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Emulator Release: DarcNES v1990428.
18:40: A new version of DarcNES, NES, SMS, and PCE emulator for Linux, has been released. I though it'd been awhile too, no binary though, yet. What's new:
Started adding Genesis support (do not expect this to work anytime soon).
Cleaned up nes sprite code.
Fixed bug with reads from $2002 in the nes ppu.
Cleaned up PC-Engine sprite code.
Fixed a bug with the ui shutdown hook.
Added preliminary SMS sound.
Added tile caching to the SMS VDP.
Unix NES page.
Emulator News: Snes9x v1.19 for Linux/DOS to be released soon.
17:49: Well, the subject says it all, a new version of Snes9x for Linux will be released within the next day or so, followed by a new dos version soon after. Needless to say, this new version will be teeming with new features, I can't wait, can you?
Technical Docs News: New Section!
15:57: I added a new Atari Jaguar section, and fixed some entries that _Bnu forgot to put in the main page. The main page can be accessed here along with the Jaguar documents.
Emulator News: Bleem! status update
14:00: The official bleem! webpage was updated late last night with information regarding the current status of bleem! It seems that they won another legal battle with Sony. From the webpage:
Sony filed ANOTHER request for a Temporary Restraining Order against bleem! late Friday afternoon - and while we haven't been able to tell you all we wanted to, this was just the latest in a non-sto pseries of legal battles we've been fighting since their FIRST TRO was denied just three weeks ago.
Anyway, at a 3pm hearing today in San Francisco, the Honorable Judge Legge DENIED Sony's latest attempt to stop bleem! from shipping (Wild cheers!).
And with the judge's decision today, the path is FINALLY CLEAR for our release - for the first time, we can work without these "surprises" cropping up every couple of days. And at long last, we're free to tell you everything that's been going on.
The page also explains other reasons for the delay. Be sure to check it out. You may also post your feelings on ZD's Next-Generation message board.
www.bleem.com
Translation News: Hacks Section Update
11:40: I have added Ballz's new hack, FF2: Directors Cut which undummies items, and changes text so it's more like the Japanese counterpart.
You can download it off the Hacks section.
Frontend News: StartM72 0.33.5 and StartRAGE 0.9.1
04:17: Dennis Piet has updated StartM72, his M72 frontend, and StartRAGE, his RAGE frontend. Here's what's new in the release of StartM72:
Screenshot: 'Reset all to Titlescreen' (must be named 01.pcx) and 'Reset all to Gameplayscreen' (must be named 02.pcx)
Changed inifile to match windows standard format.
StartM72 now only checks for new games on startup when a new version of m72.exe is found.
Windowsize is now saved OK, when StartM72 was maximized when closed.
And here are the current features of StartRAGE:
Automatically detects supported games.
StartRAGE only checks for new games on startup when a new version of RAGE.exe is found.
Checks RAGE readme for these games' real names.
Check for installed games.
View installed/uninstalled/all games.
Zipped roms path; you can now keep zipped roms in another location. StartRAGE will take care of unzipping them in the dir RAGE expects the roms to be and will also remove any files it unzippped.
User can set all options supported by RAGE 0.9
Default settings or settings per game selectable.
Remember last gamelist position.
Scalable window
Hide tabsheet
Preview Screenshots (scaled/stretched/original).
Screenshotcapture. Just hit 'print-screen' to take a new screenshot.
Designed for both smal/large fonts settings.
ViewTabSheet, ViewStatBar, Gamelist-width and Window-settings are saved.
Keyboard shortcut for some menu-actions.
Also added to the pages is the screenshots for StartRAGE. Both StartM72 and StartRAGE are available for download on the Arcade emulator frontends page.
Media News: Sony fails again to stop bleem! from being shipped
23:20: Emulators Unlimited is reporting that Sony has once again failed to stop the shipment of bleem! in court. From the report:
Randy Linden (bleem author) said, "Computer Technology is still very new in the eyes of the law, and emulation is even newer.. There are very few cases that are applicable to Emulation and even fewer that are related to bleem!". "We're trying to forge new legal ground, but the terrain is rocky and there's no compass. ...there's no compass to guide anyone yet.". "It is critical to the future of Computer Technology and Emulation that a strong, fair, legal precedent be set now to ensure innovation and creative freedom.". "Its both a blessing and a curse that bleem! will be one of those few cases that helps the Courts to more clearly define the laws that will affect future generations of Software, Hardware and other technologies." Randy ended by saying.."We are exceptionally pleased by Judge Legge's decision today and look forward to our release without further delay. The past few weeks have been more difficult for us that we could have ever imagined, and the coming months aren't going to get any easier.". "We
truely appreciated everyone's patience, understanding and support (well, most of you that is ;-) ... and we hope that you'll continue to stand with us in the future. Its a fight thats truely worth winning, and we need all the soilders we can get!"
