# jEnesisDS v0.7 + ApprenticeMinusDS v0.2.6 released



## Destructobot (Apr 21, 2008)

Lordus has released version 0.7 of jEnesisDS, his awesome Sega Genesis emulator for the DS. Also included is the initial release of ApprenticeMinusDS, his new Sega Master System/ Game Gear emulator.



Spoiler: jEnesisDS change log



********
v0.7   * 
********
- Fixed bug in Z80 core, preventing some games from having sound (Wonderboy, etc.).
- Fixed bug in 68000 optimization, that could make some games hang (Bonanza Brothers, etc.).
- Changed sound handling and doubled sample rate for PCM sound, resulting in slightly better sound quality.
- HW renderer partially rewritten, many glitches should be gone, some are still there (and will probably not be easy to fix ever)
- Sprite rendering completely rewritten in ASM. Should be faster and fix most of the sprite issues.
- Implemented mid frame palette updates (water effects in Sonic games, Castlevania, etc.). Note, that this just works, if a game is constantly fast enough, so slowdowns can still cause colors to flicker).
- Many little optimizations in memory handling and the CPU cores. Should reduce slowdowns.
- Added option for sprite masking (Landstalker etc.). It is not 100% emulated, just faked to be enough for most games using it (disable it, if sprites are missing, that should be there).
- Added option to change between 3- and 6-Button pad (just works, if the option is applied BEFORE loading a game). When 6-Button pad is disabled, L+R can be used to move the visible screen area, X to center it.
- Added sound state to the savestates, so that the correct tracks should play now when a state is loaded. Savestates are still not 100% reliable and loading old states can potentially cause problems.





Spoiler: ApprenticeMinusDS change log & known issues



************************
v0.2.6  preview release * 
************************
- Enhanced Z80 ASM core used in jEnesisDS.
- SMS/GG emulation.
- 10 Savestates per game.
- Rewind and fast forward feature.
- Settings can be saved per game.
- Fully rendered by the DS 2D hardware.
- Perfect sync option, that actually syncs every scanline (emulated scanline to DS scanline).
This option is more accurate, and needed for some games to look correctly, but it can be     problematic to use it, when "Rewind" is enabled.
- sample accurate (almost ;P) PSG emulation.
- Stereo sound for GG games.


Known issues: 
- timing is not exactly correct yet, so some games might not work, or have glitches.
- No FM emulation (yet?)
- Sprite updates need to be improved, sometimes there can be glitched sprites atm.
- Many more, that i don't remember now..



Download: http://gbatemp.net/index.php?download=2274


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## Urza (Apr 21, 2008)

Why did you upload them together?


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## Destructobot (Apr 21, 2008)

Lordus released them that way.


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## 2002120141 (Apr 21, 2008)

wish he'd be able to make jenesis run in a "fit to screen" mode or something...


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## Destructobot (Apr 21, 2008)

He can't. Deal with it. That issue comes up in every discussion of jEnesisDS, and it just isn't possible with the hardware renderer. He has to use all four of the DS's background layers to emulate the Genesis backgrounds, and the DS can only scale two background layers at a time.

An older version that used a software renderer did have full scaling, but it didn't run at full speed and it didn't have sound.


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## DanTheManMS (Apr 21, 2008)

Curse you Destructobot for taking the words right out of my mouth.  
	

	
	
		
		

		
			





I'm not entirely sure it's the "2 layers vs 4 layers" thing though.  I thought it was more of an issue of tile mode supporting only vertical scaling (by skipping scanlines) vs framebuffer mode supporting both vertical and horizontal scaling.  Tile mode uses the DS's 2D hardware and is obviously faster, hence why Lordus has focused his efforts on using this one rather than the framebuffer mode.  

To the one who asked, if you're interested, the version that has both modes is v0.4a.  They're separate *.nds binaries.  Also note that vertical scaling is actually already enabled by default and has been since v0.5 or somewhere around there.


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## Destructobot (Apr 21, 2008)

I got that bit about the background layers from your second post in the jEnesisDS topic you started on the Pocket Heaven boards. 

Wait, that's not it. I'll try and find the right post.


Edit: I can't find the post I was thinking of. It was either on a different forum or I just made it up. Either way, Lordus has stated many many times that horizontal scaling is probably never going to happen in the hardware renderer, so people should feel free to stop asking about it.


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## notnarb (Apr 21, 2008)

I'd love me some genesis rewind.. too bad the roms take up most of the available ram


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## Nero (Apr 21, 2008)

I've been gone for 2 months and this is what happens?
Two releases of jEnesisDS. Way to go Lordus.


