0.4.4

This release adds a touch joystick and fixes menu text that showed thin lines.

• Touch joystick (Issue #30): OPTIONS > INPUT > TOUCH STICK switches the on-screen directions between D-PAD and JOYSTICK. It is also TouchStick in [Input] of Config/chaotix.ini.

  • The joystick sits where the d-pad was. The thumb that lands on it keeps it until you lift it, and keeps steering even after sliding off the base.
  • A small dead zone in the middle stops a resting thumb from moving the character.
  • Other fingers press only the buttons.
  • To reskin it, put stick.bmp (the base) and knob.bmp in Mods/Touch. Each can also have a _pressed version.

• Sharper menu text (Issue #5): in windows that weren't 720 pixels tall, for example 1080p fullscreen, the menu text was drawn between pixels. That blurred the pixel font and showed thin lines from neighbouring letters. Text now lands on whole pixels.

• For testing: the app now takes two new options.

  • --stage FRAME:PLACE:LEVEL:TIME:PLAYER:PARTNER:2P starts any place, the special stage included.
  • --log-timing logs the frame rate and the slowest frame every second.

  The headless runner's --profile now also reports the slowest frame. These come from looking into Issue #31 (special stage lag on Windows). It doesn't reproduce here yet: the special stage runs at 60 fps, with emulation taking 3–4 ms of each frame.

Thanks to @stuffinix and @DanKorell.

Validation:

• Windows: all 27 CTest cases pass.
• Linux: all 24 Linux CTest cases pass.
• New tests: one for the joystick (holding it, steering off the base, other fingers, letting go). Another draws text at a fractional and a whole position and checks they match; it fails on 0.4.3.
• Packages: the packaged Windows and Linux builds pass the startup tests.
• Android: the APKs have not been tested on a device for this release.

Downloads: the Windows x64 zip, the Linux x64 tar.gz, and two Android APKs: arm64-v8a/x86_64 (the usual one) and armeabi-v7a (32-bit ARM). Both APKs use version code 17 and the same signing certificate as 0.4.3, so they update in place.

You must supply your own Knuckles' Chaotix (Japan, USA) ROM. No ROM image or game assets are included.