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Tux
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This version mainly adds support to save the state of fm sound chips (music) in savegames and restore them correctly, it should help to get rid of the reports of sound corruption in neoraine.
This is something I have been ignoring for years, but after thinking about it, it was maybe one of the last annoyances in raine, so it was definetely something to add before stopping.
Since this improvement for savegames is shared between raine and neoraine you get a new binary for both, and I even compiled a dos version (but without testing it - it should be ok).
It also fixes a problem with the command line of neoraine, adds a cheat to disable encounters in ssrpg, and tweaks some minor details. I also finally took the time to update the "old versions" page, it should be much more readable now. Well it seems we are finally reaching the end of raine/neoraine, because I run out of inspiration now...
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Huggybaby
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Thanks Tux, we appreciate all the fixes even if we forget to check in from time to time.
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mer-curious
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This version mainly adds support to save the state of fm sound chips (music) in savegames and restore them correctly, it should help to get rid of the reports of sound corruption in neoraine. I haven't done many tests until now to see if this is working correctly.
What I can assure is that there are still bugs in this savestate emulation, as the one I've reported:
- the problem of music not being resumed when you load a savestate created from a previously loaded savestate in intro movies;
And besides all those things on that to-do list, I'd like to suggest a change on the behaviour of the "Region" option.
Currently if you just show the name of a region in the GUI, neoraine immediately loads it and resets the game, which means that if we accidentaly do it, bye bye to our progress in that turn, it is gone.
So why not changing the region only if/when we come back to the game with a new setting? I mean, showing the region on the GUI won't immediately reset the game to the described region. It will only happen when pressing the "Play Game" option or the "ESC" key with a new setting.
But you can think of something more clear, like a confirmation warning on the GUI everytime a new region is selected. What about placing the Region set up in a reserved menu instead of setting it up directly from the main menu? It could join the NeoCD options, for instance. Something like:
Alow speed hacks.........Yes
Region........................Europe (you change it by pressing left or right arrow keys)
And when we exit this menu with a new setting, a warning comes: "Really change the region (the game will be reset)? Yes/No".
And that's it, the changing is confirmed and when you press ESC one more time you're back to the game with the new setting.
Well, this is just an example of how you can prevent us from accidentaly resetting the game and losing all of our progress during that turn (yes, it has already happened with me).
By the way, talking about the GUI: if you go to the "About..." menu with the default window size (the one that comes with the emulator), the text won't correctly fit the window.
And finally, a new bug report: load a game, go to the video options, then return to main menu. Change the region. Neoraine suddenly crashes. Also happens in fullscreen mode.
I use normal blits-hq2x/3x.
Those are my comments for now.
Thanks in advance for your patience,
mer-curious.
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« Last Edit: Mar 11 2010, 04:29 PM by mer-curious »
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Tux
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For the music not restarted when you reload a savegame, well I just tried in kof99, started the intro movie, made a savegame while the music was playing, reset the game, load the savegame from the silent menu, and it resumes the music from where it was.
So I'll need more details on how to see this bug then. It might be related to the format of your game, I use mainly zip + mp3 on my side (but I can try another format if you find a bug there !).
For info I just fixed the famous old bug about the sound of the roulette on the left side in kof games. It was amazing ! It's simply because these games use the ay8910 chip, a very old sound fm chip, and there was a bug in the interface of this chip, but it didn't get noticed until now because all the other games I could test which use the same ym2610 sound chip totally ignore this ay8910 chip !!!
Well it's fixed now, the fix will probably won't be usefull for anything else but anyway...
EDIT : ok for the region change, now it won't reset the game immediately anymore, it will reset it only if the region is different when you leave the menu.
I can't reproduce your crash (load / video options / change region), even with force normal blits/hq2x3x, windowed mode.
Yeah I know for the font size not being perfect all the time, it tries to choose the best option but there are always cases where it fails. I have changed it many times since 0.50.0 already, but it still fails sometimes.
The changes are commited to git if you want to compile them ! 
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« Last Edit: Mar 11 2010, 10:08 PM by Tux »
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Huggybaby
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Hey, another bug bites the dust. Just because it's a corner case doesn't mean the fix isn't just as valuable in the wild and wacky world of emulation.
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mer-curious
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So I'll need more details on how to see this bug then. I see this bug very easily in the KOF' 98 intro. I can even reproduce it without needing to reload a previously loaded savegame.
