CPCEC a new emulator from cngsoft

[robcfg]

Let me poke César.

[cngsoft]

CPCEC returns with a "minor patch" whose log took way too long to write, not unlike the patch itself took too long to release:

20240830 -- minor patch with many small additions and bugfixes. All emulators now simulate the gradual signal loss of their DAC devices (either built-in, like the 48K beeper in ZXSEC and the 4th SID voice in CSFEC, or optional, such as the Digiblaster in CPCEC and Konami's Synthesizer in MSXEC) and thus soften and cancel the noise from softwares that don't restore the DACs to their neutral state. MSXEC and CSFEC support up to 2 MB of extended RAM, and MSXEC can read 4-MB cartridges, f.e. the special release of "King's Valley" with sampled music and speech. Rapidly flipping the 128K video page in ZXSEC now fetches all the attributes from the right bank, f.e. one of the final effects in "Elysium State". The C64 SID chip in CSFEC is no longer internally stereo; instead, a single-SID setup optionally simulates stereo with a delay between the left and right sides. The shared runtime between Win32 and SDL2 versions unifies the general synchronisation logic instead of letting each version handle it independently; the versions simply provide wrappers for video, audio and timer logic. Defining the macro VIDEO_BORDERLESS on compile time will enable the reduced window modes (640x400 pixels for CPCEC, 512x384 for ZXSEC, etc) that were already built-in but required editing the headers by hand. "Fine Giga/X-blend" extends the old option "Fine X-blending" to interframe blending; it sets whether the emulator does the traditional two-step Gigascreen composition or a more general motion blur. The onscreen status now includes an audio oscilloscope. Alt+Right and Alt+Left respectively speed the emulation up and down. XRF2, a new video compression mode hopefully improving on the old XRF1, is now generated by the emulators; XRFEC can read both the old XRF1 and the new XRF2. The emulators can record PNG screenshots, although the QOI format stays optionally available on compile time. RUNEC can recognize 8K MSX cartridges.

[cngsoft]

Oops, I forgot to mention the most important innovation: ZXSEC finally supports "Chromatrons Attack"!

Now I have a doubt: are there any MODE 2 creations for CPC that rely on moiré patterns to create unexpected colours like these?

[andycadley]

Oops, I forgot to mention the most important innovation: ZXSEC finally supports "Chromatrons Attack"!

Now I have a doubt: are there any MODE 2 creations for CPC that rely on moiré patterns to create unexpected colours like these?

Isn't it a PAL signal issue? I'd have thought the CPC wouldn't suffer in the same way, since the monitor always took an RGB signal.

[Gryzor]

The what attack now? What is that?

[d_kef]

Chromatrons Attack is a ZX Spectrum mini game designed to be hard to emulate.
https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/entry/31261/ZX-Spectrum/Chromatrons_Attack

d_kef

[Gryzor]

Hahaha seriously? That's cool😁

Does the video show it as it should look or not at all?

[roudoudou]

Hahaha seriously? That's cool😁

Does the video show it as it should look or not at all?

yeah, hard to see since there is still glitches and no "impossible" colors for a spectrum

the funny things the game is black/white only but display two colors on composite

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/articles/Composite_artifact_colors

[Gryzor]

😂

Thanks, interesting read. I realized I knew about the effect but had never quite, erm, realized it.

[cngsoft]

Quick update:
20240909 -- minor patch reworking the keyboard, joystick and autorun logic to be more similar across machines (and rejecting simultaneous UP-DOWN and LEFT-RIGHT motions when the joystick is virtual and mapped on the keyboard), extending the "Chromatrons effect" option in ZXSEC (introduced in the previous patch) to support the slightly different brightness of some attributes (f.e. "Bright Miner" and "NOP 1995"), fixing a bug in CSFEC (the 4th SID voice wasn't falling to zero when sound played without changing the mixer) and turning the artificially stereo chips from MSXEC (PSG, Konami SCC and Yamaha OPLL) into their real mono selves: stereo in MSXEC is now surround-like as in CSFEC.