Here are the systems currently missing in Bizhawk that I'm looking forward to the most: ... MSX OpenMSX/BlueMSX could be ported over, but since you want to develop something in-house I guess that's out of question. I remember you once said all the components for a MSX core are already there, and it's just a matter of stitching them together. So maybe this one wouldn't be super hard? ... That's it. As a side note, I know this has already been said many times, but if you can reserve a bit of time to improve PCEHawk and bring it closer to Mednafen levels of accuracy, it'd be much appreciated. That core is in pretty bad shape.
+1 for X68000 and PC-98, these are systems that I would definitely use.
Developing emulation for these from scratch looks like a waste of time to me if instead existing emulators could be improved and reused.
Some in the discord server agree that they want PSP support.
I would like to see a new Genesis core that could hit cycle accuarcy, like a BlastEm port or something. That's probably going to be difficult to do though.
I would like to see a new Genesis core that could hit cycle accuarcy, like a BlastEm port or something. That's probably going to be difficult to do though.
Personally, I think a working TAS-capable Amiga emulator would be amazing; the workflow in recording games for the system is so long-winded without re-recording.
Can we also look into porting Mednafen’s PCE core into bizhawk to replace PCEHawk?
Honestly though, starting from zero, you or anyone other interested person is only like 2 months of relatively simple study away from being 100% capable of fixing the existing core. It's really really not that hard. I would strongly encourage you or any other interested PCE folks to give it a try, you may find it rewarding to get a system working that you are very interested in.
Maybe we should have a vote on desired core? Like poll results? I would really love to see PCem ported to bizhawk. With waterbox there shouldnt be any desync issues. If PPSSPP is easier to integrate, I would vote on that instead.
Can you give us some links containing the resources/materials necessary for studying then? Because for someone starting from zero like me, I'd appreciate some directions at least. Just information that'd be relevant to fixing the core is enough.
I'm making progress on a new C++ core. I made a game gear version as a proof of concept since it has mostly the same parts as MSX. It was more of struggle to convert things to work in C++ then I thought. Actually most of the problem was due to needing to use a C interface in the DLL. Things would be so much easier if there was a standard C++ interface, but oh well. This was a very worth while exercise because I was able to sort out most of the bugs just by comparison with the existing C# core.
As you can see in the screenshot, this core runs around 490 fps on my laptop. This is actually not very good, since this core in C# runs at 310 fps. This is no where near the performance I need, it should be up around 800 like gambatte. So I obviously have a long way to go in terms of optimization. The whole point of going to C++ though is that there are many possibilities to achieve those optimizations, so I'll be starting down that road once all other aspects of the core are done.
On the up side, starting from scratch has let me organize the core in very straightforward way that should hopefully be largely reusable as I build more systems. Also some of the more complicated things like memory domains and trace logger are done. The two major thins I have left to add are sound and savestates, but neither of those should be too tough.
After that I'll probably rework the CPU core to take advantage of C++ features. The Z80A is really slow, partly because I needed to capture all the signals for spectrum and CPC, but also just because it's poorly optimized. That was partly by design since I wanted maximum clarity in order to easily fix bugs in development, but by now it's quite well verified and I can sacrifice some clarity on the C++ side to go fast.
I'm making steady progress on the new core. Input, sound, and savestates now work. If this were a production core it would basically be done.
Now it's time to optimize. I've already played around with a few things, and was happy to see that things I thought might improve performance actually did. This is very welcome considering how much I banged my head against the wall with C# trying to optimize things.
Once I'm comfortable with the level of optimization and can verify that nothing gets broken along the way, I can start the process of turning this into an MSX core. That part shouldn't be too hard hopefully. Having all of this infrastructure and the z80 in place is already at least 80% of the work.
For follow on work I'm leaning heavily toward an MC68000 based system. I think this will offer the most utility in the long run just having the cpu available. But I'm still not 100% sure yet.For follow on work I'm leaning heavily toward an MC68000 based system. I think this will offer the most utility in the long run just having the cpu available. But I'm still not 100% sure yet.
Do you plan to turn this into new cores for SMS and GG as well?
I've converted over to an actual MSX machine now and am getting the bugs worked out. It shouldn't take too much longer to have a reasonably complete MSX1 machine ready for use. I'm not sure how far I'll go into the MSX line up, maybe just the 2.
I'm able to get in game now on MSX1 with joystick control.
There are some audio bugs left to work out and I haven't thoroughly tested savestates yet, but at least for MSX1 this is almost in a TASable state.
I could use some help getting a list together of good hashes (SHA1) for BIOS files though, if anyone more familiar with the system knows what the standards are.
