-------------------------------------------------------------------------05. August, 2002 Version 1.

65

- Many users reported me wrong black areas in certain NTSC games. Thanx to Cobra95, by using his Spyro3 save state I was able to investigate and fix that issue. - Lewpy suggested a small trick to prevent FF9 from crashing when framebuffer access is activated. I have followed his suggestions, but still I advise NOT to use the FA options with that game (it will not crash anymore, but glitches in battle will happen). Well, it's up to you :) - I've removed the "FF9 mdec mask bit" special game fix, hopefully now all mdec polygons and mdec texts will be fine without. Thanks to Dimitri for reports and Yazoo for his save state. - Since Lewpy did a very nice dynamic loading of the kernel funcs for disabling screensavers/power saving modes in the P.E.Op.S. soft gpu plugin, I couldn't find any more reasons against a 'disable screensavers' option (without Lewpy's piece of code such an option would have crashed with Win95/WinNT in the past). So, if you were tormented by suddenly starting screen savers while playing a psx game before, you can now easily disable them in the gpu configs. - I've found a small bug in the D3D plugins with the "Unfiltered framebuffer updates - faster mdecs" option. I don't know what games suffered by that bug, but I've decided to fix it nonetheless ;) Oh, btw, I did notice that this option does not (and never will) work right with emulating the psx mask bit. So, if you are seeing flickering displays, or missing stuff, try to turn that D3D option off (OpenGL will always be ok, though). - Finally I was able to find out what was going wrong with the 'Monkey Hero' game (that one was really messed up with all of my gpu plugins), and yeah, I've fixed it. Will be interesting to see what other games will also run better because of the fix (and I hope that speed will not drop much because of it... at least on my system I didn't notice any slowdowns). "Life is the future, not the past - it's the Wizard's Seventh Rule" - "The Pillars of Creation" by Terry Goodkind -------------------------------------------------------------------------10. July, 2002 Version 1.64

- While the last releases were mainly bug fixes and compatibility stuff, 1.64 has only one purpose: to improve the graphics (yeah, we all love that :)) - Ok, the first change takes care about some unwanted texture shaking that was happening in my hw/accel plugins. That doesn't mean that now all psx texture wobbling is magically gone, only some issues caused by the internal texture alignment has been improved. Thanx to Shadow Lady for the 'shaking Lara' save state :)

- And now for the real graphical boost (note: if you don't want to read (maybe boring) background informations, you can skip this part): I was long time no friend to special texture filtering ideas. I always did see big problems arise when the original psx texture data gets changed by filters, and it's already hard enuff to render the original unfiltered psx textures on hw/accel APIs without glitches. Anyway, last week there was a small ngemu forum discussion about filtering again, and to proove E}I{ wrong (who was telling that 2xSaI filtering on textures should work well), I downloaded the latest OpenGL plugin from NickK, to make some screenshots with that texture filtering method. NickK always is a pioneer when it comes to interesting new ideas (like his full screen smoothing or... tada... 2xSaI texture caching), but this time I wanted to use his plugin to show the various problems which will occur with pre-filtered textures (shame on me ;)) Anyway, I've tried all kind of games with his plugin and 2xSaI textures, and yeah, I did see glitches caused by the filtering, but strange enuff not the problems I have expected to see (only some texture alignment gaps and garbage, and big slowdowns, but not the expected texture distortions... good work, NickK, btw :). So of course I had to do two things: a) to apologize to E}I{ for prooving _me_ wrong (tststs, ehehe), and b) to drop a mail to Derek Liauw, the creator and copyright holder of the 2xSaI algorithm, asking him for permission to use his func in my (not GPLd yet) hw/accel plugins. And yeah, Derek happily allowed me to use the 2xSaI func (since he is enjoying epsxe and my plugins, too :)), and I have to admit it wasn't difficult to add to my source... I had to change it somewhat to handle my texture color depths and alpha values, and to avoid problems at the texture area borders, but that was all... - So, a new option in the gpu config is available, called "Hi-Res textures (2xSaI)". You can activate it with all available texture color modes, and of course you can even combine it with filtering, smoothing, whatever. The option will improve the textures in many games, making small fonts more readable, and most textures will look sharper. It even will help the standard bilinear filtering, less 'blocky' look that way and not much black borders. On the other hand some rendering techniques (like multi-layered 2D backgrounds) will cause glitches (thin lines appear, for example, or small gaps between textures), and that is nothing I can fix! So mailing me issues with FF7/8/9 or games using a similar rendering style is useless and will get ignored (well, maybe I will flame a few mailers, depends on my mood :))... and if you don't believe me, feel free to code your own psx gpu plugin and add 2xSaI textures... good luck :) And also be aware of the following: a) your gfx card has to be able to handle 512x512 textures. Otherwise you will get no textures at all. So, for example, no Hi-Res textures on V2/V3 cards and prolly some other older brands as well. b) Hi-Res 2xSaI textures need 4 times as much vram as the 'normal' textures. That means for example that your 32 MB gfx card can handle the same amount of 'hires' textures as an 8 (!!!) MB gfx card with 'normal' textures. And that's not very much, and prolly will cause slowdowns... users with 64 and 128 MB cards will not encounter much

speed problems, though... runs great on my 64 MB GF3 with most games :) Finally some tips for using my Hi-Res texture option, if you are having speed problems: - use a lower display resolution, for example 640x480 in 16 bit color depth - use a lower texture quality mode, for example 4-4-4-4 or 5-5-5-1 textures - turn off the 'mask bit' emulation option, that saves some vram as well - don't use the 'screen smoothing' option, and absolutely turn off FSAA in your display properties. - I have seen strange autodetected vram size values in the DX6 plugin with my nVidia GF3 card (I am absolutely sure that I don't have over 80 MB vram, ehe). The exactly same func reports the correct size in the DX7 plugin, though. So maybe a generic advise is to set the 'vram size' value manually to the correct value in all plugins, just to be sure. On the other hand, maybe it will help if you set the 'vram size' option manually to an higher value (for example to '64 MB' even if your card only has 32 MB). Will depend on the game, your hardware and the phase of the moon, though ;) Have fun! - btw, I've decided to keep the D3D-DX6 plugin alive. The 1.63 DX7 changes did help a lotta cards (thanx to all users reporting their results), so the DX6 plugin isn't that necessary anymore, but I've nearly forgotten the poor WinNT 4 users, who can't use anything above DX6... thanx to DarkWatcher for reminding me :) - Ah, and a final note: I've added an extra FAQ file with this release, covering many standard questions. Check it out if you are having problems. "Du musst glauben, du musst wagen, denn die Goetter leih'n kein Pfand..." ah, bah, enuff text for this release, listen yourself: http://www.dhalia.de/musik/sounds/daten/sehnsucht_dhalia.mp3 -------------------------------------------------------------------------23. June, 2002 Version 1.63

- The nicest change in 1.63 (imho): no more "short dmachain" game fix, no more "Ignore dmachain 0" game fix... the handling of bad dmachains is now done automatically without much speed loss. That means you can now play Tekken3, Tekken2, Syphoon Filter, Ghosts'n Goblins, Persona2, MetalSX and prolly some more games without any special options. Ehe, I really like that :) - Another internal change: correct support for write vram wrappings. I've noticed missing textures in a soccer game (can't remember its name, but the players looked funny without heads), that one at least is fixed. - And some more internal adjustments: I've was able to reduce the garbage frames which can happen after/before a 24 bit mdec is displayed. You can see that with FF9, for example. - Also some flickering issues (for example in FF7 after a battle, or in some Wild Arms1, BOF4 and Silent Hill splash screens) are corrected. The same code will also help drivers which are doing page flipping

