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| April's Snes9x Update |
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Two months now, and still no release...
Anti Resonance has very kindly rewritten large parts of his super-fast SPC700 and sound DSP assembler emulation code to make it 32-bit friendly, the code works fine for him but I'm having all sorts of problems. Some games work, then hang, others appear to work but remain completely silent, the remainder hang at start up. My guess is that his code only ever has to work in preinitialised environment in SPC Tool, but in Snes9x the boot-strap and inter-CPU comm. ports come into play, so the that's likely where the problem(s) must be.
To add to my problems, Anti's code is written using a TASM assembler, something I don't have and isn't free. At the moment I can't even make changes to his code to help debug the problem, so I'm forced the link in .obj files e-mailed to me by the author. Since they are .obj files, I can't even use them in the Linux port and its only the Linux port that has all my SNES debug code built-in.
Three weeks on and I'm still nowhere near getting the code to a releasable state. I'm going to have to bite-the-bullet and convert the source code to NASM format, then I'll be able to build the source on Linux, Windows and DOS. I can then make changes and debug it much more easily under Linux. Since the whole process is likely to take a few more weeks, I've put it on hold for the moment and switched back to working on netplay...
...I've changed the protocol again on netplay, trying to reduce the amount of information that has to be sent between machines during normal game play, especially useful if the people you're playing against are at the far end of a slow modem link. I've also added sequence numbers to make the protocol more robust.
If you're on a local area network, or have a cable modem, I've added an option to send ROM images from the server session to the other players. Other options include send freeze files and sync all players using a freeze file.
Although netplay is working, its far too easy for two or more Snes9x sessions to get out of sync at the moment. For example, if you drag or resize the Snes9x window, DirectX blocks access to the screen for the duration and the emulation pauses, but the server session continues to send out heartbeat messages which other Snes9x sessions receive and continue playing. What needs to happen is that the netplay client thread needs to spot when DirectX has blocked the main emulation thread and send a pause message to the server. Similarly, when a menu or dialog box is visible, or when the player attempts to load up a new ROM or freeze file, again the server needs to be informed.
I'm on vacation for a week from the 10th April, so its looking like the release date for netplay won't be until the end of April/early May.
Gary, 4-4-2000 05:20:00 |
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| Snes9X Update |
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Over a month with no new release, but I've been busy...
Spent over a week trying out a new sample decompression routine from Anti Resonance, the SPC Tool author. This routine finally allows the wind sound effects in Chrono Trigger and FF3 to be emulated more or less 100% correctly. The bad news is that the routine causes sample glitches on a few other games I tested so it might have to be switchable.
Still relating to SPC Tool, Anti Resonance has offered, well, actually, I asked, if his SPC700 and sound DSP assembler emulations could be included in Snes9x - after all, he did user Snes9x source code as a reference - and he said yes! I would of had o rewrite them in asm anyway, one day, but I'm sure Anti's code would be a lot better and faster than mine. The catch is that SPC Tool code is 16-bit and Snes9x is a 32-bit app. But fear-not, Anti is currently converting his code to 32-bit as I type.
Network game-play (both local network and Internet) on the Windows port is progressing; no GUI yet, but several rewrites later and I can now play multi-player games between machines on my mini-network at home. There are some Windows threading issues I still have to look into - basically if Snes9x can't hit 100% frame rate, the main emulation thread seems to steal all available CPU time from network client and/or server threads and emulation speed doesn't remain constant. Also, I need to improve the protocol: slim-line it some more, otherwise just two people playing will saturate a modem connection, and add additional messages; but its getting there.
On another speed related issue, I found a nasty problem with the auto-frame skip code in the Windows port - if Snes9x couldn't hit 100% frame rate rendering, the auto-frame skip code made it skip even more frames, 16 out of 17 times you ran Snes9x! Whoops! The few Super FX and SA-1 games which weren't fun to play on my 266MHz notebook computer due to speed, are now very playable.
Oh, and I'm hot on the trail of the Voodoo 3 problems people are having, well, I have a theory, at least.
Gary, 28-2-2000 11:41:00 |
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| E-Mail |
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| Well, now the server is running again, but email is down... It has to do with the MX record of our DNS zone, but I'm not super with DNS records... Anyways, it looks like email send to any @snes9x.com address just won't reach the server =( I'll probably fix it tonight... The new server has arrived in canada though and is ready for installation, add 1 1/2 weeks and it'll be up and running, Dual P2-400 of pure POWER !!!! =)
Jerremy, 23-2-2000 22:44:00 |
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| No fun... |
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| Finally the server is running like a charm, the DNS servers are acting up ! The DNS servers have been down since the 15th... Were now switching DNS (again), this time (hopefully) for good... If you read this message, you either went directly to the correct IP number (209.35.126.38) or the DNS server change has kicked in... I wonder if I can sue the people where I rented DNS 'space'...
Jerremy, 17-2-2000 00:19:00 |
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| Server down... |
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| Some of you might have noticed that the server was down almost all day yesterday. Well, if your reading this you can assume it's working again =) Currently we are having some problems with the server that crashes quite a lot... We are working on a fix for this, which is actually a new server which should be online in about 3 weeks... (give or take a week) So bare with us =)
Jerremy, 8-2-2000 22:37:00 |
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Go back in time
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