-------------------------------------------------------------------------- 26. August, 2001 Version 1.52- All plugins: I've added some code to list all available desktop resolutions of your gfx card. That way you have a bigger choice for the gpu fullscreen modes (and I don't have to add more and more resolutions in every gpu release ;)- OGL plugin: changed the "InitFullScreen"func. I hope it will now work better with certain cards, and with the W2K OS. Please note: toggling between the window/fullscreen mode (ALT+ENTER) is still unstable, if your desktop color depth is not the same as the desired fullscreen mode.- All plugins: Lewpy told me about a bug with high performance counters. Our plugins are using such counters to calculate the framerate and to do the fps limitation. The bug will show up only on certain chipsets under heavy PCI bus load, and it can cause weird speed behaviour with our gpu plugins. I've tried to make a workaround for that issue, let us see if it helps (no problems on my system, so it's hard to check by myself...). If you want to know what MS is saying about that bug, or check out if your chipset is known as buggy, check out: http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q274/3/23.ASP?LN=EN-US&SD=g- All plugins: my new system (Athlon 1.2C, GF3) is very fast... that's fine, of course, but it also brought me some troubles: usually I play psx games at the 'auto-detected' speed (50 or 60 fps), and if some (boring) scene happens, or if I have to do some (uneventfull) walks in the game, I just turn off the fps limitation in the gpu menu. On my old system (P3-550, GF1) speed usually doubled, so I had a kind of 'fast forward' function, until I enabled the fps limit again. Well, on my new system the 'fast forward' tends to be a 'hyperspeed forward', making walking around nearly impossible... so I've now enhanced the old "limit on/off" switch in the gpu menu into "limit off", "limit manual setting" and "limit autodetect". that way I can toggle between "auto" and "manual" (I set the manual value to 120 fps), and now I am happy again ;)- All plugins: if you are running a game at a "manual" limited framerate, you can change the manual value in the game using the gpu menu: set the menu arrow to the FL option, and press SHIFT + HOME or SHIFT + END. On each keypress the manual value will in/decrease by 1 FPS, so you can try to adjust the manual value within the game to a framerate which suits you.- SOFT plugin: oh no... a glitch! In my 'oh-so-compatible' soft plugin! While checking out a few game demos I've noticed a wild shaking screen in the Pandemonium2 demo. After a little debugging I've pinpointed the problem to wrongly called psx vsync signals from ePSXe. So I've double-checked the demo with FPSE, and to my surprise the vsync calls were even worse (in ePSXe the vsync comes at a wrong time with that game, in FPSE the vsync comes at a wrong time AND far too often...) Ah, well, to get around the bug I made a 'special game fix' for P2. It's called "Lazy screen updates", and if you want you can try the option also with other games, they may become faster if it is activated. Of course it can also cause unwanted side-effects (missing parts of the screen, for example), so use it with care. Btw, in the hw/accel. gpus Pandemonium2 needs also an (already available) option, the "Swap front/back detection" special game fix. Btw, part 2: the psx vsync is very important to get the 'right' FPS limitation, so don't be surprised if some games are running at a wrong speed in FPSE... the only way to get around that problem (beside a fix in the main emu core, of course) is to set a manual FPS limit until the game 'feels' right (the new in-game "manual FPS limit adjust" as described above can help you with that).- OGL plugin: and another special game fix... pfff... well, it's not really a game fix, it's more a 'bad OpenGL ICD' fix... in version 1.51 I've introduced a perfect "subtractive blending" mode, if the gfx card driver is reporting it can do it. Well, I should have guessed that some vendors will report they can do the feature, but in reality they just screw it (did I say S2000? no, I didn't ;) You can now force the gpu plugin to ignore the OGL extension for subtractive blending by the new game fix. - OGL plugin: "keep psx aspect ratio" option. In version 1.50 I did that option for the soft plugin, now it is available in the OGL plugin as well... it does a 'ratio correct' stretch in x/y, causing lotsa screen borders, of course. Use it, if you like it, or turn it off (like I do ;) I am not sure if I should code that option in the D3D gpus as well (it's really lot of work).- OGL/D3D plugins: in december 2000 (version 1.42) I made the black scanlines option, promising that all requests for 25% or 50% scanlines will get ignored :) While looking for new ways to improve the image quality, I stumbled again over the scanline func, and played a bit with it... the result: you can now set the scanline brightness in a range between 0 and 255. 0 is like it worked before (black scanlines, dark display), higher values will make the scanlines brighter (blended over the image, not just simple lines in one color)... I suggest to try a value of 200 to get a nice smoothed display, of course it also depends of the used resolution and your personal taste :)- OGL/D3D plugins: some small changes in compatibility: when you play FF7, using the special game fix for the text box borders, the battle hand cursor will also be fine now. Also I've tried to remove some screen garbage which showed up occasionally in some games (usually between splash screens), if your OD mode is 3 (enhanced) or smaller."It's not the end Not the kingdom come It is the journey that matters, the distant wanderer Call of the wild In me forever and ever and ever forever Wanderlust"- "The Wanderlust" by Nightwish -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 06. July, 2001 Version 1.51- All plugins: _Demo_ suggested to use a 59.94 fps NTSC timing (instead of the old 60 fps one), if auto- detected fps limitation is enabled. Well, done... (don't ask me if that will improve anything... most of my games are PAL ones anyway :)- D3D plugins: I wanted to add a few more fullscreen modes to the D3D plugins in version 1.50, but somehow I've forgotten to add the 320x240 and 320x200 D3D modes, tsts. Oki, fixed.- All plugins: it is now possible to redefine the gpu hotkeys in the gpu config windows (look for a small "..." button). - OGL/D3D: added some mmx asm to squeeze out a few more frames per second. The optimizations were done in my texture caching funcs, the speed increase will be in the range of 0 - 10 more fps (depends, as always, on the game and your pc specs). No mmx was added to the soft gpu (main reason: most time in the soft gpu is used up in the per-pixel blending funcs, and that ones are very mmx-unfriendly right now... well, I've checked out some other optimizations in the soft gpu, giving me around 2 additional fps, but the gpu dll size was doubled and the code was a really big mess, so I've dropped that again). - OGL plugin: the best is yet to come: 100% perfect subtractive blending! Well, one of the psx blending modes is hard to emulate in hw/accel. gpus, because that kind of blending was not supported on older pc gfx hardware. But lately I've found an OGL extension to get that mode right, and luckily my GeForce1 DDR card can do it without problems. Version 1.51 of the OGL plugin will check your card's opengl capabilities, and enable that special blending mode, if it is available. Prolly all GeForce cards can do it, I don't know if it is supported on other cards as well, though. The gpu ingame-menu will show a little 'moon' symbol, if the extension can be used. Of course the gpu plugin will fall back to the old blending func, if it's not possible to use it. Quite easy, no special option needed :) You will notice the new blending mostly with correctly faded menu backgrounds in FF9, or with darker shadows and lighting in CC. Oki, and now let me answer some new FAQs _before_ they have a chance to get FAQs ;) 1. Q: Is it possible to do the new mode in the DX6/DX7 D3D plugins? A: No 2. Q: Would it be possible in a DX8 D3D plugin? A: Yes 3. Q: Will you code a DX8 D3D plugin? A: No... at least not in the near future :) Ask Lewpy to do one... :):):)- All plugins: there is _no_ new option for the wrong mdec colors with fpse 0.9! I did think alot about it, if I should do a 'special fpse game fix' or something like that, but in the end I've decided against it. Why? Well, the wrong colors are caused by fpse, not by the gpu plugins, and I think in terms of compatibility it was a bad decision by the fpse team. And if I would do a special fix, hey, maybe the fpse team would never correct the colors... and maybe the next emu team would decide to display the mdecs up-side-down, and I would have to add another bunch of useless convert funcs... nonono ;) And one fpse member already told me that they want to fix the mdec issue themselves, so hey, don't worry :)"There was a man found hanging in a jail cell And they said it was suicide A man was found hanging in his jail cell And they told me it was suicide Now you can blame the social system But I still say it was his necktie"- "Necktie" by Michelle Shocked-------------------------------------------------------------------------- 24. May, 2001 Version 1.50- D3D plugins: sometimes there were disturbing lines in unfiltered mdecs on Matrox cards. Fixed.- OGL plugin: because of PSEmu Pro I always had to do a delayed gpu init (otherwise the screen would stay black in this emu). Well, I've noticed a problem (crash, boom, bang) with one demo because of that delay, so I do now some more 'init' checks.- SOFT plugin: a new stretch option: "scale to window, keep aspect ratio". That one will keep the original psx screen proportions, of course you will get black screen borders, if the aspect ratio doesn't match your window size. That option is much harder to do on the OGL/D3D gpus (because many of my funcs are relying on a fully rendered window), but maybe I will do that in a later version... we will see :)- OGL/D3D: a new special game fix for FF9: "G4 polygon cache". If it is activated, the yellow character selection rect in battle mode will be displayed. All cudos are going to Lewpy, who has developed that fix :) Btw, enable it ONLY with FF9. No other game will need it, and it can cause glitches! - OGL/D3D: a workaround for horizontal wrapping display positions. Now my XPloder demo cd is working, maybe it will help with some more 'black-screen-only' games, too.- OGL/D3D: Thanx to Gabi, who did send me her original RRT4 game cd, I could investigate (and fix) some more glitches: * disabled screens are now handled more correct. That means: less garbage with some games (like the garbage in RRT4 before/after mdecs). * clipping areas with a width/height of 0 are now fine... It seems that sometimes I do too much checks ;) The disturbing bottom menu boxes in the RRT4 menus are gone. * Changed my line offset code a little bit. Result: less disturbing dots/lines in RRT4 (most times while driving below bridges).