Squidgesnes 0.38

[DaveC]

changelog:
0.38

• Reversed sprite drawing order. This is better at least in a few games.
• Pal games are now properly centered when scaler is disabled.
• Pressing left or right in ROM selector menu now does the same as shoulder buttons.
• Added CPU clock control, RAM timing and gamma options to the menu for conveniance.

List of things which need fixing:
major problems / need lots of work:

• Transparencies are not supported
• Performance should be better

TODO / problems to fix:

• [improved?] Sprite priorities
• The "Vol Min" or "Vol Max" text comes up in the middle of the screen out of nowhere and annoys people
• In some games the picture is not center
• Frameskip seems to be set at auto no matter what you choose.
• ROMs do not start from command line
• CPU speed would better be choosable in increments of 5
• Tecmo Super Bowl III: helmets when selecting a team are all red
• Megaman 7: messy after the intro, the graphics become garbled [it's custom chip emulation broken?]
• Street Fighter Alpha 2: Garbled graphics
• Equinox: sprite layers slightly wrong. Your character sometimes appears in front of objects when he is really behind them.
• Mario Kart map screen: sprite peiority problems
• Gradius 3 US: when you're trying to select a type for your ship, the other types are invisible instead of grayed out until you highlight them.
• Crono Trigger: sometimes after a fight, the sprites gets alot of random sprites around them
• Super Metroid 2nd level, after Cirrus Station: just keep going down the level and you'll eventually hit a section that is completely black
• Yoshi's Island: needs SuperFX emulation, which is now broken
• Super mario RPG: needs SA-1 emulation, which is now broken

Latest version is 0.38:
download here

Thanks for the awesome release.

A suggestion though to put somewhere on this list would be to improve the sound, It is pretty rough on most games.

Hopefully that ASM sound core you wrote would help.

Fantastic job so far.

 

[icurafu]

I must agree. Thanks so much.

Even if you don't continue, atleast you have wrapped a lot of loose ends together that needed to be done for a long long time.

 

[XaMMaX90]

60fps with 250mHz in most games!!! I can't beleave!! Die psp!!!

 

[darkman]

I have been wanting to make a comment to this thread but I have been playing Crono and Super R-Type! Great improvements! Keep up the good work! The only problem I am having is with R-Type. On my SNES with the original cart I had slow down to help me in the game. I am finding no slow down now on the GP2X! iiiiiaaaa.. the aliens are attacking and I am having to use my pitiful skills. :blink: This is great! Finally a Super R-Type the way it was supposed to be.

 

[mamewarrior]

Wanted to take a break from PicoDrive, so I took a look at SquidgeSNES code, because I do occasional SNES gaming. I don't like using scripts, so first I added performance options to the menus. I don't like scaled display, so I keep it off, but then there are problems with PAL games like Mario, they were just incorrectly centered, so I fixed that.

The strangest thing in the code was that the sprites were being drawn in wrong order (IMO), so I changed that. This seems to fix several games, but does it break anything? I want YOU to go and find out.

So now I'm going to try walking through the code and do some refactoring. Every time I make something noticeable I'm going to post an update. It is up to you to find as many bugs as possible. I want them to be constructive, not something like "BUG: second core is not used, go and make use of it". SNES is much more complex system and I am not familiar with the code and how it works, so I can't go directly to that. It might be not worth the effort to move code to second core at all. So please be patient, currently I am quite motivated to work on this.

changelog:
0.38

• Reversed sprite drawing order. This is better at least in a few games.
• Pal games are now properly centered when scaler is disabled.
• Pressing left or right in ROM selector menu now does the same as shoulder buttons.
• Added CPU clock control, RAM timing and gamma options to the menu for conveniance.

List of things which need fixing:
major problems / need lots of work:

• Transparencies are not supported
• Performance should be better

TODO / problems to fix:

• [improved?] Sprite priorities
• The "Vol Min" or "Vol Max" text comes up in the middle of the screen out of nowhere and annoys people
• In some games the picture is not center
• Frameskip seems to be set at auto no matter what you choose.
• ROMs do not start from command line
• CPU speed would better be choosable in increments of 5
• Tecmo Super Bowl III: helmets when selecting a team are all red
• Megaman 7: messy after the intro, the graphics become garbled [it's custom chip emulation broken?]
• Street Fighter Alpha 2: Garbled graphics
• Equinox: sprite layers slightly wrong. Your character sometimes appears in front of objects when he is really behind them.
• Mario Kart map screen: sprite peiority problems
• Gradius 3 US: when you're trying to select a type for your ship, the other types are invisible instead of grayed out until you highlight them.
• Crono Trigger: sometimes after a fight, the sprites gets alot of random sprites around them
• Super Metroid 2nd level, after Cirrus Station: just keep going down the level and you'll eventually hit a section that is completely black
• Yoshi's Island: needs SuperFX emulation, which is now broken
• Super mario RPG: needs SA-1 emulation, which is now broken

Latest version is 0.38:
download here

Please don't take this the wrong way but zip support would be greatly appreciated.

 

[notaz]

Question... when I overclock with Gmenu2x does the OC reset to whatever the setting is in Squidgesnes?

