Philips CD-i

[stiff flare]

Supposed to happen.

Later models boot directly into the media but the current CDi core mimics the first model. So that’s 100% intended.

I should probably add a note about that. It trips everyone up who isn’t familiar with the CDi, myself included.

[buoyant vapor]

OK, sounds good. But then the same happens when pressing the PLAY triangle button, which seems to indicate that it crashes and reboots. I should try it a bit more and try to remember what happens in some more detail. 🙂

[stiff flare]

Oh, yeah that’s not supposed to happen. Sorry to hear about that. Could also be the game you’re trying to load. I know Link: Faces of Evil has been working great for a while. I have that CHD compressed and it’s fine for me,

[spring gate]

If you check the testing sheet that is pinned you can see what is definitely working. The recommended pack is the no DVC games pack from the usual place

[buoyant vapor]

Thanks, good suggestion @spring gate

[errant surge]

In my experience, if you load a non-working game you have to reboot the mister before you are all able to boot a working game. The same thing was happening to me and I thought it had to do with my file structure but I just had to reboot and avoid non-working games.

[terse flare]

@buoyant vapor The suggestion is a good one. There is a certain yet unresolved stability issue. I think you don't need to power cycle the whole hardware. It's usually enough to reload the core.

[bold dragon]

That type of thing is related to initialization. Some thing might need to be initialized explicitly (and aren't)

I'd consider that something to clean up at a low priority or as devlopement finishes up

[terse flare]

Ah well, help is always welcome.

[spring gate]

Any thoughts on why BMB Karaoke 1 displays this? Could missing TOC support cause it to look like this and not do anything?

[nocturne vortex]

Looks like an hsync problem on a crt 😉

Just tweak your hhold pot, duh

[spring gate]

Will try that after I move the pile of magnets I have sitting next to it

[sly sedge]

I was going to recommend degaussing your liquid crystals. Good call.

[gray badge]

have you tried turning it off and then back on?

[spring gate]

Will try that after I unplug every other appliance in my house, and knock on my neighbours' doors and ask them to do the same

[fair linden]

think i saw jeff gerstmann test a karaoke disc awhile back on stream, and his solution was to just switch to the appropriate region (NTSC for the image he tested) and reset

https://youtu.be/6oOuHL_LprM?feature=shared&t=5775

[spring gate]

Oh, that worked!

Playing fine now it seems

[terse flare]

Flashback looks similar if the "Standard" flag is not set to activate the NTSC to PAL compatibility mode. I wonder what happens when a disc like this is inserted into a real CD-i. If the symptoms are the same, the core is at least accurate and I think there is not really something I can do.

[spring gate]

Yeah that's likely not a bug. I wonder if way down the line some clever auto setting could be done to set certain discs to PAL or NTSC, maybe like how N64 does with a list of titles and settings for them that sits outside of the core

[spring gate]

I am tested through nearly 1/4 of the Redump Photo CD set over the past week (they are great for running on the second screen while doing something else). Support is looking great, not come across any that don't boot and most seem to have no obvious issues. Once I have done more I write up the issues I have come across (stuff is documented on the sheet).

Main issue is what seems to be a bug in the player software, where it doesn't save when you set it to high Res. One of the info tabs within the discs explicitly mentions that it should save the selection, so does seem to be a bug. What happens currently is you set to high Res and reloads the current picture in much better quality, then when you move to the next pic it defaults back to low Res.

Would be a much better experience if it would save the format selected. If it could also somehow default to high Res that would be even better.

[stiff flare]

Which ones is your favorite or a cool one for a photo cd noob like me to check out?

[spring gate]

If you are a fan of Ghost In The Shell, definitely that one

[stiff flare]

OH SHIT

MY MAN

[terse flare]

For some reason, I can think of some kind of FAQ. Especially with known issues of software which behaves also faulty on the real machine, it should be clear that this is not fault of the MiSTer core. Issues like the wrong first samples of Hotel Mario music...

[spring gate]

Yeah, definitely be good to have a FAQ for hardware issues and anomalies that look like bugs but are not

Some of the things I have found on Photo CDs feel broken but need to be confirmed on real hardware by someone to be sure

The High Res thing does seem to be a bug though, it should remember that selection when it moves to the next image

[terse flare]

I finally figured out why the EU version of the Apprentice wasn't working. The data is encrypted and must be "descrambled" before the CPU is allowed to use the data. I don't know how the original machine did it but I think this is something that can be safely done in the MiSTer Main as it saves some space on the FPGA side.
I'm not sure if I can punch out a new core tomorrow to celebrate CD-Friday. For some reason, after copying data around on my SD card, there is a random issue that the games are sometimes not loading. MiSTer Main is not even asked for CD data. This is something I think I would like to fix now as it seems to have increased in chance on my setup.

Ok, the decryption is just like a CRC....
Oh well. It works good on the Linux side.. so why bother...

[spring gate]

Don't punish yourself to get a build out every Friday if you want more time or are doing something else, just drop when you are ready and want to 🙂

[terse flare]

You are of course right. I don't know why I am like this. Sometimes there is this idea in my head that people are not satisfied. It's the same at work. My boss knows that I have this issue and even he needs to remind me to slow down a bit. Whenever a person tells me they have an issue, I'm trying to solve it even so I don't need to. It is a mental disorder.

[spring gate]

Are you still digging into TOC side, or taking a breather from that?

[terse flare]

Digging is done. It works.

I've managed to fix some of the issues today. But the code is dirty and I need to clean that up before I can build that and maybe do a PR. The next release should also be compatible with all 3 types of images. CHD, Single Bin CUE and Multi Bin CUE.

I did some .... bizzare thing.... I've dumped an audio cd with just 4 songs. It is a single with 12 minutes of audio. Then I've written some software for the core to dump some bytes of every sector of the CD to the serial port to collect on my PC. Then I've converted the dump to all different image types and compared the outcome. With this... I'm pretty confident now that CUE vs CHD issues should be gone.

I sometimes wonder how other people do it. How can a human being develop a Saturn core, do a 3DO in parallel and fix the SNES at the same time? You have to juggle HDL code for that while sleeping.

[glacial herald]

It's all good - no pressure 🙂
CD-i is the most chill console on the MiSTer and we're happy to be along for the ride, bumps and all (with lots of pan-flute music)

(or maybe I've just seen the intro to INCA too many times)

[rugged panther]

We're ecstatic with the work you're doing just keep doing things the Slamy way™ and don't sweat what other devs do

[noble talon]

CD-i and Jaguar single ram are awesome to see, genuinely appreciate all the dev work and helping preserve these systems and give us a way to experience these otherwise obscure pieces of hardware

[gleaming echo]

Yeah as everyone else has said, forget about the other devs, just do you things your own way we appreciate all that you have done bringing the CD-i to the MiSTer 😀

[wintry dust]

you forgot he also wrote a battletoads arcade core too!

[sterile cedar]

That core was never officially finished right?

[valid onyx]

I don't think so, based on my search after reading it should exist 🙂

[sly sedge]

Well good grief, what's taking him so long?!
😏

[valid cairn]

You can ever see the intro to Inca too many times

https://tenor.com/view/jeff-gerstmann-giant-bomb-dance-smile-gif-16581811

[errant surge]

https://tenor.com/view/nobody-wins-giant-bomb-jeff-gerstmann-brad-shoemaker-mario-party-gif-16557388

[merry oyster]

I thought what I'd do was, I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes. ||Or should I? ||

[spring gate]

Well if you go that deep then I admire your commitment Major, but you will of no help in testing Photo CDs on the CDi core.

We need to know the early 90s Japanese new-age-ambient scores are playing pitch perfect.

[stiff flare]

So this would be software you’d walk into a store and go “yes I would like some jpegs, please”?

I never knew Photo CDs were a thing.

[strange zephyr]

And you call yourself a saturn fan

[stiff flare]

That’s a thing on Saturn too?

I just knew about the Virtua Fighter discs lol

[chilly flax]

Saturn has a standalone photo cd software

[valid onyx]

You could go into stores with your camera roll, have it developed, and instead of, or in addition to, getting them on paper, get them on a photo cd, iirc

maybe I'm misunderstanding your question though 🙂

[stiff flare]

I guess I’m surprised that there was photo cd software sold. But I don’t remember seeing it here in the US or I was too young.

But it is cool you could convert your photos to photo cd

[chilly flax]

It wasn't released in the US

[wintry dust]

this is amazing. now the actual console is in this channel

[young grotto]

this one must be the ghost of CD-i past

[spring gate]

There is a software disc you can boot and then disc swap in a Photo CD. On the core the disc boots fine, but you can't successfully load a Photo CD (core doesn't support Photo CD). If you had the mpeg card for the Saturn that plays VCDs then you could also play Photo CDs without this disc.

I have learned way too much recently about a format I didn't even know existed a few months ago...

[buoyant vapor]

It seems that the "putting the core in a weird state by booting one non-working title"-bug was what happened to me. I pruned my CD-i directory from titles not in the "working" list, and now it works much better. 🙂

Working CD-i and now most likely 3DO core in 2025, what a time to be alive

[modern mirage]

A 68030 and accurate aga timings would be a time to be alive

[terse flare]

Ah I see, the poor Minimig core... No one is stopping you from learning the skills required to achieve that dream. One of the issues of the Minimig core is that it seems not to have an active maintainer.

[spring gate]

Sorg seems to be the main man on that one

[radiant minnow]

This is my dream too 🙂 In fact, I'd be happy with accurate OCS...

[spring gate]

Is this an especially complex chip?

[sly sedge]

It's a combination of custom chips.

[spring gate]

And I take it they aren't used elsewhere by other systems?

[radiant minnow]

Right. These are the Amiga-specific custom chips.
For OCS at least, WinUAE (opensource emulator) is accurate.

[modern mirage]

I am fine with Win Uae . Fpga is good but its not better than a well written SW emulator

[buoyant vapor]

Accurate Amiga would be very cool to see. I suppose it’s possible to use UAE in some way to get perfect frame pacing over HDMI or analogue RGB, but that part is soo easy with FPGA systems.

[terse flare]

It is actually quite easy. There is a certain cult around MAME people who do this to get a SW emulator into an arcade cabinet. There are options for Linux and Windows. The only thing that is a little bit difficult is interlacing. With my old GTX 970, interlacing was possible with a VGA to SCART adapter. With the RTX 2070 this is no longer the case. But 15 kHz non interlaced is still possible.

[terse flare]

Isn't this opinion contrary to the believes of the church of MiSTer?🤣

[modern mirage]

Lucky for me I can think for myself 🙂

[radiant minnow]

WinUAE has an up-to-date port to LibRetro called libretro-uae.
It synchronizes to host video refresh rate and resamples audio accordingly, so it's trivial to get totally smooth Amiga graphics & sound on GNU/Linux 🙂 Even works on KMS/DRM (No legacy X11, no need for Wayland)

But anyway, accurate Amiga on the MiSTer would be awesome

And I hope it happens someday

[west pagoda]

030 would be great for atari as well…having falcon and tt030 in mister would be nice

[spring gate]

Is space left in the core on DE-10 Nano a possible blocker?

[modern mirage]

probably should move this out of the CDI channel

[terse flare]

Can you give me a list of some games which have lead to nonfunctional state? Just curious

[buoyant vapor]

I had “Apprentice, The (Europe)” on top of the list, which I noticed you wrote about here just today or yesterday

[terse flare]

Yes and to be honest It just works today to my disbelieve. Another one? In computer science this is called a Heisenbug. If you try to observe it, it just disappears.

[buoyant vapor]

I could never get the EU version of Link: Faces of Evil to boot, but that is listed as playable so it must’ve been something with my copy I suppose

[terse flare]

Hmm... I have "Die Fratzen des Bösen" and it seems to work just fine. I have it as CHD.

Ah ok. I should not compare my current work in progress state with the currently released version... Hmm... Maybe I really should release a core to synchronize everyone again.

[spring gate]

If it makes sense for a new core then nobody here is going to say no to a new core 🙂

[modern mirage]

Release when you want. Not to appease the masses

[shut flint]

looking through the CD-i library finally to gather my "collection" and it looks like they just released a bunch of movies for CD-i in Korea (or maybe bootlegs)?

Was trying to find more information about it, but not coming up with anything

[modern mirage]

it will be vcd

and in a horrible res

[shut flint]

right

I figured it was just VCD

[terse flare]

Main_MiSTer:
  - Rewritten image handling: Multi- or Single-Bin CUE files and
    CHD should provide the same experience now.
  - Added Subchannel Q data together with "Table of Contents"
  - Added support for "Green Book Scrambling" (Fixes "The Apprentice (Europe)")
MCD212: Experimental Limited Range RGB to Full Range scaler (in Debug options)
SERVO: Experimental Audio CD disc type force on reset (in Debug options)
CDIC:
  - Fixed subchannel Q data for CDDA sectors
  - Added support for HPS TOC request
  - Hopefully finally fixed problems with HPS data latency
MCD212: Add DVC RAM (Enables SFX with "The Apprentice")

[terse flare]

It's fine I think. It helps core development if we all use the same project state.^^

When no big problems are detected during the next days, I will create another PR for Sorg. This way we hopefully don't need to change the MiSTer Main for a long time now. Concerning the changes, some of them are rather experimental and not for the light hearted. Especially the Audio CD playing is rather buggy. It hangs with a 50/50 chance on stopping playback. This was one of the things that I think I wanted to fix before releasing this version. But as no one here will probably totally get into Audio CD playing, I guess we are fine by now.

