Fuse: what do you want to see?
An open brainstorm.
If you had a team of programmers working on Fuse, what would you tell them to work on?
Any and all ideas welcome.
[size=-4]PS: No such team exists[/size]
If you had a team of programmers working on Fuse, what would you tell them to work on?
Any and all ideas welcome.
[size=-4]PS: No such team exists[/size]
Post edited by Philip Kendall on
Comments
When you say PC do you mean Windows? Cause fuse runs fine on linux on my PC :p
Spectranet emulation :)
http://zx-spectrum.cz/data/articles/ultrasoft
http://www.zx-spectrum.cz
1. Can the emulator load the FRAMES system variables with a random value before LOADing a game, as that way games will be randomized (as long as they're loaded from .TZX or .TAP and not .Z80 or .ZNA, obviously)?
2. Can the emulator use .POK files, both to activate pokes and also to create/edit .POK files?
3. Can you fast-forward the emulator (by holding down a pre-defined key) to the maximum speed that the host machine can run it, so that you can quickly bypass long winded cutscenes, text scrollers, etc?
4. Can you dynamically go "back in time" as you can with EmuZwin, whereby when you hold a predefined key down then the game you're playing goes back to an ealier state, and if you keep holding down the key then the game goes back to an earlier state, and so on? It's sort of like a rewind function in the game, and I think it's achieved by saving a complete state of the Spectrum's RAM + registers +whatever to the PC's RAM every half-second or so, in an endless loop (must be looped of course, as the PC's memory is not infinite, so you get maybe a few minutes of past game history accessible, and the time you can go backwards is always the same, but the earliest point increments at the same pace as the point you are playing).
5. Instead of just a file loader, can you have another option like say "Game loader", that is basically a front end for loading games into FUSE, so that when you select Game Loader (as opposed to Load File) you go to a screen similar to the DOS front end SGD:
http://www.worldofspectrum.org/sgd.html ?
See, most Speccy users (I imagine) have their games ordered something like:
e:\Spectrum\Games\A
e:\Spectrum\Games\B
e:\Spectrum\Games\C
etc up to
e:\Spectrum\Games\Z
e:\Spectrum\Games\TZX\A
e:\Spectrum\Games\TZX\B
e:\Spectrum\Games\TZX\C
etc up to
e:\Spectrum\Games\TEXTA\Z
e:\Spectrum\Games\TEXTA\A
e:\Spectrum\Games\TEXTA\B
e:\Spectrum\Games\TEXTA\C
etc up to
e:\Spectrum\Games\TEXTA\Z
e:\Spectrum\Games\DISK
e:\Spectrum\Games\Demos\TAP
e:\Spectrum\Games\Demos\DISK
e:\Spectrum\Games\platform
e:\Spectrum\Games\favourit
e:\Spectrum\Games\magazine
and so on.
e:\Spectrum\Games\A
and if you could select "Make a game list" from the Game Loader, then you could point FUSE to however many diectories at once that you like and tell FUSE to add every game (including every game in every subdirectory) to that list, and call the list what you like.
So that, for example, in the above examples, a list called Games.LST would be created that listed all of the games in the directories (as chosen by the user) :
e:\Spectrum\Games\A
e:\Spectrum\Games\B
e:\Spectrum\Games\C
etc up to
e:\Spectrum\Games\Z
e:\Spectrum\Games\TZX\A
e:\Spectrum\Games\TZX\B
e:\Spectrum\Games\TZX\C
etc up to
e:\Spectrum\Games\TEXTA\Z
e:\Spectrum\Games\TEXTA\A
e:\Spectrum\Games\TEXTA\B
e:\Spectrum\Games\TEXTA\C
etc up to
e:\Spectrum\Games\TEXTA\Z
e:\Spectrum\Games\DISK
e:\Spectrum\Games\platform
e:\Spectrum\Games\favourit
(basically everything but the demos and magazine directories),
and a file called magazine.LST would be created from:
e:\Spectrum\Games\magazine
and a file called Favourites.lst could be created from:
e:\Spectrum\Games\favourit
and so on, and the user could view any list he choses, and load the game that way. That means that instead of having to manually search for a game through all of the directories, he can just select Game Loader from FUSE's main menu, load GAME.LST and select the game he chooses from there.
Also, can Game Loader please have an option to view a text file in the same directory as the game with the same file name, but in a \txt\subdirectory, as SGD does?
i.e. if the game is called:
e:\Spectrum\Games\B\Brian Bloodaxe.tap
and there's a file called:
e:\Spectrum\Games\B\txt\Brian Bloodaxe.tap
then FUSE will be able to open and view the text file, both in the Game Loader menu and also when playing the game (well, when the game is paused and the menu is up).
Also, SGD allows you to view a screenshot, if the screenshot is in a \scr\ subdirectory, which is good, so could the Game Loader menu do this, and could FUSE also have an option to save a screenshot to the relative \scr\ directory (and create such a \scr\directory if it doesn't already exist) from the game. X128 does this, and it's a very nice feature.
Basically SGD is fantastic, and I wish that non-DOS emulators could either be used with it, or would adopt the same sort of features.
Filler.
- Better support for more custom loaders in fastload mode, for example:
http://retrospec.sgn.net/users/tomcat/yu/ZX/Cracks/CriticalMass.zip
http://retrospec.sgn.net/users/tomcat/yu/ZX/Cracks/Rambo.zip
- "Recent Files" option.
