F-Zero 1.8.3 - Diagnostic reporting

Adds Mods > Diagnostics, an optional performance logger that is off by default.

To help investigate a slowdown:

1. Enable Diagnostics in the launcher Mods menu.
2. Play through the slowdown, then quit normally.
3. Attach the newest diagnostics/performance-*.jsonl file to your bug report. The folder is beside the executable on Windows and beside the AppImage on Linux.

Reports include hardware/build information, effective HD Mode 7 and display settings, and time spent composing frames, uploading textures, presenting frames, and waiting for frame deadlines. Logs stay local and contain no ROM or save data.

If Skip Launcher is enabled, start the game with --launcher to access the toggle. See the diagnostics guide for details.

The reported HD Mode 7 performance regression remains under investigation; this patch adds the reporting needed to diagnose affected machines.

Windows ZIP and Linux AppImage downloads include SHA-256 checksum files. Diagnostic behavior and settings were checked on Windows and Linux, including logging off/on, output failures, and AppImage report placement.

F-Zero 1.8.2 — Custom HD Mode 7 scales and Skip Launcher fix

HD Mode 7 now accepts whole-number resolution multipliers from 2x through 10x, including 6x and 8x. Enter the multiplier under Mods > HD Mode 7. It remains off by default, with 2x as the starting value.

• Show a clear warning above 4x: these settings can cause severe slowdown, especially with ultrawide views or high Presentation FPS. Use at your own risk. A lower texture scale is used for the session if the graphics renderer cannot create the requested size.
• Fix Skip Launcher persistence and direct boot using the remembered, verified ROM. Run with --launcher to reopen the menu. Missing or invalid remembered ROMs reopen it automatically.
• Save Mods settings when quitting the launcher as well as when pressing Play.

Higher HD scales refine the Mode 7 track. Skyline, sprite and HUD artwork retain their original pixels.

Windows x64 ZIP and Linux x86_64 AppImage are attached, with SHA-256 checksums. Extract the complete Windows ZIP. Bring your own unmodified F-Zero (USA) ROM; no commercial ROM is included.

F-Zero 1.8.1 — Explosion fix and HD Mode 7 optimization

Fixes split vehicle explosions in Widescreen and reduces the CPU cost of HD Mode 7.

• Explosion and smoke sprites stay together when the game reuses rank-display sprite slots. Actual rank digits still anchor to the HUD. Supports fixed widescreen aspects, Fit, and native/2x/4x rendering.
• HD Mode 7 shares native/HD composition, caches scanline color math and repeated texture lookups, and uses faster texture wrapping. Recorded renderer benchmarks show roughly 2.5–3.3x faster rendering in the tested widescreen cases, with matching output hashes. Whole-application gains vary with resolution, CPU and presentation rate; see the measurements.

Download the Windows x64 ZIP or Linux x86_64 AppImage. Supply your own F-Zero (USA) ROM. BS F-Zero Deluxe remains included with its authors' permission. HD Mode 7 remains optional and off by default.

Validation: all nine test suites pass on Windows and Linux. The reported slot 01 explosion replay passes 228 captured frame/aspect/HD comparisons. Both packaged downloads pass stock and BS Deluxe race checks with HD off/4x, plus the slot 01 replay with HD off/2x/4x; final game memory matches between rendering modes.

FZeroSNESRecomp 1.8.0

Sharper tracks with optional HD Mode 7 rendering.

• Enable Mods > HD Mode 7 and choose 2x or 4x. The enhancement is off by default and works independently of Widescreen and Presentation FPS.
• Race and attract-mode tracks are sampled at higher resolution with smoother affine coordinates and interpolation between compatible camera scanlines. Cars, HUD and menus retain their original pixel artwork.
• Both SDL and OpenGL/shader presentation receive the enlarged texture. Start at 2x if 4x costs too much performance, especially with wide aspect ratios or high presentation FPS.
• Includes the shared snesrecomp HD Mode 7 renderer, plus the ROM-selection persistence fix from v1.7.1.

Download the Windows x64 ZIP or Linux x86_64 AppImage below. Supply your own F-Zero (USA) ROM. BS F-Zero Deluxe remains included with its authors' permission. ROMs, personal settings/saves, music packs, MSU patches and imported third-party shaders are not included.

See HD Mode 7 details for supported scenes and rendering limits.

Validation: all nine F-Zero tests pass on Windows and Linux. Both packaged downloads pass 1,600-frame stock and BS Deluxe checks with HD off and at 4x; guest memory matches, and 4x output is 1368x896 at 16:9. A 10,800-frame native soak passes with no audio underruns.

FZeroSNESRecomp 1.7.1

Fix ROM selection being forgotten when the launcher restarts (#8).

• ROMs selected with Browse For ROM are now remembered after both Play and closing the launcher.
• Cancelling the picker or selecting an invalid file preserves the last valid ROM selection.
• The fix lives in the shared recomp-ui launcher and is included through F-Zero's dependency pin.

Reproduced the failure in the original Windows v1.7.0 package and Linux AppImage using their actual file dialogs. Verified fresh selection and repeated relaunch/Play cycles in the v1.7.1 release packages, with external ROMs and paths containing spaces. All 23 shared launcher tests and all 9 F-Zero tests pass on Windows and Linux.

Download the Windows x64 ZIP or Linux x86_64 AppImage below. Supply your own F-Zero (USA) ROM. ROMs, personal settings/saves, music packs, MSU patches and imported third-party shaders are not included.