The other thing was the mysterious hangups. I wanted to solve it, I'm unable to reproduce it now. Please keep an eye out for that... I still don't get it.

Concering the Limited Range RGB... this is a change that might be removed if proven wrong. I've added it for people with "an eye for color accuracy". I've noticed that most CD-i software uses only RGB values from 16 to 235. This change makes it scale to 0-255. It might not be accurate at all but fixes the colors on the system menu and also on some Photo CDs.

[unreal sparrow]

Thank you playing salamander ost 😊

[shut flint]

can't wait to boot this core and learn "how the camel got his hump"

[spring gate]

Amazing, great work Slamy! Which Photo CDs were you testing out of interest?

[terse flare]

Only the "Photo CD Sample Disc (USA)". I had it on a real CD-i burned already and wondered about the colors. So this release might not be the most interesting for you as probably no other issues are really fixes except maybe the TOC.

[unreal sparrow]

I can used also bin/cue for Apprentice USA so I could remove CHD !

[terse flare]

Why do you want to do that? The CHD is smaller. And not by a small margin. The full US release is 627MB while the CHD is only 313MB

[unreal sparrow]

the space is not an issue with the size of SD Card if we selected games but yeah the full set could be tricky !
CHD have also issue to keep information of tracks if I understand correclty

[terse flare]

I'm not sure if a title is already affected by this. Is there one?

[spring gate]

Just to clarify, the subchannel data you discuss is different to the subchannel data utilised by CD+G discs?

[terse flare]

Actually both is subchannel data. There are multiple channels though. Today we are still talking only about the channel Q. It contains the time code for CDDA and also the TOC in the Lead-In area

[unreal sparrow]

I don't know

[terse flare]

There is a certain rumor spreading in this channel that CHD is bad somehow. This needs to stop. I have all my games as CHD and only the ones as CUE which I needed now to verify the reading process.

Also, if something is not broken, don't change it.

@spring gate There might be already a regression. Darkchaser is not starting any more. I think it was one of the PhotoCDs you have suggested.

[spring gate]

Hmm, that one was working before

There was one where I thought TOC may fix it, as sound was cutting out when it loaded images, it was one about fighter planes, let me figure out what one it was...

Fighting Wings (Japan)

[spring gate]

Enhanced Music CDs appear to be working!

The Ennio Morricone one is loading for me 🙂

Is even playing a video interview from the menu with him!

[shut flint]

man, based on everything sitting in archive's redump set, this core's gonna be a tougher one to organize the set for. I'm still gonna take a stab at it, though

[spring gate]

It's already been done

@strange crater has put a lot of time into sorting it all, and you may notice some curated packs appearing in the usual place like the no DVC game pack

[shut flint]

oh, that's awesome!

I assume by "appearing" you mean that they aren't currently out there

oh wait I found the one you mentioned

[errant island]

I'm working sometimes on that complete pack, but I will need probably weeks or months for having everything's done right and with the same format (redoing the CHD files and classify them).

[spring gate]

Dark Chaser is loading for me @terse flare, using the redump file

Tangerine Dream enhanced Music CD doesn't want to boot however

I wonder if that one needs DVC

Ah, yes it does

[spring gate]

If anyone is looking for a second screen experience, and do some testing at the same time, there is a pack of the enhanced music CDs. There aren't actually that many of them. 28 in total.

[pine linden]

What do I need to add in Mister.ini to use MiSTer_CDi as an alternative Mister Main?

[shut flint]

I just did it earlier and I believe it’s just two lines like so:

[CDi]
main=MiSTer_CDi

[errant surge]

Alien Gate is one that kicks it off for me.

[pine linden]

Thank you!

Trying to play Mad Dog McCree and got this message. Is the Digital Video Cartridge not implemented at this moment or am I doing something wrong? Sorry if it was asked before

[errant surge]

The DVC is a long-term goal that may or may not happen. Slamy isn't' worried about it right now, just getting everything else working.

[pine linden]

Thank you!

[harsh ember]

Holy crap, I had no idea that there was a cd-i core.

Thanks for the hard work!

[lunar nexus]

@spring gate Away from home at present, tried the Jimi CD+G?

[wintry dust]

that subcode data isn't being sent/used so at best it will work like a normal audio cd

[terse flare]

No sugarcoating here. I think games like these have coined the term "Eurotrash". It is a game but feels more like an SDK example to explain how to move graphics on the screen on a system which should be superior to the competition. It was released in 1993, 3 years after Super Mario World was released in Japan. Title Music is nice though...

[lunar nexus]

Aw, bugger. Got the ccd (is that the subcode data) with it as well. Thanks.

[stiff flare]

where is the Ameritrash category and why is Earthworm Jim in it?

[terse flare]

This bug is truly interesting. As you were one of the testers with this issue, please test these when you have time. The MiSTer application fixes a small overlook from my side in case of single bin images. The RBF is the core from yesterday with a little bit more defensive approach when it comes to reading from non existing discs. The reason I'm posting these here in public for the others as well is having maybe more testers in case someone else also faces issues like these.
From my side, I'm unable to reproduce the problem somehow. I hate stochastic issues.
Edit: I also would like to know the probability. Does it always occur? Maybe there is a pattern...

[valid onyx]

For me, when using the mister_cdi from 50ish minutes ago, combined with the cdi core from yesterday evening, none of the +- 5 images I tried booted

with the defensive one, all seem fine (on a quick inspection)

this is with images running of SD card

[rugged panther]

I keep hearing that frame buffering is unavoidable with software emulation but then I see stuff like RGB Pi and I'm trying to figure out what the truth is lol

[modern mirage]

I see no drops at all then again I am running on a beast of a PC

as long as you arent running on a ancient machine or a weak arse arm device its fine

[rugged panther]

Yeah but again I'm told frame buffer is mandatory in software so that should be independant of power

like you lose a frame automatically

of latency

[modern mirage]

the frame buffer will be in my 4090

and that thing has no issue with an amiga display

besides winuae is cycle accurate. Mister isnt

[rugged panther]

how would you know if you are or aren't losing a frame of latency though without measuring it

[modern mirage]

so even if you gain a frame of lag its still a better amiga than the Mister

[rugged panther]

seems a bummer amiga isn't cycle accurate if it's part of the name of MiSTer lol

[modern mirage]

Well its not detectable to me. The games play exactly as they did in the late 80's

[rugged panther]

https://tenor.com/view/trombone-pusheen-musician-instrument-gif-11434220432919976776

[modern mirage]

A FPGA is not a magic device. Accurate FPGA requires effort and dedication

you need a Robert, Slamy, SRG etc etc who are driven to make it as accurate as it can be

[rugged panther]

I am aware

it's the latency that I was looking at

but at the same time I see these devices using software emulation that appear to get the same latency

I've yet to see anybody that's like a third party actually do some deep diving into this

[modern mirage]

you could only do that vs real HW

and then you get that Real HW is no longer as real as it was. All the components have aged and are no longer as they once were

[wintry dust]

win-uae can use some pretty advanced beam racing stuff to get really minimal lag

[sly sedge]

Yeah, that 'lagless VSYNC' option is nice.

[wintry dust]

it doesn't have to do a presentation call at the end of an emulated frame. it can do multiple ones with partially filled buffers

[modern mirage]

where is that option I dont see it in Host display options

[young grotto]

does the amiga core have known inaccuracies?

[modern mirage]

yes its ecs and aga timing are bad

[young grotto]

huh

i just assumed from it's age it must be tip-top

[modern mirage]

no compared to a real Amiga its good enough in ECS, AGA is worse

[sly sedge]

Rather ironic, since that's one of the oldest cores in the project, and one of the two that the project is actually named after. 😄

[modern mirage]

The core is good enough to play almost evry demo and game

and that was how it was left

other things like you cant go beyond a 68020 are limits

[young grotto]

maybe someone will come along and tighten it up one day you never know

[sly sedge]

Almost certainly. Just a matter of time, skill, and desire.

I remember years ago the ao486 core languished in a pretty poor state. Then all of a sudden, seemingly out of nowhere, there was a surge of interest. Then, one update after another for several weeks/months in a row, with it seeing massive improvements.

That's just how it happens sometimes.

[spring gate]

Seems we have gone off topic, when Slamy is requesting some help testing new CDi build...

[strange crater]

There are multiple different revisions of Alien Gate with slightly tweaked game code. I’ll test each and report back.

I’ve encountered these initialization bugs, but never with Alien Gate. Used to get this often with Accelerator, but I haven’t tested it with the new core yet.

[spring gate]

I think these potentially dud dumps can screw with things if you need a good way to try break the core, I have seen some loading weirdness but not dug into how it happened exactly

[strange crater]

No, my copy of Accelerator’s running in the new core. Hmm…

Oh, awesome - Alien Gate has title music now. That was missing in previous cores

[stiff flare]

Great call-out!

I think I was able to play Plunderball for the first time with yesterday’s update!

[strange crater]

Dimo’s Quest is running now, too - with SFX thanks to the DVC RAM. All in all, some pretty excellent progress for the Vision Factory titles.

[terse flare]

I sometimes wonder why these games require more RAM than others. Do they have so many graphical assets to store?

[strange crater]

Not sure. Managing audio tracks on the CD-i seems like it was a real challenge for developers, though - a music-only mode without sound effects appears to have been a pretty regular compromise.

[spring gate]

Anyone looked at the Homebrew titles? Not many, but when they were last tested many months back a number weren't even booting

[hot wave]

Has anyone tested the CD-z?

[spring gate]

What is that "CD-z"?

[hot wave]

CDEEZ NUTS

gottem

[strange crater]

I’ll run through them today.

[spring gate]

Definitely seems the TOC pains Slamy went through were worth it, a lot of things seem to now be working or working better

[strange crater]

Yeah, basically all of the shell crashes I encountered on the testing sheet appear to have been fixed. The only titles I’ve encountered so far that aren’t getting in-game are Earth Command & Burn:Cycle.

[spring gate]

Those weird dumps we found haven't started booting based on my quick check yesterday, so still no idea what the deal is with those.

[strange crater]

My guess would be those Photo CDs are bad dumps, either improperly extracted or corrupted. I wouldn’t worry about those for the time being.

[spring gate]

Yeah, is a shame as there are a tonne in there, what a waste if he went to all that effort and his process wasn't sound so are all worthless

[terse flare]

When something is not working, it is always important to check on other emulators and maybe a real CD-i to compare with. This way we should find out whether the dump is bad or the emulation is faulty.

[spring gate]

Yeah, this isn't something you should worry about, definitely need confirmation elsewhere and all indicators are they are just bad dumps

[lavish crow]

Bad dumps? Aren't we all testing redumps? Forgive my ignorance, but I thought redumps were of the highest calibur of dumps

[spring gate]

Redumps are all great

[strange crater]

Yep, we’re talking about a non-Redump source for some Photo CDs

[spring gate]

Elphive and I came across a load of Photo CDs in a collection of over 8000 old CD ROMs someone had uploaded to archive, but none of them work

[shy bramble]

Not to be that guy, but is there a link on how to get this going? I was looking through the GitHub for the CD-i and I don't see the RBF. Do I need to compile this myself to get it going?

[errant island]

See the pins here.

[shy bramble]

I apologize I am not that familiar with Discord. I will look for the option to review pinned info. Thanks!

[errant island]

There are the core compiled from today and some FAQs on how to use the core.

[shy bramble]

I found the pinned, I see the info. I appreciate your help @errant island

[shy bramble]

@errant island thanks again. After some trial and error I got it working. The games are just as terrible as I remember demoing them at Montgomery Wards haha

[errant surge]

Alien Gate is now working.

Apologies but I had been previously been using the latest unstable Mister Main as pulled down via script as I thought that was close enough. Using your provided CDi Mister Main seems to have fixed things. Alien Gate works both on the latest CDi core and also the CDi defensive core your provided.

[terse flare]

Cool. Thx for testing. The defensive method should be the definitive now. Because for some reason, asking for CD data without a disc actually seems to cause problems in Main. It makes the problem 100% reproducible if you load a game once without selecting a disc. Even resetting doesn't help. With the new changes, the core will never ask Main for data before the image is mounted.
A PR to Sorg is created. If this goes in and no further bugs are found, this would be a good state for Main until we need something else again... like other subchannels....

[rugged panther]

How's this look

[strange crater]

Love it, but probably post that one in the 3DO thread

[rugged panther]

oh haha!

good idea lol

I'm lost

I was downloading the CD-i logo and forgot I had just done 3DO 😆

[spring gate]

If this is the best build, would it be worth renaming to today's date and we can use this for testing against?

[stiff flare]

We do need a CDi logo! 🙏

[rugged panther]

I'm working on it

[terse flare]

If you want you can call it CDi_20250118.rbf . As I've already plans for an update with low hanging fruits during sunday I don't think that this state of having no name or date to attach to will be long. Maybe I should get used to always put a date on it. On the other hand, it was just an idea. A not that bad one at that.

[stiff flare]

lol I’m playing Voyeur

Oh shit it starts off raunchy

LOL WTF

UHHH

time for another game!