- OGL/D3D: fixed a wrong clipping area which was caused by toggling between fullscreen/window mode. Because of that bug sometimes only a part of the screen got updated after switching to fullscreen mode.- All plugins: I've changed the gpu config dialogs, so now there is a better description for most options. Don't get shocked when you are opening the config window for the first time :) In the D3D/Soft plugin you will also find some more fullscreen resolutions (added by user requests).- All plugins: Well, if you have visited www.psxemu.com, you will already know about the new "save state pic" feature. Of course the main emu has to support it, and right now there is no released emu with that ability yet, but hey, we are prepared :) You can still check out that feature, though: when you hit the "INSERT" key, and no fps menu is displayed, you will see a nice pic with the gpu version number. If the fps menu is enabled, a description text of the selected option will be shown instead... kind of an online help :)- OGL/D3D: I've hidden an easteregg... yup... a very slow one, though... try to find it... I will tell no more, all requests to reveal it will be ignored :) Oki, just one thing: somewhere I've placed an _obvious_ hint how to activate it... "Master of the lightnings, rider on the storm, wearer of a crown of swords, spinner-out of fate. Who thinks he turns the Wheel of Time, may learn the truth too late. (From a fragmentary translation of _The Prophecies of the Dragon_, attributed to Lord Mangore Kiramin, Sword-bard of Aramaelle and Warder to Caraighan Maconar, into what was then called the vulgar tongue (circa 300 AB))" - "The Wheel of Time" by Robert Jordan-------------------------------------------------------------------------- 28. April, 2001 Version 1.49- OGL/D3D: improved my screen clearing detection, so some garbage borders (like the ones in Legend of Mana) are now history. RIP :)- D3D plugins: while doing the above mentioned improvement, I've noticed a wrong clipping on block fills in the D3D plugins. The OGL plugin was fine, though- All plugins: Lewpy suggested to do some more coord checks like the ones needed for the silent hill maps... well, it's done, and it doesn't seem to hurt, so we give it a try, eh? :)- OGL plugin: fixed a stupid bug which caused the gpu to crash after a race in GT2 when offscreen drawing was enabled. The D3D plugins only worked because of some strange kind of luck ;)- OGL plugin: a wrong ZBuffer init caused troubles with some games, if the mask bit detection was enabled (for example: wrong shadows and missing texts in GT2). Conclusion: never forget to remove debugging code... tststs- OGL/D3D: I've tried to get more game menus/splash screens to work. Currently the screen detection is a real mess... but always when I've started to recode the funcs, I've ended up with the same zillions checks. So I decided to leave the funcs in the current state, and just to add a few more or less clever lines of code if the "Offscreen Drawing" mode is set to "4: extended". The new code works not too bad in games like Spyro (intro screens), Spiderman demo (intro screens), Batman demo (special kind of mdec at the beginning of the demo)... still, the extended OD can also act too eager, producing additional garbage and/or flickering. My advice: use it only, if you are missing something important in your game. Oh, and btw: some changes in the OD code is causing wrong lines in the FF8 intro screens... Lewpy fixed the lines in his 1.32 glide plugin, well, I've fixed it in an earlier version of my gpus, too... now it's magically back, and honestly: I don't care :)- OGL/D3D: a new 'special game fix' called 'Framebuffer read'. What's that? Well, some games are reading back the currently displayed frame to the psx main memory, changing it, and upload the changed frame data again to the gpu. Such effects could only emulated in the past by activating the (slow) "full vram primitives" option (FVP is drawing everything in the emulated gpu memory, so the "read back" is possible). The new 'framebuffer read' (FBR) option can be used as a FVP replacement in most games: it tries to detect, if the game is reading screen data, and if yes, it will convert the needed screen part of the OGL/D3D display into the psx format, giving that data to the emulated cpu. Advantage compared to FVP: it only has to jump in if the game is really trying a read back (my FVP has always to be activated to do its job right, causing a slowdown _all_ the time). Disadvantage compared to FVP: a) the FBR "read back detection" can guess wrong, causing either glitches or also unwanted slowdowns. b) the gfx card driver has to support the screen reading I am doing (it's not as complex as the "gfx card framebuffer textures" option, so I think most cards can do it). The interaction between FVP, FBR and FBT (framebuffer textures) is a bit tricky, so lemme try to explain the best combinations: 1. if you have a very fast cpu, you can enable FVP, set FBT to "emulated vram" and disable the new FBR. 2. if enabled FVP is too slow on your system, turn it off and use the new FBR option. FBT has to be set to "emulated vram" or sometimes "gfx card buffer". 3. Many games will run best, if you simply set the FBT to "gfx card buffer" and disable FVP/FBR. Maybe you will miss some (unimportant) bkg gfx or battle transitions, but that's all. And if you are looking for speed only, disable FVP/FBR and set FBT to "Black"... speeds up most transitions (they will be black, of course). I've checked the new combination #2 (using FBR) with a couple of games, and it worked fine on Spyro 1 (bkg gfx in the option menu), Tomb Raider TLR (bkg gfx while pausing), ChronoCross (bkg gfx while pausing/item menu), Star Ocean 2 (battle transition), Blaze&Blade (bkg gfx and transition), Legend of Mana (entering town transition). Prolly more games will also show up additional stuff which you have missed before if you haven't used FVP. Another thing: all framebuffer read effects will look 'low res'... if you have read the above text carefully, you can guess why. A final note on the new FBR option (wow, that description is getting far too long): DON'T USE IT WITH FF9!!! FF9 is also reading back data after a battle... and if the new FBR option is enabled, ePSXe will crash with an unkown opcode. Don't ask me why... maybe FF9 doesn't like what I am giving back (copy protection? bug in my code? mmm... have to do more investigations). Still: complains about problems in FF9 with activated FBR will go to my personal NULL device :)"Little do I know - little do I care Little would it help if I knew and was aware. Aim beyond the stars, catch a glimpse of gold A planetary chart where the stories are untold. There's a piece of truth for everyone..."- "Lunar Sanctum" by Kamelot -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 07. April, 2001 Version 1.48- OGL plugin: fixed a small bug in the "filtering without sprites" modes. In some games (using textured windows) the sprite filtering was not turned off. The D3D plugins were doing it fine, though.- OGL/D3D: improved the mask bit detection, should be now handled exactly like the SoftGPU. - All plugins: added code to get negative display positions to work. That bug could have caused crashings in the SoftGPU and black screens in the OGL/D3D ones. Of course not much games are using it (I've seen it just with "Tobal No.1")- All plugins: I've tried to make mdecs less skippy if frame limitation and frame skipping are turned on at the same time. But if your cdrom is a bit slow reading psx cds, the skipping will be still there (well, frame skipping can cause all kinds of problems, so I don't recommend it anyway).- All plugins: faster "MoveImage" func... yup... but I don't think that you will notice it much.- All plugins: the Silent Hill maps will now be displayed. Maybe some splash screens/background gfx in other games will appear as well.- All plugins: faster "Line offset" func. I like the new func, it's a very easy (but still accurate) approach. I had to do a lot of thinking until everything worked as planned, so I am kinda proud of it, ehehe ;)- All plugins: you can now use the "HOME" key to step down the available option modes in the in-game gpu menu. It's like the "END" key, just in the other direction... of course it's only helpfull, if an option is offering more than two modes (like the filtering option, or the new offscreen drawing one).- OGL/D3D: there are now 5 OD option modes: 0 (none), 1 (minimum), 2 (standard), 3 (enhanced), 4 (extended). A short overview: OD is used to detect drawings which are outside the front/backbuffer, doing such stuff in software (or by tweaking polygon coords). 0 (none): fastest mode, glitches in splash screens/game gfx can happen 1 (minimum): takes care of most splash screens 2 (standard): does an easy check, if software drawing/coord tweaking is needed 3 (enhanced): does a more complicated check for soft drawing/coords 4 (extended): does the "enhanced" check, and adds some additional buffer swaps (can cause flickering with some games) Usually the "standard" mode is enuff to get everything to work, with FF8 you should use the "enhanced" mode to get all character stats in battles."Hear my song. People won't you listen now? Sing along. You don't know what you're missing now. Any little song that you know Everything that's small has to grow. And it has to grow!"- "The Song Remains The Same" by Led Zeppelin-------------------------------------------------------------------------- 17. March, 2001 Version 1.47- All plugins: a small bug krept in my 1.46 versions in the fps limit autodetection. If you did stop and continue a game, the auto detected limit value was lost, and the manual one was activated. That's fixed.- All plugins: Improved the screen centering funcs... not much to say about it :)- OGL/D3D: fixed the smeared background in Castlevania by doing a more lazy "clear on next swap" detection... Thanks to R. Belmont for giving me a chance to investigate the issue :)- OGL plugin: removed the anti aliasing option... yup... most users didn't understand that the option did activate line a-a, not FSAA, causing big slowdowns with most gfx cards (yeah, I wrote in my ogl readme that the line a-a is NOT supported by most cards, but of course that didn't help much... there are always some 'wise' ppl knowing it better). Well, the a-a option is dead and buried... use FSAA, if your card is supporting it. To fill the missing space in the config window, I've added the old funny "Lines only" mode again, because I've got some nice mails asking for it... be happy :)- All plugins: the biggest improvement... new mask bit detection. Lewpy's and my plugins already had a mask bit option in the previous versions... but "Silent Hill", one of the few games which is using mask bits, was still screwed... Well, we decided it's a main emu bug (ehehe), but now I've tried my luck again... and I think I've finally solved the riddle :) At least Silent Hill is now working fine, I don't know how many games are also using mask bits, though. Some hint: activating the option eats away valuable texture vram, so only turn it on, if you really need it.