Try it in KOF' 98 like this: load the game, go to the intro movie, wait until the Kyo's sun is drawn in the center of the screen with the words "SPECIAL EDITION", and then save the game (F2 key). Wait some seconds and load this savestate (F4 key). Music won't be reloaded.
I'm asking you to wait until the sun is drawn in the screen because it happens more easily after this part (very strange, I know).
All my ROMs have the "ISO + CUE + MP3 files" format. I always load them from the CUE files.
For info I just fixed the famous old bug about the sound of the roulette on the left side in kof games. It was amazing ! It's simply because these games use the ay8910 chip, a very old sound fm chip, and there was a bug in the interface of this chip, but it didn't get noticed until now because all the other games I could test which use the same ym2610 sound chip totally ignore this ay8910 chip !!!
Well it's fixed now, the fix will probably won't be usefull for anything else but anyway... At last!
Thank you!
EDIT : ok for the region change, now it won't reset the game immediately anymore, it will reset it only if the region is different when you leave the menu. Thank you!
But what about placing this option in the "NeoCD options" menu?
I mean, it has something to do with those game console options after all, no? But it's currently the only option with a separated place for it (in the main menu). So I think that placing it in the "NeoCD options" menu would let the GUI better organized.
What do you think?
I can't reproduce your crash (load / video options / change region), even with force normal blits/hq2x3x, windowed mode. It's a very bizarre crash. I just do as I've described in the last post: load a game, press ESC to come to the GUI, go to the "Video options" menu, press ESC to go back to the main menu and then change the region (pressing left or right arrow keys). Neoraine suddenly terminates.
I don't change anything when I go to the "Video options" menu, as normal blits-hq2x/3x is already my setup when I open the emu.
Please, try to do it one more time when you have the chance.
Yeah I know for the font size not being perfect all the time, it tries to choose the best option but there are always cases where it fails. I have changed it many times since 0.50.0 already, but it still fails sometimes. No problem. These minor glitches you can leave for some time later.
The changes are commited to git if you want to compile them ! I'll wait you check these bugs (the one in the KOF' 98 intro and the crash with the region option - remember to try them in version 1.2.10, because it's the one I'm using) and release a new version. If you prefer to wait some time before releasing a new version, no problem for me.
By the way, let's update the "to-do" list:
List of things that can be worked on for the next version(s):
- change the framerate float from 59.1856 to 59.185606 to get ultra-perfect sync (or at least to match MAME specifications, regardless of neoraine emulating NG-CD and not the MVS versions);
- a "return to default" option in the framerate menu so that we could freely change the value and quickly have the default one after testing.
- the "cursor-sound-only-sent-to-the-left-channel" issue in KOF games (confirmed to be an issue of neoraine, because doesn't hapen on NeoGeo CDZ emulator, which, by the way, is able to perfectly emulate the NG-CD interface) [FIXED];
- the problem of music not being resumed when you load a savestate created from a previously loaded savestate in intro movies (persists in neoraine 1.2.10);
- the problem of window state not being remembered in Windows;
- the "slow motion 1-click key" feature, which could be done by letting the user to set a framerate value that would be instantly activated and deactivated by pressing a key at a time;
- raster effects emulation for some specific games;
- add more video filters, like the "75% scanlines".
- improve the GUI and fix some glitches;
- new Region option behaviour to prevent accidental region changing; [FIXED]
Thank you for your time and efforts,
mer-curious.
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« Last Edit: Mar 12 2010, 06:18 AM by mer-curious »
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Tux
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On ven. 12 mars 2010 07:14:03 CET, mer-curious wrote:
> Try it in KOF' 98 like this: load the game, go to the intro movie, wait until the Kyo's sun is drawn in the center of the screen with the words "SPECIAL EDITION", and then save the game (F2 key). Wait some seconds and load this savestate (F4 key). Music won't be reloaded.
Ok, I could reproduce it this time.
It's because there was an overflow in the sound position (44100 Hz, 2 channels, stereo, + position in ms, it's increasing very fast !). The number is divided by 100 now, the overflow should not appear anymore anywhere, and even old savegames will be restored correctly now.
To reproduce this you had to wait at least 15s in a track, my tests are really too fast ! 
> > EDIT : ok for the region change, now it won't reset the game immediately anymore, it will reset it only if the region is different when you leave the menu.
> Thank you!
>
> But what about placing this option in the "NeoCD options" menu?
