1/12/2004 ( Azimer ) The end? The source code for Apollo v0.10 and my last HLE Audio plugin are being released. Discuss this at emutalk. I offer no support for the sources or the executables generated from the sources. If you use the source, give Phrodide and I credit. If you would discuss all things related to the source in the Apollo forum, I would be grateful. Thanks. If you want to see my other projects look here and here. Just don't expect a new Apollo any time soon. This page may be used for another purpose unless someone officially takes over the project. 2/17/2002 ( Azimer ) Still alive I am still alive an kicking. I have been working on Apollo the last couple days. Finally getting it ready for the R2 beta test. I have been slacking on it since my first dynarec went to shit. I decided on a different approach like schibo did when he first wrote his dynarec many months ago. Anyway... you can keep track of me here. That is the first place you will find news on me and my projects. Happy new year several weeks late! 12/28/2002 ( Azimer ) Todo List/Status Page I did manage to find time to work on some stuff during my time off. Here is a page I put up to allow the public to test out my works in progress. I do not care to call these releases since they have very well known and glaring issues. Use all those files at your own risk. Useful feedback is desired and can be placed on the forum :) You can go to the page here. 12/08/2002 ( Azimer ) Update Sorry for the delay in the update. I have had more crap to deal with these last few days then I care to. I promised on emutalk to update the site Thursday night. My first topic of discussion is Apollo. Before I stopped working on it, I had fixed many FPU bugs as mentioned months ago. Turok2, Turok3, and many other games are now playable. I believe the interpreter is as compatible or more compatible then some others. Bjz has the sole responsibility to release the next Apollo when he feels up to it. I am done working on Apollo for now. So go bother him. You can find him on IRC #emulation64. :) Next topic is my Audio/Graphics plugins. Those have also been discontinued temporarily. I do not like the audio plugin spec and I have only Apollo to develop a new spec with. Apollo is not the best emulator to do that with because few people use it to actually play any games. This post is not a goodbye, but a see you later. If/When I begin working on these projects again, you all will be notified here first. I hope I can work on them while school is out for break, but likely, I will not be able to. So... see you soon. 04/23/2002 ( Azimer ) Long time no update Those close to me have known that I took some time off for different reasons. Lately, I have been back to work for the most part. Most of what I've been doing is with fixing various no-audio issues in Apollo and working on my graphics dll. I am trying to fix some FPU bugs in Apollo that prevent certain games from working correctly. I am also working on the first build of my dynarec, and it should be enabled next release. I am also trying to get Banjo Tooie to work, but it's not going too well. This will just take time and unlikely to be in the very next release, but definately before the end of summer. The graphics are coming along well, but I won't reveal any screenshots of its progress. There are many plugins in the works now, and I don't care to contribute to the overload. I have plans to make a bug-submitting site for my beta testers and the general public just before the next release. This will save me heart-ache when it comes down to tracking bugs and losing what people have submitted to me in person. It will also help to evolve into an FAQ/Solutions/Compatibility list. Not much real news to tell, but it's always nice to let people know I am still alive, kicking, and working on stuff. Last thing... the site now has its own domainname. www.apollo64.com. Update your bookmarks. Enough babbling from me. Have a nice day! :) 01/17/2002 ( Azimer ) Status/Site updates I updated some of the sections in the site. I haven't added new screenshots yet since I would like them to be from my own graphics plugin if/when it gets completed to a satisfactory level. If you find a section of the site you'd like updated, let me know by posting to my forum. I would also like to mention that the compatibility list is lacking because I don't have many roms to test with so I haven't updated the list. I will see about doing that with whatever roms I have now later. Apollo hasn't been touched much since last release. I've been working on my graphics plugin lately so I haven't touched audio since the beta was out. In a way I need