|
introducing valkyrie
#282275 - 04/12/12 03:58 PM
|
|
|
Hey all,
(hopefully this is the right place to post this kind of thing)
I have been working for some time on a sega hikaru emulator, valkyrie. You may have seen a couple of screenshots on R.Belmont's blog[1], but there have not been any official news; so I figured I should write a status report of some sorts.
A short introduction: valkyrie is an incomplete, slow, primitive, crude and sometimes hacky sega hikaru emulator, written from scratch by reversing the few existing hikaru dumps, in my very limited spare time. Only linux is currently supported (it should be rather easy to port to windows/osx, but I can't do the porting myself, as I use linux boxes only.)
At the time of writing, valkyrie is able to run the bootrom almost fully, including the simple 3D triangle strips making up the bootrom menu. Furthermore it can display the bitmap layers used to render 2D stuff on screen: planet harriers and airtrix up reach the title screen; sega nascar arcade also shows the intro screen; brave fire fighters is trying desperately to display the title screen, but given that there are no dumps for most of the texture data, it renders garbage. So there is some promise here.
(An appetizer: the 3D intro in pharrier is actually being pushed to the GPU, the problem is that I don't know yet how to render it. I mean, valkyrie _can_ render the meshes somewhat using a canonical orthographic viewport, but I don't know how to make use of the viewport and modelview matrices uploaded by the game. At some point the game just uploads NaNs, though.)
However there is still a ton missing stuff: AICA and input emulation (I'm using an ugly hack to fake them; probably missing AICA/input IRQs are the main cause of current emulation errors), my understanding of the graphics hardware is still rather limited (I _think_ I figured out most of the GPU ISA; but many instructions are still unknown), and the exact ROM mapping of some games (sega nascar arcade, and likely podrace) is unclear.
I'll take some time in the next few weeks to fix the obvious warts in the code, and then upload a git tree to github, so that people can start looking at it and possibly contribute some man power. The ETA is likely 2-4 weeks.
The code will be licensed under the GPL2 or GPL3 (I have yet to pick one.), so it's free and open source, and yours to improve upon (or port to MAME.) :-)
Have fun,
Stefano
[1] http://rbelmont.mameworld.info/?p=726
|
|
|
|
Re: introducing valkyrie
[Re: Stefano Teso]
#282276 - 04/12/12 04:01 PM
|
|
|
Well this news as been posted long time ago here. 
Update: My bad, only the link.
|
|
|
|
Re: introducing valkyrie
[Re: Lewis King]
#282306 - 04/12/12 05:41 PM
|
|
|
> Well this news as been posted long time ago here.
How could it have been posted here a long time ago when the news is the post here?
The link to RB's page is not the news.
|
|
|
Stiletto |
|
They're always after me Lucky ROMS!
|
|
|
|
|
|
Reged: 03/07/04
|
|
Posts: 6472
|
|
|
|
|
|
Send PM
|
|
|
Please ignore this man. *nt*
[Re: Lewis King]
#282313 - 04/12/12 06:28 PM
|
|
|
> Well this news as been posted long time ago here.
|
|
|
| Stiletto |
|
They're always after me Lucky ROMS!
|
|
|
|
|
|
Reged: 03/07/04
|
|
Posts: 6472
|
|
|
|
|
|
Send PM
|
|
|
|
> Hey all,
>
> (hopefully this is the right place to post this kind of thing)
>
> I have been working for some time on a sega hikaru emulator, valkyrie. You may have
> seen a couple of screenshots on R.Belmont's blog[1], but there have not been any
> official news; so I figured I should write a status report of some sorts.
>
> A short introduction: valkyrie is an incomplete, slow, primitive, crude and sometimes
> hacky sega hikaru emulator, written from scratch by reversing the few existing hikaru
> dumps, in my very limited spare time. Only linux is currently supported (it should be
> rather easy to port to windows/osx, but I can't do the porting myself, as I use linux
> boxes only.)
