Articles tagged with: dapplegrey

News Roundup: August 25 - November 5

mossy_11 on Friday, 07 November 2014. Posted in News

Fear not, emulation fans: my monthly news roundup is not dead yet. (It's just struggling to stay true to its descriptor.)


Nintendo Gamecube and Wii emulator Dolphin has made some big progress in the past few months. So big, in fact, that Wes Fenlon saw fit to write a cool feature article over at PC Gamer on the massive performance boosts brought on by Fiora Aeterna's contributions. The Dolphin team put together its own progress reports to highlight the gains, and also the new features and bug fixes. They've got posts up on August, September, and October. If you've been holding out on Dolphin for any reason, now's the time to dive in. New development builds are flying out of the compiler.


While I'm sending you off to read interesting articles about emulation, I might as well throw in David "Haze" Haywood's blog, which always picks out notable changes and discoveries in MAME and MESS development (or UME, if you're running it through Wine or virtualisation) — both in terms of emulation and hardware preservation.


Speaking of MAME and MESS, they're now at version 0.155. As always, the list of changes is huge for MAME and slightly less-huge for MESS. Would-be contributors and those of you who compile from source note that the code repository is now on GitHub. For everyone else, the OS X SDL ports are still available here. And if you want a proper frontend and launcher, QMC2 is all synced up with the latest builds. As is MAME Launcher.


CodeWeavers has released version 14.0.0 (since updated to 14.0.1) of its commercial Wine-based Windows application/game wrapper tool CrossOver. Besides Yosemite compatibility, this release overhauls the user interface — with shortcuts in the dock and the CrossOver app for individual Windows apps drawing particular attention in the announcement. There are new supported apps as well, including Terraria, Euro Truck Simulator 2, Cube World, and Path of Exile.

Continue reading for more emulator updates, including back-from-the-dead JOYCE and double updates to Stella and VirtualBox, among others.

News Roundup: July 11 - August 24

mossy_11 on Wednesday, 27 August 2014. Posted in News

PlayStation Portable emulator PPSSPP has been updated to version 0.9.9.1. This fixes a few issues discovered in the 0.9.9 release, which added support for the mp3 and aac codecs and PMP video format, fixed a number of graphical issues by adding CLUT/paletted texturing from framebuffers, improved vrot CPU instruction emulation, and much more. Mac builds are still not officially supported, and the angelXwind site that normally hosts unofficial builds seems to be down, but PPSSPP forum-goer slavezeo put together a script that can be used to compile the emulator with only a little modification.


Nintendo Wii and Gamecube emulator Dolphin apparently received hundreds of code optimisations in July, resulting in big performance improvements, fixes to long-standing bugs, and even a few new features. Read the typically-fascinating Progress Report for a rundown of the most notable changes. They've also got a review up on the Dolphin blog for the Mayflash DolphinBar, which is a USB sensor bar designed to work with Dolphin and as a mouse replacement. If you're after new builds, there's a steady flow of automated development versions appearing every day.


It's been a long time coming, but ScummVM 1.7.0 was released in July. Five new games are supported, including 1996 claymation The Neverhood. Changes include "many" improvements to the UI, an OpenGL backend and enhanced AGOS engine, and updated MT-32 emulation. You can read a full breakdown of the changes in the release notes. Get it from the ScummVM download page.

Continue reading for more updates, including GBA on Bizhawk, loads of FS-UAE development builds, new Hatari, and more.

News Roundup: June 15 - July 10

mossy_11 on Saturday, 12 July 2014. Posted in News

Emulicious, a Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Sega Master System, and Sega Game Gear emulator written in Java 1.6, is now available. The current version has built-in IPS patching, palette and tilemap viewers, a memory tracer, a debugger, and more. The developer also built an Alex Kidd in Miracle World editor, which looks pretty handy for would-be ROM hackers.


Atari 2600 VCS emulator Stella has a major update available. The 4.0 release ports Stella to SDL2, allowing native hardware acceleration. Other changes and additions include preliminary support for the DASH bankswitching scheme, a hidecursor command-line option, an updated PNG library, and more. Head over to Stella's news page for the full list.


