vbSMS+ WIP News

[olaf]

I've been hard at work -- working on vbSMS+, my continuation of John "brom" Casey's Sega Master System emulator written in Microsoft Visual Basic. I'm happy to announce that brom is now helping me work on vbSMS+. The main focus at the moment has been getting rid of compatibility issues (I know most of you would rather we work on sound, but at the moment, it doesn't strike me as more important). This was done by introducing support for header recognition and general per-game "hacks". brom has wanted to fix a problem with Spider-Man - Return of the Sinister Six for quite some time, and he's achieved that goal as of, the yet released, version 2.0 of vbSMS+. You may be asking: why did you go from 0.1.1 to 2.0? I think vbSMS+ deserves a larger version number -- mostly because of it's vast improvements over the original vbSMS and because of the addition of more of the features I'm about disclose. Among our "hacks" we introduced (a VDP interrupt "hack") to fix Spider-Man - Return of the Sinister Six, we've also fixed a few other games by use of MEKA's patches (it only applies patches to about 10 more games, but hey, that's a few more games that are playable or prevents problems in the future). In the release of version 2.0, users will be able to enjoy a very snazzy new memory editor. Below is a screen capture of it in action.

 

 

The memory editor includes bookmarking, searching, and save state abilities. Users will be able to sort through the Sega Master System's RAM with ease. Double click a bookmark or search result will automatically take you to the address in the memory editor's viewer to avoid having to manually search for it. Right clicking in the bookmarks or search results will also allow you to use the address in question in the "edit (value)" text box to avoid having to copying/pasting or typing. Bookmarks will automatically be loaded/saved for each game.

 

The grayscale palette was put into question for relevance... and I never used it, so, I removed it and palette switching. I also added support for the missing Z80 I/O port mirrors. Input detection (and Game Gear input detection) has been improved -- and I added support for the Sega Master System's Pause button... finally. Sprite collision detection and sprite limit toggling has also been introduced.

 

That's all for now, I'll post more as I continue working!

[Mooney]

Sounds like you're making a lot of progress. Keep up the good work!

 

Although, I personally would like to see (Or rather, hear ) sound than compatibility.

Edited November 9, 2006 by Mooney

[olaf]

Well, it was John Casey's goal to get as many games working as possible first -- and I would like to do that and other things at the same time.

[iq_132]

Yuck for hacks But that memory editor looks niiice

[olaf]

Thanks for the compliment on the memory editor, I worked very hard on it. Today, brom ironed out a timing bug that was causing speed ups and (more than likely) causing slow downs for people. Tomorrow (or in a few minutes), I'll be working on adding in Zip compression support for ROM files.

[Robert]

Very good, it gets better all the time!