Author Topic: My IPK builds for RetroFW (RS-97) (Read 2513 times)

gameblabla · « **on:** February 11, 2019, 09:45:11 am »

Hello guys,
as you may know already i stopped working on Useless-RS97, since RetroFW is much better and fixes the flaws/issues i had with the RS-97. This means i can now focus on improving the emulators/games :' )

I am providing my own IPK builds for some of my stuff here :
https://gameblabla.nl/files/ipk/rs97/

These includes:
PCSX4ALL : Improved fork with senquack's experimental MIPS recompiler, greatly improved HLE bios (fixes Digimon World not booting up, fixed saving in LEGO Racers/Parasite Eve, hotpatching hacky games on the fly...), and also fixing some bugs too. (including config file sometimes refusing to save your settings really)
Source code for fork is here : https://github.com/gameblabla/pcsx4all
I am interested in bug reports for broken games so feel free to report them and explain how it crashes. (including with HLE bios)

Temper: A simple build of Temper. Executable was profiled for best performance and 6 buttons mode now works properly.
There will be support for upscaling 32 columns mode fullscreen

Ganbare Natsuki-San: It's a port of an old japanese game and it's pretty fun ! It was at one point released on XBLA but it's gone of course... Game plays smoothly. Source is here : https://github.com/gameblabla/Ganbare-Natsuki-San

ScummVM : I'm trying to fix up ScummVM so it works properly on the RS-97. It does work for me but some people are still reporting issues in some games so be warned...

SMS_SDL : A fork of SMS_SDL i am personally maintaining. It is one of the most accurate Master System/Game Gear/SG-1000 emulator and as a result, it will play all games in the SMS library (including Dizzy). The only issue with it is Sonic 1 FM, which suffers from some slowdowns. Source : https://github.com/gameblabla/sms_sdl

Quake : A port of Quake, now based on TyrQuake (with some code from SDLQuake). This means that the game won't abruptly crash at random, something that greatly pissed me off and took me a long time. IPK file includes the shareware game.

Quake2: It's a game that even drove mad Steward-fu... and yet, after 1 year of banging my head against the wall, it is finally fixed and working on the RS-97 for your enjoyment. IPK file also includes the shareware version of the game.

Handy : Here's an improved port of Handy, the Atari lynx emulator.
It can now auto-detect vertical games and adjust controls accordingly.
It also supports Zipped roms and triple buffering. Unlike other Atari Lynx emulators, no bios is required.
Just grab your games (preferably good dumps) and enjoy !

Jason01 · « **Reply #1 on:** February 12, 2019, 01:11:11 am »

I'm glad that you say the new firmware is better than the old Useless firmware, but would you mind spelling out in layman's terms what's improved about the new RetroFW vs. Useless, for example? I saw a bulleted list saying "IPU support", "Added triple buffer support", and "VSYNC support". Can you take a few moments and compare the old firmware with the new firmware and say how it will affect the performance of the emulators?

Jason01 · « **Reply #2 on:** February 12, 2019, 03:30:34 am »

Tried your PCSX4ALL tonight. Two games I tried (Castlevania Chronicles and Castlevania Symphony of Night) freeze up when they display "Checking Memory Card."

Your pcsx4all.ipk was updated on Feb 11. The pcsx4all.ipk on the Google Drive (https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/14bgV9f_weOz0ZAy7WdRl4i5ItYGGViK3) was updated on Feb 10 and it doesn't freeze up on these games.

What's up with the duplicate work to port these emulators? Seems like you and someone else are duplicating effort..

gameblabla · « **Reply #3 on:** February 12, 2019, 08:38:41 am »

Quote

I'm glad that you say the new firmware is better than the old Useless firmware, but would you mind spelling out in layman's terms what's improved about the new RetroFW vs. Useless, for example? I saw a bulleted list saying "IPU support", "Added triple buffer support", and "VSYNC support". Can you take a few moments and compare the old firmware with the new firmware and say how it will affect the performance of the emulators?

