PC Gaming News

PC Gaming News is a News and downloads site for the PC, We have all the latest emulators, hack, homebrew, commercial games for PC and all the downloads on this site,, the latest homebrew and releases, Part of the DCEmu Homebrew & Gaming Network.

* Fixed a major bug in the card formatting function.
* Fixed error with import save function for Memory Card 2.
* Fixed error with the grid line settings for Memory Card 2.
* Added command line support per RedawgTS's suggestion.

Play PC games with poor or no gamepad support
Add gamepad support to emulated, internet and DOS games
Play multiplayer games with each player using their own gamepad
Control video/music players using media or shortcut keys
Use a gamepad with a web browser or any windows application

Improved CPU handling (optimized for multi-core CPUs/multiple-CPUs, improved for single-core CPUs/single CPUs)
Improved core stability (no more white screens or freezing) (thanks to everyone who reported problems)
Improved controller array handling (uses less memory, safer data access, data is faster to access)
Improved sub-windows (now 100% dynamic and 100% memory leak free)
Improved controller file reading (removed support for old binary controller files)
Improved some of the controller list handling
Improved controller INI read speed
Improved border interface display speed (2.2 times faster)
Improved detection data memory usage
Improved device acquisition speed
Improved handling of assignment option toggles
Improved file version reading and calculations
Improved exit speed slightly
Improved advanced assignment slot image update efficiency
Improved white shading in some areas (was off-white)
Improved handling of NameDisplay button during interface changes
Improved displaying of profile creation/opening progress text
Added core-synced animations (prevents window from being unresponsive while animations occur)
Added smart button animation completion (prevents delays if no buttons or if all buttons fully animated)
Added deletion prompt when deleting known controller
Added individual NameDisplay button statuses for each controller
Added "Opening controller" status text during animation
Added Controller global settings button icons
Fixed a bug where moving mouse speed sliders via mouse emulation caused errors (thanks to Swolch and Sametz)
Fixed some thread memory leaks
Fixed a bug where command line shortcuts did not launch until profile was manually opened (thanks to SGTCableDog)
Fixed a bug where command line profile could be lost due to multiple controller messages
Fixed a bug where command line profile did not open when controller reconnected
Fixed a bug where mouse settings window did not show stick/dpad name for group mouse settings
Fixed a bug where profile queue was not cleared when a new profile was received (thanks to WelshRabbit)
Fixed a bug where grey did not produce a proper Vista style gradient
Fixed a bug where altering trigger controller settings closed DPad window and not Trigger window
Fixed a bug where Assignment Settings window still allocated memory for old tab icons from last year!!!
Fixed a bug where buttons sometimes didn't identify correctly in controller settings window (thanks to SGTCableDog)
Fixed a bug where button detection was ignored if an axis was active (thanks to SGTCableDog)
Fixed a bug where pressing space while entering a sequence with auto-pauses could toggle the auto-pause checkbox
Fixed a bug where checking an assignment option box and then pressing space to assign caused checkbox to toggle
Fixed a bug where one Profile change value was not initialized (this may have caused a bug at some point)
Fixed a bug where recent profile lists were not correctly defragged on startup
Fixed a bug where selected button did not reset on controller settings tab change
Fixed a bug where selected button did not take priority if controller settings buttons overlapped (thanks to SGTCableDog)
Fixed a bug where controller list in INI was not correctly scanned for repeats
Fixed a bug where language help button was missing (thanks to SGTCableDog)
Fixed a bug where controllers help was out of order
Fixed some bugs where show animation option was ignored
Fixed a bug where sub windows closed after main window restore and not during minimize (thanks to SGTCableDog)
Fixed a bug where ButtonDown status was not initialized
Fixed a bug where cycle hash border did not fill button with long displayed assignment name
Fixed a bug where Start options text was badly worded
Fixed some bugs where Russian text did not appear fully in some locations
Fixed a bug where gradients did not end perfectly on final colour

