Exodus 2.1 is now available in the downloads area. Note that you'll need to install the Visual C++ 2017 x64 runtime too if you don't have it, which is available there too. There's quite an impressive list of bugfixes in this release. Job EX-303 in particular fixes a crash that could occur if you had a joystick or gamepad connected, which affected a fair number of people in the previous release. There's also pretty good performance improvements. I measure around a 30% speed improvement overall from Exodus 2.0.1, which is pretty substantial. I've made the VDP plane viewer a but nicer by making the window resizable and making the plane region zoomable, which is nice, but I'm particularly proud of this little nugget:

It's a pixel info dialog you can turn on via "Debug->Mega Drive->VDP->Debug Settings". Just float your cursor over any pixel, and it'll tell you exactly what caused it to appear there. This plays nice with layer removal, so you can peel off a layer at a time and see what's behind it if you want to, and where that pixel came from. It even works for CRAM writes during active scan. Being able to reverse the VDP render pipeline like this was relatively easy in Exodus because of how much info the VDP core holds on to, but it still took a bit of work to pull this off. Give it a spin and let me know what you think. It's great for diagnosing those mystery single line or pixel errors you can get while making something.

Here's the full list of user-facing changes in this release:

Enhancements:

• EX-301 - Created the new VDP pixel popup info window
• EX-316 - Upgraded projects to target VS2017
• EX-318 - Fixed DPI issues, and made VDP plane viewer resizable and zoomable
• EX-326 - Performance improvements
• EX-339 - Added support for Gens KMod internal debug features on undefined VDP registers
• EX-334 - Added support for stepping over "counted loop" opcodes such as DBRA
• EX-336 - Added "run to" option in disassembly window, and improved controls and hotkeys.
• EX-342 - Saved the last used ROM directory path to the system preferences

Bug fixes:

• EX-295 - Fixed incorrect clearing of Z80 registers on a reset
• EX-296 - Fixed the 32-bit build target
• EX-297 - Fixed the naming of M68000 registers in the generic register window
• EX-298 - Fixed a deadlock and several other issues with the VDP plane viewer
• EX-299 - Made more room for the FPS counter in the VDP Image status bar
• EX-302 - Fixed an error with the sample rate for YM2612 and PSG audio log files
• EX-303 - Fixed an access violation in the joystick access code that occurred if the connected joysticks didn't have consecutive ID numbers starting from 0
• EX-304 - Fixed the title of the system settings window
• EX-312 - Fixed disposal of event handles in AudioStream library
• EX-313 - Fixed bug in M68000 ABCD opcode
• EX-314 - Fixed active disassembly end location appearing as zero on startup
• EX-322 - Incorporated remaining fixes identified by Francis during GCC compilation work
• EX-323 - Fixed M68000 LINK opcode disassembly issue identified by ryanfaescotland
• EX-325 - Fixed excessive VDP rollbacks and intermittent deadlocks
• EX-327 - Fixed main window appearing at incorrect size on startup when using saved layout
• EX-328 - Fixed identified system deadlock case
• EX-271 - Worked around redraw issues with lockable register edit boxes when docked
• EX-331 - Fixed access violation when generating savestate in S315_5313::GetScreenshot
• EX-332 - Fixed threading issue when removing breakpoints
• EX-307 - Fixed the display of sprite pixels in palette column 15 when shadow/highlight mode is active
• EX-333 - Fixed disassembly display in trace log
• EX-337 - Fixed identified threading issues with system execution
• EX-338 - Fixed DPI issue with dashboard drop targets
• EX-341 - Fixed BCD flag errors in M68000 core based on new research

After a long hiatus (over 3 years!), I'm finally returning to give this project some love. At the end of the day, this is just a hobby, and it has to move aside when real life issues require more of my time. Although I can't promise that won't happen again in the future, circumstances have changed, and I do find myself with the time to work on this project again. At this stage I believe this will continue to be the case, and I'll be able to consistently move this emulator forward.

I'm keeping things low key for now, but I'll be putting out a new release very soon, possibly in less than 24 hours. This release will include performance and usability enhancements, a few new features, and various assorted bugfixes. This is mainly a housekeeping release, to clear the decks for bigger work to come.

I've been pondering what I should be focusing on for new development over the last few days, and I feel to stay true to the goals of this project, that has to be accuracy. Although there are a lot of new cool features and enhancements I want to build, Exodus currently falls well short of where it should be in terms of accuracy, and this is primarily down to a lack of sub-opcode level external bus timing accuracy in the 68000 core. While no other Mega Drive emulator does this correctly either, they bend the timings of other system events to work around this limitation and make mainstream games run. I have deliberately avoided doing that in Exodus, and as a result there are numerous games I know of that don't function correctly as a result. This is where I'll be focusing the next development stages, aiming to get 100% cycle accurate M68000 and VDP interaction as a priority. You need to be able to measure accuracy though, so this process will involve hardware testing, and producing test ROMs. By the end of this process, I'll deliver some ROMs which can act as a regression test and a measuring stick, to compare timing accuracy between emulators and the real hardware. I already know roughly how it's going to work, and it's going to be pretty well impossible to bodge, so it'll be interesting to see the results. If you thought OverDrive 2 was brutal on emulators, just wait for this one.....

I'm pretty happy with the release of Exodus 2.0 overall, but as expected with only me testing the build prior to release, there were a few bugs in some areas I hadn't tested for awhile. There have been enough issues fixed to justify a patch release, so Exodus 2.0.1 is now available for download! Considering it was 2 years between the first two releases, I think 18 hours between these last two is a bit of an improvement. :)

Enhancements:

• EX-291 - Improved default workspace loading to restore the main window size and maximized state before the main window appears, removed the maximized state as the default state, and changed the "Mega Drive Clean" workspace to not be maximized.

Bug fixes:

• EX-289 - Fixed an error in the Mega Drive ROM loader which prevented games that used SRAM from loading
• EX-290 - Fixed a bug in the way embedded ROM file selection was saved which prevented saved systems with an embedded ROM specified from loading
• EX-292 - Fixed a race condition in the ViewManager which intermittently caused two "Image" windows to appear on startup
• EX-293 - Fixed several issues with device key mapping which prevented new key assignments being made

Exodus 2.0 has now been released! You can download the new version now on the current releases page. I'm dedicating this release to my beautiful wife Judi, and my two boisterous little boys Justin and Aiden.

As promised, Exodus is now also open source. Check out the Source Code section for instructions on how to obtain and compile the source, and information on how you can contribute code changes to the project.