- And now... I am off to play Gothic :)"They made a living by growing Swampweed. Its smoke was highly praised, because it gave sweet dreams to all human beings..."- translated from the manual of "Gothic" by Piranha Bytes-------------------------------------------------------------------------- 25. February, 2001 Version 1.46- SOFT plugin: the soft plugin supports now cards which are using a 5-5-5 16 bit desktop color. So, if you had troubles in the past (green/yellow lines or something like that), it should finally work without problems.- All plugins: some games seem to have problems with the main emu vsync timing, causing strange speedups/ slowdowns even if the FPS is shown as 60/60 (or 50/50)... Well, now you can activate Lewpy's old FPS calculation again, which is based on the PC framerate, not the PSX one. It's a special game fix, mostly for some soccer games, I don't suggest to use it generally, though (it will cause a wrong MDEC timing, and sound can be out of sync). Please note: the PC fps rate is most times just half of the PSX one (30/30 or 25/25), so don't worry, if the fps display is showing less fps by activating the fix. - All plugins: yeah, it's possible to transfer image data in the dmachain... pfff... I always thought it's a main emu bug :) My plugins should now handle such transfers without problems... check out "Tombi" :) All credits and a big "thank you" to Kazzuya and especially Taka... really great job! I hope "Dragon Quest 7" will work fine for you :)"Before anything further is written, it must be noted that the following section is included only as a matter of historical documentation. The use of magic has long been proven to be unreliable and the suspected cause of mental deterioration. The author takes no responsibility for anyone who may attempt to practice magic based upon the information contained herein."- taken from the manual of "Ultima 7" by Origin-------------------------------------------------------------------------- 09. February, 2001 Version 1.45- SOFT plugin: a new option called "unstretched display". The display will be shown in the original psx resolution, centered into the plugin window.- OGL/D3D: the old "Texture alignment" option has been removed... the plugin will now correct the texture alignment automatically, without any option. The new func works similar to the "Texture correction" option in Lewpy's Glide plugin :)- OGL/D3D: new "special game fix" for Legend of Dragoon. That game needs an incredible high pixel accuracy, only my soft plugin can display it without blue pixel trash... Well, the new fix will turn the blue glitches into (much harder to see) black ones :)- OGL/D3D: and another new special game fix, called "short DMAChain check". You can use it to repair the pause in Tekken3 after a fight, but you should disable that fix in other games. It works like Lewpy's "short dmachain" option.- All plugins: biggest change in version 1.45: a new optimized dmachain handler... it was a lotta work, and there will be not much speed increase (if any), but I like the new function... and it will handle corrupt dma chains even better."Red sun rising in the sky Sleeping village, cockerels cry Soft breeze blowing in the trees Peace of mind, feel at ease"- "Sleeping Village", by Black Sabbath-------------------------------------------------------------------------- 21. January, 2001 Version 1.44- SOFT plugin: fixed a small issue with the FF9 'pause' screen. It is working without problems in version 1.44- All plugins: new ODDLINE bit handling. More games (like XMen) should be working (fingers crossed :)- OGL/D3D: if you are using a filtering mode w/o sprites, the new version will not only ignore sprites, but also textured windows (most times used as background pattern in text boxes). Less glitches will happen in such text boxes... try it with FF9 :)- OGL/D3D: you have noticed a small vertical line in the right area of MDEC movies? Well, that's fixed, too... Unfiltered MDECs should be fine now in OGL, nVidia cards will still show some small line with unfiltered MDECs in D3D, though (because of the stupid 'auto-blurring' nVidia is doing on stretched blits in D3D). - OGL/D3D: biggest improvement: a speed boost in games which are using textured windows as main texture type (like Spiderman). Enjoy :)"In diz lant hat er gesprochen einen angeslichen tac. da diu witwe wirt gerochen und der weise klagen mac und der arme den gewalt der da wirt an ime gestalt. wol im dort, der hie vergalt!"- "Palstinalied" by Walter von der Vogelweide-------------------------------------------------------------------------- 06. January, 2001 Version 1.43- SOFT plugin: fixed a small bug with wrapped sprites coords. MediEvil intro and Bust-A-Move are fine now.- All plugins: if you are doing a screenshot (F8 key with most psx emus), there will be created an additional info text file in the sub-directory "snap". The info file contains all the current plugin configuration settings, so you don't need to write them down anymore, if you want to post/mail your settings.- OGL/D3D: lotsa small fixes, should give you a better speed (in some games) and less garbage glitches... As always: I only can hope the new stuff don't screw your favourite game ;) - OGL/D3D: added three more menu items in the gpu menu: Dithering (DI), Special game fixes (GF) and Framebuffer textures (FB). The first two just toggles the option on/off, while FB is a new feature...- OGL/D3D: Framebuffer textures, yeah... my personal nightmare ;) Some special effects (mostly before entering a new screen), or things like motion blurring, are hard to emulate using hw/acceleration. But, hey, nothing is impossible! :) Ok, there is a new option in the gpu config called "Framebuffer textures". Three settings are available: * "Emulated vram" : you can use this setting in combination with activated offscreen drawing and full vram primitives... it will show you most special effects/blurring, but of course you will need a very fast cpu (1 Ghz...) to get a reasonable speed. * "Black (fastest)" : that's a setting which turns the special effects black... it's the same as the special game fix "Black framebuffer texture" in version 1.42, you can use it if you don't care about the effects, or if the effects are slowing your game down. * "Gfx card buffer" : that's the new one... it will give you the effects in nice looking hi-res, with good speed... IF your gfx card/driver can handle it. Here is some technical info concerning the "Gfx card buffer": 1. if you are owning a GeForce, you are lucky :) Use at least the Detonator drivers 6.31, though, to get a good speed. 2. TNT cards... pfff... well, I did some tests on my girlfriends P2-400 with a TNT1... with 5.xx drivers the effects crawled... 6.xx was faster, but there were big glitches in the D3D plugins. 3. 3DFX cards... well, try it... my V2 can do it using the DX6 plugin... slow, but hey! At least the speed should be better than using full vram primitives ;) ATI, Matrox, whatever cards... dunno :) 4. Resolution/color depth : the higher the resolution/color depth, the slower the effects. Using OpenGL, resolutions up to 640x480 will take away 1 MB of your cards vram. Higher resolutions will cost you up to 4 MB vram! Using D3D, the effects will always take 256 KByte of vram, no matter what the window/fullscreen resolution, but speed will also go down on high resolutions. Well, you have to play with different window/fullscreen settings, if speed gets too slow. 5. Yeah, OGL is a bit slower using the "Gfx card buffer" option, but it will give you an even better image quality than the D3D solution. Keep in mind: if you are using scanlines and/or dithering, or the gpu menu is displayed, while a whirl/blur effect is happening, strange things can happen... it's fun to see the menu sucked into a whirl, though ;) 6. Known games working with "Gfx card buffer": Crash3, BOF4, FF9, MGS, Vagrant Stories, Wild Arms1 (extended OD needed)... some games (like Blaze&Blade), will not work, though...- OGL/D3D: I've improved the "dynamic" caching mode, if a game is using procedural textures... Well, here is a small caching mode overview: * "Standard" : usually the slowest mode, causing a lotta texture uploads * "Heavy" : will store up to 10 palettes per texture... not a bad one for some games, at least faster than "Standard" * "Dynamic" : best mode for most games. It optimizes the used textures and stores as much palette stuff as possible in your gfx card vram. It even tweaks the textures for a better filtering/alignment... wow :) * "Palettized" : most times slower than the "Dynamic" mode, but some games are doing big blinking/color rotating effects, which are stressing the "dynamic" one... such games can run smoother in "palettized". TNT owners can't use it (neither in OGL nor in D3D), GeForce cards can use it with OGL, 3DFX cards with D3D... depends on the driver (maybe nVidia will fix the D3D bug with GeForce cards somewhen, fingers crossed)."Ugly is bad And bad is wrong And wrong is sinful And sin leads to eternal damnation An' hot burning fire ... I'm so cute!"- "I'M SO CUTE" by Frank Zappa -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 25. December, 2000 Version 1.42- Merry christmas... dunno if that's a bug or a feature, though :)- The Windows gpu plugins are now delivered in one zip archive... that way I have to write only one version info, giving me time to do more useful things :)- Scanline option in all gpus... well, I've got many mails concerning scanlines, and I finally decided to satisfy your hearts desire ;) Not much to say about that option, turn it on, if you like it, turn it off otherwise. Scanlines will NOT give you more speed, but if you are lucky, it will not get slower, too. The soft gpu contains two different scanline modes, enable the second mode only, if you are getting a very blured display (nVidia cards mostly). Oh, btw, any mails begging for a 25% or 50% scanline option will be ignored :)- OGL plugin: the snapshot function (F8 key) is fixed with mdecs (older versions didn't capture mdec frames).- SOFT plugin: fixed a bug which caused flicker sprites on the left side of the screen (mainly with scrolling background graphics, thanx to GreenImp for tests). Also a small issue with the Analog/Mouse display in the soft gpu menu has been repaired.- OGL/D3D: Small changes in the dynamic caching mode. I don't pull in coords of filtered textures in that caching mode anymore, giving you a less blocky display with filtering (NOT a perfect filtered display!). Still gaps/garbage can happen if you are enabling filtering (it seems that OGL is a little bit better with that, though).- OGL/D3D: I've added a new "special game fix" called "Black framebuffer texture". If you activate the option, garbage in games like BOF4 (before entering a battle) or Vagrant Stories (motion blur) will disappear. That doesn't mean, that the special psx effect will be repaired and shown perfectly... if you really want to see such framebuffer tricks, you still have to use "extended offscreen drawing" and "full vram primitives"(very slow), and you have to deactivate the new "black framebuffer texture" option. Well, but the new option gives you a fast alternative to get rid off disturbing glitches without using the slow "full vram primitives", making certain games more playable :) - Ah, and like in Lewpy's 1.23 Glide plugin, there is a great new surprise hidden within all plugins... but you will have to wait, it's not up to me to tell you more about it :)"Maybe all I need besides my pills and the surgery is a new metaphor for reality."- "DIS CON NEC TED" by Queensryche -------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------- - OLD OPENGL VERSION INFOS-------------------------------------------------------------------------- 09. December, 2000 Version 1.41- ALT-ENTER... toggle between window/fullscreen mode. Beware: there are small troubles with some gfx card drivers (at least with my GeForce and detonator 6.49 drivers), if you try to change from a 16 bit window (desktop) mode to a 32 bit fullscreen mode (or from a 32 bit window mode into a 16 bit fullscreen mode). No known problems if your desktop has the same color depth as your chosen fullscreen mode.- I've changed the Offscre en Drawing/Frontbuffer rendering detection again. The new function will finally work fine with FF8 battlemenus/world map, if you select "Standard" offscreen drawing. Some small manual about Offscreen Drawing: * "no" OD will be the fastest mode, but some splash screens and special effects (like Crashs shadow in Crash3 or menus) will not appear. * "Standard" OD will show most splash screens, and most of the battle menus/special stuff * "Extended" OD is like the "Standard" setting, but it also forces the plugin to update the screen more often if the game is drawing into the psx frontbuffer area. That will show some stupid coded "pause" menus, for example. It can cause flickering displays, though. * "Extended" OD + "Full vram primitives". That one will finally show most special psx framebuffer effects (typically used for motion blur or those nifty level entry efftecs). Of course that way the gpu has to do twice the work (acting like a soft gpu and doing the hardware drawing), and you will need a fast cpu to use it.- New rgb24 (mdec) upload detection, that one will be faster with some mdecs, and produce less garbage on mdec top/bottom (see the FF7 mdecs)- Improved the "texture alignment" option. The new TA will give better results with "Warriors of Fate", for example. So, if you are seeing vertical garbage lines in your game, try enabling TA.- I could kill some shift/and operations with each drawing primitive... it will not give you lotta more speed, but hey ;)- Last but not least: a new way to handle polygon coordinates. It will fix games like Tony Hawk 1+2, Spiderman, Apocalypse, Driver 1+2 and so on :) Thanx go to Galtor & Calb from epsxe for their suggestions, tests and chats ("it's a GPU bug" - "no, it's a CPU bug" - "no, must be a GTE bug" - "Nope, gpu can fix it" - "aaarggg") Well, I've tested the new funcs with many games and demos and it seems to be pretty compatible, but still, if you are seeing big flashing polygons with 1.41 in your favourite game, try disabling the new funcs in the "special game fixes" option."And the tower bells chime, 'ding dong' they chime They're singing, 'Jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine.'"- "Gloria" by Van Morrison-------------------------------------------------------------------------- 23. November, 2000 Version 1.40- Fixed an issue with ePSXe which was causing a crash if you stopped a game by hitting ESC and continued it again.- Small speed improvement with unfiltered MDECs, also fixed a small bug with uploading screens, if a game is using the screen centering bits- New info in the in-game menu: if the main emu is telling the gpu that the pad emulation is running in analog mode, a small 'A' will appear... no 'A' means digital pad mode- Biggest change with the version 1.40 gpu core: New way to calculate the FPS. Previous versions were only calculating the really drawn frames, so games were running 'right' at different FPS speeds (mostly 50 or 25 FPS in PAL mode or 60/30 FPS in NTSC). Version 1.40 is just using the vsync signal for doing the calculations, so if a game is running at 50 (PAL) or 60 (NTSC) FPS, you have reached full speed... ah, very easy, isn't it? Well, on my P3 550/GeForce DDR system nearly all games are working fine, and the new FPS detection helps to limit even the MDEC speed propery, sono disturbing noise is happening while playing the XA sound anymore (fingers crossed ;) Of course there is also one drawback with the new functions: you can't compare the new FPS values with the ones of my previous versions or with the plugins of Lewpy, Segu or Kazz... "If I could I'd slow the whole world down I'd bring it to it's knees I'd stop it spinning round But as it is I'm climbing up an endless wall No time at all No time this time"- "No Time This Time", The Police-------------------------------------------------------------------------- 29. October, 2000 Version 1.39- The new 1.39 core is my first try to emulate the screen centering bits. Usually this register values are used to fine adjust the game display on the TV screen, but sometimes games are using it to make big position offsets or to clip the display output. Well, I've tried to do a careful approach, because I didn't want to cause bigger black borders around the game screen, I hope I've been successful :) Yeah, Raiden 1, Raiden 2 and the Alundra2 movie sequences will work better now.- A special new game fix for 'Speed Freaks' can be enabled in the 'game fix' config options.- Found and removed a bug which caused flickering effects in 'Horned Owl'.- Polylines are now supported in the offscreen drawing functions, I've noticed a demo using them. The same demo did a stupid way to update the screen, it's also fixed (sigh).- Changed the BlockFill function a little bit, it 'feels' better now (I didn't see any differences in my games, though)- Ah, yeah, I've also squashed a small bug in my offscreen drawing funcs, the drawing area wasn't always detected properly."Down by the seashore, where the waters foam white, Hang you head over; Hear the wind's flight. The east wind loves sunshine, And the west wind loves night. The north blows alone, dear, And I fear the light."- "The Order War", by L.E. Modesitt, Jr. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 08. October, 2000 Version 1.38- It's a small update this time, just killing some bugs I've detected while doing a new kind of psx gpu plugin :) The fixes are all clipping-related, so you will not get better speed, just less glitches with a few games (see for example Dead or Alive with version 1.37, urgh)- The offscreen drawing funcs have been cleaned up, too. All errors I've found with the soft gpu are fixed in the OD stuff used by hardware accelerated plugins."What's the worry, what's the hurry, Do you hear me, do you fear me ? You've got the message, you read the story, You want the power, you need the glory. ... So you thought you had it made, Ain't it easy to be afraid, Feel the pressure, take the bait, Here it comes again."-"What's the hurry" by Marianne Faithfull-------------------------------------------------------------------------- 24. September, 2000 Version 1.37- Some 'primitive position wrap' from the 1.36 core caused glitches with a few games , so I've changed that to a safer behavior.- New 'special game fixes' option. Well, of course my goal is to to make a nice psx gpu emulation with as little glitches as possible, but some annoying stuff will always happen. If I find a way to 'do it right' I always include it without options in the plugins, but sometimes the only way seems to be to code some special workarounds. Those fixes will only work with certain games, all other games will get worse. Well, the FF7 menu border fix and the lighting fix (both gitches are caused by the main emu, imho) were already available in previous versions by hitting the 'INSERT' key. The new option gives you more control to activate the desired internal gpu patch. Ah, yes, and a new one, called 'No sprite transparency', eliminates the 'trails' in the Abe's games. You still can toggle the special fixes with the 'INSERT' key... but only the ones you have enabled in the 'special game fixes...' window. - And finally some small repairs with 4 bit palettized sprites in the offscreen drawing funcs."And you, who want to know me, be aware that allof your searching and wanting will not help you at all.You have to know the mistery: if you don't find thetruth you are searching for within yourself, you willnever find it anywhere outside."- "The Spiral Dance. A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess." by Starhawk-------------------------------------------------------------------------- 17. September, 2000 Version 1.36- For infos about the 1.36 core please read the 'version.txt' of the D3D DX7 plugin :)-------------------------------------------------------------------------- 03. September, 2000 Version 1.35- Yup, I've skipped the 1.34 core from my SoftGPU and made a new one... so check out my SoftGPU version 1.35, too :)- Something unique in my gpus right now: improved auto-detection of the game's FPS limit. My older versions did an easy check on the interlace bit, if set: 50/60 FPS, if not: 25/30 FPS (PAL/NTCS). That checking is easy, but also bad with many games. So I've done some research, and my new functions (examining the game's vsync usage) are working much better in most cases. So, for example, in Wild Arms (PAL) you will get 50 FPS in towns and 25 FPS in the battle screens... that's the way it should be. Well, I know, some ppl will not understand why they should do FPS limitation at all, but if you want to have correct game music, the timing is important. And, of course, in my age I can't handle Spyro at double speed ;)- I've taken all my new SoftGPU funcs and added them in the OGL plugin... yup. I've also killed all of my old Offscreen- Drawing detection stuff and coded some new (hopefully better) routines. And I made a new option: full vram updates. All the changes (lotta work, boah) are related, I will try to explain it in simple words: the real psx gpu is able to draw polygons and sprites _everywhere_ in the vram. Well, a hw accelerated gpu plugin usually has to detect if the game is drawing into the next visible part of the vram and do that drawings with the 3D API (OGL, D3D, Glide) it is using. By doing that things will be faster and looking much better, but (because the primitives are not painted in the vram), some special gfx effects are not right with some games. My 'standard' OD is checking, if the psx is painting outside the visible area, and if that happens it will use the soft gpu funcs to update that part of the vram correctly. The 'Extended' OD does even a bit more: it detects if painting is going on in the actually displayed area of the vram (something I call frontbuffer drawing, some popular games are doing that for displaying battle screens) and adjust it to get it (nearly) right. And what's new 'full vram update' option? Well, if combined with an OD mode, it will paint _any_ polygon in the psx vram, keeping the vram content as fine as possible. That's an hell of a job to do (because the gpu has to act as a soft gpu AND to handle the 3D accelerator as well), so you will need a most powerful cpu to use it. But on the good side: you will get nearly all funky effects (like whirling screens and motion blurrs) if you are using full vram updates and extended offscreen drawing. Hint: usually I am using 'extended' OD without 'full vram', but if a game is flickering (yup, that can happen), I just use 'standard' OD. Only a few games (like Vagrant Stories) will need 'full vram' to play without glitches.