Regen for Linux and Windows

King Of Chaos · Post by **King Of Chaos** » Tue Mar 04, 2008 4:03 pm

Somebody gave me some vital information about how why PAR isn't working with odd numbered codes, thanks to shobiz for this explanation...

In case you still don't understand how PAR codes work and why odd-numbered PAR codes aren't working, the reason is that for RAM changing codes, PAR does more than a simple byte change. If the first byte of the data is 00, that byte is ignored, and only the second byte is moved to the specified location. A few examples:

FFFE20:03E7. First byte of the data isn't 00, so the whole word is moved, and as a result, $FE20 becomes $03 and $FE21 becomes $E7

FFFE20:0001. First byte of the data is 00, so it's ignored. $FE20 becomes $01, and $FE21 is unchanged

FFFE21:00FF. First byte of the data is 00, so it's ignored. $FE21 becomes $FF

FFFE21:03E7. No idea what this will do. Theoretically, it should put $03 in $FE21 and $E7 in $FE22, but the Genesis doesn't allow word accesses to odd memory locations, so I don't know if this'll work

This only affects codes which begin with FF, so for example, a code like

0042E6:0092 will move $00 to $42E6 and $92 to $42E7, and once again no idea what'll happen if you input something like 0042E7:0092

powerspike · Post by **powerspike** » Tue Mar 04, 2008 9:45 pm

DancemasterGlenn wrote: I would try in cedega, but I don't have a subscription... is byuu's idea for detecting 32bpp at all possible?

It does the exact same thing, believe me I've tried it before. It's also funny that the proprietary binary drivers I have for my shitty ATI card only support 24bit. Though I think the problem itself is a bug in wine. I'd just wait for him to release the source code or use another genesis emulator for now.

King Of Chaos · Post by **King Of Chaos** » Tue Mar 04, 2008 9:49 pm

If I'm not mistaken, AamirM's close to releasing a beta of the Linux version of Regen. I think the only thing it's missing is sound.

powerspike · Post by **powerspike** » Tue Mar 04, 2008 9:57 pm

Really? That's freaking awesome! I wanted to have a nice accurate equivalent genesis emulator to kega fusion in linux.I'm already using bsnes and Nestopia for snes/nes stuff. : d

King Of Chaos · Post by **King Of Chaos** » Wed Mar 05, 2008 1:57 am

New issue noticed. Savestates don't work with Virtua Racing. Is this because of the SVP chip?

goatman64 · Post by **goatman64** » Wed Mar 05, 2008 4:40 am

I have a strange issue on my PC with Regen. Quite often, when playing any game, the audio will contain a lot of static. The weird thing is, when I move the Regen window, most of the time, the audio sounds crystal clear again, yet if I try to move the window once again the sound will often revert to being corrupted.

I have tested Regen from version 0.3 to 0.5 and this problem has occurred for me in each version. I have also tried modifying all the different sound settings (including modifying 'SoundBufferSize' in the ini to various values) yet I still have not found a solution. I have not had any similar issues with any other program.

I am running Windows XP SP2, DirectX 9.0c with a Pentium 4 2.4Ghz, 512MB RAM, Geforce4 Ti 4600 and Soundblaster Audigy.

AamirM has created an emulator with great potential and it is excellent to see someone actively contributing to the Mega Drive emulation scene.

AamirM · Post by **AamirM** » Wed Mar 05, 2008 5:30 am

Glenn, your monitor is absolutely fine. What's happening is that Wine is failing to create a 16-bpp surface. Typically, you select a 16-bpp surface via DDPIXELFORMAT. When this fails, Regen is most likely* falling back on the default surface, which would be your native desktop resolution, or 32-bpp. This is why the image appears 50% crushed.

Regen does not fallback to anything. Wine is reproting that 16-bit surface creation was successful.

"Super fast blitting" uses 32-bpp, whereas without the option it uses 16-bpp?? That seems backward

The filter plugins work only in 16-bit and I want to save conversion that is why I use 16-bit.

Somebody gave me some vital information about how why PAR isn't working with odd numbered codes, thanks to shobiz for this explanation...

Thanks a lot.

If I'm not mistaken, AamirM's close to releasing a beta of the Linux version of Regen. I think the only thing it's missing is sound.

