Archive for September, 2008

RACE! save state feature works perfectly!

Thursday, September 25th, 2008

… or so I assume…

It’s been four days since the release of RACE!, and I’ve gotten no negative feedback regarding the save state feature, and only 1 confirmation that it works as expected. I’ve been doing a considerable amount of testing with Sonic: Pocket Adventure myself, and so far haven’t encountered any issues.

While the lack of comments (positive or otherwise) is surprising, it’s not necessarily disappointing — I’ll just assume that where there’s no smoke, there’s no fire. Still, it would be great to know what your experience was; whether state restored correctly, or not. If you tested the feature, please post your experience in the forum — include the name of any games you may have tested.

psp.akop.org forum

Monday, September 22nd, 2008

I’ve added a new forum for discussions related to my emulator ports at http://forum.psp.akop.org. I’d like to ask all of you who have suggestions or questions related to any of the emulators to post there – I will not be able to reply to support questions in weblog comments. Random emulator-related discussions are also welcome.

RACE! PSP version 2.1 released

Sunday, September 21st, 2008

The latest release of RACE! PSP includes state saving, and the test switch that I mentioned earlier. The switch enables developer-level access to Card Fighters’ Clash, Card Fighters’ Clash 2, Dokodemo Mahjong, and possibly other games.

To enable the test switch/button, map it to any PSP button via the ‘Control’ tab — it’s unmapped by default. With regard to save state feature, I ask that you take its functionality with a grain of salt — at least until more folks report how well it works.

For those of you who are adventurous, please run some tests by saving/loading different games, and post your experience in comments. Thanks.

Download

RACE! state saving update

Sunday, September 14th, 2008

My initial attempt at implementing state saving in RACE! turned out to be more successful than anticipated. I was able to save, then load Sonic The Hedgehog: Pocket Adventure successfully, with the exception of sound, and I have a fairly good idea where to look to fix the problem (possibly the program counter of the Z80 chip).

Thanks to NeoPop’s existing state saving code (and thus neopop_uk), for pointing me in the right direction.

RACE! PSP news, future ideas, new poll

Friday, September 12th, 2008

Flavor recently posted news that he considers RACE! PSP the official PSP port of RACE, and that he doesn’t plan on continuing another port. He also mentioned a new undocumented button (not present on the consumer handheld) discovered by FluBBa, the author of an NGPC emulator for GBA that enables hidden debugging features in several NGP games (namely, Card Fighters’ Clash, Card Fighters’ Clash 2, and Dokodemo Mahjong); this feature will be added in the next release of RACE! PSP; ideally, with the ability to save state.

For a while now, I’ve been seriously considering utilizing PSP’s Media Engine (ME) processor in fMSX PSP, to (potentially) enable full-speed emulation with MSX Audio and MSX Music enabled. Currently, enabling any of the two requires emulation at 333 MHz, while enabling both makes the emulator near-unplayable. Of course, utilizing the ME opens up a whole new slew of issues, not the least of which is the challenge presented by parallel programming. If fMSX/ME succeeds, Handy may be finally coaxed to run full-speed.

RACE! PSP was one of the emulators I reported to be working on; another one is still in the initial stages. If things pan out, there may be another pre-release riddle, which should give you an idea of which system it will emulate. Thankfully, I received my replacement video card yesterday, so I can finally continue work again.

Finally, I’ve added a new poll; if you have some time, please take it.

CORRECTION The discoverer of the undocumented button was not porting RACE to NDS, he’s actually writing a new emulator for the GBA (thanks Flavor)

UPDATE The poll should now be fixed

RACE! PSP version 2.0 released

Wednesday, September 10th, 2008

As promised, RACE! PSP, the NeoGeo Pocket and Pocket Color emulator is now available. Like the original release by Flavor, this version does not feature state saving, however, it does save flash memory information routinely (either when exiting to the emulator’s menu, or to the XMB). State saving is planned for a future release, however.

Again, many thanks to Flavor for his original PSP port.

Download

RACE! PSP coming very soon

Wednesday, September 10th, 2008

RACE! PSP, a NeoGeo Pocket Color emulator (yes, another one) will be released soon. It’s based on the PSP port of the RACE! emulator by Flavor, called RACE-PSP. RACE! is significantly faster than NeoPop (as dozens of folks made sure to tell me), and runs most games at or very near 60 fps.

Many thanks to Flavor, for being kind enough to share his source code, and wraggster, for helping me track down his contact information.