byuu v1.1

February 26th, 2020, 22:09 Posted By: wraggster

byuu v1.1 is released. byuu is a multi-system emulator that focuses on accuracy and ease-of-use. It is currently in early release beta status. byuu is an upcoming multi-system emulator that aims to provide the accuracy of higan, with the ease-of-use of bsnes. It seeks to accomplish this by catering to the common 99% of use cases, rather than higan, which tries to cater to every niche. As such, certain advanced functionality will not be available in byuu; however, the emulator will be significantly easier to use, like bsnes.

Planned roadmap:
v1: support for gamepad mapping and the save state manager
v2: support for other controller types (mice, light guns) and multiple-players
v3: support for Famicom Disk System, Super Game Boy, and Sega CD emulation
v?: support for per-system input mapping, cheat codes, movie recording, and run-ahead functionality
v?+X: optional scanline renderers for each core to boost performance substantially
v?+Y: additional emulation cores from outside of higan (PS1, Saturn, N64 would be most promising!)

byuu v1.1 changelog:


Update: I posted v1.1 to address some rendering issues affecting key Super Nintendo games. Apologies, it will be a touch rocky at the start while I iron out all the kinks in the new renderers. Things should stabilize in the coming months as they did with the bsnes relaunch. Thank you!

I'm excited to release the first official version of my magnum opus software project, byuu version 1.0!

byuu is a multi-system emulator that aims to combine the accuracy of higan with the simplicity and performance of bsnes. Essentially, what bsnes did for higan's SNES emulation, I want byuu to do for all 25 of higan's emulated systems.

byuu currently emulates the Nintendo, Super Nintendo, SG-1000, Master System + Game Gear, Sega Genesis, TurboGrafx-16 + SuperGrafx, MSX + MSX2, Game Boy + Color, Game Boy Advance, WonderSwan + Color, Pocket Challenge V2, and Neo Geo Pocket + Color.

I poured my soul into this, and even for a first release, there has been substantial development. As compared to higan v107, byuu v1 features a brand-new, easy-to-use user interface in the general style of bsnes, that loads traditional game ROM images directly, supports native file dialogs, more than doubles the performance of Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis emulation, quadruples the performance of TurboGrafx-16 emulation, and provides a 20% boost to Game Boy Advance emulation. A Ryzen 5 2600 CPU should be able to run any supported system at 150fps or more. As with my other emulators, features like adaptive sync and dynamic rate control come standard.

Future plans for byuu v2+ are ambitious: I hope to add support for rewind, run-ahead, a save state manager, a cheat code editor, frame advance, screenshot capture, and much more. Possibly even a hybrid desktop + couch-mode user interface! I also want to expose my Famicom Disk System, Sega CD, and future PC Engine CD emulation to byuu. Furthermore, I hope to expand byuu beyond my own collection of emulators: specifically, I would like to offer Nintendo DS, Nintendo N64, Sony PlayStation, and Sega Saturn emulation in future releases by relying on other leading emulation projects; although I may need help in achieving those goals.

And now a heartfelt plea: I'm putting everything I have into this project, and my future in the emulation scene depends upon this project's success. Essentially, I'm getting older, and I have too many emulation cores to maintain as just one person. bsnes brought a revival to higan's SNES emulation, and I am hoping that byuu can do the same for higan's other cores.

I am looking for other developers to join on as equal contributors to this project. If this proves highly successful, I'll stick around to guide the project forward. But if not, then I will be looking for a new lead to take over the project. In that case, I would continue to periodically submit patches, time permitting, but would hope for someone else to guide byuu, higan, and bsnes forward. If neither of these two things happen by the end of this year, then my current intention is to regrettably step down from the projects, although I haven't decided on an exact date of when yet. Effectively, I've gone about as far as I could as a sole developer.

Essentially, I am hoping for this project to be what I'm remembered by after I'm gone one day, and so I want it to be as much of a success as possible. I also want these emulation cores to live on beyond me, and not just be tied to me as a person. Already bsnes and higan benefited massively thanks to 15+ years of contributions from well over a hundred volunteers. These emulators are so much more than just me. I hope to accelerate that trend, so that one day I can pass on the torch.

I hate to ask this, but anything you all can do to help promote this project would be greatly appreciated! Getting the word out about it, creating user guides and video tutorials, writing an article about it, posting about it on a forum, adding it to an existing emulation website, ... anything would help. I am hoping that in naming the project eponymously, that I can short-step some of the time-consuming struggle of establishing a new emulator project, but word of mouth is still vital for people to know that this project exists.

Thank you all so much! I hope you'll enjoy this new software as much as I've enjoyed making it.

~ Near

https://byuu.org/byuu

http://www.emucr.com/2020/02/byuu-v11.html

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