in fullscreen mode. - Some additional splash screens/menus will get displayed with the highest Offscreen Drawing setting. Still I suggest to use the highest setting only if you are missing some gfx screens. Never use it with FF8/FF9 :) - NTSC games can have a border at the top/the bottom of the display. No, 1.63 can't remove that borders (as a matter of fact the borders are right and needed), but 1.63 will now display the borders most times correctly with a black color instead of a fancy color. Thanx to Gary for some save states :) - A new mode for the framebuffer texture option, called "gfx card buffer & software". Framebuffer textures are needed to get some special effects (swirls, motion blur) right, and they are harder to emulate in hw/accel gpu plugins. The new mode (which is working like in Lewpy's Glide plugin) will help users with slower gfx cards, still a lotta cpu power will be needed. For example the pure "gfx card buffer" hardware mode is much faster on my GF3 compared to the new mode, but on other systems the results may vary... try it yourself, and use the option which makes you happy. Compatibility note: sometimes the new "gfx card + soft" mode will display certain effects more correctly (for example blurring in ChronoCross, or the "enter battle" effects in Legend of Dragoons). - I've removed the the "framebuffer read" and "framebuffer read on move" special game fixes, and combined them together with the old "Full vram primitives" option into a new main option called "Framebuffer access". That way you can control framebuffer effects more easily in the gpu in-game menu. Otherwise the new option works exactly like the old game fixes, use the framebuffer access only if it's needed (Xenogears, for example), and turn it off if it causes problems (FF9 will crash, for example) - By removing the "framebuffer reads" and "dma chain" special game fixes I've now some free slots for new fixes, ehehe. I decided to add two fixes in that release: one for FF9 polygon mdecs (it seems that the 1.62 mask bit handling can cause slight problems, so you can now turn the special handling on/off with the new game fix), and the other game fix is only for the bad polygons in ChronoCross Fort Dragonia (thanx to Nave for a save state). - Last but not least I've changed my texture handling in the DX7 D3D plugin. It should now work fine with cards which needed the DX6 plugin in the past. So please: if you used the DX6 plugin, try the new DX7 one, and mail me if it works correctly on your system. If I don't get negative feedback for a month or so, I will stop the DX6 plugin, since it isn't needed anymore :) "The maidens of beauty and swains so forlorn that carelessly wander away from their home I am off by the moonlight and break of the morning I'll be found in the mountains of Dark Iniseoghain" - "Dark Iniseoghain" by Dhalia/traditional

-------------------------------------------------------------------------29. May, 2002 Version 1.62

- Most fixes and improvements in this version were only possible because of nice feedback and save states from active psx emu lovers. Thanx to all of you :) - Black areas in Bloody Roar 2 are fixed (well, that means you don't have to turn off Offscreen Drawing anymore to play that game). - The radar in Ace Combat 3 is now visible. You will need the 'mask bit' option for it, though. - In the Chrono Cross battle menu the small dots will blink again (I screwed that somewhen in version 1.5x). Since the dots are very small I'd never noticed the bug :) - A new special game fix called "Ignore DMAchain '0'". The dmachain address checks I've introduced in 1.60 worked well with all of my games, but I got a big feedback from "Persona2" lovers (sadly I don't have that game), because it stopped to work with the new funcs. So V1.62 is doing the same checks as the versions before V1.60 (that means that Persona 2 will work without any special option), but if you want to get the "Ranma 1/2" menu screen right, you have to enable the new game fix. - When I played (and finished) FF9 with ePSXe one year ago, I noticed that polygons which were drawn on top of mdecs looked upsidedown. I always thought that it's prolly a main emu bug (sending the polys in the wrong order to the gpu), but now I've investigated the issue more closely, and actually found a solution for it. Everything should look fine in V1.62, you simply have to enable the 'mask bit' option to correct the problem. - I've improved my Offscreen Drawing detections, many annoying flickering effects (like in Rebel Assault 2, DW7, Jumping Flash) are fixed by it (and I hope that speed isn't going down much). - Speaking of Jumping Flash: that game was always really slow in my plugins since it uses a (imho) stupid offscreen rendering technique with lotsa repeated textures (aka texture windows). V1.62 is now using my newest soft plugin functions (the same I've added to the P.E.Op.S. soft plugin V1.6), giving a nice speed up in that game :) - Last but not least: some new eye candy (if you like special screen filtering effectst). "grahf" from the ngemu message boards suggested to try a new filtering mode,and first I didn't like the idea (because I usually see new problems arise with any filtering). But after I've looked what the suggested "Monitor dot matrix" mode is exactly doing (the Kawaks emu is offering such a mode, for example), I didn't find it very hard to add it to my existing scanline functions. So now you can enable it by turning on scanlines and setting the scanline blending to "-1". The best results you will get with 2D games, I think, but of course it's just a matter of taste :) Btw, I've checked the filter only with my GF3 card, hopefully other cards will not screw the texel alignment (otherwise the filter will look

kinda distorted). "Where do we go from here There must be something near Changing you, changing me forever" - "Never Satisfied" by Judas Priest -------------------------------------------------------------------------28. April, 2002 Version 1.61

- I didn't had a lot of time for emu coding in the last weeks, so V1.61 has just a few changes... nevertheless I think the new code is worth an update, so try it and give me some feedback. Speaking about feedback: _don't_ try to send me emails with attachments... I will not even see them. The latest email worms were very annoying, so I use a filter right now, deleting every mail with attached files. If you want to give me save states, pictures or whatever, please send me a pure text mail first, asking if I need the files, and I will reply how to proceed. - The first change is the least important, imho, added on request of some users: while the gpus are running they will prevent the activation of screen savers. Seems to be needed when you are using USB pads and an activated screen saver, since the pad actions will not count as user input, and therefore the saver will kick in after a while. I am using a different approach as syo's code in the P.E.Op.S. soft gpu, we will see how it will work (I've checked it on my Win98 and WinXP systems, and it's ok here). - Re-coded some of my C texture caching funcs in pure asm. That will squeeze out a few more frames per second, at least in games using lotsa textures. Mmm... funny... I needed most of the time for this new functions, but now I dunno what else to write about it :) - The nicest feature in 1.61: I was able to remove the "Adjust extreme coords" special game fix, replacing it with a much better detection of weird running wild polygons (btw, big thanx to calb). The new detection is enabled by default, you can turn it off by activating the "Disable coord check" game fix if you are having troubles (missing polygons, for example). But I checked a lot of games, and the results were very good: no more big poly glitches in Metal Gear Solid, Deathtrap Dungeon, Colony Wars, Timecrisis, Rally Championship, Fighting Force 2, Lucky Luke, to name a few... Well, there are still a few games with problems (like the big polys in one level of Chrono Cross), but there has to be some work left for the next versions, eh? :) "Spark in the nothingness Heat of creation Make the ice start to melt Life wake up in the void." - "Ginnungagap" by Therion -------------------------------------------------------------------------31. March, 2002 Version 1.60

- Yeah, the easter release :) It contains mainly small fixes, correcting all kind of gfx glitches with certain games (luckily no new config options were needed for the fixes) and speed will also be more or less the same. A small config bug in the ogl plugin has been repaired (a wrong text did show up when pushing the 'nice'/'fast' button in the gpu config), and this time the linux archive _really_ contains the right plugin version, thanx to everybody reporting that issues. Ok, let us have a look at the fixed glitches: - Support for "textured lines" (that means 1 psx-pixel wide textured triangles). "Doom" will now look perfectly, and the water effect in one stage of "Sould Edge" is now fine as well. Thanx to Lewpy for infos and calb for the save states :) - Improved dmachain checking. That will make the start menu of "Ranma 1/2 Battle Renaissance" visible (thanx to tatunoko for the save state), but I've noticed that now Tekken2 will need the "short dma chain" special game fix (otherwise you will have to wait a long time until the game starts up). Ah, and no, Tekken2 is not playable right now (streched polys), but that's a confirmed main emu bug, the gpu plugin can't repair it. - Interesting internal adjust of Texture Window coords. That's needed for some "Tales of Destiny 2" graphics, thanx to E}I{ for very helpful infos and save states :) - Improved sprite texture coord wrapping. That will fix garbage glitches with "Tales of Destiny 2" as well, and the clouds in a special level of "Wild Arms" are now fine, too. - Faster sign checks, that will prolly not give a noticable speed up in my hw/accel gpus, but it's looking nicer in my source code, ehe :) Thanx again to E}I{ for suggestions. - The "moon" symbol in "Devilsummoner Soul Hackers" (wow... what a name...) is now displayed correctly, thanx to gunshinn for a save state :) "It's just the same as imaginary snow in summertime Never able to make winter come." - "Isn't it?" by Wild Silk -------------------------------------------------------------------------23. March, 2002 Version 1.59

