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[Superfrog]

Are you guys behind the surreal 64 xxx project still working on a beta 5 ore are you tired of this project now? i have tried to visit the sureal xxx forum a coupple of times the last month but it seems to be down now. Feels a little bit sad.

If anyone could answear how the progress of this emulator develops i would bee thankfull.

THNX

[freakdave]

There was a WIP status update on my site and X-S about 1 week ago    ....
Dunno why the forums are down, but we're still active.

[GogoAckman]

1) forum is down because it wasn t a free server (I didn t even know myself), an Artik didn t pay. We are normally going to be hosted on 1emulation, but there are some issues right now (xbe + new roms for fba), I am waiting for gamecop response .

2) surreal b4.9 is upped since a week I just wait for the opening of the site.

3) I was willing to say it to Dave in mp, but there are no secrets, I have right now a dev who know very well DX8 with all the shaders knowloedge, he s trying to change all those vertexbuffer ... so the resize screen is near as well as a little boost .
And I have resolved all the problems with the new vmm (was crashing when releasing memory)   .

I am busy since this morning on ki-xxx, I desesperatly try to get KI2 running, I have rewritten a great part in asm, and the boost for the moment is ... nothing if even worse   .

[Thraxen]

QUOTE

And I have resolved all the problems with the new vmm (was crashing when releasing memory)

Is that part of the reason it crashes when taking screenshots?  I was trying to update my "previews" folder since a few games didn't have screenshots.  I found that I could take screenshots (raw) of NeoGeo games (it did crash once), but I couldn't take any screenshots of any other type of games... it would crash and lock up every time.

[GogoAckman]

QUOTE(Thraxen @ Oct 21 2005, 06:16 PM)

Is that part of the reason it crashes when taking screenshots?  I was trying to update my "previews" folder since a few games didn't have screenshots.  I found that I could take screenshots (raw) of NeoGeo games (it did crash once), but I couldn't take any screenshots of any other type of games... it would crash and lock up every time.

No, I don t think that s the problem here .
I ll try to see the different bugs when I ll have a forum back to see where the bugs are .

[Likklebaer]

QUOTE(GogoAckman @ Oct 21 2005, 06:01 PM)

I am busy since this morning on ki-xxx, I desesperatly try to get KI2 running, I have rewritten a great part in asm, and the boost for the moment is ... nothing if even worse  :lol: .

I'm afraid you're wasting your time.

You're trying to fit a quart into a pint pot.

[GogoAckman]

QUOTE(Likklebaer @ Oct 21 2005, 07:43 PM)

I'm afraid you're wasting your time.

You're trying to fit a quart into a pint pot.

I already got KI2 running at 60FPS (but it was without the scene behind, only the caracters ).

[darkstalker]

The only reason I can see KI2 being trouble for on the Xbox is the fact that it seems to use FMV for the backgrounds and pauses, rewinds and plays depending on where the fighters are. I say this as you can actually see the compression artifacts in the background. If you play far enough into KI2 to get to a 3D stage, such as TJ Combo's, you see the game runs full speed.. well, actually even a slight bit too quick. It's just the backgrounds that are slowing the game down.

So no.. I think KI2 is definitely possible, it's just a matter of profiling KI-XXX and seeing exactly what portions of the program and emulation are taking up the most time and attempting to speed those up (ASM rewrites and so on).

[darkstalker]

QUOTE(GogoAckman @ Oct 21 2005, 03:22 PM)

I already got KI2 running at 60FPS (but it was without the scene behind, only the caracters ).

I was actually going to suggest that. Hell, I would be happy being able to play 60FPS even without the backgrounds. (Link me to it, pleeease.. hehe)

Anyways, that suggests that it's possible that it's an I/O bottleneck in reading from the hard drive image.. or just the routine that draws the background needs to be sped up.

[GogoAckman]

QUOTE(darkstalker @ Oct 21 2005, 08:23 PM)

The only reason I can see KI2 being trouble for on the Xbox is the fact that it seems to use FMV for the backgrounds and pauses, rewinds and plays depending on where the fighters are. I say this as you can actually see the compression artifacts in the background. If you play far enough into KI2 to get to a 3D stage, such as TJ Combo's, you see the game runs full speed.. well, actually even a slight bit too quick. It's just the backgrounds that are slowing the game down.

So no.. I think KI2 is definitely possible, it's just a matter of profiling KI-XXX and seeing exactly what portions of the program and emulation are taking up the most time and attempting to speed those up (ASM rewrites and so on).

exactly, let explain further :
- the function who is slowing all down is readqword and writeqword , it uses 64bits QWORD and can t be threated like 32bits integer (xbox has only a bus of 32 bits), but there are in asm registers that have 64bits size (mm0 to mm7, mmx) and 128 bits size (xmm... , sse), so the goal is to optimize this in asm.
- second : xbox has only 32Kb cache l1 and 128Kb cache l2 (do not hesitate to say if I am wrong), that s way ... not enough   , so here again using the gpu via shaders others, would :
1) get things faster (cpu has less things to do)
2) liberates cache (gpu has his own cache)

So, that s what we need , I think it is possible to get it to run normally or at least 45fps in place of 30fps .

