Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Need to slow down a bit.

First I want to say thanks for everyone encouraging me to make Cxbx greater and greater every day! For the past 4 days, I've been working on Cxbx non stop because sometimes I get a bit too excited and over do it. What I plan to do is not stop working on Cxbx, but slow it down a bit to a steady pace; such as dedicating a few hours a day for Cxbx while getting my other priorities done.

Either way, I do have a few things I want to share with you all. A combination of things I haven't told you all yet to things I plan on doing in the future.

  1. We do have another person working diligently on Cxbx in his spare time. Even though he's just getting started, he's learning rather quickly and slowly but surely beginning to make progress. As details surface, I'll share them with you.
  2. I'm adding another game to the list, Alter Echo (XDK 5233). I can't really tell what it's trying to do (8-bit textures are not fully supported yet). It's only classified as Intros at this point, but it's still progress.
  3. Patrick got me a copy of the Flair SDK. This will greatly speed up Cxbx progress very much!
  4. I finally figured out why Panzer and Robotech: Battlecry keep giving us crazy 3D graphics. The problem is that these games are using quads to render 3D geometry. I can understand why Panzer does this since it was once a Sega Saturn game (which used 3D quads for rendering) so that would make things easier for the developers to use the Xbox's ability to render 3D quads. While standard PC Direct3D does not support this, OpenGL does [natively]. Another reason why I'm porting to OpenGL.
  5. Speaking of OpenGL, I'm going to start the port really soon. The next release will likely not use OpenGL, but after the next release, releases should be much more frequent.
So for now, I'm going to take a small break. Rest assured, I do have more plans!

Shogun.

20 comments:

  1. I can't be positive about this but doesn't newer versions of Direct3D, specifically Direct3D 11, offer all the same features as OpenGL? Also, if you're planning on adding sound support to CXBX, I suggest you try out OpenAL. I heard it's very good. Oh and just out of curiosity, I'm not trying to rush you or anything, but when you say releases should be more frequent, do you mean like you're going to release a compiled version that's ready to download and use on the CXBX website more frequently?

    ReplyDelete
  2. So far, at this rate, Direct3D will never have all the features of OpenGL. If we were emulating Xbox360, then Direct3D 11 would be the only logical choice. Ever since the first GeForce (up until GeForce 6), NVIDIA designed it to conform mostly to the OpenGL specifications. There are many primitive types, render states and other features that Direct3D never did support and never will. Using Direct3D 11 would also make vertex shader operations much more of a chore. So the most logical way to do it (or should I say the least painful way) is to use OpenGL.

    Cxbx does support sound via DirectSound. We don't currently have the need to use OpenAL at this point. If we do need to change audio APIs, XAudio is what we'd probably use. I like OpenAL better than XAudio, but it would be a better choice at this point.

    Yes, What I meant by releases are binaries posted on the Cxbx homepage. Caustik said he'll post any builds I give him, so when this build is stable enough, I'll release it.

    ReplyDelete
  3. @blueshogun96
    Thanks man for making this emulator. I had a Xbox some years ago and wold be amazing play games like: Tenchu: Return From Darkness, Dead Or Alive 3, etc... On PC.

    Game Cube was a low-sell-console, just like the Xbox, but today, with Dolphin emulator, everybody is playing games like: RE Remake, RE Zero, Zelda, etc...

    ReplyDelete
  4. blueshogunm friend take a look at this..
    download my dead or alive dump XDK 4928 AT
    http://rapidshare.com/files/331872923/deadoralivexdk4928info.rar.html


    and well ..have a good day

    ReplyDelete
  5. Never give up :D.

    ReplyDelete
  6. OpenGL sounds great - it will pave the way for Linux and Mac portability =)
    I'll see if I can be helpfull porting porting the interface to something portable like wxWidgets.
    Btw.: Where is the current development branch hosted? http://cxbx.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/cxbx/ seems a little outdated.

    ReplyDelete
  7. @mewtwo: Go to /viewvc/cxbx/branches/shogun3d

    That's the most up to date revision (8 weeks ago)

    ReplyDelete
  8. @saintseiya, I appreciate it, but I already have DOAV. Please do not post anymore dumps here. Thanks.

    ReplyDelete
  9. hello. I came across the xdk 5933. it's somewhat useless to me, but I think it might help you. if you want, I can send it to you. just mail me. also have the 360 7465.1 if you want it.

    ReplyDelete
  10. he already has most of them. Theres onl;y 1 that i know of that he needs

    ReplyDelete
  11. As a huge xbox fan, I just want to say, thank you for all your hard work into making it possible for everyone to someday play all the original xbox titles. This is truly a dream of mine to see and play. I'll keep myself tuned to your blog for further updates. God Bless.

    - Joe K.M.

    ReplyDelete
  12. wow blues.excuse me idon´t knew that you´ve this xdk version and the dump....i only hadposted the dump because i don´t have any forums for to send you..or can i use generalemulation for this?
    ...well this deoa is the same xdk than you have??

    ReplyDelete
  13. Your blog is great and your enthusiasm is awesome. Thank you for what you're doing.

    ReplyDelete
  14. Have you considered doing full hardware emulation instead of all this HLE hackery? Of course, it would be much trickier and probably slower, but I think it could be done fast enough, and it would completely get rid of the need of all of these XDK function patching tables etc.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Yes, I have, but that's going to be a totally different emulator.

    ReplyDelete
  16. Is xenoborg still alive? I couldn't find it anywhere.
    Could we have a look at the source? Maybe it's helpfull for someone

    ReplyDelete
  17. hi blues a litle question: your cxbx progress is only for specifics xdk or maybe others games can works or something ?
    well emulators like dolphin in somes svn updates more games are playables and the own devs doesn´t knows .because only the testers has this games..is important to try to run all xdk that we can in your new svn when you´ll have released??
    greetings ...and sorry for the questions

    ReplyDelete
  18. There's a way to play Shenmue 2 with this emulator? It's my gaming dream! hehe!

    ReplyDelete
  19. @mewtwo, yes, it is. I'll release it as soon as the new loader works.

    @saint, I try to add support for every XDK I can. Some XDKs are similar to others which allow us to support it even though we don't have it.

    @Guillermo, You'll have to wait a while for that. Sega titles are usually difficult to work with.

    ReplyDelete
  20. you could emulate quad support by just drawing two triangles instead, its easier than later trying to make a vs1.1 and ps1.1 to GLSL converter

    ReplyDelete