Discussion Resurrecting Nuance

toxie

You may change this now in User CP
Reaction score
50
Hi!
Let me quickly introduce myself before i start with my actual topic: I fell in love with Tempest back in the Jaguar days, and am still a fan til today (along with all other Llamasoft spinoffs that were released over the years, i even did my own variant in 96k some years ago: http://ainc.de/Games.htm (Tsunami 2010)). I also collect old consoles and games, but still miss one of the preferred NUON players to ever have enjoyed T3K.

So, back a decade ago, i fooled around with Nuance, the emulator, and now wanted to check back on the status of emulation. To my surprise, there are NO new emulators whatsoever. But, also to my surprise, the source code of Nuance was released on http://www.dragonshadow.com/

So i thought: why not give it a try and make it somehow compile again: Out of the box it did not work, as it missed some old libs, but thanks to the net, i could find versions that are close enough. And after some more time, i could make it compile and also work on my setup!

So here it is: https://sourceforge.net/projects/nuance-nuon-emulator/

( MOD EDIT: newest build is here: https://www.thehelper.net/threads/resurrecting-nuance.166935/post-1396926 )

And in the meantime i also made some more cleanups and fixes and optimizations, which lead to some bugs being fixed with (at least) Ballistic, T3K and Merlin Racing, so these are now running much smoother, display correctly (i think) and with mostly undistorted sound.

Unfortunately, (at least) Merlin Racing, T3K, Space Invaders XL still crash or hang during actual gameplay, and i don't know if i can actually make these work at some point, given that i don't have the experience of the awesome passed away original author. So i'm just standing on the shoulders of a giant here. But nevertheless, if this helps to get things going again with NUON emulation, then i'm glad to have helped.

There are still some things i want to do, especially with regards to optimizations and some fishy code, so there will at least be some more updates to the code until i need to pass this to somebody else.

Now some request: Does somebody know if Merlin Racing or T3K gamplay ever did work with some version of Nuance, with some special cfg setting combination maybe? Cause i thought i played T3K back in the days with it, although it was at <5 fps for sure.

Oh, and one more thing: Does somebody know if someone else also already started with tweaking the released source, so that we could combine our efforts? I couldn't find any indication myself though.

p.s.: as for my original goal: in T3K one can visit the vector test to prevent a hang from directly happening on level select.. If one then also selects a level > 1, then one can play for a while and finish levels, on my old/mid-range laptop almost fluid even! :)
 
Last edited by a moderator:

toxie

You may change this now in User CP
Reaction score
50
I will announce a new release version here as soon as i think that i fixed (and did not broke anything new ;)) enough.. I still have the hope to find some more fishy code and hopefully get rid of the hangs.. :/
 

toxie

You may change this now in User CP
Reaction score
50
Update: Still some issues with sporadic hangs and some invalid memory accesses (especially in Merlin Racing), but enough that i finally could start a game of T3K from level 1 and play for quite a while! (although still involves a bit of 'luck' to be able to select level 1, or a rather fast desktop PC
atariage_icon_smile.gif
)

Doom, Next Tetris and Ballistic so far worked fantastic. :)
 

toxie

You may change this now in User CP
Reaction score
50
by now i also tested the available homebrew more, and most also work better now, except for the Yaroze sampler which is somehow "stuck"
 

toxie

You may change this now in User CP
Reaction score
50
I'm still trying to get that damn random hang in T3K sorted out, and i gain more and more insight and fix some potential issues on the way, but it still refuses to work reliably. After that i want to package up a new release.
 

toxie

You may change this now in User CP
Reaction score
50
Thanks! But so far there are only basically 3 things left that drive me insane, and one of them i think i can fix (what i mentioned above). After that i think someone else has to pick up the work as fixing these is beyond me. :/
 

toxie

You may change this now in User CP
Reaction score
50
Yup, doing so already. ;)

I found some more fishy things in the meantime, but none helped with that damn T3K-getting-randomly-stuck-on-level-select thing.
 

toxie

You may change this now in User CP
Reaction score
50
As i pretty much hit a brick wall with these weird hangs/crashes on Merlin Racing and Tempest 3000, here the current status/release: :)

https://sourceforge.net/projects/nuance-nuon-emulator/files/Nuance_060.zip/download

Please read the Demo/GameCompatibility.txt (especially for the workarounds for Tempest 3000 to make it work a bit more reliably) and the readme.txt for the keyboard mappings.

And of course, this is all done in honour of the original author of Nuance, Mike Perry!
I mainly continued all of this to not let this great piece of technology of him bitrot even more.
 

tom_mai78101

The Helper Connoisseur / Ex-MineCraft Host
Staff member
Reaction score
1,706
As i pretty much hit a brick wall with these weird hangs/crashes on Merlin Racing and Tempest 3000, here the current status/release: :)

https://sourceforge.net/projects/nuance-nuon-emulator/files/Nuance_060.zip/download

Please read the Demo/GameCompatibility.txt (especially for the workarounds for Tempest 3000 to make it work a bit more reliably) and the readme.txt for the keyboard mappings.

And of course, this is all done in honour of the original author of Nuance, Mike Perry!
I mainly continued all of this to not let this great piece of technology of him bitrot even more.

