Age of Empires 1 graphical glitches on v.17 / MacM1

[AmintaPCem]

Hi!

First of all a HUGE "THANKS" to Sarah for this astonishing emulator that help to preserve the PC machines of the past!

Here I'm pointing out some strange and reiterated glitches that occur when playing Age of Empires 1 original version on Pcem v.17 on my MacBook Pro 13" M1, 8+8 core, 16Gb.

I'm using the very fast / Arm M1 native version for MacOs, built yesterday on my MacBookPro: https://github.com/PCemOnMac/PCemV17macOS.

The guest machine configuration is: Shuttle-Hot 557 - Pentium 200 128MB - S3Virge Dx FastPci - Voodoo 2 Graphics 4MB - Windows 98SE.

You can see duplicated arrows/artifact in first image and a clear strip in the second one.

To be honest, I'm not sure if it is simply a problem of the game, because I can notice some minimal glitches (eg: very very small gray boxes that can appear on desktop) even out of the game. Maybe is the Mac-Arm version I'm using the culprit?

Thanks in advance!

1.jpg (236.44 KiB) Viewed 6642 times

The attachment 2.jpg is no longer available

[SarahWalker]

Can you reproduce this bug on an x86 build? It may well be an ARM-specific bug.

[AmintaPCem]

Hi Sarah!

Unfortunately, if I try to compile with make" PCEm for x86 architecture I get this message:

Code: Select all

ld: warning: ignoring file /opt/homebrew/lib/libSDL2.dylib, building for macOS-x86_64 but attempting to link with file built for macOS-arm64
Undefined symbols for architecture x86_64:

Note that I have installed sdl2 also for x86 and compiling Pcem I'm using Rosetta...

Can you reproduce this bug on an x86 build? It may well be an ARM-specific bug.

[omarsis81]

I have the Gold version and will test the game in my Windows 8.1 x86 system

[omarsis81]

Works fine in my system.
Maybe it's like Sarah said, ARM specific bug, or try another 2D Virge driver

age2.jpg (270.19 KiB) Viewed 6487 times

[AmintaPCem]

Hi! What drivers are you using?

Works fine in my system.
Maybe it's like Sarah said, ARM specific bug, or try another 2D Virge driver

age2.jpg

[omarsis81]

I even won a game without a single bug
Look for W9531201.zip for the Virge DX driver

won.jpg (184.04 KiB) Viewed 6458 times

[AmintaPCem]

Definitely is not a problem of one game only, but - sometimes - also of the OS:

Schermata 2021-05-24 alle 00.46.52.png (137.98 KiB) Viewed 6396 times

[omarsis81]

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html
The M1 is more powerful that I thought. It is today's best performing single thread of all!