07/10/2000 - Snes9x version 1.30b1 is released! [Posted by DarkMazda]

Snes9x(Windows9x SNES Emu) version 1.30b1 has been released! Here is a big list of whats new

• - The Windows auto-frame skip code was broken - badly. It didn't re-sync a timer value with timer events being generated, causing Snes9x to deliberately stop and wait for an event when it didn't need to, slowing down the overall emulation speed and increasing the number of frames skipped.
• - Improved the Windows cheat search dialog - its now possible to compare against a value and more comparison functions are available.
• - Finally worked out why Voodoo 3 support was so buggy in Snes9x - the Voodoo 3 card generates a WM_DISPLAYCHANGE message when switching to Voodoo mode (the Voodoo 1 and 2 cards don't); Snes9x thought that some other application had changed the screen depth or resolution and tried to adjust its window to match - triggering another WM_DISPLAYCHANGE message. No idea how the code worked at all; it must have been only by chance and very dependant on the driver version you were using!
• - Implemented Netplay on the Windows port - but its buggy as hell. I seem to be having major Windows multi-threading problems. Comments I've seen seem to suggest that Windows 95/98 don't implement true multi-threading; hmmm...
• - Not happy with the current Netplay, so I scrapped it and tried again; the protocol is much improved and not using select to control game timing seems to have removed lots of the threading-type problems I was having.
• - Attempted to switch to just using Borland's C++ Builder to build the Windows port - and failed, again. Although C++ Builder can build Snes9x from sources, it can't then link in the asm CPU cores. I had hoped Borland might have fixed this with their latest release - they haven't.
• - Several attempts to get Anti Resonance's super-fast sound CPU and sound DSP code working in Snes9x, but all failed. Part of the problem was his code was written using TASM and the object files it generated would only work under Windows - but all my SNES debugging code was in the Linux port. Anti' fixed that, and I then had some success getting his code working, but its just too unstable at the moment for a main-stream release.
• - Included an option to use Anti Resonance's alternate sample decoding routine; it can approximate the wind and noise sound effects heard in several Square Soft games.
• - Thanks to Lindsey Dubb for the mode 7 bi-linear filtering code - it generates a nice smooth image when a game scales the screen using the SNES' mode 7, but you'll a fast machine if you don't want the frame rate to drop.
• - Thanks again to Lindsey Dubb, he improved the colour addition/subtraction subtraction routines - they are just a little slower but now mostly perform full 15-bit precision addition and subtraction rather than the previous 13-bits of precision. Many more colour shades can be seen - look at the improved shading on the Mario Kart or F-Zero track for example.
• - Added a reverse stereo option, for people with sound cards that swap the two channels.
• - Added a sound config dialog to the Windows port - now you can access extra sound options that have always been there, but just no GUI interface to access them.
• - Fixed the 32-bit windowed support on the Windows port.
• - Adjusted the NMI timing by a few microseconds to get Metal Warriors working again.
• - Added a few more sound playback rate choices. Most modern sound cards allow any value to be used from a large range, rather than just a select few, may be I ought to add text field so you could just type a value in?
• - Used Factory Setup 4 to build a new installer package for the Windows port - just shipping a zip file was confusing novice users and many (mostly AOL users) seemed to have an odd program mapped to .zip files, further confusing the issue.
• - Added a fast forward key (Tab).