DuDe
Emu64 Staff
Gonetz has released a new version of his awesome Glide plugin, Glide64, after six months of hard work. Here's what he had to say :
New version of Glide64 is released after 6 month of hard work. I have
implemented tons of new features and improvements. Some of these features are
long awaited, some were not even expected to be supported by ancient 3dfx
hardware. Many novelties are never seen before in N64 emulation. Beta testing
has proved that new features work well, surprisingly well. That's why this
version is called "Miracle Edition". It's impossible to list all changes here,
I'll describe only most important ones:
<UL>
<LI><B>Hardware frame buffer emulation (HWFBE).</B>
Such feature was first introduced in glN64 plugin by Orkin. HWFBE allows plugin
to use video memory for auxiliary frame buffers. This greatly speed ups frame
buffer emulation and improves image quality. Frame buffer effects like motion
blur now work as smooth as on real console and in high resolution. This feature
also allowed me to emulate many things which are hardly possible to emulate with
usual frame buffer emulation, e.g. dynamic shadows. HWFBE is fully
supported only by Voodoo4/5 and partially by Voodoo3 and Banshee. Read
readme.txt for details. Many thanks to KoolSmoky who gave me Voodoo5 card and
hints how to implement this feature.
<LI><B>Long long long awaited Conker's Bad Fur Day support!</B>
This game was partially supported yet by v0.1, but it was unplayable due to
heavy graphics errors. I found that these errors were caused by improper dynamic
lighting emulation. When I removed dynamic lighting, problems were gone! Of
course, the game looks incorrect without lighting, but currently no video plugin
emulates lighting in this game correctly. PJ64 plugin by Jabo also does not
emulated it at all. Beside this, the game looks perfect. As usual, all frame
buffer effects are supported, including dynamic Conker's shadow (HWFBE is
required for shadow).
<LI><B>Perfect Dark support.</B>
The game works nearly perfect, almost all frame buffer effects emulated
correctly, including lens effect when cam spy is used. Voodoo4/5 users should
use HWFBE to get full speed with frame buffer effects. I have used sources of
TR64Ogl and glN64 to get information about microcode for this game, thanks to
Icepir8 and Orkin!
<LI><B>Jet Force Gemini and Mickey's Speedway USA support.</B>
These 2 games use the same microcode as Diddy Kong Racing, only slightly
modified. Again, all frame buffer effects are supported. Voodoo3/4/5 and Banshee
users can get dynamic shadows in JFG thanks to HWFBE. I have used sources of
glN64 and RiceDeadalus to modify microcode for these games, thanks to Orkin and
Rice!
<LI><B>Dr.Mario 64 support.</B>
Rice and schibo have added few extensions to Zilmar's plugin specifications.
These extensions are designed to help video plugin with some kind of frame
buffer emulation and they are supported by new 1964 and Rice's video plugin. I
have implemented these extensions too, so Dr.Mario 64 is fully playable now.
<LI><B>Partial YUV textures support.</B>
N64 allows game to store images in JPEG format to save valuable space in ROM
cartridge. This possibility is rarely used though, may be because JPEG
compression leads to quality lost. However one game, Ogre Battle 64, uses it a
lot, probably because it's the only way to put huge number of backgrounds into
N64 cartridge. YUV is intermediate format for JPEG compression/decompression.
Texture must be converted from YUV into common RGB format to be usable. This
could be done by lot of ways since there are lot of YUV formats, and it was
unclear which one is used by N64. I have decrypted format used by Ogre battle
64, and now this game is fully playable! However, my decoding method may not
work for other games which use YUV textures.
<LI><B>Large textures support in sprite microcode.</B>
This fixes a bug in Yoshi's Story and makes Neon Genesis Evangelion playable!
<LI>Fixed a bug in TexrectFlip - all problems with text in Wetrix are gone!
<LI>Implemented/fixed combiners for many many games. Most drastic results
can be seen in Beetle Adventure Racing and Roadsters Trophy.
<LI>Configuration dialog is changed a bit to avoid confusions when "Use custom ini
settings" option is used. Ini file is greatly improved to make this option
really useful.
<LI>Tons of other fixes and improvements. </LI></UL>
Big ups to ggab for the news tip. Grab this amazing release from the <a href="http://www.emuxhaven.net/~glide64/downloads.htm">Glide64 downloads page</a>.
