There are lots of improvements in this new release, both to core emulation and to the user interface. However, some of these changes are quite substantial, so regressions are a possibility. Please report any regressions from v103 on the forums if found.
Note that Mega Drive save RAM files will not be compatible with v103, but will now be compatible with save RAM files from all other Mega Drive emulators, and the format will be stable going forward.
Also!! Thanks to the tireless work of Screwtape, the Help->Documentation link in higan now takes you to a very comprehensive user guide. Please be sure to consult this if you have any questions about using higan.
Lastly, I've added a link to my Patreon page (
https://patreon.com/byuu/) to the higan downloads page. The money will go exclusively toward purchasing SNES games for preservation, hardware and flash carts for reverse engineering, equipment such as backup drives, etc. Donating is entirely optional and comes with no rewards, but would of course be greatly appreciated! ^^;
Changelog:
nall/dsp: improved first-order IIR filtering
Famicom: improved audio filtering (90hz lowpass + 440hz lowpass + 14khz highpass)
Game Boy Advance: corrected bug in PSG wave channel emulation [Cydrak]
Mega Drive: added first-order 2.84KHz low-pass filter to match VA6 model hardware
Mega Drive: lowered PSG volume relative to YM2612 to match VA6 model hardware
Mega Drive: Hblank flag is not always set during Vblank
Mega Drive: fix PAL mode reporting from control port reads
Famicom: improved phase duty cycle emulation (mode 3 is 25% phase inverted; counter decrements)
Mega Drive: reset does not cancel 68K bus requests
Mega Drive: 68K is not granted bus access on Z80 reset
Mega Drive: CTRL port is now read-write, maintains value across controller changes
Z80: IX, IY override mode can now be serialized in save states
68K: fixed calculations for ABCD, NBCD, SBCD [hex_usr, SuperMikeMan]
SPC700: improved all cycle timings to match results observed by Overload with a logic anaylzer
Super Famicom: SMP uses a separate 4x8-bit buffer for $f4-f7; not APU RAM [hex_usr]
Super Famicom: SMP TEST register is now finally 100% fully emulated [byuu, AWJ]
Game Boy Advance: DMA can run between CPU instruction cycles
Game Boy Advance: added 2-cycle delay between DMA activation and transfers
higan: improved aspect ratio correction accuracy at higher video scaling sizes
higan: overscan masking will now actually crop the underlying video instead of just blanking it
Mega Drive: center video when overscan is disabled
higan: added increment/decrement quick save slot hotkeys
Game Boy Advance: fixed wave RAM nibble ordering (fixes audio in Castlevania, Pocket NES)
higan: added new adaptive windowed mode: resizes the window to the current emulated system's size
higan: added new integral scaling mode: resizes the window to fill as much of the screen as possible
higan: main window is now resizable and will automatically scale contents based on user settings
higan: fixed one-time blinking of the main window on startup caused by focus stealing bug
ruby: fixed major memory leak in Direct3D driver
ruby: added fullscreen exclusive mode to Direct3D driver
Super Famicom: corrected latching behavior of BGnHOFS PPU registers
higan: all windows sans the main viewport can be dismissed with the escape key now
ruby: complete API rewrite; many audio drivers now support device selection
higan: output frequency can now be modified
higan: configuration settings split to individual menu options for faster access to individual pages
ruby: improved WASAPI driver to event-driven model; more compatible in exclusive mode now
libco: fix compilation of sjlj and fiber targets [Screwtape]
ruby: added YV12 and I420 support to X-Video driver
Game Boy: added TAMA emulation (RTC emulation is not working yet) [thanks to endrift for notes]
Game Boy: correct data ordering of MMM01 ROMs (MMM01 ROMs will need to be re-imported into higan)
Game Boy: store MBC2 save RAM as 256-bytes instead of 512-bytes (RAM is 4-bit; not 8-bit with padding)
Game Boy: fixed a bug with RAM serialization in games without a battery
Mega Drive: fix CRAM reads (fixes Sonic Spinball) [hex_usr]
Game Boy: added rumble support to MBC5 games such as Pokemon Pinball
Game Boy: added MBC7 emulation (accelerometer X-axis, EEPROM not working yet) [thanks to endrift for notes]
hiro: macOS compilation fixes and UI improvements [MerryMage, ncbncb]
Game Boy: added MBC6 emulation (no phone link or flash support; timing bugs in game still)
Game Boy: HDMA syncs to other components after each byte transfer now
Game Boy: disabling the LCD completely halts the PPU (fixes onscreen graphical corruption in some games)
Mega Drive: added 6-button Fighting Pad emulation [hex_usr]
68K: TAS sets d7 when EA mode is a direct register (fixes Asterix graphical corruption)
Game Boy: STAT mode is forced to zero when LCD is disabled (fixes Pokemon Pinball)
LR35902: complete rewrite
icarus: high-DPI is not supported on Windows yet; remove setting for consistency with higan window sizes
hiro: added full support for high-DPI displays on macOS [ncbncb]
ARM7TDMI: complete rewrite
Super Famicom: disabled channels during HDMA initialization appear to set DoTransfer flag
V30MZ: code cleanup
Mega Drive: added optional TMSS emulation; disabled by default [hex_usr]
ARM7TDMI: pipeline decode stage caches CPSR.T [MerryMage]
ARM7TDMI: fixed timing of THUMB stack multiple instruction [Cydrak]
higan: detect when ruby drivers crash; disable drivers on next startup to prevent crash loop
Mega Drive: added automatic region detection (favors NTSC-J > NTSC-U > PAL) [hex_usr]
Mega Drive: support 8-bit SRAM
ARM7TDMI: PC should be incremented by 2 when setting CPSR.T via MSR instruction [MerryMage]
ruby: add Windows ASIO driver support (does not work on some systems due to buggy vendor drivers)
higan: default to safe drivers on a new install; due to instability with some optimal drivers