Regen for Linux and Windows

King Of Chaos · Post by **King Of Chaos** » Mon Aug 18, 2008 12:28 am

I remember all too well unfortunately.

Kega gets it right (for the most part) so just compare it to it.

neo_bahamut1985 · Post by **neo_bahamut1985** » Mon Aug 18, 2008 3:17 am

Well, at least Regen's sound core is better than Gens' sound core.

AamirM · Post by **AamirM** » Mon Aug 18, 2008 8:31 am

Hi,

King of Chaos wrote:Since I'm a nice person and want to help people get it working right off the bat, and some people are having issues with it crashing without the fonts folder and because of rendering plugins past 2X, I made little RAR files containing everything you'd need to run Regen perfectly.

You are nice indeed

. Thanks.

King of Chaos wrote:Some notable music/sounds to test in Robocop Vs. The Terminator's Sound Test which Regen sounds different from Kega (and real hardware, since I know Kega gets it right)...

Yes these are incorrect indeed. But that is due to PSG and not because of YM2612. I will be working on band limited PSG, maybe using Blip Buffer (if license allows).

King of Chaos wrote:I remember all too well unfortunately. Kega gets it right (for the most part) so just compare it to it.

I thought so too. But when I heard real recordings side by side I could hear the difference (see about Comix Zone in SpritesMind). I am not saying your are wrong or anything. Kega has the best sound but its slightly off from the real thing which I am trying to achieve.

stay safe,

AamirM

mudlord · Post by **mudlord** » Mon Aug 18, 2008 10:04 am

I will be working on band limited PSG, maybe using Blip Buffer (if license allows).

All blargg's stuff seems to be LGPL, so it should be allowed.

AamirM · Post by **AamirM** » Mon Aug 18, 2008 5:49 pm

Hi,

I've fixed the sound problems in Robocop vs. Terminator. Thanks to the heavy rewriting of some of the parts of PSG.

stay safe,

AamirM

King Of Chaos · Post by **King Of Chaos** » Mon Aug 18, 2008 5:57 pm

Awesome!

I gotta ask though, any progress on Sonic 3/Sonic & Knuckles/Sonic 3 & Knuckles sound wise?

AamirM · Post by **AamirM** » Mon Aug 18, 2008 6:13 pm

Hi,

Yeah I looked at it too but couldn't find anything wrong. It must be the new envelope generator changes that maybe causing that. But it produces correct sound in other games.

stay safe,

AamirM

King Of Chaos · Post by **King Of Chaos** » Wed Aug 20, 2008 2:23 am

Found another one.

In Spider-Man vs The Kingpin (W) [!] during the first level (ok, the first REAL level, the warehouse), there's a loud pitch sound every once in awhile. Now, Kega does emulate this sound correctly. Although, I'd like to point out I do have the original card and I vividly remember not hearing a sound like that at all during that level, even though Steve Snake told me it happens on the real hardware, so I accepted as much.

AamirM · Post by **AamirM** » Wed Aug 20, 2008 11:47 am

King Of Chaos wrote:Found another one.

In Spider-Man vs The Kingpin (W) [!] during the first level (ok, the first REAL level, the warehouse), there's a loud pitch sound every once in awhile. Now, Kega does emulate this sound correctly. Although, I'd like to point out I do have the original card and I vividly remember not hearing a sound like that at all during that level, even though Steve Snake told me it happens on the real hardware, so I accepted as much.

Hi,

Yep, it was a problem with PSG but has been fixed with my new changes.

stay safe,

AamirM

AamirM · Post by **AamirM** » Wed Aug 20, 2008 4:14 pm

Hi,

Okay, another beta (or WIP as its known around here

) is ready for testing. This mainly includes the sound fixes including the fixes to PSG (which is now more accurate) and cycle accurate sample support which makes sound very accurate and clean (and handles fast DAC writes efficiently

). Another thing which is included is ROM/RAM switching which fixes SRAM issues in Sonic 3 and Knuckles.

Download from here. It includes all the minimal things needed to run. Changelog is in there as well.

stay safe,

AamirM

King Of Chaos · Post by **King Of Chaos** » Wed Aug 20, 2008 5:59 pm

Ok, done some testing comparing to Kega, my ears and my memory on a couple things.

1) TmEE's music player ROM sounds perfectly as far as I can tell.

2) Robocop Vs. The Terminator - Still has sound FX off by a bit. Using the flame thrower in game as a comparison, it sounds too high pitched compared to Kega and what I remember from the real hardware.