GSport, an Apple IIgs emulator, has been updated to version 0.31. This build introduces AppleTalk networking emulation with bridging to EtherTalk (online multiplayer!), allows pasting of (text) clipboard contents from OS X, and fixes a few bugs, among other things. You can see the full breakdown here.

Continue reading for more updates, including Dolphin progress, new versions of Mednafen and Shoebill, and more.

News Roundup: December 28 - March 8

mossy_11 on Sunday, 09 March 2014. Posted in News

My apologies on another late roundup. I’ve been busy. It was worth the wait, though, as we’ve got a huge one this time round, including a few new emulators.


There’s a new Macintosh emulator under development! Shoebill currently emulates a Mac II running A/UX (versions 1.x.x through 2.0.0), which was Apple’s implementation of Unix some 20+ years ago, although it will eventually support booting Mac OS. It’s early days yet, with the 0.0.1 release dropping just last week, but this is the first emulator that supports A/UX and it also emulates the MMU (which other Mac emulators don’t, so we could finally have some leaps forward if somebody manages to decouple the MMU code from Shoebill). See this E-Maculation thread for discussion, or head to GitHub for a download link and screenshots. (Thanks WatchSmart!)


Shoebill isn’t the only new emulator for us to play with; 8086tiny holds claim to the title of “the world’s smallest portable, highly-functional PC emulator.” True or not, at 28K (with comments) the source code is at least tiny. It emulates an 8086 CPU plus all standard PC peripherals, and its disk images should mount out of the box in OS X. I haven’t had a chance to test it myself yet, but this looks like a great choice for running DOS or early versions of Windows. You can learn more about 8086tiny and download the source code from its official website.


Multi-system emulator BizHawk has been updated to version 1.6.0. This release adds Sega Genesis and CD support and OpenGL video output, and it also fixes some issues with stability, audio throttling, and opening NES games. Check out Sappharad’s forum thread for more details and a download link.


WatchSmart pointed out this very cool browser-based Mac Plus emulator, RetroWeb, which comes with a number of built-in games and apps and seems to run at a decent frame rate in most current browsers. You can load your own disk images, too, but that’s not really the point here — this is an easy way to reminisce or to show other people what Macs were like 25 years ago without going to the hassle of setting up Mini vMac. (It uses PCE for its core, in case you were wondering.)


Continue reading for more updates, including a full complement of Mac-on-Mac news, a new way to play a classic, progress on a NeXT emulator, and more.

News Roundup: September 23 - November 1

mossy_11 on Wednesday, 06 November 2013. Posted in News

PlayStation Portable emulator PPSSPP turned one this week, and to celebrate the developers released version 0.9.5. This adds post-processing shaders and fixes loads of bugs and emulation issues. Head over to the PPSSPP news page for more details, and download an unofficial Mac binary here (requires SDL).


Open-source virtualisation tool VirtualBox got both a major and a minor update in October. Version 4.3.0 added USB touch device emulation, SCSI CD-ROM emulation, and loads of other things, while 4.3.2 fixed bugs in the virtual machine, GUI, and more. See the changelog for more details.


Sappharad was on the forums recently updating us on the progress of his Mac port of multi-system tool-assisted-speedruns-focused emulator Bizhawk. The latest build is 1.5.2, with recent additions including TI-83 support and loads of bug fixes. There’s still no native user interface, but the main Bizhawk team is refactoring the code to make it easier for someone to do this (if anyone’s up for the task). See the MacScene forum thread here, grab the download here, or check out the Bizhawk Google Code page for more details.


ScummVM celebrated its 12th birthday in style with a super cool visualisation (embedded below) of the history of its codebase. Even if you don’t understand the slightest thing about coding and classes, this will give you a great feel for the scale of the project and the 58,000+ commits made by hundreds of coders. If you’re looking for a more narrative-based history, head over to Ars Technica for my big feature on the project from last year.

Continue reading for more updates, including OS X PPC guest support in QEMU and new versions of RPCEmu, zxsp, CocoaMSX, Mednafen, and more.