to thank schibo for making such a pre-release since I no longer feel the pressure to release a new version any time soon. No news to report... just a little about what was going on. 01/05/2002 ( Azimer ) Important notes on 1964 Release I will NOT support the Audio plugin which was included in 1964's release. It was released without my ok. Apparently schibo and I had a misunderstanding, and the Audio Plugin released in 1964 is a private beta-tester plugin. I suppose I will release the REAL 0.40 when I am done with it in a week or two. I apologize for any issues you have with the plugin. I guess I neglected to make it clear to him that it was an unreleasable beta version. If you want, post bug reports on my emutalk forum. I will only entertain those dealing with HLE problems. I will not deal with those issues which were in a WIP state when I gave it to schibo. Thanks. 11/23/2001 ( Azimer ) New Release New version is out. In my typical style, I will allow you to see what's new from the zip file. Be warned that this isn't a bug-free verison. I won't be able to work on it again until post-christmas. If you need help please see the messageboard. On a side note, azimer@emulation64.com is no longer valid. Too much SPAM caused me to kill the email address. Best of luck with the beta. It's pretty slow on a lot of roms... but they probably work. I am releasing Apollo to keep my word to someone about when I will release next. I said when Perfect Dark, Golden Eye, Conker's Bad Fur Day, and fix bugs in a few other games. Well... it happen so there is my promise to him. As far as the next release? I don't know. Only time will tell. If you are looking for source, I am sorry... not this build. I don't have time/patience to clean it up. Screenshots and updated compatibility list coming soon. I noticed 1964 just released. It was not my intention to release Apollo on the same day. Great work to the 1964 team on the release. I just got mixed signals today and didn't realize you guys planned to move ahead with the release. 09-13-2001 ( Azimer ) State of Apollo I will be discontinuing Apollo and my Audio plugin for an undisclosed period of time publically. You may or may not see a new release this weekend of each. I would also like to take this space to send my condolences to my friends and aquaintences who have lost friends and family in New York, DC, and the passengers on the airliners. Thanks. 08-08-2001 ( RatTrap ) The Company: Compatibility List Old news, but it should be in here. We have had so much going on both Azimer and I that we just kind of didn't think about posting it :). Well better late than never right? over 200 games tested and more than half of them working, go and take a look at The Company, or check out the compatibility list here. I have also changed some links here and there on some of the pages since the Apollo board has changed servers, along with all the other emu boards hosted by Emulation64. That's it for Now :) 07-28-2001 ( RatTrap ) Status Page Update & a few screens It sure took me some time but i think i managed to make a pretty nice looking compatibility list. The whole status page has gonne thru major surgery and i've added things that should have been in there since the beginning. Also, with no extra charge i put up a few screens from Apollo v0.03 (I hope Azimer whon't kill me now), enjoy. 07-26-2001 ( RatTrap ) New Screen Shots The screens from some of these games were picked for more then just compatibility reasons, i found i got very high fps counts in both Dk64 and Cruis'n The World compared to a few other emulators. But then again, some of these games need to be played without sound to run properly. I sudgest you check out the compatibility list that should be up on the "Status" part of the site by tomorrow night. Now go have a look at the Screens-section :) 07-24-2001 ( Azimer ) New Release New version is out... get it from the download page. I will be putting up a new page soon so you can let me know what games work and what doesn't. Enjoy. 