After all the new playable games on the last report, I’m sure no one actually expected something even bigger from June, but for the sake of my sleepless nights: WE DID IT!
We’ve finally reached 100 playable games, covering 10% of the entire Xbox library. What? You want even more? Ok, what about sound improvements and better HLE kernel accuracy? More ways to be sure your game was dumped properly? We got you covered. First, let’s take a look at the numbers:
General Improvements
Combo of HLE kernel improvements (PR #1911,PR #1915,PR #1917, PR #1918)
CxBx-Reloaded having its own HLE kernel implementation makes it much easier to use as you don’t need anything else other than the emulator and your game to be able to play. This great combo of improvements made the HLE kernel code even more accurate (tested against real hardware), which made many games run with better stability (a good example is Teen Titans, where the game would always crash after 2 minutes in-game, and now you can even play for more than 1 hour without any issue) and for sure will help to prevent future problems for the new games that never worked before.
Treat X_D3DSCM_NORESERVEDCONSTANTS as a flag (PR #1914)
GTA III sets the constant mode to 0x11, but we check for constant mode == 0x10 and proceed to overwrite some normally reserved constants that the title should be in control of. The incorrect behaviour of the old code created some weird vertex explosions that were common to some games like Soldier of Fortune II and Rayman 3.
Couple DirectSound Fixes (PR #1916)
Once again I’ve annoyed Radwolfie (sorry…) into looking at some issues I had related to sound with the game Sonic Mega Collection Plus. The problem was: other than some sound loops being wrong, the game itself would crash if you tried to call the in-game menu while running any game from this compilation. After some minutes he made a more verbose build (that could get more information needed to understand the issue properly) and with the logs in hand he found a solution in less than an hour! But he didn’t stop there: in the same PR, he made a second change that fixed Delta Force - Black Hawk Down crashing after booting.
Improved Popup Handler (PR #1921)
All “message boxes” are now redirected to one API for better management, all popups are suppressed if exclusive fullscreen is being used, gives the user ability to suppress test case popups, log every test case to console or file (even if the user requested to suppress test cases) and log every popup messages whenever it occurs, both GUI and kernel.
Load the most appropriate xinput dll based on the Windows version (PR #1923)
This change was made to be sure that CxBx-Reloaded will always load the correct version needed for your Windows version. Basically it will try to load 1_4 version first (since Windows 8 and later shipped with the driver). Otherwise, it will try 1_3 version (which is backward compatible down to Windows Vista). Unless both aren't detected, it will use legacy support. You can read more details about each version of the library and their features here https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/xinput/xinput-versions.
Show a popup when xbe sections are corrupted + print section corruption status on xbe dumps as well (PR #1925)
This will show a popup warning message when CxBx-Reloaded detects that one or more xbe section(s) are corrupted, instead of just silently logging them in the kernel dumps. Note that this check is different than the existing xbe signature check, which only verifies the xbe header. In addition, it also prints the section checks in the xbe dumps as well. Finally, a new option was added to the gui to allow users to also ignoring this new xbe section check.
Notable Game Improvements
Soldier of Fortune 2 [PLAYABLE]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kbXtdAX7V0
With the major blocker out of the way (vertex explosions fixed), you can now finish the game. Note: at some points the skybox doesn’t update properly, leading to some really weird visuals, but nothing that can stop you from progressing.
Room Zoom - Race For Impact [PLAYABLE]
Rendering improved a lot for this game, but it’s one of those cases where it takes a long time to load (so most users probably gave up on it, thinking it was broken). Boot the game, wait up to 2 or 3 minutes and the game will run properly once it’s loaded (after this initial wait the game will not present any similar issues while still running, you just need to wait again if you stop the emulation).
Atari Anthology [PLAYABLE]
This classic compilation is now playable (this is one of those “too late to the party” results, but the game could only be fully verified recently).
Midway Arcade Treasures 2 [PLAYABLE]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeUliv1-IHA
Each individual game was tested and finally, we have the collection confirmed as fully playable.
Magi Death Fight - Mahou Gakuen [PLAYABLE]
Fully playable, you’ll only see some visual issues at some bosses (missing some of the geometry). Sound and music are also working properly.