- Some smaller changes were done to some psx state bits and interlaced screen uploads. Oh yes, I also wanted to speed up MDECs, but I've learned (again), that the fastest way to paint 2D screens with OGL is to use textures, so I removed the new (slower) code and did a new option instead: 'Unfiltered framebuffer updates' will be a little bit faster with mdecs (not using texture filtering). Oh well, and some older options like 'texture windows' simply vanished (all those options are now fire proofed, no need to turn them off). - My version 1.35 D3D gpus (for all non-nVidia users) will be ready in a couple of days, I hope (I just need some time, sigh)."I think therefore I am, familar to most?How long did we eat the seed planted by our host?4 billion years between our ears,still hatred brings as many tears.Still we judge each other...why when we're only looking for the same high?"- "spOOL" by Queensryche-------------------------------------------------------------------------- 30. May, 2000 Version 1.33- Attention: I've renamed the gpu to "Pete's OpenGL Driver" (gpuPeteOpenGL.dll), because that name fits better than the old "Pete's TNT Driver" one. Reason A) It's not for TNT cards only (for example I use the plugin with my GeForce) Reason B) It uses the OpenGL API... yup, surprise ;) Reason C) But keep in mind that you have to reconfigure PSEmu Pro to use the new file, just copying will _not_ work this time (of course you could rename the file to "gpupetetnt.dll" again and copy it over the old version, but hey :) - This is my first gpu version with sprite mirroring enabled. I thought that the standard psx gpu is not capable of sprite mirroring (and when I coded that feature I noticed glitches with some games), but of course it was just a little bug in my code which caused the bad behavior. Well, one game using mirroring is the "GD010" shoot-em-up demo, that one plays fine now.- I've rewritten the whole code for detecting screen uploads (you know, for game titles and loading screens and such), I was not happy with my old code (it was not bad, but a real mess...). The new code is leaner and does its job even better (in my opinion), some screens will still be missing, but not many, I think (if you are enabling offscreen-drawing, though). Because of the new functions it can happen that even "too much" will be displayed causing some garbage when the screen should be black.- Last thingie: my email address has changed: if you have suggestions or problems or whatever, mail to: BlackDove@addcom.de"An Aes Sedai never liesbut the truth she speaksmay not be the truth you think you hear"- Saying concerning sisters of the White Tower, by Robert Jordan"The Wizard's Fifth Rule: Mind what people do,not only what they say, for deeds will betray a lie." - The Sword of Truth, by Terry Goodkind"Honestly, I feel that we have a greatproduct in the market and that the vastmajority of users are happy with bleem!"- Sean Kauppinen, Communications Director of bleem! Inc."Hehehe"- Pete-------------------------------------------------------------------------- 01. May, 2000 Version 1.32- I've done a lotta testing if the V1.31 dma handler could cause any troubles before I did the release... and all looked fine. Well, some games I didn't check (there is a point in every man's/woman's life when he/she can't stand another fighting game), so I just did a short check on Tekken3... and of course that game was the reason for the 'emergency break'. Sigh... this version repairs things again with a better dma handling, so T3 _and_ the demos will work.- Added some code for games/demos which are using the MoveImage command for erasing the framebuffer. The 'Space Lemmings' demo is working fine.- Support for flat and smooth shaded 2-point lines in offscreen drawing. It's needed in the 'Bad Funk Stripe' demo, but that demo is hard to emulate with a 3D API gpu, so it still doesn't work right. Have to think about that issue first :)"Long ago ran the sun on a folk who had a dream And the heart and the will and the power They moved earth; they carved stone; moulded hill and channeled stream That we, the Stones, might stand on the wide plains of Wiltshire."Lyrics by Gwenllian Gwalch'gaeaf , "Stones"-------------------------------------------------------------------------- 30. April, 2000 Version 1.31- Removed an 'emergency break' from the dma handler. That one caused troubles with many psx demos. Thanx to the pcsx crew for putting the demos on their page. Check out 'http://pcsx.emuforce.com/' for getting infos about this new promising psx emulator :)"Ain't getting old, ain't getting younger though Just getting used to the lay of the land I ain't tongue-tied, just don't got nothin' to say ... Got people here down on their knees and prayin' Hawks and doves are circlin' in the rain Got rock and roll, got country music playin' If you hate us, you just don't know what you're sayin'" by Neil Young, "Hawks & Doves"-------------------------------------------------------------------------- 22. March, 2000 Version 1.30- And again a small update. This version is emulating the PSX ability to mask out special polygons, so they will not be overdrawn by following primitives. Well, there exists just one game (Silent Hill) which is using that feature as far as I know, but I think it will not hurt to try the new 'Enable mask bit detection' option in the gpu config dialog window with any game you own. Maybe some other games will be fixed by it, too, eh? If you find some other game which is using mask bits, let me know, just send a mail to psswitch@online.de BTW, I don't have Silent Hill, so I couldn't do much tests, thanx to Lewpy for testing :) And yes, I know that Silent Hill still doesn't work perfectly with PSEmu, you don't have to report that issue ;) Just one more note: If you enable mask bits, the '3D glasses' option will also activated, that's simply because my mask bit emulation also is doing the ZBuffer trick."I know where the stars glow And the sky's unclouded Sweet the water runs my friends But Noldor Blood is on your hands Tears unnumbered You will shet and dwell in pain"- Blind Guardian, Noldor-------------------------------------------------------------------------- 19. Feb, 2000 Version 1.29- At the moment I don't do much changes on my PSEmu OpenGL plugin (I am busy with some other project) but I've added a small new option and I want to release that version even if it contains no big surprises. Ok, so what is new? Two more filtering options: you can now configure filtering to leave sprites unsmoothed. That will look nice on some games: all 3D stuff will be smooth, while text and health bars will be looking sharp. Of course some games are having strange graphics with that mixed mode, but hey, that's the reason why options exist: turn em off if you like it, turn em off if you hate it. Small suggestion: use my PSSwitch configuration utiliy, so you can make different PSEmu settings for your different games :) Thanx to Q'tro for the idea to filter everything but sprites. Oh, one last word: the in-game menu toggles now between all five filtering modes in the following order: none, standard, extended, standard without sprites, extended without sprites."Encumbered forever by desire and ambition There's a hunger still unsatisfied Our weary eyes still stray to the horizon Though down this road we've been so may times"- Pink Floyd-------------------------------------------------------------------------- 28. Jan, 2000 Version 1.28- I've tried it again: out of order drawing to minimize texture and shading state changes. And again: no speed gained. Sigh. Maybe I have to play a bit more with that funcs, right now all the o-o-o-d stuff is disabled (there are still some small glitches and offscreen drawing isn't done in the new funcs yet, so I've decided they are not ready for public eyes :) But another option, related to o-o-o-d, can be activated in the gpu config dialog: support for 3D VR glasses. I don't have some for testing, so I can only hope it will work. Please note that most 3D glasses are working with D3D only, but I think the Asus glasses come with tweaked nVidia OpenGL drivers, so they should be working... try it and send me an email...- While re-writing my gpu for o-o-o-d (nearly all gpu funcs had to be changed, sigh) I've detected a small bug with smooth shaded polylines. That one is fixed.- Optimized some of my asm texture uploading code. Faster that way.- The GeForce is handling texture sow/tow coords slightly different than TNT or 3DFX cards. All caching types beside the dynamic mode produced small gaps between textures on some occasions with the current GeForce Detonator drivers. Well, I didn't want to wait until nVidia is willing to fix that glitch (if ever...) and luckily I could finally tweak my texture matrix so it should be fine with all cards. I've tested it on my GeForce and Voodoo2 card, I hope that TNT(2) cards will be fine, too. If you have a TNT based card and you are detecting some small thin lines with version 1.28, please send me a mail... in that case I will do some config option, so everyone will be happy :)"The elves and gnomes have to hide when the moon is showing its face and raging orcs will set their traps and all forests will burn they hate green trees and love the dark they don't understand that they're caught and left alone they feel the magic in the wind they just fear the old man's song"- Blind Guardian-------------------------------------------------------------------------- 09. Jan, 2000 Version 1.27- Optimized 'Dynamic caching'. It will be slightly faster (less cache thrashing).