You can read the whole thing at Emulators Unlimited.
Interview News: Interview with Ricardo Bittencourt
22:59: Beyond Emulation has interviewed Ricardo Bittencourt, author of BrSMS, a Sega Master System & GameGear emulator for DOS. You can check it out at the link below.
Ricardo Bittencourt interview
Emulator News: Bleem! News
19:55: I'm sure everyone out there is wondering where their Bleem! is at. Don't worry, its coming. Apparently, Game-Over has contacted the Bleem! Team and gotten the inside scoop on the whereabouts of Bleem!. Go read the full article.
Interview News: RealityMan Interviewed
19:31: RealityMan was just interviewed by FathrDeth of EmuUnlim. It includes what happened with writing UltraHLE, what will come in the future, et cetera. You can catch the interview here.
Emulator Release: Generator/MacOS 0.0.3
18:44: Richard Bannister strikes again! The port of Generator for MacOS has been updated; here's what's new:
The automatic frameskip now works correctly - taking full advantage of the processor speed.
Optimized the smoothed mode significantly. It's still fairly slow - although now I get 20fps on my G3/350 (whereas before I got maybe 5fps at a pinch). I seem to have introduced a bug or two in it though - sometimes parts of the image are not smoothed correctly. Not sure why yet.
The monitor depth is now changed back to its original setting after playing.
Generator no longer tries to run if it can't set the monitor to 8 bit mode. In previous versions, it would try to run, then crash.
Added an interlaced video mode.
Fixed the Out of memory errors when the second ROM you double-clicked on was larger than the first. Stupid bug.
Removed lots of debugging print messages from the code. In previous versions, these were not displayed, but still present. Removing them completely resulted in the application shrinking by nearly 15K.
Generator no longer quits without warning if the emulated Sega Genesis crashes. Now it will tell you that the emulator has crashed - and it will no longer quit.
You can find Generator on the Genesis Emulators for MacOS page.
Emulator Release: Handy/MacOS 0.5.3
18:25: Well, it seems as if Richard Bannister IS alive after all :) The MacOS port of Handy, an Atari Lynx emulator, has been updated. Here's what's new:
- Recompiled using CodeWarrior Pro 4.1, and for the first time ever, compiled with CodeWarrior's Level 4 Optimization. The only reason I've been able to do this is my Mac now has 192MB of RAM - providing enough for CodeWarrior to compile without running out of memory. With a G3/350, it only takes 11 minutes to compile - a far cry from the hours and hours (and eventual crash with no code at all) on my old Mac.
Fixed the speed limiter so that it is no longer based on sound. The limiter wasn't working at all on my new G3. Unfortunately, this will almost certainly have a detrimental effect on the sound quality on slower Macs - which may start to experience broken sound. Handy's speed throttling code is not the best, I'm afraid.
Implemented Snes9x-style RAVE mode (Thanks John!). This requires 16-bit colour.
Yes, I'm aware the PC version is now at v0.6. I've begun the v0.6 port, but as it looks like it is going to take a while, I figured I'd release this version now with v0.6 following when it is ready.
Pick up Handy/MacOS at the Lynx Emulators for Macintosh page.
Emulator Release: Pretendo 0.02
14:02: A new version of Pretendo has been released. Here's what's new:
ASM Speedups
C Speedups
Bug Fixes here and there
FPS Counter
Video Modes for FullScreen are detected automatically
Changed Video Config
Utilization of DirectInput to read Keystrokes
Get it at the NES page.
Interview News: VirtualE Author Interviewed
![news by [noam]](/web/19990430015359im_/http://zophar.net/personal/[noam].gif)
21:51: Over on Beyond Emulation, the author of VirtualE has been interviewed. Also, Beyond Emulation plans to have an interview from Ricardo of BrSMS either today or tomorrow.
Go scope out the interview over at Beyond Emulation.