- First of all: the FF7 battle swirls are now working (they should have been working in 1.58 already, but a last minute fix disabled them). You have to enable the FF7 special text border fix, use the highest Offscreen Drawing setting, enable the "gfx card" frame buffer textures and the "Framebuffer read on move" game fix is also needed (oh my). The performance of the effects will (as always) depend how good your card is supporting framebuffer accessing. But it's fine on my GF3 ;) - The Lunar1 special game fix is now available in the hw/accel. plugins as well. That will repair the black screens when entering a house or

a menu in the same way as in the P.E.Op.S. soft plugin. Ah, and talking about special game fixes: I've decided to combine the nVidia FSAA fix with the ATI subtract blending fix in the OGL plugin. Since both issues are bugs in the drivers, (hopefully) fixed somewhen with one of the next driver releases, I didn't want to waste too much of my (up to 32) possible game fixes ;) - A few games were showing wrong MDEC colors due to some lines of code I've included for doing screen centering. None of my games had shown that glitch, so I can't be 100% sure that this issue is completely fixed, but there is hope ;) - A new texture option, called "Faster palettized texture windows". Well, texture windows (mostly used in psx games for text box background gfx, or in some racing games) are having a separate cache in my hw/accel. plugins, and that one is working fine for most games... I have seen only one game (Ghost In A Shell) which is stressing the cache so much that the game crawled at 40-50 fps on my system (quite unusual). The only solution I've found for that game was using pal textures, causing a fine speedup (2 - 3 times faster). So, if your card can handle pal textures (like GeForce cards with newer drivers), you can safely enable the new option, otherwise (TNT cards for example) you cannot use it at all (a filled Smiley sign in my gpu menu will show you if the option is working). - Biggest change: improved "texture garbage collection" option. When I introduced that option in 1.58, I just did an easy approach to reorder the internally used texture space, to check out if the function is working okay. Well, the new version does a much more complicated job to optimize the texture usage, we will see how that code will work on less powerful cpus/gfx cards (it's very fine on my Athlon 1.2/GF3 system). Still: the cleanup will only kick in, if it is really needed, most games will not activate it anyway. Games needing the garbage collection _may_ stall the game for a short time (while doing all the texture optimizations), depending on your system's power. "Schume nur mein wildes Herz, in des Zornes Wehen Bin aus leichtem Stoff gemacht, muss wie Luft vergehen Ohne Schiffer treibt mein Kahn, auf des Meeres Spiegel Niemals fesselt mich ein Band, riegelt mich ein Riegel Suchte meinesgleichen, fand nur Snder ohne Zgel" - "Lebensbeichte" by In Extremo -------------------------------------------------------------------------16. February, 2002 Version 1.58

- Damn, since the release of 1.57 I couldn't stop gpu coding... so it took only two weeks for a new release this time. Well, enjoy :) - To help gfx cards with slow texture uploading speed and/or a very limited vram size, I've coded additional functions which will optimize the texture usage even more. Of course that will mean a little bit more work for the cpu, but hey, somebody has to do the job... Ok, so, if you have encountered irritating slowdowns in your game (caused by the gpu, NOT by cdrom accessing ;), you should give the new "Smart texture garbage collection" option

a try... even my GF3 does like it in some games (well... it doesn't matter much for me if a game runs with 100 or with 300 fps, but if it does help my system, it should help slower ones even more). Oh, and one more hint about the texture caching: some users reported a big speed up by selecting "64" Mbytes vram on their 8 MB cards... - Hurray, hurray... one "special game fix" has been removed: The "no sprite transparency" one for the Oddworld games. Those formerly "special fixed" glitches are now confirmed main emu bugs, so the option will be useless with the next epsxe release anyway. And since that fix did cost a lotta additional testing in the soft funcs, I've decided to remove it as soon as possible... and that's now :) - Hurray, hurrraaarrrggg: Oddworld fix is gone, and a new fix has taken its place instead (in the OGL plugin). nVidia is well-known for their good and fast OGL ICDs, but there is a stupid bug (at least) in the W9X 23.51 drivers: if you are using FSAA with OGL, the driver will reset the alpha testing state each frame, causing black areas and other glitches in my OGL plugin. Well, the 21.xx WinXP driver is doing FSAA fine, as far as I could see, but if you want to use FSAA in W9x you should enable the new special game fix... or pray to nVidia to release drivers without that bug. - Improved psx vram moves, that will fix glitches with a few special effects in FF9 and BOF4 (seen in certain magic effects during battles). Mmm... and most times "full vram prims" and/or a certain framebuffer setting is needed to get such effects right. - Wrapped sprites will work perfectly again (they were broken in 1.57), so the glitches in (for example) Tales of Destiny 2 are gone (thanx to expert464 for the save state). - Oh my... some optimization I've done in version 1.20 (or so) of the OGL plugin caused missing tires in "Driver", screwed hair in "Blaze&Blade" and prolly it was responsible for some more screwed textured polys. That issue is fixed as well. - Improved the Offscreen-Drawing detections. Much cleaner now, and as far as I remember the FF8 "distant hill flickering" will be fixed by that... mmm... and the FF7 swirls should be visible with hw/accel. FB textures, using the highest OD settings. - And finally: screen smoothing. This new option will blur the whole screen, so especially 2D games will look less pixelated. It will need a good gfx card, though (something in the Geforce class should do the job), and the higher the used resolution, the bigger the slowdown with screen smoothing. Activated smoothing will cost around 1.5 - 3 MByte vram (no big issue with my 64 MB GF3, ehehe), and your gfx card must be able to use textures bigger than 256x256 pixels (well, that means for example no smoothing with 3dfx V2/V3 cards). Anyway, if the option does work fast enuff on your system, and you like the smoothed look, use it... if I did everything right, there will be no emulation compatibility issues at all. Oh, a small hint: of course you can combine the old texture filtering

with the new screen smoothing, the results are really nice most times. Oh, and another remark: yes, motion blur would be also possible. But, no, I will not include it in my gpu plugins. I will leave that effect to NickK's NextGL/Next3D plugins, his gpus are getting better and better with every release, so go and check them out :) "Those are the pictures of what was of what is of what is to come We are the people the rolling people the why people the waiting people the wanting people..." - "Altamont" by Aphrodite's Child -------------------------------------------------------------------------04. February, 2002 Version 1.57

- Let's start with the biggest change: I did a big cleanup in my texture caching code. Now you can't select between different caching modes anymore, the plugin will work with a slightly optimized "dynamic" caching method. Still there is an option in the gpu plugin config window, which is controlling the behaviour of texture caching: "Gfx card vram size [MBytes]". Here you can select "Autodetection", which will work without problems on nVidia cards, or enter the size of your gfx card's ram manually (needed for example on 3dfx cards in OpenGL mode, but prolly it's safer with other vendors as well). A wrong big value can cause heavy vram <> system memory swapping, you will notice that when the game speed is slowing down without a reason, and a much too small value can cause an heavier cpu usage and constant texture uploading, so it's up to you... :) Well, some examples: - with D3D, all cards should be reporting the correct vram size, so you can set it to "Auto" as long as you don't want to make some experiments ;) - with OGL, nVidia cards will report the correct vram size as well (at least they did the last time I've checked it =), so you can use "Auto", too - Other vendors may need some tweaking in OGL: Gfx cards with 64 MByte (or more) will always be fine, you can set the vram size to "64", enable FSAA or whatever, and be happy. With gfx cards less than 64 MBytes you should be more careful, try first to enter your real gfx card vram size (for example 16), and if you notice slowdowns you can try to lower the size (15, 14, 13...) to get better speed. Ah yes, and if you have an onboard gfx card you can try to set a much bigger value to get the best speed.

