SemaTor release history

1.1.601 — 18 profiles, SimCity controls and input fixes

• Adds profiles for Armour-Geddon, B-17 Flying Fortress, Carrier Command, Castle Master, F-29 Retaliator, Frontier, Hard Drivin', Infestation, Interphase, Maclean Pool, Maclean Snooker, Midwinter, Midwinter II, No Second Prize (demo), Powermonger, RoboCop 3, Shuttle, and Total Eclipse (Replicants crack). Per-game options vary; selected profiles offer Smooth Motion, render resolution, anti-aliasing, widescreen, draw distance, mouse sensitivity, audio or HUD controls.
• SimCity adds independent 70 ms map-camera easing at native and wide layouts. Trains, helicopters, boats and other native objects retain their game update cadence. Experimental large maps default off and remain incompletely verified, including dense-city, disaster and long-play behavior.
• Adds an optional user-file MIDI playlist in the automatically created Add-ons/SimCity midi folder, with Music controls and General MIDI or OPL2 output. OPL2 uses GM-family FM mappings rather than an exact SimCity 2000 sound-card or patch-bank reproduction; no game music or patch bank is included.
• Fixes pointer and Music click handling and scrollbar gestures. CRT no-bezel mode returns cabinet space to the game picture.
• Total Eclipse improves checked-scene presentation for the supported Replicants build. Coverage is limited to the documented start-area walk; interiors and enemies were not walked, and the visual audit is not clean.
• Frontier and Maclean Snooker remain baseline implementations; no general motion fix is claimed. SimCity easing affects the map camera only and does not make all objects move at display rate.

1.1.598 — More cartridge soundtracks

• Expands SemaDrive jukebox import to all 19 currently profiled game entries: 415 additional track selections, 486 total. Adds Sonic 3, Sonic & Knuckles, Sonic 3 & Knuckles, Golden Axe I/II, Streets of Rage 1–3, Shinobi III, Gunstar Heroes, Thunder Force IV / Lightening Force, Castlevania: Bloodlines, Rocket Knight Adventures and Aladdin.
• Plays each soundtrack through its cartridge's native sound driver on an independent emulated board. Both verified Thunder Force regional revisions support music import; gameplay support is unchanged.
• Uses Aladdin's native sound-test names. Other newly imported tracks retain their original music command labels. Empty slots, voice-only entries and confirmed aliases are omitted.
• Pages the supported-games list so every entry remains accessible in smaller jukebox windows. Existing imports, favourites and the original five game profiles keep their identities.

1.1.597 — Verified Mega Drive enhancements and GPU worlds

• Adds production Mega Drive enhancements for the verified revisions of Streets of Rage 1–3, Shinobi III, Gunstar Heroes, Bloodlines, Rocket Knight Adventures, Aladdin, Sonic 3, Sonic & Knuckles, Sonic 3 & Knuckles and Lightening Force (USA).
• Widescreen follows verified authored gameplay bounds. Fixed rooms, cutscenes and Aladdin special stages retain native framing. Corrects Sonic and Altered Beast finite scene boundaries.
• Adds independent Mega Drive music and sound-effect levels and improves supported GPU motion presentation without advancing game simulation or audio for extra display frames.
• Adds Hunter, Simulcra and Virus GPU presentation. Virus adds widescreen sky particles and a single Original / 2× / 3× / 4× / 8× draw-distance control. Extended enemy activation, attacks and collisions are not fully verified beyond the original view.
• Adds the EPIC Android Actions-button option under Game options.
• Refreshes the jukebox with an independent Atari ST / Mega Drive switch, a compact playback layout and saved play/pause state. Starting in SemaDrive selects its soundtrack library.
• Refreshes the website with machine filters and animated SemaDrive scenery.

1.1.596 — SemaDrive arrives

• A dedicated Mega Drive / Genesis home joins SemaOS, with a system switcher, cartridge library, region-aware artwork, enhanced-game filters and animated themes. ST creative apps stay together in their own suite.
• Shared Session and Settings menus keep the same layout and controls across machines. Mega Drive has cartridge restart, save slots, rewind, controller settings and CRT Studio, with a blue accent. Shoulder buttons switch Session/Settings.
• Mega Drive FM, PSG and sampled sound playback receive hardware-emulation improvements, including the Sonic startup voice. Cartridge scanning handles supported raw and ZIP formats more reliably.
• Altered Beast gains extended widescreen gameplay, independent enhanced music/effects, optional full-level hard mode and boss-theme choices. Road Rash II and Sonic 1/2 receive widescreen fixes, including hills, tile seams and Sonic running beyond the extended view at the act finish. Sonic 2's special-stage halfpipe remains centered at its original aspect ratio.
• SemaDrive Jukebox imports supported editions of Sonic 1, Sonic 2, Altered Beast, Road Rash II and OutRun from your own cartridges. Albums are retained, grouped by game and series, with favourites, recent tracks, search, a visualiser and configurable autoplay. Import games scans the Mega Drive folder and reports progress. Unknown track lengths are labelled honestly.
• Animated coastal and arcade themes add masked water movement, drifting clouds, lights, cameos and licensed ambience. Appearance can hide the SemaDrive logo. Ambience yields to jukebox playback.
• Android adds machine selection, separate Mega Drive library and jukebox, and system-specific touch layouts with per-game button choices.
• EPIC gains verified-profile Smooth Motion for space and surface missions, full model detail, separate music/effects controls and phone action controls. Original simulation timing is retained.
• Added CRT Shader - No Bezel, retaining the CRT preset collection without the cabinet. Removed Super ST Colour from the options. Fixed R-Type pickup motion and improved enhanced-cover sheen.
• Runtime packages omit source, raw enhancement profiles, research tools and native debug symbols. GPU shader debug metadata is stripped without changing executable shader instructions. No games, ROMs or game music are included.

These changes have automated and bounded gameplay coverage; they are not a claim of every-game compatibility, completed campaigns or physical Android-device certification.

1.1.595 — RoboCop bottom HUD and widescreen gameplay

• RoboCop now uses three enhanced layouts: 16:9, 21:9 and 32:9. One silver bottom HUD replaces the top credits and side panels; score, equipment, arrest timer and power remain live. The full score label and weapon icon are retained.
• Horizontal gameplay expands with the view, including enemy activation and retirement. The original vertical view, game speed, collision map and actor limits remain unchanged. No extra top scenery is invented or repeated.
• Replaced solid green damage-mask flashes on RoboCop and enemies with the original sprite artwork plus a brief pale edge highlight in widescreen presentation. Original hit and invulnerability timing is unchanged.
• Independent HUD updates no longer cause the original HUD to flicker into enhanced gameplay. Scene transitions still use the original picture where a captured scene cannot be verified.
• Shadow of the Beast I music can be imported into the jukebox through Insert Amiga Disk from the verified original Europe and Europe Alt music disks or their two-disk ZIPs. Each edition provides Intro, Outdoors, Caves and Castle, played from your own cached disk data. The alternate edition also works with the in-game music companion. Beast II/III imports and Amiga artwork are still in development.
• Checked 1,468 captured RoboCop frames across six stage starts at all three layouts, original-engine expanded enemy activation, memory/thread sanitizers and three actual threaded gameplay runs. This is bounded route testing, not a completed campaign or physical-phone certification.

1.1.594 — Beast Amiga music and configurable jukebox autoplay

Includes the RoboCop and game-directory work below; 1.1.593 was a development checkpoint, not a public desktop release.

• Shadow of the Beast can play the original Amiga intro, outdoor, cave and castle music from an owner-supplied original Europe Disk 2 IPF or two-disk ZIP. Music and ST effects retain separate volume controls. Missing or unsupported media retains native audio; no game media is bundled.
• Fixed the remaining corrupted Beast intro text: mixed-resolution scanout now keeps every text pixel through presentation with Smooth Motion enabled or disabled.
• Jukebox tracks with unknown duration no longer pretend to be three minutes long. The configurable autoplay timer offers 3, 5, 10 (default), 15 or 30 minutes, or Off. It affects unknown-length tracks only, pauses with playback, and is ignored by Repeat One. Known song durations still take precedence.
• Desktop and phone jukeboxes show unknown duration honestly, disable percentage seeking for those tracks, and retain the timer setting. SemaSynth imports remain bounded to 5 minutes 30 seconds.
• Amiga artwork and its additional background and foreground parallax layers are deferred to the following public build.

1.1.593 — RoboCop expanded view and Smooth Motion

• Redesigned the GitHub game directory with compact feature comparisons, combined filters, pagination and shareable edition-detail panels. Only the selected page of games is rendered, keeping large collections manageable.

• RoboCop gains expanded original scenery and existing actors, with a centered HUD and no stretching or changes to enemy activation.
• Lock-free Smooth Motion interpolates camera and actor positions while retaining the original game speed. Sprite animation, spawns and animated scenery keep their native cadence without interrupting camera interpolation.
• Separate music/effects volume follows the original PSG voices and sampled intro speech. Equal gains preserve original audio; no replacement soundtrack is added.
• Added optional Infinite Energy for ordinary hits and Infinite Time, both off by default, plus a pad B jump shortcut and control guide.
• Verified 1,468 complete frames across six stage starts at four widths and 6,000 original-renderer camera replays. Original RAM, native image and equal-gain audio remain bit-identical. These are bounded routes, not a completed campaign; unsupported scenes use the original picture.

1.1.592 — Strider upgrade and Shadow of the Beast fixes

• Strider adds an expanded view that reveals original scenery and existing actors without stretching the picture or changing enemy activation rules.
• Replaced its older Smooth Motion renderer with immutable captured scenes and lock-free presentation. Camera and character movement interpolate at the selected presentation rate while original game speed and animation artwork are retained.
• Added independent volume for original music, chip effects and sampled effects. Equal music/effects volume preserves the original audio; the game's original voice sharing remains intact.
• Added optional Infinite Time alongside Infinite Lives, plus a control guide and pad B jump shortcut. Cheats remain off by default.
• Verified 1,123 captured frames from all five stage starts at four widths and 2,947 original-renderer camera replays. This is bounded route coverage, not a completed-campaign claim. Unsupported scenes retain the original picture.
• Fixed Shadow of the Beast's garbled intro text: mixed low/medium-resolution frames now preserve the scrolling text's 640-pixel mode.
• Fixed Beast Smooth Motion dropping interpolation when animation artwork changes or enemies appear. Camera motion and matching actors now continue independently, with original animation frames and game logic retained.
• Beast now inserts the requested disk at its verified disk prompt; press Fire when ready. Unknown code and unrelated scenes do not trigger a swap.

1.1.591 — Shadow of the Beast expanded view and Smooth Motion

• Shadow of the Beast adds expanded scenery and lock-free Smooth Motion for captured camera, parallax and actor movement, including vertical camera scrolling in interiors. Original gameplay speed and enemy activation rules are retained; unverified frames use the original picture.
• Separate volume controls follow the original digital title music and gameplay effects. No extra soundtrack is added. Optional Infinite Energy prevents ordinary hit and poison damage; instant-death hazards remain dangerous.
• The game now has a control guide and a pad jump shortcut. Its second disk belongs in drive A when requested.
• Corrected floppy-controller handling of a seek sent during motor spin-up. The original Shadow of the Beast disk check now reads the requested track, preventing the incorrectly reversed cave picture.

