Hey everyone!
We've got a new release exactly one month after the previous one, and this one is all about finishing the CRT-fication of Update All that started in 2.5.
This release focuses mostly on making the CRT experience feel complete, especially for NTSC users, but there are a couple of extra additions in here too.
Overscan
The feature doing the heaviest lifting here is the new Overscan setting. Yes, the one on JJ Haggar’s screen above this post. It makes Update All keep text inside the visible area of the screen, so nothing important gets pushed out of view. This is especially useful on CRTs, but it can also be very handy on flat screens too.
There are five levels available: None (0%), Low (5%), Medium (10%), High (15%), and Max (20%). I set the default to Medium, after analyzing the feedback I've received from the testers (Thank you!).
To change it, open the Settings Screen by pressing up, then head into System Options.
Other UI tweaks were necessary to accommodate this change, since it requires more scrolling elements when the Overscan is set to Max in small resolutions.
NTSC Support
For NTSC users, we’ve got good news too. I’ve received some very helpful feedback from the community while testing this release on NTSC equipment. Since I don’t own any NTSC gear myself and live in PAL-land, that feedback made it possible to choose a good default Overscan setting and also recommend solid video modes for NTSC users.
If you have an NTSC CRT and want to run Update All on it, you’ll need to manually edit your MiSTer.ini file, or create it if it doesn’t exist yet, and add one of these sections at the bottom. If a [Menu] section already exists, replace it instead.
If you’d like bigger text:
[Menu]vga_scaler=1video_mode=384,16,37,63,224,10,3,24,7830
If you’d like smaller, less wide text:
[Menu]vga_scaler=1video_mode=640,30,60,70,240,4,4,14,12587
Then boot the MiSTer and run Update All normally. If the text still looks too big, don’t worry. Go to Update All’s Settings Screen, open System Options, and adjust the Overscan setting until the preview borders are barely visible. Anything inside those borders is the safe area where text will be printed.
It’s important to note that once you add this [Menu] section to your MiSTer.ini, you won’t be able to use the MiSTer menus on a flat screen while you are outside a core. That means you’ll need to rely on your CRT (or Zaparoo, Remote, etc) to launch a core first. After that, the core itself should display correctly on both the CRT and the flat screen at the same time, if that’s your setup.
I also have to admit that I’m not very happy with this manual MiSTer.ini step. That’s why I’ve added a firmware-side change that should let us handle this more comfortably in the future. It will even make it easy to adjust the screen positioning! Once there’s a new firmware release including it (maybe a couple of months?), I’ll add a video mode selector to Update All and make this much smoother.
So once again, thank you to everyone who helped test this on NTSC equipment. Your feedback made a real difference here.
What about PAL users?
I'm a PAL user myself, so I can tell you we have it a bit better. Those resolutions above also work in many PAL TVs. But if you want something native, try these two options:
If you’d like bigger text:
[Menu]vga_scaler=1video_mode=320,13,31,52,288,4,3,18,6510
If you’d like smaller, less wide text:
[Menu]vga_scaler=1video_mode=640,30,60,70,288,6,4,14,12587
Dual RAM Console Cores DB
This release also adds a new DB: the Dual RAM Console Cores DB, maintained by TheJesusFish (kudos for maintaining it!).
This DB includes the Dual RAM versions of PSX, Saturn, and Jaguar for now, so users with two SDRAM sticks can use them through Update All.
I do want to warn you that these cores are not part of the official distribution, and they may introduce their own unique issues, even if in some cases they can also work better. If you have questions about them, please ask in the official MiSTer Discord server.
Monochrome UI
A Reddit user had a really good idea: making a high-contrast UI available to everyone, even if they’re not patrons. So I went ahead and added that option to System Options.
From now on, all users can choose between the standard theme and the monochrome UI, also known as the Mono theme, without needing Patreon.
And since I was already touching that part of the code, I also took the chance to improve the Log Viewer HUD for all themes. I hope you like the new look there.
Closing Up
Before I go, one small fix worth mentioning: I fixed a bug in the Arcade Organizer that was preventing some files from being created when they had the ":" in their path name.
And on a different note, the new login system was introduced back in 2.4, but it became mandatory a week ago. To make that transition a bit easier for new patrons, I’m currently running a 50% off first-month offer until the end of the weekend. If you were thinking about joining, now’s a pretty good time. And as always, huge thanks to everyone already supporting the project.
That’s it for this release. As usual, you’ll find many more changes in the CHANGELOG.
See you in the next update!