- OK, so the different caching modes are gone... no need to get sad, though. With just one mode left, I was able to improve my texture alignment further: now FSAA will work better, and some of the filtered textures will not look as blocky as before (yes, there are tile edges in the filtered modes, yes, I know, no, I can't do nothing about it, sorry). Still some adjustments have to be done with textured windows, ah, but that's for another day and release. - Improved some dma chain checking, now certain games which were showing black screens before will be running without problems (for example The Mummy or T'ai Fu). - Changed (again) my MMX palette code, finally it seems to be working without any problems. For example the battle menus in FF4 are ok, maybe even the red/yellow cards in Winning11 will be visible again? We will see :) - A new special game fix has been done as well, this time it's a goodie for all Capcom 2D fighter fans: you can enlarge the screen area at the right side of the display, and see all the background gfx without any cut-off (well, glitches can happen, too, you are warned :) - And some more small changes :) "I've been searching everywhere Looking for the final freedom Where there are no boundaries When you never need a reason Well, it has been taking me some time 'Till I've got it what I've tried to find" - "Welcome to the other side" by RAGE -------------------------------------------------------------------------06. January, 2002 Version 1.56b

- OGL/D3D plugins: the fullscreen/window toggle blending fix screwed sometimes the transparency mode on startup. Therefore version 1.56b fixes the fix :) -------------------------------------------------------------------------05. January, 2002 Version 1.56

- OGL/D3D plugins: New special game fix: "Adjust extreme coords". It's the same fix I've included in the P.E.Op.S. soft gpu 1.3, it helps a few games showing weird polygons running wild across the screen. So, try to enable it if a game is having polygon troubles, but don't use it as default setting (because games which doesn't need that option might get screwed). And, no, it doesn't fix Tekken 2. - OGL/D3D plugins: I've also included all new soft funcs (for Offscreen Drawing) which I've changed in the P.E.Op.S. soft gpu 1.3. Not a big deal, though. - OGL/D3D plugins: my texture caching on 15 bit psx textures had a small bug, it wasn't caching the transparency bit. Thanx to Matesic Darko for telling me about the problem.

- OGL/D3D plugins: smashed a sprite Offscreen Drawing bug which has been crept in with version 1.54. The Medievil 1 gravestone menu is now fine again. - OGL/D3D plugins: repaired a small texture window sprite overlapping issue. The Guardian's Crusade in-game menu is correct now. - OGL/D3D plugins: improved my MMX color lookup table code. Some color rotation effects (Vagrant Stories, Blaze&Blade water) are finally working perfectly. - OGL/D3D plugins: sometimes blending was screwed after toggling between window and fullscreen mode. Thanx to JNS for kicking my ass until I've fixed that ;) "On the day of the night things were always well But on the night of the light all night things fell" - "Mystical End" by Iced Earth -------------------------------------------------------------------------02. December, 2001 Version 1.55

- The SOFT gpu has gone Open Source and is not part of the archive anymore. You can find newer versions of the soft gpu (renamed to P.E.Op.S soft gpu) at: http://sourceforge.net/projects/peops - OGL plugin: the "Framebuffer read" and "Framebuffer read on move" special game fixes were giving a yellowish display some times. That's fixed. Still my old advise: activate the FB options only if you really need them, some games (FF9 for example) will not work if the options are turned on. - OGL/D3D plugins: repaired a small scissoring issue and coded a new special game fix... this time it's an option called "Lazy upload detection", and it can be used with Dragon Warrior 7, to repair the flickering effects with text boxes in that game. It's not a 100% fix, since the text boxes will not get semi-transparent if the fix is enabled, and the bkg graphics will not be animated anymore, but at least the flickering is gone... well, you can also turn off the fix and turn on "Full vram primitives", if you have a powerfull cpu, that will emulate the text boxes more accurate, but the bkg gfx will get ugly low-res... well, it's up to you :) I only had a save state, not the full game, so I can't tell you if there are more issues with DW7... but if the rest of the game is coded like the text boxes (using a third display buffer for uploads, bah), I am sure there will be more problems ;) Oh, and the text boxes are using the psx mask bit as well (sure... simple pseudo triple-buffering would be too easy ;) So if you don't see any text boxes at all, try to turn off the "mask bit" gpu option... that will help gfx cards which don't like my mask bit emulation. - OGL/D3D plugins: tadaaaa... two additional filtering modes...

most of you will know the problem with filtering pre-rendered background graphics (the gfx will have a tiled look if filtering is enabled). Well, my advise in the past: use "filtering without sprites", since most games are using sprites for the bkg scenes, and personally I think it's better to have a pixelated display than staring at annoying box edges. My new advise: use "filtering with smoothed sprites" :) Sprite smoothing will work fine with many games (yes, yes, including FF9), and I hope it will not cost too much speed on an average system. Of course it will not help games which aren't using sprites at all (for example Wild Arms), and it will produce glitches with other games (like Legend of Dragoons or FF7). Still it's a good choice for many sprite-based games and rpgs. "Since we've reached the point of no return We pray for starlight, we wait for the moon The sky is empty Alone in the unknown We're getting nowhere" - "And then there was silence" by Blind Guardian -------------------------------------------------------------------------04. November, 2001 Version 1.54

- All plugins: finally I have added psx polyline support to the "WriteData" interface funcs. Polylines were only supported in dma chains before, and, to be honest, I haven't seen any game using them outside of dma chains. Well, Matesic Darko's great GPU Test Windows application is using polylines without dma chains, so I have used that one to check if all is working fine. Btw, you can get the GPU Test app at: http://mrdario.tripod.com in the "Tools" section. - OGL/D3D plugins: Xenogears... yup... well, that game is using a hard to emulate framebuffer texture/framebuffer move combination in cutscenes and transition screens, which only could emulated properly by using "Full Vram primitives" in my hw/accel. plugins before. FVP tends to need a lot of cpu power, so I've looked if I could do an option to let the gfx card do most of the work... and there it is: a new special game fix called "framebuffer read on move". Unfortunately reading the gfx card framebuffer is also slow with most nowadays gfx cards, so I dunno how it will perform on average systems. Speed is fine on my GF3 in OGL, and kinda slow in D3D. So, my advise: use the new option only in Xenogears, or if you want to try to remove similar glitches in other games. Btw, XG needs the new FBOM option with activated "gfx card" framebuffer textures and don't use the highest Offscreen drawing setting! Oh, and I removed the special game fix for Tomb Raider 3... that one only was needed in the old PSEmu Pro emu to repair some of the GTE bugs, but since all newer emus can play the game without the fix, I don't think that it is needed anymore.

- All plugins: the biggest change in 1.54: all software drawing funcs have been redone (lotta work), and the new soft gpu is now up to 20% faster than before. Therefore also the Offscreen drawing and FVP options of the hw/accel. gpus have gained more speed. Another nice thing with the new soft funcs: g-shaded quads are now rendered in the real psx way, check out the quad polygon in the first Sony BIOS screen (hi Galtor :) On the other hand there is a very small chance that little g-shaded textured quads get slightly distorted... during my tests I didn't notice anything bad, but if you encounter some new glitches, drop me a mail. - OGL plugin: while adding the new soft funcs in the OGL plugin, I've noticed that the D3D plugins had a bigger security psx vram area, preventing nasty crashs. OK, now the OGL one has it, too. - Announcement: 1.54 was the last release of "Pete's Soft GPU"! Why? Well, I have done all I wanted to do with the soft gpu plugin, and I think the time is right to go Open Source :) So, in a few days the Windows & Linux sources of the soft gpu plugin will be released, but what does that mean exactly to the users of the soft plugin? 1.) the name of the plugin will change... not a big deal, I think, but I don't want to label a plugin with "Pete's whatever" when (hopefully) a lotta more people beside me are working on it. 2.) improvements in games I don't own myself... I can't investigate some issues if I don't have the game, but now the chances will be higher that another coder is able to fix the problem. 3.) more features I never cared about... maybe a smarter frame skipping? or a native FPSE interface? some special gfx modes? Dunno :) 4.) the plugin will not get bundled in my "gpupete" archive anymore. We will have to wait and see how often a new release of the OS soft gpu is happening... And what does it mean to the psx emu/gpu plugin coders out there? There will be much informations in the source, for example the proper usage of the gpu interface, fps handling and, of course, the soft drawing funcs themselves. OK, so: 1.) the license will be GPL 2.) still I don't want to force any freeware coder to go Open Source himself, if he is using parts of the soft gpu source in his work. So, I will allow the usage of the soft gpu funcs in closed source projects, too, if a) the project is freeware b) credits are given c) any improvements in the open source funcs are reported back to the Open Source project. I hope that way everybody will be happy :) And if the OS way is working well, chances are high that my hw/accel. plugins will go Open Source, too :) "Pissing in a river, watching it rise Tattoo fingers shy away from me Voices voices mesmerize Voices voices beckoning sea