[glacial herald]

I SWEAR I THOUGHT IT WAS A STAR TREK VOYAGER GAME!!

[dapper kettle]

I play (and enjoy) the apprentice for the first time😄. Thanks for the core @terse flare.

[stiff flare]

Is that a cool game?

[strange crater]

The Apprentice? Yeah, it’s a platformer for the system - one of the best titles on the CD-i.

[merry oyster]

Oh nice! I missed this update today. Will have to test it out tonight!

[merry oyster]

It also holds a terrible ||yet wonderful?|| secret!

[strange crater]

Fun fact - those Vision Factory games were programmed by one of the lead developers on the God of War franchise

[rugged panther]

Tell me more

[merry oyster]

If you want the real raunch, play The Apprentice! Rated E for everyone!

[hot wave]

you're fired

[strange crater]

https://youtu.be/JtT2BRFq7Nk

[rugged panther]

now this is educational software

[stiff flare]

I think I mixed it up with Merlin’s Apprentice lol

Wait a minute. Doesn’t the Apprentice use the DVC?

It doesn’t. I have no idea why I labeled it as using it lol

Interesting, Secret Mission has no audio.

Felix the Cat has audio issues, it’s weird. The narration and music randomly skips ahead.

[lavish crow]

It technically uses DVC as an enhanced feature. The DVC allows The Apprentice to play sound fx in addition to music, whereas w/out the DVC you have to choose either

I think Slamy mentioned that this was a ram issue that was fixed in an earlier post so I think we got both sfx and music

[stiff flare]

Woah cool! Thanks for the explanation.

Also, didn't know the CDi supported lightguns!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peacekeeper_Revolver

[sly sedge]

I wondered the same thing. I was surprised initially when I look in the 'No DVC' pack and see 'The Apprentice (DVC Enhanced)'.
Umm... 🤨 😄

[spring gate]

What will be interesting to see, when Slamy comes to it, is how many DVC games are just looking for the extra ram and that extra ram is added to the core.

[strange crater]

Most DVC titles use the MPEG1 functionality, like Thunder in Paradise, Braindead 13, the ALG titles, Lost Eden, Dragon’s Lair, etc.

[strange crater]

DVC Enhanced means that a title has additional functionality unlocked with the DVC, but the disc is still playable without one.

[sly sedge]

I understand now. It just seemed funny at the time. Thanks for the explanation.

[stiff flare]

@spring gate https://cdrom.ca/games/2023/01/02/photocd.html

[spring gate]

Oh nice, will give this a read through

[south urchin]

huh, it was an IR tracking gun

[shy bramble]

Holy smokes Micro Machines has a killer sound track... Giving me TG16 Lords of Thunder vibes.

[hot wave]

PHILIPS on the gun barrel is awesome

[south urchin]

trigger, aka the action button

[hot wave]

you got an itchy action finger?

[strange crater]

Right? Track 2 is probably my favorite:

https://youtu.be/kd4BT4gQSV0

[hot wave]

dang

[south urchin]

and eagle vision
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8T5u5sM_AY

[hot wave]

ᵖᵘˡˡ

it's amazing that duck hunt appears to be the superior game having come out 10 years prior

[stiff flare]

I might prefer it over the NES version because the game is slower and all the cars are easier to control lol

[strange crater]

Fun fact - Nintendo actually violated Philips's patent for this when designing the Wiimote, and Philips successfully sued them for it for an undisclosed settlement.

[stiff flare]

hahaha didn’t know that

[south urchin]

nothing but an overclocked gamecube with a cd-i controller

[strange crater]

Going through the CD-i testing sheet for Homebrew titles now.

Here's a notable one - compared it with original hardware, and Plunderball is running significantly too fast.

[stiff flare]

Oh good, I thought it was way too fast but wasn’t sure

[strange crater]

Frog Feast, Go, and Nobelia all seem to look, sound, and play correct, though I need to test more of Nobelia to verify if it’s completable to the end. Space Ranger has a visual issue that makes half the screen a brown gradient, rendering it unplayable.

[strange crater]

The public domain title Super Quartet appears to be a bad disc image in the set. I'll make sure that file gets updated - in the meantime, the mirror from the original World of CD-i post for it on Archive works fine on the core.

[terse flare]

It is added to the core. It was one of the features of the 20250117 release. #1103404843512631357 message
This is why The Apprentice now has the SFX available if you choose so in the menu

[terse flare]

HPS IO: Only request data if image is mounted
        Seems to fix unresponsive CD reading after failing once (Required core reload before)
MCD212: Fixed CLUT4 with RLE
        RLE reduces available CLUT4 index bits to 3. Bit 3 is forced to be 0.
        Fixes graphics of "The Flowers of Robert Mapplethorpe"
MCD212: ICA/DCA1 always writes CLUT Bank 2 and 3
        Fixes corrupted colors and transparency in Zenith

It should be noted that Zenith still has graphical issues during the intro. The gameplay seems to be fine though with this fix. Also, the game is really addictive. I recommend playing with the mouse.
Concerning the unresponsive CD reading, this is still not the end. For some reason, sometimes the CD-i just resets and I need to press play again. The title seems to load only on the second try. The only difference to before is that the core is not hanging when that happens.

Concerning resets, no one has probably noticed it: In the debug options, there is "No reset on NvRAM change" for quite some time now. Enabling that will result into performing no resets on CD image change. I thought it would be necessary to do that as we are changing the NvRAM contents while the machine is running. Just from testing, it seems that this is not problematic at all. I can't guarantee that there are hidden problems with this though.

[valid onyx]

I had noticed the option, but had no clues as to what it would do, so I didnt dare touch it 🙂

And I believed you previously mentioned that changing the CD whilst another game is running always required the core to be reset, as otherwise, it'd just try to continue reading the data, not aware it was now a different disk; so are you now saying we do NOT need to reset it anymore after swapping disk while another one is running?

Also, completely unrelated, on some of the VERY old cores, one of the first few you released, I had 1 silly disk ('Diamant Frituurtest', a disk I think with instructions on how to use the brand 'Diamant' deep fry oil) load a bit and show some stuff, allowed for some menu interaction, but somewhere along the lines that broke, and it never worked again; is it worthwhile for me to dig up which version still worked? Or is this more something for the far distant future to possibly investigate?

( I tried it due to the sillyness of it, and that it was pretty small, IIRC)

[terse flare]

Ahh, ok, I should be more verbose. Changing the disc on a real machine is not possible without the OS noticing that as the tray has to be opened. If you do so anyway in the core, the software will probably crash but who cares I guess. The reason for the automatic reset was something different. A real CD-i has the NvRAM for savegames. There is only one but according to the MiSTer philosophy, a new NvRAM shall be created for every inserted image. Just changing the NvRAM during operation is not possible on a real machine. I was afraid this might corrupt the data so the reset was introduced. Whenever you load a new CD, the NvRAM is getting replaced as well. Always consider that.

[terse flare]

The title works just fine... Please try it again. "Hoe wordt uw friteuse of bakwand verwarmd?"

[valid onyx]

Huh, I'll give it another go in a second!

[valid onyx]

K, so if I understand correctly:

• swapping a CD in the core itself does not auto reset the CDi
• swapping a CD changes the NvRam
• the flag in the debug menu controls when nvram is changed (which only happens when swapping the CD), the core is reset?
• So the debug flag in an indirect way controls resetting the core on CD swap?

Also, don't feel like you need to explain this thing to me 🙂 I was just wondering which part my brain failed to understand. Don't want to stand in the way of core development 🙂

[terse flare]

You got it exactly right.

[valid onyx]

But if I need to reset the core anyway when I swap the image - I'd say that this behavior is desired, even though the implementation (because of the reason of the reset) might be... unconventional or indirect?

[terse flare]

You are totally right... the more I think about it... I think the reason I choose to not reset the core is because the machine needs to be reset at least once after it was loaded. Hmm... It might be possible to only reset it after unloading a disc... On the other hand, that is exactly what a real machine would do. I think I'm looking too much through the developers eyes. I like avoiding some resets. But yes, you have to reset the core after changing from one disc to the next.

[valid onyx]

But indeed, it might be nicer on unmount, rather than mount - that way, you save a reset the first time you mount a disk

(I always forget to first reset, then pick new disk, I always pick a new disk and then am sometimes faced with a hanging mister as the result of it :))

[valid onyx]

It was indeed user error; at some point I removed this from my USB, and instead uploaded it to the sd card, but had never noticed my upload failed halfway though. Sigh. Sorry for wasting your time!

[harsh ember]

Is Burn Cycle playable at the moment?

[valid onyx]

It was reported yesterday that it doesn't get in-game yet, nor did Earth Command

[stiff flare]

I checked out a bunch of games, multimedia, and photo CDs last night on the core. Pretty cool stuff.

[arctic lily]

this core is so cool

i played Hotel Mario for the first time last night

the music is kind of a bop sometimes...

i kept thinking, damn, nintendo let this happen. they took that bag and were like, whatever sure yeah you can make a mario game about him murdering all his unruly hotel guests

the one that really jazzed me up was CD-i Tetris, that soundtrack is an actual stunner

immediate vibes

pretty much everything i booted up was delightful in that inimitable 90's multimedia way

[valid onyx]

The Apprentice is not a really forgiving platformer 🙂 It's pretty, but.. hard. Also, Slamy, I finally put on a headphone, and yeah, it's odd to hear just music in 1 ear and SFX in the other 🙂

[stiff flare]

Zenith is working great, thanks!

Ok someone is going to have to explain to me The Flowers of Robert Mapplethorpe, because I don’t get it.

[spring gate]

The CDi version or the Photo CD version? Photo CD is just a slideshow of some of his photographs

I haven't looked at the CDi version but I imagine it is ostensibly the same

I can't imagine they threw in any mini games

Although that would be amusing

[stiff flare]

Oh, I just thought it was a Photo CD, that’s what I’m checking out.

I mean they’re very nice photos of flowers.

But how is it a meme lol

[spring gate]

You know who Mapplethorpe was?

[stiff flare]

Nope

[spring gate]

Ah OK

[stiff flare]

I’ll look it up!

[spring gate]

He was a very famous and influential photographer, worth giving his wiki a read

[stiff flare]

https://tenor.com/view/ron-burgundy-escalated-quickly-gif-9744555

[spring gate]

I think it is a meme, because the title is quite bizarre and pompous sounding for a disc on what people wrongly assume is a games console, and not a multimedia machine. Then Angry Video Game Nerd did a video on it I think

[stiff flare]

Ohhhhh AVGN, ok that explains it

[spring gate]

Yeah, there is also the fact he was heavily involved in the the gay BDSM scene, so having a collection of his pictures of flowers is not what he is known for

He was close to the New York music scene from the late 60s onwards, he was Patti Smith's partner in the late 60s/early 70s. I guess a way to think of him is like the Photographer equivalent of Lou Reed.

[stiff flare]

and this is the photo cd of his art they decide to go with? lol

[wide swan]

Robby RN:

https://tenor.com/view/hercules-kevin-sorbo-disappointed-mad-sad-gif-19756349

[stiff flare]

omg there a a full blown visual novel on a photo cd called Mars Blade

Wait no, adventure game

Wow

The CDi feels like a games console they would have on Star Trek TNG. It’s got multimedia discs covering all sorts of topics and like really weird ports of arcade games with high res graphics.

“Computer, show me the flowers of Robert mapplethorpe. Engage.”

I have Earth Rhythms running in the background with the Earth Sounds menu option selected. It’s just jungle ambiance with random bird sounds and insect hums.

This core kicks ass lol

[south urchin]

Still probably going to go with PS, but I read most of the PSX thread from the start and don't recall the marketability of photo cds of flowers vs BDSM being raised once.
+1 CD-i

[wide swan]

Computer returns image from his BDSM gallery:

https://tenor.com/view/yikes-cringe-fake-smile-gif-14838421114574087139

Everyone one else on the bridge watching the big screen

[rugged panther]

How the heck am I gonna make this look like MiSTer FPGA

I can put MiSTer Kun in the upper left and replace PANASONIC with MISTER, but CD>i is gonna be weird to turn into FPGA lol

FPG>a? lol

[stiff flare]

Yes

Or it could be

MiSTer

BDS▶️M

[wintry dust]

Robby hoping for a different Mapplethorpe photo-cd

[modern mirage]

He has the Coffee Table book. Did cause some concern when his relatives come to visit

[ember granite]

The real deal 😎

Only one connector for the controller port

Imagine this working on SNAC 😎

[terse flare]

The AVGN videos about the CD-i ultimately motivated me to buy a player when the episodes came out back then. I don't even know anymore why I investigated into this direction to fix the graphical issues of this disc. Someone has observed this and I had put it on my TODO list to look into and the fix was also rather small.

[terse flare]

The original composer has uploaded the original high quality recordings https://soundcloud.com/user-391016128/sets/phillips-cdi

[stiff flare]

Great call, having the meme games up and running so well is an awesome showing for the core!

This core has become one of my favorites because of just how unique it is.

[terse flare]

If only they would be running well. Every "meme game" has some sort of issues.

[stiff flare]

Not sure this helps, but as someone who's clueless about the CDi, either those issues aren't extremely apparent or I just assume it's part of the hardware.