• Fixed bug and re-enabled HDMA bus sync delays
• Emulated newly discovered IRQ timing edge case
• Optimized offset-per-tile rendering
• Added state-machine implementation of S-DSP core, ~5% speedup
• Added SPC7110 detection, will now warn that this chip is unsupported
• Fixed very annoying Windows port OS beeping noise when using keyboard for input
• Linux port will now save most recent folder when no default ROM path is selected
• Added OpenGL rendering support to Windows port [krom]
• Fixed Direct3D pixel mode scaling bug [krom, sinamas, VG]
• Improved SNES controller graphic [FitzRoy]
• Added UPS (not IPS) soft-patching support; UPS patch must be made against unheadered ROM
• As always, cleaned up source code a bit

_ fixed Uniplus 1.4 kernel boot bug
_ fixed speed (was 2.5 MHz instead of 5...)
_ still a bug in display acceleration

Bugs fixed:
- 'Open path in explorer' enabled on datafile node
- 'Clean db' disabled on some nodes
- listview not refreshed after a 'close db'
- 'check drive' disabled on some nodes
- 'rebuild all' removed (not used)
- Listview not cleaned after loading a new db
- Some menu falsely enabled after loading a db
- Custom emulator command lines not saved
- parentnode button enabled when no node selected
- db error 'multiple rows in singleton select'
- fix some log messages
- folder size = 0
- cursor pointer not always set to hourglass

Features added:
- New generic xml format
- 'Short path name' option to display short paths in view
- Name of database in main treeview node
- Zipped CHD detected
- 'Samples mode' info in statusbar
- Several options disabled if not avail in database (chd, samples, bios...)
- DB nodes hidden if not avail in database (chd, samples...)
- Search box is back
- 'remove useless files' no more by default
- 'create ghost games' by default
- DB info set when creating a mame database
- French translation (still incomplete)

- 3 X Faster ripping!
- Rip an entire CD in 3 minutes
- Fixes tag issues with MP3 and FLAC
- Ability to use custom Genre
- Less CPU usage when ripping

- Processing that decided the vertical display beginning position was brought close to a real machine. In "Strider Hiryu", the problem that the high-score display in the top of the screen is lacked was solved.
- "Overscan Height 6dot" menu was added to "Screen->Overscan Customize" menu.
- Additionally, a detailed part has been improved and corrected.

MAMETesters Bugs Fixed
------------------------------------------
01571: [DIP/Input] stadhero: Player 1 and Player2 Start are mapped twice. (stephh)
01673: [Graphics] sfjp: Game backgrounds replaced with other images (Fabio Priuli)
01567: [DIP/Input] megazona, megazonb, megazonc, megazone, megaznik: P2 button 1 key mapped twice and P2 button 2 missing (stephh)
00458: [Misc.] NEC CPU debug bug (robiza)
00029: [Sound] contcirc: Audio emits from one speaker on start up. (Nicola Salmoria)
01609: [DIP/Input] Various - tested srmp4 (ssv.c), ttmahjng (route16.c), vsmahjng (vsnes.c), tokkae (konamigx.c), sf2 (cps1.c): INP playback loses sync quickly (Aaron Giles)
01680: [Graphics] area88, unsquad: [possible] DOT TEST in service mode shows garbage chars (Nicola Salmoria)
00761: [Speed] finalapr: Heavy performance hit. (couriersud)
00352: [DIP/Input] spaceskr: The cabinet DIP setting is inverted, when you set it upright mode, control is separated for P1 and P2, the scre[en] (Nicola Salmoria)
01659: [Core] stereo balancing is wrong (Aaron Giles)
01622: [Core] -refreshspeed has no effect (Aaron Giles)
01663: [DIP/Input] Hat switches not working (couriersud)
00250: [Graphics] 3wonders: Various graphic glitches. (Nicola Salmoria)
00405: [Graphics] cawing: Text in the attract mode is garbled. (Nicola Salmoria)
01021: [Side-by-side] dorunru2: Side-by-side test. (Nicola Salmoria)
00404: [Graphics] 3wonders: a glitch when u insert your record name when game is over. (Nicola Salmoria)
01552: [Graphics] 3wonders, 3wonderu: Another little graphic glitch on attract mode (Nicola Salmoria)
01081: (partial): megaplay.c (all games): 1 Player Start and 2 Players Start are duplicated. (couriersud)