Come come come come back come back Come back come back come back ... Should I pursue a path so twisted ? Should I crawl defeated and gifted ? Should I go the length of a river, (The royal, the throne, the cry me a river) What about it, what about it, what about it ? Oh, I'm pissing in a river." - "Pissing in a river" by Patti Smith -------------------------------------------------------------------------07. October, 2001 Version 1.53

- All plugins: the 1.52 fps limitation bug fix for special chipsets seems to work fine (thanx to all users reporting it), so I've added the fix also to the displayed fps rate, and to the 'Use PC fps calculation' option. - All plugins: added a "copy settings to clipboard" button to the gpu config dialogs. A simple mouse click will now transfer your current gpu settings to the clipboard, you can paste them into bug reporting mails or forum messages. Unlike Lewpy's similar func I don't include your cpu speed, OS, etc... only the pure settings and the name of your gfx card. - OGL/D3D plugins: again small adjustments in the screen upload detection, for example the GT1 main menu will be fine now, the Soul Reaver (demo) menu will get displayed and the Aeronauts (demo) language selection is shown. As always the advise: if you are missing some menus or screens, play with the Offscreen Drawing settings. If there is garbage in the screen border areas, play with the Offscreen Drawing settings. If you are feeling bored, play with the Offscreen Drawing settings ;) - All plugins: fixed a small scissor problem which could happen on very rare occasitions (if the game was using strange screen centering values). The text boxes in Star Ocean 2 will now pop up fine with the D3D/OGL plugins. - All plugins: I've improved all triangle soft drawing funcs, you will get a small speed increase with the Soft gpu in games using lotsa triangles. Since the hw/accel. gpus are using the same funcs for offscreen drawing and full vram primitives, a small speed increase can happen with them, too. Thanx to Lewpy for suggestions :) - OGL/D3D plugins: if you are using the "gfx card buffer" frame buffer textures option, you prolly will have noticed shaking screens effects in some games (for example sometimes in ChonoCross battle screens, in Alundra2 underwater levels/cutscenes, in Megaman Legend 2 water/desert stages, in some AITD4 effects... yawn). Well, what to say? It's fixed :) "And what have started long ago Is heading towards the end There's no easy way out

There's blood on my hands But I am sure in the end I will prove I was right Runes of a long forgotten time Ancient spells in endless rhymes Soon the other world appears Roam to the ghostly river Rhine Leave the misty shades behind I can feel I'm getting near" - "Blood On My Hands" by Demons & Wizards -------------------------------------------------------------------------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, look at: 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 autodetected 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, spin ner-out of fate. Who thinks he turns the Wheel of Time, may learn the truth too late. (From a fragm entary 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 "dy namic" 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 all of your searching and wanting will not help you at all. You have to know the mistery: if you don't find the truth you are searching for within yourself, you will never 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 OffscreenDrawing 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) <insert any reason that satisfy yourself> 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 lies but the truth she speaks may 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 great product in the market and that the vast majority 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)... tststs OK, that's all this time. I wish you luck trying the new mode whatever card and game you are owning. Oh well, and if a game is slow, you can do 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 gpu option 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 drivers for my TNT card. Why? Well, because they are faster with OGL... I don't see a reason to use newer drivers (3.53), if I get a better performance using the old ones (2.08). But, of course, that's only true for my Elsa TNT card, you have to 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 is that 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 need a game/demo showing the effect to fix it, because the remaining baddies are 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 kiddin g :) 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/qual ity, 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 <INSERT> 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 your video 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 Treasures of the Deep: 9 G-Darius: 20 Spyro: 25 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 all can 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 -> -> -> -> 25 20 40 30 FPS FPS FPS FPS

- 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 <DEL> 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 speed up a func, doing benchmarks and searching new bugs or strange effects with my testing games. So the next versions will not be released as fast as the previous ones :( But there is also some good news: nVidia wants to include new OpenGL extensions in 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 1.13

Missing 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 my progs (kind of tradition), if you want to sell software to make a living you 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 applicat ions". >You have to TURN IT OFF. That's the default setting and that's the way things w ill >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 coul d speed things up with OpenGL. Sad but true: speed wasn't really higher and I di dn'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 am looking 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 compatibility with the next version. Wait and see... But what I want to do most is to speed up things further, so I will try to 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 1.9 A 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 <DEL> 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 : Filtering DI : Dithering TW : Texture window * : Smiley (read next section) < : Arrow for selecting Below every option there is a small box, if the box is filled the option is active, empty box means inactive. You can move a small arrow with the <PAGE UP> or <PAGE DOWN> keys to an option you want to toggle. Just hit the <END> key to switch the selected option on or off. Changes will be done immediatly, you can see how the framerate is affected if an option is on or off. If you have found a setting that suits your game just hide the menu by pressing <DEL> again. Nice, eh? I don't store changed options permanently, you have to do that still in the main configuration dialog. - But what's that smiley in the menu? When is it shown and why? That's related to the second major change within this release: Texture quality, a new option in the config dialog, and if you have a non-3DFX card I think you should check it... You can choose the following texture qualities in all non-paletted Texture modes : 'don't care', 'R4 G4 B4 A4', 'R5 G5 B5 A1' and 'R8 G8 B8 A8'. * 'don't care' is how the previous versions of my GPU were working, so selecting it means no gain and no loss... just to be sure * 'R4 G4 B4 A4': Every color info has 4 bits, so texture colors are not as fine, but... if you are having a newer video card (TNT), I can use a special trick causing less memory transfer to the video card which speeds things up :) If your card can do that special trick, I will show that smiley mentioned above. So if you see it, be happy :) But don't expect to much... we are talking about 2-5 FPS, depending how a game is coded. * 'R5 G5 B5 A1': texture colors are getting better, but the 'Alpha Multipass' mode can't be done with just one alpha bit. Many games don't need AM (Spyro, Tekken) so you can select this mode for better colors. This mode is as fast as R4G4B4A4, because (depending on your card) I can do the special trick again, the smiley will tell you if it works. * 'R8 G8 B8 A8': Best colors your PC can offer, at the cost of speed. If game speed is OK within that mode on your PC, use it! No smiley will appear, though. Why did I mention 3DFX cards above? Because the 3DFX OpenGL (Beta2.1) ignores all quality requests, you will ever get 'R4G4B4A4' and I can't do my special

