Kega Fusion Mini-Manual ----------------------- Need help? See the bottom of this file. What is Fusion ? ---------------- Fusion: * Emulates the Sega SG-1000, SC-3000, Master System, and GameGear with a high degree of accuracy. * Emulates the Sega MegaDrive/Genesis more accurately than any other emulator. * Emulates the Sega MegaCD/SegaCD more accurately than any other emulator. * Emulates the Sega 32X more accurately than any other emulator. * Emulates the Sega CD+32X together, no other emulator can do this. * Has many other interesting features. Fusion is written mainly in hand optimised x86 ASM, with small parts (Windows interface, DirectX interface, File Handling) written in C. All code is written by me - Steve Snake. Fusion requires DirectX 7.0 or above to operate, and your desktop must be set to either 16-Bit (HI-COLOR) or 32-Bit (TRUE-COLOR). A modern graphics card is recommended, however a fallback compatibility mode is included if you have an older card, or experience speed issues or other problems. This will kick in automatically if needed, but can be forced by editing the INI file value for "ForceCompatibleGFX" to 1 should your performance suffer. You could also try settings of either 0 or 1 for "CompatibleGFXOpt" to see which works fastest on your hardware. Note however that this mode is no longer supported, is somewhat slower, has less features, and requires the desktop to be in 16-Bit (HI-COLOR) Mode. Under Win9x/WinME, it requires an ASPI manager in order to access CD-ROM drives. Under Win2k/WinXP it will attempt to use IOCTL instead, but should you encounter problems with this you can edit the INI file value for "ForceASPI" to 1, and install ASPI anyway. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Using Fusion - the basics --------------------------------------------------------------------------- The basic operation of Fusion should be fairly self-explanatory, so until a proper manual exists, here is some basic information on using it. Some more detail, and some "special features" are explained at the end of this file. FILE menu --------- Load MasterSystem ROM - Load a MasterSystem/SG-1000/SC-3000 ROM Load GameGear ROM - Load a GameGear ROM Load Genesis/32X ROM - Load a Genesis or 32X ROM Load SegaCD Image - Load a SegaCD CUE, ISO or BIN Image File Boot SegaCD - Boot SegaCD from a real CD in your drive Power On/Hard Reset - Power On or Hard Reset current console Power Off - Power off the current console Soft Reset - Soft Reset the current console Game Genie/PAR - Enter/Edit/Toggle/Find Game Genie or PAR codes Netplay - Join/Start/Exit a Netplay game Load State As - Load a specified State File Save State As - Save to a specified State File Load State/Save State - Load or Save to one of 10 State Slots Change State Slot - Select State Slot for Load/Save Save Screenshot - Save Screenshot in TGA or BMP format Load RAM Cart - Load a SegaCD RAM Cartridge Create New RAM Cart - Create and Load a new SegaCD RAM Cartridge File History - List or load up to 16 recently used files Clear File History - Clears the above list Exit - Exits Fusion COUNTRY menu ------------ Select USA/JAP/EUR modes, or Auto Detect. Auto Detect may not work for all games because of incorrect data in the ROM header. You can also select the preferred order of country detection, for games that work in more than one region. VIDEO menu ---------- From here you can select (seperately) the Window size (for Windowed Mode) and the Resolution (for FullScreen Mode). The options available will depend on your system. "Fixed Aspect (Fit)" will attempt to fit the picture to the selected resolution without altering the aspect ratio, assuming square pixels. This means if you have, for example, a TFT display of 1280x1024, the image will be displayed centered at 1280x960. But if you have a widescreen TFT display of 1280x768, the image will be displayed centered at 960x720 (the closest to the original 4:3 aspect ratio.) "Fixed Aspect (Zoom)" does kinda the opposite of above. Rather than trying to fit all the picture, it instead tries to fill as much of the screen as possible, again without altering the aspect ratio, assuming square pixels. This means if you have, for example, a widescreen TFT display of 1280x768, the image will be displayed centered at 1280x960 - with 96 pixels at the top and bottom being cut off. It's similar to the 'Zoom' mode found on widescreen TVs. If both Fixed Aspect options are turned off, the image will just be scaled to fill the whole screen. The Brighten option simply brightens the display, to take care of the differences in brightness between a CRT TV and a PC monitor. The rest of the options are fairly self explanatory. You can toggle FullScreen or Windowed mode, enable or