Source Changes
-------------------------------
Changed the system to show a message if coin-lockout is active and a coin key is pressed. [couriersud]

Actually fixed -refreshspeed. [Aaron Giles]

Reverted previous SCSI CD change which broke some games. [R. Belmont]

Seibu COP cleanup, primarily sorting the code and identifying similarities in different implementations. [David Haywood]

Fixed an erroneous debug change which leaked into the last version of the namcona1 update. [Pierpaolo Prazzoli]

Fixed marineb colors. [David Haywood, Tomasz Slanina]

Rewrote INP recording from scratch, since all old INPs are broken anyways. Header now includes timestamp, which overrides the default time base for MAME's system time. Each frame recorded now gets a timestamp. Analog ports are recorded once per frame and interpolated. Analog port calculations are all done in fixed point for consistent results. A bunch of other minor tweaks in the input port code. NOTE: There may still be a few changes to the final INP format. [Aaron Giles]

Improved graphic decoding for Legionnaire, the BK3 tiles are now correctly extracted from the TXT region, map screen has correct tiles now. [David Haywood]

Removed CPS1 tile kludges and replaced with per-game ROM mapping tables. Ideally, the ROM mapping should be derived from mapping of the PALs found on the B board. Note that this is a significant change and some new bugs might be caused by it. Unlike previous bugs, where extra garbage tiles would appear in the games, the new bugs would be tiles or sprites MISSING--so they will be harder to notice. This would happen because in some cases the 16x16 regions of the gfx ROMs can be used by both scroll2 and sprites, while in other cases they must be separated. [Nicola Salmoria]

PSX updates: [smf]
- Fixed the SR masks for MTC0.
- Added ability to test the instruction/data cache ram. The scratchpad and BIU register are now handled internally to the CPU.
- All writes are performed with masks. SWL/SWR used to be implemented with two writes ( one byte and one word ) when writing three bytes, now it only ever performs one. Byte and Word writes use masks as they leave the rest of the register on the bus, which can be picked up by larger registers.
- The read/write functions to use are cached when the SR bits are updated, as are the bad address masks.
- Added coprocessor 1 & 3 support, though they don't do anything useful.
- All loads now go through the delay pipeline, a lwl/lwr will grab the value out of the pipeline if it's updating the same register.
- Added undocumented behaviour of BLEZ/BGTZ. The comparison for zero can be changed by specifying an alternate register in the RT field ( the documentation says you should always use register 0 ).
- Restricted to 16 COP0 registers & generate an exception if any of the 5 for the MMU are used.
- Added BCF/BCT instructions, although I have found no conditions that affect them yet.
- Generates an exception if any MMU instructions are executed.
- Sets the CE instruction for all exceptions, not just those involving a coprocessor. The bits of the opcode that specify the coprocessor are grabbed no matter what the instruction.
- Added TAR register and BT bit in SR. When an exception occurs during a branch, BT determines whether it was taken or not. The TAR register gets set to the destination of the branch.
- Fixed the BD bit when you are in a branch delay slot and you didn't take the branch, this shows up in the pipeline as !pc.
- Fixed branches within a branch delay slot.
- Multiply & divide instructions can be aborted if you write to HI/LO before reading the result. Added data breakpoints, you don't appear to be able to set breakpoints on any of the addresses internal to the CPU.
- Multiply/divide/GTE instructions can execute when an exception is taken, although the EPC indicates that it hasn't. The BIOS avoids rerunning GTE instructions as they are destructive, so you have to make sure they run.
- Added bus error handling, PSXCPU is limited to 8mb of ram & any access outside this range will trigger an exception. I believe this is to be an internal limit.
- Added CXD8611R as a specific CPU type, System 12 appears to allow more than 8mb of ram & it's possible that this is different.
- Mapped out all instructions to either generate an exception or ignore bits.
- Updated the disassembler to match the decoding.
- Fixed disassembling of branch instructions in a branch delay slot.
- Lui checks for a ori/addiu following and will show you the result.
- Added step over/out support.
- Fixed standalone disassembler.
- Fixed SZ0 truncation.
- Fixed IRGB truncation and conversion to IR1/IR2/IR3
- Added IR1/IR2/IR3 saturation when calculating ORGB.
- Fixed OTZ sign extension
- Fixed reading from SXYP
- Fixed reading from IRGB
- Fixed writing to LZCR
- Fixed sign extension of GTE control registers
- Fixed writing to FLAG
- Fixed flag calculation in F macro.
- Fixed avsz3 & avsz4 flag & otz calculation.

