Legend of Mana's land-creation effect rendered as hard-edged coloured
wedges instead of a soft bloom. The cause was in the CD-ROM controller,
not the renderer.
The game streams a file by issuing Setloc(next)+ReadN roughly 10,800
guest cycles after each sector arrives. Every ReadN called
start_read_stream(), which clears the sector buffer -- destroying the
sector that had already been delivered and announced but not yet drained
by the guest. Measured at the palette load:
buffer psx-runtime DuckStation
0x0E1F18 125111 125111
0x0E2718 125113 125112 <- the effect's colour palette
0x0DCF18 125113 125113
Sector 125112 carries the effect's 5-colour palette (0x0888F8 =
(248,136,8), 0xB0F8F8 = (248,248,176), verified against the disc image).
Destroyed before the guest could take it, its buffer received 125113's
raw file bytes instead, and the colour routine faithfully scaled those
into 216 distinct vertex colours -- the wedges. The table now holds 5.
DuckStation only calls BeginReading -- the function that clears the
buffers and re-arms the read-start latency -- when the request actually
moves the drive:
if ((!setloc_pending || setloc_position.ToLBA() == GetNextSectorToBeRead())
&& (drive_state == Reading || ...))
"Ignoring read command with pending/same setloc, already reading"
else
BeginReading();
A Read issued while the drive already streams the sector the pending
Setloc names is the game saying "keep going", not "start over". The
command is still ACKed with the same INT3; only the restart is skipped.
Two things fall out of it. The un-drained sector survives, so the game
receives the consecutive sectors it expects (109,110,111,112,113 rather
than 109,111,111,113,113). And each request stops paying
initial_read_delay_cycles() again: inter-sector gaps drop from ~456,000
cycles to 225,792 -- exactly the 2x cadence -- so this load takes 2 guest
frames instead of 13, matching DuckStation. int1_pended goes 10 -> 0.
Also included, developed alongside and verified in the same runs:
- An 8-slot sector buffer ring, as the hardware has (nocash;
DuckStation NUM_SECTOR_BUFFERS = 8). A delivered sector fills the
NEXT slot and the INT1 that announces it latches the read slot, so a
sector arriving mid-drain no longer clobbers the FIFO. The read
pointer follows the slot each INT1 announces, captured when the INT1
is RAISED: this drive free-runs, so latching "newest" at
presentation time handed the guest a sector seven ahead of the one
it asked for.
- The seamless no-IRQ refill advances the read pointer, because it is
a continuation of the drain already in progress. Without it a
multi-sector DMA starves mid-transfer (measured: 1,128,960 starved
drains).
- A pended data-ready is released on a short schedule rather than
inside the guest's ack store, matching DuckStation's
QueueDeliverAsyncInterrupt.
- Flow control for accelerated (non-1x) reads: never overwrite a
sector the guest has not consumed while running faster than
hardware, capped at the authentic sector period. Inert at authentic
timing.
New cdrom_state counters ring_starved and ring_dropped, plus
cdrom_timing_dump for per-sector deadline/delivery records, are the
regression tripwires: ring_starved and int1_lost must stay 0.
Verified on Legend of Mana (SLUS-01013): the effect renders correctly,
the palette table holds 5 colour words, sectors arrive at the 2x
cadence, and no notification is lost.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
A still image drawn behind the game, filling whatever the letterbox or
pillarbox leaves over -- the trick vertical shmups use on horizontal displays,
where the dead space carries artwork so it reads as designed rather than as a
limitation. MAME calls the same idea bezel artwork.
Drawn across the whole drawable before the game quad, which is simpler and
safer than filling two margin strips: no margin arithmetic, it covers pillarbox
and letterbox alike, and the frame paints over the centre.
The reason this is the right shape and present_edge_fill was not: edge fill
stretches one edge COLUMN of the live frame across the margin. That suits a flat
menu backdrop and turns track geometry into horizontal smears, so it needs to
know whether the current frame is a menu -- a question it answers with
force_4_3, which is only ever set by the widescreen path. A still image has no
such question. It looks the same in a race and in a menu, which is the point.
