LukeUsher

Progress Report (April 2020)

Added 2020-05-03 11:10:47 +0000 UTC

This was an interesting month: we didn’t have an April fools joke…but instead, we had FIVE more playable games (you were waiting for a punchline? Too bad!). Perhaps you have an AMD GPU and it’s annoyed about some games that can’t even show graphics without using a wrapper… then I’ve good news for you too: this regression was finally fixed! As usual, tons of games were improved one step further into playable territory and some work just started to fix several other issues (being tested right now, expect some great news next month…

General Improvements

Display warning message when activating the all cores hack (PR #1856)

This adds a warning message which is displayed whenever the user tries to activate the "all cores" speed hack. This is intended to hopefully reduce the number of users which report invalid issues that are actually caused by the hack instead.

Prevent missing polygons with AMD GPU (PR #1865)

AMD's current GPU drivers seem to have problems when using Shader Model 3.0 with DirectX9. This work-around falls back to Shader Model 2.0 when AMD hardware is detected (so you no longer need to use a wrapper to make graphics visible in some games).

Near absolute memory control (PR #1872)

This pull request has been in the works for about two years and was a joined effort of PatrickvL, ergo720, and RadWolfie. With this work, Cxbx-Reloaded gains near-absolute control over all memory ranges an Xbox requires. This has been a challenge to achieve under Windows, because applications normally load all sorts of binaries before an application even gets executed. Those binaries tend to get loaded into the address space that we have to control ourselves. We've overcome this by using a tiny loader executable, that claims all those ranges before doing anything else, and only then we start our emulation code through a DLL, that gets loaded only after claiming all those memory ranges. This doesn’t affect games directly in any way for now but is the base for many other future improvements (more accuracy on how we handle memory ranges, easier to create, or modify any GUI code without touching anything related to the emulation, smaller executable size and faster compilation times). Another PR was made related to this change (#1871), adding a new option to the GUI that allows the user to enable or disable the new loader (it’s enabled by default, only touch these options if you’re testing something, otherwise shouldn’t be disabled).

Notable Game Improvements

Tennis Master Series 2003 [PLAYABLE]

Another nice side effect from the sound improvements from the last month that couldn’t be properly tested in time, this is now fully playable. The issue preventing it from being playable was very annoying stuttering.

Monopoly Party [PLAYABLE]

This game fooled me once while testing, as the performance was at single-digit values when you hit the menus screen, but as RadWolfie told me that this is the only part of the game to present such performance, I gave it another try and bang, it’s fully playable (tested in all themes).

Tak 2 - Staff Of Dreams [IN-GAME]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8MYs4RoHPA

Reaching in-game much easier now and rendering much more than some simple lines.

Sneakers [IN-GAME]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ef2c1HHzvr4

In-game for the first time and rendering some cute fur on the cutscenes (in-game is still mostly covered by some visual issues, you can only explore some of the first and seconds levels while using wireframe mode).

NHL 2005 [IN-GAME]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlRBlHy9L60

Reaching in-game all the time now (was mostly “luck” based one-month ago…), you can play many matches without issues (still not confirmed as fully playable, needs more time as I had a random crash).

Strike Force Bowling [IN-GAME]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAG7vCT04L4

First time in-game and rendering most of the graphics properly, this one is really close to fully playable as well.

Secret Weapons Over Normandy [IN-GAME]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsoUCJQjHM8

Reaching in-game now… most of the time (you’ll still hang on loading screens randomly), and once in-game it’s mostly stable.

Sneak King [IN-GAME]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUKUo35Lcyc

Almost sneakily playable… but the menus are so sneaky that you can’t even see anything to change your settings. Once in-game (with a good dose of button mashing) most graphics are rendered properly.

Batman Dark Tomorrow [IN-GAME]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Eb9F0YPHxI

This game was in-game for a very long time, with a sad result: once in-game, you beat 3 enemies and… that’s it, the game always hangs in this first scene and never progressed any further. Now you can progress as much as you can (depends on how masochist you are, really, even walking in this game looks like a glitch), with no other issue than some text being hard/impossible to read on the options menu and some parts in-game (we really need a brave soul to finish this game to confirm it as playable…).

Blood Wake [PLAYABLE]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgpsNh11XWY

Finally finished and confirmed as playable, with good performance. The only issue you’ll find is related to some textures/shaders/materials not being rendered properly, but nothing will ever prevent you from progressing.

Hot Wheels Stunt Track Challenge [PLAYABLE]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqA_Ph3t8KE

Finally fully playable! The issue preventing this status was very annoying: once you’ve finished a race or any other kind of event, the game would save and… hang on the loading screen while trying to go back to the menus (so yes, you could finish the game, if you had the patience to restart the emulator after every single event). With this fixed, you can now enjoy the game with no other interruptions.

King of Fighters Maximum Impact [IN-GAME]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1XAXKkbGOQ

In-game for some time, but only recently rendering more than just a black void. Scenarios are almost fully rendered correctly, but the characters are “invisible” (the hair is there, so you know at which direction you should punch and kick).

Spartan - Total Warrior [IN-GAME]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjxEkwuaJ-4

Rendering most in-game geometry for the first time, this game improved a lot in the last 2 months (going from menus to in-game without nothing but a few lines and now with most of the geometry visible). It’s still running slow and crashing/hanging a lot (and the sun in-game? that will kill you for sure).

Minority Report [IN-GAME]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoLjuQ1u3W0

In-game for the first time. The amount of progress you can have while in-game is mostly “luck” based as the game will crash at some point, but it’s still huge progress because this game didn’t even boot a month ago.

Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3 [PLAYABLE]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJOByTd1hEo

This game was already known as “playable” for some time, but only recently was confirmed as actually fully playable. Performance is good enough to run at full speed (or really close to it) most of the time even with toaster tier CPUs, but it’s still more demanding than Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2X.

Jaws Unleashed [IN-GAME]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wu7t1MXJdTc

Not news for most people that it’s in-game, but now you can progress further in this game (yet it’s very unstable + the sound is just oh my god why?).

Mercenaries [INTROS]

Used to hang on the first intro screen, now at random, you can reach a bit further (but not enough to reach the menus yet).

Tenerezza [IN-GAME]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMpjvEhm7l0

We’re really close to playable with this one and it’s already very enjoyable, just be sure to save your progress at any given time because random crashes will happen.

SpongeBob Squarepants - The Movie [IN-GAME]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeNuauZkVbw

We had improvements in both rendering and performance for this game, but a lot of the geometry is still invisible (mostly the characters and enemies).

Spy Hunter - Nowhere To Run [IN-GAME]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4tOnOxN8uk

Previously untested, it’s in-game and running fairly well. The major issue is it's stability as the game will crash at random points (you can finish a level or two or crash some seconds into the first level).

Final Words

Last but not least, we’ll leave you with some incoming graphic improvement that’s being worked on (can you spot the difference?):