Monthly Archives: August 2011

Key Features:

1. Multiple player support

I certainly didn’t think I’d be able to get this feature up and running as quickly as I did! I left the interface a tad lacking, but oh well. Let me know if you experience issues with this. I tested it out as best as my brain could handle flubbing around with several controllers at once.

By the way, the controllers are set to be always active, meaning the 3DO system will think they’re always plugged in. I think this is a safe assumption, but let me know if any games complain or fail as a result.

Also, 4DO currently supports only 6 players; I tested these using Fifa soccer. I’m pretty sure there’s at least one game with support for 8 players, but I’m considering that a pretty low priority (and I’m not sure how the game managed to fit those last two controllers into the number of bytes I believe are available). Besides, I doubt that there are 8 rabid 3DO fans living in close proximity just waiting to test it out. Obviously, 6 people is downright feasible.

You can download 4DO 1.0.5.1 alpha here:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/fourdo/files/4DO_1.0.5.1_alpha.zip/download

Features:

1. Joystick Support
2. Support for multiple bindings per control

It’s been a long run for joystick support, but I’m quite happy with the results; this ain’t your little sister’s joystick support. I’ve been burned by crappy input settings on emulators (and retail games, come to think of it), so I want to keep 4DO from failing in that area. Here are some of the little things about the joystick support that you may appreciate if you have been exposed to crummy joystick support in the past:

• Joysticks/Controllers that you set up should be saving with a unique joystick GUID (supplied by DirectInput). This avoids cumbersome problems in a more simplistic system using something like device number. You should be able to set up two controllers of the exact same brand and 4DO will recognize them as unique. This held true for any joysticks I have, but I would like to know if someone experiences an issue.
• If a joystick gets unplugged while you’re playing, 4DO won’t freak out. It will not continually press whatever you last had pressed, and you can plug the joystick back in to resume playing.
• You can bind the same joystick button to several 3DO buttons and vice versa. I’ve never liked the “key is in use” I’ve seen elsewhere.
• Support for any joystick axis, including accelerometers. I do not have a joystick with any accelerometer features, so I’d appreciate feedback from anybody who does (I worry that the noise data involved in merely holding a joystick with them will cause them to be noticed and bound unconditionally). I have also ensured that point-of-view controls (PoV) can be bound.
• You do not have to choose a specific device (keyboard or joystick) when setting up a 3DO controller. You can bind both keyboard keys and joystick controls to the same 3DO controller. This avoids having to go back to the setup screen if you don’t have the controller handy.
• Documentation tells me that SlimDX supports XBox 360 controllers, and so 4DO should too. However, I don’t have one to try. Edit: Feedback from Wolf-5 has shown that Xbox 360 controllers do not work in 1.0.5.0.

Please note that this new version introduces a new dependency that must be installed (SlimDX). If you’d like to try this version of 4DO, please first go to the SlimDX Download page to download the .NET 4 version.

You can download 4DO 1.0.5.0 alpha here:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/fourdo/files/4DO_1.0.5.0_alpha.zip/download

Enjoy! If you find a problem, please post a comment and let me know!

Features:

1. Audio Oddities Solved — I’ve put more work into the audio system. After playing a game for a while you may have noticed garble-ing noises. This was due to the playback getting ahead of the write buffer. 4DO now monitors for this situation (and vice versa) to move the audio read buffer’s position when it gets out of sync.
2. Audio Playback Enabled on Some Machines – On initialization, the audio playback now “scans” for the highest supported audio bitrate on the system. This previously would just attempt to load a device with 32-bit fidelity, and gave up if it didn’t find one. This will result in audio being heard on machines that otherwise would have heard none. This could be improved later to give the user the option to choose the audio device to playback to.

Bug Fixes:

1. NVRAM now gets initialized with proper structures when the NVRAM file does not exist.. This will prevent certain games like Need For Speed from thinking that there is no save data space. I did not bother changing the filename, so if you ran into this issue, you should delete the NVRAM_SaveData.ram file you have if you’re dropping this new version of 4DO in the same directory.

This is a bug fix release only.

* NVRAM was not actually saving data to the NVRAM file.

Sorry about that. I had changed NVRAM to do a delayed write (rather than write to file after every byte written) and forgot to add back the final save-to-file logic. So, NVRAM previously was simply not saving to disk!