1.1.590 — Gauntlet II expanded view and Smooth Motion

• Gauntlet II adds a captured maze renderer, expanded view and camera/actor Smooth Motion using the shared frame-rate setting. Original gameplay timing and off-screen monster activation rules are retained.
• Separate volume ownership follows the original intro music and gameplay effects/speech drivers; no extra soundtrack or simultaneous playback is added.
• Existing infinite health, retained keys and retained potions options remain available. Unknown rendering code or an unverified scene uses the original picture.

1.1.589 — Faster Creator workflows, precise sample loops and reliable playtests

Changes since public 1.1.587. Includes the tested 1.1.588 development work; 1.1.588 was a local test package, not a public release.

• Browse an object type's placed instances across rooms and jump to the exact placement. Navigation reveals hidden placements and retains map locks without changing the project.
• Duplicate objects using the actual room bounds, including wide rooms. Create a named reusable type directly from an independent object, keeping its position and rules; one Undo restores it.
• Code navigation adds Ctrl+G to jump to a line, backwards search with Shift+F3, match counts and search controls that fit compact windows with larger fields in touch mode.
• Room audio adds Include all / Exclude all PCM controls, selected sample byte counts, direct editing links and visible MOD compatibility guidance. Re-selecting unchanged audio settings no longer creates empty undo steps.
• The Sample Editor keeps ST digi loop markers aligned through resampling, cut/paste, trim and tuning. Audio Undo/Redo and linked editing restore loop positions. The waveform now shows the loop range; importing another WAV clears unrelated markers.

• MOD instrument loops now follow sample edits and resampling, and loop-only changes support Done, Cancel and Undo. A conflicting MOD edit remains open. Set/clear loop is undoable, Select loop reveals its range, and the selection panel shows duration. WAV exports still contain audio only.
• Rounded seconds in sample precision fields now apply to the correct sample frame, including at the end of the audio.
• Program Lab adds Go to Line (Ctrl+L) and backward search (Shift+F3); its Ctrl+G find-next shortcut is preserved. Maker Go to Line preselects its value, and instance paging returns to the top.
• Paused playtests retry a completed preview picture when the shared frame buffer was busy, without advancing the guest or blocking on the parent.
• Oversized single sound effects are refused before they can overflow their 16-bit word count. The 128 KB bank can still hold multiple effects; one effect is limited to 131070 bytes.
• Linked STE sound effects now load and retain their loop start through edits and rate conversion, with Done/Cancel/Undo and conflict protection. Their loop always ends with the sample, as STE playback requires.
• Sample keyboard navigation adds frame steps, Ctrl+Left/Right for 10 ms steps, Shift selection, Home/End, Ctrl+L to select the loop and Ctrl++/-/0 for zoom/fit. Tab switches precision fields. Navigation leaves audio and Undo history unchanged.
• Maker search match counts reuse unchanged results, keeping large source buffers responsive while checking exact text changes.
• SemaPaint colour replacement respects the selected rectangle, identifies its scope in the menu and preserves Redo when nothing changes. Select all and Deselect are available in the Edit menu.

1.1.588 — Local development checkpoint

Local Creator suite test package only. The completed changes and release packages are published as 1.1.589, preserving the identity of the earlier development APK.

1.1.587 — A clearer Creator studio, faithful hardware checks and library repairs

Changes since public 1.1.586. This update concentrates on desktop authoring, clearer editing workflows, native-game correctness and reliable disk/library handling.

• Damaged SCP disk images now reject out-of-range track and flux offsets safely. Failed magnetic-image decoding also releases its temporary storage.

Maker: desktop workspaces and navigation

• Redesigned the project dashboard, workspace pages and project library with clearer grouping, quieter panels and useful shortcuts in both Violet and GEM themes.
• Replaced text dropdown markers with proper menu indicators. Improved page headings, spacing, responsive layouts and Build feedback.
• The project library has dedicated filters for rooms, scenes, artwork, code, rules, types and sounds. Search includes named modules, object/game code and disabled rule drafts.
• Exposed the complete artwork bank, all 48 code units and all 64 rules in navigation. Late pages and filtered lists select the right asset after project changes.
• Rebuilt the Code page around the editor: more visible lines, a line gutter and status, tools alongside on wide desktops and below on compact windows. Code-unit controls are paged to keep the editor in view.
• Code editing adds block indent/outdent, automatic indentation on Enter and Ctrl+/ to toggle SemaBASIC or assembly comments. Selected code is preserved, full-buffer edits are atomic and each block edit supports Undo.
• Fixed overlapping command IDs that could make ordinary Code commands select an unrelated unit.
• Object properties can open or create each type event's SemaBASIC code, retaining the correct owner and existing source.
• Object types now show the objects you have defined, with unused slots available on demand. New type creation and duplication include clear capacity checks; duplication copies the type's rules and event code together and supports a single Undo.
• Fixed module shortcuts opening the wrong Code control, sprite selection stopping at the original bank and room-audio panels stacking unnecessarily on wide desktops.
• Fixed rule selection, paging, reordering and room duplication/remapping that still assumed the old 32-rule limit.
• The sprite workspace adds independent animation preview, onion skin, grid controls and frame reordering, with Undo and responsive layouts for all supported sprite sizes.

Native Creator games

• Fixed winning and losing pictures that could remain erased, incomplete or hidden by the player's damage flash.
• One-screen arcade games now present completed buffered pictures, preventing active bullets from disappearing between erase and redraw. The extra screen buffer is included in the target memory budget.
• Fixed disappearing sprites when a fixed-screen game draws text or graphics in its Draw event. Completed pictures are presented from a hidden screen, persistent drawings keep their existing behaviour and game logic follows the native field clock. The additional memory is included in build limits.
• Added the SemaBASIC SOLID(x, y) terrain query. It uses world pixel coordinates, follows live MAP changes and treats points outside the room as blocked.
• The two-player starter now checks the second player's corners against painted internal walls, including diagonal sliding.
• Build failures remain readable on the Build page, with navigation back to the offending rule or source line.

SemaPaint and palette editing

• Refined the painting workspace, tools, palette and preview presentation.
• Added pixel-level grid support and clearer zoom/grid controls for ST-resolution artwork.
• Exposed the ST's 512-colour and STE's 4,096-colour choices while retaining the indexed palette limits of the selected picture mode.
• Separated adding a colour from editing an existing palette entry. Used slots and available capacity are visible; changing a used entry clearly affects the pixels that reference it.

SemaOS, Capture Gallery and Hardware Check

• Reworked Capture Gallery's composition and browsing workspace, with clearer framing, caption and export controls.
• Refined the top menus, removed duplicated View/Create app destinations, added keyboard navigation and kept long menus reachable on small windows.
• Redesigned Hardware Check and clarified the difference between observed activity, estimates and physical-machine verification.
• Hardware Check now enforces the selected RAM boundary for CPU reads, writes and instruction fetches, device transfers and OS file buffers. A 512 KB test runs with the 512 KB boundary enforced.
• Auto Space now uses emulated time, reliably pressing at intervals during the test. Previously its instruction-based timing could put every press after the run had ended.
• Restored Hardware Check’s captured-screen preview by decoding its PPM output on desktop and Android. In-memory picture decoding now uses the same pixel limit as file decoding.
• Explorer refuses overlong paths instead of silently navigating to or exporting a truncated filename.

Games, Android and library reliability

• Fire and Ice's recognized ICS edition detects its initial DATA disk request directly and inserts the uniquely matched disk 2 earlier. The game's Space/Fire confirmation remains under the player's control.
• Next disk follows disk numbers among exact companions and wraps to disk 1. Missing or ambiguous twins leave the current disk inserted; loose same-title variants and save disks are excluded.
• Refined companion matching for secondary Disk A/B labels while preserving edition/crack identities. Android provider-only paths are covered in both directions.
• New games start with Frame Generation Off; an explicitly saved choice remains in effect.
• Fixed Rick Dangerous 2's Android title-screen input route and Double Dragon's Smooth Motion visibility during enemy death flashing.
• Unreadable or incomplete linked-folder scans retain unavailable catalogue entries and favourites until access returns, instead of treating the missing listing as an empty folder. Incomplete scans do not replace the saved catalogue.
• Linked folders consistently remain read-only with Android All files access as well as the document provider. Explorer still allows copying files out to a writable folder.
• Android disk copying rejects incomplete or changed-size provider streams and cleans up partial files. Long Unicode filenames are shortened on complete characters within the filesystem byte budget, keeping their disk extension.
• Android folder operations recover cleanly after Java allocation/provider exceptions, releasing temporary references and rejecting incomplete metadata instead of carrying the failure into later reads.

1.1.586 — Desktop studio, native game creation, SemaSynth and smoother play

Changes since public 1.1.585. This release brings a substantial expansion of the desktop creative suite, native ST/STE game building and music authoring, together with rendering, input and compatibility fixes across SemaTor.

Desktop workspaces and creative workflow

• Reworked Maker, Paint, Program Lab and Sample Editor around compact desktop menus, grouped tools and contextual inspectors, leaving more space for the document or canvas.
• Refined spacing, labels, selection and property panels in both Violet and GEM themes, including narrower and resized windows.
• Desktop authoring keeps its mouse-and-keyboard layout when a gamepad is used. Actual touch input retains adaptive controls without turning the desktop editors into controller menus.
• Paint gains docked layers and timeline controls, document menus and more usable canvas space.
• Maker replaces long button rows with workspace menus and compact Rules, Variables, Sounds and Object types inspectors. Dropdowns support keyboard operation.
• Object Events uses a compact split desktop layout. Room settings make better use of wide windows, with room audio beside the main properties and a scrolling fallback in compact windows.
• Rebuilt the Sample Editor workspace with clearer transport, zoom, selection, precision fields and sample tools. Added distinct waveform artwork for Violet and GEM.
• Program Lab and Samples improve access to controls in compact and touch layouts, with clearer playtest shortcuts and contextual guidance.
• Linked creative documents to their Studio projects, with clearer navigation between a project and its associated artwork, music and code.
• Added typed file drops and shared pixel-clipboard workflows between creative apps.
• Improved edit-in-another-app round trips between Maker, Paint, Code Reader, SemaSynth and Samples, including return/apply/cancel handling and protection against silent loss of edits.
• Connected Program Lab assets, Maker routines and debugger source origins so build and playtest work is easier to follow.
• Added searchable SemaSynth lessons to Help, including a playable STE sample lesson.