> I mean, it has something to do with those game console options after all, no? But it's currently the only option with a separated place for it (in the main menu). So I think that placing it in the "NeoCD options" menu would let the GUI better organized.
>
> What do you think?
It's a function shared by raine and neoraine, so it can't go to neocd options.
+ I am not a big fan of confirmation dialogs everywhere (time loss...).
It should be fine this way...
> > I can't reproduce your crash (load / video options / change region), even with force normal blits/hq2x3x, windowed mode.
> It's a very bizarre crash. I just do as I've described in the last post: load a game, press ESC to come to the GUI, go to the "Video options" menu, press ESC to go back to the main menu and then change the region (pressing left or right arrow keys). Neoraine suddenly terminates.
>
> I don't change anything when I go to the "Video options" menu, as normal blits-hq2x/3x is already my setup when I open the emu.
>
> Please, try to do it one more time when you have the chance.
I tried on another linux system, and no crash.
I suspect again a windows video driver bug. I'll try on my windows here later to be sure it doesn't crash with a good driver.
EDIT : well I tried in windows, no crash neither. Tried in windowed mode and fullscreen, yuv overlays and hq2x/3x. Can't do better I guess if it's not specific to a game which is unlikely then it's specific to your system.
> > Yeah I know for the font size not being perfect all the time, it tries to choose the best option but there are always cases where it fails. I have changed it many times since 0.50.0 already, but it still fails sometimes.
> No problem. These minor glitches you can leave for some time later.
I'll try to fix it again later anyway...
> By the way, let's update the "to-do" list:
>
> List of things that can be worked on for the next version(s):
>
> - change the framerate float from 59.1856 to 59.185606 to get ultra-perfect sync (or at least to match MAME specifications, regardless of neoraine emulating NG-CD and not the MVS versions);
I was going to do it, which obliges to change a lot of types from float to double, and quite a few functions from SDL_gfx too, when I realized this is quite crazy :
This framerate is used to get the number of ms to wait between 2 frames.
ms = 1000.0 / fps
The difference here between 59.1856 and 59.185606 makes a difference of 1.76e-06 ms !!! Which means that you will need 1 million frames to see a difference of only 1 frame per second between the 2 numbers. And for info, to get 1 million frames, you need to wait more than 4 hours !!! But since you are human, you shouldn't notice any difference before at least 1/4s, so here it's roughly a delay of 15 frames, so you'll have to wait 15*4 = 60 hours to have a chance to see this delay (in fact you'll see nothing, because sound and graphics are synced much more often than that in the game).
So finally there is no point to do it, I'll just leave mame with their uber precision for nothing and keep my 59.1856 number, which is more than enough here.
> - a "return to default" option in the framerate menu so that we could freely change the value and quickly have the default one after testing.
Done.
> - the "cursor-sound-only-sent-to-the-left-channel" issue in KOF games (confirmed to be an issue of neoraine, because doesn't hapen on NeoGeo CDZ emulator, which, by the way, is able to perfectly emulate the NG-CD interface) [FIXED];
This one is fixed now.
> - the problem of music not being resumed when you load a savestate created from a previously loaded savestate in intro movies (persists in neoraine 1.2.10);
Fixed too.
> - the problem of window state not being remembered in Windows;
> - the "slow motion 1-click key" feature, which could be done by letting the user to set a framerate value that would be instantly activated and deactivated by pressing a key at a time;
> - raster effects emulation for some specific games;
This one is super complex if you don't want to copy stupidly the code from the mame neogeo driver, so I'll pass on this one for now.
> - add more video filters, like the "75% scanlines".
> - improve the GUI and fix some glitches;
> - new Region option behaviour to prevent accidental region changing; [FIXED]
>
>
> Thank you for your time and efforts,
> mer-curious.
>
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« Last Edit: Mar 13 2010, 01:32 PM by Tux »
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mer-curious
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To reproduce this you had to wait at least 15s in a track, my tests are really too fast ! Haha, no problem! So it was good to tell you to wait till the Kyo's sun to show in the screen.
Thanks for fixing this one too!
It's a function shared by raine and neoraine, so it can't go to neocd options.
+ I am not a big fan of confirmation dialogs everywhere (time loss...).
It should be fine this way... Yeah, no problem!
EDIT : well I tried in windows, no crash neither. Tried in windowed mode and fullscreen, yuv overlays and hq2x/3x. Can't do better I guess if it's not specific to a game which is unlikely then it's specific to your system. I've just confirmed that it really seems to be a game specific bug, because it won't happen with Samurai Spirits 1 and 2.
