Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Getting ready for Mupen64Plus 1.4

As we round the end of the month, we approach a new release. Mupen64Plus 1.4 RC1 should be expected to release in the next few weeks. We are finishing up a few of our side branches, and going to make a merge shortly. Well what can you expect in this new release? There is really to much list! I will briefly go over a few things with you guys:

New compatibility setting: Disable Expansion Pack
On Screen Display Capability (Great for fullscreen)
Severe GUI Speedups, and numerous bug fixes.
Numerous improvements to the sound plugin, input plugin, and video plugins.
More games boot and play (But this was not this releases focus)
Fixed numerous bugs in the core.

As we do our final release we will go indepth with the change log. Stay tuned to our homepage, and emutalk for the RC 1.4 release.

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Windows Port

Alright. Some people are wondering about the future of the Windows port. With this recent port, gaining over 2800 downloads already, I've patched up much of the problems we've been having with the previous attempts, making it the best port so far. So, with the next release, I will be starting from scratch, making some of the modifications in the trunk (like removing some left over Win32 junk from the original code that's no longer necessary) and others in a new branch. Hopefully I can make this one good enough to make a merge - This requires clean code and stability. I hope to see Qt4 builds on Windows soon, I have a feeling windows users would like it more than GTK+2. Speaking of which, the next version will likely still run GTK+2. I'll try to make it a better experience.

So anyways, Let's make a run down of the needed improvements.
  • More plug in ports
  • Glide64 Wonder Plus (I have a port already but it's of extremely poor quality)
  • Improved code quality
  • Less #ifdefs
  • Less hacks
  • Split up platform dependent things (blight's rumble support)
  • More plug in compatibility
  • Keep the SDL compatibility (our SDL plugins require that the emu run SDL, which we do now)
  • Try to add more support for input plug ins (Currently most crash or fail to work)
  • Windows Specific Features
  • Graphics in Rom Browser Window? (Warning: May require hackish code!)
  • XInput support in Blight (for those who don't feel like hunting down good drivers for their Xbox360 controllers)
So that's about it. We need this by the final port, but I may be able to get Windows compatible code in the trunk sooner than it's completed. If you have any suggestions, feel free to let me know, I'll add it.

Also, the Mupen64Plus Build Environment needs some improvements. I will have libsamplerate included so you can use JttL's resampler feature (I don't know how well it works, when I added it, It was pretty much a broken hack, but I think someone fixed it)

Mupen64Plus - Development Diary

We started this blog so that we could reach more of the public, show a little bit of eye-candy, and showcase our work. This blog will be used for showing off some new features, posting about breakthroughs, and giving a general update to our user base. This blog will not be used for discussing technical details, support, or feedback. Also if the blog does not work out as we wanted it to, we reserve the right to scrap it at any time. However user comments are welcome, and we will try to give an update at least once a week.