Release Notes for openMSX 0.5.2 (2005-06-18)
============================================

This release is mainly a bug fix release with only a few new features, but a lot
of quality improvements, mainly related to audio. We reworked the YM2413 engine
by Okazaki, bringing the openMSX fork up to date with the latest release of
MSXplug. We also fixed an bug in the SCC emulation, which screwed up some sound
effects. Other fixes include MSX-AUDIO sample RAM access and the timer accuracy
of OPL4 and MSX-AUDIO. Finally, we also added a DirectSound driver for Windows.

A new sound related feature is the sound logger. It writes the sound played by
openMSX to an uncompressed WAV file. The current version logs exactly what is
sent to the sound driver, including any inaccuracies caused by realtime
synchronization. We are planning a logger that is not timing sensitive to
appear in a future openMSX release. For usage instructions, see section 7.3 of
the openMSX User's Manual.

A last new (but still a bit experimental) feature is the disk manipulator. This
is a new built in toolkit to transfer files from the host OS to the MSX disks
(disk images and hard disk images with partitions are all supported) and vice
versa. You can also use it to create new (hard) disk images and format them. A
complete description is in doc/using-diskmanipulator.txt.

New or improved emulator features:
- New scaler: HQ2xLite. This is a scaler that is almost as good as HQ2x, but
  uses a lot less CPU.
- Added DirectSound driver for Windows, which solves the problems some people
  had with SDL on Windows. It also runs at a lower latency than the SDL driver.
  Many thanks to Daniel Vik for helping with DirectSound. To switch between the
  DirectSound and SDL sound drivers, use the new "sound_driver" setting.
- Improved debugger, with some new (TCL based) commands like disasm, step_in,
  step_over and run_to.
- Extended IPS patch support, it should now support all IPS files.
- Updated ROM database.
- Added trainers.tcl: hundreds of game trainers. Use trainer_[TAB] in the
  console to switch on the trainer for the game you want.
- Added a cheat finder script: create your own game trainers. For an
  explanation how to use it, see this openMSX forum post:
    http://forum.openmsx.org/viewtopic.php?t=34
- Use revamped console background and font as default. If you're upgrading from
  an older openMSX version and want to use this new background and font, you
  can either remove your settings.xml file or type the following lines in the
  openMSX console:
    set consolebackground skins/ConsoleBackgroundGrey.png
    set consolefont skins/ConsoleFontRaveLShaded.png
- New icon, made by Eric Boon.

MSX device support:
- Updated Okazaki YM2413 core (now the default).
- Added pixel accurate rendering to V9990 emulation. Note that the timing may
  still be quite incorrect.
- Improved timing on turbo R machines. For example, speed difference between
  R800-ROM and R800-DRAM mode is now emulated.
- Various IDE fixes from Adriano Camargo Rodrigues da Cunha.

Build system, packaging, documentation:
- Compile fixes for GCC 4.x.
- Added experimental build support for Sparc, DEC Alpha, ARM, HP PA-RISC, IA-64,
  Motorola 680x0, MIPS and IBM S/390. Except for Sparc these are all untested.
- openMSX is now relocatable on Mac OS X, which means you can move the
  installation directory around.
- Our Debian packages are now uploaded to the Debian archive, soon after
  release.
- Updated C-BIOS to 0.21.

And of course the usual various bug fixes.

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.

Known issues / caveats:
- Emulation is not perfect yet.
  See the bug tracker on sourceforge.net for known bugs.
- Until we reach version 1.0.0, file formats can change in an incompatible way
  without backwards compatibility. This happened between 0.4.0 and 0.5.0, for
  example. Keep this in mind if you create machine descriptions, ROM database
  entries etc.
- openMSX is confirmed to run on the following operating systems: Linux, Win32,
  Mac OS X, FreeBSD, OpenBSD and NetBSD; on x86, x86-64, Sparc and PPC CPUs.
  Running on other operating systems (wherever SDL runs) or CPUs 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.
- 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
  200MHz machine, others are slow on a 2GHz machine. For performance tuning
  tips, see the Setup Guide.

CALL FOR HELP:
To increase video rendering performance on Windows, we are looking for a
DirectX programmer who would like to help us!

openMSX Home Page:
  http://openmsx.sourceforge.net/
Project page on SourceForge:
  http://sourceforge.net/projects/openmsx/
Contact options:
- Send a message to the openmsx-user mailing list.
  Go to the SourceForge project page and look under "Lists".
- Use the new forum on www.openmsx.org.
- Talk to us on #openmsx on irc.freenode.net.

Have fun with your emulated MSX!
                                        the openMSX developers
