New Glide64 v0.7 "Miracle Edition"!

[ggab]

<P><B>April, Sunday 4, 2004 - Glide64 "Miracle Edition"! </B><BR>
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:</P>
<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>
<P>Download Glide64 v0.7 ME <A
href="http://www.emuxhaven.net/~glide64/files/glide64_07me.zip">here</A>!<br>
Sources can be dowloaded from <A
href="http://www.emuxhaven.net/~glide64/sources.htm">here</A>. <br>
Visit our <A href="http://www.emuxhaven.net/forum/index.php?amp;act=SF&f=9">
message board</A> to see screen shots from this version. Feedback is welcome too.</P>
<P>If you like this program, you may buy me a beer...or a car <br> //comment by me: if u want to Make payments with PayPal - it's fast, free and secure! go here http://www.emuxhaven.net/~glide64/ and check the original message.</P>
<B>Gonetz</B>.
<P>P.S. Don't forget to check new Compatibility List. It also has information which games are compatible with HWFBE.<br>
P.P.S. Don't expect miracles from this plugin if you don't have 3dfx hardware.
</P>

 

[revl8er]

This makes me wish I had a voodoo card. I tested it on my Geforce fx5900 and I keep getting microde errors on perfect dark and when I try to use the rocket launcher in conkers bad fur day, I keep getting unexpected emulation thread error.

 

[h3h3]

ya it does work REAL bad with evoodoo...
might be a great release but is at the same time a sad change in the development of glide64:
not making it work decent for non-voodoo owners :-(

no i guess it's all on evoodoo which was/is a great wrapper though

 

[Stezo2k]

wow sounds great, would peform very well if i still had my old voodoo 2, oh well

 

[Lex]

That is one hell of a compatibility list, even Conkers bad fur day
too bad i don't have my voodoo banshee anymore

 

[khanmeister]

Sometimes there are tandem evoodoo releases, anyone taking bets or have info?

 

[Trotterwatch]

Just tested a few games (with Evoodoo on a Radeon 8500). Pretty much all worked well, Perfect Dark and Conkers Bad Fur Day to name but two. Even tried the rocket launcher out on Conkers, worked fine (even with the site) though of course there was a speed hit - still playable though with the FB speedhit.

 

[h3h3]

actually I cannot even get to run super mario "right"
gfx errors that never occurred in any other gleid64 release
and it's HELLA slow :-/ most of the time

i tried every version of evoodoo
3.25 still seems to give me the best results though

i got Geforce4 Ti 4200

 

[Trotterwatch]

Not sure what version of Evoodoo I'm using, I'll post it later.

 

[Gonetz]

too eVoodoo users. I don't know which version of eVoodoo is best for new Glide64. However, for every version one thing is true - it's very very slow in 32bit mode, even on fast modern cards. Run it in 16bit mode only. If you run it in window, don't forget to switch your desktop to 16bit color.

And about new version of eVoodoo - no good news Glide64 beta was send to McLeod almost 2 month ago, but I got no answer from him.

 

[Doomulation]

But...the source was released. So hopefully, someone who knows what they do might port it to d3d some day.

 

[zorbid]

Zeckensack is also working on glide3x emulation. You may want to contact him..

 

[Falcon4ever]

Good job Gonetz, nice too see glide64 is still alive and kickin'.


And about Mcleod, he hasn't been on irc for 3 months either (dev chans).
=/

 

[h3h3]

why not call him???
a ringing phone can bring great pleasure sometime...

sry guess i'm not able to talk normal stuff today...

 

[tomman]

Wow!

This "Miracle Edition" is simply awesome! I have a crappy SiS 630 OnBoard 16 MB share "video accelerator", so Rice Video is not for me. I'm using latest stable eVoodoo 3.2 (not eVoodoo Nemesis (or it was Genesis?), it are pure crap). Dr. Mario 64 runs OK, but with some "black-boxed items" [drmario64.png].
Yoshi runs almost OK, but with a strange "scanlines effect" while turning the book cover [yoshi_cbook.png]. And the "fruit meter" and "flower meter" are missing, instead, there are black items. And with a lot of BG graphics errors [yoshi_gbugs.png].

