0.7.0

This release widens the bonus stages and the special stage results, lets you pick the menu background, brings fast-forward to gamepads and touch screens, and adds a new kind of mod for menu text.

• Widescreen bonus stages (Issue #38): the bonus stages reached through the giant rings now fill the widescreen.
  • The tunnel's rings are continued into the margins the way the art draws them, so they cycle colour with the rest of the tunnel. The blocks and items are drawn across the whole width.
  • Like the widened special stage, the extra drawing can delay a frame's buffer flip by one frame, so a run with the same inputs can pick different random items in widescreen than in 4:3. No frames are lost.
• Widescreen special stage results (Issue #39): the results screen after a special stage now reaches both edges of the screen.
• Choose the menu background (Issue #37):
  • OPTIONS > EXTRAS > MENU BACKGROUND now offers CYCLE (the old behaviour), PLAIN, or one of the seven zones: World Entrance, Isolated Island, Botanic Base, Marina Madness, Speed Slider, Amazing Arena and Techno Tower.
  • The picture that used to be called Isolated Island was in fact the World Entrance lobby. It is now listed under that name, and Isolated Island has a picture of its own.
  • The ring tether between the two characters no longer shows in the pictures. Because of that, the pictures are made again once.
• Fast-forward on gamepad and touch (Issue #45):
  • Gamepad: the right trigger, which can be changed on the CONTROLS page.
  • Keyboard: Tab, which can now also be rebound there.
  • Touch: an optional button in the top-left corner, under OPTIONS > INPUT > TOUCH FAST FORWARD. It is off by default.
  • Speed and mode: OPTIONS > INPUT > FAST FORWARD sets HOLD or TOGGLE, and FAST FORWARD SPEED sets 2X, 4X or MAX. At 2X and 4X the sound keeps playing, pitched up; MAX is the old behaviour.
  • Fast-forward is off during TIME ATTACK runs.
• Mods: menu text replacement: a new mdtext_<name>.txt + .png mod replaces a run of Mega Drive tiles, such as a word drawn with the game's letter font, with one picture.
  • This is how a translation can change menu words without changing every letter that shares their tiles.
  • DUMP GRAPHICS now also lists the text runs on each screen, ready to copy into a pattern.
  • Details: docs/TEXTURE_MODS.md.

Thanks to @lemanrush for the suggestions.

Validation:

• Windows: all 56 CTest cases pass. New tests:
  • the bonus stage and the results screen are widescreen, with their centres matching 4:3 and lockstep holding;
  • each menu background renders and is saved;
  • fast-forward speeds, modes and the TIME ATTACK lock;
  • menu text replacement.
• Lockstep: all 33 sweep runs with random input are bit-identical.
• macOS (M1): all 53 CTest cases pass and lockstep is bit-identical on arm64.
• Linux: all 53 Linux CTest cases pass.
• 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, the macOS arm64 zip, the iOS .ipa, and two Android APKs: arm64-v8a/x86_64 (the usual one) and armeabi-v7a (32-bit ARM). Both APKs use version code 29 and the same signing certificate as 0.6.2, so they update in place.

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