Well, IPU support is important (the biggest complain about the RS-97 actually) because you can just target 320x240, rather than 320x480. And believe me, that extra 240 pixels vertically was a lot of pain to deal with and as a result, a lot of performance is lost due to the required scaling. This is all handled by the IPU chip inside of the JZ4760B, hardware acceleration basically.
Triple buffering/Vsync are kind of related and they are techniques to deal with screen tearing. It's also a complain some people had to deal with and most of the stuff on RetroFW supports/use it. (a few have issues with triple buffering though)

Quote from: Jason01 on February 12, 2019, 03:30:34 am

Tried your PCSX4ALL tonight. Two games I tried (Castlevania Chronicles and Castlevania Symphony of Night) freeze up when they display "Checking Memory Card."

~~Is that with the official BIOS or HLE ? I'm taking a look at it but it's entirely possible that we're dealing with a recompiler bug...~~
EDIT: It was an issue on HLE, bug is now fixed : https://github.com/gameblabla/pcsx4all/commit/b31b7801cbf39d8f4278516e477a683244bbc211
I've uploaded the newer build on my website.

Quote

What's up with the duplicate work to port these emulators? Seems like you and someone else are duplicating effort..

https://github.com/dmitrysmagin/pcsx4all/issues/46#issuecomment-462277817
It's not in active development anymore it seems and repo has not been updated since 2 years now.

adventureFAN · « **Reply #4 on:** February 12, 2019, 08:55:47 am »

Thank you very much!

Can you take a look at ReGBA @ 3.0? Because it dosn't work =(

gameblabla · « **Reply #5 on:** February 12, 2019, 09:20:17 am »

Alright, thanks for reporting the bug Jason, i've managed to quickly fix the regression (an error on my part...) and uploaded the newer build on my website.
Related commit : https://github.com/gameblabla/pcsx4all/commit/b31b7801cbf39d8f4278516e477a683244bbc211

Keep reporting on regressions guys, thank you.

Quote from: adventureFAN on February 12, 2019, 08:55:47 am

Can you take a look at ReGBA @ 3.0? Because it dosn't work =(

Wasn't it fixed already for 1.0S+ units on RetroFW ? Also just saying, but Tony has not released the source code for his reGBA yet so i can't look at it.

adventureFAN · « **Reply #6 on:** February 12, 2019, 11:58:58 am »

Oh you're right! Finaly ReGBA works! Greeeeat! =D
And thank you very much for your ports =)

Senor Quack · « **Reply #7 on:** February 12, 2019, 05:46:51 pm »

Quote from: gameblabla on February 12, 2019, 08:38:41 am

Quote from: Jason01 on February 12, 2019, 03:30:34 am
Tried your PCSX4ALL tonight. Two games I tried (Castlevania Chronicles and Castlevania Symphony of Night) freeze up when they display "Checking Memory Card."
~~Is that with the official BIOS or HLE ? I'm taking a look at it but it's entirely possible that we're dealing with a recompiler bug...~~
EDIT: It was an issue on HLE, bug is now fixed : https://github.com/gameblabla/pcsx4all/commit/b31b7801cbf39d8f4278516e477a683244bbc211
I've uploaded the newer build on my website.

Quote
What's up with the duplicate work to port these emulators? Seems like you and someone else are duplicating effort..
https://github.com/dmitrysmagin/pcsx4all/issues/46#issuecomment-462277817
It's not in active development anymore it seems and repo has not been updated since 2 years now.

This is simply not true, there are many commits that I have not posted on github publically yet, like 'part5' of my dynarec improvement branches. Furthermore there are many changes that haven't been committed through my private git yet, including game fixes, IPU scaling support, an entire MXU renderer, MXU sound etc. I don't have 100% of my time available to spend on pcsx4all and sometimes I must work on other stuff or life or take a break. If you charge ahead with patches, please be aware that it might make it harder for you in the long run.

In fact, back in December, I'd found and fixed the HLE 'PAD_init' bug related to it not checkng a0,a1 types. However, this was randomly found by me while fixing random mem alignment issues throughout the project. Normally I wouldn't spend much time on HLE issues, because it's just the tip of the iceberg: HLE was woefully incompatible, and using a real BIOS is always the preferred method to run games. I simply had other issues, one of which is currently removing redundant calls to ResetIoCycle() throughout HLE and elsewhere,
after reworking how cycle advancement works in the dynarec.