The bug showed in these games: KOF '97, '98 and '99, Last Blade 2.
Please try it with one of them if you still haven't. Just do as I've described: load the game (don't do anything in the game after loading it); after seeing the in-game static menu, press ESC to come to the GUI; go to the video options; press ESC to return to the GUI; and finally try to change the region. Neoraine will crash.
Please use version 1.2.10 to test, as it's the one I'm using here.
Sample of the crash: http://rapidshare.com/files/363156396/neoraine1210crash.wmv.html
WMV / 44 seconds / ~ 3MB
The bug also happens in YUV overlays mode.
I'm using Vista 32bits. Haven't tried Win 7 yet.
So finally there is no point to do it, I'll just leave mame with their uber precision for nothing and keep my 59.1856 number, which is more than enough here. Thank you so much for checking this up.
Besides what you've stated, I've been playing the KOF '98 intro and sync seems perfectly good so far. So maybe it was really something of my eyes/brain that made me focus a lot and see a sync problem that didn't exist after you changed the framerate from 60 to 59.1856.
- a "return to default" option in the framerate menu so that we could freely change the value and quickly have the default one after testing.
Done.
This one is super complex if you don't want to copy stupidly the code from the mame neogeo driver, so I'll pass on this one for now. Ok, no problem.
Actually this is an issue reported by other users here, not me. The games I've played doesn't show any graphic problems until now. But I think it was good to include it the list anyway.
And finally, I may let you know that neoraine page is down. Please take a look on it when you have time.
Now let's update the list:
List of things that can yet be worked on for the next version(s):
- the "slow motion 1-click key" feature, which could be done by letting the user to set a framerate value that would be instantly activated and deactivated by pressing a key at a time;
- raster effects emulation for some specific games;
- add more video filters, like the "75% scanlines".
- improve the GUI and fix some glitches;
Thanks a lot for your patience,
mer-curious.
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« Last Edit: Mar 14 2010, 10:00 AM by mer-curious »
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Tux
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On Sun 14 Mar 2010 10:52:04 AM CET, mer-curious wrote:
> And finally, I may let you know that neoraine page is down. Please take a look on it when you have time.
You mean this page :
http://rainemu.swishparty.co.uk/html/download/neoraine.html
You could access it without problem...
What was the error message ?
Otherwise I looked again at your bug with current dev version and couldn't reproduce it with kof99. I'll try again in windows later...
I know for the remaining things...
> Now let's update the list:
>
> List of things that can yet be worked on for the next version(s):
>
> - the "slow motion 1-click key" feature, which could be done by letting the user to set a framerate value that would be instantly activated and deactivated by pressing a key at a time;
> - raster effects emulation for some specific games;
> - add more video filters, like the "75% scanlines".
> - improve the GUI and fix some glitches;
>
>
> Thanks a lot for your patience,
> mer-curious.
>
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Tux
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On Sun 14 Mar 2010 12:06:34 PM CET, mer-curious wrote:
> On Sun 14 Mar 2010 11:48:28 AM CET, Tux wrote:You mean this page :
> > http://rainemu.swishparty.co.uk/html/download/neoraine.html
> >
> > You could access it without problem...
> > What was the error message ?
> Yes, that page!
>
> I got a "File not found" error with Firefox.
Strange...
> > Otherwise I looked again at your bug with current dev version and couldn't reproduce it with kof99. I'll try again in windows later...
> Thanks!
Ok, I could finally reproduce it. Actually it was already fixed in the dev version, that's why it was hard to redo it.
What fixed it is of course the change for the regions, now it waits before reseting the game, which avoids the crash.
I added a 2nd security to be sure it wouldn't come back too easily, that was really a stupid bug ! Could happen in linux too, but I hadn't the 1.2.10 binary anymore.
> Cya,
> mer-curious.
>
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Tux
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On Sun 14 Mar 2010 10:52:04 AM CET, mer-curious wrote:
> - improve the GUI and fix some glitches;
Ok the about dialog is fixed. It was because this dialog is a special case, the raine bitmap at the top is in a header, and the size of the header was forgotten when trying to choose the right font size.
>
>
> Thanks a lot for your patience,
> mer-curious.
>
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mer-curious
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Strange... Yeah, very strange.
So I opened the page using IE to test it and voi la, it loaded ok.