Now, I spoke with manto/Bdiamond and he knows this far better than I, he said that asm-ising all could be slower as the compiler is already doing a great job, and he s right, I need to optimize my asm code as it is slower for the moment (29-30 fps in KI2 in place of 32-33).

[GogoAckman]

QUOTE(darkstalker @ Oct 21 2005, 08:26 PM)

I was actually going to suggest that. Hell, I would be happy being able to play 60FPS even without the backgrounds. (Link me to it, pleeease.. hehe)

Anyways, that suggests that it's possible that it's an I/O bottleneck in reading from the hard drive image.. or just the routine that draws the background needs to be sped up.

I thought the same thing but .. gues what, there are no HDD access during a battle .

[GogoAckman]

I am in a good mood tonight :

a gift , it is KI without scene, you ll see 2 things :
1) it is not 60fps as said sorry, it is more between 45 and 55fps
2) the non render of the scene creates bugs, in sabrewulf world it is painful, but in orchid stage, it is mainly black so no problem.
I could try to render all in black, but that s not the goal.

Now, I am tired of waiting the website (I hope you can post it on your site Dave ) here is surreal beta 4.9 :

QUOTE

Surreal64 XXX Changelog:

Beta 4.9
---------

- Changed: Launchdata is not needed anymore
- Changed: Video plugins are now chosen after the emulator has been selected
- Changed: Pagesize is now 256k
- Changed: Rom is now entirely loaded into ram (only for 128Mb users)
- Changed: Removed Enable/Disable Controller option from submenu (Change it in the launcher)
- Changed: Shortcut for changing Paks : Hold both triggers and press left thumbstick
- Changed: Project64 and 1964 debug infos, now telling which emu is running
- Fixed: Rewrote CD/DVD detection code (tested and working)
- Fixed: Rom size was shown incorrectly
- Fixed: Bug in Basic Audio plugin
- Added: New and optimized VMM code (slight speed increase and maybe will fix crashes when going to ingamemenu)
- Added: Skin selection menu
- Added: Rom selection menu can now be controlled faster by D-PAD - Left Stick

binary
sources

Do not forget to update your folders, some files moved due to the new skin option.

[darkstalker]

Thank you sir. I'll let you know what I think when I get done playing around with them.

[darkstalker]

KI2 does run a little better.. in fact, pretty damn close to full speed. I wouldn't notice the difference unless I had recently played the original, to be honest. Yeah, the backgrounds are a little goofy and headache-inducing though in this buggy version. I'm guessing that's because you aren't clearing the framebuffer before writing to it again.. if I'm not mistaken, that's taken care of with a..

g_pD3DDevice->Clear(0, NULL, D3DCLEAR_TARGET|D3DCLEAR_ZBUFFER,
         D3DCOLOR_XRGB(0, 0, 0), 1.0f, 0);

.. on every loop, but I could be wrong. That would give us the plain black background though, that's for sure.

I noticed that nothing else has really changed yet. KI1 still seems to continually insert credits, making it impossible to NOT continue a game after losing. I also noticed a regression. The character select boxes mostly aren't shown (and a shown a little glitchy around the edges of the screen and the character boxes for your opponents aren't shown at all anymore. I believe the top portion of Jago's furthest background is also missing.

So far, so good though.. so close. I'm sure you could nail it.

This post has been edited by darkstalker: Oct 21 2005, 09:41 PM

[GogoAckman]

QUOTE(darkstalker @ Oct 21 2005, 10:12 PM)

KI2 does run a little better.. in fact, pretty damn close to full speed. I wouldn't notice the difference unless I had recently played the original, to be honest. Yeah, the backgrounds are a little goofy and headache-inducing though in this buggy version. I'm guessing that's because you aren't clearing the framebuffer before writing to it again.. if I'm not mistaken, that's taken care of with a..

g_pD3DDevice->Clear(0, NULL, D3DCLEAR_TARGET|D3DCLEAR_ZBUFFER,
     D3DCOLOR_XRGB(0, 0, 0), 1.0f, 0);

.. on every loop, but I could be wrong. That would give us the plain black background though, that's for sure.

I noticed that nothing else has really changed yet. KI1 still seems to continually insert credits, making it impossible to NOT continue a game after losing. I also noticed a regression. The character select boxes mostly aren't shown (and a shown a little glitchy around the edges of the screen and the character boxes for your opponents aren't shown at all anymore. I believe the top portion of Jago's furthest background is also missing.

So far, so good though.. so close. I'm sure you could nail it.

I just deleted 2 things in this version, now the great part of the job, rewrite it, and have the other programmer to change all the way graphics are used (but he s motivated even more than me to get it running).