07-22-2001 ( Azimer ) Status Update First, I'd like to say congrats to schibo, rice and the rest of the 1964 team on a new release with a very important bug fix. Also thank you to schibo for letting me know about the bug so I can make sure Apollo wasn't suffering from something similar. So what's been up with me anyway? Currently, I am working full time for a company and I can't concentrate on emulation too much. But only very recently have I started working on Apollo ago. With schibo's bug fix, Apollo is much more compatible then before. Until now, I've kept quiet about how well it helped me. Rattums and I plan on updating the screenshot page once we get this going. Next on the agenda. My audio plugin is currently going through some major surgery HLE-wise. I am rewriting the envelope mixer for Mario64/Banjo Kazooie. I am also trying to HLE mp3 decompression and get that in before too long. MP3 decompression is used most notably in Perfect Dark and Conker's Bad Fur Day. Lastly are just a few screenshots... much thanks to schibo and Jabo. Taken on 450Mhz Celeron/128MB RAM/Creative TNT. Super Smash Brothers Banjo Kazooie Paper Mario 1080 Donkey Kong 64 Almost forgot... you can see a short and sweet compat list here. 06-17-2001 ( Azimer ) Audio Plugin Update I readded v0.20(a) back to the download page. If neither of these two plugins work... Feel free to participate in the public beta of my current Audio DLL. You will find many new (some favorable... some unfavorable) differences. 06-15-2001 ( Azimer ) Audio Plugin Pre-Release I won't say much... but I decided to make a release of my Audio Plugin. I will place it on the download page. I don't know the status of Apollo so we will just have to be glad for plugins. :) This plugin has a new audio code. That's it really. I hadn't fixed any HLE errors yet. *UPDATE* I just released a minor bug fix and added registry stuff. Bring it up to v0.20b. 05-27-2001 ( Azimer ) Save Game Endianess Swapper With the release of PJ64, some have voiced concern over using nemu save games (.srm) files on PJ64 and also .srm files and .fla files saved from a v64jr. So I decided to make a little conversion utility to make it possible. Go download it here. Just keep track of which format it is before you swap the Save Game. You risk a chance of losing the game so I recommend everyone to BACKUP thier game before using this tool. Congrats to the PJ64 on a sucessful release. 05-23-2001 ( Azimer ) Release Issues Many of you have voiced your concern over my OpenGL plugin in Apollo. My OpenGL WAS a work in progress before Phrodide left the project several months ago. I have not had time to work on it, or to learn about the RDP since then. So I no longer support it. Now... If you want to see graphics like on the Apollo's screenshot page, you MUST download TR64 or 1964 and use their plugins or download from the pages I listed in the Plugin dialog box! I am sorry but this the only way to get graphics in my emulator at this time. I also recommend Jabo's plugin. For more help... please post in the Apollo forum. Thanks. 05-22-2001 ( Azimer ) New Release I just released v0.01e yesterday. I was having trouble getting the new site up and running properly, but I believe RatTrap fixed it. I think it looks VERY nice. A HUGE thank you to Rattums for his time and effort!!! Go to the Download section to download the new beta and check out the readme.txt for what's new. There are too many new things to list here, unfortunately, Dynarec or CPU bug fixes aren't one of them. 01-04-25 (Azimer) info ...I removed the link to the demo plugin down below (no longer needed). Here is a new plugin to fix some errors people were having when TR64 would close a rom. I hope this is the last bug fix I have to make to this audio driver so I can continue work on the new one. Snag it here. 01-04-25 (Azimer) What's going on? ...It's been ages since I last updated. I've been very busy with school, life, Audio, and everything. Trying to find a good solution for those with HLE Audio problems (though I feel they mistake poor audio plugin with poor emulation speed on the emulator's behalf). I've also been trying to get an UltraHLE-like/Daedalus-like debugger going so Dominator from the company can feel a little more comfortable working with me to fix my core. Umm... I dunno what else to say. I decided to release a follow up to the HLE Plugin. This is pretty much just a maintainance release. I removed some message windows bjz was seeing when he used it in TR64. And since I already allowed Daedalus to use the plugin I might as well make it official. Once again this plugin is not the full thing... but it's still good. -->here<--- 01-03-26 (Azimer) What's with the names ...I have recieved a good amount of emails with suggestions for names. Your e-mails haven't gone unread! I read each and every one of them. I am currently in one of my infamous busy times in which I have a hard time coding, ircing, or even socializing. Once I choose a name, I will spend time to write each email a nice thankful reply. You all haven't gone unnoticed! I would like to mention one more thing. The couple people who I was going to add to the project seem to be extremely busy, even more then me! So I don't know what will become of that... but only time will tell I guess. (I've gotten a couple emails on this and thought it deserved an undelayed response). 