Regen for Linux and Windows

[AamirM]

Hi,

These are the latest version of Regen for Linux and Windows. Changes of each are given below:

Windows

Version 0.85
--------------

Well, this release may not look much different from previous (0.77) one but beleive me there have been many many changes.
Two major emulation subsystems have been totally replaced with new ones . They are the timing and event system and the second
being the new YM2612 core. There were many betas released to make sure every game worked correctly and more accurately than ever.
Though its true that I haven't implemented some front-end related feature requests because I didn't wanted to delay this release
any longer. I am sorry for that.

* Totally rewrote timing code and implemented a new event system. I think this new code is very close to being 100% accurate.
Although Regen still emulates line-by-line this code will give results that can only be achieved by running the emulator cycle-by-cycle.
This code is not slow either. In fact, it may be *faster* than the previous code. This code is still in early stages but I thought
it was stable enough to released. Now why I did it? Especially since the previous system was already very mature.
Well the only *real* reason for me was that a user posted me a small demo program that will only run correctly if the timings of the
emulator were absolutely perfect. So, as you may have guessed, that it did not work correctly under Regen. But the interesting thing
is that it did not work correctly in Kega either. Fixing the demo broke many other games. But with this new system not only the demo
works correctly but also all the games work perfect (as far as I've tested). This new system has also fixed some games that
did not worked previously which include:
- Bram Stoker's Dracula
- Wheel of Fortune
It also fixes some of the glitches in games like Legends of Galahad, Nigel Mansell's World Championship Racing,
Striker, Deadly Moves (runs even better than Kega) and many more.
* Replaced MAME's FM core with my own YM2612 emulator which I had been working on for some time.
This is the reason this release took so long. It more accurate than MAME's core and very close to real thing.
Listen to Warlock, Ariel, Shaq Fu etc... for the difference. If a game still doesn't sound correctly
please reprot it.
* Changed 68k timings. This fixes Surging Aura.
* Sound in Pac-Man 2, The New Adventures (U) fixed. Maybe the first time for any Genesis emulator. I couldn't find
any other emu that runs it correctly.
* Corrected the behaviour of X-MEN 2 and Eternal Champions on reset.
* Fixed the PAR finally this time. All the codes will now work Regen that worked in Kega and real hardware.
* Added multi-language support to Regen menus. There are many languages available by default. Thanks to their
authors. See the respective language files for their names. You can create your own language file too.
See the readme for that. Please note that there won't be any check beside any selected language. That is
because I noticed the list changes on every run of Regen even if no new languages are installed. This creates
the problem of check appearing against wrong language. There are solutions to it but its just too much pain.
* Changed the drop list height in redefine keys dialog so that 6-button, Menacer, Sega Mouse options are visible.
People thought Regen didn't support them
* Regen will now correctly load Kega and Gens' created SRAM files.
* Now you can pause a game then press space for executing just one frame. Useful for taking precise screenshots.
* Fixed and improved the EEPROM support. All games that *did* have EEPROM originaly will run
correctly now.
* Fixed a small glitch in country sub menu.
* Multiple messages can now be displayed.
* Added a small program in "Fonts" directory to create fonts for the emulator text engine. Please note that it will
ask twice to select font. The first will be used when 'Superfast Rendering' or 'None' is selected. The second will
be used when a plugin is selected and is usually the same as the first one but nearly twice the size. I could do it
programmatically but I didn't because this way the user can tweak the sizes individually because the second font doesn't
appear to be exactly twice the size (little bigger) even the height is exactly the twice of the first one.
* AVI movie recording support. Don't ask for any other format please. Recording directory is same
as sound.
* Loading a game multiple times will create only one entry in the File History.
* Fixed FPS display being cut-off if in three or more digits in None plugin mode.
* Fixed some crashes especially when changing the sound rate.
* Many other internal changes.