New version of Glide64 is released after 6 month of hard work. I have
implemented tons of new features and improvements. Some of these features are
long awaited, some were not even expected to be supported by ancient 3dfx
hardware. Many novelties are never seen before in N64 emulation. Beta testing
has proved that new features work well, surprisingly well. That's why this
version is called "Miracle Edition". It's impossible to list all changes here,
I'll describe only most important ones:
<UL>
<LI><B>Hardware frame buffer emulation (HWFBE).</B>
Such feature was first introduced in glN64 plugin by Orkin. HWFBE allows plugin
to use video memory for auxiliary frame buffers. This greatly speed ups frame
buffer emulation and improves image quality. Frame buffer effects like motion
blur now work as smooth as on real console and in high resolution. This feature
also allowed me to emulate many things which are hardly possible to emulate with
usual frame buffer emulation, e.g. dynamic shadows. HWFBE is fully
supported only by Voodoo4/5 and partially by Voodoo3 and Banshee. Read
readme.txt for details. Many thanks to KoolSmoky who gave me Voodoo5 card and
hints how to implement this feature.
<LI><B>Long long long awaited Conker's Bad Fur Day support!</B>
This game was partially supported yet by v0.1, but it was unplayable due to
heavy graphics errors. I found that these errors were caused by improper dynamic
lighting emulation. When I removed dynamic lighting, problems were gone! Of
course, the game looks incorrect without lighting, but currently no video plugin
emulates lighting in this game correctly. PJ64 plugin by Jabo also does not
emulated it at all. Beside this, the game looks perfect. As usual, all frame
buffer effects are supported, including dynamic Conker's shadow (HWFBE is
required for shadow).
<LI><B>Perfect Dark support.</B>
The game works nearly perfect, almost all frame buffer effects emulated
correctly, including lens effect when cam spy is used. Voodoo4/5 users should
use HWFBE to get full speed with frame buffer effects. I have used sources of
TR64Ogl and glN64 to get information about microcode for this game, thanks to
Icepir8 and Orkin!
<LI><B>Jet Force Gemini and Mickey's Speedway USA support.</B>
These 2 games use the same microcode as Diddy Kong Racing, only slightly
modified. Again, all frame buffer effects are supported. Voodoo3/4/5 and Banshee
users can get dynamic shadows in JFG thanks to HWFBE. I have used sources of
glN64 and RiceDeadalus to modify microcode for these games, thanks to Orkin and
Rice!
<LI><B>Dr.Mario 64 support.</B>
Rice and schibo have added few extensions to Zilmar's plugin specifications.
These extensions are designed to help video plugin with some kind of frame
buffer emulation and they are supported by new 1964 and Rice's video plugin. I
have implemented these extensions too, so Dr.Mario 64 is fully playable now.
<LI><B>Partial YUV textures support.</B>
N64 allows game to store images in JPEG format to save valuable space in ROM
cartridge. This possibility is rarely used though, may be because JPEG
compression leads to quality lost. However one game, Ogre Battle 64, uses it a
lot, probably because it's the only way to put huge number of backgrounds into
N64 cartridge. YUV is intermediate format for JPEG compression/decompression.
Texture must be converted from YUV into common RGB format to be usable. This
could be done by lot of ways since there are lot of YUV formats, and it was
unclear which one is used by N64. I have decrypted format used by Ogre battle
64, and now this game is fully playable! However, my decoding method may not
work for other games which use YUV textures.
<LI><B>Large textures support in sprite microcode.</B>
This fixes a bug in Yoshi's Story and makes Neon Genesis Evangelion playable!
<LI>Fixed a bug in TexrectFlip - all problems with text in Wetrix are gone!
<LI>Implemented/fixed combiners for many many games. Most drastic results
can be seen in Beetle Adventure Racing and Roadsters Trophy.
<LI>Configuration dialog is changed a bit to avoid confusions when "Use custom ini
settings" option is used. Ini file is greatly improved to make this option
really useful.
<LI>Tons of other fixes and improvements. </LI></UL>
Big ups to ggab for the news tip. Grab this amazing release from the <a href="http://www.emuxhaven.net/~glide64/downloads.htm">Glide64 downloads page</a>.
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