disable VSync, and select the render mode. Render Plugins are available seperately and should be placed either in the same folder as the Fusion.exe, or in their own folder named Plugins. Please note that VSync in Windowed mode may be quite slow. This is because the only way to do VSync in windowed mode is to physically sit there and wait until the VSync happens. Obviously that can be a huge waste of CPU time, especially if, at the point you start waiting, you've only just missed the last VSync... SOUND menu ---------- From here you can enable/disable sound emulation, and choose your desired samplerate. It is recommended that, if your PC is fast enough, you select "SuperHQ" mode. The soundchips in each console are emulated much more accurately in this mode, and sound very close to the real thing. The samplerate will also be fixed to 44100Hz when you select this mode. The OVERDRIVE option doubles the volume of sound output, making it sound closer in volume to most other emulators using the MAME sound core. However doing this means that the YM2612, and possibly other chips, are slightly distorted by clipping. If you turn this option off, and your speakers up, you will get a slightly cleaner sound. But no doubt most users will prefer OVERDRIVE mode, since the difference in quality may be very subtle. You can log sound output to either a WAV file, or a VGM file. Select either of these options, choose a filename to log to, and the logging will begin. To stop logging at any time, simply select the option again. CD DRIVE menu ------------- Your CD-ROM drive(s) should appear here, if available. Select the one you wish to boot from. OPTIONS menu ------------ SET CONFIG - See CONFIG PERFECT SYNC - Some SegaCD/MegaCD games will only run correctly if the two MC68000 processors inside the console are perfectly syncronised. This option enables this feature. Traditionally this type of feature requires a lot more processor power, but Fusion is very highly optimised, and this feature isn't usually noticably slower, so it should be ok to leave it enabled all the time. If you do notice poor performance, or notice any strange problems with certain MegaCD/SegaCD games, you may wish to try it both ways. You can choose to enable or disable display of a frames per second counter, and the SegaCD LEDs. USE ALTERNATE TIMING - Normally the sound card will be used for timing purposes - this ensures a clean, pop/gap free sound stream. However, some sound cards/drivers do not provide accurate timing information. If you notice any speedup / slowdown or inconsistent speed problems, you can try enabling alternate timing instead. Note though that you may get some problems with sound if you do so. This option will be forced ON if you have no sound card in your machine, or you disable sound. SLEEP WHILE WAITING - Normally, when Fusion has finished rendering a frame it will begin waiting until it's time to start rendering the next one. The timing required here is very precise. Because during this time Fusion is not completely inactive (it's constantly saying 'Are we there yet?') this results in a high CPU usage measured in the Windows Task Manager. This is not a problem, Fusion will give time up to other applications that need it - still, some people don't seem to like, or understand, this. SLEEP WHILE WAITING means that Fusion will instead go to sleep at the end of rendering a frame, giving much lower CPU usage measurements. But do understand that if you enable this feature, it is not possible to get the precise timing needed, and Fusion *can not* wake up in time to render the next frame. The frame rate will be 'choppy' at best. I leave it up to you to decide which you prefer. HIGH PRIORITY - Because Fusion does, in fact, give up time to other applications (see above), sometimes background tasks such as virus scan, or other programs that you have running, can cause the framerate to drop or become 'choppy'. This option should improve the situation considerably. Please note that there is very little point enabling HIGH PRIORITY and SLEEP WHILE WAITING at the same time, because of the problems mentioned above. DISABLE KEY SHORTCUTS - turns off all keyboard shortcuts (except ESC) to prevent the accidental selection of some option while playing a game with the keyboard. CONFIG ------ The config dialog is split into several tabs: SMS/GG: ------- You can specify where to find the USA/JAP/EUR BIOS files for the Sega Master System, and the GG BIOS file for the GameGear. None of these files are required for operation, but you can use them if you wish. SxM Files - these are the emulated battery-backed RAM files used in some cartridges. Select the folder where you want...
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