Linux

Version 0.9
-----------

* First official Linux release. Previous was just a proof-of-concept
* Fixed Combat Cars two player mode screen.
* Optimized the YM2612 core resulting in big speed increase.
* Added SSG-EG support to the YM2612 core. Now some instruments in Shiru's and HardWareMan's TurboFM player are correct.
Alisia's Dragon (U) also seems to use this. All the information come totally from current MAME core so thanks to
Jarek Burczynski and Tatsuyuki Satoh.
* Optimized the VDP rendering code resulting in another good speed increase.
* Fixed sound in some Chinese games. GoodGen lists them unknown. But they look very nice.
* Fixed Time Killers and Onslaught lock-ups.
* Improved 6-button pad support a bit. Fixes controls in Mortal Kombat.
* DAC sound in Mega Turrican and some others fixed.
* Slightly changed the 68k timings. This removes the flickering in Zero the Kamikaze Squirrel.
* Changed VDP timings a bit. This fixes Streets of Rage intro not showing up.
* Improved region detection a bit.

Downloads

Linux Version

Some render plugins for Linux version

Windows Version (for Pentium3 and Athlons)

Windows Version (for Pentium4 and up)

EDIT:

For those who don't know, a dedicated Regen board is now located here. It is recommended that all Regen related things be discussed there from now on.

stay safe and enjoy,

AamirM

[tetsuo55]

thanks for this, i have a few questions:

1) is this an accuracy, speed or combination based emulator?
2) what language are you programming this in?
3) According to many emulator programmers multiprocessors will only slowdown emulation, why do you think it will speedup your emulator?


Forgot the rest

[mz]

Great emulator. The NTSC filter is amazing, by the way.

There are only a couple of things that I don't like right now:
- I can't load roms with the command line.
- Competitions in Dino Dini's Soccer don't work.

Keep up the good work.

[AamirM]

Hi,

@tetsuo55

1) I have tried to be as accurate as possible. Speed comes second.
2) C and x86 assembly.
3) I don't think so. What reasons do they give?

@mz

I have added those to my list to do in next release. Thanks for the feedback.

stay safe,

AamirM

[tetsuo55]

core synchronisation on CPU cores is extremely slow,, it would seem that this delay makes the code slower than calculating everthing in a single core (thats not to say you can't offload things like the ntsc filter)


EDIT:

Found a bug, once you enable the NTSC filter its impossible to change its settings

In a related question, where does Regen store its settings?

EDIT2:

Seems you have to reselect the NTSC filter setting each time you start Regen, very annoying.

Can i change the advanced settings somehow (im not used to seeing scanlines)

[AamirM]

core synchronisation on CPU cores is extremely slow,, it would seem that this delay makes the code slower than calculating everthing in a single core (thats not to say you can't offload things like the ntsc filter)

About the multithreading, the reason may be right but I don't do it on CPU level I do it on executing a frame and blitting concurrently.

EDIT:

Found a bug, once you enable the NTSC filter its impossible to change its settings

In a related question, where does Regen store its settings?

That is not a bug. It was meant to be this way. Although I can change it.
Regen stores its settings in the file "regen.ini"

EDIT2:

Seems you have to reselect the NTSC filter setting each time you start Regen, very annoying.

Can i change the advanced settings somehow (im not used to seeing scanlines)

Regen is compatible with Kega Fusion plugins so there are some limitation as to what you can do. Right now you can't change the settings(except by compiling the plugin's sources) but I will add that option in the next release.

stay safe,

AamirM

[tetsuo55]

thanks,

i decided to do a benchmark, so i download the most demanding games released for the genesis, i took the list from this site:

http://www.racketboy.com/retro/2006/02/ ... art-1.html

So i played all games except virtua racing, and to my pleasant surprise they all seem to work, everything looks accurate to my noob eyes, but i do not have a genesis flashcart to verify.

the only issue i found so far is that some layers have tearing, and some effects look a bit wierd, but that could be limitation of the system

The unfiltered screenshot function just gives me black screens, and filtered has a bunch of black around the screenshot

Also you change the default format to PNG? its opensource and lossless

[AamirM]

thanks,

i decided to do a benchmark, so i download the most demanding games released for the genesis, i took the list from this site:

http://www.racketboy.com/retro/2006/02/ ... art-1.html

So i played all games except virtua racing, and to my pleasant surprise they all seem to work, everything looks accurate to my noob eyes, but i do not have a genesis flashcart to verify.

the only issue i found so far is that some layers have tearing, and some effects look a bit wierd, but that could be limitation of the system

Hi,

You can also run Virtua Racing since the emu supports SVP chip. Could you please tell in which games you found the problems?

