At Epilogue, we're thrilled to announce a series of enhancements to both our Playback software and firmware updates for the Operator devices. We've listened to your feedback and worked diligently to create a seamless, user-friendly experience that will take your enjoyment of our products to new heights.
Playback software:
When we initially launched the Playback software alongside the GB Operator we were under immense pressure to deliver everything in a very short amount of time. At that moment it did not even have an identity more than simply the "Operator software". Therefore we wrote all the software in a non-scalable manner. As Epilogue has become more stable we took advantage of this opportunity to completely re-engineer sections of the Playback software that we were unhappy with.
This not only brings stability and performance improvements, but lays the groundwork for our upcoming SN Operator and modularity for other Operator devices in the future.
- Our team has been hard at work delivering a complete redesign of the Playback application, introducing a sleek, modern interface that aligns with your aesthetic preferences. A new feature that detects the average color of your album cover art and applies a corresponding gradient to the app's background creates a visually appealing, immersive experience.
- We've reengineered the device communication backend from the ground up. The result is a more robust system that now supports communication with multiple devices and is compatible with the SN Operator.
- We've integrated a new update system into the application, offering support for our revolutionary Core system on Operator devices. This means that your Playback software will always stay current with the latest advancements.
- We've expanded our reach by adding language translations to include Japanese, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Dutch, Korean, and Romanian, making our software more accessible to users worldwide.
- To enhance your gaming experience, we've updated our game controller database, providing extended support for a wider range of game controllers.
- To ensure the stability of the application, we've incorporated a crashpad handler that reports crashes directly to our team. This allows us to swiftly identify and release bug fixes, ensuring uninterrupted use of our software.
- We've fixed a small but bothersome issue where the emulator bar would not auto-hide when the cursor moved off-window.
- OpenGL 3.0 is now supported. In the past the minimum version was OpenGL 3.2, now the Playback software is able to be used on more hardware configurations than ever.
- The Audio driver and interface has been greatly improved, bringing faster switching when you change from a headset to speakers. In addition to this we've fixed multiple bugs which would cause crashes under certain OSes.
- Now, whenever you manage your cartridge data, the last folder used is being selected, we know that this can be an inconvenience when managing large libraries of cartridges.
- We've reimagined the data management views, now using Data Flow, you'll be able to see live data that is being transmitted from the cartridge to your computer.
- Now Game Boy Camera pictures can be scaled directly from the software. We use bilinear scaling so that the images are as accurate to the original size, producing a high-fidelity version of it.
- The Vault system has been changed quite a bit to offer more backups so that you can rest assured that no data is being lost while reading/writing save data to your cartridge. Now every time there's a operation being done on the cartridge, you'll see it backing up the data first.
- In order to create a more seamless experience the autosave option has been improved offering better performance and stability.
- Versioned download URL for Linux app distribution systems will bring support for listing our application on various app stores on Linux distros. Special thanks u/SuburbanMe on Reddit for guiding us.
- As always, our database of cover arts and game information keeps improving thanks to the information submitted by our community.
Operator devices (v9.1.0 firmware has been released):
At launch of the v8 firmware, we encountered stability issues on some units, prompting us to halt the release in order to enhance our systems and avoid disruption across our fleet of units. We did not want to send out something that did not meet our standards.
This release includes all changes that were introduced in v8 such as:
- Faster bootleg rewriting for GBA: 4 times faster chip erasing implemented for most bootlegs;
- Added RTC support for GBA/GBC, now your Pokemon Gold/Silver/Crystal won't ask for setting the clock and berry farming will work on GBA games.
- Added support for flashcarts/bootlegs which require flashing commands on Bank 1;
- Added support for flashcarts from Ferrante Crafts (32KB, 64KB and 512KB).
And additionally, it brings the following features as part of the v9 pack of features:
- For added reliability, we've implemented a watchdog to monitor operations running on the Operator's embedded firmware. If a process hangs, the watchdog will automatically reset the device, maintaining smooth and consistent performance.
- Improved USB interface to add an extra more descriptive interface, now the USB driver should be much more stable. This update brings major stability and performance improvements to the USB driver.
- Communication stability between the Operator device and Playback software has improved, now each packet of data is verified. This has been tested and has brought no performance changes.
- If your Operator device has issues connecting via USB to the computer, now it flashes quickly a white LED while the device is connecting to the computer and if it fails, it will keep flashing.
- We're introducing the Core system for Operator devices. This groundbreaking system provides multiple security improvements, as well as a brick recovery feature in case of any issues during updates.
- Miscellaneous improvements such as more:
- More performant cryptographic engine while we did not compromise on security
- Faster boot times of Operator devices
Hotfixes (v1.0.2 & v1.0.1):
- Fixed a bug where on computer with high load environments the application would freeze for 500ms during emulation.
- Re-added the maximize button in the application as requested by the community.
- Fixed issue on Windows builds that would sometimes not load the main window.
At Epilogue, we're committed to delivering the highest quality products and services to our users. With these changes, we believe that Playback software and devices will provide an even more enjoyable, reliable, and seamless experience. We offer our most sincere thanks to you for supporting Epilogue.