SNES emulator

This release adds SPC7110 emulation, without the need for graphics packs!!, and a rewritten S-RTC (real-time clock) emulator.

 

SPC7110 support means that Far East of Eden Zero, FEoEZ: Shounen Jump Edition, Momotarou Dentetsu Happy and Super Power League 4 are now all fully playable. I will warn you, the emulation is very slow in this version -- while most areas of each game will run at the same speed as other games, there are a few peak moments where speed will drop by up to ~50%. The reason for the slow-down is that I am currently uncertain how to determine the amount of data to decompress in advance, so I default to the maximum amount possible. The reason I am releasing now anyway, is because I beleive in the "release early, release often" paradigm. It will likely take me a few weeks to finish researching this chip, and I didn't want to keep the work I had private during that time. But rest assured, bsnes v034 should feature much faster SPC7110 emulation.

 

neviksti, Andreas Naive and jolly_codger worked non-stop on the SPC7110 decompression algorithm for the past two weeks. caitsith2 provided valuable data to the effort. I only wish that I could've been of some use, but alas, I had no role in this. In the end, it was neviksti who managed to crack all three(!!) compression modes of this chip, which turned out to be a customized 8-bit QM-coder with a prediction model. You can read more about this here. I would also like to thank Dark Force and John Weidman (aka The Dumper) for their research notes on the SPC7110 register interface.

 

For those who don't understand the hoopla about figuring out this compression algorithm when we already had graphics pack simulation, I should note that we have since found a few errors in these packs. Not to mention, you no longer need ~4-16MB packs for each game you wish to run. They work like any other game now. Better still, the chip can now be used to compress new graphics, eg for any future translation efforts on these titles.

 

The real-time clocks in both Far East of Eden Zero and Dai Kaijuu Monogatari 2 will now save a ".rtc" file in your save folder, which contains the clock as set by the video game, as well as a timestamp from your computer when the time was last updated. It uses the difference between the saved timestamp and current time to update the time. This allows you to specify any time you like, whereas previously bsnes would just use your computer's current time, ignoring the time you set in-game. It also allows the "round clock by 30 seconds" option in both games to work. I avoided this before because this method makes supporting daylight savings time and such impractical, although I should note that the original hardware did not support DST, either. This method was required to pass the SPC7110 tests, and is overall much more faithful to how the original chips worked.

 

Once again, I'd really like to personally thank neviksti for his tireless efforts. Eliminating graphics packs from SNES emulation was one of my primary reasons for getting involved in the SNES emulation scene. That neviksti managed to crack this algorithm means a lot to me. Thank you so much, neviksti. This release is dedicated to you, now go get some sleep

>> Get it HERE.

- Added dynamic video size switching to the core

- Merged in Captain CPS-X's menu themes code and added the options to the misc menu (disabled by default)

- Merged in kev's and oopswares changes to zet and added CZ80 to the source distribution

- Fixed an issue causing the preview image not to display on program start when the Enhanced blitter was enable

- Fixed an issue with localisation support and added an option to reset to UI default language

- Changed the hotkeys for cheat search to be used with Ctrl

- Added support for the widescreen mode in Street Fighter III 2nd Impact

- Added a fake dipswitch to Street Fighter III for widescreen since the game seems to support it

- Added extracted roms to all CPS-3 sets (noone is likely to port CHD support just for CPS-3 which already works anyway)

- Added fake dip hack to make Red Earth and War Zard work

- Added sf2m8 to release builds

- Added tigerhb1 to the Tiger Heli driver

- Fixed a potential crash in the ICS2115 reset routine (spotted by iq_132)

- Matched all sets to MAME 0.126u1

>> Get it HERE.

Saturn emulator

>> Get it HERE.

BT client

--- 2008-07-22: Version 1.8 RC6 (build 11564)

- Fix: loading of skins (enabled and disabled images, flags)

- Fix: crash with Change Location dialog when adding torrents

 

--- 2008-07-21: Version 1.8 RC5 (build 11549)

- Feature: add associate magnet URI button

- Change: handle magnet URIs

- Change: make association check on startup apply to all associations, not just .torrent

- Change: when a file is relocated, do not recheck if it is unlikely the file has changed. mirrors Stop and Start behaviour

- Change: warn and do not load skins of the wrong size

- Fix: logger options represent settings after peer log selection

- Fix: do not reset check_update_beta when upgrading from beta to stable

- Fix: rare http peer connection stall

 

--- 2008-07-16: Version 1.8 RC4 (build 11468)

- Fix: possible fatal error after clearing peer list

 

--- 2008-07-15: Version 1.8 RC3 (build 11464)

- Change: move upload_only flag to extension message

- Change: add peer ID for the BitTorrent SDK

- Fix: Clear Peers would leave some peers in the list

- Fix: do not try to connect to IPv6 peers if IPv6 is not installed

- Fix: crash when a download completed and connections were pending

- Fix: correctly reset completed_on and move files for torrent that finish a second time (after unskipping or force rechecking and losing data)

- Fix: cookie syntax with HTTP proxies

 

--- 2008-07-15: Version 1.8 RC2 (build 11439)

- Feature: 'Clear all logging flags' in logger tab

- Feature: use SOCKS5 hostname capability instead of resolving DNS locally

- Change: move icmp port bind failure message to misc error log

- Change: prefer to resume pieces which are more complete

- Change: sort piece bar column on Pieces tab by number of busy blocks

- Change: stopped torrents now show no ETA instead of infinity

- Change: do not automatically register .torrent, prompt instead

- Change: fix overuse of ellipses in menu items

- Change: while downloading, disconnect 'upload only' peers that have nothing we need

- Change: Do not display infinity for >1000 share ratio in general tab

- Change: improve peer connection priority system

- Fix: send reject messages for requests dropped from socket buffer

- Fix: Bring the window to the front correctly when "Activate the program window" under "When adding torrents" is selected on Windows 98/2000+

- Fix: Reset .torrent file attributes when copying to storage so that it can be deleted etc. later if wanted

- Fix: prevent excessively long multiscrape HTTPS URLs because wininet can not handle them

- Fix: fix column display when RSS category is selected and no torrents are loaded

- Fix: showing of RSS Downloader from category context menu when no RSS items were present

- Fix: include HTTP seed connections in "use proxy for p2p connections" option

- Fix: shutting down when there are deleted torrents to process and graceful_shutdown is on

- Fix: systray icon loading before Explorer is running

>> Get it HERE.