Windows users:
- Download the zip below,
- Disable your virus protection or make an exception for
demarc.exe
- Unpack, and double click one of the BAT files.
Linux/Mac users
- Run the install script
- Download the databases you need (CSDb/demozoo)
- Run
demarc --help
- (Mac users may need to run
xattr -c demarc to clear the quarantine flag)
Release Notes
Added
- New
newsys Loading Pipeline: Replaced the old file-detection and load path with a generic System trait, covering archive/disk handling, loading and per-system configuration (b8eb1c7, eacf457, b5241b6, 9e85034).
- Many New Systems: Amstrad, Atari 2600, Atari XL, GBA, Megadrive, Sinclair ZX Spectrum, SNES and TIC-80 (
cabf235, 1381027); PlayStation with m3u multi-disc handling (a9ecf2c); Atari ST and the image viewer (fbc1d29); bare music files (7f43f3a).
- Neo Geo CD: Added Neo Geo CD support with the disc-image code shared with PSX, plus the Neo Geo BIOS (
78f505a, 3aeae1b).
- Asynchronous Loading: Demos load on a background task so downloads no longer freeze the emulator (
a6889dc).
- Lua Music Visualization: User modifiable LUA script for music visualization (
353af2e, 9f9baa3).
- egui Frontend: Ported HUD toasts, the text list, file picker search/select/info and the hotkey list to egui, behind a reusable fuzzy-list widget (
ecebb92, b06b220, c9abe6b, c51c909, adb2009, f47c414).
- New Image Formats: ZX Spectrum screens, PCX and TGA (
21da2aa); NEOchrome, CrackArt and KID (18a4869); DEGAS via ImageSystem (75ddf43); Amiga super-hires with AGA vs OCS/ECS palette detection (b1b7adc).
- Image Format Descriptions: Report format details — including truecolour images by distinct colour count — for the frontend info display (
a659d18, ec16193, 702b169).
- Download Resilience: Retry downloads across mirrors and remember the one that works, falling back to the next release URL on failure, with an in-flight download counter in the HUD (
f7fad43, 938d8ee, b0c94a6).
- Per-View Focus: Avoid work in unfocused/invisible grid cells. (
6f6ce3b).
- DREZ Downsampling: Downsample minified views, configurable with
--downsample (93adaa6).
- Retro Replay Autoboot: Autoboot the Retro Replay cart for C64 disk/m3u loads under
--fast-load, with autoboot and console input mode wired through the System trait (b151267, 39c0604, 9e32254).
- Beetle PSX Core: Support
mednafen_psx for PSX under --grid (7768568).
- Wayland Idle Inhibit: Prefer Wayland idle-inhibit for screensaver suppression on Linux (
b444ba1).
- Shared
FileCache: One cache implementation reused across all disc and download caches (da30902).
- Release Artifacts: Publish the demo databases as release artifacts and ship CSDB/Demozoo launcher
.BAT files in the Windows zip (8fa8a70, a1412b6).
Changed
- Tags Reworked: Renamed tags to meta with a real tag lookup, described entries from tags instead of
SystemType, and simplified db parsing so all named fields land in tags — including year extraction from the date tag (57ca2e4, a62c554, fdb027d, 0df2154).
- Single Shared Camera: Composite all emulator views through one camera and drop the passthrough slangp chain in favour of compositing the framebuffer directly (
05fe7b4, 202e4d1).
- Atari ST Configuration: Hatari is configured from content tags, releases from 1994 onward default to STE with 4 MB, and an ST-specific aspect-ratio tweak was added (
5d535b3, 63c8931, ce4c3d4).
- Logging via
tracing: Replaced ad-hoc println debugging with tracing macros and demoted per-file walk, system-probe and frame drop/duplicate logs to trace (60654c9, 47e49a8, 373f41e, e0fa8d9).
- HUD Presentation: Drop shadows render behind the text (
21a5692, ac64bf1, 868c90b).
- Mirror Resolution: Resolve db link classes (
SceneOrgFile, ModlandFile, …) to mirror URLs (450ab97).
- Image Ordering: Better image sorting, multi-disk image sorting, and jpg/jpeg screenshots ranked below other true colour formats (
cffa732, 3ceb7bd, 7f4c4d4).
- Cleanup: Removed the legacy pre-
newsys pipeline, the superseded file-detection code, the systems module (folding GameInfo/info text into Emulator), the obsolete bevy-UI fuzzy list and unused text_input (9e85034, 273c66e, dd3cf02, eedf71d, 5eae6ae).
Fixed
- Amiga Executables: Validate by parsing the hunk format, fix AMOS handling, and fix the 1997+ meta key and
copy_all detection (a51eaec, 9c1ed96, 73de6fc, f9ae1f9).
- ILBM Robustness: Hardened chunk parsing against malformed/truncated files and let a square BMHD aspect override the mode-id guess (
44e0a99, 81b87cd).
- Content-Based Detection: PlayStation discs detected by content instead of filename/cue,
.atr Atari disk images by header, standalone Atari XL binaries recognized, and false-positive tar detection in is_archive fixed (0866945, 3db94b0, 07bc58f, e3b8a3d).
- Atari ST Loading: Pick the boot program by name rather than size and scope hard-drive staging by release instead of directory (
29a054b, 30455ef).
- Directory Scanning:
scan_release_dir no longer picks a screenshot folder over the demo folder (ad04d37).
- Audio While Skipping: Drain core audio while frames are skipped (
1b09d82).
- Unrecognized Files: Report path details when no system recognizes a file (
e1aef30).
- Misc Loading: Fixed floppy detection, image pause state and loader error handling (
f6dd2be).
- Release Build: Fixed
release-fast LTO setting causing link errors (d57fdb7).
Install demarc 1.5.0
Install prebuilt binaries via shell script
curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -LsSf https://github.com/sasq64/demarc/releases/download/v1.5.0/demarc-installer.sh | sh
Install prebuilt binaries via powershell script
powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -c "irm https://github.com/sasq64/demarc/releases/download/v1.5.0/demarc-installer.ps1 | iex"
Download demarc 1.5.0
