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| June Snes9X Update |
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Almost there...
I'm getting very close to requiring beta-testers for the new NetPlay feature - it basically will allow up to five people running five copies of Snes9x on different machines to play simultaneously over a TCP/IP lan, or direct modem connection, or Internet connection or, in fact any connection that Windows supports TCP/IP over - although whether a game will be actually playable over the Internet will be down to local ping times...
I've been using Bomberman 5 as my main test ROM - it allows five simultaneous players and its very sensitive to Snes9x NetPlay sessions getting out of sync: it spins a random number generator each frame and uses it to build random screen layouts; one dropped frame and the Snes9x NetPlay sessions are looking at different screen layouts!
I'm beginning to wish I'd never started adding NetPlay - its been a nightmare. Part of the problem is me not having access to a network for 99% of the time while developing the code and the remainder is due to the implementation I've chosen...
I've tried to be clever - most implementations of network game-play just send a joypad update message to another session and then block, waiting for an update message from the other session. This has three problems: it slows down all sessions to the speed of the slowest machine, it only allows two players and it makes no attempt to hide network delays, probably making Internet game-play impossible.
My implementation is different, though not original. One Snes9x session acts as a server and sends out heartbeat and joypad information messages to Snes9x clients. A separate thread in the client sessions queues up heartbeat messages and then the emulation thread uses these to act as a speed regulator, skipping the rendering frames when its falling behind or sleeping when its caught up. Once each frame the client sessions send joypad state information back to the server. The major advantage here is that the server doesn't have to wait until all clients have received a heartbeat message, emulated a frame then reported back their current joypad states.
If you're interested in becoming a beta-tester for the network game-play, post a message on the Snes9x message board (http://www.snes9x.com/forum.asp) - I'll note down names and e-mail addresses and contact people when I'm ready. Please mention how you intended to try out the feature, e.g. direct modem connection to another machine, local lan, etc. so I can choose equal numbers of each.
Gary, 15-6-2000 08:41:00 |
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| May Snes9x Update |
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Three months now, and still no release...
Business trips, home DIY, being very busy at work and the final killer, now having a DVD drive on my notebook computer so I can watch movies on the way to and from work, have all combined to make Snes9x development a bit slow of late.
Anti Resonance converted his SPCTool asm sound emulation code to MASM and can now generate coff format object files, that with a bit of fiddling and format conversion, can be used in Linux - my main emulation development platform. I've been trying to get his code working in Snes9x for the past few weeks now, with some success, but its still far too buggy to be released.
Even when I do get his code integrated and working 100%, there are speed issues to resolve - my C code version is actually faster at the moment due to speed hacks and no cycle count conversion being required - and there are freeze file backwards compatibility problems to fix. So, for the moment, I've put SPCTool SPC700 and sound DSP code integration on hold for the second time and its back to Netplay...
...I'm happy with the protocol now, much more stream-lined than the previous version and now has options to send ROM images, freeze files, S-RAM data, etc. to remote players. Just a few getting out of sync problems to investigate and fix. I'm still stuck with what to do with the GUI though.
Sending S-RAM or freeze file data to several remote Snes9x sessions over the Internet is not going to be quick, what I need is a progress bar so you can see how far its got and possibly a cancel button to give up waiting if its taking too long. My problem is that the Snes9x Windows GUI is built using Borland's C++ Builder and it generates dialogs where I loose control of the application's main loop while the dialog is on screen; not what I want.
I was considering investigating how to access Windows' low-level API, but that sounds like a lot of hard work. An easier solution would be to use Micro$oft's foundation classes but that would bloat the size of the Snes9x .exe and have possible compatibility problems with Borland. The ideal solution would be to ditch Borland altogether and just use M$ stuff but I suspect rewriting the GUI might take me a month or two given the amount of time I have to work on Snes9x. Any other suggestions anyone?
Oh, almost forgot to mention, I now have access to a Voodoo 3 card so you can be sure the next Snes9x release will have no problems with newer Voodoo cards. Also, Lindsey Dubb has submitted some bi-linear filtering code for the mode 7 scaling and rotation effects; for people with faster machines it smoothes jagged lines and generally makes the image nicer to look at.
Gary, 19-5-2000 06:44:00 |
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| I never thought it possible.... |
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| We've finally moved servers, although not all the hosted sites have been transfered, the biggest site has been... And that's Snes9x... What you "users" should notice is faster response time, since the server is something like twice as fast and has triple the memory...
Jerremy, 16-5-2000 17:40:00 |
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| Broken download fixed... |
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It seemed that the archive of the Windows port was broken... For some reason it was 0 bytes in size... No idea how it happend, I know that it's now fixed again... Reuploaded a correct version, so if you had problems downloading the windows port, then try it again... It's back up =)
Btw, if this happens again, it might be better to email me instead of Gary... (Or better yet, mail us both !)
Jerremy, 8-5-2000 10:44:00 |
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| Moving server + subsites |
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| I am currently moving the server and subsites, although this may take a few days to complete, the site may react even slower then usual and some hosted sites have reported that they can't update their site anymore... It's being worked on...
Jerremy, 7-5-2000 04:58:00 |
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Go back in time
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