MagicEngine

[Chris]

[Hucard]
Fighting Run - sprite glitches
Necros no Yousai - dialogue box is shaking during intro
Street Fighter 2 Dash - Not working

[CD]
Dracula - Konami Logo is not removed during intro and the game hangs at start-up
Popful Mail - Intro problem - graphic glitches (game play is O.K.)

[Kaminari]

Snatcher - black screen at startup
Spriggan - crash when selecting New Game, Options and Challenge

[Kaminari]

Soldier Blade - the raster (colour gradient) on the title screen is replaced by a blue background.

[Laahel]

Emerald Dragon - Hangs the emulator on the animation where Tamlin and the Dragon speak together (after starting a new game, juste before the game becomes realy playable) This is with the PR3, not tested with previous due to gamepad problems ^^

Edit : Problem fixed with PR4

[Kaminari]

White noise related issues: ME 1.0 seems to purely and simply mute one of the white noise channels in some games, but it seems to be selective. Sound effects (mainly explosions) and drums do work ok, but hihats (cymbals?) are usually inaudible. Here's a quick list of shooters I tried which are affected:

Aldynes
Battle Ace
Silent Debuggers
Space Harrier

There are probably many others. Compare with ME 0.99b5 or the real HuCards to hear what I mean :)

[dmichel]

I just checked the code, noise should work on the two channels. You sure the noise is not played at all?
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David Michel

[Kaminari]

I'll gave a spin to my Aldynes and Space Harrier cards ASAP, but I'm (almost) dead certain that something is missing in the games I mentioned

Battle Ace is interesting, you can actually hear the very first note of the hihat part that is supposed to be played by the white noise generator during a given pattern, but the following hihat notes are silent for the rest of the part until the next, from where you can hear again the first note of the white noise hihat.

I'd better make an MP3 of the thing in order to explain it correctly

[Kaminari]

I'll try Space Harrier tonight on my Coregrafx 2, just to be sure about that white noise thing.

I've been spotting other weird audio glitches lately. Batman is a good example. Some high-pitched sound effects have a kind of echo, like if they were repeated twice (when you press Start on the title screen, when you pick up an item during the game...).

Also, after you press Start on the title screen, the screen "Gotham City Stage 1" appears while the music is fading out. Cool. But just before the music stops completely, there's a short volume burst, along with a strange stereo panning effect, like an agressive reverb from right to left (give it a try, you'll see what I mean).

That unexpected panning effect at the beginning or the end of a given music happens in a fair number of games I've tried in the emulator. It didn't happen in the old versions and I don't recall it happening on my console either.

[Kaminari]

Oh, about the various CD audio issues mentioned here and there (especially the lock-ups), maybe this could help you debug it: try listening to an Audio CD with the built-in player of the PC Engine... As soon as you click on Play, the controls become extremely sluggish and the emulator will eventually freeze -- better try this in Window Mode

[dmichel]

I have fixed a cdda bug that could freeze MagicEngine, hopefully that's the one you talking about.

About the PSG emulation, yup I just ran Batman, something's not right, I will check that more closely.
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David Michel

[denzilla]

3 in 1 CD - Gates of thunder,Bonk 1/2:

Sound will somtimes stick when starting Gates of thunder. Seems random in nature.


BTW: Are you still releasing a new PR today? Just curious

Thanks

[dmichel]

Yup, there will be a new PR tonight.

Kami, no need to get your Coregraphx, I have fixed the bug! It was a typo error. ^^; When I copied the PSG volume table from the old MagicEngine to the new one I wrongly typed one value, was 4x higher than it should have been, so games that were doing fine fading had an unexpected increase of volume in the middle, this is what was making this echo like effect in Batman. Dunno if it's related to the noise problem though.
_________________
David Michel

[Specineff]

Dungeon Explorer 2 still has the scrambled graphic after the intro, when you see a minotaur kidnapping a princess.
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Proud owner of a Dreamcast, Saturn, Turbo Duo and a registered version of ME since 2002.

[Kaminari]

The volume increase glitch in Batman and others are gone, neat :o)

It didn't fix the noise issue though. I tried Space Harrier yesterday on the console of a friend, and I can confirm the missing noise problem. Here's a simple test: the title screen of Space Harrier plays a short intro tune, which should have a soft drum accompanying the music. You can definitely hear it on a real machine or in ME 0.99b5, but it's totally silent in ME 1.0.

About the PC Engine built-in CD player and CDDA lock-ups: yup, they're gone, no slowdown, works great! However the player still has a number of problems. Try to play any Audio CD with it and see for yourself. You can select your track with button II and press Play, but you can't change the track with the Previous/Next buttons -- Previous always plays track 2, Next always plays track 3. I guess this is cosmetic and not high priority, though it may perhaps be useful for fixing related problems in some CD games, who knows.

Another thingy about the built-in CD player... The player vu-meter doesn't work (actually, it has never worked in any previous version of ME). I'm not sure how it is internally handled by the PC Engine... And since I'm at it, the CD+G feature (Graphics option on the player screen) doesn't work either; the dark blue interface is displayed correctly, but the buttons are ineffective. Ok ok, I'm nitpicking now -- who really needs to play karaoke CD+G nowadays :D

[dmichel]