Finally i found a plugin for run Kirby near from perfection! There are some GFX missing (for example, square background on intro movies are missing [kirby_bad.png], sometimes there are some lines on Nintendo/HAL Labs logos, missing info on status bar (powerups, life and stars meter info), black text on stars titles, and missing backgrounds on these screens, missing animations when kirby get a powerup, ETC,), but nothing else... [kirby_good.png]. As an comparison, Rice Video runs this game with crappy graphics and lots and lots of graphics bugs (flickering, "squared" GFX, and more) (and the same goes for yoshi and dr. mario 64, since framebuffer emulation is broken)

Keep up the hard good work! Glide64+eVoodoo is the "slow PCs saver" for N64 emulation :holiday:
we only need a new eVoodoo stable version now My poor Celeron 700 will rock for some years... Someday Rice will remember that crappy graphic cards and slow PC's exist, and he will develop an enhanced plugin for that class of crap (Hey, the original UltraHLE appeared in the age of PII's and Voodoos, where the fastest processor was the PII 450).

Another games tested:
-Mario 64: IT SUCKS! specially "Select file" screen text
-Pokemon Snap (Spanish version): Nothing, screen black, but game runs
-Doom 64: Aaaa, perfect.

BTW: this new vBulletin ver does not work very well under Mozilla! Post editor buttons launches lots and lots of script errors

 

[tomman]

More shots, more voodoo

OK, i decided to give it a try to eVoodoo Nemesis. It are better than eVoodoo XP, but it have some issues

Yoshi looks perfect! (with the same bg bugs from Rice Video), and yes, that "book cover scanlines issue" is still there. [yoshi_evn.png]

This [m64_sucks.png] issue become an standard in all N64 GPU plugins: files screen text on Mario 64 looks ugly. Can somebody fix that? I prefer to use Corn for play Mario, it's veeeeeeeeeeeeery fast. Talking about speed, eVoodoo Nemesis is slow as hell! but it produces better graphics.

Kirby looks OK, now with correct stars title cards, better GFX, but graphics "fly to hell" when i start a level. Screen is blacked out... [kirby_crashed.png], but i still hear the music, so i'm not sure if the game crashes or not.

A bonus shot: [doom_monsters.png]. Can somebody add contrast/brightness setup to N64 GPU plugins? It is a veeeery important feature, and better than tweak graphic card/monitor settings.

Dr Mario 64 still runs with the black boxes, but better than Rice Video. And Pokemon Snap finally gets some graphics, but with ugly text.

wow, i love to post shots

To finish this "photo session", a BUG! And a big one. When i quit a game, i must restart emulator for load another. If i load another without restart emu, game will be loaded, but it will not run... Strange, or not? Anybody else have experienced that?

 

[Clements]

glN64() 0.41 and Rice's Video plugin both have hq*x filters that dramatically improve the quality of the text in SM64, although these plugins probably won't work on SiS graphics.

 

[tomman]

SiS = Sucking Intensive Systems

glN64() 0.41 and Rice's Video plugin both have hq*x filters that dramatically improve the quality of the text in SM64, although these plugins probably won't work on SiS graphics.

hq2x (and any related algorythm) is good, but for N64 it is slow. I must switch any emulator to fullscreen if i want to play any game with hq2x for get an reasonable speed, at least in this computer.

I will stay with raw graphichs for a while...

 

[gandalf]

I have an sis 630 too,its very baaaaad,but filters are working well (only in rice).A lot of bad graphics,slooooooww.The best plug-in in my SiS is Jabo.
I tried Glide+ Evoodoo 3.99 and works OK,but slow.

 

[tomman]

eVoodoo 3.99 is eVoodoo Nemesis? If not, where i can grab it?

Rice is for high-end cards, and Jabo is not so good, so i will stay with eVoodoo and Glide64. Maybe someday i will buy a new PC... in 2021