>
> At the time of writing, valkyrie is able to run the bootrom almost fully, including
> the simple 3D triangle strips making up the bootrom menu. Furthermore it can display
> the bitmap layers used to render 2D stuff on screen: planet harriers and airtrix up
> reach the title screen; sega nascar arcade also shows the intro screen; brave fire
> fighters is trying desperately to display the title screen, but given that there are
> no dumps for most of the texture data, it renders garbage. So there is some promise
> here.
>
> (An appetizer: the 3D intro in pharrier is actually being pushed to the GPU, the
> problem is that I don't know yet how to render it. I mean, valkyrie _can_ render the
> meshes somewhat using a canonical orthographic viewport, but I don't know how to make
> use of the viewport and modelview matrices uploaded by the game. At some point the
> game just uploads NaNs, though.)
>
> However there is still a ton missing stuff: AICA and input emulation (I'm using an
> ugly hack to fake them; probably missing AICA/input IRQs are the main cause of
> current emulation errors), my understanding of the graphics hardware is still rather
> limited (I _think_ I figured out most of the GPU ISA; but many instructions are still
> unknown), and the exact ROM mapping of some games (sega nascar arcade, and likely
> podrace) is unclear.
>
> I'll take some time in the next few weeks to fix the obvious warts in the code, and
> then upload a git tree to github, so that people can start looking at it and possibly
> contribute some man power. The ETA is likely 2-4 weeks.
>
> The code will be licensed under the GPL2 or GPL3 (I have yet to pick one.), so it's
> free and open source, and yours to improve upon (or port to MAME.) :-)
>
> Have fun,
>
> Stefano
>
> [1] http://rbelmont.mameworld.info/?p=726
Looking forward to seeing this, Stefano!
- Stiletto
|
|
|
| Cable |
|
retro gamer
|
|
|
|
|
Reged: 08/30/08
|
|
Posts: 131
|
|
Loc: UK
|
|
|
|
Send PM
|
|
|
Re: introducing valkyrie
[Re: Stefano Teso]
#282327 - 04/12/12 07:17 PM
|
|
|
This is great news i hope you get help from those who can! Its always good to see a new emulator for a system that hasnt been emulated yet. Just ignore Animal Bear his translator is buggered again. 
|
|
|
|
|
It's always nice to see another emulator, particularly a "new" one for a system that has no other emulators.
Hopefully people will help with it. I know squat about such stuff. I'm just a middle aged guy who used to code crappy out of date programming languages like COBOL, Fortran, and RPG...
|
|
|
|
Re: introducing valkyrie
[Re: Cable]
#282336 - 04/12/12 07:47 PM
|
|
|
> This is great news i hope you get help from those who can! Its always good to see a
> new emulator for a system that hasnt been emulated yet. Just ignore Animal Bear his
> translator is buggered again.
There now are you going to ignore me, because I confused the same link in another forum post here, so I saw this great information.
Cable, see if you have a cable off. 
|
|
|
| Stiletto |
|
They're always after me Lucky ROMS!
|
|
|
|
|
|
Reged: 03/07/04
|
|
Posts: 6472
|
|
|
|
|
|
Send PM
|
|
|
Re: introducing valkyrie
[Re: Lewis King]
#282344 - 04/12/12 09:07 PM
|
|
|
> > This is great news i hope you get help from those who can! Its always good to see a
> > new emulator for a system that hasnt been emulated yet. Just ignore Animal Bear his
> > translator is buggered again.
>
> There now are you going to ignore me, because I confused the same link in another
> forum post here, so I saw this great information.
I think we're just annoyed that you said this to THE AUTHOR OF THE NEW EMULATOR.
- Stiletto
|
|
|
|
Re: introducing valkyrie
[Re: Stefano Teso]
#282457 - 04/13/12 09:36 PM
|
|
|
Awesome accomplishment!
(you are far too humble)
|
|
|
Index 
Threaded 
introducing valkyrie
Reply
[Re: 
