Regen for Linux and Windows

King Of Chaos · Post by **King Of Chaos** » Thu Mar 13, 2008 5:37 pm

Sure. Here, I zipped up all of my cheat files for Kega...

http://rapidshare.com/files/99260895/Cheats.zip.html

Dullaron · Post by **Dullaron** » Fri Mar 14, 2008 12:05 am

Thanks once again King Of Chaos.

AamirM · Post by **AamirM** » Fri Mar 14, 2008 8:03 am

King Of Chaos wrote:Sure. Here, I zipped up all of my cheat files for Kega...

http://rapidshare.com/files/99260895/Cheats.zip.html

Hi,

Thank you very much for the cheats. I wrote a small program to convert them to Regen cheat format you can get it from here. And the converted cheats from here.

stay safe,

AamirM

AamirM · Post by **AamirM** » Fri Mar 14, 2008 8:08 am

Hi,

I have uploaded the linux version. Tell me how it goes.

stay safe,

AamirM

DancemasterGlenn · Post by **DancemasterGlenn** » Fri Mar 14, 2008 9:01 am

The linux version works! Woo! Thanks very much for uploading it, it's very exciting to see it in action. Just a few comments/questions:

- Since it's just the one file, what can I edit to change settings? There doesn't seem to be a config file, and there's no gui yet, so I'm still a bit stumped at the moment.
- Is a gui for the linux version a possibility in the future? I can live without them with a really good config file, but as most people on the forum know, I'm a sucker for a nice gui. Just curious.
- I am experiencing a fair amount of choppiness, but that may just be that the emulator is quite taxing. My computer isn't that slow, though. I'm sure if there are optimizations to be made, you're already at work on them.

Honestly, the best part is seeing it run at all. Thanks again for uploading this, I hope you'll continue to update it alongside the windows version.

AamirM · Post by **AamirM** » Fri Mar 14, 2008 10:14 am

DancemasterGlenn wrote:The linux version works! Woo! Thanks very much for uploading it, it's very exciting to see it in action. Just a few comments/questions:

- Since it's just the one file, what can I edit to change settings? There doesn't seem to be a config file, and there's no gui yet, so I'm still a bit stumped at the moment.
- Is a gui for the linux version a possibility in the future? I can live without them with a really good config file, but as most people on the forum know, I'm a sucker for a nice gui. Just curious.
- I am experiencing a fair amount of choppiness, but that may just be that the emulator is quite taxing. My computer isn't that slow, though. I'm sure if there are optimizations to be made, you're already at work on them.

Honestly, the best part is seeing it run at all. Thanks again for uploading this, I hope you'll continue to update it alongside the windows version.

Hi,

There is no feature to change the configuration settings right now. Since I use Windows' API for the loading/saving config file, I am writing code to replicate those functions in Linux. Also, it is just the emulator's backend core running on SDL. I just wanted to see if it worked. I will be adding many features that are in Windows version to the Linux version soon(including special linux-only video plugin system). About the GUI, honestly I am also a sucker for a gui so thats a real possibility. I am still learning to use wxWidgets so it may not happen immediatly.

About the choppiness problem, did you noticed it in video or sound or both?

stay safe,

AamirM

neo_bahamut1985 · Post by **neo_bahamut1985** » Fri Mar 14, 2008 2:08 pm

A little bug with the controls (in all games, regardless if I use a keyboard or not) is that I can only use up, down, left and right. Directional combos, such as up left, up right, down left and down right can't be used (thus making games like Sparkster nearly impossible to play). It's just a little request but hey, don't get me wrong, other than this directional arrow issue, this emulator's freakin' awesome!

AamirM · Post by **AamirM** » Fri Mar 14, 2008 2:37 pm

neo_bahamut1985 wrote:A little bug with the controls (in all games, regardless if I use a keyboard or not) is that I can only use up, down, left and right. Directional combos, such as up left, up right, down left and down right can't be used (thus making games like Sparkster nearly impossible to play). It's just a little request but hey, don't get me wrong, other than this directional arrow issue, this emulator's freakin' awesome!

Have you set High priority option?

EDIT:

Just played Sparkster (with keyboard), it works fine here. I will look into your problem.

AamirM · Post by **AamirM** » Fri Mar 14, 2008 3:51 pm

King Of Chaos wrote:I'm going to keep track of bugs and issues people have noticed in this post. If you find anything, please post it here and I'll edit this post.

