Picodrive 1.40

[notaz]

BTW..do you think that 32x emulation would be possible on gp2x? Its just a question..

Emulation is of course possible, but how playable it would be is another question. It depends on how much those SH2s were used I guess, and I have no idea about that right now.

I seem to have encountered 2 (minor) problems:

- Can no longer bind Up/Down in the controls; holding Select to bind them does not work like before.

- The included predefined game configs will use the original config for the settings that are not specified in the game config, which can cause some confusion as the controls and other settings would revert back and not follow the one in your own custom default config. Editing is required for each of the predefined games to have them follow your own settings for the controls and others.

Thanks for the report, just fixed that, see my first post. You will need to delete game.cfg, as I changed the filenames again:
game.cfg - stores game specific config you save in menu.
config.cfg - stores global config.
game_def.cfg - stores predefined configs, used if there is no config in game.cfg, and uses config.cfg as base.

With all that work on emulating that SVP, and a believer in re-using code, is there anything else that uses this hardware?

Nothing I know of. If there was, it would run much worse, because I wouldn't be able to use so many shortcuts and hacks emulating this hardware..

 

[ledro]

It plays wonderfull. I actually still own the japanese version of this game. Finally I'm able to keep a record of my best times ;-)
I think this is the first good 3d racer for the GP2x.

Thanks and great work man!

 

[jbrodack]

you are a coding god notaz. thanks a bunch for the release. fmv seems to work flawlessly now and you don't have to wait for buffers anymore. plus we get virtua racing. I knew we were eventually getting virtua racing since you posted about it but being released now with the fmv improvement is a nice surprise. definitely the best emulator for the gp2x.

 

[fusion_power]

Great Work! Besides the SVP stuff I really enjoy the fixed RAM-Card issue of the SegaCD Emulation AND of course the Fixed FMV issue! Non more hangs in Videos, superb. Now, the SonicCD Into and the Endings are fun to watch. ^^ I knew this would be possible. (what exactly was the trick? )

 

[PokeParadox]

Congratulations, another great achievment.
Unfortunately my SD card has completely died on me bah.
managed to test it using my external drive though and it's great! have to find me some new bios files again, so I can test SegaCD, since they were on my sd :/

EDIT: WOO! I found one of my card reader can still read the card, although my gp2x and other readers can't so I managed to recover my data at least... but need a new sd card now.

 

[marzsyndrome]

First off, hello everyone, another new arrival coming! ^_^


Now, I just wanted to say......... Didn't expect a new release of this today! I guess that means I signed up too late though, as I was going to remind Notaz of two niggling issues related to his emulator, involving two particular games. I believe these problems plagued other Mega Drive emulators in the past too....


1) Puggsy (the original Mega Drive version) is not playable past the first boss on your emulator due to a rather obscure copy-protection mechanism that triggers depending on whether it detects SRAM upon startup (if it does, then attempting to start the first new level after Boss 1 will take you to a message suggesting you've played enough levels and that you should go play the real version instead of "this silly copy", before taking you back to the SEGA logo). I tried setting "Use SRAM/BRAM savestates" to Off (and even saved it into a config file to use afresh) but this did not foil the protection. Some emulators (or maybe only one emulator I know of) include a proper "Disable SRAM" option that allows one to play the rest of the game.

2) You should probably improve the "Reset" function some more, like include Hard and Soft options perhaps. This would come in handy - for instance - for beating that level in X-Men (check 4 mins into the video) which required you to actually press the Reset button on your MD/Genesis at the very end (AFAIK, this is the only game that performs such a unique trick).


Apart from that, I'm loving all the work Notaz is doing. Thank you so much, man!

 

[b._.o._.b]

And again Notaz adds value to my GP2X! VR is a very nice racing game and it plays like a charm (OC 270)
Great achievement, thanks for sharing the hard work.

 

[Manjuu]

[...]

Thanks for the report, just fixed that, see my first post. You will need to delete game.cfg, as I changed the filenames again:
game.cfg - stores game specific config you save in menu.
config.cfg - stores global config.
game_def.cfg - stores predefined configs, used if there is no config in game.cfg, and uses config.cfg as base.