Obviously core isn't perfect, but dude I can enjoy a huge chunk of the library and it's genuinely amazing.

[modern mirage]

I fixed your typing above you could just write "but as someone who's clueless" !

[stiff flare]

Thank you, I'd knew you'd have my back. 😂

[terse flare]

This is a general fear of myself about emulation. If it is not accurate, the real thing might get lost as no one knows how it really was. It's similar to motion clarity we had with CRTs. It seems no one really remembers how good it was.

[stiff flare]

That is absolutely true, you even see it here too. I'd consider anyone who buys a MiSTer and joins this Discord to be pretty hardcore about retro gaming and yet you still see users report bugs in cores that are actually how the original hardware performed. Hell, I'm sure I've done that once or twice myself!

So you're doing the wider retro gaming community an absolutely monumental service. By making sure this core is as accurate as can be so people understand and can enjoy how these games behaved as closely as possible without having original hardware.

Also, sorry @terse flare if I'm inundating you with constant praise. This core really has brought me and my youngest a lot of joy. All those fun kids games on the CD-i core are simply fantastic for my kid.

[spring gate]

It is amazing to see the core at such an advanced state, that Todo list must be getting shorter and moving to smaller issues and bug fixes now rather than a load of massive core system feature implementations 🙂

[terse flare]

The TODO list is actually not getting shorter. It's just more bugs and less features. 😄

[stiff flare]

Yooo, thanks for hyping up Photo CDs. What an absolute marvel of dead end technology.

I hope that didn't sounds dismissive. I meant it as a compliment.

[spring gate]

It has been a fun trip for me, and still more exploring to do.

[stiff flare]

I totally get it now. Like as a novelty it's pretty neat. But you can leave that on in the background and it's a cool screensaver for your living room.

[spring gate]

It would be great if it were possible for the core to save when you turn on the high Def flag, as seeing these discs in good quality and not low Res would be a much better experience. It isn't viable to do this manually for every picture, and isn't possible when it is a carousel

There is some great music in some of them as well, they are fun to stick on while doing something on the other screen and have them play in the background, for sure

[stiff flare]

There's a high-def flag? Woah, how is that accessed?

[spring gate]

You see the red square when you bring up the OSD menu? Click that and you get extra options

There is a high Def tick box, ticking it will reload the image in much better quality.

However you can wind up freezing discs after doing it on some, and it reverts back to being turned off when you can load the next image

Haven't been able to check today's build, sounds like the few corrupt images we were seeing on a few discs may also be fine now (assuming the Mapplethorpe fix also fixes those)

[spring gate]

Mapplethorpe playing well, looks nice now, also has some music

[spring gate]

It's an interesting format this one, different from others. I doesn't have the OSD menu and seems the pictures are only available in one size/resolution, but it's better than the default on other discs (if not as good as high res). The music cuts out after the first image and hasn't ever come back for me (not sure if like that on real hardware). Stranglely pressing the ? button on the menu doesn't do anything, and disc just becomes unresponsive for a bit.

Going through the Program Credits there are a load of classical music tracks listed, so I think something is up with the sound in this one as I never heard anything after the first track stopped

Good news, is the graphical fix for Mapplethorpe seems to have also fixed the discs where it would flash up fine for a split second and graphics corrupt as seen on:
100 Obras Maestras de la Pintura (Spain) (Disc 2)
Associated Press Present, The - Photo Journalism - The Best of 1992 (Europe)
Autosport Magazine Presents Grand Prix Special (UK)
Bill Brandt - The Picture Post Years 1938-51 (Europe)
Film-Legenden (Germany)

Hmm, interesting sound issue on Autosport Magazine Presents Grand Prix Special (UK). If you select to play the 1950s history then you get a commentary going through the history, however for some clips when it moves on to the next one before playing the next audio clip it plays the last word from the previous clip

[spring gate]

Anyone looking for a disc with nice dreamy images and ambient synth music, God Streams is a winner 🙂

Also this disc explicitly states this in the info menu

[terse flare]

Something similar happens with Dark Chaser. I don't yet know the cause of this. This might be related to the pause subchannel but I'm not sure.
Also, concerning resolution of Mapplethorpe, there are different ones available. Go to Cataologue, press the Zoom glass and then maybe press an image. It will ask you to place the zoom area. For some reason, some Photo CDs are producing weird horizontal lines. I'm also not yet sure about that.

[spring gate]

If you want a nice, relazing, early 90s experience then definitely give God Streams a look 🙂

[terse flare]

You seem to be really into this. I'll recommend the invest into a physical CD-i player for an accurate experience.

[spring gate]

I can play them on PC-FX, but it does seem CDi's Photo CD Player is better

Looking now, and CDi players gone up even more in UK, you are looking at £200-£300 now for an OK one :-(.

[rugged panther]

🤷‍♂️

[modern mirage]

you keep spelling Frog wrong

[deft talon]

This one is my pick .. but both look good

[rugged panther]

I'll make both available with the background and without

[deft talon]

That’s ideal!

[little light]

Is it [CDi] or [CD-i] when adding this line to the Mister.ini?

[terse flare]

I have it like this but sometimes it really confuses me as I just replace the MiSTer Main

[CD-i]
main=MiSTer_CDi

There was a discussion about this a time ago as not everyone of the MiSTer prime ministers seems to be happy about having multiple MiSTer binaries. It was in the pins before but had to be removed due to that.

This whole issue will be automatically solved in 2-3 days probably. Sorg has accepted my PR. This means that all current changes to the MiSTer binary are now mainline.

[spring gate]

Anyone any idea what this says?

You get it when loading Ozaki Yutaka - Eyes - Hakushi no Sanran Yori (Japan) Photo CD, and can't progress

Only one I have had this issue with

[errant island]

Reproduction of the photos prohibited and only for private use.

It's a general warning, not an issue one.

[spring gate]

Thanks for confirming, I thought it may be that

Weird this one seems stuck on that screen. If someone else is able to give it a go I would appreciate it, maybe I am missing something

[shut flint]

I thought it was based on the core’s filename, so I did [CDi], but it sounds like maybe it’ll work the other way too based on what @terse flare said. I actually haven’t tested it on my setup yet

Edit: Ok, just tested and it looks like it does have to be CD-i because the directory name also needs to be that. I was confused since the rbf filename is just CDi

[formal frost]

Solar Crusade (the last CD-i game released) doesn't seem to work on this core yet (Doesn't boot).

[lunar nexus]

At a rough guess requires the Video addon?

[spring gate]

Shouldn't, no Photo CD should require DVC to run, isn't part of the spec

[stiff flare]

It requires the Digital Video Cartridge (DVC) and at the moment the core doesn’t support that.

Check this site for a list of games that require the DVC and therefore won’t work on the core - https://www.theworldofcdi.com/cd-i_encyclopedia/dvc-required/

[modern mirage]

if only there was a handheld device with a google translate app that lets you point as text with a camera and translates

[stiff flare]

** 𝐓𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐒𝐡𝐞𝐞𝐭 **

Spreadsheet - [LINK]

(thanks to @spring gate for this invaluable community resource; reach out to him if you’d like to contribute)

[spring gate]

I thought it was called Lens and looked to find it and wasn't there, have downloaded Google translate so can try that going forward

[stiff flare]

DeepL is also pretty good if you want a non-Google alternative

[spring gate]

So, anyone tried out loading Ozaki Yutaka - Eyes - Hakushi no Sanran Yori (Japan) Photo CD? Any joy getting past this screen?

[shy bramble]

Change the all caps PHILLIPS in to MiSTer in the same font and color? You have the Phillips logo to the left of it.

[rugged panther]

Not any more I don't

[rugged panther]

#1103404843512631357 message

[stiff flare]

Dimo’s Quest is a cool little Chip’s Challenge type game

[open bramble]

Anyone tested the obscure Axis & Allies exclusive for this console yet?

[spring gate]

Have you checked the testing sheet? Is pinned here

[stiff flare]

Yeah it needs more prominence, one second

[open bramble]

Found it, yup appears to be finishable too.

[fair linden]

i do wonder if we need a deeper look at some of those "required" games, as at least Effacer and Rise of the Robots actually work without the DVC

but there's a good chance those are the only outliers in that list

[stiff flare]

Probably due to the support implemented for the Apprentice to get music and audio working at the same time

I’m going through all my DVC labeled games now to see if anything else pops up

lol the Lost Ride lets you play a little jigsaw puzzle game of the DVC Required message

None of my DVC games worked but the Gnome multimedia disc did

[strange crater]

World of CD-i had a few errors with DVC-required titles. Gnomes & Effacer don’t say anywhere on the package that they require it, and are included in my No-DVC set.

[stiff flare]

Oh! Thanks for clearing that up.

[strange crater]

Rise of the Robots says on the back of the jewel case that it requires the DVC, but I’ve heard mixed things on that front - it may be optional, according to certain sources online.
I haven’t tested it myself on real hardware, but it didn't load correctly under emulation - it would get to the main menu, but no buttons would appear, making it impossible to progress.

[karmic bramble]

Played some Hotel Mario, Jank fun.

[strange crater]

Looks like it runs on the current MiSTer core, so the menu bug is likely a MAME issue. Runs way too fast, though.

[spring gate]

Maybe running since Slamy added in the extra ram that the DVC offers?

[strange crater]

Could be. I'll copy over the DVC category and re-check each entry, though.

I do know at least one other entry - Labryinth of Crete - claimed to need the DVC on its case but didn't actually utilize it. So it is possible Philips simply mislabeled it.

[rugged panther]

And nothing of value was lost

[stiff flare]

Thanks for doing so much research and clearing up these confusions. You’re awesome.

[spring gate]

Would be great if more began to run because of the extra ram. Wonder if we will need a new pack for these

[tawny kestrel]

Is the game "The Apprentice" still unsupported? It throws me back to Philips main screen after try to start it. Redump version.

[spring gate]

Should be working pretty well, are other games known to work loading OK?

[tawny kestrel]

They do

[spring gate]

You got the latest core and latest bespoke main?

[tawny kestrel]

Is there still a seperate main. Thought CDI support was added in the main around christmas

[terse flare]

The Apprentice requires CDDA which was not around Christmas if I remember that correctly. Also, is this game the US version or Europe?

[tawny kestrel]

Tried both

[spring gate]

No, you will need the most recent one Slamy posted here

[terse flare]

The first version which worked at all was the USA version as CHD. Everything else only works with the newest Main in this thread.

[spring gate]

Official Main or even latest unstable main will not give you everything you need, you need the one posted in this channel

[terse flare]

Within this week I would expect that the latest unstable Main contains the necessary changes.

[spring gate]

Get the latest bespoke Main here:
#1103404843512631357 message

Latest core if here:
#1103404843512631357 message

[tawny kestrel]

Yep, now it works fine. Played it a bit. Seems like a nice platformer.

[strange crater]

Added Rise of the Robots (Europe) and Rise of the Robots (Europe) (Alt) to the testing sheet, along with the results I got from them in the current core. (Honestly, I think they were just mislabeled on the package as needing the DVC - I haven't seen any difference with them running on DVC or non-DVC hardware.)

[opal mural]

Hi guys, just got this brand new controller from USA!

[valid cairn]

Looks great 👍

[molten elk]

Are you able to run last core with last mister main?

[gray badge]

yes, but it won't play The Apprentice (and something else?) without the bespoke main

[rough sable]

@opal mural - Does it work with Mister?

[gray badge]

It do. @stiff flare has one too. It’s awful

[strange crater]

I also have one, and can confirm that it’s awful.

[stiff flare]

Yeah it’s awesome, it’s so bad.

[strange crater]

https://tenor.com/view/the-wizard-lucas-the-wizard-lucas-power-glove-nes-power-glove-power-glove-nintendo-gif-8941764928314157831

[wild crag]

I am so happy I got the WIP core working with all four Nintendo games

[shut flint]

Looks like the ideal controller for the MiSTer menu/OSD 😎

[gleaming echo]

Happy CD-i Friday all

[valid cairn]

CD-

https://tenor.com/view/johnny-depp-pirate-pirate-salute-salute-intergalactic-pirates-of-the-caribbean-gif-13418067761850108708

[terse flare]

Something with the unstable builds of MiSTer Main went wrong. The build from yesterday should also contain the changes required for the CD-i core. It's not mentioned though. This means that right now, no special MiSTer binary is required.^^

[terse flare]

Here some candy to celebrate CD-Friday. It's only 3 lines of code changed but has a certain impact. Like a virus shot into your brain.

CDIC: Fixed sample rate change during playback
      Fixes bootup of Burn Cycle

I have not performed much regression testing with this yet.

[gray badge]

Oh shit

burn cycle?

the day has been booked

[terse flare]

Please don't play the game with headphones. It switches between Mono and Stereo very often and this might be irritating especially for the left ear. Fixing this "Attenuation" problem is the next thing I'm working on. It will take some time though. I've also only tested the german version.

[gray badge]

I play things out of a anker portable speaker as the developers intended

[spring gate]

Great work Slamy

Anyone testing, there is a beta/proto of Burn Cycle in the no DV pack as well that would be worth checking

[gray badge]

Now this is podracing

[spring gate]

Wizard!

