Genesis Plus EX v3.2.0

This update adds a Scaling Filter (Nearest, Sharp Nearest, Bilinear, Sharp Bilinear, Bicubic), region flags in the game list, light gun borders and crosshairs, Variable Refresh Rate, Color Correction, headphone crossfeed, three new accuracy options (Enhanced Per-Tile Vertical Scroll, System Lock-Ups, CPU Speed), Hide All Bars, a High Contrast mode, a Factory Reset button and a System language. The whole program's text (the User Guide and the file windows too) is translatable, with right-to-left languages and a translated User Guide that keeps its sections.

Download

SHA-256 of the program files (to check a download):

Unzip it anywhere you can write to and run the program; keep the Plugins folder next to it.

What's New

Languages

• Template.pot now holds all of the program's text: the long lines of the User Guide, the Settings rows of the guide (made from the names and tips of the options, so they follow the translation of the Settings window), and the titles and kinds of file of the open and save windows, which are translated now.
• Language > System (first in Options > Language and in Settings): uses the language file of the Languages folder that is for the language of Windows (its header says Language: fr, or the file is named fr.po), English when there is none.
• Right-to-left languages (Language-Direction: rtl in the header of the .po file): windows, dialogs, message boxes, menus, toolbar, search bar and status bar are mirrored. The game picture and the game list are not flipped; the debugger tools stay left to right.
• The User Guide of a translated language splits into its sections and shows its items in any script: titles and items are marked while the text is English, so a title without capital letters or a full-width colon no longer breaks the page.
• A translation whose %s, %d, %lu ... markers differ from the English text is not used (the program could crash or show garbage when it filled in the value); the text stays English. The new tools/check_po.py lists these (and differing line ends, tabs and & keys) for translators.

Picture

• Scaling Filter (Video menu, below Render Filter, and Settings > Video) replaces the Smooth Scaling check box: Nearest, Sharp Nearest (a whole multiple with sharp pixels first, then smoothed only for the rest: crisp, even pixels without the borders of Integer Scaling), Bilinear (what Smooth Scaling was), Sharp Bilinear (Bilinear with a narrow blend at the seams on a smooth curve, about half a source pixel: much less blur) and Bicubic (Catmull-Rom). Sharp Bilinear and Bicubic are pixel shaders with Direct3D 9 and 11; the classic renderer does Sharp Bilinear on the processor and has no Bicubic, which is grayed there. The whole Scaling Filter is grayed while a Direct3D 11 shader runs (the shader scales the picture itself, so the filter did nothing); your choice is kept and comes back when the shader is off. A saved Smooth Scaling setting becomes Bilinear.
• The render filters Sharp 4x, Sharp Bilinear 2x-6x, Lanczos, Catmull-Rom, Mitchell and B-Spline (2x-6x) and CRT Geom 4x (CRT Geom 3x stays) are removed: they only resized the picture, on the processor, which could make the program and its windows sluggish. Scaling Filter (Sharp Nearest, Sharp Bilinear, Bicubic) does that on the graphics card. A saved render filter that is gone is simply off.
• Video > Variable Refresh Rate and a check box under VSync in Settings > Video (G-Sync, FreeSync, Adaptive-Sync), for the Direct3D 11 renderer: each frame is shown the moment it is ready and the display follows the game's own rate, so there is no tearing and no frame shown twice or skipped. It needs Windows 10 (version 1607 or later), a driver that supports it and variable refresh turned on in Windows or the driver; it takes the place of VSync while it is in use. Off by default; when the PC cannot do it, the program says so and keeps the normal picture.
• Video > Visual Effects > Color Correction (also Settings > Video; Off, Light, Full): every console gets the colors of a handheld LCD screen (paler, a little dull, the colors bleeding into each other, as on the Game Gear) instead of the raw ones. Hue, Saturation and the other Picture Adjustments still apply on top.

Light Guns

• Settings > Input > Light Gun > Light Gun Border: while a light gun is plugged in, a white frame of 2, 4, 6 or 8% of the window's height is drawn round a smaller picture, for guns that find the screen with a camera, such as the Sinden Lightgun. Off by default; the aim is measured on the picture inside the frame.
• A shot with the pointer on the black bars or on the frame is now a shot off the screen (it was taken as a shot at the edge of the picture), which games such as Lethal Enforcers use to reload.
• Crosshair Shape, Color and Size (Settings > Input > Light Gun): the Windows cross or one of eight shapes (plus, plus with a gap, dot, circle with a dot, circle with ticks, crosshair target, diamond, diamond with a dot), in white, red, green, yellow, cyan or black with an outline of the opposite brightness, in four sizes.

