Resurrecting Nuance

[Stephen]

Damn that's cool! I have all the SDK samples built but I don;t think my dumb ass made a list of ones I know that do not work.

Sorry I do not know the answer to your question regarding the emulator source.

 

[cubanismo]

Well I've submitted a pull request:

Pretend valid video config exists at startup by cubanismo · Pull Request #1 · andkrau/NuanceResurrection

According to the documentation, the BIOS will always initialize a valid video configuration before the application is started, so applications can reasonably expect to be able to inherit that mode ...

github.com

We'll see if anyone responds

 

[cubanral]

Is https://github.com/andkrau/NuanceResurrection the most recent+active version of the codeline? I have a set of small fixes that get the MGL demos from the SDK working (They sort of work in Nuance 0.5.1, but the display is messed up, and don't work at all in 0.6.1). Well I've submitted a pull request. We'll see if anyone responds.

Yep, the commits from July are the most recent. I've done some stuff since then, but was really just experiments at sacrificing audio quality for the sake of stability. It was definitely not something worth committing.

I've merged your commit. I didn't notice any regressions when I tried it with commercial titles.

 

[cubanismo]

Turns out Nuance isn't actually rendering that image right. It's just a lot better than the blank screen it got before. It's not handling the texture mapping properly. It's just repeating some line (probably the first line) of each texture across the entire span, which for most textures in the room demo, actually looks pretty close to OK. However, I noticed it right away last week when testing my own code with some test textures purposely designed to show errors like this. I ordered some NOS high quality Sony CD-RW discs and verified the MGL code renders textures correctly on real HW (I'll post images of a correctly-rendered room demo for comparison soon when I have a Nuon hooked up to video capture again), so there's a more subtle bug in Nuance's handling of the MGL 3D library somewhere. Also, if you make the textures larger than 32x32, you either get a completely corrupted screen (at 64x64), or an error about an unhandled DMA operation from the Nuance BIOS handler code (128x128). Still need to verify those texture dimensions work on real hardware, but MGL claims support for up to 1024x1024 textures in its documentation.

 

[toxie]

Hi again!
How cool is that! Just saw these updates here.. Will directly dive into reviewing the new changes..
So https://github.com/andkrau/NuanceResurrection is now considered the new main repo?

 

[toxie]

If yes, would you be okay with adding me to be able to do commits directly? https://github.com/toxieainc/
(and if you're up to it, maybe link my account to my existing commits?)
Thanks!

 

[The Helper]

Cool! Lets get toxie back in the mix! Also toxie, the Discord has alot of chat about the emulator and the people working on it talk alot there. The link to the Discord is on the right hand side of the forum above the chat.

 

[toxie]

I need to use so much slack, discord, teams, etc during the day that i try to stay away from it in my spare time, but lets see.

I also tried the new changes, but unfortunately T3K still hangs from time to time for me, but its also not worse than before, so all looking fine to me.

 

[cubanral]

If yes, would you be okay with adding me to be able to do commits directly? https://github.com/toxieainc/
(and if you're up to it, maybe link my account to my existing commits?)
Thanks!

Welcome back!

All set on both counts. Make sure to grab the source again as rewriting the commit history tends to goof things up.

Using a timer rate for the audio that is some rather large multiple of the video timer rate does reduce crashing. Sadly, this ends up being unlistenable as the audio has to play close to half as much as it should be to eliminate the crashes. It is almost as if the audio interrupt has to be delayed in certain cases, but I've never figured out what those cases may be.

 

[toxie]

Thanks a lot! Some commits got lost, but i'll just re-submit then.

 

[toxie]

Here the newest release: https://github.com/andkrau/NuanceResurrection/releases/tag/0.6.2
It fixes some small regressions from the other recent changes seen here in the thread. Please test and let us know if there is some other regression still left (i haven't tested all of the homebrew and SDK stuff for example).

 

[toxie]

Good news! I found one more source for the hangs/memory corruptions, so now one can finally enter (and finish!) Merlin Racings Arcade mode. This was also one of the sources that makes T3K hang, BUT unfortunately not the most prominent one, so T3K is still very buggy. :/

Downside: This makes emulation a bit(!) more demanding, but i'm still looking into how one could improve speed again.

 

[cubanral]

Good news! I found one more source for the hangs/memory corruptions, so now one can finally enter (and finish!) Merlin Racings Arcade mode. This was also one of the sources that makes T3K hang, BUT unfortunately not the most prominent one, so T3K is still very buggy. :/

Downside: This makes emulation a bit(!) more demanding, but i'm still looking into how one could improve speed again.

That is amazing to hear! I'm looking forward to seeing it.

 

[toxie]

And Merlin Racing adventure mode now also works

 

[toxie]

Changes are commited now. Performance should also be roughly the same as before (0.6.2) again. Sometimes (peaks) its a bit slower, most of the time even a tiny bit faster.

..oh, and to the coders in here: Please review my changes if something is now fishy..

 

[Stephen]

I'll grab the latest version and run through all the SDK demos sometime this weekend. I'll let you know if I find any issues.

 

[toxie]

Can you compile the Nuance proj on your own?

 

[Stephen]

Can you compile the Nuance proj on your own?

I've never tried - I'll take a look. I currently have Visual Studio 2022 and VS Code on my machine, as well as the (irrelevant for this case) gcc compiler in the Nuon SDK.

I've downloaded the source, and Visual Studio is currently updatng (I never installed stuff for C++). I'll let you know once I am able to run the build.

Success - I am now able to build Nuance from source.

 

[cubanral]

And Merlin Racing adventure mode now also works

I didn't experience a single crash when playing Merlin Racing quite a bit.

Even though Tempest 3000 still requires going to vector test before playing, I didn't experience the crash that requires going to the the music test before playing. I didn't have any crashes before getting a game over. Are the seemingly random crashes gone or was I just lucky?

This definitely appears to be the biggest update as far as "crashiness" goes.

 

[toxie]

Success - I am now able to build Nuance from source.

Great! And good to know. Be sure to compile 'Release' and 'x86'/32bit, as the 64bit version does (at least) not support the dynamic recompilation.