Monthly Archives: September 2011

Only a few minor changes this time:

1. Fixed freeze seen in FZ-1 bios screen.
2. Fixed bug in which the pause “status” was not saved correctly when the option is enabled.
3. Changed the display to enforce that it shows black when the system is not running.

To try out 4DO 1.0.6.4 alpha, head to to the download page:
4DO Downloads

Fixes:

1. Video rendering fix for several graphics cards (mainly NVidia)
2. Fixed bug where selecting the “None” void area background would not get loaded correctly on startup (it was showing up as “Bumps”).

Most graphics cards seem to require power-of-two textures, so I’ve adhered to this for the video rendering. This has worked on every machine I’ve tested it out on, and with some additional testing from Bry (thanks Bry!).

To try out 4DO 1.0.6.3 alpha, head to to the download page:
4DO Downloads

Features:

1. 4DO now hides the mouse cursor if it’s floating over the game area.
2. Support for more types of controllers/gamepads. I do not know if this also includes xbox 360 controllers.
3. Users can now select a different void area pattern (including none/blank/black). This means you can turn off the “bricks” on the sides of the screen. I do indeed pay attention to comments! I personally will be using “Metal” because I like to pretend that I’m manly.

Fixes:

1. If you configured your controller settings with a blank set of bindings, 4DO would fail to load it. This is now fixed, although I fixed it by changing how the file is saved.

I’m quite certain that I will be able to hear cheers of joy throughout the day tomorrow as the various people of the world discover that they can now change the void area pattern to flat black (I’m thinking of you, Sedabi!).

A clarification on the added controller support: 4DO was previously looking for input devices that identified themselves as “joystick”. I found another controller of mine that wouldn’t register and discovered that it considered itself a “gamepad”. It was quite easy to resolve once I found this. However, I doubt that XBox 360 controllers fall into this category; they have an API of their own.

The updates will slow down for a while. I want to iron out problems with the video (DirectX) as well as solve the timing issues that some people have been reporting. Because none of my machines exhibit these problems, it’ll take a while to investigate.

To try out 4DO 1.0.6.2 alpha, head to to the download page:
4DO Downloads

This is a bug fix release only.

Fixes:

1. Switched from DirectX11(using Direct2D) to DirectX9. This should allow for windows XP support.
2. Reverted processor architecture specification back to x86. I have a feeling this was the culprit to the broken x64 support.

Unfortunately, I can’t really test this on my own. I’m using Windows 7, 32-bit. If these fixes changes don’t revive Windows XP or 64-bit support, then I’ve got a problem! I have an XP virtual machine, but it has no DirectX support. Anyhow, I guess I’ll have to think of something if there’s ever a 4DO installer.

To try out 4DO 1.0.6.1 alpha, head to to the download page:
4DO Downloads

Key Features:

1. Replaced GDI rendering with DirectX11 (Direct2D) rendering.
2. Vsync
3. Improved performance. (As a result of the above changes)

Say goodbye to that irritating video tearing!

I got Direct2D up and running relatively quickly. However, I still saw some tearing, although it wasn’t nearly as noticeable as before. I wrestled with DirectX for days on this. As it turns out, the games themselves were responsible for some of the tearing. The FreeDO core already had a mechanism in place (named “multitask”) to help this. Once I figured that out, the last of the tearing was dead.

This will reduce strain on the CPU for many systems (including mine). This should reduce audio anomalies for some. I’ve seen some reports of sporadic timing (which will also cause audio popping) in the comments, and I would expect that it is still a problem. I suspect that my use of “Thread.Sleep” isn’t providing enough resolution on certain systems. I’ll have to chalk that up to future developments (most likely within beta?).

I will also be considering leaving the GDI rendering option in 4DO. This would require fleshing out those half-done “plugin” frameworks. The GDI solution would be a good fallback if DirectX is unavailable. I’m going to be trying out 4DO in a remote desktop session and seeing what happens! If I put the GDI solution back in, it’ll probably be during beta, which is when I figured I’d work on the plugin framework.

My next focus is uniquely identifying games. This also will have some effects on the save state system. For example, if you load a game from a CD drive, I want it to use the same save state it would from any CD drive on you computer as well as an identical ISO image on your hard drive. This unique identification will also be important much further into 4DO’s future. If 4DO starts providing any game-specific features (such as low-level workarounds or fixes), then unique game identification can identify when to flip these switches based on the game that’s been opened. This is the one remaining task I have before I’m going to mark 4DO as “beta”.

By the way, a friend of mine is letting me borrow an Xbox 360 controller for a while, so I will also tackle that.

I am going to change the download links on these release announcements to point to the 4DO download page instead. That may help to keep newcomers aware of the 4DO prerequisites.

To try out 4DO 1.0.6.0 alpha, head to to the download page:
4DO Downloads

Woohoo! Let’s keep 3DO alive!