- Auto save of all options changes, after exit.
- Real pc floppy drive support at least for +3 and +d format.
http://zx-pk.ru/
It probably wouldn't take much more than a few icons, groupboxes, replacing long lists of radio buttons with comboboxes, merging multiple separate dialogs into nice-looking tab-based dialogs with icons and so on to make a world of difference.
The long and the short of it is that fuse currently looks a bit scary and technical and "non-windowsy" under Windows when compared to its competition.
in what way does it look non-windowsy?
it looks more "windowsy" than spin for example
The nuts and bolts of what I mean should be relatively obvious, I think. I'm perfectly happy to catalogue specifc examples (over and above the general points in the 2nd paragraph of my previous post) if needed, but that's probably best done outside of this forum.
Ahhh, thanks for that.
I was going by the link in your original post at the start of the thread, one would think that the official page would be the best to look at re. up-to-date information.
The version listed on that page is 0.10.0.2 (by Marek Januszewski and Stuart Brady)
Have now DLed the newest Windows version from WoS, and will be able to give a better comment tomorrow.
Seconded. The reason Fuse looks like the way it does on Windows is because it's a straight port of the Linux version, which is very matter-of-fact and no-frills to begin with. However, there is ample scope in both the versions for some GUI freshening up. Eye candy and ease of use is as important as functionality. Ask any iphone/ipad user! ;)
Bytes:Chuntey - Spectrum tech blog.
These have always been my thoughts as well, but ccowley explained it perfectly.
I tried the latest Windows build, read the news and know what's new, but in terms of GUI it "suffers" from the same issue found in previous versions: Confusing, non-friendly GUI. The Wii port is in the same situation last time I checked. It's nothing to do with Fuse's capabilities. It's all about the GUI.
The last time I tried to use Fuse (older version) it wouldn't start because it would try to find an .HDF file that no longer existed and would exit completely instead of allowing the emulator to finish loading. Not sure if the newer version will react the same way.
On a side note, I do like the fact that Fuse doesn't suffer from slow-downs on older computers and is happy to run along other apps.
Since it's the first time Philip is asking for this type of input I will come back to this topic at a later time and add a few more things. Can't remember how Fuse looks in terms of TV emulation. Will have to check.
That's a preference under Options->General->Auto-save settings
2. Something similar for playing and recording rzx files
3. Disciple support (I know FUSE supports +D already)
4. ULAplus; there's no Mac emulator supporting that at the moment
5. pok file support
Yes, but still doesnt save resized main window and selected filter.
He always brings me back to the small default size, after restart.
I used this latest win version..
edit:
I just tested Woody's "z80 test suite" and Fuse failed all MEMPTR section.
Also, beeper emulation still sounds worse than SpecEmu, Spin or Jspec.
This is particularly noticeable in Mister Beep's tunes from "1-bit attack" and "8 channels", (eg. drumm effects).
And it would be good if we could speed up emulator or cpu, as needed.
http://zx-pk.ru/
Shame there is no team of programmers to work on the implementation.~
Compared to a real machine or to the idealised sound output from those emulators?
I think Fuse has the most sophisticated sound output of the Spectrum emulators which has been enhanced in the latest version to do band-pass filtering to simulate the limited quality of a small beeper like that built into the original 48k machine as well as a better but not ideal speaker like that found in a cheap TV from the 80's. It now has low-pass and high-pass filters that remove some of the bass and treble that these type of speakers couldn't reproduce and I don't think any other emulator does this.
We've just put back an option to have the sound unfiltered to give the maximum fidelity possible when we got some comments about people missing the unfiltered sound (after version 1.0.1), but I think that Mister Beep's tunes require that there is some filtering added in order to get the intended result (though I think he composes for MIC output to proper speakers rather than for the actual beeper itself) which is why he complains that no emulator does a good job of beeper emulation (e.g. here http://worldofspectrum.org/forums/showthread.php?t=27410).
Happy to discuss this further on another thread to avoid derailing this one if you are interested in the topic.
This is intentional. MEMPTR emulation is needed by absolutely nothing outside test suites, and adding it would slow down emulation everywhere.
F1 -> Options -> Full Screen
I compared only this emulators and the difference in sound quality was evident, especially in the bass and drum section of the last part of "1-bit attack" or "8 channel" tunes also.
I think that Mister Beep said earlier, that this tunes sounding best on real machine and my conclusion was that these emulators are doing a better job than Fuse.
But I'm not an expert, just a user, so if you say that Fuse has the most sophisticated sound output, then I guess that this is the case and of course thanks for the explanation.
My personal impression is still that beper in SpecEmu, JSpec and Spin sounds better, but it's just me. :)
http://zx-pk.ru/
Of course.
I have always support the intention, that emulators are as close as possible to the real hardware.
But if we stick to this principle then it should also be supported "ULA colour ramping" effect, discovered a few years ago.
As we know, SpecEmu and Spin support this feature and becouse of that, all others emulators look less like a real spectrum too.
http://zx-pk.ru/
Although given the number of times that bright black has been wrongly reported as a bug in SpecEmu in these forums...
JSpeccy have ULAplus support and runs under MacOS-X too... ;)
I think it would be nice given infinite development time to support all those effects in Fuse too, and I don't mean to imply that the other emulators don't have extra features not found in Fuse :)
I do think I made a mistake defaulting to have the extra filtering option on as it does seem to cause some confusion for the unwary. I'll make sure that is changed for the next version.