What's New:
New Features
- Video/audio sync improvements which should enable significantly improved frame pacing without needing to rely on 60Hz VSync (which can cause very noticeable input latency on some platforms)
- Added a new "frame time sync" option that uses the host system clock to match the emulated system's framerate and frame timing as closely as possible without relying on host GPU synchronization (i.e. VSync)
- Added a new option for dynamic audio resampling ratio, which periodically adjusts the audio resampling ratio to try and avoid audio buffer underflows and overflows (which both cause audio popping)
- This is implemented in a very conservative way in order to avoid audible differences in audio pitch, so it is not completely guaranteed to prevent audio buffer underflow/overflow
- Audio sync now checks the audio buffer size every 16 samples enqueued rather than only checking once per frame, which should significantly reduce stuttering when audio sync is enabled without VSync or frame time sync
- Adjusted default sync/audio settings values to hopefully make stuttering and audio popping less likely when running with default settings
- In the GUI, video/audio sync settings have been moved to a new window under Settings > Synchronization
- Input mapping overhaul to make input mapping/configuration more flexible (#134 / #137)
- Keyboard and gamepad settings are no longer separate configurations; each system now supports up to 2 mappings for each emulated button where each mapping can be a keyboard key, a gamepad input, or a mouse button
- Key/input/button combinations (2 or 3 simultaneous inputs) are now supported for mappings in addition to individual keys/inputs
- Hotkeys can now be mapped to gamepad inputs, mouse buttons, and combinations in addition to individual keyboard keys
- Each input settings window now has a button to apply one of two keyboard presets for P1 inputs, one with arrow keys mapped to the d-pad and one with WASD mapped to the d-pad
- Added a new set of hotkeys for saving/loading specific save state slots (#134)
- (Genesis / Sega CD / 32X) Added an option to overclock the main Genesis CPU (the 68000) by decreasing the master clock divider, which can reduce or eliminate slowdown in games (#133)
- Note that this is a fairly naive form of overclocking that works very well in many games but very poorly in some games; use with caution
- As far as SCD/32X, from my testing overclocking the 68000 almost always causes problems in 32X games (which are normally bottlenecked on SH-2 speed anyway), but it does fix slowdown in some Sega CD games
- (SMS / Game Gear) Replaced the "double Z80 CPU speed" setting with an option to overclock at finer granularity by decreasing the Z80 master clock divider
- Same caveat as above regarding this form of overclocking working very poorly in some games, and this is more of an issue for SMS/Game Gear than it is for Genesis/Sega CD
- Added an option to only hide the mouse cursor when in fullscreen, in addition to the previous settings of "always hide" and "never hide"
- Added an option to change the fullscreen mode from borderless to exclusive
- Added an option to change the audio output frequency from 48000 Hz to 44100 Hz
Improvements
- (Genesis / Sega CD) Slightly improved performance by advancing the emulated clock in larger intervals while a long VDP DMA is in progress
- (32X) Slightly improved performance by optimizing SH-2 instruction decoding
- (GB) Improved video frame delivery behavior when the PPU is powered off to make it play a little nicer with VSync and frame time sync
- The emulator window is now explicitly focused/raised when a game is loaded; previously this wouldn't always happen automatically, particularly on Windows
Fixes
- (Sega CD) Slightly extended the delay between a game sending a CDD Play/Read command and the CD drive reading the first sector; this fixes Time Gal having excruciatingly long "load times"
- "Load times" in quotes because the game was actually getting confused and repeatedly re-reading the same CD-ROM sectors until various interrupts happened to trigger at exactly the right times relative to each other
- (Sega CD) Fixed a bug where some backend settings would not correctly persist after loading a save state (they would temporarily revert to what they were when the save state was created)