Hi all, as you're probably aware by now, Exodus 2.0.1 will be released on the 30th of April 2015, and the project will be going open source at that time. I've just spread the word around to a few other forums. Feel free to do the same, or point me towards any other communities you think would be interested in hearing about this. Here's what I've posted on the other forums:
You may or may not have heard about
Exodus. Exodus is a generic and extensible emulation platform I have been developing for almost 9 years now, which aims to support cycle-level accuracy in emulation, combined with powerful debugging and development tools. Unlike other emulators which are statically compiled to support a particular set of systems, Exodus is open an extensible, with every emulation core supplied through plugins. The platform itself constructs systems from an XML definition of the connections between individual components in the system. This design allows the emulator itself to focus on managing the timing and interaction between the components, and allows the emulation cores to be totally modular and reusable in other systems that share the same components. A lot more information about this is available on the website.
On the 30th of April 2013 I released Exodus 1.0, with support for the Sega Mega Drive. The plugin SDK wasn't ready for use at that stage though, so I held off on the open source release until I could get it up to scratch. Since then I've had delays and setbacks in getting the next release out the door, but the long process is now complete. I'm pleased to announce that Exodus 2.0 will be released both as binaries, and an open source repository, on the 30th of April 2015. Developer documentation will also be published detailing the API. The code will be licensed under
MS-RL, and the repository will be hosted on
Bitbucket. Refer to the website for more information on how to build Exodus from the source, and how to contribute ideas or code changes to the project.
In terms of Mega Drive emulation, the main differences in Exodus 2.0 are as follows:
-Major speed improvements (average 90% on dual-core systems, 30%-40% on quad-core systems)
-Around 40% reduction in memory usage
-Completely redesigned user interface, with a very powerful docking system for window management.
-Gamepad/joystick support
-Lots of bugs fixed and new debugging features