01-03-18 (Azimer) ...Added a mirror for the last version of the source/binary v0.01d. Someone was having problems downloading from ztnet servers. ***UPDATE*** I need your help... I am thinking of changing the name of the emulator. Suggestions are VERY welcome. Please send me an e-mail at azimer"at"emulation64"dot"com and give me your suggestions! Thanks. You will get recognition for the suggestion, and if you could make a cool new logo too, you will also get credit on the mainpage as long as we use your logo. Cool beans? 01-01-29 (Azimer) ...Source is up. Go to the download section. The source will compile... but please don't expect everything inside. Good luck on your developing efforts. Please keep me posted. 01-01-28 (Azimer) Not of much suprise to me, the emulation websites were quick to point fingers at the general emulation crowd as lamers who caused me to "quit". That's far from the truth. People who I don't know never cause me to feel badly about things. I deal with lame e-mails on a daily basis. Not a big deal... I can take it. The lack of respect was from people close to me, internally in the N64emudev group... which turns out to be a huge misunderstanding as I stated in a previous news post. Now... I've gotten overwhelming amounts of support from people who thought the disrespect, lameness was a result of general emulation. And to be honest, I never knew so many people would feel so strongly about my decision to stop working on Apollo for awhile. So in doing so, I've decided to do what 1964 had done months ago, and open my source for the general emulation crowd. I am hoping this decision will make people interested in the project, and perhaps continue Apollo with, or without me as a coder. I will work on it again someday... just not right now. My social life is a little more important right now. Especially since my best friend just lost his gf of 4 years and going throught he same things I did last November. So the release you will get will be what I haven't had time to work on since January 3rd or so. Since then, I've been working hard on RSP Audio for TR64 and I will continue to do so. I will post the analogy I made to Cruiser of Dream64 in an ICQ message: Coding to me... is like reading a good book. You can go all psycho and read a lot of stuff in one day... but then you get tired and don't feel like reading for awhile... and sometimes you just get too busy to read. But eventually, you'll want to pick that book back up and start reading again. Don't ever assume the worst of a situation. 01-01-26 (Azimer) ...It's been over two weeks now without with an update. I haven't gotten any serious inquiries about the position with Apollo. I am tired of coding Apollo... *clip* So I am calling it quits for right now. *clips* Good bye. -Azimer Thanks goes out to Marin64 for hosting me for the last 8 months, Jabo for being a great friend, and zilmar for always giving me advice on the emulator. You three mean something special to me. ***UPDATE*** Things got a lil out of hand earlier and misunderstandings took place. The end result is the same. No hard feelings reside between me and anyone else. I removed parts of the post to prevent any more hard feelings from my emotionally charged post. 01-01-10 (Azimer) ...Sorry for the lack of updates... and the news section being down. I've been busy working with F|RES on TR64. I have FlashRAM support in Apollo now... It's not working 100% yet but over time I am sure it will. Not much progress has been made since you last saw it on the messageboard. I've spent the last 3-5 days on TR64 like I've mentioned. I also added a popup banner. Sorry but bandwidth isn't cheap. It's costing my host $150/month to keep Emulation64 and all hosted sites running. I can see how someone wouldn't want to pay that out of their own pocket. :) Better then geocities right? :) Lastly, I am looking for a possible second coder for the project to start after the next release. Qualified applicants should have had prior emulation experience (though not a necessity), MIPS knowledge, and a will to work hard on the project. 3D Graphics programmers are welcome too. If you are interested, please email me at ??? and I will setup a time for us to chat. Please bring a couple samples of your prior work if you believe they are applicable to the position you want with the project. 