Emulator issues & bugs noticed (updated for the current Regen v0.5):

-Playing sounds in the sound test in Sonic 2 can cause the emulator to lock up or crash the emulator.
-Loading another game past Virtua Racing causes the graphics to be messed up.
-Using key direction combinations (on a gamepad) like up+left/up+right/down+left/down+right causes the main directions to not respond until a couple presses.
-Using the Quick Load State feature can sometimes crash the emulator.
-Once a cheat is enabled, you can't change the state if it's a multi-option cheat. (e.g. Sonic 1 chaos emerald modifier, can't change from Six to Five, always goes back to Six).
-Using the taskbar button for Regen doesn't autopause gameplay. It keeps on playing minimized (at least when using Windows Vista).
-Trying to load Ultimate Mortal Kombat Trilogy (downloaded from here) crashes the emulator because of it's large 10MB size.
-Loading another game from history when Virtua Racing is loading causes the emulator to crash.
-Savestates don't work with Virtua Racing.

Non-working games:

-Super Street Fighter II (red screen of death).

Hi,

Could you please update it ?

stay safe,

AamirM

DancemasterGlenn · Post by **DancemasterGlenn** » Fri Mar 14, 2008 4:14 pm

Nice! Glad to hear there will probably be an eventual gui. Definitely take your time on that, I'm not the type to scream at people to work faster on something just on my account. I know it'll be done when it's done. Glad to hear you're interested in it too, though.

Also, the slowdown problem seems to have completely disappeared. Very strange. It may have had something to do with whatever I was multitasking with last night... but since I can't remember specifically what for the life of me, I couldn't tell you at this point. But anyway, the important thing is that the problem seems to be gone, and if it comes back I'll be sure to note the circumstance.

Thanks again AamirM!

King Of Chaos · Post by **King Of Chaos** » Fri Mar 14, 2008 5:30 pm

Haha, the cheat converter works.

I'll update the bug list in a couple minutes.

About the directionals problem (up+left, up+right), this exists in the Windows version too. Gens/Gens32 has the same issue, but Gens+ doesn't since there's support for it that variant.

EDIT: Updated the bug tracker list here.

King Of Chaos · Post by **King Of Chaos** » Fri Mar 14, 2008 6:11 pm

Found a "new" issue that does can cause some new games to become unplayable.

Since direction combinations like up+left and left+down aren't supported, you can't crouch and crawl in World Of Illusion for example and in other games requiring this, potentially making the games unplayable past a certain point or unplayable all together.

AamirM · Post by **AamirM** » Fri Mar 14, 2008 6:55 pm

King Of Chaos wrote:Found a "new" issue that does can cause some new games to become unplayable.

Since direction combinations like up+left and left+down aren't supported, you can't crouch and crawl in World Of Illusion for example and in other games requiring this, potentially making the games unplayable past a certain point or unplayable all together.

I really did not expect it to happen in linux. I thought it was DirectX problem.

EDIT:

Another problem is that I cannot reproduce it.

King Of Chaos · Post by **King Of Chaos** » Fri Mar 14, 2008 7:11 pm

Yea, I suspect you'd need a gamepad to do it, unless you can press left+down at the same time on a keyboard.

Now, possibly found something else. The boss fight in Castle Of Illusion doesn't sound like the real hardware.

AamirM · Post by **AamirM** » Fri Mar 14, 2008 7:18 pm

King Of Chaos wrote:Yea, I suspect you'd need a gamepad to do it, unless you can press left+down at the same time on a keyboard.

Now, possibly found something else. The boss fight in Castle Of Illusion doesn't sound like the real hardware.

On keyboard it works fine. I will have to get a gamepad.

The sound problems are a bit difficult to track down. I have been thinking of writing my own YM2612 core but I lack knowledge in that area. Only if there was a way to use Kega's FM core using DLL

.

neo_bahamut1985 · Post by **neo_bahamut1985** » Fri Mar 14, 2008 9:27 pm

The controller bug is also noticeable in Earthworm Jim (when you climb up conveyor belts in the first level; you can't go up left, etc). But what would setting it to "high priority" do? Doesn't that just crash the emulator...?

Deathlike2 · Post by **Deathlike2** » Fri Mar 14, 2008 9:30 pm

Increasing CPU priority can increase application response to input. However, the OS and other background apps may not respond as well as they could.

AamirM · Post by **AamirM** » Sat Mar 15, 2008 9:24 am

Hi,

I have uploaded a Regen beta to fix the controller issues. You can get it from here. Do tell me if it fixes the problem.

neo_bahamut1985 · Post by **neo_bahamut1985** » Sat Mar 15, 2008 1:57 pm

Hey, thanks! Congrats, man, you fixed the controller issues!

AamirM · Post by **AamirM** » Sat Mar 15, 2008 3:45 pm

neo_bahamut1985 wrote:Hey, thanks! Congrats, man, you fixed the controller issues!

