gsu (superfx) support [work in progress]

[nensondubois]

Many thanks for the great work on GSU support.

As of GSU 2.0 here are the most obvious issues.
Winter Gold, Doom and Star Fox runs faster than normal to the point where there is almost no slowdown that remains when played on the original cartridges. I have noticed a few graphical glitches in Doom on the first level where there are lines at the point of ground and acid separation in the third door after the blue room.

I wouldn't mind having the option to run GSU / FX games at either normal speed or faster if and when performance becomes cycle-accurate or as close to possible (assuming the GSU chips are decapped and implemented as are the other DSPs but from my understanding this won't be possible because of how many resources the FGPA would require for accurate simulation).

I was unable to get the games to boot past the black screen on most tries previously until I deleted the config file and downloaded the official original files.

[redguy]

The latest tag points at the last usb2snes release.  I've only setup the one prelease gsu_v02 tag for now.

It doesn't look like the doom fix helped with the crash on start bug so I'll continue to look into that.

The original fpga_base.bit file was included for 2 reasons:
- I gave some people a modified fpga_base.bit in the past and wanted them to be using the correct version from 0.1.7e.
- It removes the issue where someone isn't using 0.1.7e before copying the gsu files over.

Not sure how close to cycle accurate it will get.  There's a trade-off between detail and getting it to fit.  It will never be an exact match.

Holding down reset should only be required to save the SRM to SD for gsu games in v02.  Non-gsu games work as they do with the original 0.1.7e firmware.

The v02 firmware disables in-game hooks automatically if it detects a gsu game is loaded.  It allows you to leave the in-game hooks enabled in the menu but avoid the problems associated with gsu games.  Hopefully this is temporary.

[Greg2600]

redguy, not sure if you explained, but why is power cycling fixing game loading?  I have to assume it's more than simply magic, aka something you can fix!     

[redguy]

I'm not sure what the bug is, but it will be fixed in the next version.

[tic]

Try now doom in my snes pal+doom pal it show me blackscreen when go ingame.

[marcus.miranda]

Try now doom in my snes pal+doom pal it show me blackscreen when go ingame.

i have no problem with doom no blackscreen, i use rom  Doom USA version and Superfamicom NTSC and the game launch

Everytime I see someone stating the game doesn't work the person was running a PAL game.
@redguy, is it possible for you to debug pal games, assuming you have not done that?

[tic]

Yeah i  swith off/on and now works, false alarm.

[marcus.miranda]

...

Everytime I see someone stating the game doesn't work the person was running a PAL game.
@redguy, is it possible for you to debug pal games, assuming you have not done that?

i have tried with the PAL version Doom and it work , same to my version Doom USA , you sure you have the good rom set ? i use console Superfamicom japanese NTSC

I haven't tested myself yet... I also have a NTSC SuFami (GPM-02 and a 001) with a Rev. G SD2SNES. Will test v0.2 today.
I'm just saying that in the past messages, everytime someone mentioned they had black screen and the game didn't run at all, it was a PAL game. Might be a bad rom set or something, though.

@redguy even asked for those ROMs MD5, name and specs for those who are facing issues.

As a side note, I'm amazed on the quick progress and how actively this thread is being accessed!

[tic]

My rom set is from epforums.

[tic]

Yeah, they have packs for all everdrives, inclusive pack only for msu-1. Type in google epforums everdrive
And view it.

[chunkyjackson]

I can confirm that Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island MSU-1 hack works with the gsu_02 beta firmware. A few minor graphical glitches & slowdown, it seems that when the music changes the screen blacks out a frame or 2, but playable.

[Rahzadan]

I can confirm that Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island MSU-1 hack works with the gsu_02 beta firmware. A few minor graphical glitches & slowdown, it seems that when the music changes the screen blacks out a frame or 2, but playable.

I noticed the screen blacking out too when the music changes, but this is an issue with the Hack, not the GSU firmware, since it does not happen on a clean ROM. I'll have to see if that screen blackout thing happens on Snes9x/Higan.

[megari]

The latest tag points at the last usb2snes release.  I've only setup the one prelease gsu_v02 tag for now.

I was talking about the gsu_v02 tag. It seems to point to the tip of your master branch, commit 8cbc42f ("Added some comments and advanced version number."), which is also pointed to by the tags v7 and addrmap_v1. Is this intentional?

[GreenXarrow]

Give this version a try.  I fixed the doom graphics glitch bug which may have also fixed stunt race fx and the startup crash.  You can turn the in-game hooks back on, but they are now temporarily disabled in gsu games.  I still need to fix that bug.

Fixed doom graphical glitch.
Fixed in-game hooks by temporarily disabling with gsu games.

Doom black screens after loading screens, with in-game hooks on. turned it back off and everything is working again, better than before - no graphical glitches

[James-F]

I'm not sure what the bug is, but it will be fixed in the next version.

Now I'm 100% convinced you are the real deal.
Only a true master can make a "will" claim and tackle it single handed.
I think people are still in shock of how quickly you cooked this, I know I am.

BTW,
Fixing the speckles in Doom is a tremendous achievement in itself because Doom in Snes9X still has the speckles and people tried to fix this for years with limitless PC power.
Truly well done.