4DO 1.3.2.2 Released!

Now with informational messages!

Changes:

  1. Added emulation notification messages – These show up at the bottom of the screen for things such as “Save State” and “Screenshot saved”. There is also a setting under the General tab to turn them off.
  2. Emulation performance optimization – about a 5-10% improvement.
  3. Input/Controller setup screen now shows a textual form of what button or function you’re currently pressing (“A Button”, “Save State”) in addition to the yellow halo over the button.
  4. Added ability to reset all bindings to defaults.
  5. Added ability to bind to an “Exit” console function, to exit the emulator.
  6. Fixed bug in which the default input bindings were blank if starting 4DO for the first time.
  7. Fixed bug in which controller 6 input bindings were unavailable.
  8. Some minor usability improvements to file browser (added “x files selected” message, and using “up directory” button will highlight the folder you came from).
  9. Chinese translation improvements

If you want to try 4DO 1.3.2.2, head to to the download page:
4DO Downloads

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4DO 1.3.2.1 Released!

Browse for and extract files from your 3DO games!

Changes:

  1. File Browser Added – Available through the new “Tools” menu, the file browser allows users to browse the current disc’s file system and extract files. This can be used to find music, sound clips, images, videos, etc.
  2. German Language Fixed – German is now actually available. The previous release did not properly include a necessary file in the release package.

The files are often unusual formats, so you will most likely have to find tools for converting them.

If you want to try 4DO 1.3.2.1, head to to the download page:
4DO Downloads

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4DO 1.3.2.0 Released!

Happy Holidays!

Changes:

  1. Binding to Console Events – Users can now bind console events (such as Save State, Load State, Fullscreen) to input devices (keyboards, gamepads, joysticks). Save state without reaching for the keyboard!
  2. German Language Support – Thanks to the efforts of lenne, German translations are available

 

Access the console event binding feature from the “Configure Input” screen.

If you want to try 4DO 1.3.2.0, head to to the download page:
4DO Downloads

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4DO 1.3.1.0 Released!

“hqx” Filters available!

Changes:

  1. “hqx” Filters Added – Users can select hq2x, hq3x, or hq4x from the Display menu, or in the options screen.
  2. Emulation “Health” Indicator added – This is to help users identify when they have settings that are too intensive for their PCs. See more details below

The hqx filters are full-screen post-processing operations provide benefit via color matching, so there is noticeable improvement on flat fonts or cartoon-style graphics. 3DO games with video or photo-realism are much less likely to see benefit. Here’s a demonstration of hq2x:

 

Much like the high-resolution rendering (which I’ve renamed to “Double Resolution Rendering”), these hqx filters are very CPU intensive. For example, my 3.0Ghz processor can only handle hq2x at normal speed! Games that do not tax the CPU heavily are good candidates to try.

Note: If you performance is too low for you, you can typically sacrifice game framerate by turning down the CPU Clock Speed in the Advanced settings tab.

I have added a “Health” indicator to help identify when the emulation speed is lagging behind its proper schedule:

Green indicates normal operation. Yellow indicates that the emulation fell behind schedule once recently (and you will hear an audio skip during the compensation), but is otherwise fine. Red indicates that the emulation is chronically behind schedule (at which times framerate is too low and the audio is probably very annoying). Viewing core FPS is still available has not been changed. Games do not necessarily run at 60fps, so FPS wasn’t sufficient to gauge whether the system was running too slow, thus the introduction of the “Health” indicator.

If you want to try 4DO 1.3.1.0, head to to the download page:
4DO Downloads

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4DO 1.3.0.1 Released!

Some quick fixes to the 1.3.0.0 release.

  1. Olympic Summer Games fixed – Olympic Summer Games now boots and is playable.
  2. Crash ‘n Burn fixes isolated. Several games in 1.3.0.0 were crashing as a result of the game-specific changes. Viktor has modified the Crash ‘n Burn changes so that they are game-specific rather than system wide.

If you want to try 4DO 1.3.0.1, head to to the download page:
4DO Downloads

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4DO 1.3.0.0 Released!

3DO History has been made today!