3) Spider-Man Vs. The Kingpin - Sounds good except that high pitched noise during the warehouse level (that happens at random). Personally, I'd like to know what exactly this noise is and what it's for.

4) Sonic 3 & Knuckles - SRAM works fine for it now, and some of the sounds seem a little better. The Super Sonic theme for example still sounds slightly echoed, and the special stage music sounds sightly different. In the sound test sound 22 and sound 24 (Desert Palace and Endless Mine) sound way off from the real hardware and Kega. Oh yes, the issue with the sound of the plane with the falling bombs is still there, just in case anyone wondered.

AamirM · Post by **AamirM** » Wed Aug 20, 2008 7:03 pm

Hi,

Thanks for testing. I'll look into the problems shortly.

stay safe,

AamirM

neo_bahamut1985 · Post by **neo_bahamut1985** » Wed Aug 20, 2008 9:36 pm

Wow...the screensaver and SRAM issues were fixed! Thanks for the WIP!

JFD62780 · Post by **JFD62780** » Thu Aug 21, 2008 6:26 am

Hey guys, forgive me for choosing now to make my first post to this topic, but I do believe that 0.93, beta 2 broke Dynamite Headdy somehow for some reason. It just shows a red screen upon load. This was tried with the Japanese versions and the US/Europe versions. I wonder if a previous version buggered it up?

Anyways, I see this emulator maturing quite nicely.

King Of Chaos · Post by **King Of Chaos** » Thu Aug 21, 2008 7:10 am

Common problem...

Uncheck "Autofix Checksum" from the System menu.

King Of Chaos · Post by **King Of Chaos** » Sat Aug 23, 2008 5:58 pm

Ok, I've decided to make another release of the package with everything you'll need to run Regen right off the bat, this time for v0.93 Beta 2.

Stuff included in this package are;

-Latest Regen test executable (v0.93 Beta 2).
-Required Fonts folder and makefile executable, to prevent crashes and allow you to customize the fonts.
-Updated Readme and History files (which are updated for v0.93 Beta 2).
-Updated Cheats files, for those whom could use them.
-All working rendering plugins 2X and below.

Download: Regen v0.93 Beta 2

85cocoa · Post by **85cocoa** » Mon Aug 25, 2008 10:58 pm

First of all, I'd like to say: AamirM, thank you for all the good work.

I have a question that is only tangentially related. Sorry if this is not the right place:

http://aamirm.hacking-cult.org/current-feature-requests/ wrote:Game lock-on support via a “Load Lock-On” menu item to choose up to 4 ROMs to “lock together” as one game. Examples of 2 are Game Genie + a game, or Sonic & Knuckles + Sonic 3. An Example of 3 locked together games are Game Genie + Sonic & Knuckes + Sonic 3, or Sonic & Knuckles + Sonic 2K UPMEM + Sonic 2...

I'm trying to find a concise explanation of what exactly Sonic 2K Upmem is, but I'm having no luck. Google only gives me a bunch of... um, illegal download sites as well as the page on the Regen site I copied that text from. Could you explain what the purpose of Sonic 2K Upmem is and what it has to do with lock-on cartridges?

King Of Chaos · Post by **King Of Chaos** » Mon Aug 25, 2008 11:17 pm

It's the patch that was used within Sonic & Knuckles where when connected to Sonic 2, it'd allow Knuckles in Sonic 2.

From the S&K Wikipedia article...

Unlike the Sonic 3 lock-on, where the Sonic & Knuckles ROM referenced the data in Sonic 3 to add its additional features, this game used the Sonic 2 data bank exclusively except for an otherwise hidden extra data bank on the Sonic & Knuckles cart. The lack of knowledge over the existence of this patch made it impossible to find a working dump of the Knuckles in Sonic 2 ROM for a long time.

Gary_Oak · Post by **Gary_Oak** » Tue Aug 26, 2008 3:51 pm

Your emulator is really awesome AamirM and I wanna help you out with it as much as possible just like many other members of this board, there are a few things I found out while testing a couple of games with Regen 0.93 Beta 2:

Asterix and the Great Rescue (USA): There seems to be some static noise in the song that is played during Level 1 (and in many others), also the music slows down when Asterix drinks the magic potion in the end of the level.

Sonic the Hedgehog (USA, Europe): In the title screen, Sonic's body is in front of the top of his logo (covering a little of the letter N as a result), as far as I can remember, is body is supposed to be in the back of the logo.

In Regen:

In KEGA Fusion:

By the way, does the Sega Menacer emulation work on Regen? I tried using it on Terminator 2 - The Arcade Game but I had no luck.

