v0.5.0-alpha — Much faster loads, fixed sprite layering, smoother menus

Tomba! Recompiled — v0.5.0-alpha

The fast-and-faithful release: loads are dramatically quicker, sprite layering is fixed, and the menus are smooth.

✨ What's new

Much faster loading — on by default, with sound

Loading is now blazing fast. While a load is happening, the whole machine fast-forwards at your PC's full speed, then drops back to normal the instant it's done — so a load that used to take a few seconds finishes almost immediately. Crucially, this preserves all of the game's internal timing, so audio plays through normally (no mute, no cut, no glitches) and nothing desyncs.

This is on by default now. (In v0.4.0 the fast-forward briefly muted audio, so it shipped off — that mute is gone, so it's simply the better way to play.) You can still turn it off in Settings → Turbo loads if you prefer authentic loading times.

Fixed sprite layering

On the OpenGL renderer, the character could appear in front of things he should be behind — an item block's "AP" letters, a save post. That's fixed: sprites now layer correctly, matching the original hardware (and the software renderer).

Smoother menus

The title screen and file-select / load menu lag is gone — menus and save browsing are now snappy.

🔧 Under the hood

• Reworked the emulated CD timing so it stays authentic (the safe default), with the speed coming from the load fast-forward above instead of from speeding up the disc itself — which is what keeps audio and game logic correct.
• The OpenGL renderer now composites opaque sprites in their true draw order (the cause of the layering bug), with no impact on the scenery batching that keeps framerates high.

📝 Notes

• As always, bring your own PlayStation BIOS and Tomba! (USA, SCUS-94236) disc image — the launcher asks for each.
• Options live in the launcher's Settings and are remembered between launches.
• Widescreen remains opt-in and experimental.
• The overlay cache grows as you play; please keep overlay_captures.json private — it contains game code read from your disc (see README).