Fixed unicode crashing bug with input names. [Aaron Giles]

Renamed input port functions: [Aaron Giles]
readinputport -> input_port_read_indexed
readinputportbytag -> input_port_read
readinputportbytag_safe -> input_port_read_safe
Added machine parameter to input port functions. Updated many drivers to accomplish this.

Bulk converted drivers explicitly calling input_port_n_r() with a bogus offset to calling input_port_read_indexed() instead. [Aaron Giles]

Memory map merges for drivers starting with U, V, W, and Z. [Andrew Gardner]

Mostly fixed sound in N64-based games. [Adam Gashlin]

Correct DMA functionality in N64-based games. [Ville Linde]

Aerfboot improvements: [robiza]
- sprite offset are now correct
- split spriteram in two parts
- identified last sprite for the two parts
- promoted to "working" (no sound)

Pallavol improvements: [robiza]
- fix for sprite's y-coordinate
- implement lookup table for convert sprite code in the real code
- change the name to "1991 Spikes (Italian bootleg)
- fix scroll
- fix offset

Merged sonson memory maps. [Nicola Salmoria]

Added mising TC0060DCA sound mixer to the Taito Z driver. Marked one dblaxle ROM as BAD_DUMP. [Nicola Salmoria]

Changed the 8237dma implementation into a device. [Wilbert Pol]

Fixed wrong tile-sprite priority in m62 driver. [robiza]

Fixed nec v30 dasm when a "real-time encrypted cpu" is used. Also fixed Execution Clocks for add,addc,and,or,xor,cmp,sub,subc instructions. [robiza]

Removed the hardcoded dependency on a 8254 device from the 8042kbdc code. Changed the drivers using the 8042kdbc to define their own 8042kdbc - 8254 dependency. [Wilbert Pol]

Rewrote core memory handlers as inline functions. These should be easier to trace through in a debug build, yet should operate the same as before. [Aaron Giles]

Created a complete set of functions for all databus sizes (8,16,32,64) and all endiannesses. A few functions are redundant, but it is now very clear which functions to use in which scenarios. It is also now possible to rely on being able to access values of 8, 16, 32 or 64 bits via the built-in accessors without fear of crashing. [Aaron Giles]

Updated all cores using 8-bit handlers to explicitly call the 8-bit handlers with the appropriate endianness. [Aaron Giles]

Fixed a few games which were calling n-bit handlers directly to use the generic forms. In the future, this is all the access drivers will have. [Aaron Giles]

More opcodes fixed in gussun oyoyo and risky challenge. [robiza]

Added tags and locations to dips for marvins.c and matmania.c. [Fabio Priuli]

Enabled roz tilemap in emeraldia, but it's not centered in the right position when it's not in its original dimension. [Pierpaolo Prazzoli]

Fixed 'lghost*' Dip Switches. [stephh]

Reduced the number of save state callback types from 3 to 1. The only remaining form is the one that takes a pointer parameter. Added macros for STATE_PRESAVE and STATE_POSTLOAD to define common functions. Added machine parameter to these functions. Updated all drivers and CPU/sound cores to use the new macros and consolidate on the single function type. As a result pushed the machine parameter through a few initialization stacks. [Aaron Giles]

Removed unnecessary postload callbacks which only marked all tiles dirty, since this is done automatically by the tilemap engine. [Aaron Giles]

Updates for the driver wc90b.c: [ClawGrip]
- Removed the second YM2203, it isn't present on the bootleg boards
- Changed the clocks according to the oscilators found on the board

Added the running_machine* parameter to the function passed into cpunum_set_irq_callback() and adds the IRQ_CALLBACK macro for the callback function. [Oliver Stoenberg]

