Nintendo GBA

[ionic phoenix]

Didn't notice anything egregious.

[zealous nacelle]

Cart accessories aren’t currently supported right, so no rumble?

[ionic phoenix]

Rumble works, can confirm.

[zealous nacelle]

Oh shit!

[ionic phoenix]

Also gyro works, so games like Yoshi Topsy-Turvy and WarioWare Twisted! will work.

[lean remnant]

And as far as GBA goes, I only know about the following games:

Accelerometer: games that somehow involve physical movement to control the games.

Koro Koro Puzzle - Happy Panechu

Yoshi Topsy-Turvy

WarioWare: Twisted! (Note: actually uses different tech than the other 2 games, and has a much larger, but more accurate, sensor)

Rumble: Used in I think only one game.

Drill Dozer

Sunlight Sensor: I'm sure you know of Boktai games by now.

Boktai 1/2/3 (3 is Japan-only, sadly.)

Proto-Skylanders: Bet you didn't know toys to life started in japan on the GBA. Both these games have their own special hardware and toyline to... do something, I'm sure.

Bouken Yuuki Pluster World - Plust Gate/EX/Pluston GP

Legendz: Island of Ordeal/Sign of Nekuromu

Mobile System GB: Like the GBC, the GBA could also use the Mobile System GB. Again, no games required it. Don't have a list on me at the moment, but it was around 15 games or so, including Mario Kart Advance.

And that's what I know about this junk. Too much, honestly.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Gameboy/comments/3gd77s/looking_for_a_list_of_game_boy_and_gba_games_that/

[delicate python]

I thought there were a few rumble games, half remembering from making a list on the forum years ago when rumble support was not in Main

[lean remnant]

There is also the new homebrew named Goodboy Galaxy using rumble

[ionic phoenix]

WarioWare Twisted and Drill Dozer are the only ones that had rumble in the cartridge itself, but there are more games like Pokémon Pinball Ruby & Sapphire and Mario & Luigi Superstar Saga that had rumble when played on a Game Boy Player.

[delicate python]

Ah, interesting. Do those ones GB Player ones have rumble in the MiSTer core(s)?

[lean remnant]

Website interesting with specials hardwares for GB/GBC and GBA
https://shonumi.github.io/articles/art34.html

[jade wraith]

I would imagine it depends on whether or not the game sends the rumble commands regardless of whether or not they detected the gbp

However, that’s just my imagination

[lean remnant]

The screen of Goodboy Galaxy regarding GP Player detection but on other core I think rumble working. I don't have with me rumble gamepad to test if rumble working or not for this game

[lean remnant]

Quake Proto shows white screen and music ongoing

[fathom lintel]

I tried that one too and seems to do that on the old core too

[delicate python]

Do you want the photos and betas added to the sheet @lean remnant ?

[lean remnant]

Last unstable of other core fixed it (fixes by paulbnl)

[lean remnant]

Proto maybe (beta not sure it is important to test)
Photos ? I didn't know it existed

[delicate python]

Sorry, that should read Protos, it was a genuine autocorrect rather than me thinking about Photo CDs (this time anyways...)

I will get the Protos on there later today for you

[lean remnant]

i added Quake on list but we can move it thank you

[delicate python]

That's got a tab on the far right now

If anyone is testing and there is something missing then let me know, the sheet reflects the everdrive pack so be good to keep the sheet reflecting that to avoid confusion if possible

[low carbon]

is it easy to replicate? could you maybe get a savestate from that?

[ionic phoenix]

All you need to do is talk to Bianca at the end of the level Country Farms, which is automatic after you defeat the wizard Rynoc.

This save state should be at that cutscene.

[fathom lintel]

Left fantastic four running for a while on title screen and got a E0006 error

[charred stone]

Oh I know what I should test

Gunstar Super Heroes or the Astro Boy game, there's at least one specific graphical glitch I know of in GSH that a lot of emulators used to have. I have both as carts

Astro Boy, I just really want to play again lol

[delicate python]

Is it worth looking through the GitHub for the old core and checking the closed issue bugs to see if those may have reappeared here?

[lone canyon]

made it to traverse town in CoM.
the opening cutscene played perfectly too.
so far so good

[north sand]

https://tenor.com/view/ears-anime-what-is-this-girl-cute-gif-21254111

where is your mister?

[zealous nacelle]

What’s wrong with her eyes lol

[north sand]

something something reflection

[sand saffron]

Robby has witnessed cuteness for the first time. It has him in its clutches. Saving him is no longer an option. Next time we see him, he'll be wearing a T-shirt that says waifu for lifu.

[zealous nacelle]

It’s like her eyes are filled with mercury lol

[crude marten]

best psp game

[fathom lintel]

Metroid Zero Mission is completable without issues

[sand saffron]

So she's a living thermometer. 🌡️

[hushed narwhal]

I have just ordered a gb link Snac adapter. (I'm hoping I can use Taki's Level shifter with it, but waiting confirmation). If I can't, then il have to wait a bit to purchase a different level shifter.

Il be happy to test any sort of GBA link compatibility. I even have a Gameboy player too. (Aswell as a few models of the GBA and GBA sp)

[hushed narwhal]

In regards to the above. I had a response from the vendor that I brought some snac adapters from

Nat said that I could use the level shifter that came with the Mister Pi as they are the same.

[zealous nacelle]

Anyone test Mind Goblin for GBA yet?

[ionic phoenix]

Was playing with Rhythm Tengoku. I noticed that the different color modifiers break the gradient patterns in the background, which I'm assuming is due to how the colors are converted.

Not a problem with the game itself, other gradiants cause similar problems, just an observation I noticed.

[fierce eagle]

What's mind goblin? I need to know. Unrelated to that, do you mind goblin deez nuts, Robby?

[zealous nacelle]

[fierce eagle]

Nooo? So you don't mind goblin deez nuts? Thank's a lot, bro!

[ionic phoenix]

Decided to change the color modify settings to "75%" and turn on gamma_130.txt to reduce the contrast slightly. I don't like the broken gradients, but I still want to reduce the saturation and contrast common in GBA games.

Some samples of the new settings.

[fierce eagle]

I roll with raw colors and 130 gamma. I didn't ruin my eyes on these dark displays to not sear them with bright colors now.

[honest viper]

Flipping through the saturation colors really shows how much they can be blown out. Super Mario Advance has some radioactive pinks

[fierce eagle]

Beautiful, ain't they?

[placid crater]

Why is the lense flare effect flicker in Golden Sun (before the meny)? Isnt the GBA screen a 60Hz screen?

[fierce eagle]

Got frame blend enabled? The overworld in golden sun also flickers if you don't have it on.

[placid crater]

No, I didnt have it enabled as I wanted the original experince and thought it was trickery like the Megadrive blending for dithering

[zealous nacelle]

Lots of visual trickery employed that’s reliant on the quirks of the display.

The original experience is with frame blend

[placid crater]

I also think running left to right in the core is a lot more choppy than real GBA

[zealous nacelle]

Ill go check that out but you do need frame blend enabled (I think)

[placid crater]

Ive added frame blend but the choppyness is the same. Its like bad frame pacing

small stutters

[zealous nacelle]

Ohhh ok

Thanks for confirming

I’ll try to compare.

[placid crater]

yeah its a hard comparison since I´m comparing a small AGS screen with my 65 inch LCD. But I think I would detect the stutters on the small screen

[zealous nacelle]

I think so too

[placid crater]

scrolling is much smoother on real GBA

[zealous nacelle]

I was going to compare against my Micro lol

[fierce eagle]

Having it on is more accurate afaik but looks a bit smeary on modern displays.

[placid crater]

yeah

Even the panning of the lens flare is more jerky

[fierce eagle]

Pls don't talk about your... here.

@placid crater could you do me a favor and just listen to the music when you're ingame for 5-10 minutes? I've noticed an issue on the new core that the music would drop out for a split second every few minutes. Couldn't replicate that on the old core or real hardware, but would like confirmation that I'm not crazy.

[placid crater]

sure, will try for 5 minutes

music in Sol Sanctum is soo good

[jade wraith]

You mean in the whole game

[placid crater]

Music is not dropping out for me

[fierce eagle]

What kind of audio/video out are you using?

[placid crater]

HDMI

[fierce eagle]

Through the internal scaler or direct video?

[placid crater]

internal

I have a MMS system

still playing and no sound dropoff

[fierce eagle]

I'm using direct video through rt4k. Maybe that's the issue. Will try the internal scaler when I get home.

[placid crater]

I have an option thats called "Sync core to video" on

maybe thats what does the dropouts if you dont have it enabled

[lone canyon]

I'm currently using GBA 2.2 with the Gen 5 preset.

It seems to work well

[copper needle]

are you on vsync adjust 2?

gba isn't a perfect 60hz you'll see judder in vsync 0 mode

[placid crater]

Its not called like that anymnore, have it set to "Match display frequency".

[low carbon]

the core is currently dropping sync on adjust 1 and 2 when you load a new game or a savestate. Will improve this by autopausing until the internal(core) and external(video out) screen position matches.
Kind of comparable to the old "sync core to video" which currently does nothing on the new core, but instead of just keeping the difference small, I will make it exactly the same offset.
Want to rule our all random effects over time 😅

But things like this (video out sync, borders, ...) has to wait until the internal core is really stable, it's currently top priority that games don'T crash or show issues

[placid crater]

Thats great to hear! I thought I did something nobody else was doing, but I´m very sensitive to uneven frame pacing

[low carbon]

on your choppy scrolling: is it better with the old core?

[placid crater]

and when I loaded Golden Sun later on a coold boot, the frame pacing was better than previous and indeed I had made a savestate on my previous run

[placid crater]

will check now

I must say it looks on par with the second run I did on the new core. Better but still some judder

I will try tomorrow on the CRT to see if we aliminate the scaler all together if its perfect

We have a family TV time soon so cant check it today 🙂

[fierce eagle]

With dv on rt4k I didn't notice any issues with the scrolling. I've just defeated ||Trent||.

But I have to check whether my audio issues are caused by dv.

[low carbon]

well, i can tell that it will not get better than with the old core. Maybe there are still issues I haven't seen yet with the new (for scrolling issues)

[ionic phoenix]

I get no audio over direct video while using the Morph 4K from my experience. I'm assuming it's the same thing with the RetroTink 4K?

[coarse cape]

no, works fine on the tink

[ionic phoenix]

Maybe my specific setup is causing issues. I have an HDMI audio extraction splitter and have the 96hz on, but this is the only core giving me this issue so idk.

[fierce eagle]

Never had it before but in golden sun I have the audio drop out for a split second every few minutes. Maybe I'll play another game for some decent amount of time to see whether it is that game specifically or on all games. Doesn't happen on the old core.

[coarse cape]

ill check golden sun on my tink. monkey ball was fine tho (until it crashed)

[ionic phoenix]

It works on the old core too.

[fierce eagle]

Misread, sorry. Sound is fine with rt4k (usually)

[fierce eagle]

Just stand around for 5 minutes and you have a decent chance of hearing a drop

I recorded it. It also happens in battles etc. But it's harder to notice with different effects playing.

