http://picodrive.atspace.com/ and
http://notaz.atspace.com/index.html

Adrian's pointed out that these sites don't have source.

Well, all we need to do is provide appropriate pokeage to the authors.

Have you e-mailed them?

Pretty

My next improvement will be to the screen rendering, so that it keeps a list of redraw rectangles and draws only within those rectangles The plan is to make the DMA-based rendering into a small, self-contained library that will cope with the very different DMA hardware found on the Iyonix and A9home, so you'll see the source - particularly in video_out.c is a bit of a dog's breakfast currently.

That'll be a bug in the joypad drivers, surely?

Did you see my comments on NS textareas at the end of the last page of the thread?

That'll be a bug in the joypad drivers, surely?

Maybe.

Ah.... ahem, yes!

Well you see, my chums in EVE have a nasty habit of getting themselves into trouble. And I seem to have somehow mad myself into a valuable asset to them. This, apart from my latent procrastination, is usually why I never get any work done

an open source video rendering library that uses DMA hardware where available

http://adrian.aemulor.com/downloads/picodrive.zip

I expect that to move onto the official site as soon as tlsa has finished his beautiful handiwork.

http://picodrive.acornarcade.com/test.html

Screenshots, Compatibility and Mega Drive section not done yet. Enough done to launch anyway. The download links don't actually point to anything yet either. Once the downloads are sorted out, I'll move the front page to http://picodrive.acornarcade.com/

[Edited by tlsa at 20:59, 15/9/2006]

Are there any games with Acorn relevance that were released for the Megadrive?

Did you see my comments on NS textareas at the end of the last page of the thread?

Yeah, I guess I'll do some more work on those soon.

I think it would be good if we could launch the site and first PicoDrive release this weekend.

I think it would be good if we could launch the site and first PicoDrive release this weekend.

Is there anything you need/want me to do for this release?

Hmm, probably won't have time to do anything on that list today

http://picodrive.atspace.com/ and
http://notaz.atspace.com/index.html

Adrian's pointed out that these sites don't have source.

Well, all we need to do is provide appropriate pokeage to the authors.

Have you e-mailed them?

Not yet, no

Shining Force doesn't work atm with RISC OS PicoDrive, but the changelog says it is one of the games that is fixed with that Cyclone.

The download-link on the !Picodrive homepage unfortunately isn't working.

Are there any deficiencies in the VDP emulation, or elsewhere in PicoDrive that you know about and haven't mentioned? I'm only aware of the maximum number of sprites not being emulated and hence Sonic appearing in front of the title scroll; something that I'm sure could be easily fixed.

Yes I've seen a few things like baddies randomly appearing on the screen in Sonic and some strangeness with sprite plotting. Games are generally playable but aren't emulated 100 correctly.

Going though this list of screenshots:

http://www.squish.net/generator/shots.html

Sonic title screen wrong 'cos of max sprites limit not being emulated

Sonic 2 title screen wrong (characters on top of logo as they come in). Apparently because sprite priorities aren't correct.

Sonic 1 Marble Zone wrong (fireballs behind the grass so only the tops of them show). Another sprite priority thing where the foreground sprite should get cut out.

Travellers Tales logo is not right in PicoDrive (see Sonic 3D). Apparently it's highlight/shadow features.

"Auto"  option tries to run the game in it's original speed by skipping next
        frame if the previous was rendered too slow.
"0"     displays every frame, thus game runs very slow.
"1"     skips every other frame. Use this for a game which is smoother, but a bit
        too slow (actually depends on display mode you use).
"2"     also makes the game smoother, but it will be too fast in most areas.
"4","8" is way too fast and is useful for skiping intros, etc.

I'm interested in the hardware emulation level. I've done some work to speed up the VDP and rendering, as you know, but I can optimise it further (something that would be especially useful on RiscPC-era machines, I expect).

PicodriveN says it has nearly all VDP code rewritten in ARM asm, which makes it 10-25 faster (depending on game)

PicodriveN says it has nearly all VDP code rewritten in ARM asm, which makes it 10-25 faster (depending on game)

10-25 faster, not times, just to clarify

PicodriveN says it has nearly all VDP code rewritten in ARM asm, which makes it 10-25 faster (depending on game)

10-25 faster, not times, just to clarify

I definatly typed it. I guess NS lost it when I edited the post. It also seems to have removed the % in your post in the quote.

Yay! fanmail.

Erm, I'll do some work soon. Possibly tonight.

Yay! fanmail.

Erm, I'll do some work soon. Possibly tonight.

It's about how to set up the picodrive.acornarcade.com aliases so you, adrian and I all get e-mails sent from the contact form.