[opal mural]

@terse flare today I've tried your core after 1 month, with my brand new CD I Limited Run Controller: it was a great pleasure to me to play Zelda or to listen classical music with interactive Cds after 1 week of hard work at the office. So: THANK YOU. Take all the time you need to continue your work that even today is magnificent!

[strange crater]

Oh, awesome!

No joke when I say that Burn:Cycle is up there as one of my favorite games of all time - it just nails that Blade Runner vibe in a way so many other titles fail at. Will be giving this a full playthrough later tonight.

[trim oyster]

I turned around on the first screen and got an instant game over ❤️. 10/10, goty.

[strange crater]

Yeah, that entire opening sequence is brutal on your first playthrough lol. I’d say treat it like a Sierra game - save early, save often.

[gray badge]

i remember sinking hours into that game on PC

two discs

[strange crater]

Thankfully, it wasn’t a “swap-disc” kind of game, though. The second disc just contained the soundtrack.

[gray badge]

oh right right

and it was a good soundtrack iirc

[strange crater]

It does seem a bit unstable. I’ve had a few crashes already, one in the intro cards during the Club D’Investissement Multimedia card I couldn’t reproduce, four during the Psychic Roulette sequence (with one more short hang that eventually unfroze itself), and another immediately following with the cutscene with Ascii.

Thankfully, you can save anywhere with minimal menuing. It’s a good title for testing.

Slight visual glitch on the scene with Gala knocking out the SofTech guard, with a crash shortly after. Thankfully, I saved right before this - I’ll see if I can get past this cutscene by skipping it.

Nope, immediate crash trying to load that save. Let me try approaching the scene again from a previous save.

Hmm - it looks like whatever occurred, it persisted until I rebooted the core. Wouldn’t let me load any saves until I did, but then the save loaded up fine.

Was able to get past that section, including the codecracking, safe & escape puzzles. Moving on to the laser puzzle.

Got a crash exiting from the laser puzzle screen (going back after inserting the replacement component in your vehicle from Zip).

[spring gate]

Looks like this is an interesting game, will need to check it out.

I wonder if this is going to get any other no boot titles booting up now.

[stiff flare]

I never played Burn Cycle

[south urchin]

did cd-i have an analog controller?

the cursor in burn cycle has variable speed in the core when using left analog stick

[spring gate]

There was this thing

[south urchin]

huh, i just assumed it was like those old atari pads that had a stick in the dpad

[spring gate]

It may well be

I don't know the hardware

[south urchin]

makes two of us 🙂

[spring gate]

Would be quite funny if they just stuck a crude stick on top of the d-pad, but it was the early 90s, so they probably did do that...

[sly sedge]

Gee... that looks familiar. 😉

[south urchin]

This was my first console (not my pic) https://content.invisioncic.com/r322239/gallery/album_1750/gallery_48086_1750_4590955.jpg
it served to make it less comfortable to play with both with the stick and without due to the screw hole

hahaha

identical

[sly sedge]

Even down to the nipples!

[strange crater]

Burn:Cycle is completable!

[rough sable]

I think all pc kids from the 90s had a gravis pad

[sly sedge]

Most likely.

[stiff flare]

I definitely did

[south urchin]

https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/647909398072655907/964812115229671444/IMG20220416165712.jpg?ex=6795508d&is=6793ff0d&hm=372c6452aa36465fab365a0996193811019ae20363eae215e40b45633a07d928&=&format=webp&width=1059&height=792 The only good 90s PC controller

[wild crag]

Flowers of Robert Mapplethorpe runs good on the WIP core

[south urchin]

Robby tested that one thoroughly

[wild crag]

nice

Also got Super Mario Wacky Worlds going on it too

I assume it is normal that music comes out one side and sound effects out the other? Or is that something needing to be fixed in the core?

[south urchin]

Slamy mentioned theres normally a mixer at the end that isnt implemented currently

[wild crag]

ah ok

thanks

I am so excited that the CDi on MiSTer is a thing now

[south urchin]

#1103404843512631357 message

[wild crag]

Saves me money buying a whole game console that probably wouldn't work

[wild crag]

sweet

[south urchin]

great to have a new library ive never seen before to try out 🙂

and interesting tech updates to go with it

[wild crag]

I was mostly excited to play the bad Nintendo games that Nintendo does not want to acknowledge

Still, I don't have to shell out a few hundred for the Mario and Zelda CDi discs

AVGN spent over 180 USD for Zelda's Adventure

jesus christ

[south urchin]

insane

[wild crag]

IKR

[south urchin]

disc rot will come for $2k cds too

[wild crag]

again, thank god for fans preserving game dumps

and thanks to Slamy for making a hardware accurate core of CDi, and I am sure alot of the OG CDi hardware is close to being dead

@terse flare Just wanna say, keep up the good work, I believe in you 👍

[terse flare]

Thank you for completing the game on the core. The random crashes are a little bit sad. Seemingly stochastic problems are the worst to debug. The best case is always having a save file and a consistent crash. Even a 10% chance to crash is most of the time good enough.
So, If you experience crashes that can be easly reproduced by collecting the save file and sending that to me, don't hesitate to do that. Every thread with a possible bug fix at the end is worth collecting.

[terse flare]

The biggest problem is probably the laser. Maybe we will have some optical drive emulator some day to install into these machines. The rest is silicon and should survive for many years to come. 🙂

[terse flare]

You can also play Burn Cycle with the mouse. The core does support that. I especially recommend playing Zenith with the mouse. Otherwise it's rather difficult and frustrating.

[ancient wasp]

Fixel, the creator of the 3DO ODE, is rumored to have CD-i ODEs for sale when his website reopens in about a week.

https://3do.dev/

[rough sable]

^^ I have his ODE, it is awesome. Curious if the CD-i one will be external as well.

[stiff flare]

So I never knew Burn Cycle was an adventure game. Everyone calling it FMV and I thought it was some bullshit like Night Trap or Sewer Shark.

Considering the hardware limitation’s it’s really good. That’s not a backhanded compliment, I think it’s fun and impressed as hell it’s on the CD-I.

Damn; I really wish the CD-I had more games like that. It’s a perfect fit for the system’s capabilities.

Also video looks really good on this system. Like much better than any FMV on the PS1.

[gleaming echo]

I just tested it out, is a pretty fun game

[spring gate]

Be worth checking more no boot games, just fired up the core while doing some work and Accelerator (Europe) is booting now, currently running the demo mode and looks good (top down driving game)

At this stage it's likely most evertything is working now (to some degree anyway)

Great soundtrack on this one, dark early 90s acid-house stuff, ambient techno stuff, with some ominous vocal samples "don't go on", "gonna die any minute"

Is it easy/possible to rip the music tracks from a CDi game? I really want a copy of this score

Dimo's Quest (Europe) also booting in now, this game and Accelorator have The Vision Factory splash screen at start, so likely all their games are booting fine now

Steel Machine (Europe) another Vision Factory game working now

Is a basic shooter, for fans of that genre. Banging music again, CDi had some great scores

[spring gate]

Have tested the USA and Europe no boots and seems everything on those that wasn't booting before is now playable

Be good to go through the ones that had issues before and recheck those, I suspect we are down to minor issues on all the games now

I didn't update sheet for entries of Apprentice. If people who know more about outstanding issues on that game can that would be good

One thing to check, is this corruption on the International Tennis Open menu?

Icons look weird

Although same deal in this video, so maybe just weird design choice

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUELYHjehk8

[glacial sonnet]

But right now AFAIK the biggest problem is the timekeeper's internal battery, although it's fixable if you're handy

The CD-i is a mess anyway and this core is a blessing

We just need an active homebrew scene now ...lol

[spring gate]

Yeah, seems you can now remove the internal (likely dead) battery and replace with a coin batter slot which is a much nicer solution, as can easily be replaced in the future. Seems like something worth doing if you have original hardware, last thing you want is dead battery leaking everywhere

I had a play of some of the Enhanced Music CDs, ones I checked are all booting now. SImple ones seem to be fine, but more advanced seem buggy

[strange crater]

Sure! Where are game saves stored?

I have one spot with a crash that I can very easily replicate. It’s the Psychic Roulette minigame.

Ah - found it:

Should be right after the save labeled "PSYR".

Drag the card from your inventory into the machine in front of you, then remove it to start the game. Select yes or no (I've had crashes on this animation, too, but it's not the most regular area for a crash).

Wait on the spinning images once it starts. The game should then eventually start freezing or crash.

[terse flare]

Thank you. I'm at least able to reproduce the issue on my MiSTer. It's interesting that the save file is compatible between the USA, Europe and the german version. I've also noticed something else. The background music sounds strange. (Edit: The loop is unclean). This is something one might need to check on the real machine. Luckily I have a save game transfer kit for my CD-i 😄

[valid onyx]

Oh Slamy, did you learn the things from the machine you ordered form the UK you were hoping to learn? Has it proven useful? Was this indeed what enabled you to get the CD reading fixed?

[copper ridge]

Wait, is Slamy working at the core again?

[shut flint]

@copper ridge yeah

I need to test more stuff on this core. So far I’ve only tried The Apprentice

[earnest spindle]

i freaking love my CDI, there is one zelda game the top down that actually reminded me of breath of the wild.. just dump in the game and a good luck. Also burning cycle was my fave! I always wanted to get that video expansion slot for my cdi so i could play the space age game, but my parents back then told me lol no. So i was stuck with the zelda game, lemmings (loved that game tho), burning cycle, an encyclopedia thing and some drawing colors game. Oh and rise of the robots

[rough sable]

I wish the CDI core worked on my QMTech 😦 Still can't get it to do anything.

[gray badge]

Did we already troubleshoot that, Rancid? I can’t remember

[rough sable]

Sorta. I mentioned it like 3 weekends ago and Slamy tried to help, I could get to the cd-i screen and when I tried to load a game it would go to the turquoise screen then back to the cd load screen. Now it just goes to a black screen and I see nothing with latest core.

[spring gate]

You need to have the latest core and unstable Main, and use redump images, check the test sheet to make sure it is a disc that is known to boot

[gray badge]

Install the unstable main and grab the latest RBF (you can delete any mister.ini cdi shenanigans). If it still doesn’t work, we will dig into it

I’m just sitting here rotating arcade game profiles on the tink

[rough sable]

so dont use the old mister.ini?

let me fire it up

This is it

Loading a game does nothing

[stiff flare]

Do you have a bios that matches these checksums?

#1103404843512631357 message

Wait the bios screen popped up for you so I guess you do

[rough sable]

Yeah so weird

Tried multiple chd files

[stiff flare]

And you tried bin/cue?

[rough sable]

On the old core I saw the magnaox screen

[stiff flare]

Could be your game dumps.

[gray badge]

I don’t see a bios there. You’re still getting a bios and whatnot, yeah?

[south urchin]

Make sure you have
-the latest unstable main
-removed the [cd-i] section from your MiSTer.ini
-boot0.rom and boot1.rom in /games/CD-i/. If using storage other than sd card, make sure those are in the /games/CD-i/ folder on the additional storage

[stiff flare]

Also double check if you have older versions of the core and delete those

[rough sable]

thx gimme few

[stiff flare]

Ok but you’re still on the clock

[rough sable]

was playhing halo lol

ini is good, got the latest core.. checking bios

alright replaced bios files, checking with latest core

well holy crap it worked, ty guys! best community 🙂

Squid Games 2 gonna have to wait now lol

[stiff flare]

That’s awesome to hear!

I hope you made lotsa spaghetti

[shut flint]

me too

[rough sable]

Reflex adapter+Saturn controller=Fun CD-i lol

[rugged panther]

ahem CD-Fri-day

[wild crag]

I was using the M30 on the Reflex Adapt

[strange crater]

About 100 titles left in my category sort for the 3DO. Should finish this up at some point tomorrow.

[terse flare]

The machine is very useful. I have shared most technical details on the CD-i discord here #797170542758068284 message
I think I can't share that much detail here as it would confuse too many peoples. The discussion there is really on the possibilities of every single bit and their potential. I'm actually abusing the machine a bit as I've replaced the ROM code with my own lunatic creations to manually drive the CDIC and check its responses to get a more accurate emulation from it. Before, I only had the existing emulators to learn its behavior. This is very important right now as I'm currently investigating an issue which I have stopped working on in November... Maybe I should still explain something and stay high level.

There is a pair of AD7528 in the analog audio path which do the audio mixing. Each one of them are responsible for attenuating the left and right output of the DAC with a factor and adding them together for the output of single channel. This is just some math so it can be understood. The multiplying factors of them are serially transfered to them from the slave controller. The CPU has 3 known commands. "Mute", "Unmute" and "Set Attenuation". Mute and Unmute are resulting into a slow fade of about 28ms which is performed automatically by the slave. "Mute" and "Unmute" are used frequently when starting or stopping audio. "Set Attenuation" is called very often by the applications itself for proper mixing. Some games like Kether even seem to use it to mute audio as the audio tracks are bilingual.
MAME doesn't implement anything of this. The emulation is as wrong as it is in the MiSTer core right now. cdiemu is high level emulating the slave as does MAME but at least emulated the attenuation to have some proper mixing. It ignores mute and unmute.
As the CD-i core actually recreates the slave by letting a 68HC05 execute the intended ROM code, I can't cheat.

