[Plugin] Pete’s GPU v1.63

– Another internal change: correct support for write vram wrappings. I’ve noticed missing textures in a soccer game (can’t remember its name, but the players looked funny without heads), that one at least is fixed.

– And some more internal adjustments: I’ve was able to reduce the garbage frames which can happen after/before a 24 bit mdec is displayed. You can see that with FF9, for example.

– Also some flickering issues (for example in FF7 after a battle, or in some Wild Arms1, BOF4 and Silent Hill splash screens) are corrected. The same code will also help drivers which are doing page flipping in fullscreen mode.

– Some additional splash screens/menus will get displayed with the highest Offscreen Drawing setting. Still I suggest to use the highest setting only if you are missing some gfx screens. Never use it with FF8/FF9 🙂

– NTSC games can have a border at the top/the bottom of the display. No, 1.63 can’t remove that borders (as a matter of fact the borders are right and needed), but 1.63 will now display the borders most times correctly with a black color instead of a fancy color. Thanx to Gary for some save states 🙂

– A new mode for the framebuffer texture option, called « gfx card buffer & software ». Framebuffer textures are needed to get some special effects (swirls, motion blur) right, and they are harder to emulate in hw/accel gpu plugins. The new mode (which is working like in Lewpy’s Glide plugin) will help users with slower gfx cards, still a lotta cpu power will be needed.
For example the pure « gfx card buffer » hardware mode is much faster on my GF3 compared to the new mode, but on other systems the results may vary… try it yourself, and use the option which makes you happy. Compatibility note: sometimes the new « gfx card + soft » mode will display certain effects more correctly (for example blurring in ChronoCross, or the « enter battle » effects in Legend of Dragoons).

– I’ve removed the the « framebuffer read » and « framebuffer read on move » special game fixes, and combined them together with the old « Full vram primitives » option into a new main option called « Framebuffer access ». That way you can control framebuffer effects more easily in the gpu in-game menu. Otherwise the new option works exactly like the old game fixes, use the framebuffer access only if it’s needed (Xenogears, for example), and turn it off if it causes problems (FF9 will crash, for example).

– By removing the « framebuffer reads » and « dma chain » special game fixes I’ve now some free slots for new fixes, ehehe. I decided to add two fixes in that release: one for FF9 polygon mdecs (it seems that the 1.62 mask bit handling can cause slight problems, so you can now turn the special handling on/off with the new game fix), and the other game fix is only for the bad polygons in ChronoCross Fort Dragonia (thanx to Nave for a save state).