openMSX/doc/release-notes.txt

Release Notes for openMSX 16.0 (2020-08-25)
===========================================

A major release in which we finally migrated to SDL2 and Tcl 8.6. And we moved
to a simpler versioning scheme, stripping off that 0. prefix now :) Other than
that, there are loads and loads of improvements. Some often requested ones are
copy/paste functionality and drag and drop support. But we also added a super
accurate YM2413 emulation (originally written by NukeYKT), fixed MIDI-in/out
support on Windows, a new keyboard mode, much improved OSD menu, etc. See below
for the details.

Special thanks to all the contributors of this release who are not in the core
team! Keep these pull requests coming!

Here's the list with all highlights and details:

MSX device support:
- V9990:
  - added EOR feature in V9990 bitmap cursor rendering
  - fixed crash in overscan modes with deflicker filter
  - fixed YJK/YUV rendering (was broken 8 years ago...)
  - fixed BMLX command
  - fixed drawing of second cursor (in some cases)
  - added synchronization for the CE IRQ
  - fixed sprite rendering algorithm on P modes
  - fixed background rendering in P2
  - fixed crash when using V9990 B4 mode with SDL renderer and scale_factor 3
- V99x8:
  - fixed that set adjust has no influence on maximum horizontal interrupt line
  - fixed right border on V9958 horizontal scroll
  - implemented "Cadari" bit
  - fixed sprite collision detection with color 0 sprites
  - fixed behaviour of TP bit in sprite mode 1
- PSG:
  - fixed that PSG registers of turboR do not mirror
  - fixed behaviour of wrong PSG port configuration (input ports output 0xFF)
  - it is now possible to specify whether a machine ignores PSG port
    directions; this helps to only show the warning on machines that may
    actually get damaged by these PSG bits
  - fixed noise level 0 ("sound6,0")
- fixed behaviour details of ADPCM of MSX-AUDIO
- fixed VDP I/O wait cycles of T9769: only apply to Z80
- fixed initial RAM pattern of ColecoVision to 0x00, which fixes The Heist
- fixed register mirroring of Yamaha SFG modules
- improved loading bad quality WAV cassette images using cubic interpolation
- added very accurate (but also slower) NukeYKT YM2413 core (now also the
  default)
- added emulation of 256kB hangul font ROM of the Daewoo CPC-400S
- added emulation of mappers Repro Cartridge mapper (v1 and v2) and Matra
  Compilation (e.g. Konami Compilation 1 and 2)
- fixed keyboard type of CIEL Expert Turbo
- fixed RAM size of Daewoo DPC-180
- added mapper type for RBSC Flash cartridges with KonamiSCC mapper
- added new machines: Yamaha AX500 (thanks Hashem Khalifa), Toshiba HX-20E
  (thanks Isaac Santaolalla), Yamaha YIS-503, YIS-503II, CX5F, YIS-604/128,
  Sony HB-G900D (thanks Peter Hanraets), Yamaha AX150 (thanks Pedro Gimeno),
  Olympia PHC-2 (thanks Patrick)
- added new extensions: Yamaha FD-03 (thanks Arjen) and FD-05 disk drive,
  Toshiba HX-F101PE disk drive, ROM Hunter Mk2 (thanks BiFi, Takamichi), Sony
  HBI-J1 (thanks Sandy), JVC MSX MIDI (thanks gflores)