Game List

• Settings > General > Region Flags (on by default): a small flag for each region of a game (from the file name tags such as (USA), (Japan, Europe)), in the Region column of the list instead of the region text and in the bottom left corner of each grid cover. A game without a region tag gets a flag with a question mark in the list.

Controllers and Sound

• Settings > Input > Stick Directions: how the left stick makes the D-pad's diagonals. Classic (as before) compares each direction with the deadzone on its own; Wide Straight Zones, Even Eight Directions and Wide Diagonal Zones use the angle of the push, with the deadzone as the distance only.
• DAC Volume (Audio > Levels and Latency, 0% to 150%) and Mute DAC Sound (Audio > Mute, Settings > Audio, Ctrl+D): the DAC is the sample channel of the Genesis FM chip, which plays the drums, voices and effects a game has recorded; its level can now be set or silenced on its own. Genesis, Mega CD and Pico games (not the Master System, which has no DAC, nor 32X games).
• Audio Levels dialog rearranged: the sliders are in two frames, Volumes (Master, FM, PSG, DAC, PWM, CD Audio, Mega CD PCM) and Audio Filter, in one column with the label beside each slider, a tick mark at 100%, and the percentages in gray. The frames use the same colors as Settings, also in dark mode.
• Settings > Audio > Headphone Crossfeed (Light, Medium, Strong): a little of each ear's sound, with the highs taken off, goes into the other ear.
• Settings > Options > Accuracy has three new options of the Genesis Plus GX core: Enhanced Per-Tile Vertical Scroll (with its Vertical Scroll Limit, 2 to 16), System Lock-Ups (on by default; turn off only for a few demos and homebrew) and CPU Speed (50% to 400% for the main 68000 and the Mega CD sub-CPU, always 100% during netplay).

Window and Theme

• View > Toolbars > Hide All Bars (Ctrl+H): while a game runs (in a window or fullscreen), the menu bar, toolbar and status bar go away, so the window shows the game only; in fullscreen the menu bar and toolbar also stay away when the mouse touches the top edge. Not saved; the game list keeps its bars.
• Settings > General > High Contrast Mode (off by default): while Windows is in a high-contrast mode the program uses the Light theme and the Classic style, so the windows take the colors Windows chose; your own choice comes back afterwards.
• Settings > Video > Lock Window Shape When Resizing (on by default): switch it off to drag the game window to any shape (the picture is still drawn in its right shape, with bars).
• Window Size and the console: a game's window is the size Window Size asks for, whatever the console: a Game Gear, Master System or SG-1000 game gets the same window as a Mega Drive one (its smaller picture fits inside, with bars where the shape differs), and a game that starts no longer takes its window size from the game that ran before it. A window you dragged to a size is still kept. A game's window is also no longer widened to the toolbar when the size you chose is narrower (the toolbar takes more rows instead): 1x of a Mega Drive game came out as 1.5x.
• Aspect Ratio and the window size: changing Aspect Ratio keeps a window you dragged to a size; before, the window went back to the size Window Size asks for.

Small Changes

• Settings > Options > Troubleshooting > Factory Reset... deletes the settings file (both the one beside the program and the one in %LOCALAPPDATA%\Genesis Plus EX, when each exists) and restarts the program as a new copy would: all settings, controls, hotkeys, picture adjustments, audio levels, folders, ROM directories, favorites and the recent and played lists go back to the defaults. Games, saves, states, covers, cheats and saved controller profiles are not touched.
• Menu open, game speed: while a menu is open, and when the menu bar is clicked again and again, the game ran faster than normal (120% or more): the sound queue was emptied at every click and the game ran extra frames to fill it, and a menu was run two steps for every timer tick. Both are fixed: the queue is kept, and the game is held to its normal speed by the clock.
• Size All Columns to Fit (right-click a column title) gives the same widths the first time as the next, and the Region column fits its flags. Before, the last column filled the rest of the list.
• A language file can no longer change what the program writes to its settings file: Template.pot no longer lists the line formats of the history (%lu|), of the controls profiles (turbo_speed=%d) or of the cheat files as text, and the program never looks such a format up. A language that translated it (the test language did) made the Recently Played list unreadable after a restart.
• Restarting the program (after choosing a language, or the interface size) no longer risks an empty Recently Played list: the new copy waits for the closing one to finish writing the settings file, and keeps using the same settings file when --config was used.

Notes

• Windows 7 or later.
• 32X games need the Plugins folder; Mega CD games need your own BIOS files in BIOS/.