Trouble Makers v0.3.7

What's fixed

• Fixed the garbage pixel strip at the top of the screen during the
  Nintendo/Enix/Treasure intro logos
  (#37).
  The game copies palette data into framebuffer rows a CRT never displayed;
  presentation now skips the rows above the video interface origin and hides
  the first scanned-out rows the way CRT overscan did. This affected every
  GPU, aspect ratio, and antialiasing mode, not only the AMD fullscreen setup
  in the report.
• Added a VSync option. VSync stays on by default and can be disabled from
  the launcher's Advanced tab, with --no-vsync, or with vsync=0 in
  display.cfg — no more forcing it off in the GPU driver's control panel.
  Disabling it presents without waiting for the display and can tear.
• Fullscreen now starts at the monitor's current desktop mode instead of the
  saved windowed resolution, which previously made the renderer allocate an
  oversized transient render target (up to 18x with supersampling) when a 4K
  size was saved on a 1080p desktop.

Performance guidance and launcher

• The recommended baseline is native 60 fps with antialiasing off. At the
  recomp's high internal resolution, MSAA/SSAA often make only a subtle
  visual difference; if there is spare headroom, raising the frame-rate
  target is the more noticeable upgrade. The launcher now ships quick presets
  (Recommended, Higher FPS, Try 4x MSAA), estimates the internal render
  target, and warns when SSAA is combined with high-rate interpolation.

Diagnostics

• Presentation-path telemetry: the five-second session reports now include a
  [present] record from the real presentation thread — measured present
  cadence with p95/p99 tails, late and missed deadlines, interpolated and
  skipped frames, and the time blocked in swap-chain acquisition, the GPU
  fence, present waits, and pacing — closing the blind spot that made the
  July Windows stutter report unattributable.
• Process memory and thread statistics now also report on Windows, and the
  render-target size and antialiasing state appear in every report.

The implementation and test evidence landed in
#38.

Full changelog: v0.3.6...v0.3.7

Trouble Makers v0.3.6

What's fixed

• Fixed the 4:3 left-edge texture stretch that could appear while Marina and
  the camera moved through a stage.
• Fixed Vertigo and Seasick Climb regressions where sprites left Windows
  Solitaire-style trails, the rotating wall disappeared or used the wrong
  color, and moving 3D platforms lost or stretched their textures.
• Removed a host-message retry loop that could consume an entire CPU core from
  startup and interfere with graphics and audio work on lower-end systems.
• Bounded deferred host events and RT64 render-target bookkeeping so abandoned
  queues and render-target recreation cannot create increasing work over a
  long session.
• Prevented the pre-game launcher from redrawing without a limit when VSync is
  unavailable. Its software fallback is now event-driven and uses a bounded UI
  scale.
• Restricted the Linux NVIDIA ubershader workaround to affected RTX 50-series
  and Blackwell devices, so older GeForce GPUs retain RT64's faster specialized
  shader path.

Vertigo and Seasick Climb intentionally remain centered 4:3 when widescreen is
selected because their rotating rooms are authored as fixed 320x240 canvases.
Ordinary scrolling stages still use expanded widescreen rendering.

Diagnostics and regression coverage

• Added renderer queue, shader, texture, upload, process-memory, and thread
  statistics to the existing five-second session reports.
• Added an optimized native profiling workflow and detailed performance guide.
• Added sustained walking captures, explicit 4:3/widescreen and
  native/interpolated-rate matrices, anti-aliasing coverage, fatal-log checks,
  and a dedicated rotation-stage regression suite.
• Validated all 52 campaign stages in both widescreen-preference and explicit
  4:3 sweeps. The final five-minute streaming soak held native cadence with no
  slow frames or growing renderer queue.

The implementation and test evidence landed in
#34.
This release does not claim to resolve the separate audio-backend reports in
#26 or
#27.

Full changelog: v0.3.5...v0.3.6

Trouble Makers v0.3.5

What's new

• Added compact performance snapshots every five seconds, including native frame cadence, average/p95/maximum frame time, slow-frame counts, and VI, screen-update, display-list, and audio-task rates.
• Added renderer submission timing, active GPU/display details, target refresh rate, render scale, and scene-transition diagnostics to help isolate frame drops and slowdowns.
• Added audio device, conversion, queue-depth, underrun, clipping, DC-offset, and error diagnostics to help investigate buzzing and playback problems.
• Added lifecycle milestones and a watchdog that identifies stalled or recovered game, renderer, display-list, and audio progress.
• Added elapsed timestamps to captured output and preserved startup diagnostics when bounded session logs are compacted.
• Added resolved configuration and SDL environment diagnostics, including a warning for the commonly mistyped SDL_AUDIO_DRIVER variable.
• Updated the bug-report workflow with a 15-second reproduction window so copied reports include three comparable performance samples.

This diagnostics-focused release gives us substantially better evidence for the two open community reports, #26 and #27. It does not claim those issues are fixed yet.