My current issue to investigate is finding out why the CDIC driver code (or some unknown entity) is not sending an Unmute command to the Slave. This results into some games just being muted whenever the CDIC is instructed to play ADPCM automatically without CPU interference. This is an issue. I've therefore made two things:

1. Ditch the ROM code and write my own to stimulate and observe a real CDIC. For the interested reader, here you go: https://github.com/Slamy/Nobelia/blob/toc_reader/src/main.c#L72
2. Disassemble the existing driver with ghidra and find the culprit.

The disassembly lead to this drawing. It turns out that a Unmute operation is performed when certain "mysterious bits" are set. The expectations of the driver are not that far off from my replication. I therefore think I should be able to replicate that. But I'm not sure yet. It might take some days or weeks until it is running properly.

[valid onyx]

Thanks! I find this a fascinating read, and I really appreciate and am fascinated by your skills and dedication to this. Totally uncharted territories! And what you've made so far is already extremely mind blowing. Much appreciated.

[valid cairn]

Incredible work!

[bold bolt]

I have ‘all’ the games.

[rough sable]

Is The 7Th Guest on CD-i 1 or 2 discs, anyone know? I see pictures that says 2 discs but only see 1 for USA release for some reason.

[stiff flare]

Second disc is music

Two discs, one for game

[sly sedge]

2 discs, 1 game.

[rough sable]

thx all

was confused why redump showed only 1

[stiff flare]

Thunder in Paradise is another one, one of the discs is for a TV episode.

Be aware that the core currently does not support the DVC add-on, so any games that require it will not work. Here is a list of those games - https://www.theworldofcdi.com/cd-i_encyclopedia/dvc-required/

I’ll add that info to the pins

Done

[sly sedge]

Burn:Cycle was another (2nd disc for music).

[rough sable]

@stiff flare - yes sir, I have a real cd-i as well and was looking to get it out after enjoying the core last night to play it.

Will be awesome if they ever get the video addon to work one day

[stiff flare]

I’m positive it’ll happen, just need to get the console working great first.

[rough sable]

My CD-i either refuses to turn on half the time or the laser won't work properly and it skips. Needs a recap bad.

I'd say of all my real consoles it is the most finiky to actually want to work

[stiff flare]

Development on this core has been impressively fast. Speaks volumes about Slamy and both his passion for the CD-I and what a great programmer he is.

[rough sable]

I feel all the latest cores are that way, very talented dev group

[young grotto]

its nice to see a new wave of activity i thought things were tailing off after n64

[stiff flare]

MiSTer ain’t done until we get a Virtual Boy core lol

[rough sable]

Might not be the appropriate place to ask, but are there any more shader packs to download for the Mister is it what we have is what we are getting? The preset ones for each gen hardware is very impressive and reminds me of my JVC Crt, but there are a couple systems that could benefit from more choices.

[young grotto]

so you're saying it'll never be done?

[rough sable]

AvP on Jaguar with any preset shader looks terrible with the predator and unplayable

I have a real virtual boy, paid a ton of money to have it "fixed" to work, played it once, never touched it again lol.

[stiff flare]

Are you using the console generation presets?

[rough sable]

Yup, they are the best by far.

[young grotto]

hm sorry i'm not really one to ask about presets i basically always use one of the pvm ones

[rough sable]

It might be my oled and the settings of the tv but when you go into camo mode on the predator it is very hard to see b/c of the shader.

[young grotto]

too dark?

[stiff flare]

Thanks, I put those together. Sorry to hear they don’t look good for the Predator.

[rough sable]

No everything is very bright and blends in together (it applies a green filter to the screen).

Wow Robby, amazing work man

[young grotto]

hmmm

[rough sable]

You know I have a real CRT and they are very close man

[stiff flare]

Try the 4th gen preset

[rough sable]

It also made me not want to get a retro-tink 4k

[young grotto]

try a less adaptive scanline like er, 30/75 ish

[stiff flare]

Yeah that’s probably it, good call

[rough sable]

I'll play around with it, was just curious. I am a huge retroarch fan b/c of the shaders and they have spoiled me to a degree. 🙂

I'll fire it up now and see

[young grotto]

thats almost certainly fixable it sounds like you're getting some clipping basically from the scanline bloom

rt4k would fix it even easier too 😄

[rough sable]

I had every intention of getting one but Robby's presets are good enough for when I'm not on my CRT

[young grotto]

on the tv side disabling any sort of adaptive contrast or tone mapping may help too

possibly dropping contrast a bit too, depending whats going on

oh also gamma

on the mister

[rough sable]

ah didnt think of that

[young grotto]

if this core supports it

morph is also excellent i should say for balance - and much cheaper too

[rough sable]

I looked into the morph and had almost pre-ordered it when it first came out and couldn't decide between it and an OSCC Pro as an alt to the retrotink.

I hear the morph is coming along nicely

[young grotto]

its good they've got all the same key features at this point imo

at launch it was a bit barebones

[stiff flare]

I use a morph but for my Switch and GameCube. For transparency it was given to me as a gift.

[rough sable]

Does it have a good dev community behind it?

[young grotto]

i paid for mine fwiw, nobody sends me stuff that cool 😄

[gray badge]

It will be interesting to see how the tink4k CE stacks up to the morph. I believe they are similarly priced

[rough sable]

Seems that is why the tink is so popular

[young grotto]

they're got a discord its pretty friendly

[gray badge]

And I think the creator is here, no? I don’t remember their name tho

[young grotto]

its the same people who do all the console hdmi mods

one of them, it's a team

[stiff flare]

I hate saying it because it feels like a flex but it’s not, by accepting a free gift that makes me biased and people need to know

lol

I declined it at first!

[young grotto]

yeah no good for pointing that out

[stiff flare]

But they insisted

[gray badge]

Must be hard being robby

[stiff flare]

I don’t like getting free things

Makes me feel like I owe someone

[rough sable]

Robby curious do you have a real crt that you modeled your shaders after?

[stiff flare]

Nope lol

[rough sable]

gtfo

wow

[young grotto]

i didn't even know robby had become a presets artist

where are these

[rugged panther]

And frigging Ngage dammit

[stiff flare]

Adding them was a bit contentious at first because MiSTer is all about accuracy and those presets aren’t built to any real hardware.

[stiff flare]

They’re named console generation and I also did all the core specific ones, those are based off actual displays though

[young grotto]

oh on update-all

neat

[stiff flare]

But the goal behind them was to have a good starting point for people to tweak and make their own.

[rough sable]

@stiff flare

[stiff flare]

And those console generation presets take general video output quality and TV quality of the time.

[stiff flare]

lmao wow

[rough sable]

This is a good example. In the first shot you can see the entire hallway. In the second it blends together.

You can't see anything hardly

[young grotto]

maybe we should of called presets "templates" instead, encourage people to change them a bit more

[stiff flare]

That’s a great point

[rough sable]

I think AvP might could benefit from a specific shader or one tailored to this system

I'll play around with it

[young grotto]

yeah i'd try gamma first see if that tames it

i think gamma 110 is most crt-like

[rugged panther]

Gamma makes more sense for a hulk game doesn't it

[young grotto]

or poly 2.6 or something? i've forgotten i just have this set on all cores years ago 😄

[stiff flare]

LOL

[young grotto]

remember you can use L/R on the menu without actually entering the selector to quickly toggle through settings

makes it much easier to find the sweet spot i find

[rough sable]

Did not know that, nice

110 gamma

going above a 130 gamma preset def makes it way worse but 110 doesn't fix it either.

[nocturne vortex]

As you increase gamma you more and more become the Incredible Hulk. Makes sense

[sinful hornet]

Is it possible to make your own CDi cd? Like if I wanted to load a random video onto a disc and have it play?

[undone nimbus]

was the gravis gamepad ok to use? i only ever saw it in ingame ads in jazz jackrabbit

[river turtle]

Didn't even know this core exists. I know what il be doing later then, getting it set up

[terse flare]

If a DVC is mounted, the machine should be able to just play normal Video CDs (not Super Video CD) if that's what you asked. For non MPEG CD-i content, things are probably more complicated as you need the original authoring software. That should not be an issue however as the SDK seems to be fully available. But you need Dosbox to execute it as some binaries are 16 bit executables.

[terse flare]

I think the usual approach is to upload to https://discord.com/channels/647909397477195803/737506076806611064 ? This would provide more exposure to the core for all to see. I'm not yet sure when to switch to doing so. A few months ago the core was really alpha so it didn't made sense. Right now it has become actually more beta and may be used for the intended purpose.

[river turtle]

Sweet thank you mate 🙂

[karmic bramble]

I've played several hours of Hotel Mario no the core (got stuck in one of the harders stages), thank god it is possible to save by selecting no on the continue screen. First time I've played I didn't know that, but didn't went too far either. Of all this time, only around 5 times the sound effects became mute, it fixed itself when the stage reloaded. Amazing core, even in this state.

[strange crater]

It's possible, but more difficult than it might appear at first glance. You need to write certain player files to the disc, and they tend to be incredibly finicky with the formatting.

I tried for quite a while to run Kung Fury on a VCD, but gave up after consistently only being able to play the first few frames before it crashed.

(Went as far as pan-and-scanning the whole movie, too - I even remade an entire shot in 4:3.)

You would need the DVC, though - Video CD requires it, and as far as I'm aware, there isn't a tool to make video discs for the standard consoles.

[spring gate]

Back around 25 years ago I was involved in the evolution of the "tape trading" scene, trading bootleg concert audio and videos of various bands primarily, sending them via mail. When I got into it takes had moved to CDRs and for a lot of traders VHS tapes were replaced with VCDs.

I used to burn off loads of VCDs to CDRs back in the day, it was dead easy in Nero. You could play them back on most DVD players which were fairly new back then, or on a computer.

The file format seemed pretty crude, if would basically rename mpeg 1 video files to .dat . If you copied the .dat files to your computer and renamed them to .mpg or . mpeg they played just fine in video players.

Anyways, if for some reason you really want to watch a VCD in 2025, you can chuck it in a DVD/BD player and it will likely be supported, or copy over the .dat files and rename to .mpg/.mpeg and they will play fine on any media player.

[strange crater]

True, but the CD-i format is actually slightly different than a VCD you can play on a DVD player.

It requires a specific executable to be added to the image, and that executable tends to be quite picky - even when you add it, many CD-i players will just refuse to load the video.

[unreal sparrow]

The bios of "Goldstar", "GPi 1200" is added in mame
https://github.com/mamedev/mame/commit/650b7e1d711ca13d3e4b51d8f5fa32bc9fa60173#diff-0900907b868a05c6efa2be9c9e0a7cac2992a054a66aa4a249c9b8d785d7daf0

[valid onyx]

or a mister :p

[strange crater]

Something I should add on the topic of Video CDs on the DVC - there are plenty of badly formatted VCD discs out there which either don’t have the player files on the disc or were never tested on the CD-i and don’t run.

Many international discs lack the proper boot files for the CD-i, as later players didn’t use them, and some others only included them because they were part of the Philips specification and never tested them, rendering them inoperable when played on original hardware.

[gentle ember]

dvc

[flint fulcrum]

is DVC working in the core now?

[unreal sparrow]

nop

[terse flare]

We need a CD-i core thread bingo card. It should have phrases like "DVC" (multiple times on the card of course), "CD+G", "Photo CD", "Mah boi" and "Toasters toast toast"

[sinful hornet]

don't forget "breast game"

[gray badge]

Bingo!

[glacial sonnet]

bingo card with nerdy terms predicting what will come in the next updates!

"cycle accuracy" "DVC"

without understanding any of the words of course 😉

[gray badge]

Hotel Mario needs to be a square

[glacial sonnet]

"is X game fully playable now?"

breast exam is definitely going on the card, too.

[gray badge]

yeah...yeah

and "Sex" will be on the 3do card

[glacial sonnet]

shame they never released the sequel, prostate exam

cutting off the male audience was not a good move for Philips. That's why the CD-i failed.

[gray badge]

how will I know if I have cancer

[terse flare]

Well... the SDK is out there... someone could be able to develop and release it today...

[glacial sonnet]

but we'd need the Philips anal probe

in gray with the Philips logo stamped on it

I want to get tested with style, why else use the CD-i

[gray badge]

Anything can be an anal probe if you put your mind to it

https://tenor.com/Gxh8.gif

[glacial sonnet]

if it doesn't have the Philips logo on it, I'm not using it

[gray badge]

oof, third party probes https://limitedrungames.com/products/retro-inspired-switch-pc-controller

[glacial sonnet]

Y'know, now that I'm looking at it...

the "spoon" might have been something else entirely

ok now imagine connecting the Philips anal prostate cancer probe to the MiSTer FPGA's CD-i core's SNAC interface...I'm laughing my ass off just thinking about it

partly because with all the weird and unusual shit companies would release back then...it doesn't sound too out of place

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_BeJ8PZvV4

[nocturne vortex]

Do any famous titles even need DVC? By famous I mean ones that I’ve personally heard of 😜

Oh the plumbers one right?

Err not hotel mario

Erotic mario

[spring gate]

Pretty much all the lightgun games bar one or two

[nocturne vortex]

Oh whoops the plumbers don’t wear ties is a 3DO meme game not a cdi meme game

[young grotto]

7th guest i think needs dvc

[nocturne vortex]

Sir that’s a PC game

[strange crater]

It got a CD-i port with some enhanced FMVs over the PC original.

