FBANext PS3 r424 MC68000 / Z80 Arcade Emulator is Released

115w ago - Today squarepusher2 has updated the MC68000 / Z80 Arcade Emulator to FBANext PS3 r424, which includes many changes as outlined below.

Download: FBANext PS3 - r424 (FW 1.92+/FW 3.15/FW 3.41/CFW 3.55)

To quote: Since I now have commit access (thanks to Lantus), I can drop the 'custom' label and instead give you straight version releases.

This one I committed today - it includes all my changes from the previous three or four custom versions including a ton of additional improvements - this CHANGELOG is probably not very decipherable for the average user, but I'm going to post this here anyway since it would take too long to create a new CHANGELOG:

CHANGELOG (r424)

• (PS3) Added waterpaint-normalcontrast.cg, waterpaint-normalcontrast-scanline.cg, waterpaint-highcontrast.cg, waterpaint-highcontrast-scanline.cg shaders
  
• (PS3) Optimized crt.cg shader - now runs at 60fps (fullspeed) at 1080p (1920x1080). Also added crt-highgamma.cg.
  
• (PS3) Texture references used - far faster graphics code as a result. Also adapted refreshwithalpha so that it looks the same as it did before without texture references.
  
• (PS3) Added all the shaders added inbetween r423 and the custom versions
  
• (PS3) Replaced inlineASM in burnint.h with intrinsic so that it can be compiled with SNC. Also commented out little endian functions in blargg_endian.h to get SNC to work
  
• (PS3) Commented out all exceptions and try - catch blocks in files such as ticpp.cpp and others - SNC by default works with exception support disabled - also exceptions have performance overhead - commenting out the exceptions and the try-catch blocks for both GCC and SNC increased performance.
  
• (PS3) Got rid of virtual function call overhead in classes that inherited from a base class with virtual function definitions - such as the Cellframework Audio driver, and FBA's aud_audio.h itself. Led to measurable performance increases and lag reduction.
  
• (PS3) Better button responsiveness - in PS3/run.cpp, for some reason button input was only being registered one out of every three frames - commented that out. There were tons of other branches in the interface code that are unnecessary - checking for bDrivOkay for instance in video_interface and vid_psgl - that were commented out for
  PS3. This could similary be applied to FBA 360 for some performance gains - same with the elimination of virtual function call overhead.
  
• (PS3) Menu scrolling with the D-pad/analog stick in the ROM browser/settings menu/ingame menu by pressing and holding directional keys.
  
• (PS3) Shaders now receive three additional input params for the main vertex program (main_vertex). This allows us to offload some more calculations from the fragment shader which leads to increased performance.
  
• (PS3) Added back ability to go to Service menu by pressing R3 button.
  
• (Core) - Rygar driver colors are restored again to normal colors - during the update to FBA beta, a swapword statement was left out.
  
• (PS3) Makefile works now for either SNC or GCC. Change CELL_BUILD_TOOLS to set either of the two. The best speed I currently get with GCC for some odd reason.
  
• (PS3) Makefile and preprocessor statements in the code now let you compile the source and have it detect your SDK version automatically.
  
• (PS3) There is a special debug mode you can activate (CELL_DEBUG_CONSOLE = 1) where a Telnet server will be running in the background which you can telnet into - in this mode, you can track variables and/or dump screenshots on the HDD.
  
• (PS3) Better speed, far less lag as a result of all of the above. PS. Every change above only affects the PS3 version.