Glad to hear it. But will have to wait for some more input on this. Anyways here is a short list of more things present in this beta

* Fixed a problem in sprite masking code. Fixes sprites in Castle of Illsions appearing above the window plane.
* Fixed sprite problems in Contra Hardcops.
* Added preliminary FIFO and its timing (VDP write latency) emulation. Menu in Double Clutch is now correct (but flickers)
and The Chaos Engine runs perfect (no flickering on scroll). It was reported by Eke and he also helped in fixing it. Thanks.
* Fixed corrupted games when loaded after Virtua Racing.
* Added 7zip support.
* Rewrote major part of DirectInput code to fix some controller issues.
* Selecting a window size now has a little check by the selection.
* Fixed buzzing sounds when disabling sound mid-game.
* Netplay option has been disabled in this release because it was way too buggy.

King Of Chaos · Post by **King Of Chaos** » Sat Mar 15, 2008 4:13 pm

Yep, controller issues are now GONE.

I can confirm the combinations work now on a gamepad.

EDIT: PAR is still hit and miss though. Load up Mighty Morphin Power Rangers (U) [!] and the cheat file and see what it's doing. For example the code for max special bar FFD082:0036 needs the offsets modified to FFD082:FFFF to work. I think this is causing a lot of codes for a lot of games to not work, as you have to change the values. Another example is the code for infinite health FFD080:0060 no matter what I change the value to, it appears as low health, not high health.

And still, some code addresses that end with 1 or an odd number need to be modified back to work.

I'll ask somebody about this, and get an answer once and for all.

AamirM · Post by **AamirM** » Sat Mar 15, 2008 5:31 pm

I did try to implement PAR as you told earlier but then it didn't work at all. I will give some more try to make it work. Give some few example codes to work with.

King Of Chaos · Post by **King Of Chaos** » Sat Mar 15, 2008 5:42 pm

Done. Here's my Kega codelist for Mighty Morphin Power Rangers (U) [!]...

FFC110:0099 Infinite Time
FFD080:0060 Infinite Health P1
FFD200:0060 Infinite Health P2
FFD082:0036 Max Special Bar P1
FFD089:00FC P1 Can't Be Hit
FFA001:0030 P1 Character Modifier (Cyclopsis)
FFA001:0038 P1 Character Modifier (Cyclopsis v1)
FFA001:0000 P1 Character Modifier (Megazord)
FFA001:0004 P1 Character Modifier (Dragonzord)
FFA001:0008 P1 Character Modifier (Red Ranger)
FFA001:000C P1 Character Modifier (Black Ranger)
FFA001:0019 P1 Character Modifier (Blue Ranger)
FFA001:0014 P1 Character Modifier (Pink Ranger)
FFA001:0018 P1 Character Modifier (Yellow Ranger)
FFA001:001C P1 Character Modifier (Green Ranger)
FFA001:0028 P1 Character Modifier (Evil Dragonzord)
FFA001:0034 P1 Character Modifier (Evil Green Ranger)
FFA001:002C P1 Character Modifier (Goldar)
FFA001:0020 P1 Character Modifier (Minotaur)
FFA001:0024 P1 Character Modifier (Madam Woe)

Infinite Time and Health P1 don't work in Regen (haven't figured out what to change the values to first). Max Special Bar P1 works when you change the value from 0036 to FFFF. The P1 Cannot Be Hit code works when changing FFD089:00FC to FFD088:00FC. The P1 Character Modifiers work in Regen when I change FFA001 to FFA000.

I honestly am stumped on this.

I'm sending messages out to sites and people knowledgeable on the PAR and how it works.

EDIT: Some information...

1-byte PAR codes: XXXXXX:00YY (XXXXXX = address, YY = value)
2-byte PAR codes: XXXXXX:YYYY (XXXXXX = address, must be even, YYYY = value, >= $100)
Values are refreshed when VBlank starts, if I'm not wrong. Remember that the 68k can't write words to odd addresses, and this is true also for PAR codes.

AamirM · Post by **AamirM** » Sat Mar 15, 2008 6:27 pm

The infinite time cheat works here. But not the health one.

King Of Chaos · Post by **King Of Chaos** » Sat Mar 15, 2008 7:14 pm

It's the right address, but it's the value throwing it off somehow.

Two more updates...

When the first byte of the value is 00 it's ignored. In this case, $FFD089 would become $FC, and that's it. A few more examples:

$FFFE21:0063 - $FFFE21 becomes $63
$FFFE12:0009 - $FFFE12 becomes $09
etc etc

Byte access is always OK. The problem is word access.

The only thing I know is that the 68k does something really wrong when reading words at odd addresses, as those spawns into two different words internally in memory. I think it reads the high byte from the first word and the low byte from the second word, when it should read the low from the first and the high from the second. Absolutely nothing useful. Didn't check if it does the same for writing. I'm not sure about all this, watch out