[lone canyon]

I don't have an issue with the stuttery frames when the "camera" moves along with characters if I enabled blending

[fierce eagle]

Played golden for about 20 minutes now with the internal scaler and didn't have a single sound issue. Guess it's something with the way the rt4k converts the not quite 60hz to 60. I had it on triple buffer, will try genlock now. But it doesn't seem to be the core itself. Weird it works on the old core without issues though.

[low carbon]

good to know, thanks for the test!
Let's look at this again when the video out is more fleshed out in future.

[fierce eagle]

Also explains why I couldn't savestate before a drop. 😅

[coarse cape]

Still need me to look at this?

[fierce eagle]

Only if you got a rt4k to test it with. Seems to only happen with direct video.

[coarse cape]

Please, what do you take me for? A dirty tubeman?

[fierce eagle]

I'm scared you might be a morph muppet!

I tried triple buffer, genlock and framelock on rt4k and it happend with all of them. So I'm starting to agree with Robert, to look at this again after video out is more fleshed out. 😅

[coarse cape]

how far in do I need to be?

[fierce eagle]

A few minutes till the background music starts playing. Makes it easier to hear.

Maybe you can also hear it in the rain effect.

[coarse cape]

oh no their psyenergy

brand psyerngy

[fierce eagle]

Psynergy (tm)

[coarse cape]

battle music count?

[fierce eagle]

Yeah.

Technically it can happen anytime, but it's easier to notice when you just let the music player without effects happening.

[coarse cape]

this is a bop

(I never played GS)

I will say, I don’t think I would live in a village where it can rain boulders

just doesn’t seem like a good investment

but I bet land is cheap

ahh yep

just heard it

had to sit for a while tho

[fierce eagle]

Tomorrow I'll try smt for a longer time to see whether it's GS or a core thing overall. But as Robert said, let's wait for all the video out pieces are in place before poking around too much.

[coarse cape]

I do like this song tho

[fierce eagle]

GS is a great game. And it's also great that I'm not crazy. Thanks for testing.

[coarse cape]

for the village

[fierce eagle]

Taki is really sitting on those cabbages... but I don't want to push him either.

[coarse cape]

He says next week!

[fathom lintel]

Got a crash E006 error on Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets when I opened the OSD to allow it to save

[primal reef]

Does anyone know if there's a way to put the gba core at full screen in a CRT TV ?

[lone canyon]

You could try enabling VGA scaler for GBA specifically, and setting the resolution to what the TV supports.
Haven't tried it myself but if it works, the image will no longer have the black padding and will be scaled.
It'll look like absolute ass but it'll fill the screen (hopefully)

[primal reef]

sorry where's the VGA Scaler ? Couldn't find it

[fathom lintel]

Cruis'n Velocity crashes at midway logo with E0006 error

[lime heath]

might be able to added something like this to the bottom of your ini #general-banter message

[lone canyon]

Yeah, you have to set things up using the INI. You just want to have a line that enables VGA scaler, and a line for your video mode.

[fathom lintel]

Seems grand theft auto can randomly crash E0006 error

[wide ember]

oh shid I didn't realize we had another platform for GTA

[fringe comet]

Damn, so far all the games I've tested have worked

I know that's equally as important as games that don't... But finding a crash is cool

Testing all these games has allowed me to play games I'd probably have never turned on otherwise. I played Ace Combat Advance and... Yeah it's not good.

[ionic phoenix]

Going to play through The Legend of Zelda The Minish Cap.

[fathom lintel]

I played up until the minish village

[honest viper]

Driver 2 worked ok for the 10 minutes I played (for more intense games that can stress the system)

[ionic phoenix]

Alright, going to stop playing Zelda for a bit. I'm at the point in the game where I got the Fire Element and the White Sword. Didn't notice any issues so far.

[long forge]

Is it bad to leave autosave on for the OSD when testing with the core? I think I read something about it but I can't seem to find it again

[zealous nacelle]

Nope it’s great

[long forge]

Also hope y'all are having a good weekend so far

Okay sweet

[zealous nacelle]

Thanks you too, man

[low carbon]

reproducible?

[fathom lintel]

Happened everytime i tried

[lone canyon]

Yep, crashes for me too.

However, was able to play two races to completion just fine. One in freestyle and one in cup mode.
I used a save state I made at the press start screen on the official core

So it's just that intro the crashes from my brief initial testing

[low carbon]

Great, perfect case. Hopefully this is the same as the other E0006 errors 🙂

Just to make that clear: finding such reproducible issues saves me countless hours of time trying to reproduce the random issues that happen mid game, so I really have to thank you so much!

[fierce eagle]

Just to make that clear: you writing amazing fpga cores saves us countless hours of playing on shitty software emulators, trying to catch random dopamine rushes, so we really have to thank you so much!

[placid crater]

I even prefer the MiSTer cores over the real hardware due to convenience, image quality improvements and features such as save states. Especially handhelds which as I get older strains my eyes nowadays

[placid crater]

@low carbon I have garbled signal on my CRT with the new core, the old core works as it should with black bars around the small image
tested using Direct Video
same result with VGA port
Its too garbled to even see any OSD options

[copper needle]

new core doesn't support directvideo or analog output yet

[placid crater]

I wanted to troubleshoot if scrolling is smoother with analogue output, since I had some judder in Golden Sun

[low carbon]

i tried fitting the 240x160 image with normal 240p video out, but as I have no way to test, it's probably not good currently.
Please give it a while, we will get a better output.

[fringe comet]

I nearly bought a DS Lite for easy GBA testing... But I do just have a GBA

[ionic phoenix]

Has anyone tested Mega Man Battle Network 4: Blue Moon yet? That game is kind of infamous for having a bug where the performance tanks in the Park Area during the WoodMan.exe scenario when played on emulators or the DS. Like bad enough that even Nintendo themselves acknowledged it.

[long forge]

Should I be keeping the error overlay on for testing? I think I read somewhere that gba games notoriously throw errors even when functioning as normal. So I am not sure how useful that would be

[coarse cape]

Yes please. Or you can hide it and wait for a crash

Enabling it then will show you the error

[fathom lintel]

I'd keep it on, only errors i ran into were E0006 errors

[long forge]

Okay no problem

Does mister apply the same OSD options to each type of system? The OSD appears exactly the same options as the old core, and even stuff like the filters work just the same. Are they separate parts of the code base?

[lone canyon]

You mean E0006?

Or did you come across a different one? Cuz 6 is the one that everyone else has been experiencing with the crash

[fathom lintel]

Oops yea that's what i meant, typed that out fast while i busy with something. I'll edit that lol

[lone canyon]

Dang, I was curious to know about another error lolol 😂

[zealous nacelle]

This core has the same level of slowdown exactly where it would happen in the Tower SP, which is neat

[low carbon]

new version:

• fixed DMA deadlock situations when DMA is turned off by CPU in the same cycle it is activated by trigger(e.g. vsync)
  This removes the E0006 error in cruisn and i completled the whole set of easy levels in Super Monkey Ball without issues.
  Hopefully the other E0006 issues are resolved as well.

[fringe comet]

Hell yeah, excited to try this one!

[gilded schooner]

I can't trigger any E0006 error code anymore at the moment.

[ionic phoenix]

I'm guessing no? Alright I'll try looking into it myself when I get the chance. Even if the game is kind of ass

[charred stone]

I never did get into 4, I stopped at 3

[low carbon]

there was a savestate for the critical spot some years ago, need to see if I still find it

it is open bus related and SHOULD work, but a proof would be nice of course

Fixed the SRAM quirk: some games(like Rocky or the NES classics) check if cartridge SRAM is writeable.
As the original cartridge doesn't have any, they know they run in an emulator and hang or produce graphical glitches.
Therefore the core has a list of games that do this behavior and turns of SRAM for them. Kind of like the database for the n64 core.
Anyway, the implementation of the SRAM disable didn't work properly, but that is fixed now, so these games should be fine.

[lean remnant]

Thank you 🙂
The save are created for famicon classic ! The missing graphic part o texts are still present but maybe it required to add sprite_quirk after checking code of previous core.

[low carbon]

sprite quirk is not existing anymore, the core now always draws the maximum amount of pixels

probably some other method...

[lean remnant]

also for Famicom Mini 13 - Balloon Fight (Japan) has a different size for the save.
This game have a cartrige error showing at the start.

[low carbon]

interesting. Could you delete the save and retry?
Because this game has the sram quirk in the list. So maybe the game code is wrong or you had some old save?
https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/GBA_MiSTer/blob/master/GBA.sv#L722

[finite briar]

if(cart_id       == "FVFJ") begin sram_quirk <= 1; memory_remap_quirk <= 1;                    end // Famicom Mini 13 - Balloon Fight

[low carbon]

looks like a typo in the quirks:

So no need to test further, will fix in the next build 🙂

[lean remnant]

thanks 🙂

[low carbon]

thank you for the test. No one has noticed (or reported) in the old core for years, good find!

[lean remnant]

Is the core will able to redo the save after setting the quirk if the none correct save is still present ?

[fringe comet]

That's crazy, Balloon Fight is awesome. Then again, probably better to just play it on NES so I can see why it might have been overlooked.

Am I right in thinking the fixes in this current build won't have fixed the Super Street Fighter II Turbo Rebirth Upper Grand Master Challenge X graphical glitch?

[lean remnant]

Some Famicom Mini Games doesn't propose to make a save like Super Mario Bros, maybe sram quirk is not required to set to all famicon mini games.

I will check if I can found a list for which games needs a save

[split lintel]

Forgive my stupidity, but is there any way we might get a GBA image that scales to fill a crt screen? Apologies if this has been discussed…

[lean remnant]

it was discussed here #1347219390130688024 message

[fringe comet]

I think one of the issues is that the GBA resolution doesn't integer scale into a 240p resolution

So you'd have some kind of interpolation that would look a bit ugly

[wide ember]

you can do it on a 31kHz VGA monitor

a 720x540 mode should scale it correctly into the 4:3 frame with bars above and below. That's 3x integer scaling

the GBA is slightly widescreen

720x480 if you're willing to tweak the vsize knob manually

[split lintel]

I guess then, a 15khz crt is likely to always have the borders. Thanks appreciate the response 👍

[wide ember]

yeah I think it's unavoidable at "15" kHz at least.

[split lintel]

Ok cool

Shame tho, gba pixel art was ace would look nice on the old crt

[wide ember]

I think it does look nice, even with the borders. Maybe the solution is to offer some kind of SGB like border decorations, hint hint @low carbon

[split lintel]

Certainly better than the scaled image from the old core. Not had a chance to test this new one

[compact vessel]

#1347219390130688024 message

[wide ember]

ah nice

[low carbon]

unfortunatly the core will always use the same size when a save is already there. So the save will not get smaller. However, this should not stop the game from working. The last part of the save will just be dead data.

[low carbon]

Yes, some games don't save at all and still check for SRAM as part of the copy/emu protection part

[lean remnant]

I see so it is important to set the quirk thanks !

Exitebike we can build on our parcour but no save is available 😦

[low carbon]

Well, at least savestate will always work. If i see it right, the original Famicon couldn't save unless you have some additional hardware(tape). Since those games are all emulation it's probably due to that?

