March 2000

Sunday, March 26

Free Web Based E-mail

I've added another new section to the site: Free Web Based E-mail. It's similar to hotmail, except that it is almost guaranteed that the name you want isn't taken. You will have an e-mail address like: yourname@briansemu.zzn.com. It's free, private, and better than hotmail, so go sign up.

Posted by brian

Tuesday, March 21

e-mail

You may not want to bother sending me e-mail until next week... I really need to study, so I don't have a lot of time to respond to e-mail.

Posted by brian

Sunday, March 19

Magic Trick

Check out this Magic Trick. I thought it was pretty clever, and it had me fooled the 1st 2 times I tried it... Of course, it being 2:30 am might have something to do with it...heh

Posted by brian

Friday, March 17

Stuff

Check out my latest project here. It should look somewhat familiar :)
It's still being developed, however, feel free to submit your sites for now..

Posted by brian

Tuesday, March 14

Meka 0.50 Relased

Meka 0.50 has been released. Below is a list of what is new... including improved light gun emulation for many cool games. I just wish that they would fix it so my stupid awe 128 would work! It's annoying...

---------
Master System perfect compatibility rate is now of 98.90%
Games still causing problems are:
Back to the Future 2
(black section flickering between the road and status bar)
Gangster Town
(little line of skyblue pixels on the top of the car in the first scene)
Operation Wolf
(minor graphic glitches on the top of the bottom bar when shooting)
Wonderboy in Monsterworld
(minor glitche on the menu vertical scrolling line when pressing pause)
Found out that the bug in Aerial Assault was happening on a real system.
So it's not considered as a bug anymore.

Next step will be to improve Game Gear perfect compatibility rate (94% now).

First, reparing bugs introduced in Meka 0.40:
- Fixed accidentally left bug in SG-1000 interrupt emulation, fixing
Championship Lode Runner and probably other games.
- Fixed accidentally left minor scrolling bug in a few games (Castle of
Illusion to name one. I forgot about the others).

New stuff being:
- Rewrote Light Phaser emulation. The following games are now playable:
- Laser Ghost (Light Phaser is optional)
- Missile Defense 3D
- Operation Wolf
- Shooting Gallery
- Wanted
- Improved various bit of emulation to fix the following games:
- Robocop 3 (SMS): does not crash anymore when pausing.
- Back to the Future 3 (SMS): have minor title screen bug fixed.
- Sonic Drift 2 (GG): bottom of screen is correct now.
- Out Run (GG): music now plays.
- Added Game Gear vertical scrolling lock emulation (fixing Fray).
- Added wide effective area emulation (2 Star Trek games on Game Gear).
- Implemented better systems hardware differences to allow detection.
Renaming Pit Pot (SMS) to the .SG extension and running it will
now show a custom error screen! Thanks goes to Yujiro to the notice.
- Slighty optimized Master System and Game Gear screen refresh.
- Rewrote blitters handling system:
- Added blitters definition file (MEKA.BLT) where you can configure
fullscreen video modes drivers, resolution and effects, and create
your own video modes this way.
- Added "TV Mode" blitter that simulate accurates TV scanlines.
- Added "Double" blitter. Nice uses of it are:
- Doubling screen with 512x384 mode (getting true Fullscreen).
- Doubling screen in a tweaked mode (Game Gear with big pixels).
If you find any suitable mode for Game Gear other than the ones
listed in the MEKA.BLT file, please tell me about it.
- Added "Page Flipping" option to blitter (reducing flickers)
- Included "Perfect" blitter definition with all best features enabled
(512x384 resolution, TV Mode, Doubled Fullscreen, Page Flipping and
Vertical Synchronisation) for people with *very* fast computer.
- Removed hotkeys to enable/disable the Scanlines, Eagle and Parallel
effects. They are now part of blitters configuration. The current
blitter can be changed by pressing F1.
- Rewrote frameskip handling system and added speed throttling.
- F2 key now switch between standard and automatic frameskipping.
- F3 decrease speed in automatic mode, else decrease frameskip.
- F4 increase speed in automatic mode, else increase frameskip.
- Added icons package from various contributors (see ICONS.ZIP).
- Added Massage savegame converter. Rename a .MSD file in the Meka
naming convention and it will be automatically converted when loading.
You might in some cases experience sound or various other problems
with certain games. The usual solution is to pause and unpause the
game, else try to change screen/level.
- Slighty improved voice emulation.
- Rewrote drivers handling system. It is easier to maintain internally now.
- Color related stuff:
- Fixed potentiel palette problems with some video card/mode couples.
- Revamped whole palette update handling (reducing snow).
- Palette viewer now show no more than the correct number of colors
in SG-1000/SC-3000/Coleco mode.
- Fixed configuration file problem when using PSX and N64 joypads.
- Added new games and product numbers to compatibility and checksum lists.
- Added mouse button 2 shortcut to switch between the two Light Phasers.
- Added some new GUI themes - uncomment in MEKA.THM file to use them.
- Fixed file browser bug when overwriting recognized ROMs with unknown
ones would keep the old, recognized name showing.
- Fullscreen captures now ignore status message and filters/effects.
- Made some structural optimisations, increasing speed of a few percents.
- Fixed bug virtual longfile name self created list saving.
- Fixed a screenshot naming bug with short ROM names.
- Fixed rare crashing bug with the blood cursor GUI effect.
- Sega Basic Level 3 Version 1.1 Japanese now works with a patch.
- Reduced savegame size for SG-1000 and Colecovision systems.
- Compiled with latest Allegro library, adding support for the following
joysticks/pads drivers:
- DB9 pads through parallel ports (allow to plug real SMS pads!)
- PC Engine pads through parallel ports
- Saturn pads with IF-SEGA interface cards for PC.

