List of PCEhawk bugs

[Sonia-7]

I made a list of the PCEhawk bugs I'm aware of. For the PCECD stuff, I Tested with both the Redump and Trurip images of the games:

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3 Games in 1: Gate of Thunger + Bonk's Adventure + Bonk's Revenge
-Horrible, screechy audio if you choose Gate of Thunder.

Gates Of Thunder (Bugged Audio).zip

Aurora Quest: Otaku no Seiza
-Very poor input response on the title screen. It only works when it wants to.

Burai
-Bad graphic effects on the game's split screen.

BizHawk:

Mednafen:

Daimakaimura
-There's a fade out effect on the ending sequence, but it doesn't fade out correctly, causing graphic glitches to occur.

Final Blaster
-Wrong graphic positions on the game's intro. It's hard to do comparison pics or explain, but basically, the horizontal sequence of images should first appear on the middle of the screen, then the top, then bottom. On bizhawk they all appear on the top.

Popful Mail
-Garbage graphics at the game's intro. Maybe more corrupted graphics later on.

Star Breaker
-Game crashes upon leaving the first town.

Star Breaker (Japan) (Save State).zip

Steam Heart's
-Black screen only during stages. Not possible to play the game.

Takeda Shingen
-Game stops responding to inputs when swords are locked, making it impossible to continue unless if you reset it.

Valis
-Black screen only through the entire game. Impossible to play it. (still needs CD access time emulation)

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The main problem is that the creator of pcehawk (Vecna) is no longer around to fix the above issues, meaning they'll likely never get fixed. Since none of those bugs exist in the latest mednafen pce core, I'd like to suggest waterboxing it as the primary core for pce TASing, while still leaving pcehawk as an option. The pce emulation from mednafen is certainly better overall, and more mature than bizhawk's.

[alyosha-tas]

Also there is final soldier (#771) and Ys 3 (#776)

I thought Valis still crashes on Mednafen after level 2 but maybe it's been fixed. Either way I agree that the PCE core has some real issues, it is probably the weakest in house core in BizHawk right now (maybe except for colecovision) and Mednafen's core would be a big improvement.

[alyosha-tas]

Minor update:

For Takeda Shingen, the problem is that when you are in the 'locked swords' animation, the game processes inputs twice per frame, and in order to escape it expects them to be different. Unfortunately the way BizHawk samples input they are always identical, so you can never escape.

[alyosha-tas]

I fixed Final Blaster as a by-product of the fix to Devil's Crush.

[alyosha-tas]

Valis is fixed!

[alyosha-tas]

Fixed Final Soldier by correctly emulating latching of y-scroll. Burai suffers from a variant of the same bug but I'm not sure how to fix it.

[alyosha-tas]

Gate of Thunder finally fixed in the same manner as Valis

[alyosha-tas]

Even though Mugen Senshi Valis now runs, the cutscene animation does not sync with the audio (needs CD access time emulation.)

[Sonia-7]

Edited the OP striking through the games that have been fixed.

Also, if you want to look into the Daimakaimura ending issue, I made a save state:
Daimakaimura - Ending.zip

(The top of the screen looks glitched as well, btw)

ROM information if necessary:
Dai-Makaimura (Japan)
SHA1:CAB9E4A1A8B6DA07CC2C5CC35949928199A417EE
MD5:6D9FF6F70608166C88FD2553D44CA17A

[ghost]

Mednafen accurate core is so perfect. Bizhawk contains other mednafen cores. Why not this one yet?

[YoshiRulz]

From IRC:

<DarkKobold> A couple I've encounter - cd_fade bios routines don't cancel when starting a new song - they have to be canceled via the cd_fade, or the music remains muted.
<DarkKobold> pal loading prior to a vsync causes graphical glitches on a console that don't occur in bizhawk

[YoshiRulz]

Looks like there's only a handful of inaccuracies left here, can someone please test them on TurboNyma?

edit: I'm going to let this one fall into the archives

[alyosha-tas]

Moving graphics bugs from cyorter here:

"Sorry for the late, but after playing 5-10 minutes each game, I see it solved the major graphic problems! But there are still some minor problems in the graphics, in 1941 title screen, the big "1941" (the orange one) moves to the right and after that the top gets glitched.
In Daimakaimura when black screen between the beginning scene and starting the level, there's a similar glitch on the top.
I still have to play even more Daimakaimura to being sure and test about sound but good job :)"

[alyosha-tas]

I'm removing high priority from this, as presumably PCEHawk will be removed once #2054 is resolved.

Most of these remaining bugs cannot be fixed without a rewrite of the core for better timing, irrelevent given the two Nyma cores work just fine.