[lean remnant]

yes maybe ! it is famicom disk system also i think

[lone canyon]

Does anyone know what (Unl) means on a ROM?
My default assumption would be unlicensed. But I'd like clarification from anyone else who happens to know better

[lean remnant]

so maybe on issue remaining for Famicon Mini :

• Ballon Fight -> Fixed the SRAM quirks
• Games 21 -> 30 have missing texts and missings part of graphics

[timid phoenix]

You’re correct, afaik

[low carbon]

if it really hits the ones with the sprite_quirk only, it seems there is something wrong with the amount of pixels shown. Will take a look, thanks!

[short anvil]

@low carbon could this mode be added to the core menu as an easy switch? And 720x480

[valid barn]

The resolution is possible to force in the mister.ini settings, but I don't know If we can implement the bars, perhaps with the borders option in mister.ini? I've never used it but I remember there being this option.

The option is vscale_border, I don't know if it works to add bars, I think might have to implement a new option for that.

[short anvil]

hm yea, doing it through mister.ini is a way. however if it was in the core menu directly and you could switch between the options that would be much easier. definitely not essential but a nice to have

[low carbon]

I don't want to add all kind of custom resolutions as video timings in the core. I'm also not aware of any other core doing that.
240p with borders has some use, as it behaves like the gamecube output.
What is special about 540 or 480 height? 720x480 doesn't fit in the normal VGA anyway. I don't see the use.
Why not 240p with scandoubler?

[lone canyon]

I think the way GBA outputs currently for 15khz CRT is fine. I don't need it to be the whole screen and I prefer the pixels to line up nicely with my scan lines.
Then again I have a 32" set so it stands to reason why I don't have as much of an issue with the size on the screen lol.

But I think if you could at the end of it all manage to implement a borders thing like how sgb can do borders to then allow people to create custom ones for use with MiSTer that would be super neat.

[short anvil]

hm I've done some testing on my multiformat monitors (bvm d24 and pvm 20l5) by editing mister.ini

1. this makes the resolution 720p and it doesn't really look crisp to me. fills up the screen though on the d24 monitor. image shifted to the left a bit?

vga_scaler=1
forced_scandoubler=1

2. this makes the resolution 480p and looks pretty crisp (no scanlines obviously). fills up the screen (it overscans a bit too much which is annoying but i could tweak on my monitors)

vga_scaler=1
video_mode=2 ;720x480 3:2

my situation is very niche though...i am definitely keen to see borders get introduced so i can have scanlines and no black borders

[honest viper]

Here is a writeup comparing official and unofficial Gameboy Player software video outputs (including trying an Extron to convert 480i to 240p). The conclusion is that unscaled at 240p via Swiss looks the best on a 15khz CRT.
https://www.retrorgb.com/gameboyplayer.html

[ionic phoenix]

I don't know if it's like a psychological thing, but portable systems when emulated look better when they're integer scaled and framed in a border. Like how the Super Game Boy handles Game Boy games.

I think it's because these games have such low resolutions that you need to zoom them out to mask how big the pixels are on a television/monitor.

[zealous nacelle]

That's actually exactly how I do it. All the console and PC cores I run at fullscreen without integer scaling and the handheld ones I do integer scaling an enjoy the border around the screen. Makes it feel more like a handheld to me, haha.

[honest viper]

I agree. It becomes like Pointillism style painting where the closer you are the more abstract it looks. Zooming out with crisp pixels helps the presentation and readability.

[zealous nacelle]

It also doesn't help that I've been playing my Micro a lot so I'm used to teeeeeny tiny little screen lol

[honest viper]

👀
At least we have use cases at both extremes to find the happy medium lol

[jade wraith]

I have a 13” and think the default size is fine (and definitely don’t want funky scaling artifacts). Border would help my set cope with the contents though.

[warm galleon]

Just discovered this completely new game, a Mario themed Pokemon game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2B1v94Dp1Jw
@winter rain @north jay

[inner torrent]

They've even ported it to Pokemon Showdown, the main fan-based battle sim so there's a small competitive scene for it

[sand saffron]

I posted about this one in the game-and-patches thread recently. It's seriously wild how much went into it.

[north jay]

Thanks. I saw a preview of it. Is it out now. Pokemin with Mario characters sounds amazing.

Doing vids is always scary, Nintendo are nasty with their DMCA's

I don't think its an Apil's Fools though

I found the hack page. I'll try and patch this tonight when I get home.

[lean remnant]

There is also a hack for later games like sword and bouclier

[hushed narwhal]

Well I got my GB Link adapter. So if you need someone to test the link support, I should be able to. (Pending Incan find my link cables)

[sand saffron]

It works great on MiSTer. I tested it for a bit about a week ago. It's super well done.

[zealous nacelle]

Is a real time clock needed for the game?

[sand saffron]

I...don't know.

[fierce eagle]

Don't worry, I have a RTC module like any true mister fan.

[north jay]

Thanks Mal

[lean remnant]

@low carbon is this hack of Wario Land 4 is present of GPIO quirk ?
https://github.com/djedditt/wl4-rumble

[fringe comet]

After testing some random games I realised... they made a Jimmy Neutron Metroidvania?!

what the hell

Can we "fix" the core so this game won't boot and cause nightmares?

[ionic phoenix]

Oh come on, a little bit of childhood trauma builds character.

[fringe comet]

The Jimmy Neutron game itself is bad enough

The Metroidvania one was actually... average. You can tell the devs had been playing Metroid Fusion/Zero Mission and wanted to do something actually decent.

But they used a password system as that's cheaper to manufacture (I assume)

[zealous nacelle]

No this is perfect

[coarse cape]

Looks like real hardware to me

[fringe comet]

Think of the greater good

[coarse cape]

@delicate python when you get a sec, can you add the latest test core to the WIP database?

[delicate python]

Done 🙂

[zealous nacelle]

Did I miss the latest test core?

[coarse cape]

you did not, duder - this is more because I have 4 misters (and brain worms) and updating the core on them is easier if its in the WIP repository

[zealous nacelle]

FOUR MISTERS?

[coarse cape]

I HAVE A PROBLEM OK

[delicate python]

Must be hard juggling that many, without them all finding out.

[coarse cape]

Gotta run air traffic control - make sure two arent.....landing at the same time (͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

[delicate python]

You got hoes on different IP codes

[coarse cape]

sub nettin'

[lone canyon]

Ok Calvin's dad

[warm galleon]

Almost unused GBA arrived today. Was only used a few times and sat in its original box until now. The manuals haven't even been taken out a single time, it's like it's still packaged like it came from the factory! Maybe it's just me but I can never get things back into place once I take them out haha.

It will be the perfect candidate for audio filter research and development as the electronic capacitors are most likely still in like-new factory condition. I just have to purchase a few genuine game carts and a flash cart to get started.

[fierce eagle]

Thank you for your dedication. 🙏 Anything specific a game soundtrack needs to have to be a good candidate for filter development?

[warm galleon]

I generally use a few different test tones for filter development, including MDFourier. These test tones are being played through the system by the use of a flash cart and custom roms that play back the test tones. What needs to be accounted for in this case is that flash carts can behave differently from genuine carts in regards to access times, power draw and can potentially also cause higher buildup of heat within the system, which could all affect the audio output and skew the results of the resulting technical analysis.

For this reason I have decided to to always record some reference audio samples from the real system in question, using genuine carts or discs, so that I can use these reference samples as a final method of verification in a direct comparison of the Mister Filters to the real system, to determine whether my results are accurate or not, and if further tweaking is required.

I have actually not yet even checked if MDFourier is available for the GBA, I know that they have a rom for the GB though. Fortunately there are also other ways that I can come to generate a frequency response differential between different reference tracks, although it will not offer nearly as much detailed information as MDFourier would.

With the GBA I'm specifically looking for game tracks with bad and noisy audio output, and generally just busy tracks which cover a large range of the frequency spectrum. Ideally the best case would be to have various different tones or sound samples playing back notes from the lowest to the highest possible pitch, to cover the entire possible range that the GBA can produce.

It's always exciting getting to work with a system, and I can already tell that I'm off to a much better start compared to when I started working with the N64 about two years ago, due to all the experience and knowledge that I have gained in the meantime.

So far these are my picks for genuine carts:

Barbie Horse Adventures (has somewhat crunchy sound)
Mario Kart - Super Circuit
Mother 3 (was recommended to me because of bad sound)
Spyro - Season Of Ice
Super Mario Advance 3 - Yoshi's Island
WarioWare Inc - Minigame Mania (noisy sound)

I might also include ALTTP if I can find a cart at a reasonable cost, it sounds like it also has somewhat crunchy and noisy sound.

[fierce eagle]

That sounds very technical. Afaik the everdrive gba x5 uses about as much power as a genuine card, but you could get an empty card from inside gadgets and flash various test roms on it, could be cheaper.

I remember the chorus in castlevania circle of the moons title screen to by pretty crunchy as well, way better with a filter on gbi and in the wii u virtual console rerelease.

[warm galleon]

I have to look into this! Could this cart be re-flashed multiple times?

It definitely gets expensive purchasing several genuine carts, especially games that people actively look out for. I'll try and see if I can get Castlevania as well.

[fierce eagle]

I only have limited experience with those cards, as only got some for my romhack. They have a discord where they can answer technical questions.

But I've updated my cards 3-4 times without issues.

https://discord.com/channels/513663955562921984/513663955562921986

Castlevania Harmony of dissonance is also notorious for bad sound

[ionic phoenix]

I would also recommend Sonic Battle, simply because the OST can be pretty shrill.

[warm galleon]

Unfortunately the Inside Gadgets flash cart also has a slightly higher power draw. I'll stick with the EverDrive, as it has worked quite well with the N64.

[fierce eagle]

Too bad

[warm galleon]

Does anyone here know the game shown at 9:09?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjtD1mOZlPc&t=9m09s

[gilded schooner]

Skating Board inside Warioware Inc.

The character is 9-Volt.

[warm galleon]

Apparently Nintendo developed a catridge to play back GBA games on the N64, which remained unreleased. Since the topic of adding a border to the core for CRT output was discussed, maybe this would be worth replicating for the Mister, as it would be the most authentic reference for an official border.

It's being discussed in the same video I posted earlier, at 20m55s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjtD1mOZlPc&t=1255s

I think it actually also looks really good.

[fringe comet]

Is that the wideboy?

[copper needle]

the ez-flash gba carts work well for a lot cheaper than an everdrive

[lone canyon]

I think they just don't work with some games cuz of not having the hardware on board

which is expected of cheap flash carts

[gilded schooner]

Wide-Boy 64 AGB.

[warm galleon]

Yes. I forgot that the Gamecube GBP/GBI exists, but the Wideboy border looks really good and it's very simple.

[fierce eagle]

I have the omega and it draws power like a sphincter, halves the battery life.

[timid phoenix]

I love the idea that Barbie Horse Adventures will eventually have among the most accurate sound 😏

I’m pretty sure perfect accuracy in that game is the real reason FPGAzumSpass redid the GBA core 😉

[delicate python]

The video carts might be useful in comparing audio

[warm galleon]

Would I be able to use them to inject uncompressed pcm audio into the GBA?