Viktor worked long and hard to add support for Crash’n Burn, making it fully playablefor the first time on any emulator! This is the result of a lot of difficult, meticulous debugging!

Crash ‘n Burn Works!

Great Job, Viktor!

All Changes in this version:

  1. Crash ‘n Burn support – See additional notes below.
  2. The Advanced Settings’s ARM CPU Overclock option now allows users to increase it further, to clock speed up to 50Mhz (400%).
  3. Auto-cropping previously was ignoring the blue channel when detecting black pixels. This has been fixed.
  4. Russian translation improvements, also from Viktor.
  5. Translation fix on settings screen for autocrop setting.
Crash ‘n Burn Details:

It’s no hoax! For the first time, you can now play Crash ‘n Burn on an emulator! If you had been eagerly awaiting this capability, send praises Viktor‘s way. :)

The fix is pretty complicated, so you may run into a few bugs. When selecting to start a race, sometimes the game will still reboot similar as it did before. Additionally, audio for video clips in racer selection screen sometimes improperly synced. However, the game itself is fully playable!

If you want to try 4DO 1.3.0.0, head to to the download page:
4DO Downloads

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4DO 1.2.0.3 Released!

Some good updates! Primarily bug fixes, but also a new UI feature!

Improvements:

  1. Auto-crop feature added. Tired of your 3DO games adding a black border around your game? Enable auto-crop in the display menu to allow 4DO to automatically detect and remove these borders! More details below
  2. Sewer Shark and Night Trap were experiencing a startup issue in 1.2.0.2. this is now fixed.
  3. Slam ‘n Jam 95 was crashing after the Samurai Shodown improvements in 1.2.0.2. This is now fixed.
  4. 4DO now detects additional types of input devices. For example, a PS3 controller set up through MotionJoy now works as intended!
  5. More French translation improvements from Benjamin Siskoo
  6. More Chinese translation improvements from money

Auto-Cropping Disabled

Auto-Cropping Enabled

Behavioral and technical details of the autocrop feature are:

  • Cropping will perform at most 25% on each side.
  • The amount of cropping performed on each side is determined independently
  • If the user has specified to preserve aspect ratio, crops may result in an aspect ratio different than native. This is automatically expanded to the available area. Thus, games that attempt to simulate widescreen can actually be played in the intended widescreen format. An example of this is apparent in the screenshots of Wing Commander III above.
  • Auto-cropping will only increase the amount of screen cropping if the available cropping detected remains constant for 1 second.
  • Cropping detects black and near black colors; colors within about 6% of black are also considered black.
  • If the crop for any side is detected to have been too much for any side, it is immediately expanded appropriately; thus, non-black pixels are always made visible.

I first saw the need for this feature when I played through Lucienne’s Quest. I’ve come to find that several games I’ve played benefit from removing this border: Wing Commander III, Daedalus Encounter, Alone in the Dark 1 & 2, AD&D Slayer, and pretty much any FMV game!

If you want to try 4DO 1.2.0.3, head to to the download page:
4DO Downloads

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4DO 1.2.0.2 Released!

A few elusive core bugs fixed!

Improvements:

  1. Daedalus Encounter freeze fix updated. Viktor did a lot of debugging, and eventually found and fixed a difficult core emulation bug that was causing the Scene 5 freeze! This also uncovered a fix to an issue in Pebble Beach Golf Links.
  2. Samurai Shodown graphical issues fixed. Samurai Shodown was previously riddled with odd graphical issues, but no more! The characters render correctly, and the backgrounds are no longer black.

Both of these involve changes that are not specific to the games they were targeting. So, other games might be affected, but I haven’t spotted any differences in the handful of games I tried.

If you want to try 4DO 1.2.0.2 beta, head to to the download page:
4DO Downloads

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4DO 1.2.0.1 Released!

Japanese game players rejoice!

