News Roundup: October 12 - December 5

mossy_11 on Monday, 05 December 2011. Posted in News

It's two months for the price of one, since we missed the roundup last month.

Aleph One, the open-source continuation of Bungie's Marathon 2 engine, has reached its 1.0 milestone after 12 years in development. For those unfamiliar with the project, Aleph One allows all three games in the Marathon trilogy (which are now freeware) to be played on modern systems, with OpenGL shader support, mouse-look, gamepad support, mod support, and Internet co-op and multiplayer. The new version fixes lots of bugs, offers a plethora of Lua updates, adds HD graphics to Marathon 2, and more. Get it, and the Marathon games, from the Aleph One homepage.

Legacy computer emulator OpenEmulator has reached version 1.0.1. The Apple I emulation is now working. The authors claim to have the first emulator that features a fully functional Apple Cassette Interface Card and CFFA1 expansion card emulation. Other new features include an audio recorder and a selection of several virtual monitors. Check it out on the official OpenEmulator website.

ScummVM is celebrating ten years of existence with a new release. Version 1.4.0 adds support for Lands of Lore: The Throne of Chaos, Blue's Birthday Adventure, and Ringworld: Revenge of the Patriarch, along with the Amiga version of Conquests of the Longbow. Notable new features include PC speaker support for SCUMM v5 games, better handling of digital/synthesized sound effects in SCI, and out-of-the-box support for building with MacPorts. See the Release Notes for the full list, or head over to the ScummVM homepage.

Mini vMac author Paul C. Pratt is now offering a Custom Variations service for custom-made, sponsored versions of Mini vMac. If you want to support the development of classic Macintosh emulation, this is currently the best option.

Continue reading for more emulation updates...

After four release candidates, open-source machine emulator and virtualiser QEMU has reached version 1.0. Check out the changelog here, or head over to the QEMU wiki for more information and download links.

In a curious trend, Apple I emulator Pom1 has also reached 1.0.0. There's not currently any Mac build available, though, so you'll have to build from source or try the Windows version if you want to check it out. More details at the Pom1 website.

Boxer, a DOSBox-powered DOS emulator, has reached version 1.2. New features include better importing of titles purchased through Good Old Games, easier CD swapping for multi-CD games, and support for both MT-32 ROMs and real MT-32 sound systems. See here for the release notes, or download it from the Boxer website.

Open-source IA-32 (x86) emulator Bochs has been updated to version 2.5. Highlights from a lengthy change list include added support for new x86 ISA extensions and AMD SSE4A/XOP/FMA4/TBM instruction sets, in addition to PCI ROM support for cirrus and pcivga. Get it from the official Bochs website.

Atari Jaguar emulator Virtual Jaguar was updated twice in October. The biggest change is a GUI switch from SDL to Qt. Other changes include usability and compatibility improvements, along with detection code for finding relevant files inside ZIP archives. A full list of changes is included with the emulator, which you can grab from the Virtual Jaguar homepage.

Oricutron, an emulator for the Oric series of computers, has been updated to version 0.8. Changes include several bugfixes, clipboard support, and a number of UI improvements. See the official Orictron website for a complete list and download links.

Gambatte, an accuracy-focused Game Boy Color emulator, has been updated to version 0.5.0-wip2. Highlights from the changelog include Game Genie and Game Shark support, .gz file support, and a few OS X bugfixes. Head over to the Gambatte Sourceforge page for more details and a download.

The JPCSP team has released more svn snapshots. JPCSP is a Java-based Sony PSP emulator. The latest build (2373) offers some speed improvements and threading fixes. Get it from the JPCSP website.

The development releases of Nintendo Wii and Gamecube emulator Dolphin have slowed down, but there have still been several in the past couple of months. Head over to the Dolphin download page to grab the latest version, and to see what's new, or hit up the Dolphin homepage for more information about the emulator.

Arcade emulator MAME, and its Mac-specific port, SDLMAME, has been updated to version 0.144u1. See here for the change log. As usual, you can grab the source direct from the official MAME website, or get a precompiled binary at the SDLMAME website.

SpeedofMac is still plugging away at compiling PCSX Reloaded change sets. Recent additions include netplay support and a new memory card manager. Get it from the SpeedofMac PCSX Reloaded page, or check out the official PCSX Reloaded website.

wxMupen64Plus 0.2 was released in late October. Improvements were made to fullscreen mode, gamepad/keyboard support, and stability. Grab it from SpeedofMac's website.

SpeedofMac has also provided a build of Nintendo Famicom emulator FCEUX's latest source (as of October 19). Get it here.

QMC2, the MAME / MESS Catalog / Launcher II successor project to QMamecat (a MAME GUI front-end for UNIX), has been updated to 0.34. This new version brings it back in sync with MAME and MESS versions 0.144. Changes and additions include the addition of a driver status column to all views and a file chooser dialog for MESS device configuration, customisable columns in all views, support for ICO format icons, and support for YouTube's new video streaming format. You can see the full list here. Get it from the official QMC2 website.

NekoLauncher Mednafen, a launcher app for multi-system emulator Mednafen, has been updated to version 0.9.18-WIP. Get it here.

Open-source x86 and AMD64/Intel64 virtualisation tool VirtualBox continues its monthly tradition of maintenance releases. See here for a list of changes.

CrossOver Games has been updated to version 10.2.0. This release fixes a handful of game-specific bugs relating to Rift, Plants vs. Zombies, StarCraft 2, and Perfect World. See the change log here.

CrossOver was also updated in November. The 10.2.0 release fixes a WinBiz bug and makes improvements to Accuterm. You can see the change log here.


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