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Releases: ares-emulator/ares

ares v123

22 Aug 13:49
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ares v123 includes significant improvements to the emulation of the ColecoVision,
SG-1000 and the Game Boy/Game Boy Color.

This release brings the compatibility rating for ColecoVision and SG-1000 to
four stars.

This means that we have 100% compatiiblity with both of those libraries, with
the only exception being the few games that require additional peripherals
(driving controllers; touchpads, etc).

The Game Boy improvements are significant, but not quite enough to increase
the compatibility rating at the present time, even so, Many more games are
playable than before.

Finally, a few tweaks to MegaDrive emulation have improved compatibility,
reduced the occurance of video corruption, and improved performance of
the Sega 32X emulation.

Changelog:

  • ColecoVision: Initialize ram to 0; fixes a crash in The Heist [Luke Usher]
  • ColecoVision: Disable cartridge rom mirroring; fixes Sammy Lightfoot [invertego]
  • ColecoVision/MSX/SG-1000: Initialize VRAM to 0; fixes various games [invertego]
  • Game Boy: Check window x-coord instead of only y-coord; improves the Acid2 test rom [Luke Usher]
  • Game Boy: Only raise STAT interrupt when display is enabled; fixes Cool Hand [invertego]
  • Game Boy: Implement HALT hardware bug [Meepster99]
  • Game Boy: Fix relationship between LY and STAT interrupt; fixes Elite Soccer, Mouse Trap Hotel, Shantae [invertego]
  • Game Boy: Only trigger STAT interrupts at the start of OAM search; fixes Mortal Kombat 3 [invertego]
  • Game Boy Color: Fix HDMA5 bit.7 reads; improves a significant number of GBC games [invertego]
  • Game Boy Advance: Simulate standard GBA instead of Game Boy Player; fixes GBA Video titles [Luke Usher]
  • Mega Drive: Implement support for Sonic & Knuckles merged roms; fixes Sonic 2K, Sonic 3K [Luke Usher]
  • Mega Drive: Implement support for SRAM/EEPROM when using the SEGA Mapper; fixes Demons of Asteborg [Luke Usher]
  • Mega Drive: Default to 'accuracy' VDP; improves compatibility at the expense of performance [Luke Usher]
  • Mega Drive: Optimize how often the emulator synchronises between components; offsets the cost of the previous change [Luke Usher]
  • Nintendo 64: Maintain Parallel-RDP as a subtree; simplifies compilation [Luke Usher]
  • SG-1000: Implement support for roms greater than 32KB [Luke Usher]
  • SG-1000: Implement support for Taiwan Type-A/Type-B mappers; fixes unlicensed Taiwan releases [Luke Usher]
  • SM83: Fix DAA instruction [Meepster99]
  • TMS9918: Implement multicolor mode; fixes various SG-1000/ColecoVision games [invertego]
  • TMS9918/Master System/MSX: Allow sprites to bleed off top/left screen edges [invertego]
  • ares: Rename lucia to desktop-ui to better represent it's function [Luke Usher]
  • mia: Improve N64 save-type database [jeltaqq]
  • mia: Add support for UNF extension, alongside UNIF and NES [Shideravan]
  • nall: Add macOS deployment target flags; fixes ares on macOS 10.14 [MerryMage]
  • ruby: Give PulseAudio higher priority than ALSA on Linux Systems; ALSA was causing frame-rate issues [Luke Usher]

ares v122

02 Aug 19:19
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ares v122 released

This release primarily provides improved Neo Geo Pocket/Neo Geo Pocket Color and Sega 32X emulation.

The entire Neo Geo Pocket/Color library is now thought to be playable, with minor graphical issues in four titles.

A small number of SEGA 32X games are now playable, although most still experience graphical and/or audio issues.

