Drmd V5 Beta 2 Released

[Reesy]

Hi,

Thanks for everyones help so far. I resolved a few of the bugs found so far.

Options now stored in current working directory
Fixed rom names wrapping
Fixed unzipped roms crashing file scan
44100Hz audio removed for MD, appears to be broken
MD redefine controls screen now working
SMS full screen mode not implemented (yet)
[CUT]
Download http://reesy.gp32x.de/DrMDv5b2.zip

You may have noted that the SMS only achieves full speed at 100Mhz, I just wanted to point out that this is basically the same code that runs on the GP32 version which can achieve full speed at 66Mhz. Now you can clearly see the impact of running this emulator under Linux.

Just to clarify, this version has the same Genesis emulation as previous versions, work is under way to rewrite the rendering routines which WILL improve speed. 8bit versions and 16bit versions will be available. Hopefully the 16bit version will be as fast as the current 8bit mode...but as usual I won't know for sure until I write the code

If you find any more bugs please leave me a note here. Please try to give as much detail as possible when reporting a problem as it helps me solve it soo much quicker. If any roms are broken that work on the GP32 versions of code please let me know and I'll try to find out why they are broken.

Thanks again for your help
Reesy[/CUT]

 

[daclassicgamingmaster]

wow, seems good. Ill post back some thoughts once i download this

Im going to donate some more $ when I get it. Im about to buy a Passme, M3 perfect etc for my DS, but i've donated before so you know im good for it

Thanks for all the hard work!!

 

[Reesy]

Im going to donate some more $ when I get it. Im about to buy a Passme, M3 perfect etc for my DS, but i've donated before so you know im good for it

I just got myself a M3 perfect (Mini-SD version), its a bloody nice peice of kit. Just perfect for a little warez whore like me.

 

[lancelott]

Does the overclocking depend on anything in particular to work? Because I seem to be getting 51fps in Alien Soldier with both 200MHz and 250MHz. I tried reloading the game too.

 

[Vimacs]

maybe you are useing the pal version of the game?
no idear if there's a frame limiter through, so this could be bs.

 

[lancelott]

maybe you are useing the pal version of the game?
no idear if there's a frame limiter through, so this could be bs.

Oh yeah, the game is PAL only. So is that it?

 

[Reesy]

Does the overclocking depend on anything in particular to work? Because I seem to be getting 51fps in Alien Soldier with both 200MHz and 250MHz. I tried reloading the game too.

It should just work, just remember that when you reload a rom it will reload the default menu options. You should just be able to load a rom, change the cpu speed and then return to the game to enjoy the increased speed.

Maybe the cpu speed changing code is broken, its been shameless ripped from the latest version of the LCD tweaker program so should be okay. What happens when you select a higher speed? I can't personally overclock that far so the higher speeds are untested.

EDIT: never mind Vimacs the know it all has come up with an answer

 

[lancelott]

Reesy, do you think you could add a repeat for scrolling in the menu? It's not as nice having to tap for each movement.

EDIT: Noticed you had it, but it seems the delay is a bit too much IMO. Would be nicer if it did it sooner.

 

[PokeParadox]

Yeah it could be. It dpends how Reesy is doing his FPS display.
But PAL only updates the screen 50 times each second.

 

[Vimacs]

jep, pal is fullspeed at 50fps (but you get a higher res for that!)
edit: reesy, are you mad at me? :-/

 

[Reesy]

Reesy, do you think you could add a repeat for scrolling in the menu? It's not as nice having to tap for each movement.

Should be there already...yep it works for me but your the second person to question this so maybe I'm not as impatient as everyone else. I'll do some tweaking and get it to repeat quicker.

@PokeParadox: If the game is PAL then it will run at 50-52 frames per second on DrMD. If a game is already running at full speed then overclocking the emulator is not going to make it go any faster.

 

[PokeParadox]

Yes I am aware of that. I was just stating that the FPS could depend on how you calculate it.

Anyway, tested TV-out and it works if you can get to loading a rom, but garbled. (I expected this since you didn't mention any changes in this area).

Overclocking is working fine for me and the settings seem to be saving ok too.

 

[lancelott]

I have an issue that as far as I know I've never been able to avoid (had it happen in 4.3).

Sometimes, DrMD will output "Error: not zip file" and freeze, so that I have to do a hard shutdown, when loading a zipfile. This happens some of the time, and it corrected by loading it again. I know my files are good, so I don't know why it would say that. Makes me think it is an SD card error, but I usually don't have read problems as far as I have experienced.

 

[Reesy]

Yes I am aware of that. I was just stating that the FPS could depend on how you calculate it.

Anyway, tested TV-out and it works if you can get to loading a rom, but garbled. (I expected this since you didn't mention any changes in this area).

Overclocking is working fine for me and the settings seem to be saving ok too.

Not sure whats going on with TV out. Before it used to work fine in the menus but get garbled in game. Now its crap on the menus but good in-game. I'll have to have a look though to see what I've changed.

Reesy.

I have an issue that as far as I know I've never been able to avoid (had it happen in 4.3).

Sometimes, DrMD will output "Error: not zip file" and freeze, so that I have to do a hard shutdown, when loading a zipfile. This happens some of the time, and it corrected by loading it again. I know my files are good, so I don't know why it would say that. Makes me think it is an SD card error, but I usually don't have read problems as far as I have experienced.

Very strange, I'll change the code to not stop when an error is encounter with a zip file. I've got some lazy code in there at the moment which just kills the program dead because at the time I couldn't be asked to add code to redirect the user back to the rom menu. Once the code has been changed you should be able to test to see if it will work again without having to restart the machine. Intermittent problems are a pain to fix

 

[daclassicgamingmaster]

Just played around with the new features and such, and am very happy with what has been done. I think in a small amount of time when everything has been optimized and whatnot, this will indeed be the perfect emulator.

thanks for everything reesy.

 

[lancelott]

Why does it take so much more time to add uncompressed ROMs to the file list than ZIPs? With zips it goes lightning fast, but otherwise it takes a couple minutes.

 

[Vimacs]

I would gues it uses a game name list based on checksums, with zip files the checksum of the compressed file is stored in the header while the checksum of uncompressed files haves to be calcluaated first.

 

[devestation]

Hmm, I can't seem to get save states working with this new version on the md emulator. I tried finding places to bring in my old save states, and the menu never recognized any of them. Then, I thought maybe if I make a new state simply to find where this new menu stores a game state for a game, I could get it to work. However, when I tried to make a game state, the menu said failed and my gp2x froze.

I was using Sonic 3 BTW.

 

[reallynotnick]

Just got done testing the new release and while I am impressed with the new overclocking, MS support, and non flickering menu the new menu just feels sluggish. Is it underclocked?

Also Sonic 2 (it did in the old one) as a line about 3-4 pixels at the bottom of garbled land.
It was also weird because at first the volume did not work the first time I used it but now it works fine on every game.

Can't wait to see what you can optimize for the next release for Genesis games. Do you think it would be possible to skip the Linux part and just code for the hardware? Looking at your MasterSystem numbers it should give the same speed boost as overclocking to 266mhz.
Don't forget to give SquideNES some love, or did you drop that?

 

[iignotus]

I'd love the scrolling fix mentioned earlier, and also I liked using L+R to go into and out of the menu. With it, I could L+R, save, and L+R (to return to game) very quickly (I'm a dirty cheater ). Maybe this just takes more time to get used to, but doing S, save, A seems too different.

With all this bitching I'm doing I should probably mention again that this is what handheld emulation should be like. I look forward to every improvement you make.