[delicate python]

Hmm, that's an interesting thought

[warm galleon]

It's a great suggestion, I completely forgot about these.

[delicate python]

There are tools that allow you to make your own thinking about it

[warm galleon]

Yes, I there are some old tools available somewhere. If it could be modified to allow playback of even just a fraction of a second of raw pcm audio it would be absolutely amazing.

[delicate python]

Would need to make sure they are 32MB and not 64MB but should hopefully be able to do these fine on 32MB

[wide ember]

why are never Barbie games given remakes

[warm galleon]

I believe it's available on PS2 as well 😄

[wide ember]

aha

like dark alliance

[delicate python]

@sacred rivet may know about the video creation tools, that sounds like it might be in his wheelhouse

[wide ember]

perhaps they share some DNA

[sacred rivet]

Oh yeah I "put" Cogmind on GBA

Is that what you mean? Just a video trailer to ROM

If you mean retail carts it's a bit different

[warm galleon]

In the simplest terms, I'd love to be able to play back uncompressed audio through the GBA.

[sacred rivet]

Ah one second

Hmmm. It's usually MODs, true uncompressed PCM is kinda rare

Or some other format with sampling

[delicate python]

Another side thought, i think there are music creation carts for GBA aren't there? Those may be of use

[sacred rivet]

I recall a .ROM you could literally cat foo.rom music.mp3 > music.rom and get it working

[warm galleon]

Yes, likely heavily compressed to fit on the small space the carts offer

[sacred rivet]

https://github.com/Kermalis/VGMusicStudio

MP2K Engine is still compressed IIRC

There is also an m4a engine but it's not public

https://github.com/ipatix/agbplay oh it is now

[warm galleon]

Well, the other viable method would be if I could create a rom that simply plays various sounds, starting from the lowest possible pitch all the way through to the highest possible pitch that the GBA can produce.

[warm galleon]

Thanks, this could be very interesting!

[sacred rivet]

Ah a tracker .mod would be ideal for this I think

Sadly you'd have to compose your tracker sheets yourself, not automatically

Then I know mmutil from DevKitPro/DevKitARM can turn it into a GBA .ROM for you in one step

I do know how you'd feed PCM in code to it but you'd need a whole app around it

[warm galleon]

Yes, and it might not be really necessary, although it would definitely result in the most accurate measuring of the audio output. It will likely be a lot of work to get something like it working correctly.

[sacred rivet]

"just" stream 8-bit PCM data via DMA to the sound FIFO at your chosen sample rate (max 32768 Hz)

I bet I can write a ROM to do this that can take a gbfs file appended to it

One moment

I have a feeling it's gonna run out of cart space though

Butano can probably hook all this for me

Maybe ~20min

[warm galleon]

I can use a single sample test tone with equal energy across the entire frequency spectrum, it's enough to generate a response from the GBA to tell me the exact frequency response.

It would be very little in file size.

[delicate python]

Would supporting the 64MB Video carts make this doable? Although not sure if flashcards support those thinking about it

[sacred rivet]

might

not sure how constrained the core itself is on memory in that regard right now

[delicate python]

Hah, we may have a legitimate usecase for the Shrek mapper to be supported 🙂

[warm galleon]

Right, we have to make sure it also runs on the core.

@sacred rivet don't rush yourself with getting this rom to work. I also first have to figure out the cleanest possible way to resample the file to the gba's native sampling rate without causing any unwanted distortions. Should be simple really, but still could take some time to test and verify to be correct.

[sacred rivet]

it's too late I'm doing the same thing

down-sample it and the project to 16000hz, then export. Choose an output format of raw, with 8-bit signed PCM audio

close enough

[warm galleon]

I can re-sample easily to 32khz exactly, would this work out, or do I need to re-sample exactly to 32768hz? Most of my programs will not allow to use any custom target sample rates. Which bit depth value would I need to use?

[sacred rivet]

HAHAHA it played a single note of the song on my first attempt with horribly distorted and pitched down audio and crashed a second in

[sacred rivet]

I'm actually not sure, I think it's possible to resample to the true harmonic half of max, but PCM programs all give me 16000Hz instead

[wide ember]

flash carts were marketed as video playing devices

couldn't be marketed as anything else

[sacred rivet]

wow this is a jam but it's completely wrong

[warm galleon]

16khz would be too low, as would only allow for playback of frequencies up to 8khz. The closer we can get to the max supported sampling rate the better it will be. With 32khz we'd be able to measure the output up to 16khz, which should be sufficent.

[sacred rivet]

I see that makes sense

lemme see what I can do

[warm galleon]

If it's too much work to get right, it may not be worth doing it, unless you really want to. It took me and Robert around 2-3 months to inject uncompressed pcm audio at 44.1khz into the N64 and have it play back correctly. There were lots of unexpected issues coming up, and with no documentation being available it was all trial an error getting it right, other that Robert's great knowledge of the system and ability to find solutions.

[sacred rivet]

I've almost got it dw

IT WORKED

Lemme just fix it crashing at the end and throwing noise

You should be able to fit PCM samples into this, and we can work out exact harmonics but I've got 32k flat now

[warm galleon]

Sweet!

[delicate python]

Wow, great work!

[sacred rivet]

See README to compile the code. zlib licensed other than audio sample which is Fair Use. Confirmed working on real HW and Analogue Pocket, please lmk if it works on MiSTer and which core, am not able to test right now

Further improvements would be load audio from gbfs appended to the end but I wanted to get a proof of concept out just playing something to start

The code is also commented to hell albeit poorly as I just kinda hacked stuff together, enjoy

Happy to inject whatever sample on my end if you don't wanna build, just need the .raw file

Takes me 5s so it's nbd

[delicate python]

I have downed tools for the night so can't check, anyone else able to try run this rom on both cores and see if it runs OK?

[warm galleon]

Could you build two roms using these two different files? They are both the same, just one lowered by approximately 50% in level in case the full output file clips the GBA's output.

I'll test it on my Pocket quickly. To test it on the Mister I have to make some space and get everything setup, including my CRT, which I don't have time for today.

[sacred rivet]

I should be able to test in a little bit, was freed up

Will build these and drop them soon

[warm galleon]

Samba time!

I tested it with Retroarch and my Pocket, it seems to work fine with the sample you used. Using the test tones that I sent earlier will be the real test, as any distortion, skewing or other unexpected behavior will become more apparent with these.

[ionic phoenix]

Puyo Pop has garbage pixels on the top during the tutorial demo. It only shows up when the red text on the top changes.

[sacred rivet]

I passed out lemme make them now

these files still have a PCM header so I need to strip it

@warm galleon here ya go!

I'm not sure why -6 is so much larger

something seems off

if these fail your tests it might be an issue on my end when I exported them but I thought I did it right

Oh it's because I was silly and totally forgot to raw2c the file for the second one

fixed

Looking over the code again though today, I'm confused. The sampling timer constant I used was for 16KHz, how is it playing 32KHz audio? If you're able, it would be good to confirm I haven't destroyed the sampling rate

the dirac sample also seems to pop on real HW when it's first loaded, not sure what that's about

it may work because that timer is not necessarily to feed audio but regulate FIFO, audio is filled with DMA

[sacred rivet]

Got more info

I think we want 8bit ~65KHz

you may use any of these options though, lmk which is best for your test

[warm galleon]

8bit 65khz would even better if the GBA can actually play these back, as this way I'd be able to measure the frequency response up to 32.5khz. I'm still at work and will be in a long meeting shortly, I'll try to find some time to check the new roms out later.

[sacred rivet]

It definitely can

[warm galleon]

Awesome, thanks! I'll prepare the new audio files asap.

[sacred rivet]

Games just never use it because you dedicate the whole thing to audio basically

[warm galleon]

Got it. We just need to check how it behaves with 65khz sampling rate. The N64 for example regularly used 44.1khz and below for sampling rates and could also support up to 48khz, but at 48khz sampling rate the audio output was strongly aliased for some reason. I doubt anyone ever used it for anything.

[sacred rivet]

a little aliasing noise as a treat

Will put a repo up for this next time and try to add gbfs

if that's done you can

gbfs create foo.raw # creates foo.gbfs
cat gba-pcm.gba foo.gbfs > foo.gba

and just play whatever

actually... wait... I could skip gbfs

And just assume appended data is the PCM

but it would crash with horrible noise (when done)

I guess that's the price to pay

gonna add this now

a config file in there too can also let you just pick the sample rates

[warm galleon]

It would be nice to know the maximum file size that the audio file can have. I would have some additional test tones to try out including the MDFourier test tones.

[sacred rivet]

~32MiB

minus the code (less than 256KiB)

4.0K    build-gba/gba-pcm.gba

wowsers

[warm galleon]

Maybe an easy workaround would be to use a few seconds of silence before the audio file plays.

Do you require the audio files in a raw format? I can definitely also export them as raw .pcm files. The other thing to watch out for is to byte order, as it appears that these older devices used little endian byte order for the audio, which today is mostly unsupported by modern programs. Using the wrong byte order will cause the audio to play back entirely distorted.

[sacred rivet]

yeah gotta be raw format, no header

[sacred rivet]

Confirmed this works on the V240409 core

Also works on latest in this channel

[sacred rivet]

oh, sweet
https://github.com/velipso/gba-sound-demo

this will do it, I don't need to rewrite it

[warm galleon]

I appreciate all your work and support, just don't rush yourself with it. I still need to purchase the EverDrive, which will also take a few weeks to arrive (last time it was approx. a month for the parcel to arrive), so there is still plenty of time going to pass before I could even measure the real hardware or test your rom with it.

[sacred rivet]

Ah OK

This gives me plenty of time to adapt the test ROM

[warm galleon]

Would it also be possible to use 64000hz exact as a sample rate as well? None of my programs allow me to resample to custom sample rate, 64khz is the closest I can do.

[sacred rivet]

Don't think so, no

This register for sound bias only has fixed settings

[warm galleon]

Got it. So it has to be 65.536hz exactly?

[sacred rivet]

yes

sox can do it

you'd use the higher, exact sampling rate here

[warm galleon]

Nice, based on this measurement SoX in all the various VHQ settings seems to have no aliasing distortion and might even perform a tiny bit better than the SRC that I typically use.

SoX does generate some non-linear distortions though, however for our purposes it shouldn't really matter as they are very low in level and most likely will get completely drowned out by the GBA's own noise floor.

[sacred rivet]

excellent

[warm galleon]

@sacred rivet Found an interesting bit of information:

"The GBA doesn't contain a proper DAC and does this by the way of PWM. There is a tradeoff between PWM frequency and # of bits. In order to mix a Direct Sound channel + some PSG audio, at least 9 bits are required, however, using 9 bits makes the PWM only 32kHz, and at this rate a lot of aliasing appears and it sounds absolutely terrible. So most game uses 8-bits and 64kHz instead, which sounds better, even if more noise is here because of the bit loss, there is at least less aliasing."

https://forums.nesdev.org/viewtopic.php?p=138763&sid=0496a7d4a1d59744de3a43606805abc3#p138763

In this case using 64khz for measuring the GBA's audio output is the definitive way to go. It makes sense that the aliasing distortion will be less when using a 64khz internal samping rate will result in a much higher Nyquist frequency, and noise is really not much of concern. It will however allow us to also measure a more extended frequency range and result in a more accurate measurement.

