Ring Out 1.6.8

A speed release: the recompiled game code returns to the emulator far less often and does less work per call, which cuts CPU use by roughly 9-12% on the Steam Deck across all four discs.

• Far fewer trips back to the emulator. Recompiled code used to hand control back to the emulator whenever a function ran past the end of its block of code, at every jump table and at every indirect call. Those paths now stay inside the native code, and a loop can run on until the next timing event instead of stopping every thousand emulated cycles. Over a scripted arcade run, the number of hand-offs fell by about 85%.
• Small functions copied inline. Short helper functions are now copied straight into the code that calls them, so the call itself disappears.
• Faster character skinning. The loops that bend each fighter's mesh to its skeleton now do their maths two numbers at a time, the way the GameCube's CPU does.
• Faster vector loads and stores in the game's hottest code, which now move data straight between game memory and the CPU instead of through the emulated CPU state.
• Fixed: setup failed when RingOut was unzipped into a folder whose path contains a space (RingOut#13).

Measured on a Steam Deck over the same scripted run, CPU cycles fell by about 11% (US), 12% (Japanese), 11% (SC2 Plus) and 9% (European). These are the combined steps of this release, each measured on its own against the one before. Windows runs the same recompiled code.

Every disc still produces exactly the same game state as before on Windows, Linux and the Steam Deck, checked frame by frame over 16,000 frames of a scripted arcade run and 14,000 frames of a versus match.

Re-run setup to get the speedup. Almost all 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 1.6.8, as with every release.