Interview News: SEC Interviews
18:26: The SEC staff has conducted a few interviews, including the most recent interviews with archeide, of SNEmul, and TRAX, of SNeESe. Feel free to go read these, and here's a link to the SEC and to the archeide interviews. Thanks to kmarx for the news.
Emulator Release: No$MSX 1.1
17:49: No$MSX, the MSX emulator programmed by the author of the incredible GameBoy emu No$GMB, has been updated. This new release features a few new differentlty optimized versions, such as 80486 protected mode version, 80386 version, XT/AT optimized version, etc. I have only added the 80486 version compatible with Windows 9x to ZD as of yet, but I'll add all of them tomorrow. The 80486 version compatible with Windows 9x is available for download on the MSX emulators page and if you want one of the other versions and you don't have the patience to wait for tomorrow you can download them from the Mo$MSX homepage. Thanks to Arnaud for the news.
Emulator Release: NeoRAGEx 0.5b
17:29: The NeoRAGEx team has released version 0.5b of their Neo Geo emulator For Windows9x, NeoRAGEx. Here's what's new:
Joystick bug-fix.
S3-chip hang at startup fix (if it still not works for you turn off 3dhardware accelaration).
Samurai Shodown 4 hang fix (could fix some other oddities in other games too).
Neo Bomberman support for existing sound dump.
Gfx or exit bug fixed (occured when running several games without exiting the menu).
Possibility to select Alternative background color in shots factory.
Launch game with double click in gamelist.
Vsync replaced with tripple buffering (no more tearing).
Super sidekick works.
Hit ENTER,SPACE or klick to skip menu init sequence.
COIN is replaced with SELECT Buttons in console mode.
You can download NeoRAGEx 0.5b from the Neo Geo emulators page.
Site News: SiTC is having server problems....
17:23: First off, for those of you who don't know what SiTC is it's short for Spirit In The Contraption, which is a very popular ROMs site. SiTC is having some problems with their server and they are looking for a server to host them and their files. So if you feel that you can help, go mail SkrEmnJava the SiTC boss, hehe. Thanks to Chris Moeller for informing us about this.
Spirit in the Contraption
Emulator Release: VICE 1.0
14:59: New ports of VICE, a Commodore 64 emulator for Windows, DOS and UNIX, have been released. Here's the changelist for version 1.0:
Attached disk images can be stored into a flip list. Changing disks requires just one keypress.
Support for TAP tape images has been added.
The emulation of the processor port has been corrected.
The CIA timer emulation has been further improved.
RAM/ROM banking is done 100% accurate now.
Ocean cartridge crash fixed.
Funplay and Super Games cartridges are supported now.
Doing a snapshot with REU enabled could crash the emulator. This is fixed now.
Fixed huge memory leak.
Speed up in C128 emulation.
Speed up in CBM-II emulation.
New 1541-II emulation.
Disk change detection has been improved.
The virtual drive emulation can be used with G64 images now.
New function to set the name of the disk.
The monitor is available now.
Added more UI elements for sound settings.
Shortcut keys have been implemented.
P00 and PRG files can be autostarted from the command line again.
Drive memory can be loaded/saved in the monitor now.
The monitor can read and write blocks from disk.
Attaching a non-existant image via command line does not crash the emulator anymore.
ROM snapshots do not save ROMs with "traps" anymore
Thanks to Brendan Reid for the news. You can download VICE 1.0 from the Commodore 64 emulators page.
Site News: New additions to ZD & contest status
14:26: Hello everyone, Zophar here with another message for "all the millions (slight pause), and millions" of the Zoph's fans. We have some new additions to ZD.
First off, I'd like to thank the staff of emulationworld.com for providing us with a nice search engine. You can now search all of ZD for anything you want. It's accessible on the sidebar, and you can also reach it here: ZD search engine.
Next off, you may notice that the counters seem a little different. That's because we're using a new CGI counter, which sucks much less CPU from the system, thus making the load go down, which can make faster CGI executing for you guys. Enjoy.
The ZD-Lite page has really taken off! I've received a bunch of e-mails from some of you guys, and you all seem to really like it. I'm glad that it helps you out, and anyone else who'd like a news-only page might want to check it out.
Finally, the NSM contest. If you haven't already entered, or you missed the post about it, you can read the rules right here. I've received a number of submissions so far. While I won't say the exact time or the actual person, I'll say this: if your time is over 60 minutes, don't bother. :)
As always, ZD is nothing without all of you, the people who visit it. Thanks for visiting ZD!
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