Richard Bannister

Just hours after the previous release, BSNES v0.4.7 is now available - for the first and probably only time a few hours ahead of the new version for PC. This version adds support for the SuperFX chip, covering titles like Starfox and Yoshi's Island. It is also noticably faster than previous releases.

 

BSNES has been updated to v0.4.6, bringing it in sync with the latest version for PC. The most notable new feature is support for the SA-1 chip, and thus some twenty six titles that didn't previously work, notably Kirby's Dreamland 3 and Super Mario RPG. Note that software using this chip has higher system requirements than regular titles.

 

BSNES has been updated to v0.3.8, bringing it in sync with the latest version for PC. This new release is marginally slower than the last, but it does bring with it an improvement up to 100% compatibility with standard titles.

I'm wondering if the time has come to retire support for PowerPC based Macs in my various projects. I've started a thread over on Macscene for people to comment on this.

 

It has been over a year since my emulators last got a proper update, and I'm excited to announce that they're all getting the treatment today. The fixes are for the most part minor bugs, but there are major updates to Arnold, BSNES, and fMSX, not to mention the debut of a new emulator, Fuzzbug. The full change list is:

• Audio recording no longer stops when emulator is switched to background, provided that the option to keep emulating in background is on. Recording will still stop if the emulator does.
• Brushed metal mode is now off by default on new installs, as well as existing installs where users press the Default button.
• Fixed an obscure endian bug that resulted in odd window sizes when an emulator preferences file was moved between PowerPC and Intel.
• Fixed several minor visual glitches in the Preferences dialog box.
• Modified the behaviour of the Quick Freeze function, so that the last ten quick freezes for each game are kept in ~/Library/Application Support/Bannister/(emulator name)/Saved States. You can restore these at any time using the Defrost menu command. Added code to stop the quick freeze and quick defrost keys from being repeated. Thanks to David McCabe for the suggestion.
• Replaced custom about box with standard HIAboutBox. Removed option to pause execution when about box is open.
• (Arnold) Added support for automatically loading cassette files.
• (Arnold) Added support for printing from within the CPC. Text only, output is saved to a file on the users Desktop.
• (Arnold) Disk LED is once again five pixels wide. Thank the Xcode optimizer for causing this one.
• (Arnold) The Automatically load games option is now turned off by default, which should prevent inadvertent emulator resets when changing disk on multi disk games.
• (Arnold) Writing to disk images works once again.
• (BSNES) In sync with the latest version for PC.
• (fMSX) Added several additional configuration options in Preferences.
• (fMSX) Synchronised with v3.5 of the core source code. This involved a considerable amount of rewriting to the Mac code, so it's possible that some things may be currently broken. Please report issues so I can fix them.
• (fMSX) The shareware prompt now does not appear for the first time until five minutes into program execution.
• (Fuzzbug) New emulator for the ZX Spectrum.
• (Horizon) Fixed bug whereby dropping file into Horizon window would cause an assertion failure.
• (KiGB) Fixed issue where battery backed RAM was being saved to the freeze states folder and thus could be overwritten by doing a quick freeze. Thanks to Andrew Hesford for the report.
• (MO5) Fixed crash on exit. Thanks to Squirrel for spotting this one.
• (Rainbow) Added "better than nothing" icon for disks taken from Classic version of Rainbow. If someone wants to replace this please be my guest.

The shell changes in this release require an updated installation of Emulator Enhancer, which is unfortunately incompatible with previous releases due to the changed Quick Freeze function. As such, users are recommended to upgrade everything together.

 

BSNES has been updated to v0.3.4. The major new feature in this release is SPC7110 emulation, which means that Far East of Eden Zero, FEoEZ: Shounen Jump Edition, Momotarou Dentetsu Happy, and Super Power League 4 are now fully playable.

 

Life has been pretty chaotic over the last few months. Part of the problem has been my continuing desire to chase down roller coasters in far flung parts of the world. The real issue, however, is that after spending an entire working day in front of a computer I'm not terribly enthusiastic about doing the same thing in the evening. I spent almost six months of evenings studying for my MCSE, and now that that's out of the way I'd like to enjoy my spare time again. Horrid of me, eh?