Yes, should be released this weekend hopefully with sound. But it contains significantly less features than the windows version and will take me some time to add them to linux version.

About all other bugs, they have been noted down. Thanks to all for reporting.

stay safe,

AamirM

King Of Chaos · Post by **King Of Chaos** » Wed Mar 05, 2008 4:27 pm

Thanks AamirM.

@ goatman64, have you tried updating your sound card's drivers?

Also, on a couple sites I've posted about Regen, some people have mentioned some feature requests I'd like to pass along here.

-Ability to not use any graphics filters (like Kega has for "Normal").
-Ability to have resolutions above the original non-anti-aliased.
-Ability to have the system lock-up silently without the popup box.
-Ability to turn off and on the illegal address access lock-up to play games like Sonic Crackers.
-Support for scanlines with a percentage like Kega has.
-Support for Kega's brighten video feature.
-WAV/VGM logging.

ICEknight · Post by **ICEknight** » Wed Mar 05, 2008 5:35 pm

Issues with official games:
Wonder Library doesn't show a thing, and Game no Kanzume o Tokuyou hangs at the title screen and doesn't get to play the music. Somebody should check if any of those work on real hardware before jumping into conclusions, though.

Now about some video issues. I have my desktop running in 32 bit mode, and Superfast Blitting does:

Oops.

Another thing is that, even though everything runs quite smoothly without filters, the NTSC filter lags much (and by the way, it crashes Kega). I think an auto-frameskip option could be useful here.

I'm using a laptop with Core 2 Duo at 1.50Ghz, 2GB RAM with ATI Mobility Radeon HD 2400 XT (with supposedly updated drivers).

EDIT: I've just checked the Vectorman title screen, and the initial sound doesn't seem to be too accurate. I think it sounds better in Fusion, but I guess we'd need a sample of the real thing to see which is more faithful.

King Of Chaos · Post by **King Of Chaos** » Wed Mar 05, 2008 5:43 pm

Just so you know, notaz updated the SVP emulation to fix the perspective bug in PicoDrive and in the sources. More information here.

ICEknight · Post by **ICEknight** » Wed Mar 05, 2008 6:58 pm

By the way, it kinda sucks that the emulator stops playing sound when the window isn't in front.

A real MegaDrive didn't stop doing its stuff when you left it "in the background". =P

King Of Chaos · Post by **King Of Chaos** » Wed Mar 05, 2008 9:34 pm

Ok, some technical comments from a user from the Sonic Retro forums...

Sik the hedgehog wrote:Suggest a blurring filter such as Kega's one. The RF TV one, not the other, as that takes into account three columns rather than two, is centered always and normally matches more what's seen on TV. The NTSC filter provided in the plug-in isn't very good. And please, when making blurring of the borders, do it against extra black columns, not just take into account two of them like Kega does!

Another thing, emulation of model 2. You know, you should be able to choose between models 1 and 2 (I don't think model 3 has anything in special). Just a stupid thing, the whole difference would come from the security stuff at $A14000. Only useful to see if the start up code works, really :/

Last thing, total failure at this:

Sidenote, after running this I confirmed DAC sounds horribly

Honestly, this isn't really troublesome for Regen, as I didn't find any emulator capable of fooling this program. I started disassembling it to see what does it do. The only thing I wanna remark is that it doesn't use strange hardware, but relies on some interrupt that seems to trigger in the real hardware but not in emulated one. I'm really worried about it because I don't want later people using this as a security stuff to prevent games from playing in emulators. Yes, that's piracy thinking It would be a cool feature if used when really needed (for example, as QJimbo once told me, to enable some feature in the real hardware that doesn't work in emulators or vice versa), but most likely people will use it just to prevent their programs from being run in emulators. Argh...

It uses the interrupt at vector 3 (counting from zero ). If it triggers, then it's real hardware, it isn't otherwise. What's the interrupt pointer stored in that vector?

goatman64 · Post by **goatman64** » Thu Mar 06, 2008 3:28 am

About the sound problem I was having, I checked my sound card drivers and they were up to date, but I have found a work around for the issue.