Thanks for the feedback.

stay safe,

AamirM

[tetsuo55]

Lol

the emulator loaded the "readme" that was in the zipfile instead of the virtua racer rom

Anyway, it seems to work fine, i have nothing to report so far, but again, i cannot compare against the real thing, working by memory only at the moment

[AamirM]

Lol

the emulator loaded the "readme" that was in the zipfile instead of the virtua racer rom

Anyway, it seems to work fine, i have nothing to report so far, but again, i cannot compare against the real thing, working by memory only at the moment

You must extract it somwhere to run it correctly. Also it cannot load the readme file. You must have accidently drag-dropped it in the main emu window.

EDIT:

Also the emu will load the first file if you are using zipped roms.

[tetsuo55]

EDIT:

Also the emu will load the first file if you are using zipped roms.

thats exactly what happened:

[tetsuo55]

i had another idea, current your emulator looks and feels exactly like any other genesis emulator


Maybe you could remove some of the options and select the best defaults, then move the advanced config stuff to the ini file

Also it might be more intuitive to specify the target machine, jap/usa/pal in the load rom screen

sorry if i come over harsh or snes emulator biased (big fan of byuu's approach)

[byuu]

1) is this an accuracy, speed or combination based emulator?

My apologies if this post seems harsh. I respect the work you're doing, AamirM, and your emulator looks really good.

It uses a modified version of Karl Stenerud's Musashi 68k core, Neil Bradley's Z80 core, and Tatsuyuki Satoh's YM2612 core. And is ironically closed source, despite relying upon the work of so many others. Aside from the VDP (w/PSG), which is very complex in its own right, I'm not sure what else is left to emulate any differently than has already been done in the past (perhaps he has improved upon these cores for his own emulator ...?)

But so long as the above three cores are highly accurate (I know for certain that the Musashi core is far better than Corlett's Starscream core), it should prove to be a very decent emulator.

The readme also indicates that he is working on his own 68k and Z80 cores, which sounds very promising.

[mudlord]

I believe what I am about to say might cause a flame war or instill hatred against me because of my philosophies, but heck, I'll ask anyway:

But so long as the above three cores are highly accurate (I know for certain that the Musashi core is far better than Corlett's Starscream core), it should prove to be a very decent emulator.

Does it matter what sort of core it uses, as long as its accurate? Do you see cycle accuracy as the ONLY way to achieving what you call "decent" emulation? Or to that end, any emulator that DOESN'T follow these philosophies is NOT a decent emulator? I would honestly like to hear where you stand, as I personally believe its a developer's choice, and whatever the choice they make is fine, since its thier software, and I feel there is no right or wrong way to emulate. And discriminating solely on the style of emulation I think is completely wrong.

Sorry too for sounding extremely harsh, but this is a issue I feel strongly about, since I think its not fair judging emulators solely on the technical style in how they emulate things, whether its by cycle or by opcode.

[AamirM]

Hi,

@byuu

I used Musashi and MZ-80 just to test whether my VDP code and renderer does work. I do have nearly completed my 68k and Z80 cores but since there were some problems I decided not to integrate them right now. I did have the option of doing cycle accuracy and using MAME's much more accurate Z80 core but it was slowing down the emulator heavily and the speed gain was far outweighing the accuracy gains. In fact, the first few versions of the emu did used that option but I came to realize that not everyone has the luxury of owning the latest CPUs. So I went for the speed there. I hope I fix the problems with my CPU cores and integrate them as soon as possible. I also have modified the FM cores to be more accurate. About it being closed source, well, I may actually release the sources when I think I am done with it (just like Gens).

stay safe,

AamirM

[Boozle061083]

Does it matter what sort of core it uses, as long as its accurate? Do you see cycle accuracy as the ONLY way to achieving what you call "decent" emulation? Or to that end, any emulator that DOESN'T follow these philosophies is NOT a decent emulator? I would honestly like to hear where you stand, as I personally believe its a developer's choice, and whatever the choice they make is fine, since its thier software, and I feel there is no right or wrong way to emulate. And discriminating solely on the style of emulation I think is completely wrong.

