Future Drmd Release?

[johncross85]

Reesy, I've always wondered why there are black borders along the top and bottom of the screen. The GP32 screen is already widescreen and the borders make it even wider. As the Megadrive didn't use widescreen, doesn't this mean the picture on DrMD is squashed? Would it be possible to add proper full screen in the next release of DrMD?

Good luck sorting out the speed problem.

​

Sega Genesis screen resolution = 320 x 224 pixels
GP32 screen resolution = 320 x 240 pixels

16 pixel difference means that you have 8 pixels of black at the top and bottom of the screen. It's possible to stretch the display to fit but it would take a bit of the processing power away from more important things (like framerate) and for the sake of 16 pixels, why bother?

J(ohn)

 

[cozmic]

Reesy, i think DRMD is a great program!!

I wish i bought a BLU unit (i have a non lit) , now i have to put on my mining helmet at night when i'm in the back of a taxi


Maye you could implement a anti mining helmet EXTRA XXL brightness option for the poor non lit owners?? Just a few tints brighter would help me out just great..


CHEERS!!

 

[Reesy]

Reesy, i think DRMD is a great program!!

I wish i bought a BLU unit (i have a non lit) , now i have to put on my mining helmet at night when i'm in the back of a taxi


Maye you could implement a anti mining helmet EXTRA XXL brightness option for the poor non lit owners?? Just a few tints brighter would help me out just great..


CHEERS!!

​

Already done in the latest beta

 

[cozmic]

WOoow you programmed that in in less then 5 minutes!!!

 

[Reesy]

...and I was eating a sandwich too

 

[CU_AMiGA]

Reesy, the guy resposible for DrMD and the upcoming PCE and SMS emulators. Possibly the greatest emulators witnessed on GP32. This is truly the GP32's finest hour.

*Bends down on one knee and puts ring (in shape of GP32) on Reesy's finger!*

 

[Reesy]

:blink: Hmmm Alrighty then...

 

[Horscht]

Reesy, i think DRMD is a great program!!

I wish i bought a BLU unit (i have a non lit) , now i have to put on my mining helmet at night when i'm in the back of a taxi


Maye you could implement a anti mining helmet EXTRA XXL brightness option for the poor non lit owners?? Just a few tints brighter would help me out just great..


CHEERS!!

​

Already done in the latest beta

​

WOoow you programmed that in in less then 5 minutes!!!

​

huh? There hasn't been a new beta, has there?

 

[DaveC]

"huh? There hasn't been a new beta, has there?"


brightness has been in there for a few betas now

 

[Reesy]

DaveC is right the new brightness code has been in for a few beta's, it is definitely in beta 5.

I'm currently re-writing my menu to use 8bit graphics mode so that the brightness setting can be used in the menu as well as in the emulator, doing this will also allow for instant feedback on the brightness as you set it ( like in Fgen ) which will make it nicer to use. At the moment you have to set the brightness and then return to the game to actually see how bright it is.

 

[look]

I'll tell you something.

You cave dwelling non FLU owners

The latest beta goes upto a whopping

+700%

Thats got to be music to your squinty little mole eyes

 

[dreamwarbird]

hehe, long live my non-bluflu.

 

[Reesy]

DrMD News
-------------

Improved gamma correction. Gamma correction now effects manu system as well so you can see how bright the gamma setting is a you set it.
Added Fixed Frameskip. Currently 0 to 5 frames are available. ( anybody want more? if so how much)
Added individual game settings. Load a game, save the settings for the game. This creates a ini file for the game, so everytime you load the game it will load your settings for that game automatically.

To Do - before next beta
----------------------------
Add delete options to roms,save states, menu options and game ini files. Anybody know where I can get a smc delete library?
Add Z80 on/off option
Add line ints on/off option

Later

Reesy

 

[Esn]

If I wrote a TG16 emulator it would definitely be based on PCEAdvance by Flubba, I can't believe no one has attempted this yet. All that needs to be done is the graphics rendering as PCEAdvance uses the GBA hardware. I also can't believe that no one had made use of PocketNes source.

I'm probably going to add my new menu system to my GP32 port of DrSMS. I know we already have loads of SMS emulators but mine is way faster and more compatible than all of them. So it seems a waste not to release anything.