News Roundup: March 22 - May 7

mossy_11 on Tuesday, 07 May 2013. Posted in News

Mac gaming classic Pathways into Darkness, a precursor to Bungie's more famous first-person series Marathon and Halo, has been ported to OS X. This is a faithful, loving, free port with full blessings from Bungie. Go get it to revisit a slice of Mac gaming history. (If you're so inclined, I wrote up my thoughts on this OS X release here.)


There’s a new MSX emulator on the scene. CocoaMSX is based on blueMSX, and offers what looks to be a pretty robust feature set. You can follow its development on Google+ or track (and download) it on the CocoaMSX Google Code page. Be sure to let us know how it stacks up to openMSX (which has now moved from svn to Git repository, I might add).


Just over a year since the last release, Nintendo DS emulator DeSmuME has hit version 0.9.9. This build introduces a new JIT CPU core, which the devs say “yields some impressive speedups,” and specifically improves the OS X port with a ton of new options and enhancements. There’s also a bunch of bug fixes across the entire emulator. Get it from the official DeSmuME website.


Gaming-focused Amiga emulator FS-UAE has moved to fs-uae.net, and it’s been updated to version 2.2.2. Changes since March are mostly bugfixes and improvements to existing features. You can see lists here (2.2.1) and here (2.2.2). As always, head over to the FS-UAE website for more information and a download link.

Continue reading for more emulator updates, including new versions of two PSP emulators, long-overdue updates to ARAnyM and Bochs, and more.

News Roundup: Jaunary 20 - March 21

mossy_11 on Friday, 22 March 2013. Posted in News

Apologies for the break in service. We should be back to roundups every 4-5 weeks from here on out. We could always do with volunteers to help carry the weight, though.


Atari 2600 emulator Stella hit version 3.8 in February, with major changes to the sound system and ZIP archive handling. 3.8.1 followed at the beginning of March, with a few bugfixes and support for TIA RSYNC writes. See the Stella news page for more details. As always, you can get a download link here.


After taking more than nine years to reach its first stable release, ResidualVM has already popped out another one. Version 0.1.1 fixes around 20 bugs in the engine code and a dozen in Grim Fandango’s game data. Get it from the ResidualVM downloads page.


Sega Saturn emulator Yabause got its first update in 14 months near the end of January. Version 0.9.12 (link to announcement post) includes major updates to both the software and OpenGL renderers, adds ISO support to the OS X port, and adds the debug interface to the Qt port. Grab it from the Yabause download page.


Four years to the day after its last release, Sega Master System, Game Gear, SG-1000, ColecoVision, and NES (those last two are newly-added) emulator CrabEmu has been updated to version 0.2.0. You’ll have to download it for the full (and lengthy) changelog, but there’s been extensive work done on the GUI and Master System core.


Continue reading for more emulator updates from the past two months, including new versions of FS-UAE, XRoar, DBGL, VirtualBox (of course), and more.

News Roundup: December 9 - January 19

mossy_11 on Sunday, 20 January 2013. Posted in News

Codeweavers released CrossOver 12 in mid-December. This version introduces an experimental new “Mac Driver” that removes the requirement for the X Window System (thereby making installation friendlier to casual users). CrossOver 12 also includes improvements to Wine and improved support for many applications. See here for the announcement post.


It’s been a long time coming, but ResidualVM finally has a stable release. ResidualVM is ScummVM’s sister project, focused on the handful of 3D LucasArts adventures—Grim Fandango and Escape From Monkey Island—plus Myst 3 Exile. This release supports Grim Fandango, making the game playable on modern computers. Head over to the ResidualVM website for a download and more information.


Nintendo Wii and Gamecube emulator Dolphin officially ticked over from 3.0 to 3.5 in December. This milestone rounds up work done over nearly 18 months, resulting in hundreds of nightly builds, and brings the “stable” codebase mostly up to date. You can get version 3.5 or the latest nightly builds from the Dolphin download page.

Continue reading for more emulator updates, including new versions of PPSSPP, QMC2, Mednafen, Stella, PCSX-Reloaded, and more.