I will send a PM.

gameblabla · « **Reply #8 on:** February 12, 2019, 05:58:57 pm »

Quote

This is simply not true, there are many commits that I have not posted on github publically yet, like 'part5' of my dynarec improvement branches. Furthermore there are many changes that haven't been committed through my private git yet, including game fixes, IPU scaling support, an entire MXU renderer, MXU sound etc. I don't have 100% of my time available to spend on pcsx4all and sometimes I must work on other stuff or life or take a break. If you charge ahead with patches, please be aware that it might make it harder for you in the long run.

I was simply not aware that you even had a part5 for your MIPS recompiler. I'm also eargely waiting for the IPU fix, as it's something i have attempted to fix for Unai and failed because it loves to horribly crash at resolutions lower than 320...
Hence why i'm throwing big patches into the ocean because i assumed that no one cared by this point.
In fact, it seems that not even Smagin himself was aware of your efforts.

Quote

In fact, back in December, I'd found and fixed the HLE 'PAD_init' bug related to it not checkng a0,a1 types. However, this was randomly found by me while fixing random mem alignment issues throughout the project. Normally I wouldn't spend much time on HLE issues, because it's just the tip of the iceberg: HLE was woefully incompatible, and using a real BIOS is always the preferred method to run games. I simply had other issues, one of which is currently removing redundant calls to ResetIoCycle() throughout HLE and elsewhere,
after reworking how cycle advancement works in the dynarec.

Yeah, i was taking about smagin himself, of course i had noticed you were working on the MIPS recompiler. (this fork in fact uses part3)
Your last commit for part4 is like 1 year ago so i kinda assumed that you stopped working on it.

Btw, the HLE pad init bug is not even fixed in PCSXR or PCSX-Rearmed but i guess they simply don't care and the saves in some games were still broken. But it wasn't the only issue with HLE, strcat too had some issues and it was preventing Digimon from booting up.
Then they were the saves that were broken and that was only fixed by cherry picking the last commits from PCSX-R upstream + moving up the events which only then fixed the memory saves for good.

Also, i believe that the HLE deserves improvements because : 1) it's faster in some cases and 2) it would be nice if we could at least play games without additional potential legal issues with Sony.

So yeah, i would be happy to talk about pcsx4all, i have some questions for you related to it. (And i pretty much suck recompiler-wise, i myself use the interpreter)

Jason01 · « **Reply #9 on:** February 12, 2019, 10:33:19 pm »

gameblabla, clear something up for me:

Someone is posting updated versions of PCSX4ALL on this Google Drive page (lasted updated Feb 10, 2019):
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/14bgV9f_weOz0ZAy7WdRl4i5ItYGGViK3

You are also posting updated versions of PCSX4ALL on your page:
https://gameblabla.nl/files/ipk/rs97/

Who is posting the files on the Google Drive site? Which version of PCSX4ALL should I be using because it seems like two different developers (or more) are currently working on PCSX4ALL for the RS-97..

The Google Drive page is linked off the main RS-97 page here: https://jutleys.wixsite.com/retrogamers97-90

gameblabla · « **Reply #10 on:** February 13, 2019, 08:36:21 pm »

Quote from: Jason01 on February 12, 2019, 10:33:19 pm

gameblabla, clear something up for me:
Someone is posting updated versions of PCSX4ALL on this Google Drive page (lasted updated Feb 10, 2019):
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/14bgV9f_weOz0ZAy7WdRl4i5ItYGGViK3
The Google Drive page is linked off the main RS-97 page here: https://jutleys.wixsite.com/retrogamers97-90

I'm not sure if it's pingflood making these builds or Tony making them instead but they are severely behind in improvements and features.
(They don't have the HLE improvements, they don't have the Sakura fix, they don't have the newer MIPS recompiler etc...)

I know that you are a bit lost but that's because dmitrysmagin mostly stopped working on it and senquack is privately working on part5, so there was like a 2 years gaps with no updates from them so that kinda meant that everyone was keeping their own patches to themselves, if they do anything at all. (other than rebuild the current source and call it a day like it used to be the case)

Alright so i talked to senquack a bit about PCSX4ALL and it was definitely useful.
Here's what happened basically :
- He helped improved my HLE BIOS patches.
- He fixed the freeze issue (modchip protection) in Tetris with Cardraptor sakura. (Requires interpreter for now though)
- He's working on part5, including with the GTE rendering code in MIPS MXU 2 assembly and other improvements. He also fixed cache trickery in some games (mostly EA formula games).

The newer PCSX4ALL now includes the fixes (except for part5 of course, it's not ready yet).

