve compatibility to play sensible soccer?

Thx again.

 

[look]

I totally agree that the sound core in this version is the best yet.

If your going to do more on sampled sound I'd recommend testing with :-

Barbarian(palace) automation 029

IK+(international karate plus) automation 025

KickOff 2 Final whistle automation 472

Not because these are my favorite games....honest...but because they all suffer from what seems like different audio problems.

Barbarian - some samples are fine but some come out too fast. The speed of the game does not seem effected by sound.

IK+ - Seemed better in 15.1/2 the speed of the game wasnt as effected as it is now. Granted 15.3 is the clearest and beefiest I've heard the enter the dragon samples in castaway. Using ingame options f3 to ditch the music (I think its YM) and F6 to speed up the game makes things better.

KO2 FW - You got sound working in 15.1/2 sampled crowd sound and whistle. No ball sound yet. In this game its different.I think the sound struggles because the game works on maths rather than fancy graphics and the maths put alot of strain on the CPU.

Hope this is useful.

 

[carlgeorge]

Great! better sound. Thanks for the work on this emu skeezix.
Right off to try Vroom to see if the sound is fixed. Cheers again.

 

[mr.miyagi]

WEE GREAT

Now i can play no second price om my GP :lol:

 

[skeezix]

look -- did emu speed get impacted from 15.x to 15.3 (the better audio core)? I wouldn't have thought it would but its possible that during piles of samples it coudl hit performance, but generally when piles of samples going off its theme music so figured it woudlnt;' hurt. Hmm.

Perhaps I should have a config option..

1) Simple audio (like before; faster, crappy samples)
2) Better audio (like now; better samples)
3) <maybe somethign in future>

But only if things are seriously impacted by the new one.. if its like 1% slower "sometimes", its not worth it. (remembering I have severe time constraints so wasting time isn't good)

jeff

 

[Antiriad]

Jeff Im sorry if Ive been a pain over the sampled sound issue. Youre quite right that the YM audio sound was inferior in version 13.2 but I only keep bringing it up as its the only thing that lets Castaway GP down when I use it (which is often).

I appreciate youre a busy man and that swapping components of a program isnt childs play. Still, I hope working on the PS2 is a useful experience to you.

Anyway, some UI requests:

Is there any chance you could change the way R works so that it cycles between mouse joystick and cursor keys (in that order - like Pituka does) instead of cursor/mouse? Would be nice to be able to switch on joystick at one click. I appreciate that the current arrangement is for games like Dungeon Master and Captive but a lot more games are joystick orientated on the ST.

Equally in the disk menu would it be possible to see more of the disk description in game list mode?

Finally would it also be possible to be able to save the configuration in regards to frameskip, gamma, clockspeed etc

 

[look]

look -- did emu speed get impacted from 15.x to 15.3 (the better audio core)? I wouldn't have thought it would but its possible that during piles of samples it coudl hit performance, but generally when piles of samples going off its theme music so figured it woudlnt;' hurt. Hmm.

Perhaps I should have a config option..

1) Simple audio (like before; faster, crappy samples)
2) Better audio (like now; better samples)
3) <maybe somethign in future>

But only if things are seriously impacted by the new one.. if its like 1% slower "sometimes", its not worth it. (remembering I have severe time constraints so wasting time isn't good)

jeff

​

It was IK+ that felt slower. Its got alot of samples and its constant action.

The eeeyet head chop in barbarian slows too. Its the biggest animation sequence and the longest sample.

I'll have a mess around with both 15 version before/after the new sound core and let you know.

If you want to fire any quick test builds my way I'm more than happy to give em a whirl.

I'm positive that just testing with those 3 games I mentioned will help.

The savable configs Antiriad mentioned and the right paddle changing controller would save loads of messing about in menus.

 

[frolik]

Had a quick go with this last night, although I haven't got many games to test since my SMC card got corrupted a while ago...

Brightness is much better, no more bright grey backgrounds- but it's still not perfect, other emu's (sorry to compare) like the f_32 series and gpengine seem to make it more contrasting and the picture clearer. Also is it possible to have more levels or a slider to set it?

Found a prob where the brightness is broken in fast render mode.

Also is there anything you can do about the sound pich being affected when you change the clock speed?

Apart from that, I had a go on Terrys big adventure and it seemed to run perfectamundo! great work skeezix

 

[look]

OK been testing stuff

IK+ tested at 144Mhz - frameskip 1 - F3 music off - F6 Turbo

14.01
runs fastest in this version but there are some graphical glitches. Seems it cant render graphics quick enough.

Samples are flakey but they are at the right pitch.

15.02
Graphically perfect. Samples are flakey but at the right pitch.
If you try to play with the sound off it reboots the gp32 after a short while.

15.03
Graphically perfect. Samples are clearer but the pitch is slightly low.
same reboot problem as above.



In all versions alot of the samples seem cut short or compressed.

 

[argon0]

Hmmm... Hope this is the right place to ask....

Is there an up to date compatibility list for Castaway? Can't seem to find one, was wondering if Sensi Soccer is working? (Reading between the lines it doesn't seem to be).

Asked it over in another thread - but that thread's not been contributed to for over a year.

Argon0

 

[look]

Hmmm... Hope this is the right place to ask....

Is there an up to date compatibility list for Castaway? Can't seem to find one, was wondering if Sensi Soccer is working? (Reading between the lines it doesn't seem to be).

Asked it over in another thread - but that thread's not been contributed to for over a year.

Argon0

​

sensi's not running atm.

Not on castaway or DrMD anyway.