If I reduce my Audio Hardware Acceleration down to 'Basic' instead of 'Full' the audio in Regen plays clearly. This is obviously not the ideal solution and I have to return my Audio Hardware Acceleration back to 'Full' when I want to play something else, but it will do for the time being.

neo_bahamut1985 · Post by **neo_bahamut1985** » Sat Mar 08, 2008 4:01 am

Found a bug with Sonic 2; when you beat Eggman in Emerald Hill Zone 2 (when he begins to fly off) the emulator closes altogether.

AamirM · Post by **AamirM** » Tue Mar 11, 2008 9:13 am

Hi,

Version 0.6 uploaded. Many bugs fixed(hopefully).

stay safe,

AamirM

franpa · Post by **franpa** » Tue Mar 11, 2008 11:08 am

erm, when loading the sonic 2 cheat, you can only choose rings = 2 or none (plus the other codes) but you can't choose rings = 3 etc. even tho there in the cheat.dat

also, is there a cheat.dat for sonic 3 & knuckles because the layout is way more confusing then king of chaos post. i'm specifically after the invincibility code for sonic 1, 2, 3 and knuckles... and wouldn't have any problem if i could simply enter the code instead of being forced to use this cheat.dat

pmc2 · Post by **pmc2** » Tue Mar 11, 2008 12:50 pm

Hi,

Small problem:

- The mdntsc.rpi filter (crc32: 48277564 , 18 feb) working with kega fusion
- The mdntsc.rpi filter (crc32: b923df3b , 02 Mar) present in Regen v0.5/0.6 not working with kega fusion. It's not logic.

voila!

Regards,

ps: Sorry for my poor english.

AamirM · Post by **AamirM** » Tue Mar 11, 2008 1:00 pm

franpa wrote:erm, when loading the sonic 2 cheat, you can only choose rings = 2 or none (plus the other codes) but you can't choose rings = 3 etc. even tho there in the cheat.dat

also, is there a cheat.dat for sonic 3 & knuckles because the layout is way more confusing then king of chaos post. i'm specifically after the invincibility code for sonic 1, 2, 3 and knuckles... and wouldn't have any problem if i could simply enter the code instead of being forced to use this cheat.dat

Hi,

What cheat.dat are you talking about? The ones provided by default are working fine. Could you post it here? There may be some typo in it.

stay safe,

AamirM

franpa · Post by **franpa** » Tue Mar 11, 2008 1:09 pm

the Sonic 2 Sample cheat.dat file. o_O in notepad it appears on a single line with no formating at all.

thanks to how this got copied and pasted, i worked out the typo i made. the 2nd ring code had the # missing and was not on a second line.

[0]
Name=Player 1 rings worth
0=off
1=Rings worth 2,ZABT-CA50
2=Rings worth 3,SAST-DN1A
3=Rings worth 4,SAST-DT1A
4=Rings worth 5,SAST-DY1A
5=Rings worth 6,SAST-D21A
6=Rings worth 7,SAST-D61A
7=Rings worth 8,SAST-DA1A

[1]
Name=Player 1 starting lives
0=off
1=Start with 5 lives,AY8A-AAD2
2=Start with 7 lives,A68A-AAD2
3=Start with 9 lives,BE8A-AAD2
4=Start with 25 lives,DE8A-AAD2
5=Start with 50 lives,GJ8A-AAD2
6=Start with 75 lives,KN8A-AAD2
7=Start with 99 lives,NN8A-AAD2

[2]
Name=Player 1 infinite lives
0=off
1=On,JW3A-CA4J

[3]
Name=Jump Setting
0=off
1=Jump low,KBVT-CAE2
2=Jump high,FVVT-CAE2
3=Jump higher,EBVT-CAE2
4=Jump highest,CBVT-CAE2

AamirM · Post by **AamirM** » Tue Mar 11, 2008 1:09 pm

pmc2 wrote:Hi,

Small problem:

- The mdntsc.rpi filter (crc32: 48277564 , 18 feb) working with kega fusion
- The mdntsc.rpi filter (crc32: b923df3b , 02 Mar) present in Regen v0.5/0.6 not working with kega fusion. It's not logic.

voila!

Regards,

ps: Sorry for my poor english.

Hi,

You can download perfectly working filter with Kega from here.

stay safe,

AamirM

AamirM · Post by **AamirM** » Tue Mar 11, 2008 1:14 pm

franpa wrote:the Sonic 2 Sample cheat.dat file. o_O in notepad it appears on a single line with no formating at all.