Sorry too for sounding extremely harsh, but this is a issue I feel strongly about, since I think its not fair judging emulators solely on the technical style in how they emulate things, whether its by cycle or by opcode.

Well yes actually it does to some people and for different reasons. Some people play emulators to play their games on in place of real hardware. Whether it be to recapture some of their youth with games they grew up on or to play games for systems they never owned. Then there are the people that use emulation to study and document a system to see and preserve how it worked once the original hardware is gone. Thus is the goal of the MAME team and so is the goal of these emulators.

I always try to decide what category each emulator I try out fits into. Some fall into the "it's for games" category and some fall into the "it's for documentation" category. It really is up to the end user to decide which is best for them but sadly a lot of people look for one type and get the other then decide "X emulator sucks!" which is unfortunate. I personally prefer emulators that emulate on a CPU level because I am a purist. That is why I won't buy those awful TV GAMES lol. But this is just my opinion and if someone else wants to emulate a system to gain maximum speed and also add "improvements" like RockNES that fixes the scrolling in SMB3 then so be it. I agree with you that it is up to the devs HOW they want to emulate but it needs to be clear WHO they are aiming their project for. Can't have it both ways. Can't be the fastest and most accurate I'm afraid.

[mudlord]

Can't have it both ways. Can't be the fastest and most accurate I'm afraid.

Not to deviate too far off AamirM's topic, but I daresay there is some emulators that do try to aim for both. That is, they aim for high accuracy, AND be fast. I know blargg's QuickNES is one example. Its cycle accurate, and its very fast. Nestopia is quite feature rich, as well as being optimized and cycle accurate too.

I'm glad though I met someone shares my opinion, as I really don't wanna cause flamewars over something silly as debating over the opinions of how to approach emulation, as that is a choice the developer makes in the end, and end users then don't really have a say in it.

That said, I am loving Regen so far, and Ill keep you AamirM posted if I find issues.

[AamirM]

Can't be the fastest and most accurate I'm afraid.

Well, Kega has done both. As I said above, the emulator could have been a little bit more accurate but that would sacrifice speed very heavily. I am upto a point where I am rewriting some parts in asm in order to compensate for the accuracy gains.

[tetsuo55]

You can be fastest and most accurate emulator if there is no competition in either or both fields

However a emulator that focuses fully on accuracy will by definition be slow.

i am glad to hear that you are going to replace the cores along the way with your own fast but accurate versions.

Although i secretly hope you get sucked into the accuracy trap and decide to do an as accurate as possible emulator (you'll find ways to speed things up along the way)

On this note, how accurate is genesis emulation anyway? as far as i know every emulator emulates every game (besides a few copyprotected unlicended ones) just like the real thing, could it be that there are loads and loads of hacks in the core's to make sure everything works??

[byuu]

Does it matter what sort of core it uses, as long as its accurate? Do you see cycle accuracy as the ONLY way to achieving what you call "decent" emulation? Or to that end, any emulator that DOESN'T follow these philosophies is NOT a decent emulator?

You misunderstood, I was mainly commenting on the fact that it's currently mostly comprised of others' CPU cores, so judging accuracy against other emulators that are also mostly built upon these cores is kind of silly. It's like comparing a Geo Metro to a Chevy Metro. Same car, different name.
I clarified by stating that he has his own VDP core, and he's working on his own CPU cores, which sound very interesting. I certainly don't have a problem with the "get something working now, work on extending that later" approach. I use blargg's S-DSP emulator core, myself.