I'll prepare the new audio files shortly.

[sacred rivet]

the ol' divide by two

[ionic phoenix]

Just beat SpongeBob SuperSponge with no problems.

god that Plankton sprite is so dogshit

[fathom lintel]

I finished Castlevania Aria of Sorrow last night, pretty boring end screen

[timber silo]

The weird porn in the files if the PlayStation version is creepy

[zealous nacelle]

Wait what

[timber silo]

https://tcrf.net/Development:SpongeBob_SquarePants:_SuperSponge_(PlayStation)#Naughty.jpg

Technically the game never shipped with them, it was a dev build

[wide ember]

holy cheapness

imagine the greatness it could have achieved with an spc700

[fringe comet]

Trade the crustiness for muffledness and toilet reverb

[wide ember]

the snes wasn't muffled inherently, it's just that nearly nobody understood the prefiltering needed

some games sound fine

[fringe comet]

Oh yeah, a lot of the Follin bros games being a good example

[wide ember]

Huelsbeck seemed to work it well too

https://youtu.be/asgTdQ5poe0?si=AWi6Etv9vsLCSOnH

[fringe comet]

Yeah it's rare to hear a nice snare on the snes

It's the same with the Megadrive tbh, if you properly filtered the samples, they played a lot better.

Like "You've got a secret bonus point" from Dynamite Headdy. I reckon the actual sample itself has it's high end massively boosted.

Or alternatively, the low end was cut/shelved heavily

[wide ember]

yeah it's like the RIAA emphasis curve for vinyl records I guess

[fringe comet]

Work with the hardware, not against it

[warm galleon]

SNES will probably be next in line. Should be easy to just inject pcm audio via MSU-1 and a flashcart. I will need to purchase a few different good condition console revisions, such as the 1-chip, 2-chip and Jr models as they likely all sound slightly different.

[warm galleon]

Yes, I can only assume that most game devs were trying their best to optimize audio for the specific system in question, which is why I can not enjoy playing games if the audio output sounds wrong, when it's not being correctly filtered.

[placid crater]

I have the GBA core set with a lowpass filter I was recommended by Rysha. Are you working to remediate this so we don’t need the filter? Not understanding what you are doing/trying to do here 😅

[crimson gate]

We already do pretty good anti aliasing

Likely significantly better than the original

[fierce eagle]

Which if the current audio filters that come via update_all is recommended for use with GBA?

[zealous nacelle]

I mean, as a complete layman I assumed that because of how scratchy the sound was.

[wide ember]

I figured it was vinyl

[warm galleon]

I'm in the process of measuring the audio outputs of various consoles and handhelds with the intention or creating dedicated accurate audio filter presets.

[lean dune]

Nice and best of luck. You've done N64 so far. Have you completed other consoles and what's on your to-do list?

[warm galleon]

I created filters for the N64 but these will need to be re-worked entirely, hence no official release yet.

I'm currently working in parallel on measuring three different PSX revisions and a GBA for filter development. I plan on eventually developing filters for all Nintendo, Sega and Sony cores.

[warm galleon]

I have actually found out that the Mister isn't doing very great at all in terms of anti-aliasing. My tests are showing that the Mister is strongly aliasing the audio output, also confirmed by MDFourier. I checked in with Soltan about it last year, who provided me with all the information on this topic that he had available, and my conclusion that I came to after months of testing and researching is that the current internal output filter, which acts as both the core audio filter and as anti-aliasing filter at the same time, is not steep enough and therefore doesn't reach enough reduction before the Nyquist frequency, causing plenty of high frequency content to be mirrored back as aliasing distortion into the human hearing range. If I recall correctly the 3rd order lpf that the Mister uses only reaches about a -40db attenuation before Nyquist, which is not nearly enough reduction to effectively reduce aliasing. For it to perform well as anti-aliasing filter it needs to be closer to -100db or more for best results.

It is not ideal to have the same filter try and do two different tasks at once, for best results it the Mister would require a dedicated core audio filter in addition to a dedicated anti-aliasing filter using a very steep curve to act as a brick wall filter to not let anything through to reach the Nyquist frequency.

I'll be working with Robert on re-working the audio filters when we can free up some time to dedicate towards it.

[crimson gate]

You know nothing Jon Snow

[warm galleon]

?

[warm galleon]

Check this comparison out. I ran a simple sine sweep through the PSX core using the default internal filter. You see the frequency spectrum analyzer of the recording of the Mister on the left and the original file on the right. You can easily see plenty of aliased frequency content that is not present in the original file, and you can also clearly see how there is bounce back at the Nyquist frequency. My assumption is that the distortion either happens at the final output due to the internal filter not reducing enough before nyquist, or at some point during the re-sampling, or both.

I have no idea who Jon Snow is, and I want to state clearly that I'm posting my findings with no implied disrespect to anyone who worked on the code, I'm simply sharing my findings which I fully trust to be genuine, and my assumptions as to what is causing it.

[hushed narwhal]

You know nothing Jon snow is a quote from the hit TV show called Game of Thrones

[zealous nacelle]

It’s a jokey reference, meant no harm. Maybe it’s because all the GBA scratchy audio sounds like snow lol.

[crimson gate]

How do you know I didn't mean harm?

[zealous nacelle]

I’m running defense over here, you can’t keep throwing quick snaps without a mike call

[crimson gate]

Who is Mike?

[zealous nacelle]

It’s the middle linebacker, integral to call out who’s in the middle of a defensive lineup for your play so everyone knows who to block

[placid crater]

this is getting really complicated to follow 😅

[wide ember]

is this cricket or chat

[jade wraith]

Touchdown!

[sacred rivet]

I can get you the test builds for measurement whenever, just need the wav 🙂

[warm galleon]

Thanks, I appreciate it. I'll send them to you asap.

[warm galleon]

Artemo is also going to send me the MDFourier test tones at 65536hz and 8 bit shortly, so we'll be able to use it for GBA as well. I'll send the files to you as soon as I have them all together.

[sacred rivet]

Might be a bit headed out tonight

No rush

[warm galleon]

Is the rom still causing an audio pop at the beginning? If so, do we need to include a longer duration of silence in the beginning?

[sacred rivet]

It is yes

I think I fed the first sample wrong in code but silence gap would fix it too

It’s a good safety

Only pops a few ms

[lyric gust]

This should help

[coarse cape]

X won at least twice why are they still playing

[lyric gust]

I thought they were hugs and kisses

[fathom lintel]

Game Bay Advonce

[coarse cape]

I think that's actually a nickle defense

[gritty rivet]

For gba 2player when using a second monitor with the vga port how can I get it to be proper aspect ratio?

Is it possible with just a vga cable or would I need to try to output component video to a retrotink 5 like if it was a gameboy player ?

[zealous nacelle]

GAME BAY ADVONCE

[placid crater]

I think some cores have been tuned with MDFourier, pretty sure the PCE core was tuned maybe also SNES? Cant remember now, but some cores did get that treatment

[zealous nacelle]

Neo Geo too, right?

[azure lynx]

Yes if my memory serves me right

[smoky loom]

the new gba core can be found here

[coarse cape]

https://tenor.com/sI78.gif

[warm galleon]

I'll be looking into it. So far I have only worked with the N64 and PSX cores.

[low carbon]

Was on holiday for 1 week, did i miss something important? Haven't seen any crashes or so mentioned when scrolling through.

[jade wraith]

The pope passed away, though I doubt that will have an impact on the gba core.

[copper needle]

some people were working on a way to playback audio samples so they could do some analysis, i don't think i saw a single bug come up though

[low carbon]

ok, sounds good, will look at the older reported ones then

[ionic phoenix]

I did notice a strange bug in Puyo Pop with garbage pixels in the tutorial demo and a glitched line during an iris out effect in Densetsu no Stafy. Can't verify if it's a genuine bug with the core or just how the games behave.

[zealous nacelle]

Racing Gears Advance works which has historically given flash carts a ton of trouble

[fringe comet]

Maybe the biggest problem is that the core is too good

[low carbon]

Next time I will leave more bugs in for the testing phase. I understand it's less fun if there is no gold to be found while digging 🙂

[fierce eagle]

Only issue I found was the sound issue in golden sun but that only occurs when using direct video through a scaler. Someone managed to replicate it as well.

[low carbon]

probably due to the unusual video output frequency (13khz)

will work on that part when the critical bugs on my list are gone

[coarse cape]

🙋

[lyric gust]

Have you checked out @warm galleon’s discussion of audio filter accuracy

[low carbon]

yes, i regulary talk to him in private about future plans for filters 🙂

[fierce eagle]

No secrets allowed!

[vestal depot]

question, I saw a thing on I think VIDEOGAMESOOOOTERICAHERE's video about the gba core being rewritten or a new core or a new update that makes it more cycle accurate

is that a thing already?

my friend is about to play mother 3 so I want to tell him to get that first since.. mother 3 without good timing is ass

[hallow grove]

It is a thing, you can find a link to it in the pins

[fathom lintel]

Its still in progress but it's been pretty solid with 99% of the games i tested

[vestal depot]

amazing, thanks a lot

[low carbon]

i think the most critical bug currently is that unpausing can hang the core, resulting in saving to sdcard being non-functional, as saving needs pausing.
This doesn't hit every game, but was reported for at least one.

[fathom lintel]

I had one E0006 error crash on latest core when opening the OSD while playing through
Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance but I was somewhat jumping and forth between savestates. I was able to savestate on that error, reload the core still be able play fine

[obsidian apex]

Shantae gba from limited run is coming home :)

[lone canyon]

Isn't that just a ROM on an aftermarket cart no better than a bootleg?

[waxen verge]

when is that game coming out?

regardless, i'm looking forward to it. lrg doesn't deserve a dime though

[low carbon]

do you still have the savestate? Or can you tell me where that was? I want to replicate that but need the exact position in the game where it happens to not search in the dark

or was it just in a safe/save room?

[fathom lintel]

I don't have the savestate anymore, it was a one off thing I couldn't replicate and ended up using that slot for when i was testing all the endings. I can't remember specifically where it happened just that happened once while I was completing the game

[fierce eagle]

If I can finish dq7 until then I'll try to play some harmony of dissonance on Saturday to see if I can replicate. Busy weekend this week, so not sure.

[hollow merlin]

Any advice for visual processing filters for playing gba on an OLED?

[crude marten]

set video to integer,

Use the pre-set GBA filter

[hollow merlin]

What about color modification. I'm sure it's just, "use what you like" but I'm not sure I have a good model to think about it

[crude marten]

I wouldn’t recommend playing with the color unless they appear particularly garish.
Get the presentation of the pixels right and then decide if you need to desaturate or whatever

[lone canyon]

I personally like the generic 5th gen filter over GBA.
Because while GBA filter tries to give you that grid line LCD screen look of the GBA screen, because it's on such a large scale such a large display it just doesn't look as good in my opinion whereas using a 5th gen generic CRT filter helps to smooth things out a little bit make it look a lot more like it does if you're looking at an actual GBA screen

[timber silo]

I really like the LCD filter that uses white rather than black between the pixels.