The 7th Guest, Lost Eden, BrainDead 13, everything by American Laser Games (Mad Dog McCree, Who Shot Johnny Rock?, The Last Bounty Hunter, etc.), Thunder in Paradise, Atlantis: The Last Resort, Dragon’s Lair, The Lost Ride, Kingdom 1 & 2, and a few others.

[nocturne vortex]

Got it, but probably all the laserdisc games are better elsewhere so not much

[dark kayak]

Any mention of AVGN should make its way on there too

[stray plank]

The bingo card is missing mentioning the meme Nintendo games

[dark kayak]

Time keeper chip maybe? (Bingo card)

[spring gate]

Wipes brow at "Photo CD" not being on there 😉

Oh no, there it is...

Also Photo CDs are very much a vibe

[deep roost]

Don't forget, "This is illegal, you know."

[sly sedge]

There should be a "3DO WAS BETTER" square. 😉

[gentle ember]

As a 80s-90s wrestling fan, Thunder in Paradise is #1 on my need to play because its got to be sooo bad list. DVC Wen?🙂

[river sphinx]

Playing Tetris (With A Gun)

Didn't know Blastris was on CD-i

[hardy hedge]

Mapplethorpe*

I've... wasted my life.

[strange crater]

It’s wild. They sort of cut up an episode of a TV show and turned it into a game, essentially turning it into a rail shooter.

Half of the gameplay was built around footage shot at Typhoon Lagoon in Walt Disney World, something that my Disney-addicted friend picked up on immediately within five seconds of playing that section.

[gentle ember]

Yeah I so want to experience this one.

[lime nimbus]

as far as I know Rise of the Robots lets you do some alternate audio options with the dvc, don't remember specifically though

[terse flare]

Since there is no core today, I still want to tell a story for the technical people. Yesterday I've discovered that Burn Cycle does something weird during the Philips Logo. It mutes and unmutes the audio constantly. I've seen that on MAME and also the MiSTer core. On MAME it is especially bad, considering the mute is not fading, like a real machine would do. I wondered whether this was an emulation issue or is actually present on the real hardware. So what did I do? I've attached some probes to the SLAVE to read the lowest 4 bits of the CPU data bus, the clock of the mixer circuit (the one to actually control the volume) and also the IRQ pin (it goes low whenever the CPU wants to talk to the Slave).

During the Philips Logo, I've seen this. Every purple spike is one byte transferred between CPU and SLAVE. The CPU is actually slowed down to match the speed of the slave, whenever this occurs. The slave is a slower controller after all.
There is a pattern visible. The yellow spikes are communication clocks from the slave controller to the audio mixer, wanting to change volume.

If one does zoom in a bit, the left spike is Mute, following by some spikes for "Set Volume" and then after 2ms there is Unmute. The funny thing is, periodically the volume is fading out and fading in again. But I think no one is able to hear that.🤣

The currently released core has nothing of this. It's just something I'm working on as I feel that correct audio is the next thing I would like to see happen. I've also published this info on the CD-i discord but I guess it is too interesting to just leave there.

[gray badge]

that's wild

well done slamy

[valid cairn]

Very cool 😎

[neon fulcrum]

Is this something that only happens during the CD-i boot with Burn Cycle inserted?

[terse flare]

I don't know? I haven't "heard" this phenomenon in any other game so far. I wonder why no one has mentioned that for mame. It makes the Philips logo rather aggressive on the ears.

[neon fulcrum]

It would be REALLY interesting if it was something only this one game did. Also: Real weird that a inserted CD could influence the boot screen if it is based on the game...

[terse flare]

Ah there is a misunderstanding. Most CD-i titles have a spinning logo animation during bootup. This is what I'm referring to. Before you play, there is no CD access at all.

[neon fulcrum]

Ohhh ok, that's my mistake!

so either an accidental occurrence or deliberate choice by the Burn Cycle developers.

[astral slate]

I always thought Burn Cycle was a dv cartridge game.

[spring gate]

That is those two undumped Photo CDs sent off to be dumped, so fingers crossed we see one added to Redump very soon (and my version of Grandprix likely confirmed to be same as the dumped one)

[terse flare]

I would have thought too. The game demonstrates what the RLE hardware decompressor can do. If you watch some game footage you might notice that there are frequent horizontal glitches in the picture. Those are caused by the RLE.

[strange crater]

Awesome as always to see the technical deep dives in the backend for this.
I remember hearing they did a lot of tricks & hacks to get the game working on the base hardware - will be really curious to see what you find.

[modern mirage]

New mame today 0.274 and one of the things is Several CD-i graphics formats have been fixed

[terse flare]

It's refreshing to hear that the mame cdi emulation is not totally abandoned🫠 It needs some love

Don't take this too seriously. I recommend playback of the Burn:Cycle intro and also the Hotel Mario intro

[valid onyx]

Nice; tried B:C and started the 'demo' from the menu, and it feels like a very cool scene demo from yesteryear. Also reminded me a bit about return of the https://obradinn.com/

sooo, what happened?

[terse flare]

It's mostly a joke for @astral slate. It shows very dirty the trick which was used to pump out frames during video playback. It is a primitive visualization of the RLE decompression. It highlights only the actual encoded data. It's also probably not very right as the uncompressed data is also blacked out.... But I don't want to spend too much time on this.😅

[astral slate]

Voyuer is impressive too for a non dv game. It makes me wonder why they didn't use the same technique with 7th Guest.

[terse flare]

Voyeur seems to use a different approach. If you observe the cutscenes there is a static background and a small area in which the animation plays. This is also used for Tetris. Burn:Cycle is rather insane as it is actual full screen full motion video. This amount of RLE is also imprinting a certain art style on this game.

Using the DVC is only required for photo like movies. It is like GIF vs JPEG. The DVC perfoms MPEG decompression with all its disadvantages and artefacts while RLE is more like GIF with limited colors and large flat shaded areas.

The music of Burn:Cycle is also interesting. I'm not yet 100% sure but it seems to be a collection of short music pieces which are sequenced after another in a random pattern.

This can be observed with the Disk LED on the Analog I/O board if you have one on the MiSTer. It only blinks when the machine is reading from CD. In the room where the psychic roulette is located and you don't watch the moving screens, there is no CD activity but the music still does its thing.

[strange crater]

Some parts of the cutscenes also use the cutout technique, according to the extraction I saw. It actually varies on a per-shot basis.

[young grotto]

super interesting thanks ! this is the stuff i read the channel for 🙂

[astral slate]

I'm still quite new to playing Burn Cycle. I turned around from the start and some bugger shot me!

[terse flare]

You can also play with the mouse. Might be easier. I also don't know how stable the game really is. Even the demo breaks sometimes. It was completed once though.

[dark kayak]

🍝🍝🍝

[stiff osprey]

https://videogamesplus.ca/products/retro-inspired-switch-pc-controller-limited-run-games?variant=45974724968705

More of these in stock

[modern mirage]

Mame did this from its whatnew

• 09087: [Gameplay] (philips/cdi.cpp) quizardi_10: The game does not boot correctly. (Ivan Vangelista)

-philips/mcd212.cpp: Fixed CD-i DYUV color format decoding. (#13127) [Vincent-Halver]

• The DYUV format incorrectly was too dark by 16/256. This corrects a previously incorrect attempt to fix that issue.
• The DYUV format does not allow Mosaic features.

Not sure if thats of any benefit to the core

[valid onyx]

Might be the other way around, that mame is benefitting from Slamy's work

[terse flare]

Naah, actually the cores CDIC would have never been possible without the work which went into MAME which was the work which went into cdiemu. Also right now, I'm not that much contributing to mame as I've not that much time on my hand to check for quality and regressions on multiple emulators at the same time 😦

[terse flare]

Reading that is quite interesting. The core still has no support for Mosaic. I've not yet found a title so far which uses that feature. That would be required to actually measure the accuracy somehow.
Considering DYUV, this could explain why the Photo CD Sample Disc was much darker than the core and the real machine.

[radiant minnow]

Mosaic as in the "mosaic effect" on the SNES?

[terse flare]

Exactly! ^^ If you look at the MCD212, it has certain features the SNES was known for:

Mosaic
Windows -> Regions
HDMA -> Display Control Area
Color Math -> Overlay and Mixing

The CD-i has the same issue as the Amiga though when it comes to video game graphics: There is no tile mapped video mode and don't even talk about sprites. The CD-i has only the monochrome mouse cursor.
So if you know any CD-i titles that are using Mosaic, please tell me.

[sly sedge]

There was also this change in MAME 0.274:

13243: philips/mcd212.cpp: Fixed CD-i RLE decoding and transparency color key bit mask. [Vincent-Halver]

`This change:

1. Fixes RLE encoding which was short by 50%.
2. Simplifies code, reducing by >100 lines.
3. Renames Channel to Path to match the Green Book spec.
4. Adds TODO for QHY DYUV images. This image type can't be tested without 625 scanline resolution which is currently blocked. So this will remain a known gap until several other features are added.`

[rugged panther]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fp8T3d663VY

[terse flare]

Holy Moly. There is more of this
https://youtu.be/04utBxXtBJU

[gray badge]

as the creators intended

[rugged panther]

Yep someone posted that one before and I was showing my kids this morning, and it played the Mario one right after 😆

I want a hack that replaces the video with these versions now lol

[grim moat]

that would be something to behold

[radiant minnow]

I read about the windowing feature when you started working on the core. I figured it was similar to the SNES windows (see "Magical Quest" dialogs for a classic example). I didn't know the mosaic effect was there too! 😮

Maybe some japanese CD-I software used it...? For software sold in Spain (and I saw a LOT back in the day) I don't remember the effect being used.

[radiant minnow]

https://tenor.com/view/troll2-arnold-oh-my-god-gif-22571513

[hollow grove]

Try the 7th guest it could be mosaic

[terse flare]

I haven't yet tried to boot up this title as it is known for requiring the DVC and therefore probably won't work. Do you have evidence in video form that it is using the Mosaic effect?

[south urchin]

A mouse makes burn cycle so much easier 🙂

[strange crater]

The 7th Guest uses seamless floating transitions between the screens like the PC version. If it uses mosaic, I didn't notice it, but I'll check it just to be sure.

[spring gate]

Nobody on the CDi Discord know of anything that might use mosaic? Maybe a homebrew?

[terse flare]

I haven't asked yet as it would increase the number of TODOs yet again >.<

They are not even answering my current question to an extent I'm satisfied with. If you haven't already noticed, there is a debugging option to scale limited RGB to full. I've added that in hope I would find a person who is very sensitive to color. My current theory is that 16 is black and 235 is white.

[strange crater]

I believe one of the Philips test discs has a color bar set, if you want to verify its accuracy.

[terse flare]

Ok, maybe I was harsh. They told me that there is a test picture with color bars in the service manual shell. And it seems that is right. You need a dummy plug to enter that.

The dummy plug uses very advanced technology. Luckily I was able to craft one:

The only thing I would now need is a simulation of the dummy plug. I guess it makes the core more accurate when that is possible.

[ionic island]

ntsc is limited color range, which is different in japan and usa

japan is 0-235 and usa is 16-235

[terse flare]

This is what I sometimes hate about video.

[ionic island]

all output for an analog tv is almost certainly gonna be limited range, composite especially

however mister we use full range by default which can then be reduced voluntarily

I dunno how cdi works but if it's giving you values in limited, you can use a premade lookup table to convert

[terse flare]

Yes, thats what is already in the core as a debugging option. It is only a debug option right now as I wasn't really sure.

[spring gate]

As a sidebar comment, something I thought about recently and ran by Artemio, is it would be possible for someone to make a stripped down version of the 240p Test Suite in the Photo CD format that could be used on systems and cores that support the format. If there are tests that are part of 240p TS that could help here, then putting them together in the Photo CD format could be a good way to test on real hardware and the code. Food for thought anyway.

[ionic island]

you can't really anticipate how a system will display a photo cd for the sake of geometry and things, but some of the color tests might be useful

[ionic island]

if you output to mister in limited range it will have greyish blacks

[terse flare]

When does this have to be performed? Are there monitors or TVs which are expecting the limited range?

[ionic island]

when you output the rgb to sys

mister has an option in mister.ini to scale down to limited for any hardware that needs it, so you dont have to worry about it as a core level

just output as full range

[terse flare]

This is the original like you all see right now in the core. It is a screenshot

This is the scaled one if activated in the debug options.

These are two Commodore 1084 connected to a 210/05 and the MiSTer. This is how you perceive it right now. The real CD-i is on the left.

This is the scaled one. Especially in the darker areas of the screen it becomes clear that 16 is too bright on the MiSTer.

Just to make sure that the differences are not caused by different monitors, I've switched both around. Now the CD-i is on the right and the MiSTer is on the left.

It might be possible that I'm putting way too much thought into this. Results will probably vary from LCD to LCD and CRT to CRT. Another experiment could be to actually drive colors 0 to 16 on a real CD-i and check whether it is just black or levels of gray. I'm also not a photographer so my pictures might be to shitty to actually be conclusive on this topic. When using the service shell, the differences are not even perceivable.