But while we're on the subject ... someone was asking how accurate this emulator was, and I mentioned that even though it was using existing cores, Musashi still trumps Starscream in that category. If someone asked how fast this emulator was, I would've stated that Starscream was far better, but much less portable, than Musashi.

As far as what's a better approach? It depends on what you want, really. Neither is better than the other.

For general purpose gaming on the SNES for instance, I have and still recommend SNESGT. Or ZSNES / Snes9X for open source purists, myself somewhat included. I use all of them, honestly.

As far as opcode vs cycle accuracy, again it depends on what you want. If it's any consolation to you, I honestly think cycle accuracy on any chip clocked higher than 20-40MHz would be foolish. I'm very well aware I'm pushing it at even 3.58MHz, but a dozen or so games really are affected by that.

I believe accuracy should go as far as to require a top-of-the-line CPU, or to get 100% of known games playable with zero hacks and zero known bugs; whichever you reach first. After that, it's all theoretical. And yes, that's what I work on, the theoretical. Because that interests me more than gaming. But I accept I am in the vast minority here, and that's fine by me.

About it being closed source, well, I may actually release the sources when I think I am done with it Very Happy (just like Gens).

Awesome, very glad to hear that! :D
Thank you for clarifying.

I did have the option of doing cycle accuracy and using MAME's much more accurate Z80 core but it was slowing down the emulator heavily and the speed gain was far outweighing the accuracy gains. In fact, the first few versions of the emu did used that option but I came to realize that not everyone has the luxury of owning the latest CPUs. So I went for the speed there.

Well, as far as CPU power, I don't know. Do the latest PC games cater to Pentium III holdouts? I don't see much point in delaying progress. Those with older PCs have older emulators that work just fine. When you intentionally hold yours back, you're just creating more of the same. And I can tell you, history does not shine favorably on the likes of NESticle and UltraHLE.

I can see your side too, though. Having a much larger potential userbase is very important for bug tracking and moral support. And the extra speed gives you a lot of room for really neat features such as live rewind and SVP support.

Can't be the fastest and most accurate I'm afraid.

I completely agree with this. Everyone likes to state that accuracy and speed are unrelated. I don't buy that. To a small extent, maybe. But on the large scale? No way. Not in a million years will you get LLE N64 emulation as fast as UltraHLE. I don't care how good of a programmer you are.

Now, you can still be reasonably fast and accurate, sure. The problem is, faster typically means rewriting in assmebler, and adding complicated speed tricks (tile caching, prediction, timestamped queues, etc etc), which make accuracy that much harder. Yes, it can be done. Marty is proof of that. But it takes a much, much better programmer to do it. And Nestopia still doesn't hold a candle to NESticle in terms of speed.

Well, Kega has done both. As I said above, the emulator could have been a little bit more accurate but that would sacrifice speed very heavily.

I always hear that Kega is really accurate, yet I've never seen any of Kega's source, nor heard of Steve Snake's emulation methods. Has he stated on the record in detail anywhere how his model works?

Not doubting you, just curious. You would obviously know a lot more about Genesis emulation than I.

[mudlord]

You misunderstood, I was mainly commenting on the fact that it's currently mostly comprised of others' CPU cores, so judging accuracy against other emulators that are also mostly built upon these cores is kind of silly. It's like comparing a Geo Metro to a Chevy Metro. Same car, different name.
I clarified by stating that he has his own VDP core, and he's working on his own CPU cores, which sound very interesting. I certainly don't have a problem with the "get something working now, work on extending that later" approach. I use blargg's S-DSP emulator core, myself.

But while we're on the subject ... someone was asking how accurate this emulator was, and I mentioned that even though it was using existing cores, Musashi still trumps Starscream in that category. If someone asked how fast this emulator was, I would've stated that Starscream was far better, but much less portable, than Musashi.

As far as what's a better approach? It depends on what you want, really. Neither is better than the other.

For general purpose gaming on the SNES for instance, I have and still recommend SNESGT. Or ZSNES / Snes9X for open source purists, myself somewhat included. I use all of them, honestly.