At any rate, Audio Overload has been updated to version 2.0. The major new feature in this release is support for the recently developed Sega Dreamcast .DSF format. This feature was coded largely by R. Belmont who has been doing the lions share of work on Audio Overload for the last few releases. Please leave your feedback on this release on the forum.

 

Martin Freij e-mailed me to say he was finalising a new release of Nestopia less than an hour after yesterday's update. What are the chances? At any rate, here we go again; Nestopia v1.4.0.

 

Nestopia has been updated bringing it in sync with the latest release for Windows. This version also adds the workaround for the bug mentioned below that results in certain menu items being unavailable on Leopard.

Emulator Enhancer has also been updated with the same fix.

 

For the last few weeks I've been receiving sporadic reports from users saying that certain menu items are unavailable in Nestopia. The problem has been identified as a bug in the Mac OS introduced some time around 10.5.1. A workaround will be available shortly. In the meanwhile, if this issue affects you, please try double-clicking on game files rather than using the open dialog box.

 

BSNES, Emulator Enhancer, Oswan, and SMS Plus have all been updated. Here are the changes:

• (BSNES) Fixed an unfortunate bug in the previous release that caused sound to go badly off kilter after about fifteen minutes of play.
• (Enhancer) Tweaked the behaviour of the Prioritise speed over smoothness option to improve sound quality when VBL sync is on.
• (Oswan) Massively improved compatibility and sound brought on by synchronising elements of a number of different forks of the original Oswan project.
• (Shell) Changed the default preferences to turn brushed metal off by default, since it looks pretty hideous under 10.5 or later.
• (Shell) Made some slight adjustments to the behaviour of the "Prioritise speed over smoothness" option.
• (SMS Plus) Fixed issue where region setting in preferences was always ignored.
• (SMS Plus) YM2413 sound core preference was reversed. Fixed.
• (SMS Plus) YM2413 sound now works again. Note that you must have Domestic (Japanese) hardware enabled for this to work. Thanks to ZShock for the bug report.

These will probably be the last updates for a little while, as I'm off to Australia for a two week holiday next weekend, and after my return I'm going to do the next few Microsoft exams. Still, no worries, eh?

 

BSNES has been updated to v0.2.8, bringing it in sync with the core version for the first time in a little over two years. This brings many improvements to emulation, albeit with a performance penalty. I've gained most of the lost performance back due to aggressive optimization of the Mac code, but it's still very marginally slower than the previous release. Enjoy!

 

The last couple of weeks have been fairly hectic for me, as I'm attempting to gain a MCSE qualification for work. The usual joke is something along the lines of Minesweeper Consultant and Solitaire Expert, though this is frankly unfair. The exams are challenging and require a significant amount of study even for someone who spends most of their working day dealing with Windows Server.

At any rate, I'm currently working on a long-overdue update for my Mac port of BSNES, which is currently about ten releases behind the original version. The latest code is fully up and running at this point, albeit with a strange bug that causes it to crash on Intel Macs. Hopefully I'll get to the bottom of that one shortly.

 

Happy new year!

I've just uploaded my latest web site redesign. This has finally spelt the end for quite a lot of older content from these pages. The only casualty from the software section is Modeler, which was never updated to be a Universal Binary and has long since been superceded by MAME.

Some of the pages, particularly in the coaster section, have yet to be updated to the new style, but that will be resolved over the next few weeks. In the mean while, however, if you come across any obviously broken links I'd be grateful if you let me know.

 

Audio Overload has been updated to v2.0b9.

• New .SSF Sega Saturn/ST-V format supported
• New .WSR WonderSwan format supported
• Fixed issues with some SNDH/SC68 files
• Automatically advances to next song when end detected
• Experimental Win64 version for 64-bit XP and Vista
• Completely new .S98 engine with much better compatibility
• New .SPU (Sony Playstation logs from the Eternal SPU plugin) support
• 7zip container support
• Shift-JIS Japanese characters are now converted for proper display.
• New AHX / HVL support
• Greatly expanded .SC68 support - now over 50 subformats work including Future Composer and SIDMON
• Rewrote timing emulation for PSF/PSF2 files

 

Emulator Enhancer has been updated to v2.2.1. This is a maintenance release which should hopefully solve issues with entering serial numbers under Leopard. Additionally, TEO has been updated to v1.8.2, bringing it in sync with the latest code for PC. I've also added support for high resolution rendering, which makes titles using eighty column graphics mode usable.