[wide ember]

the GBA screen was atrocious

like a big cruel joke

[fierce eagle]

I kinda like the ips replacement screens, even though they're not that good appearently. But the colors are so pretty.

[low carbon]

• don't pause when DMA is upcoming in next cycle
• fix sound fifo when going into pause
  This build should fix the freezing when saving/opening OSD.
  To make a hard test of that, there is a new "pause" button that can be mapped. When this button is held down, the core will go in and out of pausing >10000 times per second.
  Audio and Video will be horrible(use vsync adjust 0!), but the game should never freeze when the button is not pressed anymore.
  I tested several games with it and couldn't find any issues, but feel free to also test that.

[warm galleon]

@sacred rivet here are the files. These are still headered pcm wav files as I can not just easily export them to a raw format while at the same time keeping the custom sample rate. Let me know if that works for you.

[sacred rivet]

I'm sure I can strip the header. Looking into this now

[zealous nacelle]

Would be cool if someone made a MiSTer to GameCube cable to use the core as a GBPlayer lol.

[delicate python]

In theory if someone were to implement support for it (no slim feat) you could use the official cable and connect MiSTer to a GameCube via SNAC using the current GBC SNAC adaptor.

I am no expert, but I think in theory it would be possible (with a lot of work).

Would take a real mad lad to try implement that

[compact vessel]

How much is in that support? Otherwise unused GBA side protocols? I guess there's no GBA "ROM" data to consider is there?

[low carbon]

https://problemkaputt.de/gbatek.htm#siojoybusmode
In theory that should be acceptable effort. However, as with all external hardware, you can only observe and debug one side

I don't have a gamecube and don't plan on getting one for it at the moment

[fierce eagle]

It's not that important and you'll have to get a gc for the eventual gc core anyway, so no need to hurry. 🙂

[compact vessel]

I guess getting a Wii would be easier but not a priority for sure. Would be really cool though!

[fierce eagle]

Afaik the gc has better video out. Not to mention the first models had a digital video out, which you can use with a carby to directly translate to hdmi.

[zealous nacelle]

Oh yeah, the practicality of that device is inherently terrible lol. It was just an idle thought of mine.

[timber silo]

The goal of mister is to reduce gizmos and doo dads, not increase them!

[crude marten]

wii with a wiidual mod just edged out the best gamecube revision for analog video

sadly it’s out of production and was never open sourced like its gamecube cousin

[copper needle]

i think this might just work if we have full-featured linkport support

from the gba's perspective its similar to the link cable games that only need 1 cart

[delicate python]

Maybe, although only one way to find out 🙂

[copper needle]

i've got all the hardware needed, my mister is already right next to my gamecube 😄

i'm not sure its of any serious utility other than the novelty though, you'd have to have 2 screens setup next to each other as well

also nearly all the games that use that its meant for 4p coop play so make that 4 misters and 5 screens heh

[compact vessel]

But that is the utilitiy! 😄

5 CRTs + 4 MiSTers + 1 GC/Wii + Friends (not included) = FUN!

[lone canyon]

get the rest and the friends will surely come.... eventually....................... right?

[compact vessel]

Even one link would have some cool utility. Like connections from MiSTer to the various GC Pokémon games for example. Could play it all direct from a MiSTer save

[low carbon]

@lean remnant cannot reproduce the elevator action issue with the newest core, could you maybe check again?

[lean remnant]

I will check and let you know !

[low carbon]

thank you!

[lean remnant]

I couldn't reproduce also I will updated the sheet file

[low carbon]

Great 🙂

[lean remnant]

One more issue fixed 🙂

[low carbon]

Famicon Classics 21+ should be fixed.
They added some "emulator test" where they would draw some large affine sprites starting at x position 239.
When the emulator would stop drawing after the first pixel, because the end of the line is reached anyway, it doesn't consume enough time and doesn't run into sprite time running out, some black sprites at the top of the screen get drawn as well.
Or basically: they test that the GBA sprite drawing is so inefficient that it spends endless time drawing invisible pixels instead of just skipping to the next sprite. (this is what the core did)

Most bugs now are minor, so I will work on the video out(160p and 240p) and pause syncing, then hopefully the core is good enough to be fully released.

[lean remnant]

You doesn't fixed Balloon fight ?

[copper needle]

my pvm is your pvm as ever if you want to rapid-iterate

[low carbon]

thank you for the reminder, will be in the next build

Should sort my todo list in a better way, 40 entries, sometimes i miss the low hanging fruits 🙂

[lean remnant]

no problem 😉

I have tested and updated sheet for other famicom classics all good 🙂

[warm galleon]

@low carbon Since you were thinking of including a border for CRT monitors, what do you think about re-creating the border of the unreleased Nintendo Wide-Boy 64 AGB for the GBA core? It's a very simple border, in the sense that it's not taking focus away from the gameplay, and it looks quite good as well.

You can find out more about it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjtD1mOZlPc&t=1256s

[lean remnant]

https://x.com/AleFunky890/status/1916499530754686976?t=1_M80raVBtLQsDp1k6PMpQ&s=19

AleFunky (@AleFunky890) on X

You can find the GitHub repository of Geometry Dash Advance here: https://t.co/DRYUY5vrRp. You can download the latest build (experimental version) there.

X · Apr 27, 2025, 2:27 PM

[ionic phoenix]

At the very least there should be an option between this and a generic black border.

[low carbon]

Plan was to have boot1.rom contain a 320x240 565 rgb raw image with some default, but you can exchange it.
Not sure if that makes sense or how other cores do it

Maybe file loading through OSD instead

[warm galleon]

If you want I can create the border. I have never worked with raw image files before but that should be easy to figure out.

[low carbon]

I cannot and will not provide any standard border with original names and potential copyright content with the core.
But I can't stop you from creating things on your own mister 😉

[warm galleon]

Got it. How about if I create the same border with a different logo? I could use "FGPAzumSpass" and try to design the logo in a similar font style.

[ionic phoenix]

Use the MiSTer logo instead.

[coarse cape]

robby's flexing avatar

[warm galleon]

Makes sense!

[warm galleon]

Even better!

[ionic phoenix]

Like text mimicking the GBA font and MiSTer-Kun next to it.

[warm galleon]

I'll create a few different designs and will post them here.

[fringe comet]

Look at AliExpress for inspiration that tickles the copyright line

"Game Lad Advanced"

[warm galleon]

I unfortunately can not find anything for that search term.

[fringe comet]

Oh I just mean there's all sorts of obviously dodgy stuff on aliexpress

No copyright infringement there

[coarse cape]

A ton of points for creativity

[zealous nacelle]

@low carbon how is it looking for the potential of including an increased clock speed option on the new core?

[warm galleon]

@low carbon can I freely choose the vertical position of the GBA output display within the border, or does it have to be perfectly centered within it?

[timber silo]

Honestly just having a solid border color would be good enough.

[lone canyon]

nah. I need a border with big tiddy goth girls while I play

[timber silo]

🤔

[fierce eagle]

https://tenor.com/view/culture-man-of-culture-cultured-gif-10903367

[lone canyon]

https://tenor.com/view/leonardo-dicaprio-leo-cheers-man-of-culture-gif-11842471611108892522

[low carbon]

to be compatible with other designs, it should stay at the same position, so centered makes sense

[low carbon]

i thought about it and would really like to do that, especially for fastforward, not so much for CPU turbo.
But there is just no headroom. The cart prefetch is running the SDRAM already at 6x clock and needs every clock cycle to be able to provide the data in time, so there is no headroom left.
Best that would be possible is a cpu turbo (not fastforward) with e.g. CPU cache added. This could easily speed up the CPU by 2x-4x, but the use cases are limited.
Games with low frame rates are rather seldom?
Maybe in future.

[fierce eagle]

Core seems pretty stable now. Are there any big bugs left?

[fringe comet]

Is the horizontal line from Street Fighter II still present?

I've not had chance to test it on the new core as I've been doing stupid grown up stuff

[warm galleon]

Unfortunately the version that is shifted vertically upwards looks much better.

Let me know which one you prefer, it's still not finished.

Resizing Mister-Kun to such small dimensions is difficult. I feel like he would have to be created from the ground up for the small resolution if I were to include him. But maybe the border would then also turn out to be too crowded.

[fierce eagle]

I think those look awesome. 👍

[ionic phoenix]

I think this looks good as is!

[fringe comet]

You can balance out the space at the top by adding something else there

I think the reason the centred one looks off is because the spacing/balance is skewed

[warm galleon]

I tried placing Mister Kun up there, but it feels out of place and too crowded

[warm galleon]

You are absolutely right. I need to think a bit about it.

[fierce eagle]

Not sure if that's such a good idea. The burder resembles the gba bezel and there is nothing on that side.

[fringe comet]

It's specific, but it's not something that has never been done

[copper needle]

try putting mister up top and fpga underneath maybe?

[warm galleon]

I also tried using colored backgrounds, I sampled several different colors from an indigo colored GBA, but I'm not sure if that works too well.

[zealous nacelle]

Here’s a little low pixel mister Kun

[coarse cape]

oooo

[coarse cape]

I dig this

[fringe comet]

There's also the Gameboy player borders as inspiration, they appear to be centred

[copper needle]

i like the idea of colors but worry about how they would look on composite?

[zealous nacelle]

If it’s just one option then grey + black + white like in your first example is the way to go imo

Also I won’t play this on a CRT so feel free to ignore me lol

[copper needle]

i think you can pick composite friendly colors that wont bleed too bad?

[warm galleon]

Yes, the grey should work fine, also because it's a very neutral color and it doesn't pop out too much.

[warm galleon]

Need to look into this.

[copper needle]

yeah need composite support on the core before you could say really

[fringe comet]

I never use borders anyway so I don't know why I'm really saying much lol

[copper needle]

i think i'd actually use this all the time now i think about it

[zealous nacelle]

I use borders all the time, well I did with the GBA player

[copper needle]

i prefer not to actually fill the screen with GBA even on hdmi output as its kind of unflattering to make it so big

[zealous nacelle]

I like fun borders, I’d even swap them to something that fits the game more lol

[fringe comet]

Whenever I get one of those game compilations, first thing I do is check I can turn off borders.

[zealous nacelle]

Yeah same, plus it makes it feel more “handheld” since it’s not full screen to my eyes lol

[fringe comet]

The Megaman X legacy collection has especially garish borders

[copper needle]

i wonder if you could do like, dynamic border color, average the active area's color or something?

[fringe comet]

Like that TV trend from a decade ago

What was it, ambi light or something

[copper needle]

people still do that

its just not built into specific tv's anymore

[fringe comet]

I never saw one in person

[copper needle]

it'd probably just turn out grey/brownish all the time though right?

i feel like it would have to be smarter than just averaging the scene color

[zealous nacelle]

HELL YEAH I do that lol

[wide ember]

you average the scene color?

