Surreal64 Xxx B5.1 Ce, Bug fixes and a few features :) Options

[Ez0n3]

Whelp, the plugins are going to take a little longer than expected (still source searching). So I'm just going to release what I did so far. This is basically the result of other people's input as well as my own. I slapped a little CE at the end to kinda give everyone a heads up that it's an unofficial "community edition" rather than a release from team XXX or the original authors (those guys are big leagues and I'm still using a tee ).

The low down: nothing major has changed to the emulators - it's basically all the same stuff from all of the other Surreal releases. Meaning - it still has the same versions of the emulators and plugins as B5. UltraHLE is completely abandoned AFAIK, Project64 quote "has no plans on releasing any more source" (straight from Zilmar) and 1964's author Schibo hasn't replied to my attempts to contact him - don't know what's going on with that one. Some new 1964 source would be awesome, but I'm not holding my breath - much .

There are some Audio and Video plugins that might help with compatibility, but finding them and porting the source isn't the easiest task. Plus the ini's haven't been updated in quite some time and that can solve some glaring bugs (I'm working on that also). Just saying - there's still allot of room for improvement with what is already readily available.

Which brings me to the reason for this update. There where a few bugs that made testing the games a bit difficult. Like not knowing which emulator is the preferred (unless you're using 1.0), configs being saved with default settings when it shouldn't, etc. Little bugs that needed to be squashed before it could move forward. There where some changes made to XXX that I felt where better done in the 1.0 release - like the way it paged roms. So this is a bit of a "Frankenstein" release - the good stuff from all of the previous versions rolled into one.

The readme is quite long , so here's a summery:

Beta 5.10 CE
---------

- Changed I: Reverted the rom paging method
- Changed II: New audio plugin selection (Use LLE RSP and Use Basic Audio are no longer used in the Surreal.ini)
- Changed III: Reinstated Max Video Mem
- Changed IV: Increased the memory setting in the menu and ini
- Changed V: Loading screen is skipped if the selected rom is the same as the cached rom
- Changed VI: Changed which memory setting is used in Project64 to make room for the in game menu.
- Changed VII: Updated the credits to reflect copyrights
- Changed IX: Updated the countries and how they are displayed (USA = America, JAP = Japan, etc)

- Fixed I: 1964 was using Project64's paging setting
- Fixed II: User and ini setting are now reflected in the menu rather than always being defaults (and saving those defaults)
- Fixed III: Shortcut folder not being accessible to some FTP programs
- Fixed IV: Empty Media folder causing crash (missing ./boxart/default.jpg = crash)
- Fixed V: Exit to Rom List causing crash
- Fixed VI: Minor code cleanups (lingering launch data code removed, Rice debug saving to C:\, etc.)

- Added I: No Audio plugin
- Added II: Default Video Plugin and Default Audio Plugin to ini (Settings)
- Added III: Preferred Video Plugin and Preferred Audio Plugin to ini (Roms)
- Added IV: Launch from the command line capabilities (plus minor update from the previous CMD patches)

Forgot to add the preferred emulator is highlighted by default now - oh well - next time .

Just to clear this up "Use LLE RSP and Use Basic Audio are no longer used in the Surreal.ini". Technically they are still used, but you shouldn't use them . In order for Surreal to allow for more than 2 audio plugins, I had to change this a bit (I left them in for backward compatibility). I added a "Default Audio Plugin" option to the main settings that can determine which audio plugin is used as well as a "Preferred Audio Plugin" for the rom sections that works like "Preferred Emulator". Most people will probably use the default and not have to put this in, but it's there if you want to add it.

New Audio Legend:

Preferred and Default Audio Plugins:
0 = No Audio
1 = LLE RSP
2 = Basic Audio
3 = JttL

If you don't mess with the ini's, you probably won't notice this or understand what I'm talking about (heck - sometimes even I don't ). But this was necessary in order to add more than 2 audio plugins.

I also added a "Default Video Plugin" and "Preferred Video Plugin" that work in much the same way. Anyone that was using the CMD patches I released and actually used "default-plugin.cfg" to override the default video plugin can now just set in the the "settings" section of the ini using "Default Video Plugin" .

Another thing to note that Bomb Bloke pointed out was that in all XXX versions, 1964 was using PJ64's paging setting which has been fixed. If you set 1964 paging to 0, neither crash. Setting PJ64's to 0 crashed them both .

Max Video Mem now works like it did in the 1.0 releases ( requested by greatant). In the 1.0 release this was set per the ini and could be changed to the persons liking (which the normal default in the ini was 4MB). In the XXX releases - it was set to a static 6MB. So if you where getting better results with XXX for a particular rom - chances are you'll have to bump this up.

And edwardar brought to my attention how XXX would really slow down in certain games using XXX and not 1.0 (IE Mario Kart 2 player using 1964 and Rice 5.1.0). I narrowed it down to the way roms are paged to memory. So I reverted it to the pre XXX releases while still leaving the code for 128MB users. I don't have a 128MB box to test it on, hopefully it will work the same or better . If there's a problem - I will probably add both methods and than use the one that works best based on the memory config.

If you having problems, the first thing to try is deleting the E:\TDATA\a64fea57\ folder and the ..\Surreal64\ini\ folder (after you've backed them up of course - in case you want to revert). All versions save to the same path and different versions of the configs can really screw with Surreal.

I'm hoping that the next release will have some new stuff rather than just big fixes and little updates. The source is included if you want to take a crack at it .

Have any questions or suggestions - shoot - and I'll move out of the way . No seriously - find something wrong and/or want something added - be heard! Just don't go asking for something silly like having all the roms listed in reverse .

I have some other things to button up as well as some source to hunt - so it may be a little while before I actually get some new stuff added (it's always open for others to tinker on). But I'll squash any bugs ASAP (especially ones that I may have created - I'm human ).

A thanks to those that contributed and a thanks to Iriez for posting it and doing what he can to find some updated source (and putting up with me ).

Made its way to XBINS last night. Enjoy!