Creator: game logic, starters and native effects

• Expanded object-type behaviours: rules can belong to a type, allowing instances to share their event logic.
• Added key and joystick event rules, control mapping and editable sound-effect definitions.
• Added an editable Puzzle starter: touch three numbered locks in order, then reach the door. Wrong-order contact resets the puzzle. Its rules, routines, variables, messages and artwork are ordinary project data.
• Added the editable two-player Twin switches starter. Both players hold their switches together, then meet at the unlocked door; keyboard and native joystick controls are included.
• Added visual native FOLLOW paths with numbered points over the room terrain. Unsupported attachment to a custom engine is rejected clearly.
• Added installable, editable sparks/particle effects, camera shake and persistent high scores for native games.
• Failed high-score writes remain pending and can retry, rather than silently losing the score.
• Added opt-in native pixel collision queries with SELF/OTHER event scope, alongside the existing collision tools.
• Fixed particle background restoration at the left screen edge, including clipped overlays.
• Improved long HUD-message drawing and avoided redrawing numeric HUD fields when the message actually covers them.
• Fixed room HUD numbering, repeated room-start rules, touch/contact bounds, invalid goal selection and a scrolling-speed mismatch.
• New starters create clean projects. Project replacement and editing have more consistent Undo behaviour, including message typing, failed actions and selecting an object without moving it.
• Changing rooms clears stale selections. Project names are made safe for generated filenames, and export-folder failures report an error.

Creator: artwork, worlds and camera

• Import pictures as backdrops, scene images, tiles, sprite sheets or maps, with a before/after preview and memory-budget feedback.
• Support includes Degas, NEOchrome, Spectrum 512, PNG, BMP, GIF and SemaPaint pictures. Spectrum artwork is reduced to the target palette with a warning.
• Added target-aware ST/STE palette conversion, palette reuse, optional dithering, cropping/scaling and sprite-sheet transparency selection. Import is a single undoable action.
• Expanded banks to 64 sprite assets and 128 tiles. Sprites support 16×16, 32×16, 16×32 and 32×32 sizes with up to four animation frames.
• Added paged asset banks, size controls and separate storage for expanded sprite and tile slots. Existing terrain cannot accidentally be enlarged.
• Map imports can reuse mirrored tiles while preserving their orientation. Larger artwork is preserved through supported Paint and import workflows.
• Expanded projects support up to 48 objects and 64 rules. Native sprite drawing, clipping, erasing, collisions and playtest inspection understand the larger assets.
• Added rooms larger than one screen, up to 16 screens, with room-size controls, editor panning, a minimap and camera coordinates.
• Added camera-follow support and native scrolling-world generation, including double-buffered ST views, STE canvases and parallax support.
• Creator Smooth Motion and expanded views understand larger worlds and sprite sizes. Builds can include the matching SemaTor profile beside their disks and in exports.

SemaBASIC, debugging and building games

• Added SemaBASIC editing and compilation to native 68000 code, with an in-editor reference, syntax colouring, a full reference and tutorial.
• Added code units on object and game events, reusable modules, typed procedures/functions and recursion.
• Expanded the language with LONG values, arrays, constant arrays, DATA/READ/RESTORE, strings and font-based PRINT/TEXT drawing.
• Added STOS-style game commands, world/camera access, a Main program and WAIT/VBL waits. STE-specific commands check the machine at runtime.
• Extended music and sound commands, including playback position, channels, volume and looping where supported.
• Playtest debugging now operates on the running child game, with breakpoints, instruction stepping and named live values. SemaBASIC supports source-line breakpoints, steps and watches.
• Expanded debugger object inspection to cover larger projects and corrected alarm/field selection.
• Build errors point back to the rule or routine that caused them. Assembler size, relocation and line limits stop the build at the relevant line.
• Generated games boot directly from AUTO. The 520 ST target checks its available program memory before producing an oversized game.
• Added packed programs and packed or disk-loaded room/scene resources, with memory checks that account for loading and unpacking.
• Added 360 KB and 720 KB disk layouts and games spanning up to nine disks, with room/scene disk assignment and complete disk-set exports.
• Disk prompts accept Fire or a key, including prompts before gameplay and intros. Cancellation and restored scrolling are handled more reliably, and collected builds retain their disk sets.

Creator music, samples and per-room audio

• Added four-channel MOD import, preview and native STE playback, with project memory/rate feedback.
• Expanded MOD playback with stereo placement, sample volume/loops and additional supported tracker effects, including retrigger, note/pattern delay, tremolo and pattern loops.
• SemaSynth songs or individual patterns can become Maker MOD music. Instruments can become YM effects or STE samples, with unsupported conversion details reported.
• Added Use in Maker / Edit in SemaSynth workflows with undoable application and cancellation. Maker-generated MOD music can reopen its associated SemaSynth song.
• MOD instruments can open in the Sample Editor and return with their edited sample and valid loop selection.
• Improved ADSR and YM effect playback, long song identities, sample-loop handling and protection of game PSG effects while music timers run.
• Added per-room choices for the project song, silence or imported 50 Hz SemaSynth SNDH music, plus selection of which existing PCM effects load with the room.
• Room audio can load from disk or be packed into the program. Room changes stop the old audio before replacing its resources; scenes restore project music, while re-entering an already loaded room preserves track position.
• Room duplication, reordering, removal, save/open and Undo preserve room-audio choices.
• Room audio currently accepts SemaSynth SNDH files up to 128 KB and uses the existing 16-effect/128 KB sample bank. It cannot be combined with global MOD music. High-rate stereo MOD plus sample effects is restricted when it would exhaust the native CPU budget; MOD E0 and EF are not implemented.

SemaSynth: composition and instrument editing

• Expanded the synthesis engine with instrument lanes, macros, WAVE/SID waveforms, sync-square, buzzer locking, glide, portamento and vibrato.
• Reworked instrument editing with cards, lanes, hardware views, presets and a waveform editor.
• Added pattern effects, variable pattern lengths, transpose, groove, sub-song editing and block tools.
• Pattern keyboard shortcuts act only while the pattern editor is shown, preserving the desktop's other shortcuts.
• Improved song looping, Loop here, noise-column editing, envelope shapes and author/year metadata.
• Improved the native SNDH player, timer selection, playback-rate support, sub-songs and game-driver integration, with CPU-budget information.
• Fixed SID waveform phase agreement between preview and export, SNDH metadata and cleanup of timers, interrupt state and sound-chip port bits.
• Improved YM voice mixing and consistency between SemaSynth preview and emulator playback. The separate experimental tone-counter behaviour remains disabled.

SemaSynth: samples, STE, MIDI and music formats

• Added one- and three-channel 4-bit digi conversion, drum kits, Quartet playback and sample-editing tools.
• Preserved digi data when saving songs and improved conversion/noise-shaping behaviour with the active YM model.
• Added editable Quartet channel D and preserved all four sample voices through Maker MOD export.
• Added an STE sample-track editor and sequencing lane, stereo WAV import, native SNDH export and stereo audio export.
• Preserved stereo STE playback through preview, recording and A/B seeks, with shared DMA playback and tone-control handling in the runtime and Jukebox.
• Integrated STE sample tracks with Creator song ownership and checked their coexistence with Quartet playback.
• Added host MIDI input/output and recording/clock support, Standard MIDI File workflows and routing between the emulated ST MIDI port and host MIDI.
• Fixed MIDI export sequencing and note timing. Live MIDI follows actual preview events and variable-length pattern positions.
• Added YM2–YM6 and VTX import, including supported YM effects, plus YM6 export with effects and checked VTX export for register songs.
• Improved STE music playback in the Jukebox, including DMA sound, tone controls and machine identification used by STE tunes.

Xenon and individual game fixes

• Xenon: Finer desktop background and motion sampling, with four spatial rows on desktop and the lighter three-row setting retained on Android.
• Xenon: Fixed reverse-driving replay-origin clipping, multipart-sprite placement and projectile matching around scrolling tiles.
• Xenon: Reused identical background work to reduce unnecessary preparation, separated spatial precision from timing, and restored effects audio correctly after loading a state.
• Speedball 2: Improved experimental Smooth Motion continuity, busy-presenter handling and fallback drawing when the GPU cannot supply a picture. Added recognition of the supported Replicants loader.
• Double Dragon: Improved experimental Smooth Motion, removed a backward step at a blank-frame boundary and kept the expanded view through GPU fallback. Early Enemy Activation is a separate choice from the visual Expanded View.
• Golden Axe: Kept widescreen output through GPU fallback. Phone touch/controller input no longer unintentionally starts player two.
• R-Type: Improved independent music/effect rendering efficiency. Existing controller setups gain the default B = Space mapping while preserving custom assignments.
• Gods: Preserved wide scenery strips and HUD icons through a torn field.
• Oids: Side panels follow the completed video field, avoiding a mismatch with the main picture.
• Turrican II: Retained wide scenery without black side areas when holding a GPU-rendered picture.
• Toki, Xenon and Turrican II: Improved CPU intermediate-picture fallback when the GPU route supplies no picture.
• Updated game-specific touch overlays and controller presets for Golden Axe, R-Type and Double Dragon.

Rendering, performance and emulator reliability

• Moved more enhancement drawing away from the emulation lock, reducing contention between original game execution and picture preparation.
• Reduced repeated memory copying and scene-capture work across Smooth Motion, expanded views and game-specific overlays.
• This work covers Arkanoid II, Batman, Cannon Fodder, Double Dragon, Fire and Ice, Gods, Kick Off/Kick Off 2, Lemmings, Lotus, The New Zealand Story, Out Run, Populous II, Rainbow Islands, Return to Genesis, Sensible Soccer, Speedball 2 and The Chaos Engine, among others.
• Extended the same separation to specialist interfaces and overlays in Dungeon Master, Lombard RAC Rally, Mega lo Mania, Phantasie, SWIV, Time Bandit, Xenon 2 and Zak McKracken.
• Reduced capture/preparation overhead for Smooth 3D in Elite, Falcon, Formula One Grand Prix, Starglider/Starglider 2 and Stunt Car Racer.
• Threaded mode avoids waiting for unused enhancement pictures when enhancements are off, and exchanges settings, sound controls and display state more consistently.
• Frame generation presents complete pictures during busy UI updates, addressing mixed-picture menu flicker. Overload handling and respecting an explicitly disabled governor were improved.
• Wide-view presentation is separated from optional extended gameplay, so seeing more scenery and changing the playable area remain distinct behaviours where offered.
• Reduced rewind capture work by examining changed memory pages instead of repeatedly comparing the whole machine.
• Corrected MFP timer timing and interrupt-priority behaviour, including 60 Hz operation. XBIOS Vsync now waits with interrupts enabled as expected.
• Improved keyboard-controller reset/input handling and startup/save-state compatibility in the integrated runtime.

Android testing build

• Android remains a separately distributed private test APK, not a public desktop-release attachment.
• Updated Classic-default migration for phone installations and reduced avoidable work in the mobile rendering path.
• Improved gameplay/menu display-mode requests, refresh-rate voting, surface lifecycle handling and frame deadlines.
• Touch controls no longer also press the emulated mouse-port button in joystick games.
• Link a folder reads the linked location in place instead of copying it. Avoided creating unintended User/games or User/media directories outside the Apple-specific layout.
• Improved portrait and narrow-screen labels, control sizing and access to STE sample controls.
• Performance diagnostics distinguish gameplay from menus, loading and pauses, making recorded timing more useful.