[zealous nacelle]

I got the Govee lights, I love having them match the color periphery

[wide ember]

oh

[copper needle]

they probably do more of a like, median color? than mean

[fringe comet]

I'm just imagining it'd look similar to me watching TV in the dark with dirty glasses

[copper needle]

nice

[zealous nacelle]

RAVE PARTY

[fathom lintel]

Epileptic seizure time

[copper needle]

is it strobing with the audio and taking color from the video?

[fringe comet]

I like how subtle it is

[zealous nacelle]

Yup!

[copper needle]

neat i didn't know they could do that

[zealous nacelle]

I get free convulsions by the end of it, it’s sweet

[copper needle]

lol

[charred stone]

Hey, how big are you thinking here, height-wise?

Looks like...24px height or so?

[timid phoenix]

Not to nitpick, but shouldn’t it be “MiSTer”

It does look awesome though

[strange drum]

I like the idea (choosing the color of the Gameboy bezel, maybe even the position within that "bezel"). But the font is just too much. Just leave it at the grey bezel! That's passive and not drawing attention that much.

[fringe comet]

That was just to illustrate that having text (or something) above the screen as well as below it was actually something that was done.

There was a Toys r Us one too from what I've seen

Really what the core needs is a way to display a reflection of my own face that prevents me from seeing the game itself

[fathom lintel]

We need the target bezel

[fringe comet]

That actually looks pretty sweet

[wide ember]

yes

[warm galleon]

I copied the original "GAME BOY ADVANCE" logo design. Using MiSTer with mixed letter case with that font doesn't work all that well.

[pine sundial]

My vote goes for PC 98 inspired borders

[ionic phoenix]

Actually being able to customize the border would be cool. Imagine having unique borders for specific games like how the Super Game Boy did it.

[warm galleon]

I finished the Mister FPGA logo in a GBA logo design copy style. I think it turned out quite well. I'll share some different background colors tomorrow.

[zealous nacelle]

Yeah, really dig the simplicity

[lyric gust]

So we're getting borders? Huzzah!

Is there a template

[ionic phoenix]

Once there's an official border template, I want to experiment with making custom borders.

[lyric gust]

Yeah that's what I'm sayin'!

[fathom lintel]

Super Mario Advance is completable

[wide ember]

it ends like all JRPGs start

[timid phoenix]

That makes sense 🙂

[sand saffron]

Does that mean SMB2 leads directly into Super Mario RPG!?

[wide ember]

yes

[lone canyon]

I would've thought that it was just a reference to how a few JRPGs back in the day always started with your main character waking up in bed a la Zelda LttP and Chrono Trigger

One of the dragon quest GB games also had you waking from a nightmare that you got to play as the intro with you being a demon who murders a whole family including the child if you selected the right options at the start.

[fierce eagle]

That's dragon warrior 3!

[warm galleon]

@lyric gust @ionic phoenix I can create a template. Which format should it be in, psd?
I'm just hoping that there is still a chance @low carbon will approve of a border with the game window slightly shifted upwards from the center, as seen in my image. If I provide a template with it really anyone should have an easy time creating additional custom borders.

[wide ember]

Will the buttons realistically depress and release?

[lyric gust]

Yeah PSD

Then a mask over the game area

[warm galleon]

Here are all the colors I created, sampled directly from the various official GBA finishes.

Indigo Light

Indigo Dark

Fuchsia

Glacier

Gold

Wide Boy 64 AGB

[lyric gust]

Needs spice and silver!

Oh also if you do a template it would be good to add guides to the edges of the cutout

[lyric gust]

Why did you want it shifted off center? This would bother my ocd

I'd want to make some borders like this

[warm galleon]

Because the same design I posted earlier would end up looking like this instead.

[lyric gust]

Yeah but moving the entire screen just to fit some text doesn't seem logical

[warm galleon]

I still need to work on it, just haven't had the time yet. Maybe it can end up looking better.

[lyric gust]

Just my view

I appreciate what you're saying though

What if you put the MiSTer at the top and the FPGA at the bottom

[ionic phoenix]

Reminder this is meant for CRTs

[warm galleon]

Yes, we'll also have to check which colors actually end up working well.

[delicate python]

Can someone fill me in on this? Is the core not going to be able to scale to be full screen, or is this some optional setting where the screen doesn't scale to fill the screen so a border could be added? Is this for HDMI and analogue video out?

[lyric gust]

Mainly for analog on a CRT because gba doesn't scale well at such low resolutions

[delicate python]

Got you

If these borders do become a thing it would be fairly trivial to make a DB of them to be distributed via official update script or update all

[lyric gust]

Exactly

[warm galleon]

I'll try to add these as well.

[lyric gust]

If we get a template I can make some stuff

Or is it literally just centering the gba resolution inside 320 x 240

[zealous nacelle]

can u make a hologram one

[warm galleon]

If it's centered, it's a simple 240x160 box inside a 320x240 image.

[lyric gust]

Right

[timid phoenix]

can u make a robby one

[zealous nacelle]

no sorry

[lyric gust]

https://tenor.com/view/jem-and-the-holograms-cartoons-gif-10556382

[low carbon]

I would prefer centered for the image, especially for CRT where borders might be cut anyway, that just seems natural

Main reason is to have a default 240p output for CRT, so no special handling is required. HDMI can use 160p output

[honest viper]

Composite can look solid with multiple colors in the border too with the right timings in YC.txt to greatly reduce dot crawl. SGB is a good example of it in action.

[copper needle]

oh yeah that design isn't title safe or whatever at all

[warm galleon]

I added Arctic, Platinum, Red and Spice colors, and also adjusted some of the others. All the generally desired colors should be covered now.

Since it appears that images uploaded to Discord have slightly changed colors, I'm uploading all the border previews here. I appreciate any feedback. Next up is re-working the design for the centered screen position.

[fierce eagle]

Now we're only missing the audio filters bear is making and the fix for that audio hickup when using an external scaler, right?

[lyric gust]

Here you go I made a very simple template. It's 320 x 240, with a 240 x 160 masked area in the center. There are guides for the document edges and centers.

@zealous nacelle maybe you could pin?

[zealous nacelle]

Ok what should I pin, both of those?

[lyric gust]

Both of what?

[timid phoenix]

You don’t get to decide that

[lyric gust]

If you mean my template and Bear's borders, then yes

[fathom lintel]

Playing Super MarioMon on the core and came across this guy

[zealous nacelle]

done!

[lyric gust]

Huzzah!

[hollow leaf]

Having mister main static as border would be nice, to use up those oled bugs in a non static fashion

[lyric gust]

It would be static static

[fringe comet]

What would the bitdepth be on a potential border?

[lean remnant]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shantae_Advance:_Risky_Revolution
Working on the core 🙂

[low carbon]

Indeed!

[fierce eagle]

More like, another perfect core.

[warm galleon]

Is it out yet? Can digital roms be purchased?

[lean remnant]

It is proposed by Limited run on physical format not digital rom it seems ...

https://limitedrungames.com/collections/all-in-production/products/shantae-advance-risky-revolution-gba?_pos=3&_sid=0ac29af62&_ss=r

[sand saffron]

I have the collector's edition on the way. Always loved the Shantae series. The first, and honestly probably last, game I've ever bought from LRG. Not a big fan of them as a company, but I had to get Shantae.

That said, I'll probably just play the game on my MiSTer, so I have no issue with "seeking it out".

[warm galleon]

Yeah, I have seen a bit about the LRG drama, definitely not a company I would want to support, but on the other side I also want to support new releases by purchasing them.

A really good game that I enjoyed is Inky and the Alien Aquarium.

[lone canyon]

I bought Scott Pilgrim from them when they did that one

[proper dagger]

good to know it works on the core, my copy is on the way, but given how I got burned by their shitty NES carts some months ago, I genuinely don't want to put the cart in any of my consoles lol

[lone canyon]

Yeah, it's not a legit cart but a bootleg style one

[warm galleon]

Oh wow, did the carts end up damaging consoles?

[lone canyon]

https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2025/02/be-warned-two-nes-titles-from-limited-run-games-may-damage-your-console

[timber silo]

The music in the Shantae games is incredible. Fun fact, the earlier Shantae and Shovel Knight share the same pixel artist.
https://shantae.fandom.com/wiki/Nick_Wozniak

[proper dagger]

I'm sure you could run them fine for a while but, why damage your hardware knowingly

[lone canyon]

Lol

[proper dagger]

from the latest round of accusations and people speaking out, they totally did it on purpose because it was cheaper to do and the assumption was "nobody will actually ever use these things anyway"

[warm galleon]

What a crazy situation! And of all things a customer would never suspect a game cart to be able to damage the console... I know they also sent out burnt CDs which weren't always functioning correct instead of having them properly pressed, to increase their profit margin for a few bucks.

[ionic phoenix]

I want to buy Shantae Advance because I want to support WayForward, but I don't want to deal with LRG.

[lone canyon]

Yup. LRG doesn't care about preservation. They care about profiting off nostalgia and fomo

[warm galleon]

Yeah, it's a problem when a company doesn't see their customers as valued human beings but purely as a means of making profit.

[sand saffron]

Honestly, my recommendation would be to just wait for the digital release on modern platforms if you want to support the game.

[warm galleon]

There are modern platforms? The most modern thing I have is a PS2, besides my PC.

[sand saffron]

PC is always modern!

[lone canyon]

PC could be a modem platform depending on what hardware is in it and the OS you are running

[sand saffron]

Well...maybe not allllllways. But close enough!

[proper dagger]

it's real fucked, I feel bad for having bought the handful of items I have over the years considering how little of a shit they gave. It's just like damn, I know some companies do shit poorly but, it''s really transparent how little certain people at the company cared about putting something of quality out

[warm galleon]

I can even see a somewhat large fuckup as non-problematic if the company in the end makes it right with their customers. But if customers are exploited knowingly and intentionally, then that's another story all together.

[proper dagger]

there's a video going around with supposed sources from within the company that point to the latter, obviously has to be taken with a grain of salt but considering how the CEO acts and has time and time again been very unwilling to accept critcisms, I'm willing to believe most of it. And just having worked for a big company, you know there's some people that genuinely care about getting the job done well and some that just are doing as little as possible and kind of just riding the waves of things out. Either way, I would never give them money again at this point

[warm galleon]

Absolutely. It's often just either out of touch people or people who don't care at all, somehow ending up in positions that they shouldn't be in. It seems to be a commonly re-appearing theme but I have stopped to try and make sense of it.

[fringe comet]

Had a little play around

[wide ember]

looks delicious!

[obsidian apex]

I already dumped mine

[lyric gust]

Love it!

Did you use the template

[fringe comet]

I did, kinda janked it as I imported it into Aseprite but it should line up!

[lyric gust]

I assume you pasted a screenshot into the template and that's not an actual image of it on MiSTer?

[fringe comet]

Yeah that's right, just grabbed whatever to have something as a reference

[sand saffron]

https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:43n7t5xwdzlhyt4t47fvvi5v/post/3lnxexqikbk2d?ref_src=embed

💫 ✦ Vela Cosmos ✦ 💫 (@velacosmos.bsky.social)

I decided Shantae: Risky Revolution's is NOT safe to play on my GBAs or DS. I will be playing with my Everdrive instead.