By the way, I didn’t find the problem myself, I personally stick to save states and don’t really use the 3DO internal save data. This bug was reported by a chap called BryWI. I greatly appreciate the bug report! I think this goes to demonstrate how valuable feedback is in the alpha stage. So, if you are seeing issues, please let me know. Even the constant stream of “Crash and Burn doesn’t work” comments are at least informative!

I find myself unsure how well mixing save states and NVRAM use is going to function. The save states do not currently save the NVRAM data. Examples:

• If you save state in a game that’s already loaded information from NVRAM, and then later you drop in a new copy of NVRAM that is different and hit “load state”, I’m concerned that the game might bomb out when it finds that the data isn’t what it just loaded. Games were most likely written to assume they’re the only ones that will be editing their NVRAM contents while the game is running.
• If you save state while it’s loading or saving to NVRAM, that of course is just asking for trouble.

I am considering saving NVRAM data on a per-game basis and possibly even per-save-state, which I think would be pretty easy to understand and resolve a lot of potential issues. This would make Game Guru absolutely useless, though. So, I don’t think the books are closed on ideal NVRAM behavior yet. I would be interested to hear how well it currently works.

Key changes:
* CD-Rom support – Play straight from CD!

Minor changes:
* I added a “File -> Close” option to close whatever is currently open.
* The option to “load state” on startup has changed into an option to “load state” whenever a game loads. For example, if you open a different game while 4DO is open, it’ll do an automatic “load state” for that game.
* 4DO now remembers the directory that you last selected a CD image file from.
* I renamed some of the menu items to make their use more clear.

https://sourceforge.net/projects/fourdo/files/4DO_1.0.3.0_alpha.zip/download

I took way longer than I anticipated figuring this out. This one cost me a lot of time, so hopefully you folks just flat-out love that CD support! Woohoo! Long live 3DO!

The next feature I will concentrate on is the Joystick/Controller support. I may also do a little housecleaning. I think it’s about time I got an installer for the folks less capable installing the dependencies. Also, I’m avoiding any use of residual files like user settings in “C:Documents and Settingsetcetc” and trying to keep all settings and files just plainly in the 4DO directory. Keeping with this trend, I also intend to do this for save states. So, save states will likely be moved to a “SaveState” folder that pops up in the same directory that 4DO gets run in. I’m also not so sure I like the “save slot” idea as currently implemented. With emulators I’ve typically found that I fumble and press the change save slot buttons on accident. I would also like to save screenshots with each save state, but the current system doesn’t have anywhere of use that I could provide a screenshot. I’m uncertain how I’d prefer it to work, though. If anybody has seen nifty, intuitive ideas regarding save states in an emulator, I’d like to hear them.

So… how many people are still left that are even interested in a 3DO emulator anyway? A dozen? My guess is somewhere around a hundred.

Version 1.0.2.0 alpha includes:
* NVRAM support : Quite the lazy job on my part. It just saves to “NVRAM_SaveData.ram” in the same directory as 4DO.exe. This is non-configurable, but it works!
* Fix to a crash on startup resulting from toggling certain settings.

So, it’s now full-featured, though a bit hairy. Anyway, you can get it here. Woohoo!
https://sourceforge.net/projects/fourdo/files/4DO_1.0.2.0_alpha.zip/download

In other news, I’ve been attempting to touch base with any remainders of the FreeDO development team. There are several versions of FreeDO that were never “officially” released. These versions have noticeable improvements (mainly graphics) in the core that I would like to make use of. It seems like a waste to have two 3DO emulators developed simultaneously when there is such little development going on at all. I’m unsure if this will mean me merging into what’s left of the FreeDO development effort, or if it means them merging into 4DO, or if it means that my diplomatic efforts fail and I’m just given the finger and told to mind my own business. I’m pretty certain that it will affect what happens with 4DO in the future.

I got in touch with the FreeDO developer I know (Altmer), and he is apparently still working on it, though slowly. I don’t know this for sure yet, but I think he was single-handedly responsible for the post-official releases like “2.1 alfa”. Those versions have improvements that I would like to incorporate into 4DO if possible…

I think we both should be working on the same emulator. However, I don’t really know that Altmer would be cool with me swooping in, taking his work, and rebranding it as “4DO”. So, I’ve offered to join up with him, which may mean I’d help improve FreeDO and leave 4DO alone. I’m unsure if he’s even interested in accepting help or open-sourcing what he’s done.