Other changes

• Improved README presentation and project description.
• Added runtime performance diagnostics in #31.
• Extended Linux and Windows CI to build and run the telemetry tests.

Full changelog: v0.3.4...v0.3.5

Trouble Makers v0.3.4

What's new

• Added fully configurable keyboard and controller input remapping through the launcher.
• Added two binding slots per action, capture, clear and reset controls, and controller hot-plug refresh.
• Added persistent controller mappings stored in controls.json, with validation and safe fallback to defaults.
• Added persistent session logs with automatic rotation to make crashes and other issues easier to diagnose.
• Added build, SDL, audio, display and GPU diagnostics to copied support reports.
• Added a Support tab for copying the latest or previous diagnostic report directly into GitHub issues.
• Fixed launcher footer button text overflowing at higher display scaling.
• Improved Linux and Windows build and test reliability.

Other changes

• Removed the decompilation checkout dependency from the build process in #29.
• Added input remapping and session logging in #30.

Full changelog: v0.3.3...v0.3.4

Trouble Makers v0.3.3

What's Changed

• Fix F11 widescreen aspect desynchronization by @ThiagoLira in #24

Full Changelog: v0.3.2...v0.3.3

Trouble Makers v0.3.2

What's Changed

• Harden graphics config and fullscreen transitions by @ThiagoLira in #23

Full Changelog: v0.3.1...v0.3.2

Trouble Makers v0.3.1

Trouble Makers v0.3.1

This is a Windows launcher hotfix. Windows users should download this build instead of v0.3.0.

Fixed

• Prevents Windows display scaling from being applied twice to the launcher.
• Stops the Advanced controls from overlapping the Start Game and Exit buttons.
• Restores Start Game click handling on affected high-DPI displays.
• Corrects the version shown in the launcher to v0.3.1.

A legally dumped US 1.1 ROM is required and is not included.

Downloads

• Windows: TroubleMakers-Windows-X64.zip
• Linux: TroubleMakers-x86_64.AppImage

What's Changed

• Fix Windows launcher DPI overlap by @ThiagoLira in #22

Full Changelog: v0.3.0...v0.3.1

Trouble Makers v0.3.0

Warning

Windows users: this release has a high-DPI launcher overlap that can prevent Start Game from responding. Download v0.3.1 instead.

Trouble Makers v0.3.0

This release makes the experimental widescreen build safer and easier to explore.

Highlights

• Adds a launcher-gated, save-safe debug menu with a campaign level selector.
• Fixes widescreen gameplay boundaries, including the Level 1 off-stage fall and soft lock.
• Prevents debug warps from changing normal save progression.
• Adds automated Linux AppImage and Windows x64 release packaging.
• Relicenses the project under GPLv3, as required by the runtime integration.

Widescreen is still experimental, so please report any level-specific visual or gameplay issues. A legally dumped US 1.1 ROM is required and is not included.

Downloads

• Linux: TroubleMakers-x86_64.AppImage
• Windows: use v0.3.1

What's Changed

• CI: automate releases on version-tag push by @ThiagoLira in #19
• Relicense to GPLv3 (required by N64ModernRuntime) by @ThiagoLira in #20
• Add save-safe debug warps and fix widescreen boundaries by @ThiagoLira in #21

Full Changelog: v0.2.9...v0.3.0

Trouble Makers v0.2.9

Trouble Makers — a native PC port of Mischief Makers (N64, Treasure 1997) via static recompilation. Bring your own legally dumped Mischief Makers (US 1.1) ROM; the launcher validates and remembers it.

Downloads

• Linux — TroubleMakers-x86_64.AppImage. chmod +x, run, pick your ROM. Needs a Vulkan-capable GPU and glibc ≥ 2.35 (Ubuntu 22.04+).
• Windows — TroubleMakers-Windows-X64.zip. Extract and run troublemakers.exe.

Drop a portable.txt next to the binary to keep saves/config beside it.

New since v0.2.8

• High-FPS frame interpolation (opt-in). --fps 240 / --fps display, or a "Frame rate" option in the launcher — RT64 synthesizes smoother-than-60 motion between the game's native 60Hz frames (game logic still runs at 60Hz). Experimental; interpolation quality on 2D sprites varies.
• Linux AppImage now defaults to XWayland, fixing HiDPI launcher glitches (tiny UI / offset clicks) and a libdecor crash on window move/resize on Wayland desktops. Override with SDL_VIDEODRIVER=wayland if you prefer the native backend.
• run.sh build-and-run helper added to the repo.

Features

• 60 fps, high-res rendering (RT64), correct audio, EEPROM saves
• Launcher: ROM select + resolution / fullscreen / widescreen / AA / frame-rate options
• Opt-in widescreen (real 16:9 scene rendering)
• In game: F11 fullscreen, hold Tab for 3x fast-forward