smiley trick with them (if you want to see the smiley with 3DFX, change to the 'paletted texture' mode, I've rewarded that OpenGL extension, too). Or go and use Lewpy's GPU, than the smiley will be your own face... Maybe some cards can change the texture quality but doesn't allow my smiley trick (no smiley shown in frame rate display), bad luck, no speed gained. But all TNT cards should have the ability and I believe the newer ATIs and may be the newer Matrox cards can also handle it. Last tip for TNT users: don't select 'don't care' quality, go for 'R4...' at least. Texture colors are the same in both quality modes, but speed is higher with smiley. If you have 'Spyro' or 'Tekken3' disable OD and AM and select 'R5...' quality for best speed. So far so good (so what?) -------------------------------------------------------------------------25. April, 1999 'last but not least' ;) Version 1.8 - The gooddie of version 1.7 (see below) was messing up my framerate limitation... fixed! I swear, I will do more testing before the next release! - But, no pain no gain, now I've found a way to display the FPS rate without loosing much speed... it's flickering alot, but who cares? It's readable... Just press <DEL> to show it and <DEL> again to hide it! Oh... and it will not work with 3DFX OpenGL... :( -------------------------------------------------------------------------25. April, 1999 (again) Version 1.7 - Ooops, forgotten to remove some debug code in 'SubTexture update' modes with version 1.6, sorry... fixed now - A small gooddie: found a save way to show up some of the missing startup screens of some games (Spyro, BOFIII), hey, even Lewpy's GPU doesn't display Spyro's startup screen (yet). -------------------------------------------------------------------------25. April, 1999 Version 1.6 Added: - Alpha MultiPass option. My personal nightmare... I knew the PSX ability to draw opaque texture areas within transparent blended texture parts when I started to code this GPU, but I couldn't find a way to do it with OpenGL without losing a lot of speed. Until now... :) If you have seen transparent looking stuff in your games where it was supposed to be solid (for example: Apples in Crash III, status display in MediEvil, some objects in BOF III), turn Alpha MultiPass on, all will be fine. OK, maybe you'll loose some speed, but it could be much worse. Your OpenGL driver has to support Alpha bits to do it right, but I've seen no problems with TNT or 3DFX OpenGL drivers. If you see black rectangles around objects, bad luck, you have to turn off this option. - Some loop optimizations done... not much speed gained, I fear, but hey! (I am hoping no new bugs crept in) - Fixed bug in the 'SubTexture update (good color table)' mode, now it should be nearly as good looking as the "RGBA Texture" mode. Most of the reported glitches in that mode should be vanished :) Also fixed a bug in the 'paletted texture' modes. - Screenshots. Press <F8> and a nice looking bitmap will be generated in

the 'Snap' sub-directory of PSEmu Pro. Please: don't mail me any unwanted screenshots if you are seeing some glitches in your games, first ask if I want to take a look at the bitmaps. But feel free to mail them to the compatibility page :) What I am doing next: - Caching of textured windows. Speeds up games like Ridge Racer 4 and Deathtrap Dungeon. To be honest: I wanted to include that within version 1.6 but I have seen unwanted effects, so I disabled it again by now. If I have the choice to do something right or to do it fast I will ever take the 'right' way (as far as I can see what is 'right'), sorry... - some research on clearing the screen (flickering) and maybe a new texture handling mode (I have some ideas, we'll see). -------------------------------------------------------------------------19. April, 1999 Version 1.5 Added: - Fix for nasty non-shaded textures bug: no more color flickering with Ridge Racer 4 and LBA (reported by panos). - Slight improvement of texture colors I hope that some more flickering will stop because of this fix... -------------------------------------------------------------------------18. April, 1999 Version 1.4 Added: - Real Textured Windows support. Tested with BOFIII, Ridge Racer 4 (demo), Deathtrap Dungeon (demo), Treasure Of The Deep (demo). Works fine as far as I can see, so turn the config option "Textured Windows" on :) - Off-Screen Drawing (Lewpy TM). It 'repairs' some wrong looking stuff. If you don't see any graphical mistakes (but who doesn't?), disable this option for a bit more speed. - Some internal bug fixes Things to come: - Cleaning up the GPU source (as always), find more speed (as always), searching for bugs (oh yeah) -------------------------------------------------------------------------11. April, 1999 Version 1.3 Added: - Some transparent areas were displayed black. Should be fixed. - Fixed cache in "SubTexture update" modes. That bug caused wrong colored textures in certain games. - Added some inline assembler functions to speed things up (but I believe the cache fix mentioned above will consume most of the speed gained). - Most important: improved the standard blending mode. If you were using "Advanced blending" to get right looking blendings, you wont need it any more (in most games), turn it off! I have renamed the "Advanced blending" option into "Slow blending", it is still there if you want to use it (some texture colors could be a bit brighter), but that option slows down the GPU heavily. What's next:

- Offscreen drawing. Lewpy explained me what that feature is doing in his GPU, and I am hoping to include it in my next version. If you are still seeing wrong colored textures with version 1.3 in your game, stay tuned, that option will repair things. It's a lot of work, please be patient. -------------------------------------------------------------------------7. April, 1999 Added: RGB24 frame uploading, most MDECs should work fix for clearing screen enhanced clipping tests, could speed things up in certain games fix for color function, so Tekken3 displays shouldn't be black anymore automatic filtering on screen uploading, looks fine handling of "PSX Display disabled" mode Version 1.2

-------------------------------------------------------------------------5. April, 1999 Added: - desktop resolution & color depth can be changed within the GPU - "Advanced blending", better but slower alpha blending (and still not 100% right) - Framerate limiter - Frame uploading, so intros and MDEC will appear (there are still some modes I am not supporting, sorry) - fixed offset & clipping function, should be OK now To be done: - ... (oh my) -------------------------------------------------------------------------1. April, 1999 To be done: - real textured windows support - MDEC (but because PSE doesn't support it right, its not on high prio) - Alpha blending modes are not 100% correct... some of them are just some fast hacks... hope I could fix that in the next release - as always... find more speed... but I want also to include a frame rate limiter for games that are running to fast... - maybe some hotkeys, there are none at the moment, so please leave your keyboard at peace... - Change desktop resolution & color depth as configured in the GPU config - and surely a lot more not mentioned here... ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- OLD D3D DX7 VERSION INFOS -------------------------------------------------------------------------Version 1.0 Version 1.1

09. December, 2000

Version 1.41

- Support for the gpu snapshot function... if the main emu is supporting making snapshots, you usually can press the "F8" key, and a bitmap in the emus "SNAP" directory will be done (some big sized 24 bit RGB bitmap :) It will not work with the first release of ePSXe! The following list is taken from the OpenGL readme, you can skip that, if you have read it already :) - 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 Offscreen 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. "I'm singing this note 'cause it fits in well With the chords I'm playing I can't pretend there's any meaning here Or in the things I'm saying" - "Gettin' In Tune" - The Who -------------------------------------------------------------------------23. November, 2000 Version 1.40

- You can change the brightness (gamma value) in fullscreen modes, using the scrollbar in the 'Select device' window. Full credits are going to David Walters, he even did send me his D3D code, because he wanted the gamma control so badly :) - New info sign in the gpu in-game menu: 'A'... stands for 'Anarchy', eh, 'Analog pad mode', yup... That's an information given by the main emu core, of course, the gpu plugin doesn't care about the pad emulation :) - Small optimization with unfiltered MDECs, that one is giving you a few more frames per second in 16 bit color modes. Also fixed a small bug with unfiltered MDECs, which could cause garbage rows on the bottom of the screen. - Tweaked the texture coords a little bit, the results are now nearly as fine as the OpenGL plugin, less pixel flickering will happen in some games. - Talking about FPS: the FPS calculation is done completely different with the 1.40 versions, if you are having 50 FPS (PAL) or 60 FPS (NTSC) now, the game is running at full speed. Of course you can't compare the FPS results with my previous plugins anymore, or the ones done by Lewpy, Segu or Kazz. But now the frame limitation will be much better with some games and mdecs :) "There are of course many problems connected with life, of which some of the most popular are 'Why are people born?' 'Why do they die?' 'Why do they spend so much of the intervening time wearing digital watches?'" - "The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy" by Douglas Adams -------------------------------------------------------------------------29. October, 2000 Version 1.39

- Well, all the new features of the OpenGL plugin can also be found in the D3D ones (screen centering, 'Speed Freak' fix, 'Horned Owl' fix, offscreen drawing polylines and drawing area). - I've also did a small trick to avoid problems with fullscreen modes in the same resolution as the desktop. - Thanx to anyone reporting that the 'Frame skipping' option wasn't stored in the registry. Now it will be saved, of course. - A new fullscreen mode (400x300) has been added, because of a nice request. Well, I don't use it, but maybe users with less powerful gfx cards want to give that mode a try. - Ah, yeah, I've installed my old 3DFX V2 card again to do some checks... well, using the latest V2 drivers I've found that the V2 doesn't need the 'fullscreen flipping' mode anymore... so I suggest to all users to deactivate that option in my gpu config, without it the game compatibility will be improved. "Never shall darkness nor light prevail, for one must balance the other; yet many of light will seek to banish darkness, and a multitude shall seek to cloak the light; but the balance will destroy all who seek the full ends of darkness and light." -"The Death Of Chaos", by L.E. Modesitt, Jr. -------------------------------------------------------------------------08. October, 2000 Version 1.38

- And again, same as the OpenGL port... kind of 'maintenance' update. - Well, and I am in a 'faithfull' mood today :) "Shall I see tonight sister, bathed in magic greet Shall we meet on the hilltop where the two roads meet. We will form the circle, hold our hands and chant, Let the great one know what it is we want. Danger is great joy, dark is bright as fire, Happy is our family, lonely is the ward." - "Witches' Song" by Marianne Faithfull -------------------------------------------------------------------------24. September, 2000 Version 1.37

- Same as the OpenGL plugin: fixed a position wrap glitch, improved offscreen drawing with 4 bit palettized sprites, and my new option 'special game fixes'.

