Rich Whitehouse just posted the latest public release of his awesome Atari Jaguar emulator, BigPEmu, with a ton of tweaks, updates and fixes. As a note, I wrote a post when v1.18 was released back in February, but was holding off until Steam approved the app…and they STILL HAVEN’T. While the Steam version is mostly the same as the standard PC version (including the ability to render games in higher resolutions!), it would enable support for game servers, friends/invites and more. So if you have a contact at Steam, can you help Rich find out what’s the holdup??? I’ll include the full list of changes for both releases, as well as some embedded videos you might be interested in below – Check out all after the links:
Support Rich: https://www.patreon.com/richwhitehouse
Download: https://www.richwhitehouse.com/jaguar/index.php
iOS Version: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/bigpemu/id6737359949
Here’s the full list of changes from 1.18 to 1.19:
- Added some more unaligned read/write edge case handling. This addresses a problem in Theme Park, possibly among other things.
- Changed some undocumented RISC instruction behavior to match some of my local hardware tests. One of these changes is known to correct an issue with object directions in Defender 2000.
- Added more Jaguar GD functionality. Filesystem functions are stubbed out, but I wasn’t sure if anyone really needs/wants this fully implemented, so let me know if it’s important to you.
- Fixed a few “undefined” Blitter cases. (not known to affect any existing titles)
- Linux ARM64 builds are now part of the automated build set. Special thanks to cubanismo for guiding me through the minefield of cross-compiling for ancient Linux targets.
- Significant improvements to the network rollback functionality, propagated back from BigInstinct.
- All kinds of new platform/framework functionality, also propagated back from BigInstinct. I didn’t feel like going through hundreds of changes to make a coherent summary, but one of the more notable additions is a byuu-style run-ahead option.
- Exposed a bunch of sound spatialization functionality to the scripting API.
- Exposed MOD and MP3 playback to the scripting API.
- Added a timing fix for Val d’Isere Skiing and Snowboarding.
- Various developer build changes to more accurately reflect hardware and/or detect errors which would break on non-developer builds. (this includes enabling M68K address exceptions)
- Lots of “anti-emulator” code will be failing in developer builds at this point, and some related functionality may be propagating to non-developer builds soon; relying on inaccuracies to prevent your software from running in BigPEmu is unwise. If you really want to prevent your software from running in BigPEmu, contact me about better/future-proof methods.
Here’s the full list of changes since v1.17:
- New Steam integration! This includes support for game servers, friends/invites, rich presence, and more.
- Added a script for Breakout 2000 touch control. The paddle is horizontally positioned to match the first active touch.
- Added an audio interpolation setting, along with a higher-quality bandlimited audio interpolator.
- Added an option to change the size of the state operation undo buffer.
- Exposed a few more network settings.
- Added options for PvP damage scaling and infinite shotgun ammo to the AvP MP script.
- Added another terrible secret.
- Fixed a bunch of problems in the socket implementation for non-Windows platforms. Special thanks to Luigi for spending the entire morning of December 4, 2024 helping me debug these problems and for offering some excellent tips on developing class consciousness. (he’s a big fan of OOP)
- Various changes/optimizations in the network protocol.
- Fixed swipe velocity not being explicitly reset when entering the menu.
- Fixed a GUID conflict bug in the SDL2 input plugin. Thanks to Tartifless for the bug report.
- Fixed script input callbacks having the potential to break movie recording/playback.
If you’d like to hear more from Rich, please check out the interview we did awhile back, as well as a recent livestream. You can watch both here, or just search any podcast app for “RetroRGB Whitehouse” to hear the interview:
