Still working on these changes to clean up the double buffering, which should help stabilize the video, and remove the need to toggle the Frame Blending setting on a per-ROM basis. Still needs a tiny bit of work
These videos look similar to recent posts, but now it looks more stable even with Frame Blending disabled (less flickering and shimmering). And no more blended frames with the previous screen (e.g. remnants of a title screen during gameplay).
I’m going to try running
some FPGA simulations in GHDL for some basic test ROMs, and compare output logs to the Uxn software emulator. The simulator runs many thousands of times slower than the real thing, and is a pain to set up, but I think I can no longer guess my way through it. Too often I’m trying random ideas, waiting 10 mins for a build to finish, and then seeing if it worked on the Pocket 😅
A little more progress on the Uxn core for Analogue Pocket! Some of the test ROMs are looking a little closer to how they are supposed to 😀 I started to fix some issues with how I was implementing the multiple sprite drawing, but I think I still have some more work to do with blending.
Sorry for the lack of updates lately - progress has been slow because I was really sick for a while. Feeling much better now!
A few more ROMs are working on the Analogue Pocket Uxn core, and input is hooked up now! I have so much more to do, so a lot of things still don’t work, but a little more progress is always exciting to see! 😀
Next, I’ll try to implement the auto-advancing sprite drawing (where a single instruction could draw as many as 16 sprites).
Loading Uxn ROMs from the SD card! There are still bugs to work out with a couple ROMs that were working before, but it’s getting there! #Uxn#Varvara#AnaloguePocket
Just fixed a CPU bug where I was just slightly off by one. That was a tough one to find, but more test ROMs are working now.
I started out with an 18MHz clock speed on the Pocket, which ought to be more than enough for everyone right? 😅 I’m gonna try to see if I can increase that speed. Maybe I can also get some more instructions to complete in fewer cycles. Then finally, I’ll go back to working on sprites!
A little more progress on the Uxn core for Analogue Pocket! Screen vectors are working, at least partially. This means that “game logic” code, which needs to execute once per frame, is handled correctly. This is assuming we are starting on a new frame where the CPU isn’t already busy. Otherwise, it will wait another frame to try again.
Some small improvements to implement palette colors. Previously, the colors were hard-coded. Now, when a Uxn ROM sets new palette colors in device RAM, the core will use the correct colors immediately.
Still a long way to go! I think I will start looking into sprites next, but I’m also tempted to start looking at adding a way to more easily switch between the bundled test ROMs, instead of rebuilding each time 😅 #Uxn#Varvara#AnaloguePocket