Distribution and validation

• Public desktop packages and signed updates are available for Windows x64, Linux x86-64 and Linux ARM64. Windows portability fixes and required runtime artwork are included.
• Refreshed the website enhancement catalogue and release documentation. The catalogue describes available enhancements, not a guarantee that every game or edition is compatible.
• Public package checks exclude application source, debug symbols, private fixtures and development/reference assets; required runtime assets and licences remain included.
• Creator validation includes complete generated disks running on emulated 520 ST and STE targets, native drawing/gameplay checks and modern/GEM desktop layout checks. Occasional particle bursts pass these checks; sustained heavy effects can still exceed an original machine's 50 Hz budget.
• Xenon has extended live-run and captured-scene comparison coverage, including first-boss damage, but boss defeat, sector transitions and a complete campaign remain unverified.
• Physical phone/STE confirmation and broader full-campaign testing remain pending. Experimental enhancements and actual performance depend on the game, scene, selected effects and device; Smooth Motion does not promise a fixed frame rate or change the original simulation speed.

1.1.585 — Golden Axe, R-Type and a more polished SemaOS

Golden Axe: GPU Smooth Motion follows scenery and actors with fractional horizontal and vertical movement. Expanded View adapts to the selected aspect ratio; the separate Expanded Play Area option allows movement in the wider scene. Original encounter gates and exits remain in place. Scrolling seams and level-edge judder are fixed, and the gamepad B button defaults to Magic while preserving custom bindings.

R-Type: GPU Smooth Motion includes scenery, stars and objects. Choose extra scenery with the original combat area, or enable Expanded Play Area for wider movement and verified enemy/projectile boundaries. Ground-enemy entry, turning and removal now account for the wider view. Intentionally timed left-side arrivals and boss formations retain their original timing.

R-Type sound and stability: Music and effects play together with independent volume controls, including when loading a mid-game save. Power-up-related ultrawide dropouts and distant scenery-cache failures are fixed. Stars extend into the additional view.

SemaOS tools: Updated creative and utility apps include the sample editor, gallery, programming tools and debugging tools, alongside improvements to Paint, Explorer and the shared desktop.

Session and Settings: Clearer text and contrast, reliable slider dragging, corrected directional-key navigation and performance-panel shortcuts. Steady menu redraws avoid repeated settings-file reads. Editor selections, tab scroll positions, file renaming and debugger step-over receive fixes.

Android packaging: Runtime artwork and required licenses remain included; development/reference assets are excluded from the APK. Existing signing identity and user-folder compatibility are preserved.

Windows x64, Linux x86-64 and Linux ARM64 public builds include signed updates. Android remains a separate testing APK. Golden Axe and R-Type were checked using saved-game replays, original-renderer comparisons and bounded later-stage tests; this is not a complete campaign playthrough. GPU Smooth Motion does not change the original game speed or guarantee a fixed frame rate on every device. Golden Axe CPU boost remains a manual choice because it also changes gameplay speed.

1.1.584 — Populous II widescreen

Populous II widescreen: Optional 16:9 and 21:9 battlefield views extend the isometric map with the game's own terrain, buildings, people and effects at their native size. The original stone control panel is kept and widened, and mouse clicks work across the added land.

Populous II camera and controls: Smooth camera panning (on by default), mouse-wheel zoom from 50% to 150%, and edge scrolling. The original keyboard view controls still work.

Populous II statue question: A new option, on by default, skips the manual's statue-number question. Turn it off to play with the original check. Gameplay and difficulty are unchanged.

Windows x64, Linux x86-64 and Linux ARM64 public builds include signed updates. The wider views are marked TEST in the enhancements menu: they were checked through the opening of the game, not a whole campaign. Populous II needs the default "Original drive" disk loading; the Fast setting can stop the game at its disk prompt.

1.1.583 — GPU Smooth Motion, steadier racing and Android improvements

Vroom GPU Smooth Motion: Road, scenery and cockpit presentation use the graphics-card path in supported views, including widescreen and Fit. Scene preparation, artwork reuse and frame pacing have been improved, with fixes for stationary flicker and clipped scenery.

Xenon GPU Smooth Motion: Fractional background and object movement works with the Vertical enhancement. Fixes cover startup, level transitions, aircraft shadows, the lower background and boss placement within the original combat area.

The Chaos Engine: GPU Smooth Motion supports widescreen and Fit. Auto CPU uses a protected 2x setting to reduce busy-scene slowdown. Display timing and retained scene history fixes address the scrolling snap-back seen with boosted CPU speed.

Frame-rate controls: Desktop and Android have an adjustable FPS cap, separate from display refresh. Performance-panel controls and timing diagnostics have been improved. Actual performance still depends on the game, device and settings.

Android startup and library: The shared SemaOS-style intro replaces the old splash, loading adapts to portrait and landscape, and animated library backgrounds work again. Game import, touch controls and orientation handling have also been updated.

Android Jukebox: Portrait and landscape layouts, composers, favourites, recent plays, playlists and additional music tools. Supported Amiga music imports are available; the library returns to landscape when leaving the player.

Android controls and second screen: Touch Turbo fire, the ST-style keyboard, and shared Session/Settings menus. Thor's second-screen keyboard and menu handling have been updated, including reconnect and held-input cleanup.

Phone stability and diagnostics: Vroom touch-input and reset handling, rendering snapshots, surface transitions and diagnostic reporting receive fixes and improvements.

Windows x64, Linux x86-64 and Linux ARM64 public builds include signed updates. The Android testing APK is distributed through the SemaTor Discord, separately from this desktop release. GPU Smooth Motion is game-specific; these changes do not promise a fixed frame rate on every device. Physical Thor testing remains limited, and the reported CRT-only HUD shimmer is still under investigation.

1.1.582 — New desktop menus, live picture controls and turbo fire

• New F11/F12 menus: A two-pane Session and Settings interface, with four physical menu sizes and a bottom-of-screen position.
• Live picture controls: Adjust CRT settings in the new menu while watching the game behind it, without switching to a separate studio page.
• GEM theme: A muted green patterned background, warm cream panels and clearer selection contrast.
• Gamepad menu controls: Back/View + Y opens Session; Back/View + Start opens Settings. LB/RB switch tabs, B goes back or closes the home page, and Start resumes. Left on the D-pad no longer closes the menu.
• Turbo fire: Assign Turbo fire (hold) to a controller button for repeated presses, while keeping normal Fire available separately for games that use a held press.

Windows x64, Linux x86-64 and Linux ARM64 public builds and signed updates. Android remains in private testing and is not included in the public release.

1.1.581 — The Chaos Engine one-disk edition recognised

• The Chaos Engine: the one-disk Cynix/Superior edition (RAM-disk and hard-drive version) is now recognised, with all enhancements: cheats, 16:9/21:9/Fit widescreen and Smooth Motion.

Windows x64, Linux x86-64 and Linux ARM64 public builds and signed updates. Android remains a private phone-test APK; it is not included in the public release.

1.1.580 — Faster threaded runtime and Turrican II on the graphics card

• Faster Threaded runtime: every game tick used to wait for the screen thread just to report the game’s enhancement status, even when nothing had changed, so a busy screen thread slowed the game down. The tick now sends the status only when it changes. Every game runs lighter in the Threaded runtime, most of all on slower machines and phones (on a desktop test: 4.2 ms a tick down to 3.2 ms).
• Turrican II at full speed: with widescreen and Smooth Motion on, Turrican II now keeps full speed on slower hardware. It makes one copy of the game’s memory per frame instead of two, and the check of its drawing moved off the emulation thread. On a desktop its tick went from 7.7 to 5.1 ms; on a test phone the game went from 37 to 50 ticks a second (full speed) and the sound dropouts from 173 to 3.
• Lighter snapshot: the snapshot of each game tick that the pictures are composed from now reuses the parts that did not change: about 0.37 MB copied per tick for Turrican II instead of 1.9 MB.
• Smooth Motion on the graphics card far more often: Turrican II’s in-between pictures are now drawn by the graphics card almost every time. Its safety check turned down 6-7% of them over a difference in an internal effect flag only, never in a colour; those are now accepted, so in testing not one picture fell back to the slower processor route (66-78 per run before). The check also runs on a sample of pictures rather than every one, which halves its cost.
• Nothing else changes: the games themselves, their timing and their sound are exactly as before (checked byte for byte against the Classic runtime).

Windows x64, Linux x86-64 and Linux ARM64 public builds and signed updates. Android remains a private phone-test APK; it is not included in the public release.

1.1.579 — Turrican II GPU Smooth Motion and lighter picture preparation

• Turrican II on the GPU: Smooth Motion now uses indexed Vulkan composition in Original, Fit and wider views, including Amiga artwork, native sprite masks, scanline colours and environmental effects. Layers are prepared once per game interval and reused for its display-rate pictures. The GPU route takes priority over the older Auto/Processor preference. CPU replay remains the fallback for an unavailable compatible renderer or a rejected scene check.
• Picture processing on the GPU: Colour processing, comparison view and Super ST 2x/3x/4x work with the new renderer. Ordinary display-rate Smooth Motion stays on the GPU through these stages. Original 50 Hz pictures with frame generation and explicit diagnostic captures retain their required readback paths.
• Less repeated CPU work: Shared native-screen decoding reuses unchanged bitplanes and palettes. Enhanced pictures avoid duplicate uploads, snapshots copy changed RAM blocks into their owned buffers, and common CPU timing calculations do less work. These changes apply on desktop and Android while preserving emulated timing and game behaviour.
• Turrican II threaded rendering: Smooth Motion and Fit compose from owned snapshots beside the running emulation. Camera, artwork and reset state stay with the selected snapshot; loading a state or starting another game invalidates retained drawing data.
• Sound reliability: Native output cannot replay an already consumed audio range after a delayed flush. State loads clear old resampler/fade history, paused time no longer biases the producer-rate estimate, and device-status publication avoids racing an output reopen. Native/SDL labels report the actual backend. Existing ST gain, filters and stereo mixing are preserved.
• Input and save requests: One-shot requests are consumed atomically, and Save/Load keeps the slot selected when the action was pressed. Input-ring overflow reconciles held controls so a dropped release cannot leave a key or button stuck.
• Phone test: saves and menus: Visible landscape Save/Load actions open the correct slot page. Settings use Display, Picture, Sound, Controls, Game options, and System & diagnostics, with advanced choices inside. Choice previews avoid temporary settings writes; touch focus, scrolling, navigation and diagnostics sharing receive fixes.
• Phone test: loading and placement: The SemaTor loading screen stays correctly sized during game-launch preparation. Fast-core controls cover registered game threads, performance updates run on the UI owner, top controls follow rotation, and Turrican fire presets no longer send an extra mouse click.
• More useful diagnostics: GPU picture counts report completed composition, captures record the actual GPU image, and native shortages are counted even when resampler lookahead remains queued. A status-indicator bug that could draw into an offscreen image is fixed.

Windows x64, Linux x86-64 and Linux ARM64 public builds and signed updates. Android remains a private phone-test APK; it is not included in the public release. Further game-specific GPU conversions follow separately.