Look at the OpenGL 'version.txt' for further details. - Oh yeah, and some good news for all 3dfx V2 users: you can use my D3D plugins again (I screwed the support with V1.35)... Just enable the 'Fullscreen blitting' option in the 'Select device' window. Well, using the blitting _could_ cause flickering with some games, so only enable it if my gpu will not work without. Thanx to Fredrik Staaf for doing the V2 tests (and check out <http://enchained.rajraj.nu> if you like some honest guitar tunes :) -------------------------------------------------------------------------17. September, 2000 Version 1.36

- For infos about the 1.36 core please look at the 'version.txt' of the D3D DX6 plugin :):) -------------------------------------------------------------------------11. September, 2000 Version 1.35

- Mmm... should I do some copy, cut and paste from the OpenGL readme? Basically all new features from the opengl plugin V1.35 are now available in the d3d ones, too. The new features include: improved auto-detection of the game's FPS limit, new Offscreen drawing funcs and the full vram update option. For more details check out the OpenGL version text 1.35 - The configuration dialog is now a little bit easier to use, I've removed some (now always activated) options. Some difference compared to the OpenGL port: the 'unfiltered framebuffer' option will give you a bigger speed gain in d3d as in opengl, because I can access the buffer in a more direct way with DirectX... though, it can happen that not all cards are able to use the new 'unfiltered' option. I've tested it on nVidia and 3dfx cards, Matrox and ATI cards should also work, but if you are having troubles, simply turn this option off. - as always: if this dx7 plugin doesn't work, try the dx6 plugin :) "The line it is drawn The curse it is cast The slow one now Will later be fast As the present now Will later be past The order is Rapidly fadin'. And the first one now Will later be last For the times they are a-changin'" - "The times they are a-changin'" - Bob Dylan --------------------------------------------------------------------------

12. June, 2000

Version 1.33

- Yup, finally I've decided to do a D3D psx gpu as well. Please read also the included 'readme' file, even if you are familar with my opengl plugin, the readme contains important infos about the plugin configuration. - Well, the version number is 1.33, even if it's the first release. That's because this plugin is at the same level as my opengl 1.33 plugin, which means: all 'basic' functions are the same, even the texture caching and all other options are doing the same job as the opengl version (well, there are some differences, see below). Using this plugin, you can easily check out how good (or bad) your gfx card opengl drivers are working: I've tried to replace the OpenGL calls with the D3D ones as close as possible, so both plugins should run at nearly the same speed... if the d3d version is much faster, flame your card vendor for the bad opengl support, if the opengl version is much faster, do the same about the d3d support :) - I have tested the plugin on my GeForce and Voodoo3 card. Generally I can say: a) D3D is slightly slower on nVidia cards than OpenGL b) D3D is a lotta faster on 3dfx cards compared to their OpenGL stuff Of course I am hoping that D3D will also help all ATI, Matrox, S3 and Intel gfx card users... mail your experiences with this plugin to: BlackDove@addcom.de Oh, and yes: more vram will help... you should have at least an 8 MB card... I don't think that less vram will work. - You need DirectX 7. Without it the plugin will not be listed in the emu plugin selection dialog. - Differences between the OpenGL and D3D plugin: * With D3D you can select the gfx device if you have more than one gfx card installed. That's not possible with OpenGL. * I have removed some options from the d3d plugin: Wireframes, anti-aliasing and the 3d glasses option are not available with d3d. All three options are not important, though. Modern cards let you enable anti-aliasing within the d3d display properties, and the 3d glasses support will be automatically enabled with the "Enable Mask bit detection' option. * The 'extended' offscreen drawing is working different. I couldn't find a way to do it exactly as with opengl, so I coded an alternative... 'extended' OD is trying to display those nasty frontbuffer stuff a game coder can do with a real psx, it's sometimes used for in-game menus. Well, the d3d version will not work as fine as the ogl one, but it's better than nothing. * Something I really like with D3D: when you select 5-5-5-1 textures, there will be no black areas when you enable the "Alpha multipass (opaque stuff)" option. That's because I can use color keys with D3D (hi Rasky :) for doing transparency effects. So the best choice for 3dfx cards (up to v3) is the "5-5-5-1" texture mode, because such cards can't do 32 bit (8-8-8-8) textures. * The 'extended' filtering modes are just working perfectly with the 'Dynamic' caching mode. See also the readme file. * I have noticed flickering splashscreens sometimes using d3d... maybe that's a vsync issue (I have disabled vsync in my display properties). Have to do more checks to be sure, though.

* The 'palettized texure' mode is just a hack, it will not work fine. Well, I am still waiting for nVidia GeForce D3D drivers which can do pal textures, so I can do better tests what's wrong with my code (there are some flickering texture effects on my v3 with pal textures). * There are three "Advanced blending" settings with D3D. Some cards can't do that modulation in hardware (3dfx), you will get no textures when you select "Hardware" blending with them. You can activate the (slower) "Software" blending, though. Or turn it off, of course ;) "I been writing a song We all been singing along It's like a wild schizophrenia wondering where we belong! Sling it all out the window Start all over again..." - Psychomodo, Steve Harley and the Cockney Rebels ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- OLD D3D DX6 VERSION INFOS -------------------------------------------------------------------------09. December, 2000 Version 1.41

- I think you know where you can find the release notes :) -------------------------------------------------------------------------23. November, 2000 Version 1.40

- Please check out the DX7 plugin release notes for version details... pfff... tell me, why am I still doing this version.txt file? Tststs -------------------------------------------------------------------------29. October, 2000 Version 1.39

- Please check out the DX7 plugin release notes for version details. -------------------------------------------------------------------------08. October, 2000 Version 1.38

- Yeah, no notes here (check out the other plugins readme files for infos), just more quotes to test your faith ;) "Well, I know that you're tired of living this way, We've been trying to get high without having to pay. The walls are all empty, it's not a permanent state, Just let me tell you that it's not too late. You're a brain drain, you go on and on like a blood stain." - "Brain Drain" by Marianne Faithfull

-------------------------------------------------------------------------24. September, 2000 Version 1.37

Oki, just a small copy and paste from the dx7 plugin (mmm, I think I am getting to the point where I have to pack all gpu plugins together, so I have to do just one readme) : - Same as the OpenGL plugin: fixed a position wrap glitch, improved offscreen drawing with 4 bit palettized sprites, and my new option 'special game fixes'. Look at the OpenGL 'version.txt' for further details. - Oh yeah, and some good news for all 3dfx V2 users: you can use my D3D plugins again (I screwed the support with V1.35)... Just enable the 'Fullscreen blitting' option in the 'Select device' window. Well, using the blitting _could_ cause flickering with some games, so only enable it if my gpu will not work without. Thanx to Fredrik Staaf for doing the V2 tests (and check out <http://enchained.rajraj.nu> if you like some honest guitar tunes :) -------------------------------------------------------------------------17. September, 2000 Version 1.36

- For infos about the 1.36 core please read the 'version.txt' of the Soft GPU plugin :):):) -------------------------------------------------------------------------11. September, 2000 Version 1.35

