FCE Ultra v0.98.11

posted in Emulator Release by mfc on Aug 14th, 2004

FCE Ultra, one of the better NES emulators out there, has been updated recently. From the change log:
  • Win32: Special scalers are now also supported in windowed mode. For Scale2x/Scale3x, the fastest "desktop" bit depth is 16bpp. For hq2x/hq3x, it is 32bpp.
  • The shared video blitting code(drivers/common/vidblit.c) can now blit using Scale2x and Scale3x to any target bit depth(8bpp, 16bpp, 24bpp, and 32bpp) instead of just 8bpp, as it was before.
  • HQ2x and HQ3x can now blit to 16bpp, 24bpp(untested), and 32bpp. The 16bpp and 24bpp targets are done doing post-processing conversion, after HQ2x/HQ3x, which really does hurt speed.
  • Changed a few names in the credits section of the documentation to their aliases. Names you didn't get to pick to have are so troublesome. :b I also made various fixes/updates to the documentation.
  • Updated the FAQ with some information regard video mode bit depths and speed.
  • SDL: Disabled the fast-forward-key speed-limiting code. I thought I had done this before...
  • Fixed a major bug in the movie recording code, and added some code to automatically detect and fix playback of broken movies from earlier versions.
  • Did a little swapping thing with mapper 90 and 209. I moved back Mortal Kombat 3 to mapper 90, and moved Shin Samurai Spirits 2 to mapper 209. Sorry for any confusion. Mapper 90 should be considered as having the fancy nametable select mode disabled, with mapper 209 having it enabled.
  • Added support for mapper 160, which turns out to be the same hardware as mapper 90. Joy.
  • Improved mapper 90 emulation. This mapper really needs low-level emulation for IRQs to work right, though. :/
  • Win32: Fixed the "hide left/right 8 video columns" feature.
  • Since FCE Ultra is ending(or has already exceeded? :b) its actively-updated life, I've gone ahead and added per-game hacks for "Kick Master" and the PAL version of "Star Wars". See the documentation for more details.
  • Minor optimizations to the high-quality sound emulation code. The FIR filter code is the bottleneck, though, so these changes won't have much of an effect on overall speed.
  • Altered MMC3 IRQ emulation(and the hooks in ppu.c for it).
  • Fixed a rather major typo in the VRC7-emulation code.
You can download this from our NES Emulators for Windows, Mac, or *nix sections.

Thanks to IceFox38 for the heads up.