Release Temper (Split from other thread)


BTW, any hope to take a look at why it doesn't run on Slackware ?

I'll probably release the source eventually. Don't know if that will help you though.


I basically decided to do so after I was "done" with it. The problem is that I haven't worked on it for a long time, but I still didn't really complete the things I wanted to complete. Here's basically what I wanted to have done, that I didn't:


1) Fixing the bugs that I introduced with the new version. Frankly don't even know where I'd want to start with that. It's probably something with the new renderer.


2) Better netplay, using UDP with various measures for redundancy.. but I'm leaning more towards scrapping this, at least for Temper, because I've received zero feedback on the feature. Am I right to assume no one has tried it? And that no one is interested in trying it. If anyone IS interested I went through PCE games (non-CD, sorry) and listed ones that are 2p...


3) ARM ASM code for the new renderer. The Pandora version doesn't need it, but the other ARM devices would benefit from it.. especially since it was supposed to make supporting a fast GP32 port easier. I promised Slaanesh I'd have this done years ago. I got frustrated with register allocation on the very first function and gave up :| (the original version only took me a few days so I guess I was overly optimistic)


4) Originally I was going to make the OGG decode stuff run on the second core on GP2X but that's not really worth doing..


5) Zip support, I guess? I have code for that from something else I could use (don't worry, not gpSP's broken zip support)


If I could either complete or write off those tasks I could feel secure opening it under some reasonable license. Mainly, once I do that I really don't want to deal with it anymore. Problem is I'm working on something else now, and I want to get stuff done on it as quickly as possible (which for me is probably still not that quickly). And I'm really bad at multitasking between multiple projects. Ask notaz.
 
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Huh there is netplay included in temper ?!!?!???


Holy W-T-F ! This is HUGE !


I never noticed it :/.


ED should definitely release a video of this on two OP !


Well seeing that todo list, i won't ask more than make Temper properly displayed under Slackware.
 
If ED wants to use the netplay maybe someone who lives near him or at least on the European mainland should volunteer. He said he'd netplay with me but the ping would be really bad.


You also need to have a fairly clean wifi connection which can be a problem for some.. it doesn't need a lot of bandwidth, it just needs to not constantly lose packets.
 
Well i just imagined a usb network between two pandoras ^^.


Or ad-hoc wifi, as it seems confirmed that the driver supports it.
 
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Hello My Exophase, or should I say Mr G.


Sorry this is a bit off topic as it's not about the Pandora version of Temper.


I've been busy porting Temper 0.80 to Dingoo - seems to work very nicely. Most HuCards work flawlessly. Some issues as previously noted by other users here.


I haven't successfully run a CD game yet, one starts and one produces garbage on the screen and one just sit there and are black screen - but the menu is still accessible.


These are Steam Heard, Dracula X and Gradius Goffer II. I've got a ton of original PC Engine games on CD and Hu (it's my favourite system) so I can test practically any CD game.


Does anyone know if these definitely work or not? Don't want to do tests on games the are known not to work.


As for the GP32 version, if it's a pain don't worry about the rotated video version unless you really want to. :)


Having said that I'd still like to release the GP32 version - it's *almost* full speed at 150Mhz for some HuCard games with the ARM assembler CPU and video code and assembler rotated blitter. That's on the older 0.75 code base. With frameskip it can get to full speed. Don't think CD audio is much of an option - OGG is probably too CPU intensive and WAV is too big for the max 128MB SMC cards - maybe fit small CD games on a single SMC?


The Dingoo version's speed fluctuates wildly. Some games are full speed, others are not. this is at 336Mhz. With some overclock most HuCard games will be fine.


I tried the CPU cpu_recompiler code but it doesn't seem any faster? Does it have busy wait loop detection?


Anyway, it's been a lot of fun porting this - should have something to release soon. I better do an OpenDingux version too.
 
There's no cpu_recompiler ;p Yes it has busy wait loop detection. But there's no ASM code for MIPS so of course it'll be a lot slower than it is for ARM.
 
I had two files: cpu.c and cpu_recompiler.c


I didn't check for differences but now I've just had a look... :)


Anyway, that's good to clear that up.


I just tried Sylphia and then removed all the OGGs from the CUE file. Seems to work - though still some graphical errors at the start. But the game plays albeit without the OGGs.


So must be something with the vorbis/ogg libraries.


In the PSP directory there is a cpu_mips_asm.S file.


Is that no good?


EDIT: I see it's just ARM asm...
 
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They're just things I thought about doing for maybe a day before I decided it wasn't worth the effort. A recompiler would have just been for research of propagation techniques with old 8-bit CPUs; no platform I'd be interested in targeting would need the performance. And I briefly wanted to do a MIPS ASM interpreter, but it's a real drag because MIPS can't do a lot of the tricks the ARM one does, and even fetching and dispatching instruction bytes takes multiple instructions each... the ARM ISA really has an advantage for this sort of interpreter.
 