Reesy, DrSMS on the GP32 would absolutely ROCK!! The current emus are ok but have problems. fSMS has the "split screen" bug, plus is gets slow sometimes. There is Masterlator with a nice menu but has some compatability problems and lack of features like full screen.

It seems that nobody uses the old SMS32 v0.5 beta by Aj0? Too bad, because in my experience it's still better than either fSMS32 or Masterlator. h34r: Unlike the other two, it runs fullspeed with sound (fSMS randomly speeds up/slows down and Masterlator is slow in general), and the only thing lacking are save states (it only supports saves where the game would save originally) and a fix for the sound crackling bug (which you hear about 10% of the time... it's not that annoying though). Perhaps nobody notices it anymore because the menu looks ugly?

BTW, something interesting that I've found: the "Dizzy" games (you know, the prince of the yolkfolk ) work on no SMS or Genesis emulator that I've tried. Maybe they use some strange map or something?

And Reesy; DrMD is already one of the best emulators on the GP32. The only option I'd ask for is to make the "B" button be "cancel" instead of "OK". Like a lot of other people, I'm hardwired to press "B" when I want to go back... :rolleyes:

 

[Reesy]

It seems that nobody uses the old SMS32 v0.5 beta by Aj0? Too bad, because in my experience it's still better than either fSMS32 or Masterlator. h34r: Unlike the other two, it runs fullspeed with sound (fSMS randomly speeds up/slows down and Masterlator is slow in general), and the only thing lacking are save states (it only supports saves where the game would save originally) and a fix for the sound crackling bug (which you hear about 10% of the time... it's not that annoying though). Perhaps nobody notices it anymore because the menu looks ugly?

BTW, something interesting that I've found: the "Dizzy" games (you know, the prince of the yolkfolk ) work on no SMS or Genesis emulator that I've tried. Maybe they use some strange map or something?

And Reesy; DrMD is already one of the best emulators on the GP32. The only option I'd ask for is to make the "B" button be "cancel" instead of "OK". Like a lot of other people, I'm hardwired to press "B" when I want to go back... :rolleyes:

​

B to go back..I'm sure I can manage that .

With regards to Codemaster games. Codemasters used to be very sneaky when they made Master System games, they used their own rom design so they did not have to pay Sega to use their rom setup. That is why you'll find that codemaster games will not run on most emulators. I've never been able to find any good document on the setup of codemaster roms, but I managed to get a few running on DrSMS. If I ever find a good document , I'll fix the support for them on my master system emulator.

 

[bast525]

Yep codemasters were always circumventing the regular process for making and selling games like that. I remember the codemasters NES cartridges had a different casing, even, than the regular NES games. Interesting to find out so many years later that they even used a completely different rom type. I remember Tengen had different cartridge casings as well and I know at least some emulators did have problems running Tengen games...


Reesy - heheh seriously bro don't get TOO bogged down in options... we can all think of 5000 things we'd love to see in there but on the other hand, it really is fantastic just as it is. Just curious why are you adding the line inits on/off and what will this actually do? See this is one of those options that sounds like it will make me PLAY games less and spend more time TESTING games to see what all of the options make it run faster/slower . What exactly will this option do?

About the frameskip, you're going to leave an option in there for us who just want it to run the same way it's always run right? I have to say, by the way, there is something about the way DrMD does frameskip... I can't figure out exactly what, but it seems to work way better than frameskip on any of the other emus I've played. I mean, DrMD is the ONLY emu I've played where even running 20fps it seems to run smooth and is fully, easily playable... sometimes you don't even realize it's running 'low' fps unless you turn the fps meter on.

 

[Reesy]

Turning off line ints allows the cyclone core to be run for the whole frame in one big chunk, instead of being stopped and started 262 times per frame.

You will only be able to turn off line ints when the z80 is turned off, the reason for this is because without line ints the the M68000 cpu will go out of sync with the Z80 cpu.

Basically when you turn off the Z80 and line ints you'll have the same emulation setup as Fgen.

I've left the Auto Frameskip option in there, the frameskip options are AUTO,0,1,2,3,4,5. Not too sure why the auto frame skip is so good, its just a bog standard setup. Maybe its to do with how the genesis games are designed to run but its all good.

With regards options I'll probably won't be adding any more for awhile ( unless someone comes up with an outstanding one ) I'll be working on the cyclone core instead for the next few weeks/months.