Changelog:

ColecoVision: Clear top bit of controller port reads; fixes Defender [invertego]
Neo Geo Pocket: Allow BIOS to handle the boot process [invertego]
Neo Geo Pocket: Copy SNK logo from BIOS during fast boot; fixes Metal Slug: 2nd Mission [invertego]
Neo Geo Pocket: Fix address used to test ram initialization [invertego]
Neo Geo Pocket: Initialize Neo Geo Pocket port 1 to zero; fixes Dynamite Slugger [invertego]
Neo Geo Pocket: Many improvements to 'fast boot' [invertego]
Neo Geo Pocket: Re-enable savint ram to disk on unload [invertego]
Sega 32X: Implement FM/Framebuffer access bit; fixes Spiderman [Luke Usher]
Sega 32X: Implement RV bit [Luke Usher]
Sega 32X: Optimise SH7604 recompiler min-cycles for 32X; fixes Knuckles Choatix & Virtua Fighter [remutro]
Sega 32X: PWM DREQ and timer are different things; fixes PWM audio in many games [Luke Usher]
Sega 32X: Used cached interpreter instead of recompiler [Luke Usher]
TMS9918: Fix sprite size emulation; fixes many graphical issues in ColecoVision/MSX/SG-1000 [invertego]
TMS9918: fix interrupt behavior [invertego]
hiro: Fix browser dialog filters on macOS [Luke Usher]
hiro: Force GTK3 to use X11 backend; fixes a crash under Wayland [thrimbor]
lucia: Disable fast boot by default [Luke Usher]
lucia: Support digital presses from analog inputs [invertego]
mia: Add workaround for underdumped Delta Warp rom [Luke Usher]
mia: Improve Nintendo 64 save chip database; fixes saving in some titles [sp1187]
nall: Enable LTO by default on non-debug builds [Luke Usher]
nall: Speed up recompiler codegen [Luke Usher]
sh2: Allow cores to determine an ideal minimum recompiler block size [Luke Usher]
sh2: Optimised code-gen for the interpreter [Luke Usher]
sh2: Recompiler should invalidate single blocks, not entire pools [Luke Usher]
tlc2900h: Fix immediate mask in BIT #,r; fixes Pocket Tennis [invertego]
z80: Correct the effect of IE on the next instruction; fixes audio drop-out in Neo Geo Pocket games [invertego]

ares v121a

06 Jul 10:36
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ares v121a is a minor point release for v121.

This is identical to Near's final release of v121, with some additional patches to fix compilation on gcc (windows/linux) and macOS.

ares nightly 2025-01-19

30 Dec 00:38
cb4a79e
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Pre-release

Auto-generated nightly release on 2024-12-30 00:38:03 UTC

Update to ares v118 release.

05 Jul 13:09
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I'm excited to launch ares v118 today, the first release featuring playable,
full-speed Nintendo 64 emulation!

The new Nintendo 64 emulation is made possible thanks to [Themaister] very
graciously porting his Vulkan-based ParaLLEl-RDP graphics renderer to ares. With
its default settings, it is nearly pixel-perfect to real hardware, and it
optionally supports upscaling to 2x or 4x the original Nintendo 64 resolution,
plus optional supersampling back down to the original resolution (for enhanced
anti-aliasing) if desired. The Vulkan support requires an appropriate graphics
card, and either Windows or Linux. At this time, Vulkan is not available for
macOS nor the BSDs.

Also new for the Nintendo 64 core in this release is Rumble Pak, Cartridge Pak,
SRAM, EEPROM, and Flash save support. Note that for right now, the Rumble Pak
will only be enabled for games which use internal saves (SRAM, EEPROM, and
Flash.) That does not cover all Rumble Pak-capable games. The option to choose
between Rumble Paks and Cartridge Paks will be added to a future release.

For the PlayStation core, [Luke Usher] provided two rendering fixes that allow
Final Fantasy VII and Tony Hawk's Pro Skater to be fully playable!

Right now, approximately 33% of the Nintendo 64 library is fully playable, and
about 67% of the PlayStation library is fully playable. Each core has only been
under active development for about one month each, so they both have a long way
to go. Please treat these early releases as tech samples, rather than finished
emulation cores.

Further, note that the Nintendo 64 and PlayStation cores employ cached
interpreters. This is a middle-ground between the accuracy of interpreters and
the performance of dynamic recompilers. As such, ares' system requirements will
be a bit higher than traditional emulators for these systems. Presuming no
background task interference or CPU throttling, generally speaking, a Ryzen 5
2600 or better CPU should get you to around ~120fps in the average case, and
~60fps in the worst case.

The source code has also been released under the terms of the Creative Commons
BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.

[Themaister]: http://github.com/Themaister/
[Luke Usher]: https://twitter.com/LukeUsher1

Update to ares v117 release.

05 Jul 13:10
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[No official changelog available for this version. -Ed.]

Update to ares v115 release.

05 Jul 13:11
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[No official changelog available for this version. -Ed.]