Thats because my editor is set to use Unix line endings. Notepad does not support there but Wordpad does.

pmc2 · Post by **pmc2** » Tue Mar 11, 2008 1:36 pm

AamirM wrote:
pmc2 wrote:Hi,

Small problem:

- The mdntsc.rpi filter (crc32: 48277564 , 18 feb) working with kega fusion
- The mdntsc.rpi filter (crc32: b923df3b , 02 Mar) present in Regen v0.5/0.6 not working with kega fusion. It's not logic.

voila!

Regards,

ps: Sorry for my poor english.
Hi,

You can download perfectly working filter with Kega from here.

stay safe,

AamirM

It's ok with this version, thanks

King Of Chaos · Post by **King Of Chaos** » Tue Mar 11, 2008 3:45 pm

Alright, I'll be testing this in several minutes. Will get back to you.

King Of Chaos · Post by **King Of Chaos** » Tue Mar 11, 2008 4:14 pm

New bug.

-Selecting Start netplay mid-game causes the emulator to lock-up, and when you try to reset (hard reset) the game, the emulator exits.

Also, I'd like to request smaller fonts. I could make one, but I'm slightly too lazy right now.

About the size of Kega's font would be nice.

I noticed my gamepad is working better with this version of Regen, even though it doesn't support U+L/U+R/D+L/D+R right. Did anything related to gamepads change in this version?

Now, about PAR, with some odd-addressed code, you still need to take it back by one. Here's Sonic 2's cheat.dat file...

[0]
Name=MASTER CODE (MUST BE ENTERED)
0=Off
1=On,000344:6004

[1]
Name=Level Select
0=Off
1=Enable,FFFFD0:0001
2=Disable,FFFFD0:0000

[2]
Name=Debug Mode
0=Off
1=Enable,FFFFD2:0001
2=Disable,FFFFD2:0000

[3]
Name=Chaos Emerald Modifier
0=Off
1=None,FFFFB1:0000
2=One,FFFFB1:0001
3=Two,FFFFB1:0002
4=Three,FFFFB1:0003
5=Four,FFFFB1:0004
6=Five,FFFFB1:0005
7=Six,FFFFB1:0006
8=Seven,FFFFB1:0007

[4]
Name=Invincibility
0=Off
1=On,FFB02B:0003

[5]
Name=Infinite Lives
0=Off
1=On,FFFE12:0009

[6]
Name=Infinite Time
0=Off
1=On,FFFE24:0000

[7]
Name=Character Modifier
0=Off
1=Sonic And Tails,FFFF70:0000
2=Sonic,FFFF70:0001
3=Tails,FFFF70:0002
4="Weird" Tails,FFFF70:0003

[8]
Name=Rings Modifier
0=Off
1=1 Ring,FFFE20:0001
2=50 Rings,FFFE20:0032
3=100 Rings,FFFE20:0064

[9]
Name=Doesn't Lose Rings When Hit
0=Off
1=Sonic,01217E:6004
2=Tails,012192:6004

[10]
Name=Super Sonic Doesn't Lose Rings With Time
0=Off
1=On,01ABEC:604E

[11]
Name=Sonic Looks Like Super Sonic (Disables Super Sonic)
0=Off
1=On,FFFE19:0001

[12]
Name=The Regular Level Music Plays When Super Sonic
0=Off
1=On,0FCBBC:0000

[13]
Name=Never Drown
0=Off
1=Sonic,FFB028:00FA
2=Tails,FFB068:00FA

[14]
Name=Disable Water On Levels
0=Off
1=On,FFF64A:FFFF

[15]
Name=Start Most Levels With Some Rings
0=Off
1=On,0041C0:31C4

I have all the Sonic games ported to this format, if desired, I can post all the cheat.dat files I have.

AamirM · Post by **AamirM** » Tue Mar 11, 2008 4:47 pm

Hi,

I will upload new small fonts soon. About the PAR, do you have to do that with all odd numbered ones or just some of them?

About the netplay, I will see it.

About the cheat files, that will be awesome. I want to include more cheats with Regen. I want all you cheat files so I can finish some games

. I am a crappy player.

stay safe,

AamirM