You should share them on /r/emulation. They will get a kick out of this.
 

Stephen

NUON Lover!
Reaction score
95
I tried this new version tonight. Only file I have on my PC is my shitty Breakout demo and it would not work. It seems if I repeatedly clicked the Display Status and MPE Status buttons it would "kick" the display window into updating, but I could not get any controller response. I reverted to my previous version 0.51 of Nuance and it worked, but the video was all screwed up (wrong colours).

I will try to make time to diagnose some more this weekend. Work has been kicking my backside lately, and it's also my mom's b-day this weekend so I can't guarantee anything.
 

toxie

You may change this now in User CP
Reaction score
50
Do you have a link for me with the demo so that i could try myself?
 

Old School Dragon

New Member
Reaction score
3
I found your SourceForge page several days ago, and was *very* excited to see that you picked this back up and had made sure good progress! I'm getting started with developing for Nuon, and this could prove to be *very* helpful for me, so that I don't have to burn a CD for testing each and every build.
 

The Helper

Necromancy Power over 9000
Staff member
Reaction score
1,701
Toxie is awesome for picking this project back up. Please keep up on this as it is the key to NUON development. Without a proper emulator you would have to burn a disc to real hardware to test anything. Getting a NUON emulator is of primary importance. Has anyone contacted the NUON chip creators on this stuff? I hope I am not the one that has to do that but I will....
 
General chit-chat
Help Users
  • No one is chatting at the moment.
  • Monovertex Monovertex:
    How are you all? :D
    +1
  • Ghan Ghan:
    Howdy
  • Ghan Ghan:
    Still lurking
    +3
  • The Helper The Helper:
    I am great and it is fantastic to see you my friend!
    +1
  • The Helper The Helper:
    If you are new to the site please check out the Recipe and Food Forum https://www.thehelper.net/forums/recipes-and-food.220/
  • Monovertex Monovertex:
    How come you're so into recipes lately? Never saw this much interest in this topic in the old days of TH.net
  • Monovertex Monovertex:
    Hmm, how do I change my signature?
  • tom_mai78101 tom_mai78101:
    Signatures can be edit in your account profile. As for the old stuffs, I'm thinking it's because Blizzard is now under Microsoft, and because of Microsoft Xbox going the way it is, it's dreadful.
  • The Helper The Helper:
    I am not big on the recipes I am just promoting them - I use the site as a practice place promoting stuff
    +2
  • Monovertex Monovertex:
    @tom_mai78101 I must be blind. If I go on my profile I don't see any area to edit the signature; If I go to account details (settings) I don't see any signature area either.
  • The Helper The Helper:
    You can get there if you click the bell icon (alerts) and choose preferences from the bottom, signature will be in the menu on the left there https://www.thehelper.net/account/preferences
  • The Helper The Helper:
    I think I need to split the Sci/Tech news forum into 2 one for Science and one for Tech but I am hating all the moving of posts I would have to do
  • The Helper The Helper:
    What is up Old Mountain Shadow?
  • The Helper The Helper:
    Happy Thursday!
    +1
  • Varine Varine:
    Crazy how much 3d printing has come in the last few years. Sad that it's not as easily modifiable though
  • Varine Varine:
    I bought an Ender 3 during the pandemic and tinkered with it all the time. Just bought a Sovol, not as easy. I'm trying to make it use a different nozzle because I have a fuck ton of Volcanos, and they use what is basically a modified volcano that is just a smidge longer, and almost every part on this thing needs to be redone to make it work
  • Varine Varine:
    Luckily I have a 3d printer for that, I guess. But it's ridiculous. The regular volcanos are 21mm, these Sovol versions are about 23.5mm
  • Varine Varine:
    So, 2.5mm longer. But the thing that measures the bed is about 1.5mm above the nozzle, so if I swap it with a volcano then I'm 1mm behind it. So cool, new bracket to swap that, but THEN the fan shroud to direct air at the part is ALSO going to be .5mm to low, and so I need to redo that, but by doing that it is a little bit off where it should be blowing and it's throwing it at the heating block instead of the part, and fuck man
  • Varine Varine:
    I didn't realize they designed this entire thing to NOT be modded. I would have just got a fucking Bambu if I knew that, the whole point was I could fuck with this. And no one else makes shit for Sovol so I have to go through them, and they have... interesting pricing models. So I have a new extruder altogether that I'm taking apart and going to just design a whole new one to use my nozzles. Dumb design.
  • Varine Varine:
    Can't just buy a new heatblock, you need to get a whole hotend - so block, heater cartridge, thermistor, heatbreak, and nozzle. And they put this fucking paste in there so I can't take the thermistor or cartridge out with any ease, that's 30 dollars. Or you can get the whole extrudor with the direct driver AND that heatblock for like 50, but you still can't get any of it to come apart
  • Varine Varine:
    Partsbuilt has individual parts I found but they're expensive. I think I can get bits swapped around and make this work with generic shit though

      The Helper Discord

      Members online

      No members online now.

      Affiliates

      Hive Workshop NUON Dome World Editor Tutorials

      Network Sponsors

      Apex Steel Pipe - Buys and sells Steel Pipe.
      Top