XRoar 0.23 released

[zephyr]

If it comes down to it, I'm willing to write a "Direct3D"(?) video output module

Please!

Out of interest, in the scaling modes, does '-fskip 2' (or more) alleviate the crackling at all?

Yes it works OK even when using the PLAY command until I switch to full screen mode. Even '-fskip 8' is usless full screen with sound because it uses way too much CPU time. BTW, the clicking problem is not present when running versions 0.22 and 0.23pre1.

[sixxie]

Hmm, well I've just cloned a virtualbox image of a Windows XP install from a colleague at work (where we have plenty of licences), and '-vo sdlgl' seems fine on it ('-vo sdlyuv' is poor, as expected). I think this is going to basically be down to what the underlying drivers do with OpenGL, so for specific machine/graphics card/driver combinations it might not be fixable.

'-vo sdl' crashes it on this virtualbox too, so there's probably something fixable there.

I have noticed an SDL alternative called SFML that might be worth a go, if you don't mind testing for me, but that's still only going to set up an OpenGL context - most of the underlying code will be the same. Maybe it'll be better able to use other 2D scaling interfaces - we'll see.

Other than that, know of any good examples or tutorials for DirectWhatever coding?

[zephyr]

I don't mind testing anything concerned with xroar and the Dragon.

I don't know of any good Direct3D tutorials personally, but a quick search with "tutorial direct3d c++" on Google brought up lots of interesting links. To be honest I'm perfectly happy with the performance from the '-vo sdl' setting. The full screen problem must be fixable because it used to work at first try on the earlier versions.

[Alastair]

Ok. I'm trying 0.23a with '-vo sdl' I'll leave the full screen test for later as I'm currently updating another program. However, although there is no clicking when using XRoar I notice that while running 0.23a with '-vo sdl' crackling does occur when moving the XRoar window, when switching to other programs, and even when I'm scrolling the screen in this browser.

Update.
No problems with switching to full screen and back here with either 0.23 or 0.23a.

[zephyr]

Ok. I'm trying 0.23a with '-vo sdl' I'll leave the full screen test for later as I'm currently updating another program. However, although there is no clicking when using XRoar I notice that while running 0.23a with '-vo sdl' crackling does occur when moving the XRoar window, when switching to other programs, and even when I'm scrolling the screen in this browser.

Same here...

[sixxie]

I have spotted a potential flaw in the '-vo sdl' code - is this any more successful at toggling fullscreen?

http://www.6809.org.uk/tmp/xroar/xroar- ... dows32.zip

I've updated all my MinGW stuff now too, though I doubt that will affect things much.

Got a basic SFML video module going, but there are various deficiencies in the API that mean I'm going to rule it out - most importantly the keyboard events report key codes of '0' for many shifted keys - useless!

[zephyr]

Yes, it seems to work perfectly. Now if you could fix the clicking bug (please) this would be the best XROAR release to date.

Thanks Ciaran!

[sixxie]

http://www.6809.org.uk/tmp/xroar/xroar- ... dows32.zip

Three changes:

1. Don't special-case Windows, use 44kHz audio with a smaller buffer. This could actually make things *worse*, but:
2. Clear audio buffer to last sample output. You can still get breaks in the audio if things are too slow, but it should make sure that those breaks don't cause "clicks", just gaps.
3. Found out the the win32 API doesn't actually have a pthread_cond_wait equivalent - SDL simulated it with some quite long code. Found something called WaitForSingleObject() and am trying that instead.

Next I'm going to add '-ao-rate HZ' and '-ao-buffer MILLISEC' so you can tune to your liking if the 44kHz change does make things worse overall.

[zephyr]

This release seems to have fixed the problem. I tested the sound using the PLAY command in Flipper, and the music from Crazy Painter.

[Alastair]

Thanks Ciaran,
the sound's a bit rough in snap-20091203 (unless you use '-vo sdl'), but it's better than in previous versions, and the clicking has disappeared.