00-12-25 (Azimer)My plans ...Just a minor status update on my plans. Christmas is over now for most of us. I got a Microsoft Trackball Explorer 1.0 (this will make Counter-Strike more challenging :P), a BJ Cannon Color printer (didn't hook it up or mess with it yet), a VCR, and some clothes. I think my parents spent ~$200 on me. I only spent $50 on them. :( *sigh*... I guess I have an excuse being a poor college student. :D Anyway... I decided what to do about Apollo. There are many bugs I found in Apollo v0.01d R6-RC1 which went out to Emulation64 staff and friends. I think a rewrite is due. For starters, I HATE the plugin selection dialog box, the multilingual support, and all the "dynarec" options in the GUI that Phrodide put in there. Also, the timing of the CPU is horrid, the interrupt handling leaves something to be desired, and I would rather rework a few things in the CPU, especially the opcode fetch/translation loop. The method I have done now is VERY fast, but it could be faster by removing unneeded code from the loop and removing stack operations (thus using naked functions). This will also come in handy when I do my psuedo dynarec engine which will make code to call each function individually (rather then recompilation). That is more like a caching interpretive and it removes all need to fetch/translate, but it doesn't remove function calling or allow for need-based optimizations. Probably more technical talk then most of you care to hear, but it's the next step to producing a dynarec without leaving the interpretive stages completely yet. All status updates from here on out will be in the developer's log save for a few points of interest I will place right on the main page. Merry Christmas, and God bless. 00-12-24 (Azimer).... ...Many people have wondered, and actually thought Apollo was just another dead N64 emulator. Oh... how wrong could they be? For starters, I didn't join TR64 so I could leave Apollo behind. I joined so I could offer them an additional coder on their team. My work on TR64 in no way interferes with Apollo and vice versa. Now... I decided to give some of you christmas present. It's not much, but it will have to do until I finally understand if this one guy wants to co-author or not. He's very talented and very interested, but it's not set in stone. He's also busy finishing up his own work so it might be awhile if he does come aboard. Without furthur delay I decided to speed up Apollo a little bit more and post a couple screen shots of Zelda64 working on the emulator. The plugins are from TR64. Zelda64 Using RCP's D3D Plugin Zelda64 Using TR64's OGL Plugin Happy holidays! 00-12-05 (Azimer)The end of the line... with a new beginning ...The time has come to come out of the closet... No... I am not gay. Worse. I am a NES Emu coder. lol. Just kidding but it caught your attention. I am doing a NES emu with a few guys and you can check it out here. It'll be fun. I will be doing the sound on the system. Hopefully trying to get it perfect. Speaking of sound... Did you HEAR WIP4 of TR64? WONDERFUL... hahaha... (as Mario says it). I guess I can quit beating around the bush. The status of Apollo is as follows. Phrodide has left the project for good. He has left the emulation scene and he has left me in sole custody of the project. He is also going to give me his v64jr if I attend his wedding *laughs*. Like I wouldn't try to make it in the first place pfft. :) You might be "sadden" by this, but I have left Apollo long ago. Over a week now. I am on TR64's team now... I won't say much about what I am doing but it's been great so far. Lets see... Oh yes... Apollo :) Apollo lives on! I will keep working on it. Of course my two new projects take priority. Now for a little recap of a post a tried to make so many times and to bring closure and perhaps a "tribute" to Phrodide contribution to my coding experiences.... I met Phrodide long ago when I was working in the moonlitcoalition on snesrise. 64bit was the "leader" but he was nothing more then a webmaster. Phrodide was there once in awhile but he was pretty much quitting sunset by the time I joined in August. I just finished my NES emulator (unreleased) and I wanted to take on new challenges. I worked for a long time and then I was approached by 64bits asking me if I think they should fire Phrodide from the project. I didn't care since I didn't know Phrodide that well... but that night or soon after I really got to meet him for the first time. We sat in a channel and decided to construct a new N64 emulator which would rival that of UltraHLE. We didn't get far. We coded until February when our team of 4 dwindled down to a team of 2. Phrodide and I disposed of the faulty emulator and constructed Apollo from its ashes. Today, it's better then that old emulator will ever be. It's all my work... it's all Phrodide's work. And now here I am... I learned SO MUCH from Phrodide, and I am truly grateful he gave me a chance one year ago to be part of that N64 emulation dev. team. Without his guidance, I would have not known how to do anything more then creating a CFB only N64 emulator. Phrodide is a good friend to me. I will miss his online presence and my phone bill will be outrageous. thanks for all the good times man :) btw, schibo... they would have know sooner or later anyhow... I have an illness I can use as an excuse for murdering lamers :) Update: I removed the link to the NES emulator project. I didn't realize how much unwanted attention the project was getting. Please disregard the link since it will be relocated soon. Sorry. 