1.1.578 — Threaded runtime, one frame rate setting and native sound

• One frame rate: the frame cap, the Smooth Motion rate and the motion rate are now one Frame rate for all games (F12 > Display and SemaOS Video settings): Match display (the new default: one picture for every refresh of your screen - 144 a second on a 144 Hz screen), 60, 120, 144 or 240, or any of the old caps under Tools > Frame rate (advanced). Smooth Motion’s in-between pictures, the Fire & Ice, Buggy Boy and Wizball motion and frame generation all fill exactly these pictures; the game’s own speed never changes.
• Your settings carry over: a frame cap you chose is kept as the frame rate. The old default of 60 becomes Match display (pick 60 again if you want it). A Smooth Motion rate of 60-240 under the default cap becomes the frame rate, and 50 Hz exact pictures stay available under Tools > Frame rate (advanced) > Smooth Motion pictures. Older SemaTor versions can still read the settings.
• Sync to display and Variable refresh: Sync to display (new, on by default) makes games wait for the screen before each picture, so there is no tearing on a fixed-refresh screen; off shows each picture at once for the lowest delay. One Variable refresh screen setting (Auto, Yes for VRR, G-SYNC and FreeSync, or No for a fixed refresh, which Beam racing needs) replaces the two switches that could disagree. Frame generation works out its own multiplier from the frame rate and the game’s rate.
• Fast forward speed (new): 2x, 3x, 4x, 6x (the default, as before), 8x or Max, under Machine.
• Match display on high-refresh Windows monitors: Windows now reads the display’s real refresh rate, so Match display uses the full rate on monitors that were reported as 60 Hz.
• Threaded runtime (new, on by default): the emulation and its sound run on their own thread, and the pictures are composed alongside from a snapshot of each game tick, so a slow display or a busy menu no longer holds the game back. The game itself, its timing and its sound are exactly the same as before. Runtime: Threaded or Classic under F12 > Debug; it applies when the next game starts. Nine enhanced games compose their pictures without ever holding the game: Xenon, Xenon 2, Zynaps, Toki, Turrican, Strider, Rick Dangerous II, Buggy Boy and Wizball.
• Steadier Smooth Motion: Smooth Motion steps down only when game ticks really run late (it mistook frame-locked games such as Xenon for an emulation falling behind), and its in-between pictures follow the rate the screen is really shown at. A new Smooth Motion drawing setting picks Auto (the default), Processor or Graphics card for games that can draw their in-between pictures either way.
• Native sound output: sound now goes straight to Windows (WASAPI) and follows a change of the default sound device, with SDL as a fallback (Sound output: Native or SDL). The sound engine also gained fixes: a bug that ran the sound 1% slow, recovery after a stall, and a resampler that dulled the high notes.
• Auto HDR for every picture mode: Auto HDR (ordinary pictures given HDR highlights) is now its own setting with its own strength, for Sharp pixels, Simple filters and the CRT cabinet alike. It needs an HDR display; on SDR the setting says so and nothing changes.
• Vertical modes: Simple filters and the CRT cabinet now work in the Xenon and Xenon 2 vertical modes, and Xenon 2’s vertical mode is steadier.
• New SemaOS start-up: one animated SemaOS start-up instead of two, with the work done alongside it, so the desktop is ready sooner.
• Game fixes: Xenon’s stall at the start of a level is split up so the picture keeps moving; Buggy Boy, Zynaps and Toki cost less to run.
• Diagnostics: Save diagnostics (F12 > Debug > Performance & diagnostics) writes one text file with the device, graphics and settings, the last two minutes of play and the end of the log, to attach to a problem report. The diagnostics also show SemaTor’s GPU usage.
• Reliability: many fixes found in a code review and a long verification pass, among them game sessions that now start clean after returning to the library.

Windows x64, Linux x86-64 and Linux ARM64 public builds and signed updates. The Android phone build remains in private testing; it is not a public Android or Play Store release.

1.1.576 — Vertical modes, Smooth Motion at any refresh rate, FidelityFX, sturdier sound and Linux ARM64

• Smooth Motion at any refresh rate: every Smooth Motion game now draws its in-between pictures for the moment each display refresh is shown, at 60, 90, 120, 144, 240 Hz and in between, without changing game speed, timing or sound. A new per-game "Smooth motion rate" row offers Match display (default), 60, 120, 144, 240 Hz or the previous 50 Hz exact pictures. Heavy scenes step down gracefully instead of stuttering, and frame generation no longer interpolates on top.
• Vertical modes (experimental): Xenon and Xenon 2 can fill a tall window or a monitor turned upright. The original view sits slightly above the bottom by default, with the stretch already flown below and what is coming above; choose Bottom, 10%, 15%, 20% or Middle under "Original view position". Xenon 2 shows upcoming formations flying in, every member on its own way with its own animation, and the wall enemies animate in the extra rows. A "Shot range" option lets shots travel their original distance beyond the 4:3 view. Both games stay vertical from the title and attract flyby to game over. Restart after changing the option.
• FidelityFX Optical Flow: a new experimental frame generation method using AMD’s open-source FidelityFX optical flow on any Vulkan GPU (AMD, Intel or NVIDIA). NVIDIA Optical Flow is unchanged.
• Sturdier sound: the sound queue is kept steady with tiny rate corrections instead of pausing and refilling, absorbs brief stalls, follows headphones or Bluetooth devices being plugged in or removed, and reliably comes back after the window regains focus.
• Presentation thread: on Vulkan, waiting for the display and submitting frames now happen on their own thread, so the game and its sound keep a steady pace while the display catches up. F12 > Debug > Performance & diagnostics can switch it off.
• Smoother interface: save-slot previews, SemaOS thumbnails and Continue cards load in the background, menu and library uploads are smaller, and the Jukebox scope and desktop music visualiser cost much less while looking the same.
• Widescreen: pausing a widescreen game keeps the widescreen picture, and the Zynaps title colour bars now run across the full width. A raster timing fix removes a faint colour flicker above Zynaps’ panel; colour changes written just after a line’s last pixel now count from the next line, as on the ST.
• SemaOS and menus: GEM windows look more like real GEM dialogs, the Jukebox has icon playback buttons and a sidebar that scrolls in small windows, and the F11/F12 menus fit small windows better.
• Linux ARM64 (new): a native Linux ARM64 build for Arm Linux devices such as Valve’s Steam Frame, with its own signed updates. It has been tested under emulation; real Arm hardware reports are welcome.

Windows x64, Linux x86-64 and Linux ARM64 public builds and signed updates. Android remains a separate test preview; it is not a public Android or Play Store release.

1.1.570 — Steadier Xenon audio and refreshed app icons

• Xenon audio: fixes missed music callbacks while Steady Speed holds the game CPU. The independent music callback now runs correctly without waking or changing the held game CPU.
• Audio efficiency: caches unchanged sound-chip oscillator rates and Timer A periods, and uses exact integer sample timing. These shared engine changes preserve the generated audio samples.
• Application icons: uses the SemaTor ST artwork for Windows executable and taskbar icons and Linux window and application-launcher icons. Normal, debug and public Windows builds embed the icon; the loose ICO is no longer shipped in the desktop runtime.

Windows x64 and Linux x86-64 public builds and signed updates. Desktop layouts are unchanged. Android phone library, Jukebox and touch-menu work remains a separate test preview; it is not a public Android or Play Store release.

1.1.568 — Clearer game titles and steadier motion

• Library cards: larger, centred game titles now wrap onto two lines, with subtitle breaks where possible. Year and publisher remain in Details. Gold Enhanced cards and the top/bottom caption setting are preserved.
• Startup loading: the SemaTor loading overlay retires as soon as the first game picture appears. It stays off for the rest of that session, including later fades to black or white and disk activity.
• Wizball: fixes the doubled ball during bounce interpolation with Smooth Motion enabled.
• The Chaos Engine: keeps widescreen side views paired with completed game pictures when screen buffers are reused, preventing death/respawn flicker. Smooth Motion also covers slower source frames in crowded areas while preserving the original game and audio timing.

Windows x64 and Linux x86-64 public builds and signed updates. Enhancements remain specific to supported game editions and scenes. Android APK qualification remains separate.

1.1.567 — Smoother games, clearer sound and a better library

• Sound and timing: fixes uneven audio delivery and incorrect resampling when a game uses 60 Hz. ST refresh (Auto / 50 Hz / 60 Hz), playback speed and the desktop frame-rate cap are now separate controls.
• Fast forward and loading: Pause / Break toggles fast forward; an unassigned right-stick click (R3) does the same on a gamepad. Blank disk-loading screens show animated guidance inside the CRT bezel, local cover art or SemaOS disk labels, useful tips and a fade into the game. Slow loading does not count as an error.
• Chaos Engine: fixes the loader losing its receive interrupt, restoring controls when starting from disk 1 and continuing through the disk change. Restart from disk 1 if an older save was made with input already stuck.
• Wider, smoother games: Zynaps gains widescreen FIT with an expanded playable area for the ship, enemies, shots and collisions. Toki can combine widescreen and Smooth Motion. Turrican extends actor activation and terrain collisions into the wider view. Turrican II improves widescreen / Smooth Motion / optional Amiga-graphics combinations and final-boss movement.
• More game fixes: smoother Xenon 2 background scrolling, less repeated rendering in The New Zealand Story, steadier Gods motion, and corrections to Batman and Sensible Soccer widescreen transitions. Smooth 3D also supports the verified Elite v1.01 and alternate Starglider editions.
• Game Details and Continue: redesigned Details lets you change enhancements and per-game options before playing, with cheats kept separate. Continue shows four recent saves above a searchable game library; open a game to see its saves.
• A more comfortable interface: compact desktop buttons and F11/F12 panels, independent cover sizes for each window, restored gold enhanced cards, and larger centred game titles. Captions default to the bottom, with a top-position option.
• Jukebox: returns to the same track and playback position after a game. Get SNDH links to the official archive and guides you through importing a downloaded ZIP.

Windows x64 and Linux x86-64 public builds and signed updates. Enhancements remain game- and edition-specific; some scenes fall back to the original view. Android startup and portable-folder fixes are included in the private source, but Android APK/device qualification remains separate and there is no Android download in this release.

1.1.566 — Game fixes and games-first phone mode

• Chaos Engine: adds optional Smooth Motion for gameplay, using isolated rendering passes while keeping the original game timing.
• The New Zealand Story: preserves smooth-motion history and activates actors visible in the widened side views.
• Xenon: reuses identical smooth-motion background subrow draws to avoid unnecessary rendering work.
• Batman: adds widescreen support for the Axis Chemicals and cathedral stages of the supported two-disk edition.
• Library and controls: keeps companion disk names readable after ZIP extraction, corrects session quit and launcher destination labels, and fixes keyboard input reporting. SemaOS gains improved touch actions and gamepad scrolling.
• SemaOS phone mode: games, Continue, Jukebox and Options come first in portrait or landscape. Creator tools are hidden by default and can be enabled under Options → Behaviour. Auto/Phone/Desktop selection is available; existing projects and desktop window positions are preserved.

