Play! (PS2 emulator) progress report covering latest months (2021)
Took me long enough... but it's out. In this brief resume I'll try to cover everything that happened in the last 3 months on the Play! project, to keep you all up to date with the major implementations and improvements, so let's cut to the chase, here they are:
New option "System Language Selection" added to the "General" menu
With this new option you can tell the game "hey, try to use this language that I've selected here, please!". Similar to the language setting you had on the original console, depending on the language selected there the game will load with that same language (if the game has support for said language, of course), instead of the default language (which for some games could be harder to navigate the menus to even select the language you want to use).
New option "Cap framerate to video refresh rate" added to the menu "General"
This came as a solution to the problem of some games running too faste when there's no other limiting factor (e.g. vsync)
New option "Resize Windows" added to the "Virtual Machine" menu
With this is now easier to resize the window based on the native resolution of the PS2 (note that this is just a faster and easier way to resize the emulator window properly, has nothing to do with the actual game resolution).
New option "Resize Output to Widescreen (16:9)" added to the "Video" menu
Some games have native support for widescreen aspect ratio (16:9), so this option will make the window ratio also fit the new aspect properly (instead of forcing you to resize the window by hand).
Support for the second controller
Self explanatory enough, you're now able to use two controllers. Controller profiles also works for the second controller.
Emu Debugger and Frame Debugger were ported Qt
With those tools ported to Qt, this means that they're available for all platforms where Qt is also supported (making the life of developers much easier while trying to debug some emulation or rendering issue under any platform they work with).
Initial implementation of the Vulkan backend for both Android and iOS
Being supported for the first time on both platforms, this arrives as an alternative to the OpenGL ES/OpenGL. Don't expect any miracles: this is just another API, with advantages to bring some solutions and new issues that don't exist on OpenGL, so some games can behave better while some much worse. Testing is always encouraged ;)
CHD support added
No HD space for all your games? This is the solution! CHD is a very nice format that preserves your game integrity, keeps the file smaller and can also be used in real time by the emulator without being previously extracted. All this at the price of almost nothing (there's a very very small overhead from the information being read from the file on the CPU, but this is so small most users shouldn't notice any difference when compared to running your ISO file directly).
Compatibility improvements
We had a ton of improvements, but I'll be listing here only what I was able to verify as fully playable (fully playable = game has not gamebreaking issues), so this doesn't include any new in-games or intro status that changed (all those can be verified on the compatibility tracker https://github.com/jpd002/Play-Compatibility/issues)
Serious Sam: Next Encounter
Rez
Yakuza Fury
Silent Scope 3
PopCap Hits! Vol 1
Radirgy Precious
Hudson Selection Vol. 4: Takahashi Meijin no Boukenjima
Bujingai: The Forsaken City
Twin Caliber
Disney/Pixar Finding Nemo
Project Arms
Pac-Man World Rally
Chou Jikuu Yousai Macross
Rogue Hearts Dungeon
Kaido Racer
Kaido Racer 2
Pipe Mania
Detonator
Melty Blood: Actress Again
London Racer II
London Racer: Police Madness
London Racer: World Challenge
Blood+: Souyoku no Battle Rondo
DoDonPachi Dai-Ou-Jou
Fruit Fall
School Days L×H
If you read this entire report, please consider supporting me on Patreon so I can still make new ones in the future and if you have to choose, please support the actual developer (I only make the reports, manage the tracker and test the games, the actual development is made by Jean) here https://www.patreon.com/jpd002