Now Phantasy Star runs at 49 frame per seconds on my computer !

Posted by brian

Sunday, March 12

RPG Zone is Back

For those of you who wondered what happened to RPG Zone, there is no need to wonder anymore. They are back up, visit them at www.rpg-zone.com

Posted by brian

Saturday, March 11

New Feature: Message Boards

Alright, I have finally added some message boards. I'm running these on a trial basis, so don't abuse them, or they will be removed. Try to keep your language clean, and the flaming down. Also, there is no need to create a login & password, like most message boards. I hate when you have to create a login, but if the boards are abused, by "impersonating", then I will force a login & password...so don't act stupid.

General Emulation: Post your emulation questions, help, news, rumors, whatever... Just general emulation messages... for any system.

Emulator Programming: I'm not sure how this one will turn out, it's definately on a trial basis.

Rom Requests: Request, and fill Requests for roms, post URL's to good roms sites. Again, this one is definately on a trial basis.. don't let it get out of hand. I'm really not sure if I should have done this one.

Buy/Sell/Trade: Buy/Sell/Trade your video game equipment, Possibly other things. Please keep this legal.

Off Topic: If you want to post a message that is not emulation related, or does not fit in one of the above categories, do it here.


The subjects of these message boards are likely to change over time, or be deleted, or have more message boards added.

Posted by brian

Friday, March 10

Solution to IE "Bug"

Ok, thanks to Ryan Ekhoff for finding the solution to my "Bug":

----
Silly IE 5.5, I think the problem you are having is one a came across a while back. It was my fault, but I think you did the same thing, try going into 'View' up in the menu and go to 'Text Size' and set it back from 'Largest' to 'Medium'. Hope this helps.

-Tetsuo687
-----

I don't remember ever going up and changing it.... it just happened all of the sudden. It's kind of stupid, because you would think that they would have something like that in the "font" section of the options... not in some odd section...


Posted by brian

Internet Explorer Puzzle

Ok, here is a question for people who think they know a lot about computers: Why, in internet explorer 5.5, did the default font size on every page I look at suddenly jump to what looks like Heading 2? This is really annoying! I don't know what button I pressed, or if it's just some bug in IE 5.5.. but this really sucks. Every site I go to now has HUGE text.. If anyone has a solution, e-mail me :)

Posted by brian

Wednesday, March 8

Banner Exchange

I have set up a Banner Exchange program called Emulation Exchange. This is something I have always wanted to have. If you own an emulation site, I would recommend joining, It will increase your hits, and get your site a lot of exposure. Just click the link above.

Posted by brian

Bugs

If you happen to see any bugs that I've missed, or have an idea of how to improve the design or the site, let me know (Besides the stupid bug in IE, where images don't show up sometimes). I think I've found most of the bugs, but I'm sure there are a few left.

Posted by brian

Netscape...

Is it just me, or does Netscape make sites more difficult to develop for? I had to create a tiny black background image for the center of the page, so it would show up correctly. But in IE 5.5, it looks great... Just another reason why I hate netscape...then again, I'm really starting to hate IE 5.5, it has a ton of bugs.

Posted by brian

New Design

I was messing around in photoshop, trying to figure out how to make a decent background, and came up with one I liked... So I decided to redo the site design, get rid of the "bandwidth" choices, and make things look (hopefully) a bit nicer.

This is really my first attempt at tables with backgrounds, and with the curved corner deal, so I'm not too good yet. Yet, for being totally original, and not copying some other site, I think it is actually pretty good.

I hope the new design will make things a little easier to find too. I plan to add a few other items eventually, such as some message boards (other than the crappy yahoo club one), computer emulation, and emulation of other systems. And also some other nice things that I don't want to mention yet.

Posted by brian

Tuesday, March 7

Updates

I finally re-installed the Newspro script, so I can post updates so they will appear on the new domain: www.briansemu.com.
Spring break is coming up soon, so hopefully I'll make some more changes then.

Posted by brian