- Support for sprite wrapping. Very interesting psx ability. I've seen that just once in one game (yeah, again in BOF3, that game seems to use nearly _every_ feature of the psx gpu). Maybe some other games will also be repaired :)-------------------------------------------------------------------------- 28. Dec, 1999 Version 1.26- Yeah, christmas time... and because I was such a nice guy the last year, Santa Claus brought me a GeForce256 DDR :) Well, compared to my old TNT1 it's slightly faster... hey, just kidding, it's really fast... as a matter of fact I think it's the best consumer OpenGL card right now. My PSEmu OGL plugin don't use the GeForce T&L features (not much transformation and lighting stuff are needed emulating the PSX gpu), but goodies like very fast vram data uploading mean a lot. And don't worry if you have an older video card like the TNT1: I won't lean back and think 'hey, why should I work on optimizations anymore, the game runs just fine on my GeForce'. Of course I will try to to get even better speed in the future, hey, the main issue of this release _is_ about speed :)- So, what's new? Generally just one new texture caching type... I call it 'Dynamic caching', and it was in my mind for some months now. It has some benefits compared to the 'heavy cachig' mode: a) It will use your video cards vram to the fullest. It will try to detect how much free vram could be used for textures on game startup, so all textures used will be vram resident... no more texture swapping! b) It will sort psx texture parts by their usage, so less texture state changes will occurr. c) Psx games using lotta palettes will work better because now _all_ different palettized texture parts will be cached (if your card has enuff vram, of course). 'Heavy caching' just keeps up to 10 different palettized copies of the same texture area, for example. d) Some 'security' border will be generated on every texture part. That means bilinear filtering will be looking slightly better, because I don't have to pull the texture sow/tow coords as much as in the other texture caching modes. It also 'repairs' the problem I've seen with the detonator drivers uploading 1 texel wide texture parts. Hey, sounds good... but, as always in life there are some drawbacks (nothing is ever easy): a) Full vram usage for textures: if you like to play at high resolutions or you like to use 32 bit textures and/or 32 bit desktop resolution, be aware that it will cost you valuable vram that can't be used for texture caching. And I hope that most OpenGL drivers tell me the truth about how many textures could be resident in vram... the 3dfx drivers for my V2 (8 MB texture vram) are reporting enuff texture ram for 32 MByte, tststs. Well, if a driver is telling lies, most likely the game will be getting slower as longer as you play it. b) Sorting: well, of course it takes more cpu time to do that. So some games (like Tekken3) will loose some frames compared to heavy caching. c) Palette caching: game depending... if just up to 10 different pals are used on the same texture part, heavy caching will be working fine... else 'Dynamic' will be more efficient d) Security border: well, that one is taking also some cpu and uploading time, of course. Conclusion: well, sometimes it runs fast like hell (try Spyro, for example), sometimes it's slower (Tekken3) and sometimes it makes no difference at all (all other games, hehehe, just joking ;) And maybe I can speed the 'Dynamic' mode further up in the future, we will see...- Back to my new baby, the GeForce... :) It's true, the GeForce supports palettized textures, even in OpenGL. So my 'Palettized texture mode' from version 1.23 really worked :) But because of the V2 hack I had to do (uploading the palette data on every primitive) it was slow. I've changed that, so the V2 has now some troubles in that mode. But, to be honest: I don't care! 3dfx should fix their drivers, the OpenGL specifications can be found at www.opengl.org ;) But it seems also nVidia has some troubles with pal textures: the 3.62 drivers contain a bug, making pal textures useless. So, if you want to try em, you have to go for the 3.53 detonator version. But most time the 'pal texture' mode is slower than my new 'Dynamic' mode on the GeForce, just a few games (like Blaze&Blade) will be smoother.- Well, and some more 'GeForce inside' infos: be sure to use the 'Block transfer' buffer flipping mode in the GeForce OpenGL display properties. If you use 'page flip' or 'auto select', sometimes bad flickering can occurr (and I've noticed no differences in speed, so I really suggest using the block transfer)! And another hint: if you enabling 'Anti-aliasing' in my GPU config, the GeForce falls back to software rendering (_very_ slow)... tststsOK, that's all this time. I wish you luck trying the new mode whatevercard and game you are owning. Oh well, and if a game is slow, you cando an easy quick test, if it's because of the gpu or the PSEmu core:just activate frameskipping. If speed doesn't get significant better(for example just 1 or 2 FPS), than it points to the core and no gpuoption will be able to fix it.-------------------------------------------------------------------------- 21. Nov, 1999 Version 1.25- Tststs... my MS compiler screwed it... that's what you call 'optimizations', Bill? Well, the ChangeDisplaySettings() func worked much faster in version 1.24... of course, because it didn't change any desktop settings at all. Yeah, I didn't notice that bug (I don't use the 'change desktop settings' option very often, and because I didn't touch a line of code in that function, I never thought to test it). Well, thanks to all who reported me that issue, it's fixed.-------------------------------------------------------------------------- 19. Nov, 1999 Version 1.24- Where to start? Well, filtering is much better now... no more wrong blended stuff, and less alignment problems. You can choose between two filtering modes: Standard and Extended. Standard is slightly faster, but some small black borders can appear and sometimes text is hard to read. Much better in Extended mode :) You can toggle between all three modes in the in-game menu in the following order: no filtering, standard, extended. - Fixed a small thingie that could cause even smaller glitches. Noticed in BOFIII with a special monster type (some wizard guy)... Oh well, you need good eyes to see the difference :) Some good news: after one year playing BOFIII (I have to admit I did more coding than playing ;) I've finished the game using PSEmuPro :)- Improved extended color check: previous versions missed some color cycling effects (I've noticed wrong Blaze&Blade wave effects, and a choppy BOFIII combat selection). Well, fixed....- Baddie in version 1.23: the tennis game with the unspeakable name (Anna Hsgfnxbhsb tennis) was screwed up... no player animations anymore. Well, I've looked hard and detected that version 1.23 did it right and all previous versions just worked by accident :) Well, V1.24 does it even more right (right-ier? hehehe), so all is looking fine again (and it is even faster than before :)- Offscreen drawing: now there is a 'Standard' and 'Extended' mode. If you activate 'Extended', you will see some additional stuff with some games (mostly splash screens). Sometimes a slight flickering can occur with the extended mode... you can't have it all :( Like the filtering you can toggle between no OD, standard OD and extended OD using the in-game menu.- Anti-aliasing option... mmm, it makes no difference on my TNT card and it is causing some glitches with my V2. Try it and tell me if it works...- FF7... oh my... missing battle screens... well, first I want to say: if you really want to play FF7 (or FF8) on the pc, go and buy the pc version. I agree fully with Kazz, no game running on a psx emu can beat a proper pc version of the same game. Yeah, some nice games are psx-only (like BOFIII, Wild Arms or Spyro) and I really like it to play them with PSEmu, but if you have a choice... take the pc version, it's less frustrating. Mmmm... back to business... oh yes... FF7 battle screens are now working :) You have to activate the standard offscreen drawing to get them (flickering will occur using the extended OD). And activate my special 'PSEmu Core Fixer' mode by hitting the 'INSERT' key, if you want to play FF7... magically all text window borders will look fine (and some flashing hand cursor in the battle menu will be fixed, too).- Last issue: I've noticed that the Detonator drivers (both 2.08 and 3.53) sometimes have troubles to upload texture parts using width or height of 1 texel (biggest surprise: the 3DFX OGL drivers do it right... tststs). So I've decided to do a small fix if you activate 'Texture Alignment': I will always upload at least 2 texels, if it is turned on. That fix helps to display the 'Tarzan' demo right on TNT cards, for example.Talking about Detonator drivers: I switched back to the 2.08 reference driversfor my TNT card. Why? Well, because they are faster with OGL... I don't seea reason to use newer drivers (3.53), if I get a better performance using theold ones (2.08). But, of course, that's only true for my Elsa TNT card, you haveto try it by yourself... -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 16. Oct, 1999 Version 1.23- Speed :) Well, I've done _many_ optimizations, so you will get 1..20 additional FPS with this version. Enjoy :)- Palettized texture support is back! TNT/TNT2 cards don't support that texture type, so I had to do the tests on my Voodoo2 card. The newest 3DFX OpenGL drivers can do palettized textures with alpha values, but I have to upload the palette data with every primitive (oh well, 3DFX and OpenGL... two different worlds), so this mode is not very fast by now. Main reason I wanted to do pal tex support: the new nVidia GeForce256 should support it :)- I've changed the color of my in-game menu to black... why? Well, I love happy, friendly colors... and there is nothing better than a happy, friendly BLACK :)Have fun!-------------------------------------------------------------------------- 17. Sept, 1999 Version 1.22- I've noticed that the texture window mode wasn't turned off in the RC Stuntcopter demo causing a strange display. Fixed!- Speedup in my texture cache management. Well, if you have a PII (or better) you won't notice the improvement, but on the other hand it couldn't hurt ;)- A small bug caused transparent pixels in movies or menu screens in rare occasions. Fixed, so the menu of Aeronauts (demo) is fine now. The demo is still unplayable slow, of course...- If you are using a 16 bit texture quality mode (4-4-4-4 or 5-5-5-1), and your OGL driver supports packed pixel formats, you will see a small speedup in MDECs or uploaded screens (well, 1-3 FPS).