Windows x64 and Linux x86-64 public builds and signed updates. Android APK/device qualification remains separate; this release does not include an Android download.

1.1.565 — Vroom widescreen stability

Fixes intermittent loss of Vroom’s side views when its dashboard updates, aligns tunnel and building endpoints across the widescreen joins, and moves pause from X to right-stick click. Custom button layouts are retained.

1.1.564 — Vroom and Windows update hotfix

Restores Vroom’s WIDESCREEN FIT THE WINDOW option in the in-game enhancements menu, removes the high-resolution track, and fixes Windows update download progress while the file is still being written.

1.1.563 — Sharper motion, wider games and a tidier library

Changes since 1.1.562. Game enhancements remain optional and depend on the supported disk edition.

• Smooth motion: new options for Speedball 2, Cannon Fodder, Turrican II, Wizball, Zynaps, Rick Dangerous II and Lemmings. Xenon and Xenon 2 background scrolling now keeps its sharp pixel detail through the smooth-motion path.
• Fit your screen: more games support FIT THE WINDOW, reaching 32:9 where their scenery permits it. Views respect supported game boundaries and retain their HUDs. Vroom gains optional widescreen, continuous high-resolution track detail and smooth motion.
• Frame generation: improved handling of sharp motion and Super ST colour, exact source frames, transitions and game-session restarts. CRT effects remain the final display stage.
• Library: game editions and companion disks share a main game card. This includes Vroom's data disk, Civilization, Llamatron's memory variants, Bubble Bobble's Extended Screens variant and Nebulus/Tower Toppler. Original disk choices remain accessible; genuine sequels remain separate. Searches work across the grouped entries.
• Phantasie: fixes the overworld terrain and mouse pointer, preserves the game's full viewport, and adds optional interface improvements.
• Compatibility: more profiles use SemaTor's TOS-compatible machine, including Buggy Boy, Captain Blood, F1 Grand Prix, Deuteros, M1 Tank Platoon, F-19 Stealth Fighter and Blood Money. Fixes also cover disk changes, saved enhancement state and Rick Dangerous II ammunition options.
• Presentation fixes: Lotus keeps its widescreen view stable; Buggy Boy's drawing worker and the frame-generation worker restart correctly between sessions.
• Jukebox: tunes with no supplied duration display a playback limit, such as "3m limit", instead of presenting that fallback as the song's length.

1.1.562 — Smooth motion for Turrican, Rainbow Islands and Xenon; Turrican II at 32:9; an update prompt; options that switch together; a front end that never waits

Changes since 1.1.561. Unless noted, each enhancement is an option that is off until chosen; it is drawn by the game's own code and leaves the game exactly as it was when off.

• Smooth motion for Turrican (also in its wide view, and still stopping at a level's edge), Rainbow Islands and Xenon - a picture every ST refresh, 50 a second. Xenon's playfield is also never shown torn with the option on.
• Xenon: STEADY SPEED (an even 16.7 frames a second where the ST wobbled) and ST SPEED EXACT. Games whose loop does not wait for the display now hold to the display's own blanks, which also fixed Xenon running 16% fast.
• Widescreen: Turrican II reaches 32:9 with FIT THE WINDOW, stopping at a level's edge; The Chaos Engine gets FIT THE WINDOW up to 21:9 width.
• Frame generation, last in line: frame generation now works from whatever picture is shown - smooth-motion and widescreen pictures included - so on a fast monitor it adds its in-betweens on top of smooth motion instead of being switched off.
• Update prompt: when a newer SemaTor is out, the library and SemaOS say so as soon as they are up, with a few lines of what is new, and offer Update now or Not now. Update now downloads, checks and installs it and opens the new version; Not now asks again at a later start, at most once a day. Never during a game, offline, or with update checks turned off.
• Options that go together switch together. Switching on an option that needs another now switches that one on too, and switches off what it cannot run with, with a one-line note saying so - in the library, SemaOS and F12, by keyboard, mouse or pad. Xenon's SMOOTH MOTION turns on STEADY SPEED and turns off ST SPEED EXACT; Toki's SMOOTH MOTION and its widescreen views switch each other off; Out Run's SMOOTH 3D and ST SPEED EXACT likewise; Lombard RAC Rally's WIDE WINDSCREEN turns on HIGH RES ROAD. Switching a needed option off switches off what needs it.
• Damaged disks: a disk that cannot be read (a ZIP cut short, an image that does not decode) shows a DAMAGED badge, a plain explanation and, when another copy of the same game reads, "Play <that copy> instead"; a Damaged filter finds them. SemaTor never changes or deletes your files.
• A front end that never waits: starting a game, Rescan and adding or removing a folder no longer wait for a library check - even one stuck on a missing network drive - and quitting never hangs on one. Folders list much faster (a 14,500-game folder in milliseconds), covers found for another edition now show on Windows, and cover downloads that GitHub limits stop politely. With a 14,000-game library a rescan takes about a third of the time, a first scan a fifth less, start-up half as long, and scrolling the library is smoother.
• First start: an empty library and Games window now say SemaTor comes with no games and show both ways to add yours - add a folder, or copy disks into the games folder and rescan.
• Smaller screens: on a first start at 1024x768 or 1280x720 SemaOS arranges itself to fit, with the making tools in one folder; at any size the first Games window opens beside the icons, and a narrow Games window keeps Rescan, the sort and Filters behind a "..." menu.
• Keyboard and gamepad: every new control - the graphics backend and reset buttons, their questions, the library's Graphics & reset page, F12's backend switch (now asked in the menu, no pop-up) and the screenshot size - works without a mouse; the first press acts when the focus is already on a control. Back from a game, SemaOS shows the game you just played.
• Safer files: settings, music indexes, SemaSynth exports and covers are written to the side and renamed, so a crash cannot leave a half-written file; background work pauses properly while a game runs.
• Stability: an audit of the new code fixed 19 rare problems - smooth-motion and widescreen pictures that could read past their buffers, Turrican II drawing an old picture after a save state was loaded, and library checks that could be lost or left paused around a game.
• Profiles: Bubble Bobble, Populous II, Another World, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Maniac Mansion, Pirates!, SimCity, Kick Off, Civilization, Starglider 1 and 2, Zak McKracken, Arkanoid II, Gauntlet II and Super Sprint now run on the accurate TOS machine with every option checked.
• Saves: save states from earlier versions still load.

1.1.561 — Every game shows its picture with OpenGL, Vulkan by default; smooth motion for Strider, Gods and Toki; settings reset

Changes since 1.1.560. Unless noted, each enhancement is an option that is off until chosen; it is drawn by the game's own code and leaves the game exactly as it was when off.

• No picture with OpenGL, fixed: with the OpenGL backend - the default on Windows and Linux until now - games played their sound but showed a black picture. They show it again. Vulkan is now the default everywhere, and the first start of this version moves every existing installation to Vulkan once; choosing OpenGL afterwards sticks, and SemaTor still falls back to OpenGL by itself when Vulkan cannot start.
• Choose the graphics backend and reset to factory defaults: SemaOS (Settings > System) and the library's Graphics & reset page offer OpenGL or Vulkan (a restart switches), and two resets - game settings, or everything including the look - each confirmed on the page, with the old files kept in a dated backup folder. Your games, library folders, save states, play times, favourites, notes, covers and the Jukebox are never touched; a game-settings reset keeps the backend you chose.
• F12 no longer crashes on the Performance HUD row; Vulkan now dims the game behind F11/F12 and draws SemaOS's GEM pointer, as OpenGL did.
• Smooth motion for Strider (motion every blank instead of every fifth), Gods and Toki, alongside 1.1.560's games.
• Widescreen to 32:9: FIT THE WINDOW for Out Run and Kick Off 2. In Turrican, Toki, Batman and The New Zealand Story the wide view now stops at a level's edge - the original picture moves aside instead of the view showing past the level.
• Xenon: INFINITE LIVES and INVINCIBLE; it now runs on the accurate TOS machine.
• Screenshots are saved at the ST's real resolution (320x200 for low resolution) by default; F11 > Save / Load > Screenshot size offers "As shown" with filters.
• TOS 1.62: SemaTor now reports itself as TOS 1.62 and keeps the running program and the keyboard's shift state where TOS does, so programs that check the TOS version take the right path.
• Front ends: clearer library status lines and labels, filter lists that keep keyboard focus, no doubled library folders, and settings, favourites, play times and folder lists that are never replaced when they cannot be read; the library's old "Reset window layout" button, which actually reset every setting, is gone.
• Stability: wide pictures up to 32:9 in every widescreen game are held safely, and a number of rare crashes and races found by an audit are fixed.
• Profiles: Captive, Damocles, Defender of the Crown, Hunter, Last Ninja 2, North & South, Lombard RAC Rally, Nebulus, Oids, Mega lo Mania and Falcon (F16.IMG) now run on the accurate TOS machine with every option checked.
• Saves: save states from earlier versions still load.

1.1.560 — Smooth motion, widescreen to 32:9, separate music and effects; SemaTor stays open when something fails

Changes since 1.1.559. Unless noted, each enhancement is an option that is off until chosen; it is drawn by the game's own code and leaves the game exactly as it was when off.

• Smooth motion: a new SMOOTH MOTION option draws pictures in between the game's own frames - scenery and characters placed part of the way to the next frame, drawn by the game's own drawing code - for The New Zealand Story, Batman - The Movie (platform levels, the Batmobile and the Batwing), Xenon 2 and Sensible Soccer. Anything that appears, vanishes or jumps is shown on the game's own frames. Lotus gets real extra frames: 50 frames a second for one player and in two-player races.
• Widescreen to 32:9: FIT THE WINDOW fills the window's shape, up to 32:9, for Batman (now including the Batmobile and the Batwing), Lotus, The New Zealand Story, Sensible Soccer, and new 16:9 / 21:9 / FIT views for Toki and Turrican. The side strips now always belong to the frame on screen (they could be a frame ahead), and Lotus and Sensible Soccer can put their HUD at the screen edges.
• Separate music and effects: Toki, Turrican, Batman and The New Zealand Story play their music and sound effects at the same time without one cutting into the other; Batman no longer makes you choose between music and effects.
• Speed and cheats: steady speed, FAST and ST SPEED EXACT options for Lotus, The New Zealand Story (FAST 25 fps), Batman (including the vehicles) and Sensible Soccer (a 2x boost by default); infinite energy and time for Batman; cheats for Toki and Turrican.
• Lotus presentation: RACE VIEW ONLY (one player, the race alone) and GARAGE PICTURE in a corner.
• Filters: every SemaOS games window and folder, and the library, can be filtered - Cheats, Enhanced, Widescreen, publisher, year, genre, format, played, favourites - quickly even with 14,000 games. A Cheats icon on the desktop in both styles; the library's side panel shows saves and notes.
• Stability: a crash now leaves a report in support.log (kept as support-crash.log at the next start) instead of closing silently. Every other reason a game session ends is written down, and SemaTor returns to the library instead of closing. Background work (covers, scans, music) pauses while a game starts and runs. The library and SemaOS retry instead of closing or blocking when the window, the graphics device or a slow network drive fails, and brief graphics-device losses are retried.
• Disks that now start or get further: a .zip opened directly (command line, Open with, drag and drop); program names with a colon on Automation and other menu disks; Automation 169 (Fusion); Spectrum 512 (and its keyboard); Atomic Disk 1's reboot; The New Zealand Story's one-disk crack; the Strider half of Black Tiger & Strider; GEM programs installed on the desktop start with their document; 3D Construction Kit II and other Setscreen users. After a disk's AUTO programs, SemaTor now does what TOS's desktop does: a folder program starts only when DESKTOP.INF names it, or when it is the disk's only program after helper-only AUTO programs.
• Profiles: about 30 older profiles - Xenon 2, Speedball 1 and 2, Rainbow Islands, Lemmings, Gods, Turrican II, Dungeon Master, Chaos Strikes Back, Kick Off 2, Populous, IK+, Elite, Prince of Persia, Monkey Island, Out Run, Stunt Car Racer, The Chaos Engine - now run on the accurate TOS machine with every option checked, and more disk editions of profiled games get their profile (the French and German Kick Off 2 cracks, Dungeon Master v1.0, the Turrican demo with its own identity).
• Saves: save states from earlier versions still load.