Well, I hope that helps you. I will be posting as I find more things like these. Keep up the good work!

deltaphc · Post by **deltaphc** » Tue Aug 26, 2008 7:59 pm

Gary_Oak wrote:Sonic the Hedgehog (USA, Europe): In the title screen, Sonic's body is in front of the top of his logo (covering a little of the letter N as a result), as far as I can remember, is body is supposed to be in the back of the logo.

In the Video menu, make sure you have "Disable sprite limitations" unchecked.

85cocoa · Post by **85cocoa** » Tue Aug 26, 2008 8:35 pm

King Of Chaos wrote:It's the patch that was used within Sonic & Knuckles where when connected to Sonic 2, it'd allow Knuckles in Sonic 2.

From the S&K Wikipedia article... (redacted for brevity)

Whoops. I was originally confused by the fact that one of those "illegal download sites" said that the GoodGen name was "Sonic 2K Upmem (S2 Hack)" which I now know is not a perfectly accurate/complete description.

So, given that Sonic 2K Upmem is physically a part of the S&K cart, is there any way we could clarify the text on the Regen website to prevent other newbies from asking the same question?

EDIT: Dubious feature request removed

King Of Chaos · Post by **King Of Chaos** » Tue Aug 26, 2008 9:27 pm

Yeah, I guess I could document what I meant when I typed that up. The Sonic 2K UPMEM is what prevented the 'dumping' of Sonic 2 & Knuckles for awhile until somebody figured it out and dumped the UPMEM and combined all three. Cowering has it listed incorrectly within GoodGen, as it's not a S&K hack at all, it's part of the official game. Hell, load the Sonic 2K UPMEM in Regen and Kega and see what happens.

You can make a BIN of Sonic 2 & Knuckles with a command prompt (or download a version of it), by combining Sonic & Knuckles + Sonic The Hedgehog 2 + Sonic 2K UPMEM and out will pop up Sonic 2 & Knuckles basically.

Overall, the 'official' list of games taking advantage of the lock-on technology and their formulas are the following;

1. Sonic & Knuckles + Sonic The Hedgehog 3 = Sonic 3 & Knuckles
2. Sonic & Knuckles + Sonic The Hedgehog 2 + Sonic 2K UPMEM = Sonic 2 & Knuckles
3. Sonic & Knuckles + ANY OTHER GAME = Sonic Special Stages (AKA Sonic 1 & Knuckles, but this is wrong too since it does it for any other games besides the 2 compatible ones above).

More or less, that is it.

Gary_Oak · Post by **Gary_Oak** » Tue Aug 26, 2008 11:40 pm

deltaphc wrote:
Gary_Oak wrote:Sonic the Hedgehog (USA, Europe): In the title screen, Sonic's body is in front of the top of his logo (covering a little of the letter N as a result), as far as I can remember, is body is supposed to be in the back of the logo.
In the Video menu, make sure you have "Disable sprite limitations" unchecked.

Oops, sorry about that Sonic report then, I had no idea that disabling the sprite limiter would cause that problem.

AamirM · Post by **AamirM** » Wed Aug 27, 2008 2:20 pm

Hi,

By the way, does the Sega Menacer emulation work on Regen? I tried using it on Terminator 2 - The Arcade Game but I had no luck.

Yes it does. But its not very good right now. Menacer works in Terminator 2. You have to connect Menacer to port 2 (from Redefine Keys dialog box) and a normal controller to port 1. But as I said, Menacer support is not very good right now so don't expect it to work like in Kega right now. The only game it works correctly in is Menacer 6-in-1. That said, I am working on fixing it

.

Asterix and the Great Rescue (USA): There seems to be some static noise in the song that is played during Level 1 (and in many others), also the music slows down when Asterix drinks the magic potion in the end of the level.

This game is using SSG-EG a lot. SSG-EG is an undocumented part of YM2612 which is emulated about 95% correctly in Regen. Unfortunately, the rest of 5% incorrect emulation is causing these sound problems. Nemesis recently did lots testing to document it but I have been unable to fully implement some of the things in my core due to some limitations. But the good news here is that SSG-EG is emulated more correctly than Kega

. Listen to track 2 of this game. Again, I am trying to fix this alongside other problems.

Btw, thanks for your reports and input.

EDIT:
Just fixed the sound problems in Asterix 2

.

stay safe,

AamirM

King Of Chaos · Post by **King Of Chaos** » Wed Aug 27, 2008 4:56 pm

What's the current list of sound problems right now? Anyone keeping track of these? I'm aware of sound problems with Sonic 3/Sonic & Knuckles.