GBATemp has finally finished review of the Team NeoFlash SMS Myth Cart / Sega MK3 Myth Cart. This currently is the ultimate solution for the Sega Master System with a fully feature packed kit including: External Flash RAM Support, Built-in FM Synthesizer for Games that Support FM, Future Support for Secure Digital (SD) Flash RAM Cards, Continued Team NeoFlash Menu and Software Updates. Click the link below to read the review!
- First of all, the video system was converted to use hi-color modes (no more palettized/indexed mode, welcome to the 21th century!), effectively increasing compatibility and glitches with newer video hardware, overally simplifying development, and allowing proper emulation of advanced palette effects on the Game Gear. The blitter system was also improved in various ways, with simplified configuration and default setting more friendly to today's computers.
- Various minor emulation issues were fixed, including cases crashing the emulator, extended 224 lines video mode and Z80 and ColecoVision interruptions behaviours.
- As for the interface, the theming system configuration style was revamped and new shortcuts were added to aid quick manipulation in debugging sessions (CTRL-F4, CTRL-TAB).
- Development tools were given a huge boost in this version. Added line history. Added conditional breakpoints. Added display line event breakpoints/watchpoints. Added SET commands to modify registers. Added the possibility to spawn multiple memory editors. Added a CLOCK commands to assist timing code. Added edition of VDP registers. Added a brand new tilemap viewer, with various filters and information display, etc.
- And generally various tweaks and fixes as well as portability improvements.
(Read full list of changes)
Great news: I finally took the time and fixed all leftover blitters problems that were introduced when switching to hi-color mode. Meaning that I should now be able to release an official 0.72 version! - It's not lacking features compared to 0.71. This WIP version should be the last, consider this as a Release Candidate for MEKA 0.72. Please report any problem you may find with it.
The new video settings are located in the .cfg file, they don't have an interface as of yet but things should work pretty well without tweaking them.
Ports:
- Preliminary MacOSX port. [Proppy]
Compile and run under a x86-based MacOSX system. Missing sound (due to Seal) and debugger (unknown problem to resolve). Looking for someone who wish to improve and maintain this port.
Blitter/Video:
- Fixed HQ2X stretched blitter when target output was not 16-bits. [Omar]
- Fixed TV Mode blitters broken since since switching to hi-color. Implementation is slower than previously, but it works well. [Omar]
- Removed obsolete "scanlines" blitter, in favor of "tvmode". [Omar]
- Stretching works on all blitters. [Omar]
- Video depth, Vsync, Triple Buffering and Page flipping are now global video settings, removed from each specific blitter. Greatly simplify configuration and tweaking. [Omar]
- Triple buffering doesn't interfere with the refresh is not supported by the current settings (eg: windowed mode), making it safe and more simple to always leave it enabled. [Omar]
CPU:
- Z80: Fixed RETI behavior (same as RETN, copying IFF2 to IFF1). Fixes pausing in SMS Robocop 3 during legal screens/introduction, probably other infrequent cases. [FluBBa, Omar]
- Z80: Accepting NMI doesn't copy IFF1 over IFF2, as suggested by Sean Young's "The Undocumented Z80 Documented". [Omar]
ColecoVision:
- Fixed emulation of pending NMI, pending flag is cleared when reading VDP status. Fixes "Rock 'N Bolt" among other. Thanks to the anonymous poster on SMS Power! forums. [Omar]
- Note that the compatibility list for ColecoVision titles is severly outdated. At some point, James Carter worked on a new, more accurate list, but I lost all contact with him.
NES:
- Fixed video rendering, broken when switching to hi-color modes. [Omar]
- Added PRAM support in Memory Editor. [Omar]
- Added 8 palette switching in Tile Viewer. [Omar]
- Note: NES emulation is humor legacy code and won't be supported.
GUI:
- Sorted default themes, removed non Sega 8-bit related themes.
- Now embedding background pictures in regular binary distribution.
- CALL FOR NEW OR IMPROVED THEMES SUBMISSION! Please contribute.
CPU:
- Z80: Fixed cases were address arithmetic would not wrap in the 16-bit address space, effectively crashing the emulator (those cases were mostly happening on corrupted data, but it also legit Z80 code, and in any case we don't want the emulator to crash). [Omar]
Tilemap viewer:
- Fixed leftover of white rectangle when mouse hover last line. [Omar]
Debugger:
- Added "B nopnop" shortcut to break on two successives NOP instructions. This is basically equivalent to "B x =0,0". [Omar]
Miscellaenous:
- Increased max length of directory/filenames. [Musuruan]
- Added "Automatically crop and align screen captures" option. This option aligns screen captures on the nearest visible tile, helping to simplify the process of creating game maps by pasting captures next to each other. [Omar] Note: May not work properly on game using scanline based effects.
- Added and modified entries in the checksum and compatibility lists. [Omar]
- Only one feature has been added to this version, but an important one: It's now possible to save emulation state into a file, and reload it to continue from the save. 5 slots are available for each rom. See the readme file for more details.
Emulation:
- Fixed data corruption/overflow in VDP emulation when seeking and writing to an invalid palette address. Thanks Maxim. [Omar]
- VDP palette write do not mask out current VDP address, so performing the (unprobable) set address/access palette/access VRAM sequence will keep address in the full 16KB range. [Omar]
- Fixed VDP line interrupts not properly running in overscan area in 224 lines mode. Fixes bottom of the screen in Charles Mac Donald's BB2K6 demo. [Omar]
Video:
- Changed default fullscreen blitter configuration in the hope of getting something more compatible (640x480 by default), as so many people have problems with fullscreen modes.