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## jhoff80 (Apr 21, 2008)

Anyone else have issues with Sonic and Knuckles attached to Sonic 3?  Sonic 3 works fine alone, as does Sonic and Knuckles, but the rom of them attached doesn't seem to be recognized, though I guess its possible I have a bad rom.


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## Destructobot (Apr 21, 2008)

AFAIK roms over 3 megabytes don't work yet.


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## Kellicros (Apr 21, 2008)

I was just testing to see if Alien Soldier runs better now, but it hangs at SEGA logo screen.


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## Destructobot (Apr 21, 2008)

Alien Soldier works if you turn on H-INT Emulation in the config menu (touch the controller icon).


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## dualscreenman (Apr 21, 2008)

Yay @ better sound emulation. Sounds good!


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## Kellicros (Apr 21, 2008)

Destructobot said:
			
		

> Alien Soldier works if you turn on H-INT Emulation in the config menu (touch the controller icon).


Awesome! Thanks very much.


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## SoulAnger (Apr 21, 2008)

holy crap finally an update! i love this emulator, jEnesisDS that is.


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## jhoff80 (Apr 21, 2008)

Destructobot said:
			
		

> AFAIK roms over 3 megabytes don't work yet.



Oh, okay, thank you.


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## DanTheManMS (Apr 21, 2008)

Destructobot said:
			
		

> Edit: I can't find the post I was thinking of. It was either on a different forum or I just made it up. Either way, Lordus has stated many many times that horizontal scaling is probably never going to happen in the hardware renderer, so people should feel free to stop asking about it.



It could very well be another forum, or a random post on this one.  I go to several different forums that could have potentially discussed jEnesisDS at some point in time.

In any case, yeah the question does get asked too much, but by this point I usually just tell them to read the ReadMe and be done with it, hehe.


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## SylvWolf (Apr 22, 2008)

Great emulator. Not perfect but, seeing as this is the DS, it is very impressive. People like Lordus are the ones that fuel the homebrew scene. ApprenticeMinusDS is pretty good too. Compared to SMSAdvance, it has a bigger screen, better compatibility and can directly access the file system, but doesn't have save states. If he implemented save states at some point, it would just blow SMSAdvance out of the water.


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## Destructobot (Apr 22, 2008)

Press L+R to go into the save state menu. You have 10 slots per rom.


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## myuusmeow (Apr 22, 2008)

How does ApprenticeMinusDS compare to DSMasterPlus (the second newest version, newest one is abysmal IIRC)


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## leetdude_007 (Apr 22, 2008)

This emulator is an epic optimization adventure with a dash of nostalgia. Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse works like a charm.


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## Destructobot (Apr 22, 2008)

myuusmeow said:
			
		

> How does ApprenticeMinusDS compare to DSMasterPlus (the second newest version, newest one is abysmal IIRC)


It's much better than DSMasterPlus. So far it's run every game I've tried perfectly, though I haven't tried that many games yet. The games not only run at full speed, but you can even overclock the SMS CPU to reduce the slowdown that the games had on the original system. 

The only issue I've run into is that you can't force it to emulate a US system, so games that have both the Japanese and English versions in the same rom will display the Japanese text.


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## Destructobot (Apr 22, 2008)

I tested a bunch of SMS games in ApprenticeMinusDS. I mostly just played each one for a minute or so, just long enough to see if it loaded and if there were any obvious problems. I haven't tried any Game Gear games yet.

I used these as my default settings, only changing them if the game wasn't running well:
CPU Overclock - off
Perfect Sync - on
Wait VSYNC - on
Codemasters Mapper - off
Rewind - off


The following games ran without any noticeable problems:


Spoiler



Aerial Assault (UE) [!].sms
Air Rescue (E) [!].sms
Aleste (W) [!].sms
Alex Kidd - The Lost Stars (UE) [!].sms
Alex Kidd in High Tech World (UE) [!].sms
Alex Kidd in Miracle World (UE) (V1.1) [!].sms
Alex Kidd in Shinobi World (UE) [!].sms
Alien Storm (E) [!].sms
Alien Syndrome (UE) [!].sms
Astro Warrior (U) [!].sms
Aztec Adventure - The Golden Road to Paradise (UE) [!].sms
Batman Returns (UE) [!].sms
Battle Out Run (E) [!].sms
Blade Eagle 3D (UE) [!].sms
Bomber Raid (UE) [!].sms
Bonanza Bros (E) [!].sms
Bubble Bobble (E) [!].sms
Buggy Run (E) [!].sms
California Games (UE) [!].sms
Captain Silver (E) [!].sms
Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse (U) (V1.1) [!].sms
Choplifter (UE) [!].sms
Cloud Master (UE) [!].sms
Cyborg Hunter (UE) [!].sms
Daffy Duck in Hollywood (E) [!].sms
Danan the Jungle Fighter (E) [!].sms
Dead Angle (UE) [!].sms
Deep Duck Trouble (E) [!].sms
Double Dragon (UE) [!].sms
Double Hawk (E) [!].sms
Dynamite Duke (E) [!].sms
Enduro Racer (UE) [!].sms
Fantastic Dizzy (E) [!].sms
Fantasy Zone - The Maze (UE) [!].sms
Fantasy Zone (UE) [!].sms
Fantasy Zone II - The Tears of Opa-Opa (UE) [!].sms
Forgotten Worlds (E) [!].sms
Ghost House (UE) [!].sms
Ghostbusters (UE) [!].sms
Ghouls 'n Ghosts (UE) [!].sms
Global Defense (UE) [!].sms
Golvellius - Valley of Doom (UE) [!].sms
Incredible Crash Dummies, The (E) [!].sms
Incredible Hulk, The (E) [!].sms
Jungle Book, The (UE) [!].sms
Kenseiden (UE) [!].sms
Land of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse (U) [!].sms
Legend of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse (U) [!].sms
Master of Darkness (UE) [!].sms
Masters of Combat (E) [!].sms
Maze Hunter 3D (U) [!].sms
Ninja Gaiden (E) [!].sms
Ninja, The (UE) [!].sms
Penguin Land (UE) [!].sms
Phantasy Star (UE) (V1.3) [!].sms
Psycho Fox (UE) [!].sms
R.C. Grand Prix (UE) [!].sms
Rampage (UE) [!].sms
Rastan (UE) [!].sms
Renegade (E) [!].sms
R-Type (UE) [!].sms
Running Battle (E) [!].sms
Sagaia (E) [!].sms
Scramble Spirits (UE) [!].sms
Secret Commando (E) [!].sms
Shadow Dancer (E) [!].sms
Shinobi (UE) [!].sms
Smurfs Travel the World, The (E) (M4) [!].sms
Smurfs, The (E) [!].sms
Sonic Chaos (E) [!].sms (runs fine with CPU overclock turned on, choppy otherwise)
Sonic The Hedgehog (UE) [!].sms
Sonic The Hedgehog 2 (UE) (V1.0) [!].sms
Star Wars (UE) [!].sms (runs fine with CPU overclock turned on, slows down when jumping otherwise)
Streets of Rage 2 (E) [!].sms
Strider II (UE) [!].sms
Taz-Mania (E) [!].sms
Thunder Blade (UE) [!].sms
Vampire (E) [!].sms
Vigilante (UE) [!].sms
Wonder Boy (UE) [!].sms
Wonder Boy III - The Dragon's Trap (UE) [!].sms
Wonder Boy in Monster World (E) [!].sms
Zillion II - The Tri Formation (UE) [!].sms



These games had some minor issues, but were still quite playable:


Spoiler



Cool Spot (E) [!].sms (Graphical glitches. Framerate is low but even, possibly normal for this game)
Galaxy Force (U) [!].sms (I can't tell if this game is glitchy, or if it just sucked to begin with)
Strider (UE) [!].sms (entire game feels like it's in slow motion, but this might be how it was designed. slight audio glitching, unless that just normally sucked too)
Ys - The Vanished Omens (UE) [!].sms (very minor graphical glitches)



These games had big problems, but were still playable to some extent:


Spoiler



Bonkers Wax Up! (UE) [!].sms (gameplay is very choppy and uneven, even with CPU overclock enabled)
Cosmic Spacehead (E) [!].sms  (Major graphical glitches, requires Codemasters mapper to be enabled)
Xenon 2 (E) (Virgin) [!].sms (sprites flicker horribly, runs very slowly unless CPU overclock is enabled, and then it still slows down a lot. nearly unplayable)



These games were unplayable for one reason or another:


Spoiler



Cyber Shinobi (UE) [!].sms (Locks up after the game starts)
Galactic Protector (UE) [!].sms (couldn't do anything but shoot straight down, possibly needs a special controller)
Rambo III (UE) [!].sms (gun game)
Rescue Mission (UE) [!].sms (gun game)



These games displayed the text in Japanese instead of English:


Spoiler



Time Soldiers (UE) [!].sms 
Wonder Boy in Monster Land (UE) (V1.1) [!].sms 
Zillion (UE) (V1.1) [!].sms


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## Downloaderz (Apr 22, 2008)

What a great release. Warsong seems to play very smoothly now, best srpg ever.
I am loving the L+R button to move the screens. Is the ds hardware capable of doing it vertically?