So i would advice that you now use my build in the meantime because they did little improvements. If you find another regression though (it shouldn't be but we never know) then let me know.

jbanes · « **Reply #11 on:** February 14, 2019, 01:55:02 am »

Quote from: Jason01 on February 12, 2019, 10:33:19 pm

gameblabla, clear something up for me:

Someone is posting updated versions of PCSX4ALL on this Google Drive page (lasted updated Feb 10, 2019):
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/14bgV9f_weOz0ZAy7WdRl4i5ItYGGViK3

That's a stable build of PCX4ALL that's basically ported from earlier firmwares. It was one of the first IPKs out of the gate when RetroFW was launched. Gameblabla since started working on and making available a newer and more experimental version with higher performance. Right now that means that the previous IPK has a bit more spit and polish on its interface while Gameblabla's makes up for looks with some freaking Back to the Future-like flame-trails of performance.

Right now both options are available. As Gameblabla's work stabilizes, I suspect his version will supplant the existing one.

Pindos · « **Reply #12 on:** February 14, 2019, 02:42:17 am »

Tested the latest version of pcsx, works very well. Almost all games have become stable 60 fps, even in some 3D games like crash Bandicoot and resident evil. Thanks to the developer for this emulator, we are waiting for other transfers of games and applications

Jason01 · « **Reply #13 on:** February 14, 2019, 03:59:19 am »

Quote from: jbanes on February 14, 2019, 01:55:02 am

Quote from: Jason01 on February 12, 2019, 10:33:19 pm
gameblabla, clear something up for me:

Someone is posting updated versions of PCSX4ALL on this Google Drive page (lasted updated Feb 10, 2019):
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/14bgV9f_weOz0ZAy7WdRl4i5ItYGGViK3

That's a stable build of PCX4ALL that's basically ported from earlier firmwares. It was one of the first IPKs out of the gate when RetroFW was launched. Gameblabla since started working on and making available a newer and more experimental version with higher performance. Right now that means that the previous IPK has a bit more spit and polish on its interface while Gameblabla's makes up for looks with some freaking Back to the Future-like flame-trails of performance.

Right now both options are available. As Gameblabla's work stabilizes, I suspect his version will supplant the existing one.

Thanks for clearing this up for me.. Gameblabla's PCX4ALL works excellent for me...

Jason01 · « **Reply #14 on:** February 14, 2019, 04:00:22 am »

Found an issue with ScummVM.. it's not saving any settings. When I go into the options and change something such as Save game path or whatever, it won't retain this setting the next time I launch ScummVM.

ChrisRR · « **Reply #15 on:** February 15, 2019, 01:14:13 am »

Could you compile Temper for PC Engine emulation please?

far · « **Reply #16 on:** February 15, 2019, 04:33:14 am »

Quote from: ChrisRR on February 15, 2019, 01:14:13 am

Could you compile Temper for PC Engine emulation please?

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/16JRzUl5LlIXIP_Sfbb_6vPM07B1FXvL7

Download and try out temper.rar

ChrisRR · « **Reply #17 on:** February 15, 2019, 01:55:07 pm »

I tried copying the contents of that rar file into the emulators directory but it seems to be in a different format to other emulators. I can't run it through commander either

Stoofa · « **Reply #18 on:** February 15, 2019, 08:44:36 pm »

I've been having limited success with the fba-a320.ipk on the googledrive. I've been using the FBA v0.2.97.39 romset. But have been coming up against a lot of errors. Am I using the wrong set or is it a case of its being worked on still?

I've no doubt its me doing something wrong, just trying to work out where I'm failing.

I know its slightly off topic as its a different originator but thought I would ask anyway.

adventureFAN · « **Reply #19 on:** February 15, 2019, 09:10:07 pm »

Quote from: far on February 15, 2019, 04:33:14 am

Quote from: ChrisRR on February 15, 2019, 01:14:13 am
Could you compile Temper for PC Engine emulation please?

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/16JRzUl5LlIXIP_Sfbb_6vPM07B1FXvL7

Download and try out temper.rar

Dosn't work for me =(

Author Topic: My IPK builds for RetroFW (RS-97) (Read 2513 times)

gameblabla (OP)

gameblabla (OP)

gameblabla (OP)

gameblabla (OP)

gameblabla (OP)