The guys of the NeoGeo Emulator for PSP has just released an updated beta for the application. Now, you can get the NEOGEO Emulator for PSP beta 2, roughly nine days after releasing the first Beta for this new emulator that they are working on.

Although this emulator is still a work in progress or a diamond in the rough, surely the emulator guys are busy fixing up bugs and amping their features so as to give a really great gaming experience to the future users of this homebrew emulator. So your constructive observations, criticisms, and suggestions would be a great deal of help. For now, let's go over the changelog which was tirelessly translated by QJ's very own, Jeff C.


Changelog for NEOGEO Emulator for PSP beta 2:
- Games that were unable to start before can now be started with sound turned off. The ROM converter is no longer needed. Yet, the game is still far from playable due to the slow speed. Now, I'm not planning to make these games playable with sound on at all.
- With the above change, the ROM Converter is updated. Encrypted ROMs are required to be converted. Small-sized games are also supported by the converter. Due to the problem that the file selection dialog doesn't show up in Windows 9X, I've moved to use the VC6 compiler. Moreover, you can now drag & drop zip files onto romcnv.exe to get it converted.
- Bugs in CZ80 confirmed, so I changed to MAME Z80. I will use CZ80 again once it's fixed.
- Timer processing changed. With this change, Cross Swords and some other games that suffered major framerate drop is now back to normal.
- Sound processing changed, and the problem that the BGM was played slower than it should be is now fixed. There may be cases that the tempo slows down, but it is limited to the level that it doesn't interfere with the gameplay. Due to the lack of time, a fix from the bottom will be done later.
- The saving format of SRAM is now the same with MAME. With this change, old files are all deleted. Also, if the BIOS is changed, the SRAM files will all be deleted too.
- Functions used for sound debug is now revamped into a sound test function. However, since this is a very simple function, you can do nothing more than selecting a BGM and play. You can select the game you want in the file browser, then press Square button to proceed.
Circle: Play the selected track number
Cross: Stop the current playing track
Triangle: Exit sound test
L Trigger: Change the PSP clock (default 333MHz)
R Trigger: Show help inf

The music folder added in this version contains the list for music playback. The English version of the list is in the music/en folder.
If a Japanese list is present, it will be used by default.
If no list can be found, music/default.lst will be used by default.
Yet, due to the bugs left in the sound-related code, it is possible that even when the list is present, the music may still not be played properly, or even completely not playable due to emulation bugs.
This function is not meant for playing music from all the games, you need to make your own list in some cases. The format is shown below:

$title: put the game name displayed in the title bar.
$samplerate: specify the playback rate. Please put one of the 11025, 22050, 44100 in. All the enclosed lists are now 22050.
$pre: put the bank number (2 digits Hex) before the playback command. Most of the games can just use the number "07".
$stop: put the code for stopping the track playback. Though most of the games uses "03" as the reset code, I suggest using the stop code "20" instead.
$start: the statement of the start of the track list.
$end: the statement of the end of the track list.

The track list should be added between the $start and $end tag. Please avoid putting redundant returns and comments there. In some cases it can freeze the whole program.
The format is, after the 2-digit Hex code, add the track number after a half-width space.

e.g.)
$title=Metal Slug
$samplerate=22050
$pre=00
$stop=03
$start
02 Neo Geo Logo
2b The Military System
blah, blah, blah...
2c Nazca Logo
$end

Yet, the added track lists are mostly created from the lists of MAME E2J's Bridge M1.

Changelog beta2 bugfix1:
- Fixed the problem that some games cannot detect the completion of the BIOS initialization, thus leading the graphic refreshing stopped.

Changelog beta2 bugfix2:
- With the fix above, fixed the graphic refreshing problem with debug BIOS and Asia BIOS.