clownmdemu and clownassembler released

Sorry for the drought of blog posts lately: I’ve been busy with work and a lot of other IRL stuff. Still, if there’s one thing I can give an update on, it’s that two of my projects have finally seen a release: clownmdemu and clownassembler have been released on Sonic Retro, Sonic Stuff Research Group,

clownmdemu – Z80 Support

With the addition of FM support, my Mega Drive emulator came much closer to being able to provide a complete experience for certain games such as Sonic 1. Unfortunately, there was still one major missing feature: drums, voice clips, and sometime even all audio entirely, were inaudible. What gives? Sonic 1 plays most of its

clownmdemu – FM Audio Emulation

It finally happened! With university over, I decided to tackle what is perhaps my greatest challenge yet in writing this emulator: emulating the YM2612. The YM2612 is the Mega Drive’s primary audio chip. Apparently, it is a cost-effective, stripped-down version of the YM2608: while the YM2608 featured FM, SSG, Rhythm, and ADPCM modules, the YM2612

The Mega Drive’s Interlaced Video Output

Today, I looked into adding support for the Mega Drive’s interlaced video output to my emulator. It didn’t go how I planned, and I eventually realised that it was worthless to pursue. Still, I think this makes for a fun story. First, I should probably go over the basics of how old CRT TVs would

Mega Drive Emulator Update: Debug Menus

It looks like I wanted to get one more thing done before the project enters hibernation again. While not exactly an accuracy-focussed emulator, I do fancy the idea of making clownmdemu into a useful developer tool. After all, I do make hacks and homebrew for the Mega Drive occasionally. For now, it features a bunch

Progress on My Mega Drive Emulator – clownmdemu

My emulator has recently seen some work, but development seems to be on the verge of slowing down again, so I think now is a good time to post a write-up here. So, what’s new in clownmdemu? Holy Moly, an Actual GUI Yes, your eyes aren’t deceiving you: I’ve actually made a GUI. I know

Even More Mega Drive Emulator Making

It happened a lot sooner than I was expecting, but here it is – full Sonic 2 support: Interlace Mode 2 Support Adding support for Interlace Mode 2 means that Sonic 2’s two player mode works now. This is a very weird feature: remember how I said that the Mega Drive’s display is made up

More Mega Drive Emulator Making

So I figured I’d give an update on the Mega Drive emulator: As you can see, it’s come a long way since the last blog post: support for rendering sprites has been added, the colours are richer, and the visual errors have been corrected. At the time, this broken title screen was really the best

Making a Mega Drive Emulator

So, I was a little bored and wanted a new project to sink my teeth into. With university starting up again soon, I decided to see if I could make a prototype Mega Drive emulator in a week. So, how’d I do? Well, I came pretty close: I started it on the 20th, and finally