- Got rid of "parallel" blitter that displayed both odd and even frame next to each other. Seems useless now. Could be brought back if some four-eyed person request it. [Omar]
Debugger:
- Added "CLOCK" command, to display/reset a Z80 cycle counter. Very simple but can be helpful to time Z80 routines. [Omar]
- (Win32) Forward debugging log to Windows debugging stream via OutputDebugString(), so running MEKA from Microsoft Visual studio will display log in the 'Output' window. [Omar]
Project:
- (Win32) Added new targets supporting shared standard libraries. [Omar]
- Updated SOURCES.TXT documentation. [Omar]
GUI:
- Fixed background picture not loading on startup. [Omar]
- Removed closing fadeout since the current implementation is way inefficient and cannot garantee proper speed. [Omar]
- Added and modified entries in the checksum and compatibility lists. [Omar]
- Implement support for zoomed (16x16, 16x32) sprites.
Corrected games: Nba_jam.gg, doraemon_waku_waku_pocket_paradise-gg-jp.gg, VR-trooper, X-Men - Mojo World, Virtua Fighter mini, Earthworm jim (SMS and GG) uses 16*32 sprite :/ And a few other one.
- Add option -irqhack: cpu->step() just before generating IRQ. This solve a few game lockup. Thanks to Charles Macdonalds for the solution.
New games working: Chicago Syndicate, Zool (SMS/GG), Monster Truck War, Sega Chess
- Add support for Korean Memory mapper. Mappers are now method-pointer driven instead of selected in wr8() with if/else condition.
- Add row 24-31 scrolling lock.
- Add embedded database with CRC32 of games that need specific options. User don't need to look for good option anymore.
- Modify the Debugger. It's now based on event (On @write, EI, DI, VDP IRQ asserted ect...).
- Correct page 0 banking. ROM at 0x000 - 0x400 is no more swapped if page 0 is changed. Spacegun now works.
- Rewrite IRQ system. IRQ generation is more accurate now.
New game working: Castelo Ra Tin Bum (Brazil) [b1].sms, Castelo Ra Tin Bum (Brazil) [!].sms, Joe Montana's Football GG, GP Rider, Spider-Man - Return of the Sinister Six (JUE).gg, Spider-Man - Return of the Sinister Six (JUE).sms, Last Action Hero (UE)[!].gg, Star Wars (collision detection).
- Add josytick support. (-joy option)
- Simplification of input handling in OsmoseCore.cpp. It's faster.
- make port 0x2 return what was written.
New game working: Primal Rage GG, Stargate GG, Pac Attack GG, Mortal Combat II GG, Griffin GG
- Modify code to avoid all GCC 4.1.1 warnings.
- Major speedup on Bilinear video filter.
- Remove -time_limite option.
The Linux build and sources for the Sega Master System/Game Gear emulator Osmose has been released. The Windows build was released about a week ago and you can view changes from our post here. Here is what was posted for the sources and Linux build.
Update 07 Nov 2006: Linux build and source code are now available. I fixed a compatibility problem with GCC 4.1.1. Windows user are not concerned by this problem, osmose was build on GCC 3.4.x.
Head on over to the official site for more information about Osmose.
- New Z80 cpu core, written from scratch but keeping the same interface.
- New SN76489 sound emulation. It's a lot faster but still need work on Noise Channel.
- Add Game Gear support (VDP / IO ports). Stereo is not implemented yet. 93.4% of rom work nicely.
- New Video filter algorithm: Nearest neighbour (-nn2x)
- New Video filte algorithmr: scale2xscanline and alternate filter between scale2x and scanline.
Changelog is pretty big, check the WIP site for all the information. Below is a part of the post.
Here we are! Everything that has been done since 0.71, now available in a fresh build. The primary target of 0.72 was to let down old paletted video modes and switch to 16/32 bits rendering, which is now done (except a few things such as blitter not all converted yet). Added support for VGM 1.10 (affecting SG-1000/SC-3000/SF-7000 and Colecovision VGM dumps), rewrote theming system, tweaks and more tweaks. And again, I added more stuff for beloved hackers who are digging into SMS history: a full featured tile-viewer, conditionnal breakpoint, VDP line based breakpoint, a register SET command, command history, you name it, etc.
A new work in progress build of MEKA has been released over at the official forums. Here is a rundown on the latest changes for the September 18th and 19th releases.
MEKA 0.72 WIP 20050919
----------------------
• Added black & white border in tilemap viewer.
• Added fadeout when quitting (only 32-bits mode supported).
• Fixed source package (yesterday's one was broken).
MEKA 0.72 WIP 20050918
----------------------
• Miscellaenous:
- (WIP) Fixed screenshots being fully transparent. [Omar]
- Updated various tidbits in the configuration file. [Omar]
• Development:
- Added tilemap viewer. [Omar]
- Shows tilemap, hovering or clicking a tile shows specific info about it, allows filtering BG/FG, disabling tile flipping, tile flipping, display of scrolling box, with or without raster effects.
- Cleaned Technical Information Viewer content, renamed a few fields to their official names, removed redundant information. It's not yet all clean. [Omar]
MEKA 0.72 WIP 20050910
----------------------
• Development:
- Debugger:
- Added line history. Navigate history by pressing Up/Down. List or search in history using HISTORY (HI) command. [Omar]
• Fixed various bugs: scrollbar display during theme switch, memory editor scrollbar crashing, etc.
• Sources/Project
- (Win32) Now linking to zlib.lib instead of zlibs.lib (name for standard static build of ZLIB).
Head on over to the WIP release thread for more information. Thanks to Emulation9 for the news. :)
