I'm still waiting for RealX.
But that's another story.
Blimey, I'd forgotten about RealX. I used to e-mail the authors every so often (nice blokes, like most emulation authors), I wonder why they seem to have lost interest in the scene, especially having done so much for it.
My guess with regards RealX (and this is just speculation), but they probably had the emulator fairly near completion (I understand a lot of work had been done on it), but they could be working on making it Vista compatible.
Bear in mind that to get an emulator that's 100% timing accurate without lagging or frame-skipping is very tricky in Windows (and in my experience none of the current emulators achieve it - all of them have lag/slow-down to some degree, etc). If they had achieved this in Win2k/XP, it would make sense to ensure it works in Vista also.
That's very interesting. I always found the lagginess of Windows in audio appications particularly annoying but I thought it was due to running a shell on top of DOS.
Windows hasn't run on top of a DOS shell for years.
Laginess in a Windows app can be due to a number of reasons, not least of which is the fact that it's attempting multi-tasking, so any application that runs has to compete for processor time. Generally to get an emulator working well you need to set it's priority above most other processes, and then it'll go whuppass on the CPU. Which ain't necessarily a bad thing.
I am still working on FuseX but real life keeps getting in the way. Dammit! :) There has been quite a few new features added and I am at a feature freeze (sort of) point now where I am just testing for stability. If anybody wants to help testing then let me know by email or pm. Saying that, I just want to finish optimising the rzx loading so it wont take ages when loading big rzxs but this has turned into a bigger job than I thought (I am ending up writing a zip streamer which decompresses as it streams from memory...)
New features are:
- PAL50 is now forced, which means sound stuttering is gone and speed should be perfect.
- Zip support.
- Emulator settings now saved to config file.
- User configurable mapping of spectrum keys to joypad buttons. Configurable from within the emulator menus.
- Fast Fwd feature - speeds up emulation whilst a pad button is pressed.
- User configurable mapping of emulator actions (such as Main Menu, virtual keyboard etc) to pad buttons.
- Keypad mappings are now saved per game in a seperate config file per game.
- Added "Fast Fwd when Loading" feature for tapes which dont load instantly. Tapes will load 10 times quicker than normal flash load.
- Activated graphics filters.
- Menus use variable width fonts and look a little nicer and should be a bit more user friendly.
- Added tape menu with Insert, Play, Stop etc.
- Fixed many bugs...
It's amazing that someone still remembers about RealX and Ramsoft, thank you for that :D
Concerning Windows programming, I agree that it's quite tricky to get a good sync between audio and video with all those buggy DirectSound drivers out there. Coding a non-trivial GUI also requires a lot of time. Vista compatibility is not quite an issue for me, I'm really curious to see when it will be widely adopted by people, considering its galactic requirements for the hardware.
Like Icabod said (hi Ica!), RealX was almost near to completion in early 2004, but since then my life has changed completely and now I simply cannot find a minute for this hobby. For example I've just realized that the source files of the multichannel soundsystem, which I was very proud of, are dated 2003 :O In 2000-2002 I used to spend a whole afternoon coding RealSpectrum or MakeTZX if I wanted to (and I wanted almost all days ;)), oh good old times!
However, I haven't lost interest in the scene! In fact I've spent this week in Madrid for my job and I contacted Jose Manuel and Jose Leandro from El Trastero for a dinner, it was a very nice meeting - thank you guys :)
And I'll try to attend the Varese meeting in Italy in July if I'm not abroad for work.
I don't despair of being able to finish RealX some day, but don't start counting the days until then :)
Hi is there any updates on FuseX? Im eagerly waiting for this emu as I've missed playing two player spectrum games. The current best emu doesn't allow more than one joystick type.
Comments
But that's another story.
Blimey, I'd forgotten about RealX. I used to e-mail the authors every so often (nice blokes, like most emulation authors), I wonder why they seem to have lost interest in the scene, especially having done so much for it.
Bear in mind that to get an emulator that's 100% timing accurate without lagging or frame-skipping is very tricky in Windows (and in my experience none of the current emulators achieve it - all of them have lag/slow-down to some degree, etc). If they had achieved this in Win2k/XP, it would make sense to ensure it works in Vista also.
Tho' as I say, that's just speculation.
Laginess in a Windows app can be due to a number of reasons, not least of which is the fact that it's attempting multi-tasking, so any application that runs has to compete for processor time. Generally to get an emulator working well you need to set it's priority above most other processes, and then it'll go whuppass on the CPU. Which ain't necessarily a bad thing.
all flavours of NT, windows 2000, XP and Vista, do not run ontop of DOS,
win 1, 2, 3, 3.1, 3.11, 3.2, 95, 98 & ME all run over DOS
XP feels like it came out yesterday to me, but as you say It has been literally years. (I use ME, so I don't really feel the march of progress ;-) )
New features are:
- PAL50 is now forced, which means sound stuttering is gone and speed should be perfect.
- Zip support.
- Emulator settings now saved to config file.
- User configurable mapping of spectrum keys to joypad buttons. Configurable from within the emulator menus.
- Fast Fwd feature - speeds up emulation whilst a pad button is pressed.
- User configurable mapping of emulator actions (such as Main Menu, virtual keyboard etc) to pad buttons.
- Keypad mappings are now saved per game in a seperate config file per game.
- Added "Fast Fwd when Loading" feature for tapes which dont load instantly. Tapes will load 10 times quicker than normal flash load.
- Activated graphics filters.
- Menus use variable width fonts and look a little nicer and should be a bit more user friendly.
- Added tape menu with Insert, Play, Stop etc.
- Fixed many bugs...
It's amazing that someone still remembers about RealX and Ramsoft, thank you for that :D
Concerning Windows programming, I agree that it's quite tricky to get a good sync between audio and video with all those buggy DirectSound drivers out there. Coding a non-trivial GUI also requires a lot of time. Vista compatibility is not quite an issue for me, I'm really curious to see when it will be widely adopted by people, considering its galactic requirements for the hardware.
Like Icabod said (hi Ica!), RealX was almost near to completion in early 2004, but since then my life has changed completely and now I simply cannot find a minute for this hobby. For example I've just realized that the source files of the multichannel soundsystem, which I was very proud of, are dated 2003 :O In 2000-2002 I used to spend a whole afternoon coding RealSpectrum or MakeTZX if I wanted to (and I wanted almost all days ;)), oh good old times!
However, I haven't lost interest in the scene! In fact I've spent this week in Madrid for my job and I contacted Jose Manuel and Jose Leandro from El Trastero for a dinner, it was a very nice meeting - thank you guys :)
And I'll try to attend the Varese meeting in Italy in July if I'm not abroad for work.
I don't despair of being able to finish RealX some day, but don't start counting the days until then :)
Luca
You won the national lottery didn't you? :P
Bytes:Chuntey - Spectrum tech blog.
:D :D
Well, if I did, I would have continued to have fun coding Spectrum stuff, instead of finding a job and living in a rush :D
Luca
good news you are not completely out of the scene,
but would you please be so kind and read this topic,
http://www.worldofspectrum.org/forums/showthread.php?t=12062
we would be very glad to know Ramsoft's opinion for the TZX format update...