ShiningSource 0.7

ShiningSource 0.7

Native port of Shining Soul II (Europe) for Windows x64 and Android. No ROM,
BIOS or game data is included: you supply your own cartridge dump (SHA-1
aa1288be9257337abdfe3034898cf6c7aa778fbc).

Online, 0.7 only meets 0.7. Every player in a room needs this version.

Online

• One order of messages for everybody. Until now each player's messages
  arrived in order, but how they interleaved with the other players' differed
  from machine to machine. Every message now goes through player 1 and every
  machine acts on them in the same order.
• Enemies that only some players had. The game can start two enemies at a
  time; several arriving together lost the third on that machine: an enemy the
  others saw and it did not. They wait their turn now.
• Less latency: what a burst of the game's messages needs (a map entry,
  several enemies acting) leaves and is acted on in one frame.
• More ways to meet, on the launcher's Online page: the official server
  (the default), Host on this PC (starts the server that comes with the
  port and lists this PC's addresses with a Copy button) and Connect by IP
  (paste the host's address). To host for players outside your own network,
  UDP port 47900 has to reach your PC.
• The display paces the game online too (since online became the default, a
  60 or 120 Hz display was repeating a frame every few seconds for everybody).

Sound

• The sound engine was rewritten after the cartridge's own driver. A song
  that is stopped and asked for again continues instead of starting over (the
  game does that at every room change and menu close); the Game Boy style
  channels sound as the driver makes them; samples that played 27% sharp are
  in tune; vibrato and reverb are there. All 74 pieces of music and the
  effects pass an audit of the whole song table.
• Music in multiplayer. In a game started from the multiplayer lobby the
  cartridge plays music only in the town and the first field: every other
  stage is silent by the game's own choice. The port lets each stage play the
  song it has in a single-player game (SS_MP_MUSIC=0 gives the cartridge's
  silence back).

Inside the game

• Options menu: Escape, Select + Start on a controller, or Back on Android.
  Screen mode, border or sides, full screen, VSync, volume, smoothing, skip
  scene, quit; each applies at once and is remembered. Alone the game is
  paused; online it runs on behind the menu. Escape no longer closes the game.
• The port's own texts use the game's typeface, read from your ROM while
  you play.
• Skip scene covers long dialogue sequences (the guide in the first field,
  and the others told the same way). It stops at a question instead of
  answering for you. Online it is a vote, and the windows stop waiting instead
  of anything running fast.
• Experimental (launcher, page Quality of life, off by default): LT / RT
  step the L and R bars backwards; D and F on the keyboard.

Picture

• Correct pacing at every refresh rate: a multiple of 60 Hz paces the game,
  any other rate from 59 Hz up keeps the game's clock with VSync, and a slower
  display no longer slows the game down.
• The half-strength copy of a sprite the game alternates moves on with it, so
  a label over a walking companion is no longer blurred; it also follows the
  camera.
• Where a map ends beside the view the fade is wider and curved; the sides
  around a dark screen sink and rise with the game's own fade.

Also

• Android: the game no longer aborts on its way out.
• The Android package always carries both game images built from the same
  source.

Install

• Windows: unpack ShiningSource-0.7-windows-x64.zip and start
  ShiningSource.exe. ss_relay.exe in the same folder is the server that
  Host on this PC starts.
• Android: install ShiningSource-0.7-android.apk (arm64-v8a and x86_64,
  Android 5 or later; signed with a debug key, so Android asks to allow it).

Checked

• The scripted 32,000-frame play-through gives 5F1DB1A8, and the same sound,
  on the development build and Windows x64.
• Online on one machine, 2 to 4 players with latency and loss simulated:
  every machine acts on the messages in the same order in every session; the
  voted skips of the introduction and of the guide's dialogue work for three
  players.
• The options menu with a window: opens, pauses, changes take effect and are
  written back.
• The sound audit of all 428 entries of the song table.

Not checked

• Combat online with the new order. The scripted sessions do not reach a
  place where enemies die and respawn, so the two fixes for enemies rest on
  reading the game's code. A real session is the test.
• Music by ear: everything about sound was measured, nothing listened to. The
  area the players reported silent was not reached by a scripted run.
• A game played through a server hosted from the launcher.
• A real controller (the menu's Select + Start, LT / RT).
• This package on Android (0.6 was run in the emulator).
• Sprites the game alternates, in the scenes the players reported: a test bench
  for them is being built.

Known

• Joining a game in progress is not possible.
• When player 1 leaves, the session ends for everybody and the game starts
  again at the title.