Cleaned up the Machine usage in the osd/windows files and added the running_machine parameter where possible. [Oliver Stoenberg]

Various tweaks/fixes from MAMEPlus:
* save state support for FD1094 chips
* improved graphics in athena
* improved sound balance in armedf
* derived refresh rate for toaplan1 games
* improved sound balance in tmnt games
* derived clocks for suprridr
* tweaked xmen visible area
* derived clocks and refresh rate in twin16 driver

CPS1: Verified some gfx ROM mapping tables against PAL dumps. Improved understanding and emulation of palette related registers. [Nicola Salmoria, Corrado Tomaselli]

New games added or promoted from NOT_WORKING status
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 on 1 Government (JAPAN) [smf]

New clones added
-------------------------------
Seibu Cup Soccer :Selection: (set 2) [Arzeno Fabrice]
Super Monaco GP (set 1, Japan, Rev A, FD1094 317-0124a) [Corrado Tomaselli]
Added Side by Side 2 (Japan) [Yasuhiro Ogawa]

New games marked as GAME_NOT_WORKING
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Touchmaster 5000 (v7.10) [Brian Troha]
Touch Master 7000 [Brian Troha]

MAME_Tunes
MAME_Tunes is a launcher application of SDLMAME / MAME OS X / MacMAME.
ITunes-like easy operation.
It is a freeware

System requirements
Only for Mac OS X.
Universal binary application supported PowerPC / Intel® processor. (Maybe)
Mac OS X 10.4.2 or higher / Mac OS X 10.5 or higher.(Maybe)

* Corrected sound in the tnzs driver
* Correctly fixed coins in the wc90 driver
* Enabled Tazmania in the megadrive driver (it works and I like it)
* Added support to the FM core interfaces for sound mixing
* Removed kaillera support. The client can be removed and probably should be due to being a potential security risk. Left netplay, chat, etc. code in the program so it has potential to be used with a different netplay system.

"We needed to change the ecosystem, and we needed a heavy hammer to do it." What do you think, too heavy, just right or not enough?

Shell:

Additions:

- Option to select favored console in preferences dialog.

Changes:

- Some video filtering work offloaded to the GPU.
- Most settings now stored in XML format.
- Misc launcher dialog display properties.
- Refactoring.

Fixes:

- Netplay input communication.
- Netplay movie recording bug (menu item accidently grayed).

Core:

Additions:

- ROM sets and external database support using new XML format co-developed with Bootgod.
- Mapper 36, 103, 104, 106, 120, 126, 175, 176, 223 and 224. Info from mad dumper, CaH4e3 and Temryu.
- UNIF boards GS-2013 and BS-5. info from CaH4e3.
- Emulation of bus conflicts for certain boards.
- Database entries.

Changes:

- PPU power/reset timing and register states. Info from blargg.
- Misc IRQ/NMI/BRK/DMA special-case behavior. Info from blargg.
- NTSC/PAL switch during emulation will now force a hard-reset.
- Misc mapper emulation improvements. Info from Bootgod.
- NES-EVENT board timer more accurate.
- Board names. Info from Bootgod.
- Refactoring and mapper codebase overhaul.
- Speed optimizations (accuracy NOT compromised!).
- Mappers 21, 23, 25 and 185 no longer supported using plain iNES files because of format restrictions.

Fixes:

- MMC3 soft-reset IRQ bug.
- Database entries.

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Gran Turismo could come to PC

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MemcardRex 0.5 revision 2 released

Gothic 3 expansion in the pipeline

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bsnes 0.031 released

Idle win_alpha_0_10 released

Romcenter 3.00 RC 1 released

Free CD Ripper 3.10 released

ASUS Eee PC 900 gets unboxed

Ootake 1.44 released

Mame 0.124u2 released

MAME Tunes 3.0 released

FB Alpha 0.2.96.79 released

Microsoft: We Designed Vista User Account Control to Piss You Off

ASUS lets loose terabyte-packin' M70 laptop

Hellgate: London finds success in Korea

EA bundles five SimCity games together

Nestopia 1.38 released

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