Be-Pachi Music!! My continued attempt at a BMS Player / BM simulator

[ichigo4120]

ok i need to get songs on here and im not exactl sure how, anyone wanna tell me cause i was reading the forum and with all the new updates i dont know whats going on anymore

[Ultra Violette]

ichigo4120:
Check the stickied topics with 'simfiles' in their names.

t3hSurge:
How fast are those computers? Also did you try disabling the alpha-blending options? That would speed things up greatly.

[t3hSurge]

If I can play Prey maxed out in full resolution then I should be able to run the simulator liquid smooth. I'll go try that though.

Edit: No change, but looked pretty bad. I think it might be a vsync thing, it's all vertical but menu animations seem just fine. Hey what do I know though.

[Ultra Violette]

Hmmm.... BPM doesn't have a 'set frame rate to vsync' option currently (That's something to add to the next version).

Currently it's fixed to update graphics every 15ms, and averages at 64 FPS, which might be the cause for the problems.

I use an LCD screen so it appeared normally for me. But I'll certainly fix that problem. Thank you

[t3hSurge]

I have an lcd it's just not a smooth program. So what's in the next release and how far away is it?

[Ultra Violette]

What's the speed of your computer's CPU? I'm just interested for comparison purposes (Mine's a 2.0 GHz Celeron)

I was hit with an HDD death recently (although it came back to life and let me clone the data on it), so I've been busy backing things up, which might push the next release into later this week.

I've been trying to get saved replays, saved high-scores, and Vs. Ghost options implemented though, still some things that need to be finalized though

Also I'll add in better low-detail options, and maybe create a new 'bare-bones' theme to maximize frame rate potential.

[t3hSurge]

2.0 Athlon 64 overclocked to 2.6
nVidia 6800xt

I'm not seeing any issues in this department.

[John.XXIV]

Sweetness. I've heard that this is easier to use than BemaniaDX. SSRMAX just doesn't work for me at all, and I'm too frustrated it with it to try anything with it. So, I'm going with word of mouth.

[SaxxonPike]

64 FPS eh? Sounds like you are using an internal Windows timer with the smallest interval. Can't you use the DirectX vsync option? And if you must have something timer driven and controlled within your code, you can also use these functions:

QueryPerformanceCounter - gets the counter's value
QueryPerformanceFrequency - divide the counter by this to get the time in seconds

This timer runs in parallel to Windows, it begins when you start the operating system and continues to count uninterrupted until it rolls over (which would take years of uptime). It deals with what's called a Large Integer: 64 bits. It could be better interpreted as two 32-bit values because it is not a floating point number. VB's Currency type handles this well, but I don't know the Delphi equivalent.

Anyway. So how could this timing function be useful? Well, you grab the frequency at the start of the program and divide it by 60 for frames per second, for this example let's call it TicksPerFrame. Also at the beginning of the program you store the current counter value in LastTick. You get a main loop to keep checking the counter and if (PerformanceCounter >= LastTick + TicksPerFrame) you increment LastTick by TicksPerFrame to keep consistency, and proceed with the update code. I've also used this timer to synchronize BMS playback as well as scripted menu animations.

Not sure how windows API works in Delphi, but you may want to look into this if you want alternative timing solutions.

[Ultra Violette]

Wow... thank you for all that info

Ever since the first version, BPM uses a DelphiX-based timer (DXTimer), which has only a "wait by milli-seconds" setting, not a "by FPS" setting. It was good for a "add a timer and forget about it"

Currently I am using the QueryPerformance commands, but only for BMS timing, not for frame rate or anything else. I'll try adding in that frequency division for FPS control... definitely an interesting idea!

Since I'm feeling better and finally getting over this flu, I'll get back to working on this too (Apologies for delay)

[inventorofPANTS]

I'm having trouble with BPM. On any song, the display of notes coming down is flashing, and moreso it's doubled (ie, a single note becomes a blinking double note). Is anyone else having this problem?

[Ultra Violette]

That's a strange bug!

Just a guess, but that problem might be caused by the non-standard frame rate BPM uses, which would make it especially noticeable on non-LCD monitors. I'll have this problem fixed in the next version, hopefully in a few days

[Ultra Violette]

A little bit delayed, but one last update for 2006!


BPM is now v0.0422a!

The following changes, fixes and improvements have been added:

- BPM will no longer crash when attempting to load a non-standard or poorly formatted BMP file. "starshore" and "Colored" are now playable!
- Added in options to disable the alpha-blending and animation effects of the key flashes. Disabling both gives a classic 'BM1' feel.
- Added an option to stop the rotation of the CD during song play.
- The various sound and music files for themes can now be replaced with files of any supported format (The support was there, it just wasn't implemented until now)
- The Auto-played note explosion bug is fixed. Now the auto-played and auto-scratched notes explode at the proper location, instead of at the top of the screen!
- AutoPlay is now available from the Modifier menu of the start-up config window.
- New Constant Speed settings are also added to the Modifier menu of the start-up config window. Constant Speed can of course be combined with the normal High Speed modifiers to allow for a wider range of constant speeds.
- The Variable speed adjust keys (default are PgUp and PgDn) can also be used to modify a constant speed during song play.
- Both Random and Mirror modifiers can now be used at the same time.
- A new timer routine is implemented with much thanks to SaxxonPike for info and examples. As a result, frame rate should be more stable.
- A custom frame rate adjust option is added to the bpm_cfg.txt file. The default value is 60, however any floating-point or whole number between 1 and 255 can be used.

The updates to the BMDX and other older themes still aren't 100% finished, so those and other promised things will have to be delayed once more... sorry


As with the previous version, the only changes to BPM were to the EXE file itself, so a complete re-download isn't required.

For a quick update, download the following file to BPM's main folder and choose to overwrite the existing BPM.EXE file:
http://x-raise.cjb.net/bpm_dl/bpm.exe - 815 KB

And here are the full downloads including themes, in RAR and ZIP format.
http://x-raise.cjb.net/bpm_dl/bpm_complete_v0.0422a.rar - 3.46 MB
http://x-raise.cjb.net/bpm_dl/bpm_complete_v0.0422a.zip - 6.46 MB

[inventorofPANTS]

This totally fixed the problem I was having. This is an amazing emulator, and you're an amazing progrmmer! Thanks a lot.

[Ultra Violette]

You're welcome! Thanks for giving it a try