[valid onyx]

Interesting; for me, the 3rd picture seems the closest match

But yeah, I believe this is very hard to photograph!

[strange crater]

I'd recommend taking a look at Validation Disc (Europe) (Disc 1) - that has a lot of tests Philips designed for the hardware.

Specifically Philips Tests - VIDEO REPRESENTATIONS - DYUV decoder and PAGE 2 - COLOUR key would probably be pretty useful in matching the palette.

DOUBLE clut on Page 3 also has similar behavior to the dummy plug with an 8-color screen, just in a different order.

[terse flare]

The idea was very good but it still doesn't feel conclusive enough. I'm still thinking about building a small application which shows bars of 0 to 32 and 200 to 255. They would really show the contrast in those areas. Concerning DYUV the contrast of the sample photo cd is really bad if not scaled from limited to full. This was what first got me into this. Anyway, I think I should finish the tasks I wanted to work on. I sometimes get easily distracted. Colors are fine tuning compared to the CDIC stuff I'm trying to fix.

Sometimes I wonder if I could convince one of the pros to develop such an application for me. It's no FPGA development. Just some C and a compiler running on MS DOS >.<

What makes this even worse is the inclusion of color spaces. DYUV to RGB might be correct or it isn't. Who knows. At least the formula is exactly the one present in the datasheet. This is why I should focus on RGB accuracy before ensuring DYUV accuracy.

[terse flare]

It's coming and coming
https://youtu.be/YPRaM01nmYw

[gray badge]

Who is doing an MSU-1-esque release for this? Is there a patreon I can contribute to for that?

[neon fulcrum]

[gray badge]

https://tenor.com/gTyL5NLkyDs.gif

[spring gate]

Was wondering, has anyone tried 2 player games on the core? Do they work OK?

[terse flare]

Right now there is no support for plugging in a second pointing device. Do you know of any cool 2 player games? Frog Feast is one of them, but thats Homebrew. Were there any official games from the prime time?

[arctic lily]

Micro Machines looks pretty good https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YFU34iuYKo

[terse flare]

The support in the core is missing at the moment, because there is no symmetry in the architecture of the machine for the second player. Usually the front port is attached to the slave controller while the back port is attached to the CPU.

[arctic lily]

World of CD-i has a list here https://www.theworldofcdi.com/cd-i_encyclopedia/up-to-2-head-to-head/

[spring gate]

Ah, was it a situation where only certain CDi models supported two controllers?

[terse flare]

It's quite weird. Some models have a splitted front port. With a split cable you have two at the front with this adapter. It seems not every machine has a port at the back. I also find attaching a controller to the back of the machine slightly weird. The back port however was also used for the MODEM.

The port at the back is already part of the core. It is connected to the UART of the Linux system and is useful for homebrew development as the system console of the CD-i also goes there.

[spring gate]

That is odd... How did you attach a keyboard and a mouse at the same time?

[terse flare]

You are always asking the right questions. I don't have an answer!

[spring gate]

Hah, fair enough

I wonder if it was the case where some models you could and others you couldn't, so may not be doable for some of these things on the core as it is targeting a specific model. Does that seem like it may be likely?

Is the split cable you mention, like a physical multitap style adapter or something that was wired inside the machine on certain models?

[terse flare]

It is wired inside the machine. The second port on the front is equal to the back port of machines that have it.

[spring gate]

Hmm, seems very limiting if there are only ever two ports and they are used for things other than controllers/pointers

[arctic lily]

lots of interesting info here but it seems complicated haha https://www.theworldofcdi.com/make-your-own-cd-i-port-splitter-for-2-player-games/

this part in particular is interesting:

PORT 1 or PORT 2 to play as Player 1?

Officially Philips explain this way:

For CD-i 450 or 550 Models produced before August 1994:
– If you own one of those models, and you are using the Port Splitter but only using 1 controller only, then you will need to connect the controller under INPUT 1.
– If you own one of those models, and you are using the Port Splitter using 2 controllers, then Player 1 will work under INPUT 2, and Player 2 will work under INPUT 1. But Player 2 controller will only work after Player 1 choose all the options and the game are ready to be played as 2 players.

For CD-i players produced from August 1994 and onward:
– If you own one of those models, and you are using the Port Splitter but only using 1 controller only, then you will need to connect the controller under INPUT 2.
– If you own one of those models, and you are using the Port Splitter using 2 controllers, then Player 1 will work under INPUT 2, and Player 2 will work under INPUT 1. But Player 2 controller will only work after Player 1 choose all the options and the game are ready to be played as 2 players.

This is due to the internet kit and Télé CD-i for the use of the modem connection.
In fact, if you turn on your CD-i player (before or after August 1994), the player will recognize the controller, wherever it is connected on INPUT 1 or INPUT 2.

[terse flare]

This machine is horrible. Almost as bad as putting the controller ports on the left side like the Amiga CD32 which also has the power switch on the back side.

[spring gate]

Let’s start from the beginning, the early CD-i players let you connect 2 controllers for player 1 and player 2 by using Input 1 (front side) and Input 2 (rear side).
The players that allows you to connect 2 controllers without the the need of a Port Splitter are:
910/00, 205/00, 205/05, 210/00, 210/20, 220/00, 220/20, 220/40, 21TCDi30 (Combined CD-i + TV).

If you own one of those players, then, you can stop reading this article and start playing with your friend right now (well, not now because at the time I am writting this article, we are still under the threat of coronavirus)!

If you don’t have any of them or you also have others players and want to use them for 2 players games, then follow me into this adventure! We will create our own Port Splitter!

The final paragraph confuses me, so could you potentially use a splitter with a 220 rather than use the back port?

This article may be of interest to @bright zinc if he looks at SNAC one day

[terse flare]

When talking about SNAC, the situation gets even more weird. The CD-i has an IR controller which can be used as well. Let me check what happens when I use the IR controller together with the wired one >.<

On the 210/05 when having the wired one in the back, it is the first. The IR controller is the second.
When the wired one is in the front, both IR and wired are the first. I don't have a second wired one to test more permutations.

[spring gate]

I didn't expect connecting basic peripherals to be such a rabbit hole with the CDi

Have you looked into the protocols for supporting keyboards? Is that another minefield of nonsense?

[terse flare]

According to the manual, the physical layer of the keyboard is equal to every other device. However it has 2 dip switches on the back to support various protocols..... you can't make this up.

http://www.icdia.co.uk/accesories/pointing.html#22er9041-manual
The link at the bottom is the user manual of the keyboard

If there are any titles to support this, I think it might be interesting to add the keyboard... it is probably as useful as the floppy drive for the CD-i.

[spring gate]

It is used for some non games discs, and apparently it works on the system menus. It might make using things like CD player and Photo CD player controls easier, but who knows? A bit of a mystery like a lot of the more niche CDi bits and bobs

[terse flare]

You want to know what is niche? The quizard dongle.
https://www.theworldofcdi.com/quizard-on-cd-i-players/

[spring gate]

If you ever do look at keyboard, this is the format that has been used on other cores to add USB support that could presumably be copy and pasted and have the values changed for the CDi protocols

https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/CreatiVision_MiSTer/blob/master/rtl/keyboard.sv

Oh yeah, Quizard! Well here's hoping one day you get absolutely everything working in the core and can make the Team Europe lads happy adding support for that 🙂

[terse flare]

Well, I don't think i have to write everything alone.🫠 If these things are so important, everyone can contribute to add them. Especially simulating the Quizard dongle doesn't involve knowledge about the CD-i as it has its own MCU. It's just attached to the serial port.
Right now my priorities are more into the accuracy of the audio. Lots of reverse engineering is still required.

[spring gate]

Yeah, I think everyone agrees Quizard can wait... :-). Reading about it, it is a funny thing. Props to Team Europe for making the dongle, that's dedication.

How is your audio accuracy work going?

[terse flare]

Things are looking slightly grim. I think I've said it before about the Attenuation circuit: Adding it results into sometimes muted audio. I've tried to fix this and it seems some of it is working now. I also try to fix the sound hiccups of Zelda's Adventure and the audio issue during the tutorial of Wand of Gameleon. All these 3 issues are linked together actually and need to be fixed together too... This is at least how I see it. The CDIC is never really understood and that is the issue now.

[sly sedge]

Not much has changed in that regard after so many years. Newer Mac minis have their power switch on the bottom of the system... 😏

[terse flare]

I also had to change my approach. I no longer just simulate the core. I've added a logic analyzer setup to the CDIC and the audio processor which allows me to live check on the registers whenever I hear a hiccup. This is rather helpful I think. ... As you said you eat your elephants one bite at a time.

The Attenuation circuit is actually very important. I've noticed some games use it frequently for nice effects. Zenith has panning so you can hear where the ball touches the ground.

Today I've tried to wrap my head around the weird way Wand of Gamelon is handling the Tutorial. It switches back and forth between audiomap to play some sound effects via CPU and CD audio playback. This still causes issues.

[spring gate]

That sounds heady and unfun. Are these related to the repeated audio snippets from previous tracks playing before the correct one plays that I was finding on Photo CDs?

[terse flare]

I think those issues are still something else. I'm not sure yet why these occur. I'm able to reproduce these issues even with my latest work in progress state. I think titles like dark chaser make use of red book audio. At the moment, I'm more focused on normal CD-i games which usually use green book audio in one of the many variants.
About the unfun part. This is engineering. Sometimes it is not that fun and you have to keep a steady course. It is not torture however and still exiting if something works. Without endurance a project like this impossible 😄

[spring gate]

Well you've made incredible progress so far, hopefully you are still enjoying the problem solving aspect of it all :-).

[terse flare]

It's like a puzzle with 8192 pieces. Sometimes you just don't find the right piece and pause for the day and maybe try again tomorrow.

[nocturne vortex]

Find two people who want to play CD-i within 100 miles of each other? Cmon man be reasonable 😉

[terse flare]

This is highly experimental. I don't want to see any bug reports about this. Regressions might occur. For headphone users, this is a relief as the audio is now centered when the game wants that. It also fixes the first audio glitch in the wand of gamelon tutorial and also some of the hiccups in Zelda's adventure. It might introduce audio glitches yet undiscovered.
Especially burn cycle seems to hate this build. For the curious among us: In the debug options you can "Disable Audio Att". With this you can experience the difference betwen what the DAC is playing and what the attenuation circuit creates from that.

[rough sable]

Thx for all the hard work, Slamy.

[strange crater]

I've run CD-i parties in-person before (I have a very specific kind of friend group lol). Clue CD-i, in particular, is great with a group on a big screen.

I'd also be willing to stream or record any oddball CD-i stuff if there's interest. It's been a bit since I streamed last, so I'm a little rusty as a presenter, but if you ever want to see a particular title running on real hardware or MiSTer, I'd be willing to show it.

[terse flare]

Since there is no core for today, there is still a story to tell to celebrate CD-Friday. Due to the sound issues I'm currently investigating I've decided to check the accuracy of the audio and video synchronicity. To do that I've attached the composite video and left audio channel of a real CD-i 210/05 to my soundcard and recorded at cutscene which I knew has automatic audio playback. I wondered of accurate the timing was. This the result.

The video signal clearly shows luminance and also the vsync as little negative peaks.

I've then synthesized a logic analyzer with signal tap to observe the signals in the FPGA in realtime and it seems the core is rather accurate. So no further investigation needed in that regards.

The reason why I did that is because the Zelda - Wand of Gamelon "Help" cutscene is still having hiccups at some points. It trys to play audio while audio is played. This might be coming from seek time emulation issues. But I'm not sure yet.

[valid cairn]

C

D

https://tenor.com/view/lord-of-the-rings-aye-gimli-gif-15778685

[stiff flare]

The Felix the Cat prototype has that issue everywhere if you want to test something with 100% reproductionand available immediately.

[strange crater]

lol - I just loaded this one up, and I swear, it’s like it’s YTPing itself

[strange crater]

My favorites so far:

“GARlic- the Cat’s Giant Electronic GRONcH Book”

“Pick-Your-Own-Felix The Cat’s Head”

“Tell me a BORinG, I’m all ears”

“You can TrIP (oHH)”

[terse flare]

The game is fascinating. With cdiemu it doesn't even boot. With mame, the audio issues are equal to the MiSTer core. I would have to burn the disc once to check the behavior on the real machine. If the audio is broken there too, there is nothing I can do for you.😅
It's also not so difficult right now to find something reproducible concerning audio. The most difficult part is to actually solve the issues. I'm struggling and I have certain fears that this is how the CD-i core will actually peak. There is a certain possibility that I'm simply not good enough as a reverse engineer to solve these issues. I've tried to harness the power of the CD-i discord guys as well but no one has yet found an answer. I might need to change my methods or maybe look for other issues first again.

[strange crater]

Let me burn it and see what I get on my console.

[terse flare]

I already did. 😄 It works without sound issues. No need to waste another blank cd. This in turn of course means that there is an emulation issue somewhere. Considering this is an unreleased (?) game, I wanted to be sure that this is indeed not a programming error. Like with Super Mario Wacky Worlds. It's just broken even on the real machine.

[stiff flare]

Yeah makes sense, glad you tested it on real hardware!

[strange crater]

How to Draw Felix is downright hilarious

“Here’s how you learn to draw fee-lies. On the left side of the screen you can see the things you will HATE”