Thanks for the quick fix.

 

[Twinbee]

Absolutely bloody superb.

Out of the box, it's excellent.

You've done an amazing job with this and the moment my money goes in you're receiving a donation sir.

 

[TrevorBradley]

Dragon's Lair works perfectly with no buffering. EXCELLENT WORK!!!!

 

[shinra]

mmm castlevania and contra glitches from the last version are gone , also It seems that arcus oddisey's sound now works properly, also tried silpheed, it plays smooth but still crashes randomly well it's only one game.

Anyone had tried to finish popful mail?, I remember there was an issue that prevents the game from completion.

thank you for yor efforts notaz .

 

[notaz]

1) Puggsy (the original Mega Drive version) is not playable past the first boss on your emulator due to a rather obscure copy-protection mechanism that triggers depending on whether it detects SRAM upon startup (if it does, then attempting to start the first new level after Boss 1 will take you to a message suggesting you've played enough levels and that you should go play the real version instead of "this silly copy"


Interesting, I wasn't aware of that. This should be easy to work around, I guess.

2) You should probably improve the "Reset" function some more, like include Hard and Soft options perhaps. This would come in handy - for instance - for beating that level in X-Men (check 4 mins into the video) which required you to actually press the Reset button on your MD/Genesis at the very end (AFAIK, this is the only game that performs such a unique trick).


Well that reset function was meant to be "soft" reset, "hard" reset would be achieved be reloading the ROM. It worked at some point (reset would select different character in X-Men 2, for example), but I see it's broken now, will try to investigate.

also tried silpheed, it plays smooth but still crashes randomly well it's only one game.

And still have no luck reproducing it, you may want to try different rip/different region version/different BIOS..

Anyone had tried to finish popful mail?, I remember there was an issue that prevents the game from completion.

If that is still the case, I would need a savestate just before it happens..

Apart from that, I'm loving all the work Notaz is doing. Thank you so much, man!

Thanks for the kind words, everyone!

 

[DaveC]

I think I found a bug running a game.

In "the adventures of Batman and Robin" If you press start it locks up the game. The emu is still running as I can exit the game normally. Also if I let the game go to demo mode it goes to that psuedo 3D car chase section but runs at 1 FPS with the sound cutting out after every frame.

Other than that it is fantastic. Thanks again for the great work.

 

[shinra]

And still have no luck reproducing it, you may want to try different rip/different region version/different BIOS..

ok i'm currently using an US version of silpheed i'll try another rip and try to finish the game tnx.

 

[cd78]

What more can i add that hasnt been already! Top work - the best emu on the gp2x just gets better and better!

 

[BadAstronaut]

Fantastic. Keep going. We love you, etc

(but really, thanks for keeping up the great work on this excellent project)

 

[notaz]

In "the adventures of Batman and Robin" If you press start it locks up the game.

AFAIK it works, just needs "better sync" I think.

Also if I let the game go to demo mode it goes to that psuedo 3D car chase section but runs at 1 FPS with the sound cutting out after every frame.

This is because of it's heavy use of scale/rotate chip. There is another Batman game which does this too. This could probably improved, but I don't know if it's worth the effort.

 

[fusion_power]

By the way, what's the correct aspect ratio of Virtua Racing? The unscaled Image in Picodrive or the horizontal streched one? The unscaled 1:1 looks sharp and good but it seems to be a little bit to "thin" ^^""

 

[halo9]

Fantastic release, keep it up!

 

[DaveC]

In "the adventures of Batman and Robin" If you press start it locks up the game.

AFAIK it works, just needs "better sync" I think.

Also if I let the game go to demo mode it goes to that psuedo 3D car chase section but runs at 1 FPS with the sound cutting out after every frame.

This is because of it's heavy use of scale/rotate chip. There is another Batman game which does this too. This could probably improved, but I don't know if it's worth the effort.


It is probably not worth the effort. I just thought if it was a simple bug it may be worthwhile. Since it is a emu optimisation/GP2X speed issue, I wouldn't bother with it.