Aira Force 0.9.2 available now!

I am proud to release Aira Force 0.9.2

Highlights include:

• Blitter onedot line mode and fill mode = filled vector graphics
• Add DMA window and improve DMA overlay
• Emulator compatibility improvements
• Find hex bytes
• Fix watchpoints

Thanks to the experts on EAB for their technical support and to all users who are using Aira and providing valuable feedback.

Please find full changelist at bottom of page

Blitter area fill

You may have noticed that several games and many demos looked very wireframe in 0.9.1. This was because two essential features were missing: blitter area fill, and the assocated blitter line onedot mode.

It was actually quite difficult to find games that use bitter line and fill mode. Most 3D Amiga games use software to draw lines and fill e.g. Stunt Car Racer, Archer Maclean's Pool, Hunter, Infestation.

Many demos do use hardware line and fill mode for filled vector graphics, so this is a worthwhile change. 

Other demos use fill mode more subtley, for example, Circumvent by TTE uses blitter fill mode to fill the white and pink sections in this effect.

DMA Window

The new DMA window shows a tree view, with one node per scanline. Next to each scanline is a brief summary of the DMA cycles used.

• Open a scanline to see details of individual bus cycles. 
• Use the context menu to select the cycle in the Video DMA overlay, or view the address in one of the memory views.
• Use the video window tooltip to inspect counters and DMA for a given position

Only one frame of DMA data is stored, so the data in each slot is the most recent use of that slot.

Improved emulator compatibility

Software compatability bugs fixed in this release include:

• Batman - The Movie (blitter bug)
• Sensible Soccer and Sensible World of Soccermain menu corruption (blitter bug)
• New Zealand Story (Denise bitplane delay bug)
• Apidya, Bill's Tomato Game title, Pinball Fantasies intro, Shadow of the Beast (hires bitplane bug)
• Shadow of the Beast, Lionheart and Copper Master (copper wait timing bug)
• Turrican and Turrican II (joystick input bug)
• Hunter (80 cylinder disk head pos bug)
• Copper Master (Angels) (special copper cycle and HAM display window bugs)

Spot the difference: The small gap in the border is caused by not accounting for a special copper DMA cycle that the copper requests then does not use!

Find hex bytes

Thanks to user olaugh for reporting that it was only possible to search memory for strings. Now memory and relocated binary can be searched by hex too.

Changelog

• Implement blitter line onedot mode and area fill mode. 
• Add Find hex bytes option to Find dialog
• Fix Watchpoints UI
• Add DMA Window
•   Shows DMA slot usage (device, address, value etc) by scanline in tree view
•   Context menu for convenient navigation to memory windows, memory visualiser
•     window, disassembly windows, and copper disassembly
•   Context menu option highlight selected slot in video window DMA overlay
• Fix blitter logic when destination channel disabled. Fixes Batman: The Movie
•   loader, Sensible Soccer / Sensible World of Soccer menu corruption and 
•   Gravity-Force 2
• Fix bitplane DMA display data fetch start logic. Fixes Tinyus
• Fix hires bitplane DMA data fetch logic stop condition. Fixes Agony intro, 
•   Apidya HUD, Bill's Tomato Game title, Pinball Fantasies intro, Shadow of the 
•   Beast intro and scrolltexts, and several intros.
• Fix Denise horizontal timing. 2 CCK (DMA cycle) delay between Agnus strobing 
•   Denise and Denise resetting its internal counter to 2. Simplifies BPLCON1
•   delay (scrolling). Fixes New Zealand Story scrolling.
• Fix CPU Window application hang caused by corrupt Exec lists
• Fix JOYTEST register logic. Fixes Turrican and Turrican 2 movement.
• Fix "special" copper DMA slot(s) logic. Fixes Copper Master border.
• Fix copper wait timing. Requires non-bitplane DMA cycle to progress. Fixes
•   Shadow of the Beast title screen and Lionheart.
• Fix HAM mode display window and sprites. Fixes Copper Master HAM effects.
• Improve Amiga Window DMA cycle and DDF information
• Show copper instruction pointer in debugger machine log
• Add "Copy line" context menu option to copper window
• Improve copper disassembly
• Fix copper window COPxLC/PC autofocus widget behaviour
• Highlight changed instruction words in copper window
• Fix video window assert due to invalid VPOS selection
• Improve video window tooltip
• Breakpoint Window double click shows in memory disassembly
• Allow USB controller select/back button to toggle vsync (turbo mode)
• Support up to 83 track disks. Fixes Hunter.
• Add blitter hardware counters for transfer, fill, line and onedot blits
• Bonus: Buggy Boy no longer hangs when you crash. I have no idea what fixed it!