Retrocopy

[Neville]

Pues después de hablaros el otro día del Mednafen me quedé con las ganas de comentar otro multi-emulador que está dando mucho que hablar, Retrocopy.

Retrocopy es un emulador de NES, Game Gear, Master System II, Megadrive y arcade (Sega System 1, Sega system 2 y Sega System E), todo ello con "cycle accuracy", o sea, sin trucos para optimizar la velocidad. Además tiene una opción muy divertida, que es crearnos una "habitación virtual" en 3D y ejecutar todos los juegos que queramos en TVs retro. Y el límite de máquinas a ejecutar simultaneamente sólo lo pone nuestra CPU.

En este vídeo tenemos un resumen de las posibilidades del emulador:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVUPMF83LvM

Y en este otro un avance de la próxima versión, que incluirá emulación de NeoGeo:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRT8_jLEB0A

Y ahora las malas noticias:

- O tenéis una CPU a 2 GHZ o más o empezad a sacrificar calidad de imagen y sonido, sobretodo en los sistemas más "tragones" de recursos, como Megadrive y (cabe suponer) NeoGeo.

- Nuestras roms de siempre no sirven. Retrocopy usa un formato propio, el GAME. Así que hay que copiar nuestras roms descomprimidas en la carpeta del sistema de turno y Retrocopy se encargará de convertirlas la siguiente vez que se ejecute.

Información y descargas en http://retrocopy.com/

Ya me contaréis qué tal.

[Neville]

Pues al final ya hay nueva versión, la v0.911, pero no hay todavía emulación de NeoGeo. A cambio, un montón de bugfixes, mejoras en el rendimiento y cambios en la interfaz.

This release has several new and extensive features. Input latency in every emulator core has been reduced from 25-50ms down to 4ms in a worst case scenario. This offers a massive improvement in the FEEL of the emulator, giving you a better connection to what is being displayed. Also added was a way to fix the "input latency" that plagues NVIDIA and ATI hardware when VSYNC is enabled. RetroCopy now doesn't use SDL, instead relying on it's own asynchronous window and inputing engines to provide the best in performance and features.

With the emulation, VGM support was added and proper Dendy NES emulation has also been added and according to people with the real devices is the most accurate Dendy emulation available. The whole GUI has been reworked so that each system feels like it has its own place in RetroCopy. Control configuration now has visual controls you can click on to set input. Read below for full changes.

[MEGA DRIVE] Added busy emulation to YM2612 sound
[MEGA DRIVE] Added Menacer lightgun
[MEGA DRIVE] Removed CRAM dot emulation until more information is known about it. Fixes a few pixels being misplaced in a few games
[SMS] Fixed problem with ROMs not multiple of 1KB not having their last segment mapped. Fixes a few homebrew games
[SMS] TH/TR writing wasn't completely disabled for Mark III and Japanese SMS consoles
[SMS] Added new korean mapper for Janggun-ui Adeul. It features hardware byte flipping to do easy sprite flipping
[SMS] Added SG Commander input device which is similar to a SMS control pad but with autofire options.
[NES] Added "content" mode to display which clips 8 pixels off top and bottom like a real TV does with overscan
[NES] Recoded some of the PPU
[NES] Added controller selection
[NES] Added emulation of Dendy and other PAL famiclones
[NES] Made PAL emulation more accurate through better PPU/CPU alignment
[NES] Improved read/write to $2007 emulation, fixes scrolling bug in Young Indiana Jones
[EMU] Input devices are no longer system specific but port specific. Allows any controllers with same port to be used on any system like real life. ie SMS Joypad on Megadrive
[EMU] Changed SMS Joypad, SMS Light Phaser, SMS Paddle, SMS Sports Pad, Megadrive 3 Button, MegaDrive 6 button controllers to DB-9/DE-9 pinouts
[VGM] Added VGM player support. Can now play SMS and MEGADRIVE/GENESIS VGMs using RetroCopy's high quality audio engine.

[GUI] Stopped "Download Content" button from reappearing when switching tabs after having downloaded new content
[GUI] Fixed issue when previous game showing screenshots when less than 5 screenshots were shown [Tommy]
[GUI] Added bilinear filtering for stretched bitmaps instead of nearest neighbour
[GUI] When a window was being removed it was rendered for one frame longer than it should
[GUI] Droplist now sets own list style
[GUI] Added small intro sequence
[GUI] Random VGM music now plays in the interface

[AUDIO] Now disable sound low/mid/high filtering unless gain is specified for one of the bands, changed default setting to "no gain" for speed boost
[AUDIO] Implemented some speedups to 3D sound mixing

[CORE] Added LCD persistence graphics filter. Simulates old LCD screens like that found on Nintendo GameBoy and Sega Game Gear
[CORE] Fixed small issue with scanline brightness setting. Scanlines can now be lighter than the content rather than only darker
[CORE] Now detect monitor used to launch retrocopy.exe so fullscreen mode goes to correct monitor
[CORE] Fixed hanging issue in .GAME conversion when a blank NAME was found
[CORE] Fixed conversion bug that would write the same game twice for an incomplete .GAME set
[CORE] Fixed problem when running a game in the DB that used the same ROM but a different name or setting
[CORE] Upgraded libraries: freetype, boost, tinyxml
[CORE] Fixed multithreading bug in game browser
[CORE] Allowed copying and posting from windows GUI clipboard to/from RetroCopy GUI
[CORE] Added option to fix input lag due to poor OpenGL VSYNC behaviour. Ensures input is matched to the display
[CORE] Removed SDL and wrote new Windowing and Input system. Fixes numerous input and other bugs caused by SDL
[CORE] Separated video and input threads. Now input events happen asynchronously and won't be limited by VSYNC
[CORE] Implemented low latency input into all of the emulator cores. Input latency has worst case response of only 4ms now
[CORE] Now disable screensaver when RetroCopy is running
[CORE] Ensure Windows doesn't think it's idle when user doesn't use mouse or keyboard
[CORE] Added more descriptive input text as given from input drivers themselves (Z axis instead of Axis 1 for instance)
[CORE] Fixed issue with broken .GAME files possibly causing crash when run
[CORE] Removed some thread locking on cores that have "Seek" capabilities to remove unneeded slowdowns. Fixes video playback issue on some systems

[ONLINE] New .GAME files with metanames longer than 32chars weren't properly being logged online [Tommy]

[Neville]

Buenas noticias para los linuxeros, ha salido la primera versión de este emulador para Linux.

Info y descargas en http://www.retrocopy.com/, como siempre.