Phew, I finally got a Wii – almost two months after it released. No thanks to my employer Best Buy. You’d think we’d have first dibs or something, but nope. And people wonder why I love my employer so much. So anyways, it’s pretty fun. I actually got my mom into it(and she never plays games). It really does cater towards non-gamers. If this trend continues, you can bet Nintendo will win this next-gen(or I guess current-gen now) console war. Phew, now to rest my aching limbs.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything. For most of November and December I had been busy getting both Yabause and DeSmuME ready for a Christmas release. It didn’t help either that at my job I had to work some absolutely retarded shifts around Christmas. The one night they were originally talking about having us stay like 14 hours, fortunately sanity prevailed and most of us only stayed 10 or so. I managed to get out of there after about 9(since I was recovering from a bad cold). Anyways, I’ve been feeling pretty rotten for the last two weeks – from everything no doubt.

So what am I working on right now? Well, one of the things I’ve noticed over the past year is that it’s getting progressively difficult to find and fix some of the regressions that have occurred in the Yabause code. Also there’s some features the Saturn supports that I’ve never found any application using, so it’s hard to make sure they’re working correctly. So due to that I’ve been working on a regression testing program that can be run on both real Saturn hardware and Saturn emulators. It’s obviously no where near complete right now, but eventually it’ll make testing a lot easier and faster.

Well, I had to work today, which is too bad since I was originally planning on picking up a Wii. We actually got fifty-five of them for launch – all of which were claimed by the more than sixty people in line that were already there well before I got to work this morning(at 6am). Not too bad for a console that some expect will once again be dead last in the console race. By the time I left I noticed that we had sold out of Zelda and pretty much all the accessories we had available(Like the Nun-chuck, Remote, classic controller, and SD cards). The other launch games still had healthy stock amounts available from what I could tell.

For those of you that have been following what’s been going on in the DeSmuME cvs(or have been reading my news posts here), you’ve probably noticed that we’ve been busy making improvements to sound emulation. It’s actually at a point now where it’s almost perfect. The only issues I’ve found have been with streaming audio and of course I still have to add support for Master Volume and Sound Bias. Otherwise, it sounds awesome. Here’s a sample from my current favorite game on the Nintendo DS, Phoenix Wright.

Latest nightly builds
Yes, it’s been a while again. It’s just been one of those cases where there’s no point in releasing a new nightly build unless some new code has been commited. So what’s new you may ask? Some cd block fixes, the software video core has been improved, netlink emulation greatly improved(although you can only connect between two instances of yabause running on the same computer for now), linux port fixes, bsd port fixes, windows port sound fixes(there shouldn’t be any crackling now), and a pad configuration dialog for the windows port(you can also use a gamepad/joystick now in addition to the keyboard).

I’m hoping to get Netlink functionality a little less rough around the edges before our next release(which will probably be around Christmas if things go well). There’s also DeSmuME too which I hope we can get a release of soon.

For about the last number of months Guill and myself have been working on DeSmuME in hopes of making it not only more portable and clean, but to add more features to it. Actually, one of the things I’ve been working on of late has been Sound emulation. NDS Sound certainly is a strange beast. Aside from the basic effects such as volume and panning, there’s pretty much nothing in terms of features, unless you consider ADPCM decoding and PSG much of a feature. It’s certainly a far cry to what the SCSP can do though, that’s for sure.

Oh yeah, here’s a link to what the sound output is like right now(from Super Princess Peach). Sadly, this is the only game that sounds like much of anything right now. For some strange reason most other games aren’t playing sounds at the right pitch, even though I’m emulating it correctly. The only other thing I can think of is that there’s some register accesses I missed or some other bug causing problems.

By the way, if you’re looking for a place to work, avoid Best Buy like the plague(especially the Merch department). Man, what a rotten piece of crap. I’ve never seen a job that can perfectly maintain a balance between the following:

1. Low Pay
2. No hours
3. What shifts you do end up working are shifts from hell.
4. Your job description keeps on changing

And to boot you have to attend these retarded 30 minute meetings that have absolutely nothing to do with your department every shift. Oh, and once a month you have to get up on a Sunday morning(of all times) to attend some 3 hour meeting to discuss what? Corporate Propaganda. Oh, and you can’t call in sick for the meetings. Unless you’re essentially dead, you’re still expected to attend.

Well, I finally managed to spend some time rebuilding the site. I’m actually more satisfied this time. Should make things a lot more interactive, and easier to maintain to boot. Hopefully now I’ll start spending time actually posting news.