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## Saylient_Dreams (Apr 22, 2008)

Wah.... so many games so many games..... now to add Tails Adventure to my replay list T_T, my ever growing replay list.....


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## Fun_Zephyr (Apr 23, 2008)

My initial thoughts is that ApprenticeMinusDS seems much better than DSMasterPlus. I find more games seem to run smootly with ApprenticeMinusDS. Though I have noticed a number of issues already pointed out like the Japanese writing etc.

The one weird one I found was Wonderboy III - Dragons Trap.

On DSMasterPlus it loads and shows Wonder Boy III BUT on ApprenticeMinusDS it Shows Monster World II after loading. Also once you beat the first monster, turn to the dragon and leave the castle the text refers to Wonder Boy II with ApprenticeMinusDS 
	

	
	
		
		

		
			





However the games runs exactly the same and still in English.

With jEnesis_v0.7 as stated in the change log there are issues with save states and loading a save state in v0.7 which was from v0.6 but i have also noticed that after loading a save game using purely v0.7 there is still some issues with sound but it does catch up at times and also sometimes when you load the top of the screen is all scewed and not very readable whereas with v0.6 it was fine with those games in the way of sound and display after loading.

Lordus is working on more updates with lots more changes and hopes that this will all be fixed then. I can't thank Lordus enough for what has been supplied so far.

Both programs are fantastic.


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## marko1986 (Apr 23, 2008)

Can`t wait to try them now 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




 Thx!


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## Elrinth (Apr 23, 2008)

Awesome.. Thanx for game working report!

Also, this Lord dude who released this rocks!


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## Cyburn2008 (Apr 23, 2008)

Thanks, downloaded it today, sound is better in this version than in v0.6


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## m3rox (Apr 23, 2008)

Destructobot, you did it wrong.  The post on the main page is supposed to be the discussion thread, not a closed thread with a link to a discussion thread.


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## xJonny (Apr 23, 2008)

Oh well. Good job on the find, Destructobot.


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## Hero-Link (Apr 23, 2008)

m3rox said:
			
		

> Destructobot, you did it wrong.  The post on the main page is supposed to be the discussion thread, not a closed thread with a link to a discussion thread.



No, this was created before the topic so this became the discussion thread first, no need for two.


Also, does anyone have a list of Genesis games working at 100% with jEnesisDS?


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## SylvWolf (Apr 23, 2008)

Destructobot said:
			
		

> Press L+R to go into the save state menu. You have 10 slots per rom.


O_O

What?

...

ApprenticeMinusDS now officially blows SMSAdvance out of the water, and that was damn good, too.


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## DanTheManMS (Apr 24, 2008)

Downloaderz said:
			
		

> What a great release. Warsong seems to play very smoothly now, best srpg ever.
> I am loving the L+R button to move the screens. Is the ds hardware capable of doing it vertically?


Vertical scaling is already enabled by default (unless he changed it in this version) so you should already be able to see the entire vertical component on the DS screen as it is.  Horizontal scaling is not possible, hence why he allows L and R to be used to move the screen horizontally for easier adjustment.


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## ViRGE (Apr 24, 2008)

Sweet, another release. Kudos to Lordus, he's one of the few big emulator authors to keep the updates coming for his stuff (is anyone even still working on SNEmulDS?). I especially like this release, Sonic 3 is now rather playable and approaching perfection.


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## Mr Slug (Apr 24, 2008)

Great update love this emu for the DS fantastic work thank you very much 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




would it not be possible to use extra ram in slot 2 ram carts to load larger games ie games that were bigger than 3MB??


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## MegaShark (Jul 19, 2008)

... but then why not horizontal scaling rather than vertical scaling...?


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## Jerme (Sep 1, 2008)

Destructobot said:
			
		

> Alien Soldier works if you turn on H-INT Emulation in the config menu (touch the controller icon).



will this work with road rash (loads, but gets stuck at a red screnn)


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## toymin80r (Aug 6, 2009)

wow, this emulator works pretty good.  Thanks (even though the topic's pretty old..)


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