Improvements:

  1. Bios 2 Support Added. Viktor determined how to added support for the second bios slot, used in Japanese hardware for the Kanji font. This should enable support for several Japanese games that require it (one example being Blue Forest Monogatari). Awesome!
  2. Daedalus Encounter timing fix added. This should alleviate many of the freezes encountered.
  3. Screenshot Feature added. Press F3 to take screenshots to a “Screenshots” subfolder.
  4. Russian translation fixes and improvements from both Viktor and Sedabi.

If you want to try 4DO 1.2.0.1 beta, head to to the download page:
4DO Downloads

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4DO Leaves the Beta Stage

Across the goal line

4DO is no longer titled as “beta”. The emulation is in a good state, and the primary features of the emulator have been stable for quite a while.

It’s been a overall a quick revival since the release of the FreeDO source code, and 4DO now provides 3DO fans with a clean, functional emulator.

4DO was able to inherit many great features from FreeDO: high-definition rendering, clock speed adjustments, and the impressive emulation accuracy! The FreeDO user interface was not open-sourced, but the resulting rewrite for 4DO was an overall benefit. The development of 4DO has introduced several unique features as well:

  • Intuitive controller setup, native joystick support, and support for up to 6 players
  • Game identification system
  • Easy-to-use quick save/load system
  • Game compatibility fixes (mainly through the efforts of Viktor!)
  • Support for 6 languages

An Abbreviated 4DO History

It’s probably not commonly known that 4DO was first started about 4 and a half years ago in 2007. I had been eager to see an open-source 3DO emulator and was disappointed that there was still none available. The aim of the project was still the same as it is today: to provide a full-featured, open-source emulator for 3DO.

At the time I was attempting a high-level emulation (HLE) approach. Progress was reasonable, and I managed to get the CPU emulation concrete enough to run many of the non-Opera binary files like the mildly famous sonic example (the screenshots of this are still available on the sourceforce site, for any emulation historians interested). However, the HLE approach was proving to be too laborious without additional help. After staring at disassembly for countless hours, I cancelled the attempt in early 2010.

Note: For those interested, the Russian “Phoenix” project is also attempting HLE emulation and results so far are impressive! I believe it is in closed beta, and be aware that there are fake versions of this emulator out in the wild.

Later the same year (November 2010), FreeDO released the code to its core emulation as open source! I found out about this in July of 2011, started rebuilding the user interface, and restarted 4DO with the FreeDO core. At this time, 4DO became a low-level emulator like its ancestor. Since then 4DO has crept along introducing features up to the ones you see today!

Elsewhere in the world, and also sometime after the FreeDO source code was released, Viktor created 3DOPlay with similar hopes of improving 3DO emulation. We discovered each others’ projects about a month ago. Since then, Viktor has been contributing help, and his efforts have been improving game compatibility significantly!

The Future of 4DO

I do not have particularly strong opinions of the features or changes that should be introduced into 4DO. There are a few things I would like to see added: light gun or mouse support, screenshot support, and save slot visualizations (like in NESticle).

With 4DO released, I personally am going to cut back on my involvement, and I have no expectation for how long. I am very happy to have helped the 3DO emulation and I feel that 4DO has accomplished its primary objective of providing a full-featured open-source emulator. I don’t intend to halt 4DO development; I’m still available for bug fixes to any major issues, and I intend to continue to perform any releases. I am hoping Viktor is available to continue help as well. I’ll likely be playing 3DO games too, so I can continue to add features when the desire hits me.

I would like to reiterate that anybody interested in contributing code changes to 4DO is welcome to do so! If you message me in the forums, I will be happy to help you get started.

If you aren’t interested in helping out as a developer, there’s always value in contributing updates to the Compatibility List.

Thank You For Your Help!

3DO emulation would be in poor shape today if it weren’t for the feedback and interest from the sparse, world-wide community of 3DO fans. I’d like to thank everyone who helped identify problems, iron out issues, or just drop by for moral support!

I’d like to also thank the following contributors:

  • BryWI : for feedback, community support, and lots of testing!
  • Enio Marconcini : for Portuguese translations
  • Benjamin Siskoo : for French translations
  • “money” : for Chinese translations
  • Antonio “Bloodbat” Ramirez : for Spanish translations
  • Sedabi : for Russian translation improvements

Long live 3DO!

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