Ring Out 1.6.7

A speed release: the hottest parts of the game's code now run as plain native code on all four discs, which cuts CPU use by roughly 8-10% on the Steam Deck, and Windows gets shorter loads and a much faster first launch.

• Hot game code runs natively. Setup now turns the game's busiest loops and functions (its random number generators, the character skinning, a decoder and dozens of small maths routines) into ordinary native code: registers kept in locals, small helper calls inlined, no per-instruction bookkeeping. It works from a list that ships for each disc and changes nothing about what the game computes. Measured on a Steam Deck, the CPU cycles for the same 16,000-frame arcade run fell by about 8% (US), 8% (Japanese), 10% (European) and 9% (SC2 Plus). These are the combined steps of this release, each measured on its own against the one before.
• The same on Windows. The Windows build gets all of it. A Windows-only bug kept this native code from being used at all in the 1.6.7 test builds; it was caught and fixed before release.
• Faster loads. The emulated disc drive no longer waits for real GameCube timing, so each load is 1 to 3 seconds shorter. It can be turned off on the System tab.
• Faster first launch on Windows. Setup now builds the shader cache, as it already does on Linux. On a 2-core laptop the first launch went from about 4.5 minutes of black window to about 28 seconds.
• Less audio work. Audio inputs a GameCube game never uses (Wii remote speakers, GBA links and others) are no longer processed: about 70% less work on the audio thread.
• A leaner runtime on Windows. Rebuilt with an updated speed profile: about 3.5% faster in the fight on a 2-core laptop.
• Fixed: the Speed row stuck on "Unlimited" on Windows after holding Tab to fast-forward while the window lost focus.
• New: slowdown report. Each second the game runs below 95% speed, launch.log gets one line saying what the machine was busy with. Useful when reporting performance problems.

Every disc produces the same game state on Windows, Linux and the Steam Deck, checked frame by frame over 16,000 frames of a scripted arcade run.

Re-run setup to get the speedup. Most of it is in the module setup builds on your machine. Unzip fresh and point setup at your disc as before.

Netplay needs both players on 1.6.7, as with every release.