1.1.559 — Widescreen Batman, New Zealand Story, Sensible Soccer and Lotus; library folders in SemaOS; many more disks start

Changes since 1.1.558. A second check of a large ST collection found most of these; each fix was compared against working disks before it went in.

• Widescreen: Batman - The Movie (both platform levels), The New Zealand Story, Sensible Soccer and Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge (one- and two-player races) get 16:9 and 21:9 views. The extra picture at the sides is drawn by each game's own code - real scenery and live enemies or players, not stretched or invented - and with the option off the games run exactly as before.
• SemaOS library folders and rescanning: add and remove game folders in Settings > Library or from Explorer (Add to library), and rescan with F5 or the Games window's Rescan button. New disks appear while the check runs, the taskbar shows its progress and a note says how many were found. A check interrupted by starting a game carries on afterwards. On Windows a folder can no longer be added twice in different letter case.
• Starting a game from SemaOS: a choice of hand-over in Settings > Behaviour > When a game starts. Sunset hand-over (the windows dissolve into the retro scene and the game's disk sets in front of the sun), GEM drive (the disk slides into an ST drive in a GEM window) or Title card; Match the desktop, the default, picks the sunset on the Retro themes and the GEM drive on the GEM style. They follow the desktop's colours and play while the game boots, so starting is no slower; a key or click skips them. The start-up screen is now drawn at the window's full resolution.
• Disk cards in the library: the library now offers SemaOS's disk labels - cover art, a blue disk with a printed label, or a hand-written marker-pen label - drawn the same way in both, from one shared setting. The library's side panel also shows how often and how long a game was played and which disk of a set it is.
• Games that now start or get further: Turbo Out Run, Lotus Turbo Challenge II, Barbarian (Palace, both builds, including The Ultimate Warrior), F-16 Combat Pilot, Asterix in the Dungeons of Doom, Super Hang-On, Alternate Reality - The City, Hard Drivin' and Dungeon Master v1.0 (the cracked editions that keep the game in memory across a reset), Bivouac, Black & Mortimer, Livingstone 2, Pacman on E's and Automation 131.
• Menu disks: menus that hide their games behind names with a colon (:RANGER.PRG) start them now - Rocket Ranger from Automation 184 among about 50 such disks; menus that keep packed game files beside their menu program boot again; Automation 200's menu no longer crashes when the mouse moves.
• Robocop no longer slows to a crawl at its disk-2 prompt.
• GEM programs: fewer GEM calls are refused, and dialogs answer the keyboard and mouse as TOS's do; The Colonel's Bequest shows its menu bar.
• Cheats and speed: infinite lives for Strider, Rick Dangerous II (also bombs and ammo) and The New Zealand Story; Strider gets FAST (12.5 fps) and ST EXACT speed options. Steady speed now measures game frames correctly in games that wait for the frame in a loop (Wizball).
• Profiles: a game with a profile now runs on the same accurate TOS machine as a game without one; the older profiles keep their tuned setup until each is checked. The Turrican II playable demo is no longer listed as Enhanced.
• Saves: save states from earlier versions still load.

1.1.558 — More disks start, and a Cheats category

Changes since 1.1.557. This release also includes 1.1.556's and 1.1.557's changes (stereo sound, the friendlier Jukebox and experimental frame generation, which remains optional and off by default).

A check of every disk in a large ST collection found these, and each fix was compared against working disks before it went in.

• Menu disks that run their menu from AUTO: disks whose only program is in the AUTO folder behind a boot sector now start their menu, as on an ST. Many Automation menu disks showed nothing before.
• Games that unpack onto a RAM disk: some loaders unpack a game to a drive they create themselves and start it from there. These now run - among them Illusion, DragonForce, The Light Corridor, Bubble Bobble and Spy vs Spy 3 from compilation disks, Asgard and Alphamax.
• Raster timing: the raster timer now fires at the end of each displayed line, as the ST's does. Colour splits are steadier and effects that follow the picture beam work.
• Keyboard chip timing: Artura no longer freezes on its first screen.
• Floppy start-up: Archipelagos (both releases) gets past its loader.
• More games that now start: 10th Frame, Advanced Rugby Simulator, Advanced Ski Simulator, Amaze, and programs built with the Alcyon C compiler now end cleanly.
• GEM programs: a program that opens its graphics with unusual settings now draws (Automation 039's Poker shows its message, Autoduel's menu its border).
• Cheats category: a game whose profile has only cheats now shows a lilac CHEATS badge and sits in its own Cheats category, so it is no longer listed as Enhanced.
• Saves: save states from earlier versions still load.

1.1.557 — Stereo sound and a friendlier Jukebox

Changes since the experimental 1.1.556 prerelease.

Experimental manual prerelease. SemaTor 1.1.555 remains the stable release. It includes 1.1.556's experimental frame-generation changes, which still have the known issue described under 1.1.556.

• Stereo for ST music: Sound > Stereo spreads the ST sound chip's three voices across the speakers. Auto keeps bass, drums and sampled sounds centred and places the melody voices left and right; Classic A-B-C and A-C-B are the traditional layouts. Stereo width sets how far apart they sit. Off, the default, is the original mono sound, unchanged.
• Mono-compatible: a stereo layout only moves voices between the speakers; mixed back to mono it is the original sound.
• Amiga blend: the Amiga plays each voice fully left or fully right. Sound > Amiga blend mixes some of each side into the other, so a melody is not alone in one ear. Off, the default, is the original.
• Jukebox stereo: Stereo and Amiga blend buttons for YM, SNDH and Amiga tunes, remembered between sessions.
• Songs in the archive: a tune with several songs opens in the list with one click, showing every song - with its name and length when the file includes them - so any song is one click away. Click the tune again to close it.
• Sorting everywhere: every Jukebox list, Favourites included, sorts by its column headings; click a heading again to reverse the order.
• Tidier Jukebox: the sound options sit together, duplicate buttons are gone, and Scan A/B is retired - inserted disks are still checked for music automatically.
• Per-game stereo profiles: a game's profile can choose its own layout, and can place sound effects at their on-screen source once that game has been researched.

1.1.556 — Experimental frame generation and Fire and Ice music

Changes since the previous public release, 1.1.555.

Experimental manual prerelease. SemaTor 1.1.555 remains the stable release.

• Fire and Ice in Jukebox: Import the supported two-IPF Amiga disk ZIP to add 23 tracks. Imported tracks are cached for later playback; the original disks are preserved. This adds verified Fire and Ice support, not support for every Amiga music format.
• Experimental frame generation: Revised visibility handling improves the captured Turrican II rifle and character breakup when moving past scenery. This is a candidate improvement, not a complete fix for frame-generation artifacts.
• Known frame-generation regression: The focused 396-case detail test changes from 13 baseline failures to one new crossing failure, with two extra sampled foreground pixels. The remaining failure is disclosed rather than counted as a pass; animated objects and overlapping scenery can still show artifacts.
• Small gradient correction: Reliable motion can now transport subtle gradients instead of holding nearly identical endpoint colours. Known-motion tests show a correction of at most one colour level; the captured real Turrican II pair was unchanged. This does not establish a fix for the reported bridge or sky flicker.

You must supply your own supported game disks. No game artwork or music is bundled.

1.1.555 — Jukebox audio hotfix

Changes since the previous public release, 1.1.554.

• Audible imported Amiga music: Fixed silent playback of supported Turrican II Amiga tracks in SemaOS Jukebox. Stereo output and volume now work correctly, including for tracks already imported.
• Clear playback limits: Imported Amiga tracks now show “7m limit” or “3m limit” in Music and Favourites. These are playback windows, not measured song lengths.

1.1.554 — Rendering efficiency, Turrican II and disk music

Changes since the previous public release, 1.1.553.

• More responsive presentation: Supported Vulkan views can present completed frames during longer CPU ticks, without changing the game's instruction timing.
• Less work per frame: Reduced repeated screen capture, image conversion and uploads. Vulkan reuses unchanged ST pictures and prepared wide-view textures while keeping palette changes, CRT effects and recovery working.
• More efficient frame generation: Vulkan Frame Blend and supported fades can stay on the GPU. NVIDIA frame generation and its software assistance do less repeated work, and Turrican II's wide view prepares the displayed phases as needed while retaining its HUD and water detail.
• Lighter CPU and run-ahead work: Reduced interpreter bookkeeping and the cost of saving and restoring prediction state. Existing instruction timing and save-file compatibility are retained.
• More Turrican II artwork: Added scenery for all three flying stages, animated panels in the first flight, the ship and shield, further enemy and boss parts, and the remaining custom vertical, gate and final-boss pieces. These use artwork from your own verified Amiga disk at normal and wide widths.
• Independent Amiga sounds: Action effects and pickup voices now have separate playback. Optional positional Amiga effects and voices follow their on-screen sources; music retains its original stereo mix and ST fallback sounds remain unchanged.
• Music from inserted disks: SemaOS Jukebox checks newly inserted ST disks for supported YM/SNDH music, with Scan A and Scan B for manual retries. Imported tracks remain available after ejecting a disk or restarting.
• Turrican II in the Jukebox: Insert a supported Turrican II Amiga IPF, or a ZIP containing it, to add the title and ten stage selections. Tracks use the existing transport and volume controls, with theme-matched import/status controls and safe cache removal.

Your original disks remain untouched, and no game images, artwork or music are included. Amiga Jukebox support initially covers the verified Turrican II edition; its listed durations are playback windows rather than measured song lengths. Unmapped artwork keeps its native fallback, and Turrican II retains its original gameplay timing.

These changes reduce verified processing and transfer work. They are not a guarantee of higher frame rates or perfectly even physical-display pacing. Windows continues to need broader real-machine testing.

1.1.553 — Turrican II bridge fix

Changes since the previous public release, 1.1.552.