Loaded after the GL context exists (the first attempt sat next to tex_pack_init,
which runs before the window, so g_gl_active was false and it silently never
loaded). Decoded with stb_image, already linked for the HD texture pack. A
relative path resolves against the disc directory, matching the pack convention,
so artwork can sit beside the disc.
Verified on a 7680-wide maximised window with 4:3 content: margins that were
pure black now carry the image on both sides, with the frame untouched in the
middle.
Known limits: the image is stretched to the drawable, so an aspect that does not
match the window will distort (cover-crop is a small follow-up), and this has
only been exercised in 4:3 pillarbox, not with the widescreen mod active.
For WipEout 3 the team wallpapers by MotorcycleEmptiness
(awesome-wipeout.github.io) suit this exactly; the shipped default is a
placeholder gradient used to verify the path, not final art.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Emitter side of the value-propagation engine (ENHANCEMENTS.md G1.10):
- recompiler/src/pgxp_hook_emitter.{h,cpp} (new, in the codegen-hash
surface): ONE hook grammar shared by BOTH emitters, wrapping loads/
stores/COP2 transfers and precision-carrying ALU ops (moves, add/sub,
or-merge, shifts, LUI, HI/LO, muldiv) with PGXP_*() macros. Clobberable
sources are captured into locals before the statement. Precision-
destroying ops (AND/XOR/SLT/...) are deliberately unhooked - validate-
on-read drops their stale shadows for free.
- code_generator.cpp: central append in translate_instruction; LWC2/SWC2
emissions capture the RAW loaded/stored word (a masked GTE register
write must validate against the word as loaded).
- strict_translator.cpp: translate() wraps translate_impl()'s c_code with
the shared grammar; deferred load-delay variants hook the psx_ldd temp.
- BIOS regenerated, fingerprints verified CHANGED (SCPH1001 + OpenBIOS;
42.6k/12.2k macro sites). Base runtime + 33/33 tests green against it.
- Gating: macros expand only under -DPSX_PGXP=1. runtime.cmake grows a
PGXP option on psxrecomp_add_runtime_target (defines PSX_PGXP=1 +
PSX_OVERLAY_FLAVOR=2, _pgxp exe suffix) and PSX_PGXP_VARIANT to build
the sibling target from the same generated tree (framework runtime +
game wrapper). No ABI version bump needed: the appended PGXPHooks
table is NULL-tolerant and the flavor half of the ABI tag rejects any
host/DLL flavor mix.
- Shard caches: flavor folded into the cache tag (cg<V>_<hash>_gc<hash>
_f<flavor>) in overlay_loader.c + compile_overlays.py so base and pgxp
caches never share a directory; compile_overlays.py passes
-DPSX_PGXP=1 when flavor bit 2 is set; overlay preamble forwards
psx_pgxp_* through the table. PSX_OVERLAY_CODEGEN_VER 9 -> 10.
- Env overrides PSX_GEOMETRY_CORRECTION / PSX_PERSPECTIVE_TEXTURING /
PSX_PGXP_CPU_MODE (validation path: free-running headless boots arm
from the first vertex); census grew produced/swc2_stores and the pgxp
verb reports suppress/active gate state.
Validated: PSXRecomp_pgxp.exe boots the recompiled BIOS with hooks armed
(engine active, per-vertex lookups flowing; the BIOS shell has no RTPS
content so produced=0 there is correct - coverage measurement moves to a
3D title in phase 3).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Keep recomp-net at occupied_mask (d65918f); master's pin was an ancestor.
Brings in rewind/save-state controls from master.
Co-authored-by: Cursor <cursoragent@cursor.com>
Bumps recomp-net so empty lobby seats no longer block READY/admit; launch
builds the mask from seated members (online + LAN).
Co-authored-by: Cursor <cursoragent@cursor.com>
Wire lib/retcomm-rbengine beside recomp-net and replace MotK in-tree sched,
hash_confirm, input hist, snap ring, and rb_post with thin PSX shims so the
ecosystem can share invent/pacing policy outside each title facade.
Co-authored-by: Cursor <cursoragent@cursor.com>
Matt Stanley