[Cross-post from the blog]
Long time, no see! I have been busy with many things lately, leaving me with a backlog of projects to talk about, the most recent of which being a revised version of my C++23 Mega Drive toolchain!
In summary, I have made some Bash scripts to automate the process of...
Implemented DMA Copy
There is not much to say about this one: I do not know of a single game that uses DMA Copy, but Nemesis's VDP test suite includes a few tests for it, so I figured that I would finally implement the feature.
DMA Copy copies bytes from one place in VRAM to another. It shares...
(Cross-post from the blog)
v0.6
Try it in your web browser: clownmdemu.clownacy.com
Download: https://github.com/Clownacy/clownmdemu-frontend/releases/tag/v0.6
Recently, I have been informed of various games that do not work correctly in my emulator by BlastBrothers, who has opened several...
I have fixed an inaccuracy that would affect padding bytes along with another inaccuracy that would cause S3K's Buggernaut tiles to compress inaccurately. An update that contains these fixes can be found here.
I have extended the compressor's test suite to include Sonic 3 & Knuckles. Now...
Here is a Nemesis compressor and decompressor that I made.
Notably, this compresses data identically to Sega's original Nemesis compressor. This is useful for disassemblies, as it allows assets to be stored uncompressed for ease of viewing and editing without causing the built ROM to become...
(Cross-post from the blog).
v0.5.2
Here is a small update that fixes a few inaccuracies in order to get more games working.
Try it in your web browser: clownmdemu.clownacy.com
Download: https://github.com/Clownacy/clownmdemu-frontend/releases/tag/v0.5.2
Fixes for Sonic 3's Data Select and...
[Another cross-post from the blog. I figured that it is relevant here, being about creating a compressor for a compression format used by various Mega Drive games.]
Long ago, I made a compressor for Kosinski, which is a compression format seemingly created by Sega and used in various Mega Drive...
[Cross-post from the blog]
Recently, I fixed a couple of inaccuracies, and I thought they would be interesting to read about:
Fixed the Title Cards in Sonic Crackers
I've tested many Sonic games and ROM-hacks in my emulator, but I've never tried the famous Chaotix prototype - Sonic Crackers...
v0.5.1
Try it in your web browser: clownmdemu.clownacy.com
Windows EXE: https://github.com/Clownacy/clownmdemu-frontend/releases/tag/v0.5.1
Source code: https://github.com/Clownacy/clownmdemu-frontend
Even-Further-Improved Audio Playback
It was pointed out to me that my Mega Drive emulator has...
[Crosspost from the blog]
I was hoping to release this update after I finished adding support for the Mega CD, but progress on that has ground to a halt. Instead, the focus of this update will be the frontend! From features to refactoring to an entire port, here's what's new in clownmdemu...
Here is v1.1.1.
Changes:
Saving tiles/palettes/mappings/DPLCs no longer requires permission to overwrite existing files.
Non-MapMacro mappings/DPLCs no longer use local labels, to improve compatibility with old disassemblies.
Tiles can now be saved in assembly format.
In the last post, I mentioned that my emulator does not use the Mega CD's BIOS program because it favours the 'High-Level Emulation' approach. In this post, I'll go over what that means and how it will affect my emulator.
Other emulators, such as Genesis Plus GX and Kega Fusion, require that...
[Blog post]
If you've been keeping up with the development of my Mega Drive emulator, you'll know that I've recently been trying to add support for the console's addon - the Mega CD. Last time, I was able to get a cartridge-based Sonic ROM-hack to boot. This hack made fairly-minimal use of the...
[Blog post]
I've been thinking of expanding my Mega Drive emulator with support for the Mega Drive's add-on - the Mega CD. On paper, this should be simple enough to do: while the Mega CD adds a second 68000 CPU, communications ports, a lot of extra RAM, hardware for graphics-transformation, a...
frontend v0.4.4
Another small update that mainly fixes bugs in the frontend, with one bugfix in the emulator itself.
The emulator also got a logo and icon at long last:
It's meant to mimic the look of Windows 11's icons, like those of Notepad and Calculator.
Support for Linux and macOS has...
Here is Sonic 2 with Knuckles and all of Sonic 1's levels. It's very unfinished, but playable from beginning to end.
Development Background
I'd like to take the 'release early, release often' approach with this hack to mitigate the problem of scope-creep and other setbacks delaying the...
I've updated the hack with a bugfix: apparently I went my entire Knuckles test playthrough without running into an enemy, otherwise I would have realised that Knuckles was invincible. Oops.
Having created a new Knuckles in Sonic 2 disassembly, I figured I'd put it to use by restoring Sonic and Tails to the game. This isn't just a matter of 'enabling' them: they were both removed from the game's code almost in their entirety. Likewise, two-player mode and the options menu were...