- Improved tile offscreen drawing. Repairs some baddies I've seen in several demos.- This version is using Lewpy's optimized func for reading/writing GPU data. Seems to be stable at last :)Mmm, this update did take nearly a month... why? Well, main reason isthat I am running out of baddies that I can fix :) Well, I know there_are_ still things to do (yeah, FF7 battle menus, I know...) but I needa game/demo showing the effect to fix it, because the remaining baddiesare mostly caused by weird PSX front buffer drawing stuff and I _really_have to take a very close look what's going on.-------------------------------------------------------------------------- 18. August, 1999 Version 1.21- A bug crept in with version 1.20 causing a hard crash with some games :( Yeah, lesson learned: optimizations are _not_ always good... maybe I should do no optimizations anymore ;)- Small goodie: the old Gradius (1995/96) game now works. Turn on 'Offscreen drawing'...-------------------------------------------------------------------------- 14. August, 1999 Version 1.20- Fixed a problem with Windows 2000. Now PSE (and my GPU) runs fine with W2K. Well, I've tested W2K RC1 with some beta nVidia W2K TNT drivers, speed is same as Win98 on my PC. But I am not using the new MS-OS very often with PSEmu because I have no W2K drivers for my sound card :(- Changed my window mode drawing code... maybe it helps some non-nVidea OGL drivers...- And even more non-nVidia compatibility: Now the 3DFX OGL beta2.1 can handle the PSE devkit mode (no more crashs), maybe it helps some other non-nVidea drivers as well (kinda deja-vu?)- Not very important, but hey! I've removed all MFC stuff from this version... so my file size increased... strange, he? Removing stuff means increasing file size... try to figure that out ;)- Some loop optimizations... will not result in much speed increase, but... such changes do never hurt :)--------------------------------------------------------------------------01. August, 1999 Version 1.19- For all Voodoo users: I've got the newest Win98 reference drivers for my Voodoo2 card (well, they are not really new, I haven't updated my V2 for awhile ;), but they come with a new OpenGL ICD! After installing the drivers, copy the file '3DFXVGL.DLL' into your PSE main directory (NOT into the plugin dir) and rename it to 'OPENGL32.DLL'. The ICD is not bad, of course slower than the TNT driver, but all in all... They now support the 'desktop changing' very nicely (no more problems noticed). To get a better speed select 'Don't care' as Texture quality, the more compact modes (R4B4G4A4 or R5B5G5A1) should be faster, but it seems that those modes are not optimized with the new OGL driver... oh, well... To get a better quality you should enable 'Dithering' and it's better to disable 'Advanced blending' else things will be slow again... As a small gooddie I could track the reason why my GPU was crashing on PSE exit with the 3DFX drivers (not a bad crash, but hey!) and I've found a way around that :) Wasn't my fault, of course...- I've noticed that the new Voodoo OGL drivers doesn't work with my 'Paletted textures' mode anymore. Nobody did report that his Matrox/ATI/S3/... card could use that mode so I decided to do a major cleanup: there are no selectable texture modes at all in this version of my GPU. Should be less confusing and it _really_ makes coding this GPU a bit easier :) When you go to the config dialog, you will see a new 'Extended color check' option... that's the replacement for the old 'SubTextureUpdate (best)'. If you disable it, you will get the old 'SubTextureUpdate (good)'. Yup, two modes survived the cleanup...- New option: 'Texture priorities'. What's that? Don't know... hehe, just kidding :) Mmm, easy explanation (hope so): OpenGL drivers are trying to establish a working set of textures in your cards VRAM. When the option is activated the GPU will help them to decide which textures are more important than others. Well, best to use this option with the 'Heavy caching' option, it will _really_ help... Without 'Heavy caching' the texture prios should be more or less useless, at least on video cards with 16 MByte VRam, it can even make things worse because of more internal calculations. If you have a card with less Ram, you can give it it try, of course... But (yeah, repeating myself, just to be sure), best thing to do: check 'Heavy caching' and 'Texture prio' in union... - Not very important, nevertheless fixed: if you are using the PSE devkit mode, you can leave a game with ESC and re-enter it by hitting the 'Run' button again. Some users seem to use that to change cheat codes while playing. Mmmm, if you are using the fullscreen mode it can happen that the screen stays black (at least with the nVidia drivers). Just quit and enter again until the display is fine. --------------------------------------------------------------------------23. July, 1999 Version 1.18- Even more special handlers for FrontBuffer drawing... small help for OpenGL drivers which can't do drawing to the front buffers (normally such drawing is really stupid, even on the PSX... got it, PSX game developers?). Thanks to SEGU for the hints :) But, sorry, it doesn't help with FF7 battle menus yet, I really need the game to fix that :( And don't forget to activate 'OffScreen drawing'... - Small changes to my polyline function. Now the text in the S.C.A.R.S demo will be OK, but the polyline code still doesn't 'feel' right... oh my, at least I haven't noticed any bad side-effects.- Corrected tile offscreen drawing: try Anna Kournikova's Smash Court Tennis... the demo version works fine :)- Fixed: the Tekken 3 flashing polygon bug. All the honor goes to Lewpy, he found a way to get around that problem. Hail to the King (or God save the Queen, or something like that... ;)- The internal pixel format color depth now depends on your selection in the GPU config. In the previous versions the 'Color Depth' option (16 or 32 Bit) was only used for the 'Change desktop settings', to switch the desktop in the wanted color mode. Now the GPU tries to set the selected color depth even if you don't want (or simply can't) change the desktop. Maybe that one will help some OpenGL drivers for more speed/compatibility/quality, but it makes no difference for nVidia TNT drivers.Oh, well, if you have a TNT/TNT2 card, try nVidias new reference drivers 2.0.8. Working fine here :)--------------------------------------------------------------------------19. June, 1999 Version 1.17- more speed: I could use a little trick in my SubTexture update modes, so some games will be faster. Gran Turismo now jumps from 12 FPS to 20-25 FPS :)- faster and more compatible: complete rewrite of my on-screen detection... causes a speed-up even if Offscreen-Drawing is enabled and more thingies will be displayed. If you were seeing some missing stuff in your game (hehehe, it's hard to see if something's missing ;), try to turn on offscreen-drawing. If that option is enabled I try some nasty FrontBuffer rendering... if your OGL driver can handle this correctly! (no problems with the nVidia 1.88 drivers and the new Q3 OGL drivers for voodoo cards, no chance with the 3DFX OGL beta 2.1) So the menu from Soul Reaver is now displayed and I've noticed some splash screens appearing. It doesn't help with the battlemenu in FF7, though :( - Some hidden gooddie... my Tomb Raider 3 demo plays fine, but some stuff is too black, so you can't see Lara's face or the inventory. I've found a way around that (no other GPU I've tested can handle TR3). What do you have to do if you want to take a look at Lara? Hit the key... yup :) Hit it again when you can't stand Laras face anymore ;) Well, it is a special fix, I don't know if there is a general PSX rule for it, but turning on that hidden option can cause wrong looking polygons within other games. So you have to do it manually... if something is looking wrong it is _your_ fault ;) Well, and I don't know if the full game is running with PSEMU...--------------------------------------------------------------------------12. June, 1999 Version 1.16- nVidia released the new detonator drivers (version 1.88)! They give an overall speed improvement with my GPU on TNT cards (sometimes up to 10 FPS) and are including new OpenGL extensions. So I could improve my blending func :) If you look into the GPU config dialog you'll notice that 'Slow blending' has changed its name into 'Advanced blending' again. That's because the new nVidia OGL drivers (and the newest ATI drivers, so I've been told) can do PSX-like blending in one pass. As a result turning on this option will not cause such a big slowdown anymore, and things will look nicer (no more wrong double-blended, intersecting stuff). The GPU will auto-detect if the OpenGL extension is available in your OGL driver and use it with activated 'Advanced blending'. You can see if it works, in the GPU menu a small shining sun should appear... No sun, no fun... 'Slow blending' instead... :( Oh, well, try 'Spyro' with the new blending... For easy testing: my GPU in-game menu now also has the option 'AB', so you can turn it on/off and look if this game is looking better...- Complete re-write of my texture window funcs. Includes stretching for non-power-2 texture windows, I don't think TWs could be done better with OpenGL. The new funcs repairs most of the wrong looking stuff with Ridge Race Type 4 (I hope some things with FF7 will be repaired, too. Hey, Per, send me a mail about it :)- Done, but not included in 'official' release... very special debugging funcs that (hopefully) will reveal still missing stuff in my GPU. Testing the various games/demos will take some time, but I have really high hopes to find the last oddities... wish me luck...Some notes to my 'Heavy caching' option: 'Heavy' means 'Heavy'... so if yourvideo card has less than 16MByte RAM, it will be most of the time a 'Heavy swapping memory slowing things terrible down' option... you are warned...--------------------------------------------------------------------------05. June Version 1.15- Window mode: If you want to play and type your homework at the same time ;) The window size can only be changed in the GPU config, it's more stable that way. Window size can be from 100x100 up to 16384x16384...- Improved (hope so) polyline funcs. Should cure some baddies, at least Wild Arms will run much better!