Super Bubble Pop [PLAYABLE]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99yhL4uTLxs
In-game for a long time, just now confirmed as fully playable due to some of the HLE kernel improvements.
Ed Edd n Eddy The MIS-EDventures [PLAYABLE]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kj2a6n2Q4WI
This is probably the best showcase of the HLE kernel improvements. One month ago, this game wouldn’t run for more than 1 minute (at best) without crashing, and now you can play it till the very end due to the improved stability.
Shikigami no Shiro II [PLAYABLE]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziyJ7L9nSAo
In-game for at least 3 months (that I could verify at least), now it’s fully playable due to some of the recent rendering improvements.
Sentou Yousei Yukikaze: Yousei no Mau Sora [PLAYABLE]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Co4ky5UjgA
Reached in-game 2 months ago and now it’s fully playable due to the latest stability improvements.
Note 1: internal resolution doesn’t work properly for this game yet
Note 2: the format used for the game textures is fairly common, so if anyone is interested in making mods or texture packs… just saying.
All-Star Baseball 2004 [PLAYABLE]
In-game for some time now (can’t even remember since when…), just now confirmed as fully playable.
All-Star Baseball 2005 [PLAYABLE]
Fully playable, same as 2004, just needed some extra hours of testing to confirm.
Namco Museum [PLAYABLE]
Another classic compilation that’s just confirmed as fully playable.
MLB SlugFest 2004 [PLAYABLE]
The first game of this series that I could confirm as playable (if you have either 2003, 2006 or Loaded, please test them as well, you never know…).
Rayman 3 - Hoodlum Havoc [IN-GAME]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvAlOhVF_QI
With the vertex explosions fixed, I could happily progress till very far in the game (I would say 80%+), just to be blocked by a single visual issue: at some point, you need to jump on invisible platforms… which is ok, they should be actually invisible, but you need to guide your jumps by looking at the reflections of said platforms on the floor in order to progress, and this is the issue, reflections don’t work in this scenario (at least not properly enough for you to be able to take a hint at where you should jump).
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4 [IN-GAME]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owgq8MJeMNA
For the first time, we can see the characters in-game, but even if you could ignore the low performance, it’s still too unstable to be playable (runs can crash after 4 to 30 minutes, but for sure you’ll always crash at some random point.
Sonic Mega Collection Plus [IN-GAME]
With the latest sound improvements, the game will not crash when you use the in-game menus anymore. But a new issue was found while testing it for more time than before: rendering will stop updating the screen at some points (the game will still be running). You can “force” the screen to update by opening the in-game menus and closing until the game is rendered properly, but this is probably too annoying for most people to do each level.
Teen Titans [IN-GAME]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iO1QEhbaTQ4
Now you’re able to play for more than 2 minutes! Jokes aside, the game is fairly stable, to the point of probably being finishable (didn’t have time to do it yet and I still had some random crashes after 40 minutes, so save often and be careful…).
Daemon Vector [IN-GAME]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcRrcW7RAyg
In-game for the first time and running fairly well. The only issue preventing it from being fully playable is that stability it’s not very good (random crashes will sadly happen).
King of Fighters Maximum Impact [IN-GAME]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAwIezT49ac
And yet another rendering improvement for this game this month. Now we have most of the geometry of the characters visible instead of just the hair.
Dennou Taisen: DroneZ [IN-GAME]
Compatibility improved, it’s now reaching in-game for the first time.
Terminator 3 - Rise Of The Machines [IN-GAME]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulDdT3TYflY
Vertex explosions of the enemies models are now fixed.
Manhunt [IN-GAME]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbPEG2vQyv8
More geometry of the characters and parts of the scenarios are rendering properly (still missing some major parts and the camera angle is a factor as geometry can be invisible during the execution animations).
Final Words
Remember that screenshot at the end of the last report? The code that improved the graphics for the menus of Halo is now outside of the draft status and it’s being tested as a regular PR (TLDR: it’s closer to being usable/mergeable to regular builds if no major issues or major regressions are found). Soooo… have another screenshot and see you all next month ;)
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