FZeroSNESRecomp 1.7.0

Desktop fixes and optional MSU-1 music

• Gameplay now uses the controller and bindings selected in the launcher, including per-device profiles and deadzones. Controller reconnects and launcher/game focus transitions are handled correctly.
• Fixed widescreen vehicle sparks being moved away from the car.
• Fixed game-over HUD anchoring, the displaced power-meter fill, and the Try Again / End Game text breaking apart during fades.
• Added optional MSU-1 music for stock F-Zero and BS F-Zero Deluxe through Settings > Sound. Use your own compatible music pack and the Conn/Cubear v11 patch; the original USA ROM is patched only in memory.
• Custom .glslp / .glsl shader imports, including CRT-Geom, work through Settings > Display > Shader > Browse. Shaders default to None (off). Invalid presets fall back to unfiltered output.
• Saved relative music/shader paths now resolve from the installation folder, including launches from shortcuts or another working directory.
• Includes the v1.6.2 settings-persistence fix, plus shared-engine audio-buffer recovery and legacy save-state compatibility updates.

Downloads and setup

Extract the entire Windows ZIP, or use the Linux x86_64 AppImage. Both include BS Deluxe with its authors' permission. You must supply your own F-Zero (USA) ROM.

For MSU-1, obtain the Conn/Cubear v11 patch, put f-zero_msu1.ips alongside your pack's numbered PCM tracks, then enable MSU-1 and select the folder in Settings > Sound. Keep using your unmodified USA ROM. The MSU patch and music are not included.

CRT-Geom is not bundled. Import your own crt-geom.glslp, keeping its accompanying shaders/crt-geom.glsl in place. Slang presets are not supported by this OpenGL path.

MSU-enabled sessions currently use interpreter execution. Loading a state or rewinding restarts the selected song from the beginning; stock/Deluxe and MSU/non-MSU states are kept separate. Arbitrary third-party ROM mods are not claimed compatible.

Android remains outside this release. Your existing settings and saves are not included in or overwritten by the download.

FZeroSNESRecomp 1.6.2

Fixes the launcher forgetting everything between runs.

Every setting on the launcher's Settings page except the three Rewind rows was reset to a built-in default on each launch and thrown away on exit, so Fullscreen, Linear filtering and the shader selection reverted every time you started the game. Window scale, Sample rate and Volume were worse than that: they were drawn, but nothing read them, so changing them did nothing at all. All of them are now saved and applied.

The ROM you pick is also remembered again. The launcher wrote its choice to rom.cfg but never read it back, so a ROM kept anywhere other than beside the game asked to be selected on every launch.

Settings are saved when you close the launcher, not only when you press Play.

FZeroSNESRecomp 1.6.1

Fixes the ROM button doing nothing on the Linux AppImage.

The AppImage set a library path for itself and also handed it to the desktop file dialog it opens, so the dialog could not start — and its failure was read back as "the player cancelled", which is why the click looked ignored. Desktop programs now get a normal desktop environment, and a file dialog that cannot run falls through to the launcher's own built-in file browser.

No gameplay changes; the Windows build is unaffected but ships alongside for version parity.

FZeroSNESRecomp 1.6.0

Adds an in-game save-state menu and rewind, and relicenses the project under MIT.

• Save-state menu. Press F7, or hold Select + R on a gamepad, for a slot browser over the frozen game: 12 slots, each with a thumbnail of the moment it was saved. A loads, X saves, B or Escape backs out.
• Rewind. Press F8, or hold Select + L, for a filmstrip of the recent past. Left and Right scrub, A or Enter drops you back in. It is off by default because it keeps whole snapshots of the machine in memory; turn it on under Settings in the launcher, where its depth and interval also live.
• Both keys are rebindable on the launcher's Controls page. The quick-slot keys (F1-F12 to load, Shift+F1-F12 to save) still work; F7 and F8 now belong to the menu and to rewind unless you rebind them.
• Stock F-Zero and BS F-Zero Deluxe keep separate save states, and a state taken on the other one is refused cleanly instead of crashing. States from 1.5.0 still load.
• Relicensed under the MIT License. Bundled dependencies keep their own licenses under licenses/.
• Updated the emulation framework and launcher. Stock 4:3 output is byte-identical to 1.5.0 on all 160 recorded captures.

Includes Windows x64 ZIP and Linux x86_64 AppImage. Supply your own F-Zero (USA) ROM; no ROM is included.

Eight regression suites pass, plus a scripted check that both overlays open, navigate and close from the keyboard and a gamepad on both presentation paths.

FZeroSNESRecomp 1.5.0

Fixes the widescreen track draw distance and ships every mod on by default.

• Widescreen track draw distance no longer follows 4:3 (reported by PowerPanda). The game only streams the track for the stock 256-pixel view; the wide margins now resolve the missing track from the game's own course tables, so pieces no longer pop in when they reach the centre. Non-player cars were unaffected. Stock 4:3 output is byte-identical.
• Fixed a one-frame full-screen flicker on the interpolated presentation path introduced by that fix during development.
• All mods are on by default: Widescreen at Fit to window, Presentation FPS at Auto, BS Deluxe. Turn any off in Mods.
• BS Deluxe v1.1 is compiled into the executable. Every download carries it and a missing mods/ folder can never stop the game from starting.
• Includes 1.4.3: bundled BS F-Zero Deluxe updated to upstream v1.1.

Includes Windows x64 ZIP and Linux x86_64 AppImage. Supply your own F-Zero (USA) ROM; no ROM is included.

Six regression suites pass. Accepted in owner playtesting.