One of the Saturn’s oldest emulators got its first update in nearly a year last month, with SSF preview version 34 sporting a bevy of technical improvements.
Many of the preview versions of SSF, including the latest one, is available at developer Shima’s GitHub, where the latest version is called PreviewVer_R34. All of SSF’s updates dating back to January 2021 can be downloaded from there. Shima calls each of this year’s updates “preview” versions, essentially betas. It doesn’t appear that a version he’s comfortable calling a full release has come out in years.
Shima announced the new version April 6 on social media, then posted in his native Japanese about the various changes in R34. Here are those posts machine translated — with some human editing — into English:
- “The drawing process of VDP1 has been changed. I think it looks closer to the actual machine. Changed interrupt handling for 68000. I can’t stop with the song of Luna’s dancer.”
- “Changed the handling of BusWait and SH2WriteBuffer. When SH2WriteBuffer is ON, it seems that memory access is faster than the actual machine overall. If the movement is suspicious, try turning off SH2WriteBuffer.”
- “Changed the handling of the VDP1 drawing thread. If the sprite does not draw well, try turning on VDP1DrawThread and VDP1DrawSync.”
- “Fixed a bug that caused the app to crash when Rewind was performed with a WindowSize of 1.5 times or more. When selecting WindowMenu, the app now pauses. If you set MenuPause of Program1 in the configuration file to 0, it will not pause.”
- “Fixed a bug that could cause imaging of CDs with 99 tracks to fail in CreateCDImage.exe. CreateObject.exe now compiles a split object for one file in a separate thread.”
- “If it stops working, first try setting CDTaskNumbers to 1. If that doesn’t work, try increasing it. In addition, other methods may work such as turning SH2WriteBuffer OFF, BusWait OFF, SCUDMARealTransfer ON, etc.”
- “When I was checking various operations, I found a few glitchy phenomena … I want to fix them as soon as possible and upload the R35. Early = 1 year later.”
- “Oh, and from this time on, only the 64-bit version will be available. I didn’t want a 32-bit version anymore, so…”
- “By the way, as a bonus, I also included the Gunbird invincibility cheat.”
- “Also, surprisingly, there was software that played CDDA in monaural, so I made it possible to know if it was playing monaural. If a ‘c’ is displayed at the right end of the ‘——‘ part of the title bar, CDDA is playing in monaural. It may be possible to change to stereo playback by using CDDAForceStereo in the sound options.”
Shima’s posts mention that only a 64-bit version of SSF is being distributed in the newest download, apparently because he just doesn’t want a 32-bit version anymore.
His posts also mention that cheats for Gunbird have been added to SSF. Action Replay cheats were added to SSF last year. The functionality can be enabled by choosing the emulator’s Option menu at the top, then Option again, then going to the Program4 tab and ticking the “Enable Cheat” checkbox.
Once that box has been checked and the emulator is restarted, if a game is run that corresponds to a folder with CHT file in the emulator’s “Cheat” folder, it’ll automatically enable all the cheats in that CHT file. The folders are named after the games’ product codes, like T_14402G being Gunbird’s.
The latest version includes Action Replay cheat codes for five other games as well: Layer Section, Thunder Force V, Space Harrier, Darius Gaiden and Sega Ages Galaxy Force II.
A few weeks after R34’s initial upload, it was updated April 28 to fix problems in two specific games.
“Updated R34,” Shima said on X that day. “Slave SH2 interrupt handling has been fixed. CPU characters in GROOVE ON FIGHT now work. VDP1 drawing process has been fixed. The display of Stellar Assault SS is now normal. Other than that, there are no other changes.”
SHIRO! last reported on SSF in May last year when it released version R31. Versions R32 and R33, which appear to have been minor updates, followed in the next month. For the next year, Shima didn’t update the emulator until R34’s release last month.
SSF didn’t get an update in most of 2022 and all of 2023 before Shima uploaded a new version to his Github in January 2024.
SSF celebrated its 25th anniversary last December. Its first publicly available version came out in 1999.
Despite its long development time, a lot of settings need to be tweaked to get various games running correctly, it seems.
Each version of SSF since R18 has included a Document folder with some HTML files that discuss the emulator’s completion and give troubleshooting tips, albeit in Japanese. In R34’s setting.html, there’s a much more substantial list of settings to change to make various games work than the one found in previous versions of SSF. The settings are found under Option and then the several Program tabs.
“The following is a list of settings required for each software,” Shima says in setting.html by way of machine translation. “These are items to be changed from the default settings.”
The list of games and the settings he recommends changing for each one are as follows:
- Biohazard (Resident Evil): SH2 DMA Real Transfer ON
- Lunar Silver Star Story (movie): SH2 Write Buffer OFF
- Dark Savior (movie): SH2 Write Buffer OFF
- Waku Waku 7: Sound Thread OFF, SH2 Write Buffer OFF
- Daytona USA Circuit Edition: VDP1 Draw Thread ON, VDP1 Draw Sync ON
- Thunderhawk II (Thunderstrike II): SH2 DMA Real Transfer ON
- Kaitou Saint Tail: Bus Wait SH2 OFF, DMA Real Transfer ON
- Assault Rigs: SH2 Write Buffer OFF
- Neon Genesis Evangelion 2nd Impression (movie): Turn off VDP2 RAM Write Timing
- Machi: 1Block Clock to 40, SH2 DMA Real Transfer ON
- Princess Maker 2: 1Block Clock 10
- Gal Jan: SH2 DMA Real Transfer ON
- Blood Factory (Loaded): Check SlaveSH2 Idle Loop OFF New, SH2 Timing OFF, SCU DMA Real Transfer ON
- Deep Fear: SH2 DMA Real Transfer ON
- Gyuwanburaa Jiko Chuushinha: SH2 Write Buffer OFF
- The King of Fighters ’96: Select 1MBytes RAM Cartridge
- Sega Rally Championship Plus: VDP1 Draw Thread ON VDP1, Draw Sync ON
- Taito Chase H.Q. Plus S.C.I.: Turn on CD Track/Index
- Purikura Daisakusen: Turn on CD Track/Index
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