The board's scuffed up, dirty chips is a new low, @limitedrungames.com! Did y'all pull these out of a crusty bucket of scavenged chips and screws?

We paid $60 for a $5 bootleg!

💫 ✦ Vela Cosmos ✦ 💫 (@velacosmos.bsky.social)
I want to be happy, y'all. Today is a good day for us Shantae fans. We got the impossible release of Risky's Revolution, and I'm excited to play it.

But I am equally angry at @limitedrungames.com's handling of its release. 3 long shipping delays and the ROM was done so dirty! I hope the cart works!

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Bluesky · Apr 29, 2025, 1:25 PM

lol

[timber silo]

How could Matt Bozon let this happen?

[wide ember]

i don't mind reused chips

[hollow leaf]

but he was not supposed to open it

[fringe comet]

LRG doing LRG stuff

I can't decide whether I'm shocked that people are shocked

[timid phoenix]

Weren’t LRG “cool” a few years back?

[zealous nacelle]

how do I use border

[fringe comet]

Lol no idea, I can share the 1x version tomorrow (if I remember) but it's just 4x integer scaled you can reverse it by doing a 25% scale at nearest neighbour

As for getting it into the core... No clue

[zealous nacelle]

u r are magic man

magic man show me wisdom

me robby

[fringe comet]

Oh I haven't made it work with the core. That's just a screenshot I googled to reference that the border wasn't too distracting lol

It's all fake

Santa isn't real

Milli Vanilli aren't real

[zealous nacelle]

me am sad. me thought girl it was true

[ionic phoenix]

And there is no Queen of England!

[crude marten]

huh?

[warm galleon]

I re-worked the design for the centered image output. I made the logo slightly smaller and off-set it to make it work well visually. There is a lot of place up top now, but since I aim to re-create the very simple Wide Boy 64 border design, I think that's as good as it gets. Next I'll have to figure out how to convert the borders to the required raw format so that the borders can be used with the core.

[timber silo]

Clean

[warm galleon]

Adjusted the spacing between Mister and FPGA. Feels good now.

[delicate python]

You may want to move the text up a bit, I imagine a good few CRTs could be cutting off/warping the edge and could trim the text

[warm galleon]

Hmm... I could place it up further so that the logo is perfectly centered between the black screen border and the outer image border. It looks quite okay still, a bit squished and the logo is a bit more distracting when looking at the game screen area, but still fine.

[delicate python]

Oh, I see, I didn't realise there was a black border as it doesn't display against discord backdrop for me

[warm galleon]

I think I worded it wrong, there is no black outer border. What I meant was that the logo could be centered in between the very outer edge and the screen area, like you see in the example above.

It might actually even look better. I think my brain is already fried for today after endlessly making small tweaks haha.

[pine hatch]

Love this one

[lime heath]

symmetrical is probably best, same number of pixels above and below the screen, and above and below the logo

[lyric gust]

I'm workin' on a lil' somethin'

[lime heath]

what does symmetrical gradient look like?

[lyric gust]

Symmetrical in what way

this is a copy of the gameboy player frame

[lime heath]

like there's a darker purple above screen and lighter below.

unless that's an optical illusion

[lyric gust]

There is, that's how the original is

What part would you want symmetrical

[lime heath]

could have the lighter sections on the side centered, have that fade darker to the same color on top and bottom.

I understand now, you were copying, I thought you were making it yourself

[lyric gust]

no but you could certainly do it in any pattern

[lime heath]

I was trying to get chatDinierto to do it for me. 😄

I'll quit bugging you, looks ok. I just don't understand what the gradient is suppose to be simulating.

[lyric gust]

Ask Nintendo I guess lol

looks metallic

[lime heath]

Now you can rip mine apart

[lyric gust]

looks good!

[lyric gust]

Okay I made a set of metallic and a set of solid colors

Solid colors

Metallic

[lime heath]

You. You're very good you

[lyric gust]

and now, I take break

[zealous nacelle]

Where’s holographic!!!?

[lyric gust]

whoops sorry

[zealous nacelle]

YASSififed it

[lyric gust]

https://tenor.com/view/damn-right-breaking-bad-gif-14029087

[jade wraith]

Now this is misterrific

[gaunt yoke]

Dunno what it is
With a color border, my screen feels smaller
With characters or artwork, it’s distracting from the game
I miss game-specific borders that were activated by the games

[lone canyon]

ok so, I just now learned about a game called Boktai.
time to find someone who can make a SNAC solar sensor device to be able to use it with the game and pay them

[fierce eagle]

I'd also be happy with it connected to an online weather service for my location and translating that.

[wide ember]

brushed aluminium or bust

[low carbon]

• videoout using old gba core timings
• fixed Balloon Fight sram quirk
  Please check on CRT if the video out is somewhat working (photo would be great). Also directvideo should hopefully no longer drop audio.

[fierce eagle]

Yay

[fathom lintel]

It's working and looks fine to me in person, taking pictures of crt's is always a pain

[fierce eagle]

I'll test it on the rt4k when I get home.

[copper needle]

the old core actually supports boktai

maybe the new one too

when you run that rom you'll get a new sunsensor control in the osd

[fierce eagle]

That's cool. But then I have to look outside. ||Or guess||

[copper needle]

isn't mr.laggy basically a sunsensor

[fierce eagle]

Doesn't the sun have a lag of like 8 minutes? Unplayable.

[timid phoenix]

Need an FPGA version

[lean remnant]

Ballon Fight (famicom classic) is working ! sheet file is updated

[lean remnant]

yes it is supported

[lyric gust]

Dammit that's not a bad idea

[honest viper]

Working on my CRT but no color for composite/svideo yet. Getting closer!

When YC gets put in, hopefully the existing composite timings for the old core in YC.txt will still be good to reduce dot crawl.

[low carbon]

Probably just because i disabled it:
set_global_assignment -name VERILOG_MACRO "MISTER_DISABLE_YC=1"
Next build i will leave it in and you can test again

thank you for the test. This seems centered enough to try the borders with these timings

[lyric gust]

Ooh ooh are we gonna do the borders

[fossil tide]

centered very nicely here. I noticed that there is no output while the ROMs are loaded, that might confuse users.

[placid crater]

@low carbon Works on CRT with direct video. Is it possible to get it to full screen without the scaler?

[wide ember]

no

hence the bezels being worked on

[placid crater]

I figured as much, not sure I would use bezels though

[crude marten]

i didn’t remember you were in the MX4000 gang

[warm galleon]

Hmm, it seems like a quite a bit of the lower border gets cut off, more so than the top.
If we can, we should try to figure out a safe margin and apply it to the border template.

[lean remnant]

For Gauntlet - Dark Legacy the sound doesn't seem right

like sizzle

[timber silo]

Bezels help with the pinching that happens to the image for crts

This exists for the nes. Could work here

[low carbon]

let's first try with the border and get some results from different crts. We can always shift it around when it turns out it's not fully centered. But probably easier to judge when some border image is added

[copper needle]

heh yeah the first border can be a centering/alignment pattern 😄

[low carbon]

Yes, video timing currently does stop when the core is halted and also resynced after pause/reset/savestate load. Need to work that out.

[zealous nacelle]

Dumb question but can the borders be used for HDMI?

[low carbon]

yes, you will be able to toggle them on or off. With off being black for CRT and original resolution for HDMI

[zealous nacelle]

I wonder if through MGL you can also set a border to load alongside the rom. I’ll ping Kitrinx and Zakk about it later.

Or alternatively have borders autoload with a rom if it’s named the same?

That’s a silly question for the future lol

This is like the Super Game Boy Advance core now lol.

There we go, new core name

[low carbon]

The question I still need to test is if mister main is currently able to:

• load 2 different file to two different addresses in ddr3 (game and border)
• load a file to ddr3 and remember it for the next time the core is loaded

would be annoying to load the border through normal IO and then write it back with effort in the core 😅

[zealous nacelle]

Yeah I can imagine

[low carbon]

I could store it in second sdram 😛

[copper needle]

finally a use for dual ram

[low carbon]

(not that anyone takes that serious, it's obvious useless when dual sdram would not allow for analog IO board where borders are mostly useful)

[copper needle]

can you treat it as a second bios file?

i think that would have all the behavior you want

[lyric gust]

Even with, it's a bad time

[lyric gust]

Good idea we can maybe make a grid with different colors and everyone loads it up on their TV and we can see which lines hit

[lyric gust]

Oh hey kind of like this

[lyric gust]

Yeah!

[lyric gust]

I'm in AF

[zealous nacelle]

You’re in the Air Force? That’s cool.

[lyric gust]

https://tenor.com/view/side-eye-suspicious-puppet-gif-2729624127692369191

[onyx lynx]

Huh, I wonder if the opposite can be achieved. Bring the border code to widescreen resolutions for hdmi so we can add bezels to 4:3 content on tvs

[lyric gust]

it's a slippery slope

[valid barn]

I think this border idea is really cool, but could we add borders to other cores handhelds like Game Gear?

[lyric gust]

The rectangles are 5 pixel increments

How's this? Anything I should change or add?

White space is GBA screen

[valid barn]

Something like this would be cool

[wide ember]

weird GBA

[lone canyon]

sega does what nintendont

[valid barn]

Maybe a game gear style border for the GBA would be cool

[lone canyon]

just to confuse people

[lyric gust]

There's an ocean of borders out there for retroarch

[lyric gust]

Cause why not lol

[ionic phoenix]

Everything is better with wood paneling

[crude marten]

seethru purple plastic with a hint of pcb showing

[zealous nacelle]

Different core author and we’ll need to wait to see how feasible it is for this core first.

[valid barn]

Yes, I understand, I just raised the idea that if everything goes well, we can add to other cores.

[lyric gust]

I think that would be very polarizing, whenever it's mentioned half the people want bezels the other half are staunchly against

[zealous nacelle]

I have a solution for the people who are staunchly against it

Don’t use it

[lyric gust]

That's what I keep saying but people don't want feature creep

[zealous nacelle]

I got another solution for people who don’t want feature creep.

Make your own core so you can decide what does and doesn’t get added.

[coarse cape]

Hookers and blow etc

[pearl lava]

(the bender line was "with blackjack and hookers" sir)

[coarse cape]

https://tenor.com/iWTwRIPAqcc.gif

Weird, that had text in the preview

Whatever, make up your own words. You’re an adult

[ionic phoenix]

But how else will I get clout on the internet to satisfy my miserable lonely life?

[zealous nacelle]

Ok true you got me there

[coarse cape]

Not only will I not use it, I will reply to every Twitter mention telling the poster that I’m not gonna use it

Have to get the word out

[zealous nacelle]

Also I know I’m being a hypocrite. I think I was against a feature on the N64 core or something. I don’t remember. I now realize I am a silly person and am wrong.

My argument was the whole “only so much can fit on the board, don’t devote it to that feature” and even if true, who cares. Core developer decides what he/she wants to do.

[fierce eagle]

Aight, with the new core I get a black screen whenever I open the osd using direct video with the rt4k. The core doesn't freeze and a get the picture back as soon as I close the osd.

This is what the tink gets

Only happens when I have pause core when osd is open option is enabled