GimliDS

[djleviticus]

I know you don't give up haha

 

[CrashMidnick]

FYI Dave, Pang is affected by the problem of frames "uneven" on DSi.
True Drive required.

The DS Lite/FAT have hard time with this title lol.

Only tested on DS lite : Robocop needs now True Drive enabled otherwise the music will stop about 5 seconds after to be in game.This was not the case with previous version AFAIR.

 

[wavemotion]

Only tested on DS lite : Robocop needs now True Drive enabled otherwise the music will stop about 5 seconds after to be in game.This was not the case with previous version AFAIR.

That's very strange! Just tested Robocop on DSi (not near my DS-Lite) and it loads fine with the standard (non TrueDrive) loader. I played for several minutes - no issues with music. Nothing should really be different for DS-Lite but I'll give it a try. I'm using one of the X-RAY cracks for that title.

Just tried PANG on the DSi and yes, that one does require TrueDrive. And I totally see what you're saying on "uneven" frames. When the disk drive light is ON, I go into turbo-warp mode... so that I can load from the 'True Drive' faster. I think that might be a mistake - not realizing that some games might actually load WHILE playing the game. So yeah, I'll fix that !!

 

[CrashMidnick]

That's very strange! Just tested Robocop on DSi (not near my DS-Lite) and it loads fine with the standard (non TrueDrive) loader. I played for several minutes - no issues with music. Nothing should really be different for DS-Lite but I'll give it a try. I'm using one of the X-RAY cracks for that title.

Tested again and it booted fine Mine is DCS or OCS (the Police is strange) crack team.

When the problem happened, I played 3-4 games before launching ROBOCOP, I'll try to reproduce the problem.


Dave, do you think it is possible to increase the general sound volume ? On DSlite the volume is quite low and the C64 is well klnow for its sound chip, we need to hear its "vocal cords"

EDIT : Robocop will fail if we play 5-6 games before. I will try another ROM. Here is a video :

 

[wavemotion]

Interesting on Robocop... maybe I'm not resetting things properly from game to game. I should be able to fix that.

I'll see what I can do about the volume. I agree it's a little low volume here as well. Sound is not my specialty

 

[CrashMidnick]

Sound is not my specialty

I know, this is why I ask you

Thanks to you, I deleted the old FrodoDS that I kept during years on my SD but never really played it due to its speed and compatibility issues

Thank you so much for this new present !

 

[wavemotion]

You're quite welcome, Crash!

Sound was easy... I managed to bump it by 50% - let's see how that does.

I also fixed the uneven speedup/slowdown on games with TrueDrive that load while playing (Pang, etc). Unfortunately the loading is a tiny bit slower - but I'd rather slow loads and proper gameplay. And Pang hits the emulation pretty hard- I doubt that would run on the DS-Lite.

Will look at Robocop (not likely a Robocop issue... more likely a memory init issue with starting a bunch of games before loading that one).

I can't put a build out tonight as I have some other disk-related experimental changes I'm not ready for the world to see... But soon.

Also, an Easter Egg. If you load a game using the Y button (instead of A), it will show you some debug - the Frames per Second (50fps is the target for PAL) will be shown on the 2nd line.

 

[CrashMidnick]

Sound was easy... I managed to bump it by 50% - let's see how that does.

Awesome !

I also fixed the uneven speedup/slowdown on games with TrueDrive that load while playing (Pang, etc). Unfortunately the loading is a tiny bit slower - but I'd rather slow loads and proper gameplay. And Pang hits the emulation pretty hard- I doubt that would run on the DS-Lite.

Not a big deal, the C64 port is not good TBH, the fact that you need to wait for the lazer beam (or whatever it is called) to disapear before fire up again is really annoying.

Also, an Easter Egg. If you load a game using the Y button (instead of A), it will show you some debug - the Frames per Second (50fps is the target for PAL) will be shown on the 2nd line.

Nice ! This what I needed

 

[wavemotion]

Version 0.9a release 02-May-2025 by wavemotion-dave

• Fixed TrueDrive loading so it doesn't alter the CPU speed (for games like Pang which were playing quite 'uneven').
• Bumped up volume of the SID output by 50% (was too quiet)
• Improved 1541 Drive emulation - mostly in the GCR and IEC areas. Nothing noticeable but should be more accurate.
• Fixed write floppy icon color (instead of the usual green, will flash blue).
• Tweaks to C64 keyboard graphic to be more authentic.

Still not ready for a 1.0 release. Still trying to bring the compatibility up - mostly unsuccessfully But there is progress.

@CrashMidnick - I can't reproduce the drop in sound/music for Robocop. I did some debug and I'm not leaking any memory... and I was able to load it like 10 times and in between loaded 10 other games. Took hours - but no issues so far. Maybe it's some specific game that is being loaded beforehand that causes the issue? I'll keep it on my 'to do' list.