New or improved emulator features:
- F11 now toggles fullscreen mode on PC, to be consistent with other
  applications such as web browsers; mute is now under F12
- fixed crash in ColecoVision when e.g. ALT+SPACE was pressed
- fixed crash when ejecting tape during cassette loading
- fixed MIDI-in/out support on Windows
- fixed possible crashes when using reverse
- added drag and drop support of files on the openMSX window. Supports ROM
  files, disk images (and folders), cassette images, LaserDisc images,
  savestates, replays, text files, Tcl scripts.
- added copy/paste functionality: with CTRL+Win+V (Cmd+V on Mac) or the middle
  mouse button, the clipboard text will be pasted into the MSX and with
  CTRL+Win+C (Cmd+C on Mac), the current MSX text screen will be copied to the
  clipboard
- added paste functionality to the console (CTRL+V/Cmd+V on Mac)
- several other small console improvements:
  - for macOS: Home/End moves to top/end of history, Cmd+Left/Right moves
    cursor to start/end of the line
  - move cursor per word with Alt+Left/Right
  - clear console with Ctrl+L and Cmd+K on macOS
  - Alt+BackSpace: delete backwards up to the start of the word
  - Alt+D (Alt+Del on macOS): delete util the end of the word
- added new POSITIONAL keyboard mapping mode, which is a much improved version
  of the KEY mode. Use when CHARACTER mode isn't working properly for you
- added file extensions to OSD menu and command line (e.g.
  .fd1/.fd2/.fd?/.1/.2)
- OSD menu:
  - when browsing for a media (ROM, disk, etc.) the menu now starts with the
    currently selected item. Makes it much easier to set disk B of a game, for
    instance.
  - implemented quick search in lists with alphanumeric keys. Type the name you
    expect and the cursor will find items starting with the typed characters.
  - fixed filtering out symlinked configurations from the machine/extension
    lists
  - go to the top of a list with HOME or CTRL+LEFT. Go to the end by pressing
    UP after that, as the lists wrap around :)
  - now all cartridge slots and disk drives can be controlled from OSD
  - show on/off instead of true/false for boolean settings
  - added keyboard mapping mode setting to OSD menu
- added setting to control vsync. Default is now enabled
- added new settings 'fastforward' and 'fastforwardspeed' to offer a way to go
  fast for a while (e.g. with the F9 button, which has now its binding changed
  to this) without going insanely fast.
- With vsync enabled the maxframeskip will not have to be tweaked anymore to go
  faster than the host monitor frame rate. Fast forward just works as you would
  expect it
- added new OSD icon set, which positions icons as far to the bottom as
  possible (set3)
- use soft-fullscreen now, instead of changing display modes. This looks better
  on almost all modern monitors. As a consequence, a screenshot made on full
  screen will be larger and will probably show letter boxes at the sides.
- huge updates to the Software DB:
  - many fixes
  - countless new entries for many ROM files you can find on the web
- when using IPS patches, the patched ROM will be looked up in the Software DB
- support host system function keys up to F24 now
- improved error messages on console commands (e.g. wrong number of arguments,
  unknown options, wrong subcommands)
- fixed cursor grabbing when going to and coming back from fullscreen
- enable HighDPI support (at least fixes some issues on macOS)
- fixed (removed) influence of user pressing modifier keys (CTRL/SHIFT/...)
  when text is typed into the MSX (e.g. with type command, auto cassette run,
  text pasting)
- added -once flag to 'debug set_bp' (and related commands) to trigger once
- several fixes to the unicode map files, so that pasting and CHARACTER
  keyboard mode works better (especially on Spanish MSX machines)
- added a debug probe on the V99x8 command execution and with that made the
  vdp_busy script more accurate
- worked around bug/limitation of MSX-BIOS when typing MSX characters 00-1F,
  which now works reliably
- fixed crash when using a relative path with the -setting command line option
- fixed 'kbd_code_kana_host_key' setting (did (sometimes?) not work anymore)
- use Rebecca Bettencourt's officially proposed Unicode mapping of MSX character
  set
- save_msx_screen script now also supports interlaced images
- added '-command' command line option to execute the given command after
  starting
- disable V99x8 specific debug writes on MSX1 VDP's
- added an optional <exit-code>-parameter to the exit command
- added script and MSX-DOS tool to give openMSX commands from within the
  emulated MSX (which is not enabled by default)
- when recording to video with throttle off, save time by displaying as few
  frames as possible on the screen
- now remember window position when the window is recreated (e.g. when changing
  renderers or coming back from full screen)
- make it easier to handle non-specific input events in Tcl scripts
- WARNING: backwards incompatible change to the 'machine_info device <device>'
  command. The result for ROM devices is now a dict (instead of a list) with at
  least one key-value pair, with key "type". For certain devices more key-value
  pairs are present, that were previously in list elements 1 to 3. Example to
  get the mapper type of device 'usas':
  dict get [machine_info device usas] "mappertype"
  And to get the device type (works for any device) of MyCoolDevice:
  dict get [machine_info device MyCoolDevice] "type"

Build system, packaging, documentation:
- migrated to SDL2 (2.0.12)
- unfortunately, the Android port is for now broken, as we did not integrate it
  into our build system yet (and that's not easy). The C++ code does compile,
  and now requires NDK20 and API level 18 (Android 4.3)
- updated all other 3rdparty libraries as well, like upgrading to Tcl 8.6
- SDLGL-PP renderer now requires OpenGL 3.3, shaders are now in GLSL 3.30
- support for pkg-config in the build system, e.g. to build FreeType
- C++ code is based on C++17 and thus requires a compiler supporting it, e.g.
  g++ 7 or later or Visual Studio 2019 or later
- fixed endianness on ppc64le
- fixed compilation for big-endian CPUs with g++-9
- migrated build system and all other Python scripts to Python 3, as Python 2
  is now officially dead
- documentation is now in HTML5 instead of XHTML


And of course the usual various bug fixes and performance improvements.

In "doc/manual/index.html" you can find a set of HTML manuals for openMSX.
Make sure you read this if you haven't used openMSX before, but also to learn
more about the new and changed features.

CPU and graphics performance varies a lot, depending on the openMSX settings
and the MSX hardware and software you're emulating. Some things run fine on a
200 MHz machine, others are slow on a 2 GHz machine. For performance tuning
tips, see the Setup Guide.

openMSX is confirmed to run on the following operating systems: Linux, Windows,
macOS, FreeBSD, OpenBSD and NetBSD; on x86, x86-64, PPC, ARM, MIPS and Sparc
CPU's. Running on other operating systems (wherever SDL runs) or CPU's should
be possible, but may require some modifications to the build system. If you are
compiling on a new platform, please share your experiences (see below for
contact info), so we can make openMSX more portable.

openMSX Home Page:
  https://openmsx.org/
Project page on GitHub:
  https://github.com/openMSX
Contact options:
- Talk to us on #openmsx on irc.freenode.net.
- Use the forum on https://www.msx.org/forum/semi-msx-talk/openmsx
- File a ticket on https://github.com/openMSX/openMSX/issues

Thanks to all contributors for their feedback, support, bug reports, testing,
coding and other help!

Have fun with your emulated MSX!
                                        the openMSX developers