I presumed it was a bug in Firefox, because Hotmail page interface had started to load all messed up. So I cleaned the Firefox cache and history, cleaned Windows registry, and today, when I accessed those pages, they loaded ok.
Don't know what I could have possibly done to Firefox behaviour this way, though.
Ok, I could finally reproduce it. Actually it was already fixed in the dev version, that's why it was hard to redo it.
What fixed it is of course the change for the regions, now it waits before reseting the game, which avoids the crash.
I added a 2nd security to be sure it wouldn't come back too easily, that was really a stupid bug ! Could happen in linux too, but I hadn't the 1.2.10 binary anymore. That's why I was telling you to test it with version 1.2.10, because I knew you had just fixed the way the "Region" option worked.
But can you explain to me why this bug was happening with games like KOF, and not with games like Samurai Spirits?
And what the heck had the "Video options" menu to do with this bug so that it was triggering it?
Nevertheless, thanks a lot for fixing it!
Ok the about dialog is fixed. It was because this dialog is a special case, the raine bitmap at the top is in a header, and the size of the header was forgotten when trying to choose the right font size. Thank you so much!
By the way, this is something Huggybaby has already suggested some time ago: can you make the cursor in main menu wraps around when you scroll down too?
Currently it only wraps around when scrolling up, so why not in both ways?
I'll wait your comments.
Again, thank you for your time and efforts,
mer-curious.
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Tux
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On Tue 16 Mar 2010 11:48:00 AM CET, mer-curious wrote:
> Yeah, very strange.
>
> So I opened the page using IE to test it and voi la, it loaded ok.
>
> I presumed it was a bug in Firefox, because Hotmail page interface had started to load all messed up. So I cleaned the Firefox cache and history, cleaned Windows registry, and today, when I accessed those pages, they loaded ok.
>
> Don't know what I could have possibly done to Firefox behaviour this way, though.
Never saw something like that in linux with ffx. It might be some other program though, I know that in windows a lot of programs install directly things in the firefox directory, even microsoft forced the installation of an extension for firefox in one of its automatic updates (and for most of the others it's either a stupid icon bar, or a change in the startup page).
I'd say you really can't trust windows !
> > Ok, I could finally reproduce it. Actually it was already fixed in the dev version, that's why it was hard to redo it.
> > What fixed it is of course the change for the regions, now it waits before reseting the game, which avoids the crash.
> > I added a 2nd security to be sure it wouldn't come back too easily, that was really a stupid bug ! Could happen in linux too, but I hadn't the 1.2.10 binary anymore.
> That's why I was telling you to test it with version 1.2.10, because I knew you had just fixed the way the "Region" option worked.
>
> But can you explain to me why this bug was happening with games like KOF, and not with games like Samurai Spirits?
It was linked to your hq2x/3x again, when this setting was enabled simply visiting the video options dialog destroyed the current gamebitmap to force its re-creation on game startup (for pointers for this scaler). But for games which contain a startup screen (not an animation, a static bitmap - you almost never see them in neoraine because they are quickly hidden by the loading animation), the bitmap was drawn before the gamebitmap was re-created -> crash.
Changing the way the region works makes sure this code is called AFTER the gamebitmap has been recreated. (it's a little complex to explain, but you are the one who asked !).
> And what the heck had the "Video options" menu to do with this bug so that it was triggering it?
Yeah the security I added was just to avoid to destroy this bitmap when the setting didn't change in the menu. It was destroyed for nothing here.
> Nevertheless, thanks a lot for fixing it!
> > Ok the about dialog is fixed. It was because this dialog is a special case, the raine bitmap at the top is in a header, and the size of the header was forgotten when trying to choose the right font size.
> Thank you so much!
>
> By the way, this is something Huggybaby has already suggested some time ago: can you make the cursor in main menu wraps around when you scroll down too?
Ok, ok thanks for remembering, I'll add this to the todo list then !
EDIT : It's done and committed !
> Currently it only wraps around when scrolling up, so why not in both ways?
>
>
> I'll wait your comments.
>
> Again, thank you for your time and efforts,
It's crazy what people can do for a good beer sometimes ! ;-)
> mer-curious.
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« Last Edit: Mar 16 2010, 02:00 PM by Tux »
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Huggybaby
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The problem mer-curious had with Firefox is normal, it's nothing he did. The cache of any browser needs to be cleaned once in a while, otherwise they get confused.
Maybe Linux is different but I don't see how.
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