20 replies to this topic

[toxie]

Hi! Time to finally release another great distraction of mine in this year:

A continuation of Nuance (http://www.nuon-dome...wordpress/?p=19 ) which emulates Nuon players (https://en.wikipedia...(DVD_technology) in a nutshell: This was similar in design to the Cell processor (which was part of the PS3), but years earlier)

 

https://sourceforge....latest/download

 

Please read the Demo/GameCompatibility.txt (especially for the workarounds for T3K to make it work a bit more reliably) and the readme.txt for the keyboard mappings.

 

And of course, this is all done in honour of the original author of Nuance, Mike Perry!
I mainly continued all of this to not let this great piece of technology of him bitrot even more.

 

 

And here the major motivation that kept me going for all these months: Actually well playable emulation of Tempest 3000 (still buggy though :/ ):

 

Edited by toxie, 19 September 2021 - 08:17 PM.

[The Loafer]

Jeff Minter lives on!  Nice work on the emulator Toxie, well done.  That reminds me, I gotta catch up on old emulators to see if they've received decent updates. The 3DO (one of my fav systems) really needed some help previously

[toxie]

Yup, indeed, although that one mostly had only sucky games. There were some nice ports though (SF2 and Wolfenstein come to mind, and the Doom port had awesome music).

Also the Jaguar could desperately need some more improvements, but its also a very tricky machine. At least the Saturn nowadays seems to be working fine.

 

At some point all of these will be redone on FPGA, i guess, and then we're back to a level matching the original HW. 

[The Loafer]

Yup, indeed, although that one mostly had only sucky games. There were some nice ports though (SF2 and Wolfenstein come to mind, and the Doom port had awesome music).

Also the Jaguar could desperately need some more improvements, but its also a very tricky machine. At least the Saturn nowadays seems to be working fine.

 

At some point all of these will be redone on FPGA, i guess, and then we're back to a level matching the original HW. 

 

The 3DO?  Them's fighting words!   Need for Speed was a great sim, slower than the PSX version but far more realistic (and I loved the xman!). Road Rash was had better deeper bassy sound on 3DO than the PlayStation port.  Star Control 2's best version was on the 3DO.  FIFA basically built it's franchise on the 3DO version's shoulders.  Return Fire was fantastic.  On the pretty good but not fantastic, I'd give props to Wing Commander 3, Shockwave, Immersion, Gex, Total Eclipse, Crash n Burn as really cool early 3D'ish titles. Another World/Out of this world had its best port on the 3DO (though granted, it's not a large game).  Slayer/Deathkeep were a bit buggy but again were ahead of their time. Foes of Ali brought something new, perhaps primitive but still a quality title. Granted there were some yuck titles too but within it's brief existence lays one heck of a fun system.  I just sold mine recently, it hurt   Thankfully (and hopefully) it can live on through decent emulation, I'll have to look into that soon

 

eheh maybe I'm wearing some rose tinted glasses but compared to the competition at the time (Genesis/SNES), it blew me away.  Too bad it was so expensive and of course compared to the PlayStation, it really was lagging in the 3D power stakes.

 

FPGA: yeah agreed on that front, we'll eventually have great emulation of all the consoles

Edited by The Loafer, 28 May 2020 - 07:53 PM.

[toxie]

Ok, true, i give you Need for Speed, Road Rash, too and Wing Commander 3.. 

The rest is not soooo much my cup of tea..

[Slydog43]

I love the miSTer project and playing with old emulators also.  Really brings me back to early 8-bit computer days.

[JizzTrumpet]

Hello. Apologies for the thread resurrection but is there a version of this download anywhere that doesn't trigger massive severe virus warnings in every internet browser to the point where they all refuse point-blank to download it?

Edited by JizzTrumpet, 11 September 2021 - 09:11 AM.

[toxie]

The sourceforge dload link above works for me in all browsers i have installed.

[JizzTrumpet]

Still gives me a "Failed - virus detected" on everything

 

The sourceforge dload link above works for me in all browsers i have installed.

Edited by JizzTrumpet, 18 September 2021 - 11:23 AM.

[toxie]

Okay, then lets simply try a new release with some more optimizations and more precise timing 

(0.6.1)

 

https://sourceforge....latest/download

[cjs26e4u]

Okay, then lets simply try a new release with some more optimizations and more precise timing 

(0.6.1)

 

https://sourceforge....latest/download

Hello, I downloaded your latest release but for some reason can not open it. I've tried running the Nuance.exe by opening it regularly and have also tried running it as "Administrator" but keep getting the message "Windows can not access the specified device, path, or file. You may not have the appropriate permissions to access the item".