- oh my, not another version file containing the same notes as the opengl and dx7 plugin ;) Check this files out for infos... - for all user which already have got a private version 1.35 dx6 plugin... use it. For versions sake I've crippled this public release a little bit, so it is exactly behaving like the 1.35 opengl/soft/dx7 plugins. There will be a version 1.36 of all plugins in awhile, of course :) 'There must be some way out of here', said the joker to the thief 'There's too much confusion, I can't get no relief. Businessmen, they drink my wine, plowmen dig my earth, None of them along the line know what any of it is worth.' 'No reason to get excited', the thief, he kindly spoke, 'There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke. But you and I, we've been trough that, and this is not our fate, So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late.' - "All along the watchtower", Bob Dylan -------------------------------------------------------------------------19. July, 2000 Version 1.33

- This version is a special port of my d3d (dx7) plugin... it uses the dx6 d3d interface and has a slightly different texture handling. If you don't have any problems with the dx7 plugin, you don't need this one. But some none-nVidia/3dfx gfx cards (like the Matrox g200/g400 ones) will work better with this dll, so try it if you are having troubles. - No readme file this time. Just look into the d3d dx7 readme file for further informations how to configure and use this plugin. - Well, this version is still using my 1.33 core... but the 1.34 core is on its way :) The next gpu plugin release is not far away, I think and it's no OpenGL, DX7 D3D or DX6 D3D gpu... and no GLide one, too :P "Well, I hit the rowdy road and many kinds I met there, many stories told me of the way to get there, ooh. So on and on I go, the seconds tick the time out, there's so much left to know, and I am on the road to find out, ooh. Well, in the end I'll know, but on the way I wonder Through descending snow, and through the frost and thunder I listen to the wind come howl, telling me I have to hurry. I listen to the robin's song saying not to worry, ooh. So on and on I go, the seconds tick the time out..." Cat Stevens - On The Road To Find Out ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- OLD SOFT GPU VERSION INFOS -------------------------------------------------------------------------09. December, 2000 Version 1.41

- ALT-ENTER... toggle between window/fullscreen mode (see the D3D version.txt) - New way to handle polygon coordinates. It will fix games like Tony Hawk 1+2, Spiderman, Apocalypse, Driver 1+2 and so on :) (see the D3D version.txt) -------------------------------------------------------------------------23. November, 2000 Version 1.40

- Gamma (brightness) control in fullscreen modes (see the D3D version.txt) - Analog pad display (see the D3D version.txt) - New way to do FPS calculation/limitation/skipping (see the D3D version.txt)

Cool quote... see D3D version.txt... ah, no... :) "A Discordian is Prohibited of Believing What he Reads." - "Principia Discordia", Fifth Commandment of the Pentabarf -------------------------------------------------------------------------29. October, 2000 Version 1.39

- The screen positioning is emulated like in the hw accelerated plugins. - Fullscreen issues are solved like in the D3D plugins, the 'frame skipping' option will also be stored now. The special 'Speed Freak' fix is not available, because the soft gpu already works fine with that game :) - Tests on my V2 with the latest 3dfx drivers were successful :) - Bug fix for sprites wrapping the texture coords (well, I've supported such wraps a long time on my hw accelerated plugins, I've just forgotten to code that with the soft gpu, too) "Justen took a large chunk of the warm bread. ' I suppose I should try to find out what else is happening in the world. Not that I expect things to have changed very much.' 'They never do,' said Murina. 'But enjoy the bread. Warm bread is better than cold gossip.'" - "The Order War", by L.E. Modesitt, Jr. -------------------------------------------------------------------------08. October, 2000 Version 1.38 - Fixed a clipping bug with poly4 primitives, causing black areas with Crash3. - And a big improvement: no annoying "FRONTBUFFER" activities anymore... all the games which are using stupid frontbuffer tricks should be working without troubles, the 'Delayed fontbuffer update' option has therefore vanished from the gpu config window :) Well, the FPS display behavior changed a little bit by doing the necessary fixes... I hope the fps limit option is not too much screwed by it (I was fighting hard to get it working again). Activating "Frame skipping" can (and will) cause bad effects, though. - Started to improve the "Horizontal/Vertical Display range" command. It's not perfect right now (such commands are usually used to center the screen on your tv set), but the loading screen of Alundra2 is much nicer now :)

"As soon as you're born they make you feel small By giving you no time instead of it all Till the pain is so big you feel nothing at all. A working class hero is something to be, A working class hero is something to be. They hurt you at home and they hit you at school, They hate you if you're clever and they despise a fool Till you're so fucking crazy you can't follow their rules. A working class hero is something to be, A working class hero is something to be." - "Working Class Hero" by Marianne Faithfull -------------------------------------------------------------------------24. September, 2000 Version 1.37

- Yeah, the SoftGPU contains the new 'special game fixes' option, too. Check out the OpenGL version.txt for details. - A small bug with 4 bit palettized sprites caused disturbing effects (most times with 2D scrolling games). You can all say a big 'thank you' to GreenImp for doing nice reports :) -------------------------------------------------------------------------17. September, 2000 Version 1.36

- For infos about the 1.36 core please read the 'version.txt' of the OpenGL plugin :):):):)... naaa... joking :) My holidays are over, so today is a big plugin release... The new gpu core contains a lotta fixes for several games... some intro screens are now working better, certain games will not crash if something stupid is happening with the dma chain, some primitive position-wrappings are handled right. Mmm... I just can hope I screwed none of the already perfectly working games with this new core ;) - All of the gpus are having a few new dll interface functions, for getting higher speed at data reading/writing. If you are coding a psx emu and want some details about the new funcs, just sent me a mail :) - Ah, yes, I've also applied the latest cpu patch on my MSVC6 before compiling the plugin dlls. Let us pray... :) "I was spending my time in the doldrums I was caught in the cauldron of hate I felt persecuted and paralysed I thought that everything else would just wait While you are wasting your time on your enemies Engulfed in a fever of spite Beyond your tunnel vision reality fades Like shadows into the night

To martyr yourself to caution Is not going to help at all Because there'll be no safety in numbers When the Right One walks out of the door Can you see your days blighted by darkness? Is it true you beat your fists on the floor? Stuck in a world of isolation While the ivy grows over the door So I open my door to my enemies And I ask could we wipe the slate clean But they tell me to please go fuck myself You know you just can't win" - "LOST FOR WORDS" by Pink Floyd -------------------------------------------------------------------------03. September, 2000 Version 1.35

- Added the new auto-detect FPS limitation functions, should be working better. See my OpenGL plugin for details. - Fixed a issue with the fullscreen modes if the main psx emu is having menus, window borders, etc. There was no problem with PSEmu Pro, though. - Some psx gpu register bits are handled more exact (I think) - Workaround for a strange bug in my dma function causing a crash. Mmm... I am still thinking its a bug in the main emu ;) "Some people fly... and some of us worry of touching the sun with wings. I know, if I try I'll get where I'm going keeping my eyes on the sky." - "Some people fly" by Queensryche -------------------------------------------------------------------------06. August, 2000 Version 1.34

- Yup, a psx SoftGPU. Yup, version 1.34. It's designed to be very compatible with the real psx gpu (hope so at least)... Well, the Kazz SoftGPU is somewhat faster than this one, but on the good side this gpu has all the psx features which the Kazz gpu doesn't support (like texture windows, polylines, sprite mirroring, mask bits and all the Offscreen and Frontbuffer drawings). So you will see every splash screen, stupid coded battlemenus and everything else what is hard to emulated with nowadays 3D APIs like OpenGL or D3D. - Why version 1.34? Because the next versions of my accelerated gpu plugins (currently version 1.33) will use some parts of this SoftGPU to get better compatibilty and even more speed. Yeah... stay tuned :)

- Please also take some time and look at the readme file. All the plugin options and the in-game plugin menu are explained in this readme. - Special thanx to Lewpy for ideas, support, tests and anything else... the world is waiting for the next version of your Glide plugin :) "The Road goes ever on and on Down from the door where it began. Now far ahead the Road has gone, And I must follow, if I can. Pursuing it with weary feet, Until it joins some larger way, Where many paths and errands meet. And wither then? I cannot say." - JRR Tolkien, hobbit rhyming