MagicEngine

dmichel · Admin Joined: 04 Apr 2002 Posts: 1166 Location: France

New preview! Smile

MagicEngine 1.0 PR 5
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David Michel

FagEmul · Member Joined: 19 Apr 2002 Posts: 68 Location: France

what news with this release ?

edit: oups , dont see the readme ^^
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Very Happy

le ciel nous tombera sur la tête Very Happy

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LacanZZ · Visitor Joined: 23 Oct 2004 Posts: 16

Awesome this preview actually runs faster *I think with V Sync maybe* then version 99.5.

The only problems I find with this are in Dracula X, with the glitch after the Konami Logo, some control issues, but are corrected I think after I exit out of Magic Engine and renter, and the fact that if I die in Dracula X, the music of the level doesn't start again.

*Goes off to play Bonk*

EvilHomer666 · Visitor Joined: 27 Nov 2004 Posts: 2

I was just about to say the same, first of, I'm so happy the blue sprite bug is gone now.
But yeah, after the Konami logo a glich happens and a few portions of it reapear right before the first cinematic screen. Then if I die, the music won't start again.
My control is working fine too and even the regular non-cd sound has improved a lot, I love it. Now it almost matches the cd sound.
keep it up Dave, you'r doing great! Applause

Kaminari · Posted: Sat Nov 27, 2004 9:45 am Post subject:

Thankfully Magic Engine isn't a Dracula X emulator... Rolling Eyes

generalleoff · Member Joined: 19 Nov 2004 Posts: 23

The overlaping sound static is now gone :)
My gamepad is still working 100%
There is a bit less glitching on the score screen in Devils Crush
The overall emulation speed feels faster
The GUI responce time feels a bit faster

Now for some bad stuff and some comments...

The program icon is still not showing correct and windows reports it is not even there. I have a feeling yer hlding off for the final 1.0 when you will launh a totaly redesigned icon tohugh so i'll hold on that :)

The built iemulators built in system cards arn't selectable from the GUI. This may have been talked about already tohugh and I didnt see it.

The text is still overlaping on the gamepad config screen. This is super minor and no big deal but a suggested fix I came up with is if it can be made so the boxes the text fit in are variable and can resize themselves by detecting the length of the text. That may be a pain to do though in this GUI.

If you set the window mode screen to 1x 2/4 of the GUI are cut offscreen still. The way I would fix this is have he screen always resize itself to defult size when in the GUI then go back to 1x size when you are in the game.

The Boot CD screen dont work with total GUI controll with a KB or gamepad and you are required to use a mouse to press the triangle to expand the system card screen and you must still use a mouse to select a systemcard. I have a suggestion about the whole Boot CD screen tohugh. How about allowing there to be upto 4 or 8 CD drives there and then moving that triangle so it is to the right of all drives and you can press it with the mouse or press right on the KB/gamepad and it will cause the System Card screen to pop out to the right of the drive. This can allow a user to set a system card per drive if they wanted.

Whilw i'm on that. How about expanding the system card selector to allow you to use all the systemcards rather then just 4. Theres 6 total counting the gamese xpress card (Japanese 1.0, 2.0, 2.1, 3.0, Games Express, and US 2.0)

Anyway thats about it. Things are definitly geting good :)

edit:
Spoke to soon. The overlaping static on 1943 is gone but it is still there on other games but not as bad. It's there in Devils Crush.

Kaminari · Posted: Sat Nov 27, 2004 10:04 am Post subject:

Some good suggestions about the Boot CD menu and the GUI issue in Window 1x Mode.

About the Magic Systems, I suppose they were not enabled (yet) because the old ones needed a serious rewrite; they caused more harm than they fixed problems.

Kaminari · Posted: Sat Nov 27, 2004 10:15 am Post subject:

Mmm, not sure what you mean by sound static... I don't get any kind of abnormal distorsion in Devil Crash, even without any filtering (except for the slight hissing in the background that is to be expected on this console). Have you tried applying some interpolation? Cubic 3 (cubic_interpolation_level=2) should give you a very nice and accurate rendering.

generalleoff · Member Joined: 19 Nov 2004 Posts: 23

the sound static used to be worse then it is now. now for the most part it is just a hissing sound and it;s very low. I wasnt aware this was a common issue with the acctual hardware. If thats the case then forget it :)

Wahat the sound was doing in PR4 was overlaping into screen changes and stuff. not just static but acctual parts of the song itself. Like the title screen music in 1943 would play for a second or so on the black screen that shows just before a level and it would hiss and click pretty bad. It also would continue to play music from a game when you exited and went into the GUI. Now thats all gone and there is nothing but a short few ms of static on screen and song changes in a game and you say thats normal for the hardware so I guess alls cool now :)

edit:

OK I give up.... This problems just to hard to explain without hearing it and I dont know if this is normal for the console as I havent touched one sence like 1991. I went and checked 1943 again after playing Devils Crush for a while and the sounds over laping the theme music bad again and even when going into the GUI. None of the filtering seems to be able to remove it.

It's not like it's a life thretning problem. Just it never did it before is all :)

unit3uk · Visitor Joined: 21 Jun 2002 Posts: 11 Location: USA

Since the sound improvment in PR 5, I can actually hear the sounds of the character jumping in Legendary Axe, but I noticed the music has a static/scratchy sound to it. Has anyone else noticed it?

Kaminari · Posted: Sat Nov 27, 2004 1:07 pm Post subject:

unit3uk · Visitor Joined: 21 Jun 2002 Posts: 11 Location: USA

Kaminari · Posted: Sat Nov 27, 2004 2:52 pm Post subject:

Good call. The noise-generated effect for the jumping sound doesn't seem to be initialized until another PSG sound effect kicks in (for example right at the beginning, if you let yourself get hit by a bird). I don't have the cartridge to test it, so I can't be sure whether it's a bug in Magic Engine or in the original game -- but I tried the ROM with Yame and it certainly works. Hopefully David will have a look at it Smile

generalleoff · Member Joined: 19 Nov 2004 Posts: 23

My sound card is a Creative Labs SoundBlaster Live Value running the laterst drivers that come with XP Pro SP2. These are the same drivers on creatives site so I dont bother to install the drivers with the offical installer as it just eats drive space and installs a duplicate driver :).

I'm going to go and tinker around alot more with the audio setings in ME and see if I can figure something out.

Edit:

OK I found another bug just now thats un related to sound.

If you are in the audio or video config screen playing with one of the little sliders for volume or color and stuff and you drag the curser out of the program window and then release it ME will still think yer holding the button down so moving the mouse around still makes the sliders movie even if yer done using them. Clicking anywhere in the GUI will stop it.

This bug is minor yet funny :D

Edit 2:

Also the up/down arows on the game select screen slider bar dont want tseem to work. Though the slider itself does work.

mario64 · Visitor Joined: 25 Nov 2004 Posts: 7