Set it to 200 and it won't try to change the CPU clock. Same thing is for gamma (100) and RAM timings are not touched if you don't turn that option ON.

A suggestion though to put somewhere on this list would be to improve the sound, It is pretty rough on most games.

Hopefully that ASM sound core you wrote would help.

This is already being worked on.

 

[ryosaeba]

Zipped roms are already supported.

I have 1 suggestion as well:
keeping select pressed to bring up the menu always seemed akward and slow to me. So my suggestion is to also add the ability to bring up the menu with L+R+Start (as suggested in other threads as the default combo), keeping the current method in place so that old users don't get lost.
I could probably add it myself but I'm already working on gmenu2x and I think it should be pretty fast to add.

Thanks a lot for your contributions

 

[nik166]

ok first "bug" , i have my roms in the /roms/snes folder, they were found before,

now i have to put them in squidgesnes folder, less flexible, was better anywhere like before (so each emu doesn't need the same roms in different places etc )

It's not a bug, you have to check 'Use absolute ROM path' in settings.

ah right!

strange i don't remember that this option was checked before :huh:

anyway good to know, thanks!

 

[Gadget]

Awesome work! That sprite priority thing has been bugging me since the first release. I don't undertstand why it wasn't addressed earlier when people kept pointing it out? I can't help but wonder if there was a reason why it was left the other way around? With the RAM timings it's much faster now. Mario Kart is almost playable with a 6 fps increase for me running at 240Mhz.

Would be really cool to use the new ASM sound engine, and even more amazing if it were to run on the 2nd CPU... Here's hoping...

Keep up the great work.

 

[WhiteFalcon]

This new version sounds very promising, alas it does for me the same as for several other people who mentioned it here. After loading a rom only a colorful screen appears and I have to switch the GP2X off. Even after deleting the whole directory and copying it over again.
There is no config file in thise release, does it mean you have to let the app create one or you use the one from the previous version?

 

[Gadget]

This new version sounds very promising, alas it does for me the same as for several other people who mentioned it here. After loading a rom only a colorful screen appears and I have to switch the GP2X off. Even after deleting the whole directory and copying it over again.
There is no config file in thise release, does it mean you have to let the app create one or you use the one from the previous version?

I didn't need to do this? I just had to delete the save state files and the .srm files...

 

[drokkeh]

I didnt do any of the above, i just extracted it to the same folder the previous squidgesnes was in (keeping the .srm files) and overwriting existing files. Not sure why people are having this issue. Worked first time here.

 

[WhiteFalcon]

Gadget & drokkeh: May I ask what version of firmware you are using?

 

[drokkeh]

Gadget & drokkeh: May I ask what version of firmware you are using?

Version 2.0

 

[krosfyah]

What settings are you using, WhiteFalcon? Maybe it's the ram timings or something like that.

 

[notaz]

This new version sounds very promising, alas it does for me the same as for several other people who mentioned it here. After loading a rom only a colorful screen appears and I have to switch the GP2X off. Even after deleting the whole directory and copying it over again.
There is no config file in thise release, does it mean you have to let the app create one or you use the one from the previous version?

Try to enter config and and save it before loading your first ROM (also check that all settings are sane). I found a little bug where it tries to set CPU clock to 0 in some cases.
And yes, the config file should be created automatically..

 

[WhiteFalcon]

What settings are you using, WhiteFalcon? Maybe it's the ram timings or something like that.

I am using the tweaker just as it comes, no changes of timing and the same with ssnes. FW 2.0.0, too.
I deleted the state files and now it loads a game and freezes about 1-2 seconds after any sound starts, so I guess its either the mmuhack not working for some reason or really a problem of memory timing, though I have no clue where it might lie.

Try to enter config and and save it before loading your first ROM (also check that all settings are sane). I found a little bug where it tries to set CPU clock to 0 in some cases.
And yes, the config file should be created automatically..

Yes, I did, thats actually probably what made it load roms at all, not removing the save states.

 

[drokkeh]

My settings are:

full screen scaling = off
show fps = on
fps limiter = off
Transhack-A = off
Frameskip = 2
Clock speed = 250mhz
craigix's ram timings = on
gamma correction = 110
Audio Processor = Enable
Audio Processor Mute = disable
Use absolute rom dir = on
SNES action buttons = on
Battery Warning 2.4V

This works everytime on my MK2 Firmware 2.0 GP2x.

 

[ryosaeba]

This confirms my suspects. At first it didn't work for me then I checked the setting and saved them and all went fine.

 

[Moonchild]

I tested Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon: Another Story with version 0.37 and then with 0.38, I noticed that sound seemed a lot more stable as well as several sprite errors had been fixed, such as the position of the cats that follow you apearing behind your character rather than on your character's head.

My settings, in case anyone is interested are:

Use Full Screen Scaling - Yes
Show FPS - No
Enable vysnc - no
FPS Limiter - no
Transhack-A V0.1 - no
Frameskip - 2
GP2x CPU Clock: 250
craigz's RAM Trimmings: yes
Gamma Correction: 110
Audio Processor Enable: Yes
Audio Processor Mute: No
Use absolute rom dir: no
Snes Action Buttons: yes
Battery Warning: 2.4V