 

I'm sure it's something on my end, but do you know what I am doing wrong lol?

 

http://vpforums.org/...rrorscreen0.jpg

[liebowa]

 

Okay, then lets simply try a new release with some more optimizations and more precise timing 

(0.6.1)

 

https://sourceforge....latest/download

Hello, I downloaded your latest release but for some reason can not open it. I've tried running the Nuance.exe by opening it regularly and have also tried running it as "Administrator" but keep getting the message "Windows can not access the specified device, path, or file. You may not have the appropriate permissions to access the item".

 

I'm sure it's something on my end, but do you know what I am doing wrong lol?

 

http://vpforums.org/...rrorscreen0.jpg

 

From the sounds of it, you're antivirus software is blocking access to it, or more specifically, quarantining it. 

 

I'm suggesting that because mine does the exact same thing - it says "Application blocked; cause: heuristic detection" 

[toxie]

I would also guess so, so maybe you need to whitelist/unblock it in your antivirus engine. Virustotal does not detect anything in the package, btw.

[Steevtee]

Okay, then lets simply try a new release with some more optimizations and more precise timing 
(0.6.1)
 
https://sourceforge....latest/download

Brilliant, I've always wanted to play T3K, and this looks like closest I'll get, although it's not working for me yet - I can't get past the player select screen! Keep up the good work toxie

Sent from my SM-A505FN using Tapatalk

[cjs26e4u]

Thanks for the help guys. It was my antivirus preventing me from running the program, once I manually disabled it I was able to open Nuance

[Robbbert]

Thanks for the new Nuance.    My virus scanner has no complaints.

[toxie]

 

Okay, then lets simply try a new release with some more optimizations and more precise timing 
(0.6.1)
 
https://sourceforge....latest/download

Brilliant, I've always wanted to play T3K, and this looks like closest I'll get, although it's not working for me yet - I can't get past the player select screen! Keep up the good work toxie

Sent from my SM-A505FN using Tapatalk

 

Unfortunately there is still a timing issue there.. From the GameCompatibility.txt:

 

Tempest 3000
------------
Playable, BUT
1) hangs most of the time when starting a game from certain levels (level 1 as prominent example).
   WORKAROUND enter options->music test first and play some different musics (or disable AudioInterrupts in nuance.cfg :/ )
2) hangs (only if dynamic compilation enabled) on entering level select
   WORKAROUND after(!) doing 1), enter options->vector test first
also music does not loop correctly.

 

Note that the workaround from 1) can also hang sometimes, but when it works then do 2) and then play for quite some time (until it will still hang after a while :/)

[Steevtee]

 

Okay, then lets simply try a new release with some more optimizations and more precise timing 
(0.6.1)
 
https://sourceforge....latest/download

Brilliant, I've always wanted to play T3K, and this looks like closest I'll get, although it's not working for me yet - I can't get past the player select screen! Keep up the good work toxie

Sent from my SM-A505FN using Tapatalk
 

Unfortunately there is still a timing issue there.. From the GameCompatibility.txt:
 
Tempest 3000
------------
Playable, BUT
1) hangs most of the time when starting a game from certain levels (level 1 as prominent example).
   WORKAROUND enter options->music test first and play some different musics (or disable AudioInterrupts in nuance.cfg :/ )
2) hangs (only if dynamic compilation enabled) on entering level select
   WORKAROUND after(!) doing 1), enter options->vector test first
also music does not loop correctly.
 
Note that the workaround from 1) can also hang sometimes, but when it works then do 2) and then play for quite some time (until it will still hang after a while :/)

Yeah I tried it again last night with the first workaround (editing the nuance.cfg file) and it worked for the first 3 levels, sans audio, then it froze. I notice it hangs when I play a music other than 'Intimidation' in the music test. Still, I finally got to play it

Sent from my SM-A505FN using Tapatalk

[toxie]

Yes, its a shame that it freezes at some point. I suspect that T3K uses some routine that somehow relies on a more cycle exact emulation of the HW. But Nuance is not cycle exact, mainly to be able to emulate much much faster.  :/

But i still have hope to sometime fix this issue. Its the main motivation to get T3K flawlessly emulated, as the rest of the games don't bother me much.

[cjs26e4u]

I appreciate the work you've done thus far, this is the only functional Nuon emulator that I'm aware of

 

One question, so the files I have, the actual Nuon releases are in ".mdf" format. The homebrew files I have are in "NUON.CD" format. I am able to load the homebrew files but not the ".mdf" files (which is every commercial release, lol).

 

Is there a way to convert ".mdf" to "NUON.CD" or are the ROMs I have not compatible with Nuance?