00-11-28 (Azimer)Broken Promises ...Hello, it's me again. As you can tell, the heading of this post is Broken Promises and that is very suiting. An Apollo release won't be made this week. It is now up to Phrodide. I have done all I am going to do, but I don't have a graphics plugin to distribute with the executable. So in essence, I am not going to work anymore until then... unless something else comes up. Lately, I've been spending my time on dinky lil projects that don't require much brain power for me, like AziNES. You won't be able to download it since I agree there are too many NES emulators and mine is just for me. :) Anyway... I am sure you will hear from me again before the week's out!!! Also sorry for the infrequent updates... I still don't have a newsupdater for the site so it makes it a pain to download the current news.txt, edit it, and reupload it. I guess I was spoiled and lazy :). laterz. 00-11-06 (Azimer) ...Been about a week since I last updated. The developer's log isn't going as nicely as a weekly update does. I have started work on the Dynamic Recompiler (my own not Phrodide's). It's going well, but since speaking with a few people, I've decided to hold off until I posssess a compatible interpreter. This is good for me, but bad for anyone expecting to play games at full speed without a 1.3 or 1.4Ghz Pentium 4. I know I don't have one. :) So instead I worked on the interpreter and gave it enough speed to where you can check out the compatibility. I saw about a 20%-25% speed increase just from some simple handmade assembler code and some rearrangements of when/where things occur. Public beta to come once I am pleased with the state of the project. ***BETA TESTER NEWS*** I don't really have an accurate list of who is a beta tester so I'll post a little note here. The pif rom and input has been disabled in the current private beta R4, but should be fully functional in the public beta. Beta testers, please contact me about recieving a beta when you get online. 00-10-30 (Azimer) ...Work on the Ultra64 CPU is proceeding nicely. I hope to get his emulator to play 2D demos soon, at least. Apollo's progress has been good since fixing the infamous bug. Controllers, Mempacks, and eeprom emulation are in. The debugger is being worked on for the CPU. And Phrodide's work on his graphics plugin is showing promise. Apollo's next private beta might go public if we find no major bugs. 00-10-24 (Azimer) ...We finally fixed the CPU Bug... here's some eye candy... WaveRace Japanese Mario Kart 64 Star Fox 64 Mario 64 Thanks to TNSe, Zilmar, F|RES, and schibo for all thier help. (The pictures above aren't from Phrodide's plugin) 00-10-24 (Phrodide) ...It's been a while since I've updated the page...so I felt this was in order. Yes I am back, and I am working on the plugins that we initially started. I've gotten 3D to work in the plugin and I plan to see more action happening, so stay tuned.... 00-10-21 (Azimer) ...Sorry for the lack of updates and not updating the developer's log. Work continous as I finally kicked the habit of playing too much Half-Life Counter-Strike. As most of you know, I've allied myself with Angelo of Ultra64 to work on a common interpretive CPU core. The one inside Apollo has that one infamous bug I still can't find. So through this method, I hope to create a better, bug free, core. For comments or concerns use our messageboard or email me. 00-10-10 (Azimer)Back to Work ...After all this terrible news I have some good news to report. Phrodide and I are both back to work. Yes Phrodide too. He left one of his jobs which freed some time from his schedule. He is taking over the graphics plugin portion of Apollo while I am working on the main executable. You can expect a lot more to happen now. Definately a release before Thanksgiving is possible. I will start by hunting down the infamous CPU bug and/or making a new CPU completely. Best of luck to Phrodide in his new task. Thanks to everyone for their supportive comments.