Seriously I think everybody should go download the Motorola 68000 Cpu manual, read up and then get debuging the cyclone core. If we can just get rid of the very few remaining bugs, will be able to stick it in Castaway, Mame and any other system that uses the M68000 cpu. Castaway with the cyclone core will be amazing, trust me. I've used the cpu core from Castaway in DrMD it was faster than Musashi but still very slow compared to Cyclone.

..I love Cyclone

 

[Billy Lee]

About pressing the B button to cancel, shouldn't it be A to cancel as the A and B buttons on the GP32 are reversed compared to the Megadrive.

Reesy, could you possibly look into why overclocking past 164MHz doesn't increase the frame rate? I tried 176MHz last night and it seemed to run the same as 164MHz. Surely a boost of 10MHz would make a noticable difference, especially when there is a noticable difference between 160MHz and 164MHz.

 

[look]

Turning off line ints allows the cyclone core to be run for the whole frame in one big chunk, instead of being stopped and started 262 times per frame.

You will only be able to turn off line ints when the z80 is turned off, the reason for this is because without line ints the the M68000 cpu will go out of sync with the Z80 cpu.

Basically when you turn off the Z80 and line ints you'll have the same emulation setup as Fgen.

I've left the Auto Frameskip option in there, the frameskip options are AUTO,0,1,2,3,4,5. Not too sure why the auto frame skip is so good, its just a bog standard setup. Maybe its to do with how the genesis games are designed to run but its all good.

With regards options I'll probably won't be adding any more for awhile ( unless someone comes up with an outstanding one ) I'll be working on the cyclone core instead for the next few weeks/months.

Seriously I think everybody should go download the Motorola 68000 Cpu manual, read up and then get debuging the cyclone core. If we can just get rid of the very few remaining bugs, will be able to stick it in Castaway, Mame and any other system that uses the M68000 cpu. Castaway with the cyclone core will be amazing, trust me. I've used the cpu core from Castaway in DrMD it was faster than Musashi but still very slow compared to Cyclone.

..I love Cyclone

​

Have you a list of symptoms of the bugs and what they do to games emulation?

If not try looking at the summary page on the DrMD section of my tracker.

There are 52 games in total added for DrMD of that seven that seem to work perfectly following the release of your 5 beta's

The rest are broken down as follows

sound - 10
graphical - 10

the 20 above I guess are likely not to be cyclone bugs

The remaining games I reckon suffer due to cyclone bugs.

gameplay - 2
crash - 13
reboots - 8

I think we can prove this if we can test them with the Musashi core.

If they work its cyclone. If not its somehting else.

From the results shouldn't it be easier to track the bugs?

 

[Reesy]

About pressing the B button to cancel, shouldn't it be A to cancel as the A and B buttons on the GP32 are reversed compared to the Megadrive.

Reesy, could you possibly look into why overclocking past 164MHz doesn't increase the frame rate? I tried 176MHz last night and it seemed to run the same as 164MHz. Surely a boost of 10MHz would make a noticable difference, especially when there is a noticable difference between 160MHz and 164MHz.

​

Its to do with the memory speed. You can make the cpu as fast as you like...but the cpu still needs to read memory in order to execute instructions. The max speed of the memory is 66Mhz, when you overclock the cpu up to around 166Mhz the memory is still within its limits but when you over clock to 176 you either have to attempt to overclock the memory or make the memory run slower.

In the latest beta I'm working on now ( beta 6) I've been playing with the overclocking settings in mr mirkos sdk. Setting the cpu speed requires 3 paramters CLKDIV,MCLK,CLKMODE.

You use another program PLLSET to find out what the values are for these 3 parameters for the particular cpu speed you require. The thing is that this program just not give you 1 answer, it gives you a list to choose from. So you have to pick the best one based on the limitations of your system.

Some combinations overclock the memory more than others, while some combinations slow the memory. The problem is that what will work on one GP32 may not work on another GP32, so mr mirko has chosen combinations that are easier on the memory because these tend to work on more GP32s than combinations that push the memory harder.

I may put some more work into the cpu speed menu options to allow you to choose between different settings for the same cpu speed.

@look: Sorry mate I read you email but forgot to send you the Musashi version of DrMD when I got home. I'll try and sort something out for you later.