 

[djleviticus]

Thanks Dave. Amazing

 

[CrashMidnick]

@CrashMidnick - I can't reproduce the drop in sound/music for Robocop. I did some debug and I'm not leaking any memory... and I was able to load it like 10 times and in between loaded 10 other games. Took hours - but no issues so far. Maybe it's some specific game that is being loaded beforehand that causes the issue? I'll keep it on my 'to do' list.

I did take other games to reproduce the problem and it happened again so I am pretty sure that it is related to my rom. When you do a cold reboot after the problem occures, it works fine again.

Without any reboot and using TrueDrive emulation, it will solve the problem but if you do not power off the DS, it will remain forever if you switch off Truedrive emulation.

This is strange because when you're ingame, everything should be loaded into RAM if I am correct so what can call the sytem to switch the music off ?!

I will try another rom and let you know if I can reproduce the problem again.

EDIT : tested with X-RAY version of Robocop = same problem. Games launched in that order before lauching Robocop : Afterburner, Arkanoid 2, Army Moves, Nebulus and then Robocop (played 1 minute of each game). On DSLite with DSTwo. Will test DSi.

EDIT 2 : no problem on DSi, I cannot reproduce the problem. I will test again later on DSlite but this time via TWilight Menu ++.

 

[wavemotion]

More interesting data, Crash. Not sure what it all means yet

For this weekend's plans... hopeful to get some preliminary cartridge support in. Still have a lot of research to do in that area.

But I have a new button anyway.

 

[djleviticus]

Ooooooo my fav way for loading c64 games. A lot less hassle and quicker

 

[wavemotion]

Ooooooo my fav way for loading c64 games. A lot less hassle and quicker

Yeah, it was a toss-up between Tape support and Cart support... and Cart won out mainly because I don't want to add yet another slow loading process and cart memory swap/access is something I'm actually reasonably good at and part of my decision process is to benefit my mental state on this.

 

[djleviticus]

Wise choice. Tape is painful, at times worse than disk. I'm sure you will crack it.

 

[wavemotion]

Got some cart-loading action! Including EasyFlash carts which is used by a lot of disk->cart conversions.

But the bad news is that it's killing the emulation speed. Almost an 18% drop which is okay on the DSi but unacceptable on the DS-Lite/Phat. And when I say 18% drop, I mean 18% drop even with no cart inserted.

Sigh... so now I'll look for a different memory mapping scheme that is faster. I have some ideas.

 

[wavemotion]

Version 0.9b release 05-May-2025 by wavemotion-dave

• Pressing L+R shoulder buttons together is WARP mode (run emulator fast while the buttons are held)
• Improved L/R + DPAD scale/offset (so it doesn't also produce joystick input at the same time)
• Minor tweaks to TrueDrive mode for improved cycle accuracy
• CRT and PRG Cartridge support. Most popular game-based formats are supported. Use the new CART icon.

Probably too much effort being expended on this

CART support is in... most popular game-based formats are supported. Be aware that most disk-to-cart conversions use one of two formats: Magic Desk or Easy Flash. I support both of those (along with more traditional banking schemes) but Magic Desk requires 'True Drive' emulation enabled and will enable it by default. This sucks as it's a cartridge format and should be free of any "disk implications" but the driver to load these kinds of conversions requires that the disk infrastructure be in place (they patch around loading). So that means while it works fine, it does come at at 15% cost to emulation speed - no problem on the DSi but that's a bit too much on the DS-Lite/Phat.

Short story: if you have the choice between Magic Desk conversions or Easy Flash conversions, go for Easy Flash. It will run full speed on the older hardware. If you have a DSi running at the faster CPU - either one works the same.

Burning out on this... there are so many issues with the code and cleaning them up is tedious. But there's a lot of fun to be had here even if everything isn't playing perfectly.

 

[djleviticus]

Wow thanks Dave. Another amazing update. Will check out later.

 

[Indy13]

@wavemotion you're the pope of the PoP dude !

A new port can be run on ds lite, after the A800 version, the C64 version, so cool !



Thx so much Dave !

 

[wavemotion]

Hey - thanks guys! Always appreciate the appreciation.

I just realized I left in the two disk icons/names in the Cart Loading menu I meant to replace that with a nice pic of a cart icon with the currently loaded cartridge name. No big deal - I'll get that corrected in a day or two.

Then I need to find a little bit of extra speed for the DS-Lite and put out a 1.0 release which will be at least respectable (but far from perfect).

Edit: At lunch I found a nice speedup that got me 5-6% gain across the board. The DS-Lite is now back to being as fast as it's ever been... and the DSi is outrageously fast - so much so that I'm tempted to try and bring in some of the more complicated 'cycle exact' stuff to improve emulation. Maybe.

I also fixed the Cassette Menu background. I decided to push out a 0.9c release - no other features beyond a bit of speed and the graphic correction.