- At last I've found a way around those flashing black rects I've seen in the Tekken3 demo fighting against Lei. I call it my 'fuzzy adjustment'. Well, that's done internally, so there is no need for any config option :)- And here it comes... speed... a new GPU option for the SubTexture update modes... I've got Blaze&Blade yesterday and it runs fine with PSEmu. But... my GPU could only run it with 6 FPS on my TNT card :( B&B works fine on my V2 (Lewpys GPU) with >20 FPS, so it isn't the PSE core... kinda challenge... I've looked _very_ hard what's going on and found out (again) that it's very bad for PSX emulation if you have a card without paletted texture support. But then I stopped crying and typed until my fingers bled ;) I've created a whole new set of caching funcs, available for the SubTexture update modes, you can activate them in the GPU config, the option is called 'Heavy caching'. Why 'Heavy'? Because it will need some system resources... 16MB additional system Ram and _really_ more texture memory as without this cache. So if your machine hasn't the requirements, turn the option off :( What will you gain? Depends on the game... sometimes nothing, sometimes you may even loose some speed, but sometimes... the black dove flies... Here some FPS (PAL demos/games): Blaze & Blade: 6 -> 25 FPS Treasures of the Deep: 9 -> 20 FPS G-Darius: 20 -> 40 FPS Spyro: 25 -> 30 FPS Nice, isn't it? Last hint for Blaze & Blade players: You can also try the 'RGBA texture' mode!B&B is one of the few games which will run very fast with it (30 FPS). We allcan be glad that I've tested this mode _after_ I've written the 'Heavy caching'option else it wouldn't exist ;)--------------------------------------------------------------------------30. May, 1999 Version 1.14- Added more (higher) screen resolutions. Highest resolution I can run on my TNT card is 1600x1200 with 16 Bit colors. Note: don't use a higher resolution if your monitor doesn't stand it... Also wanted to do a Window mode, but it did freeze occasionally with my card, so it's disabled until I'll find a safer and better way (I hope it is not a bug in the nVidia TNT drivers).- Also changed (again) the 'Change Desktop settings' option, maybe it will work better with non-TNT cards... I'll keep on trying... - If you are wondering if your card is running OpenGL in Software only (without any hardware acceleration), hit the key to display my GPU menu. If there is a sad smiley (I wonder if you can call that one smiley at all...) at the end of the menu line, you can be sure it IS the Microsoft OpenGL Software mode... bad luck. Try to get the newest OpenGL drivers for your video card and install them properly, else things will be very slow.- Added two buttons in my GPU config dialog to choose quickly a 'nice', good looking setting or a 'fast' one. The buttons will help all the newbies which were a bit lost with all the settings the GPU is offering. So you don't have to send me mails, asking for the 'best' settings for your hardware ;) Of course you still should try turning on/off different options, if it's fast/nice for me it doesn't have to be the same for you... - The usual internal optimizations, things can only get faster with them :)Next: Well, my optimizations are not finished yet, it's very tiresome to try to speedup a func, doing benchmarks and searching new bugs or strange effects with mytesting games. So the next versions will not be released as fast as the previousones :(But there is also some good news: nVidia wants to include new OpenGL extensionsin their next driver release (the newest ATI ICD's already have them...), so I hope I can speed up my blending modes in one of the next versions of the GPU. I can't wait to get the new nVidia reference drivers :)--------------------------------------------------------------------------??. May, 1999 Version 1.13Missing that version in your wonderful GPU collection? Hehehe...There's no (officially released) Version 1.13.No, I aint superstitious, but I am always skipping that number in myprogs (kind of tradition), if you want to sell software to make a livingyou have to be sensitive about the feelings of your customers :) My OpenGL GPU does a heavy flickering in all of your games?Here's a note I posted to some messageboards just in case you've missed it:>If you are seeing rapid flickering within all of your PSX games using>a TNT card with the nVidia Detonator drivers, be sure to check the following:>>If in your Windows registry the following key is set:>>\\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\NVIDIA Corporation\RIVA TNT\NV4Tweak\PowerUser=1>>you will be able to change more settings in the Windows display properties.>>Look for a tab named "OpenGL" in your TNT display properties.>>There will be an option called "Enable buffer flipping for full screen applications".>You have to TURN IT OFF. That's the default setting and that's the way things will>be working fine without any flashing...--------------------------------------------------------------------------20. May, 1999 Version 1.12- Biggest change: improved Bilinear Filtering. Sometimes only a few words are needed to set your mind on the right track... Thanks to Lewpy, always nice talking to you on IRC :) Yeah, now it's done: BF without those annoying black lines. Don't hesitate to try this feature, some racing, fighting or jump'n'run games will be looking really nice :) But keep in mind: the PSX doesn't support BF :( so all a GPU can do is trying to minimize the side effects which creep in with filtering. If you are seeing _new_ glitches while using BF, bad luck... Known BF effects with some games: * gaps between textures, or textures seem not to fit smoothly together * some blending modes are too bright * blurr effects * unreadable texts Maybe I do some BF fine tuning in the future, but for now... just go on and try it, many games will look great :) - For all users who were reporting some "blinking" displays: I've changed my screen clearing code a bit, maybe it will work better with your games. That blinking stuff is hard to fix, because I haven't found a game/demo showing that effect. And I can only hope the new changes don't make things worse in other games :(- Another chapter of the book "1001 stupid things PSX game developers can do": using Gouraud shaded primitives without wanting to shade at all. It was detected with the 'Asterix' demo (causing wild flickering colors) and it's fixed with this version. - Ooops, the next one was from the book "1001 stupid things GPU coders can do" ;) Just 'forgotten' to set some color infos with Gouraud shaded lines. Now those important health bars within some games (Tomb Raider II demo) will look right.- Improved screen uploading after disabled PSX displays (thanks to Lewpy), so more startup/loading/title screens will be shown- Slightly speeding up some funcs. As always it depends how a game is coded... Well, I spent much time testing if out-of-order drawing using Z-buffering could speed things up with OpenGL. Sad but true: speed wasn't really higher and I didn't even try to implement correct blendings :( Waste of time for the GPU, increased experience for my person :)Next version: There are still some glitches I am hunting, biggest problem seems to be that killing one means often to create two new ones in other games :(Still to be done: speeding up the offscreen drawing funcs. Strange, every time I amlooking on that part of my code I find something more important to do ;)But you can always turn OD off for better speed...--------------------------------------------------------------------------13. May, 1999 Version 1.11- Added frame skipping. You can turn it on in the configuration dialog or in the in-game menu (FS). If speed is falling below the FPS limit a frame will be skipped. So the FPS limit value will be used by both, the FPS limitation and the frame skipping option. The GPU will just skip one frame in a row, so you will get twice the speed max. More skipping would really be looking ugly... You can also try to turn on both, Frame skipping and Frame limitiation, skipping will speed things up while limitation tries to smooth things.- More speed even without FS :) if you are using SubTexture update modes (best with TNT cards). Done by some optimizations and a smarter Texture invalidation func. That one will give best results with games which are using frequently data to vram uploading for animations (mostly 2D games). Well, got some new demos yesterday, so perhaps I can increase compatibilitywith the next version. Wait and see...But what I want to do most is to speed up things further, so I will tryto do some more complicated stuff. Maybe it kicks the GPU to a higher level,maybe it's just a waste of time... Either way it will be a lot of work :(On the heights, all paths are paved with daggers.- Old Seanchan saying (R.J.)--------------------------------------------------------------------------07. May, 1999 Version 1.10- Got 'Wild Arms' (thanks to Rene), so I could improve Texture Windows, window borders will be displayed correctly now.- Do you use 'SubTexture (good color table)' as texture mode and some glitches or wrong color cycling occurs in your game? Try the new 'SubTexture (best color table)' mode. Oh, well, this mode has to make more color table checks and (depending on the game) more texture uploading, so don't expect it to be faster... I've tried to speed up my 'SubTexture' cache a bit, but I think in most games you don't see any difference.- Fixed small prob with switching dithering (DI) in the in-game menu- New way to set the original desktop resolution when leaving PSE (the old one caused problems on some cards). Don't know, if it will help...- Func for drawing rects and fading screens didn't work well in Version 1.9 :( so I've changed it back to normal...- drawing a box beneath the in-game menu for fixing unreadable FPS results with some games.Next on my to-do list:Frame skipping... seems to be the most wanted option... don't know why ;)--------------------------------------------------------------------------01. May, 1999 Version 1.9A whole lotta changes...let's start with the minor ones:- Fixed bug that causes a GPU crash in very special cases (I've never heard of a PSX TextureMode No 3, seems some games are coded a bit sloppy)- Improved 'Texture alignment' option. That's for all Breath of Fire III fans.- Added caching of texture windows. Will speed up certain games, still not perfect :(- Added more Offscreen Drawing functions. Hope that more missing stuff will show up. Nevertheless most of the funcs are done 'blind folded', meaning I couldn't test it because I haven't found a game using them. Also 'Offscreen drawing' will be a bit slower yet, I will try to speed it up with one of the next versions. If your game doesn't need OD, turn it off.- Now the more important things: added better frame rate display and a small option switching menu. It will work with all OpenGL drivers (even with 3DFX OpenGL) and no more flickering at all. But... small loss of speed while it is dislayed, so turn it off if you don't need it. How it works: Hit and the Framerate und the menu will appear. It looks like: 'FPS XXXX.X FL< OD AM TA FI DI TW *' What does it all mean? Here's the legend: FPS XXXX.X: frames per second, higher means better :) FL : Frame rate limiter OD : Offscreen drawing AM : Alpha multipass TA : Texture alignment FI