Play! - Development Log

Play! is a PlayStation2 emulator for Windows, macOS, UNIX, Android, iOS & web browser platforms. For more information about this project please visit the "About" section of this site.

Fetching compatibility status...

Put the project back in its tracks (part 2)
Posted on 2008-03-13 00:00:00

I finished the ISZ reader class. The format isn't as "open" as I thought it was... The specification doesn't mention the fact that some parts of the file are obfuscated. It took me a while to figure out how to get the right information off the obfuscated parts, but I got it to work correctly in the end.

So, all that remains is to add the class to the emulator project and allow binding the cdrom0 device with an ISZ disk image. After that, I wanna work on the idle loop skipper.

Put the project back in its tracks (part 2)
Posted on 2008-03-11 00:00:00

Almost a year since the last development! What I said in that forum topic still holds... I've made some more progress since then and I'm currently working on making Atelier Iris work like it was before.

I'd also like to add an idle loop skipper and add support for the ISZ (Ultra ISO) disk image format.

The MacOSX port is working well and is stable and I'm not really planning on adding stuff to it in a near future (except maybe a source disk image path selector).

Put the project back in its tracks
Posted on 2007-04-18 00:00:00

Finished up a basic software renderer and now we can see some output from the demo :

That's it for this development. New development coming soon.

Put the project back in its tracks
Posted on 2007-04-11 00:00:00

I've finished converting all the necessary instructions to run this demo under the 64-bits version. Now I gotta figure out what to do about the GS handler : either fix the OpenGL GS handler or work on a software GS handler.

I have no idea why the OpenGL GS handler is having trouble. It crashes as soon as a call to an OpenGL function from dynamically generated code is done...

As for creating a software GS handler, it'd be interesting because we could have a "reference" renderer in which we could easily implement the features of the GS, unlike in the OpenGL GS handler where we need to use hacks for mostly everything.

I think I'll work on the software GS handler right now, because I don't really need to implement much for this demo. Specifically, we just need to render what's in the frame buffer.

I'll probably have this done by the next week.

Put the project back in its tracks
Posted on 2007-04-04 00:00:00

Almost completed the conversion of the necessary instructions to make the demo work on the 64-bits version of the emulator. All that's left, I think, is BLEZ.

There is also some problems with the OpenGL GS handler which I'll have look into. I've created a dummy GS handler for now.

Hope I can finally make the demo work by the time I post my next log entry.

Put the project back in its tracks
Posted on 2007-03-28 00:00:00

This week I've completed most of the work on the base of the test engine. I shouldn't have to touch that much from now on.

Now I gotta work on making the demo run on the 64-bits version of the emulator. I've only converted "JR" to use the new code generation system, but lots more will follow. I'll also be adding test cases for newly converted instructions that I think are more sensible to bugs than others.

I hope to have much of the conversion job done by the next week.

Put the project back in its tracks
Posted on 2007-03-21 00:00:00

I've almost completed the instruction testing console :

All that remains to be done is the bit that'll allow the assembling of a specific test case.

After that's done, I'll start working on creating test cases for the already converted instructions and implement the missing instructions to make the demo work under a 64-bit environment.

Put the project back in its tracks
Posted on 2007-03-14 00:00:00

I'll unfortunately have to abandon the previous development : I've been working on it very scarcely since the last time I've updated the site and I haven't been able to do any significant improvement on making the game work.

With this new development, I wanna put the project back on its tracks. I'm not going to update daily as I was doing before, since I don't have time to do that right now. Updates will be weekly and will try to cover more ground than previous updates.

The ultimate goal of this development is to make the first demo (ps2_tut02a.elf) work within the 64-bits version of the emulator. This will allow me to convert some of the instructions that are still in the old instruction caching core into the new one. I also want to develop a little test engine to make the testing of the implantation of each instruction automatic and to ensure that the behavior of the 64-bits version of the instruction cacher will be the same as the 32-bits one.

I've started working on the test engine and most of the preparations are done. Test cases for each instructions are contained in an XML file located in a specific directory. We're able to read the test cases from the XML file and able to execute each test cases contained within it.

The next step will consist in creating a small user interface that will allow us to execute all tests, to view reports and to "assemble" the test case that has failed for inspection purposes.

I hope I'll have some screen shots of this GUI bit for you next week.

Make "Castlevania: Yami no Juin" playable.
Posted on 2006-10-02 00:00:00

I still don't know what is the source of the problem. Logically, the game is supposed to read lots of stuff off the DVD during that screen, so it might be a good idea to check what's happening on this side. I'll try to trace the calls to the high level sector reading routine and see if there's an hint there.

Make "Castlevania: Yami no Juin" playable.
Posted on 2006-09-21 00:00:00

I was able to implement a stub for the sound IOP module to get rid of the patch that I added in previously, but it doesn't seem to help the game going past the "Now Loading..." screen. I'll keep looking for the source of the problem in the next days.

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