As far as opcode vs cycle accuracy, again it depends on what you want. If it's any consolation to you, I honestly think cycle accuracy on any chip clocked higher than 20-40MHz would be foolish. I'm very well aware I'm pushing it at even 3.58MHz, but a dozen or so games really are affected by that.

I believe accuracy should go as far as to require a top-of-the-line CPU, or to get 100% of known games playable with zero hacks and zero known bugs; whichever you reach first. After that, it's all theoretical. And yes, that's what I work on, the theoretical. Because that interests me more than gaming. But I accept I am in the vast minority here, and that's fine by me.

Hehhe, sounds reasonable . I apologize for misunderstanding though, as I was under the impression that in your answer you were comparing things. I'm very happy its not the case, as I generally dislike when unfair comparisons are made in regards to how people emulate. As, like you said, there are different motivations in how to go about a task.

[neo_bahamut1985]

I can't believe how accurate this emulator is! Way to go!

Edit 4:49PM - The link doesn't let me save it as ".zip" but as "file" and is not a real usable file. What the crap!?

Edit 4:52PM - Uh...seems you have to add ".zip" when you save it to the HDD....weird...but it works.

[Boozle061083]

Not to deviate too far off AamirM's topic, but I daresay there is some emulators that do try to aim for both. That is, they aim for high accuracy, AND be fast. I know blargg's QuickNES is one example. Its cycle accurate, and its very fast. Nestopia is quite feature rich, as well as being optimized and cycle accurate too.

Yeah I'm not trying to hijack AamirM's thread so this will be my last post on the matter but yeah you got me there. I use Nestopia because of the cycle accurate emulation and amazing features and have never had an issue. I guess I just get tired of so many emulators trying to be "everything to everyone" and fail at it.

that is a choice the developer makes in the end, and end users then don't really have a say in it.

Yeah it never ceases to anger me when people that couldn't set a VCR clock make all these wild suggestions for features or complain about different things wrong with any given emulator. I may not be a programmer myself but I know how much hard work goes into a project like this and only offer suggestions when asked.

Do the latest PC games cater to Pentium III holdouts?

Well that is a different beast all together. Latest games on PC are trying to raise the bar into the future (Crysis) when emulators are made to "emulate" for lack of a better word, obsolete hardware many times less powerful than itself (NES).

you can still be reasonably fast and accurate

Just as you said, it takes a superstar programmer with a very intimate knowledge of the limitations and strong points of a system to gain both speed and accuracy. Many people can probably build a car to look just like a Lamborghini, but it takes someone who knows the car inside and out to replicate how it really works and get the same speed from it. Poor example I know but I love cars

Well, Kega has done both. As I said above, the emulator could have been a little bit more accurate but that would sacrifice speed very heavily.

There is nothing wrong with having an emulator geared towards speed as long as that is your goal of the project I feel. As it stands right now just having a Genesis emu that can run Virtua Racing with NTSC filters at full speed is something no matter by what means.

That said, I am loving Regen so far.

Yeah AamirM great work! I saw your post over on Eidolon's Inn and was really pleased to see such a new emulator have NTSC and SVP support. Kega and Gens don't even do that yet I'll be following this emu closely.

[AamirM]

Hi,

Thank you all for all the nice feedback. I do like these kinds of discussions.

I would like to make one thing very clear and that is I have *not used* any game specific hacks to increase compatibilty or to make it accurate. Also I would like to tell that I have tried to increase the speed by optimizing things that have no relation to the core emulation(Superfast blitting option is one such example).

I have put accuracy above everything else. Speed comes third on my list. Accuracy hasn't been sacrificed in any way. But I have definitely tried to aim for both the speed and accuracy and not just one. Although majority might not agree but I think it is quite possible.

stay safe,

AamirM

[tetsuo55]

thanks, i would be willing to do a bughunt when you feel your emulation is mature enough, so far it seems perfect, but you are not using your own core's yet.

Does anyone else here van a genesis flash cart? i can only test the handfull of original carts i have at home