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The ASM CPU and Video code for ARM are the only reasons that this works so well on the GP32.


A pure 'C' version would be way too slow. Even the Dingoo's MIPS at the default 336Mhz struggles. At full overclock - 420Mhz most games will be okay, some, where idle loops aren't detected will just be slower and may need a 50% frameskip to get it to play at the right speed.


Have there been any recent bug fixes to any of the code?


EDIT: Yay found the issue. Wasn't using OGG_TREMOR. Steam Hearts now working. First game i've tried and it's good! :)


TREMOR is the integer only build of vorbis so is faster with a small loss of accuracy.
 
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You also need to have a fairly clean wifi connection which can be a problem for some.. it doesn't need a lot of bandwidth, it just needs to not constantly lose packets.

This "qos" command makes the Pandora WIFI reliable for me:




sudo iwconfig wlan0 power off rate 54



Without it, ssh is unusable, and transfers get progressively slower / worse.
 
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I am baffled. :(   :unsure:   :wacko:   :blink:

Apparently this was one of the early emulators to hit the Pandora scene.

After reading what these mostly knowledgeable people have said in this post I wonder...what bios is needed and what do I need to do with the subfolder syscard which is not present in Temper on my Pandora>appdata>temper. Do I make one up and if so what do I place in it?

Every HuCard game I play on temper is .PCE and works well. For some reason no CD games will work for me regardless what file format I use....iso, .bin, .zip. I cannot find .pce files for the CD games.

I don't even care about converting ogg to mp3. I just want to run the game even if it means without music  :huh:   ;)

Sorry for the double posts. Please forgive me whoever is the moderator now.
 
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When i load my YS savestate, the screen is now moved to the right, so i can't see all :/.
 
When i load my YS savestate, the screen is now moved to the right, so i can't see all :/.
Do you have a per-game config on it? Try deleting it if you do..
Of course I didn't change the software in the last two years so uh, yeah.
 
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It's a savestate from gp2x i think.

I can't recall if i used it since on OP.

Will try, thx.
 
A little late to the topic... DoH...

But I ~was~ having the same issue with WiZ saves and the PND Build of Temper.

The saves were loading properly, but the screen was cropped oddly.

I started a new Ys game and let ROM go until I was fully in-game.

=AND= Then loaded the WiZ save, and all was well.

It would seem to only be a problem if you try to load a WiZ game right off the bat.

While the optical media bios is still showing.

EDIT: I noticed a better way to load the WiZ saves... maybe even all saves...

But for the current purposes:

I have WiZ saves of Ys Book I & II...

I was starting Temper.PND and trying to load the old saves, and having a screen issue.

The saves would load, but not be fully visible. They were skewed to the right.

I discovered if I booted the game, and loaded them after the game was fully started,

The saves would load normally, all was well.

Subsequently, I turned of "Display FPS"...

I noticed the FPS readout moves to the right as the game boots,

Then back again to where it should be.

If I load a save at anypoint after the FPS readout returns to its origin point,

the saves load just fine.

MUCH MUCH THX... Exophase

Would love to see more work on Temper and the NetPlay...

But Temper PND is plenty fine for my needs. ThX again!

-DEJ
 
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On another note:

I wanted to convert my BIN/CUEs to ISO_OGG, using the tool provided in the WiZ package.

I realized I no longer had "oggenc", read the README from the WiZ package, and ran off to:

http://www.rarewares.org/ogg.php only to enjoy a 404 Error ( gone but not forgotten )

Seems they no longer host it, it was versioned up to "oggenc2",

Downloaded "oggenc2" and renamed it, in the hopes it would still be compatible: NOT

Found a fork of the original at:

http://www.ph.utexas.edu/~volsung/patches/

oggenc-flac-beta2.exe

I renamed it to "oggenc.exe" dropped it in C:\Windows,

And all is right withthe world again.

Tho: I dont recall if the original "oggenc" was unhappy about " " (spaces) in filenames,

But this is sure is... so be sure to make your second ARG space_free.

as in: bin_to_iso_ogg.exe "title of my game.cue" "title_of_my_game"

Again the utility is in the WiZ package that can be found at:

http://dl.openhandhelds.org/cgi-bin/wiz.cgi?0,0,0,0,71,92

Much THX to Exophase,

Enjoy your PCE Gaming goodness...

-DEJ
 
Has anyone had success running CD based games?  I only have a couple and cannot get them to work.

Just wondered if I was doing something wrong?  I have the syscard in the right folder and correctly named as per the readme
 
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