Fixed dark rectangles beneath the moving bridge when Amiga artwork is enabled. Its sky fill now matches the enhanced scenery; other bridge pixels retain their native artwork. Applies to both first-world stages and normal/widescreen views. Gameplay timing is unchanged.

1.1.552 — Expanded Turrican II artwork

Changes since the previous public release, 1.1.551.

• Expanded Amiga scenery: Turrican II now uses artwork from your Amiga disk across all eight walking stages and the first flying stage’s static scenery, with normal, 16:9 and 21:9 views.
• Enemies and power-ups: Added 382 mapped actor pose slots across 60 banks, including all 11 shared pickups, enemies and selected boss parts. Matching Amiga poses follow the original animation slots; hit flashes retain native rendering.
• Separate effects and voices: Amiga action sound effects and spoken pickup announcements have independent switches. Existing effects settings retain action sounds; voices start off until selected. Music remains separate and keeps its switching continuity.
• Experimental coverage: Custom bosses and unmapped secondary parts, the flying ship, animated flying terrain and the other two flying stages’ terrain still use ST artwork. Original 25 Hz gameplay remains; the withdrawn 50 Hz mode stays disabled.

1.1.551 — Turrican II hotfix

Changes since the previous public release, 1.1.550.

• Original gameplay timing: Removed the experimental Turrican II 50 Hz option after reports of broken player movement and animation. The normal 25 Hz mode remains. Older enabled settings cannot reactivate the experiment; an active old save returns to normal timing at a safe frame boundary.
• Music that carries on: Switching between ST and Amiga music now keeps the companion soundtrack advancing, so switching back to Amiga music continues instead of restarting. Track changes still follow the game. Loading a saved state continues to restart the mapped Amiga tune.
• Cleaner Amiga artwork: Corrected sprite transparency in the extended view so shots and moving enemies no longer bring rectangular patches of ST background through the Amiga scenery. Native sprite colours and gameplay are retained.
• Stable title borders: Run-ahead now restores the captured screen borders with the predicted state. This fixes the title picture jumping between bordered and unbordered sizes with Crop black off. CRT sizing also accounts for opened borders before fitting the picture inside the bezel. Ordinary save/load and rewind still discard future border pixels.

1.1.550 — Release-note presentation

This public release includes all changes below since published 1.1.547, including the previously unpublished 548 and 549 builds.

Changes since 1.1.549.

• A familiar welcome: The update page returns to the shaded two-column cards, full-width header and prominent version badge. Retro follows the original purple styling and selected palette; GEM uses polished silver-grey surfaces.
• Every missed update: Each version retains its own page, with Back, Next and Skip all, saved progress and scrolling for longer notes. Small windows use a single readable column.

1.1.549 — Rendering, music timing and clearer updates

Changes since 1.1.548.

• Turrican II Amiga music: Removed a duplicate sequencer update that made the title music play too fast without raising its pitch. The original audio interrupt now controls this tune; gameplay speed and the other music banks keep their own timing.
• NVIDIA frame generation: Fixed a GPU resource-lifetime bug when games switch between normal and opened-border picture sizes. It could leave games such as Turrican II and SWIV black with invisible menus.
• Consistent CRT picture: Original and generated frames use the same continuous CRT filtering, keeping the selected tube softness when frame generation is enabled or disabled. Turrican II also uses matching source scaling for native and generated frames, with corrected CPU-generated cropping and HUD filtering.
• Display recovery: If Vulkan fails during a game, SemaTor switches to software rendering for the rest of the run, keeping the game state and menus available. Saved renderer preferences are retained.
• Updates at a glance: Individual changes have separate cards with clear titles, a version badge and theme-matched colours. Retro uses rounded cards; GEM keeps its square styling. Older catch-up pages are split into readable items too.
• Better use of space: A lone item fills the available width. Full notes remain scrollable, with Back, Next, Skip all and remembered progress.

1.1.548 — Engine reliability and Turrican II options

Changes since the previous public release, 1.1.547.

• Safer GEMDOS file handling: Closing a direct device handle no longer writes outside the handle table. Closing a redirected standard handle restores its normal device and releases the file when its last binding closes.
• Faster file reads: Small sequential GEMDOS reads keep file buffering instead of repeatedly seeking to the end and back. Shared handles, read/write alternation and oversized read-to-end requests keep their existing checks.
• Floppy saves: XBIOS can write ordinary STX sectors and read them back, including requests crossing a side boundary. Protected, damaged or ambiguous sectors are refused before either disk representation changes. Partial BIOS writes now invalidate the affected disk cache even if a later sector fails.
• Safer disk-save files: Identical edits to different disks are saved independently. Failed writes are retried, and a failed replacement keeps the previous save. Mounting or ejecting a disk flushes pending changes; temporary disk probes preserve the original save state. Corrupt save sector numbers are rejected. Original disk images remain untouched, and periodic save checks compare each sector once instead of twice.
• Inserted disks remember saves: Disks inserted later in the game, including drive B, now restore and retain that game's disk changes. STX restoration updates both disk views. Starting another game clears the previous game's binding.
• Rendering reliability: Vulkan reports failed texture operations correctly with SDL3 and rejects textures belonging to another renderer before accessing their resources.
• Boxed release notes: What's new uses cards again in both Retro and GEM, with two columns where space permits. Missed-release pages, scrolling, Back, Next, Skip all and remembered progress remain available.
• Targeted compatibility refresh: The internal disk-compatibility revision advances for these foundation fixes. Previously unreadable or no-startup disks are reconsidered; successful cached identities are retained.
• Compatibility corrections: More accurate CPU bus/address errors, supervisor and callback context, GEMDOS process loading, cached BIOS disk geometry and classic AES resource calls. Bounded tests now reach play in Pac-land, The Immortal and Super Cars, and an animated Dragonflight intro; these are not full-game compatibility guarantees. Ranarama's initial crash is fixed, but its later display still needs work.
• Rewind repaired: Restored CPU/device state, timer origins, scheduler and audio resynchronisation now agree with the saved timeline. Rewind storage boundaries protect disk writes, and the actual application save/rewind controls have regression coverage.
• Safer IPF decoding: Malformed gap recipes are rejected before they can write outside the track buffer. Companion imports have bounded decoding work.
• Turrican II companion media: Optional Amiga music and separate effects/voices use your own verified companion disk. Optional first-level artwork provides Amiga scenery and player poses at normal and wide widths. No game music, artwork or disk images are included; original ST sound/art remain available, and water effects are independently selectable.
• Experimental Turrican II timing: An optional first-stage 50 Hz mode updates supported movement and projectiles at 20 ms intervals. It remains guarded and off by default; full-campaign, boss completion and later-stage compatibility are not certified. Companion music restarts its tune after a state restore rather than restoring the exact sample phase.

1.1.547 — Smoother SemaOS and desktop music

Changes since the previous public release, 1.1.546.

• GEM folders now use shaded grey artwork matching Explorer, with a small label plate and a contents mark. Desktop and nested folders share the same scaling and hover treatment.
• The menu-bar player and update status use smooth anti-aliased symbols and readable states in both Retro and GEM. Retro button outlines are also anti-aliased to match the desktop artwork.
• Live music spectrum bars sit at the bottom-right of the desktop, behind icons and windows. They follow Jukebox audio, fade when paused or muted, and use the selected Retro palette or a restrained GEM style. Settings > Appearance includes a saved on/off option.
• SemaOS does less background work: window coverage is calculated at window edges rather than every scanline, shadow blur tables are reused, and music spectrum analysis pauses when the visualiser is disabled, covered, muted or no longer on screen.
• The desktop's Bin is now named Trash, matching English TOS. Searching for Bin still finds it; its contents and saved layout are unchanged.
• Updating across several releases shows each missed release in order, with Back, Next and Skip all. Long notes scroll, and completed pages are remembered if you leave before finishing. The notes are bundled for offline reading.

Linux x86-64 and Windows x64 ZIPs and signed in-app updates. Existing games, saves, settings and library identities are preserved; this UI/music update does not trigger a disk-compatibility recheck.

Windows validation uses Wine; native Windows hardware is not available locally.

1.1.546 — Interface scaling hotfix

Changes since the previous public release, 1.1.545.

• Vulkan interface scaling fixed: at 75% on a 3440×1440 desktop, SemaOS needs a 4586×1920 drawing surface. That exceeded a fixed 32 MiB upload buffer and stopped the renderer. Upload memory now grows to fit large canvases, including 4K desktops, and is reused safely after the GPU finishes each frame.
• Large uploads remain intact: multiple texture uploads in the same frame retain separate storage. The change also covers shared upload storage used by game rendering and CRT effects.
• Settings and library cache stay intact: this hotfix keeps your chosen theme, scale, desktop layout and cached disk identities. The internal disk-compatibility revision remains unchanged because disk-loading behaviour has not changed.

1.1.545 — Faster libraries, scoped artwork and Linux startup

Changes since the previous public release, 1.1.544.

• Linux startup fixed: removes an accidental AVX-512 / x86-64-v4 requirement introduced by the build machine's startup libraries. Builds now target baseline x86-64, including SDL and the updater. Normal operating-system and driver requirements still apply.
• Keep your library cache: product updates retain known disk identities, including migration from 544. A separate internal compatibility revision retries unreadable or no-startup disks after relevant disk/core changes; UI and music updates do not trigger that retry. Background folder checks still find additions, deletions and edits, and manual full Rescan remains available.
• Large-library metadata: collection overrides are read once per collection during a scan instead of reopening and parsing the same file for every disk.
• Artwork for one window: right-click a SemaOS game window or a game inside it and choose Fetch artwork for this window. Choose only missing artwork or replace existing fetched artwork; custom covers stay intact. The request respects search, includes offscreen titles and compilation contents, and shows its title count before starting. Both Retro and GEM use their own prompt styling.
• Less idle CPU use: SemaOS waits for input when it has no frame to present, avoiding a busy loop after a previous vsync measurement.
• Safer music recording: SemaSynth writes WAV files on a worker rather than in the audio callback. Write failures and queue overflow stop recording with a visible error; incomplete files remain separate from finished recordings.
• Faster app browsing: Workshop reuses directory listings until the disk or folder changes. SemaSynth reuses unchanged song headers and keeps the selected song when the list reorders. Windows song lists use the metadata already returned by directory enumeration.
• Jukebox stability: fixes allocation-failure handling while growing track metadata.

The expanded creative tools, embedded playtests, desktop organisation, scaling and both themes from 544 are retained. Linux x86-64 and Windows x64 ZIPs and signed in-app updates are supplied; games, saves, settings and custom artwork are preserved. No game disks or new Android/macOS binaries are included.

Validation covers generated large libraries, cache migration and selective retry, recording failures, both artwork-dialog themes, Linux and Windows under Wine. Baseline and Zen 3 CPU emulation supplement the Linux startup checks; the reported physical Ryzen 5800X and native Windows hardware are not available locally.

1.1.544 — SemaOS studio and desktop update

Changes since the previous public release, 1.1.538.

1.1.544 brings the expanded SemaOS creative tools, embedded playtesting, desktop scaling, themes and reliability work developed across builds 539–544 into one public update. The Windows interface fix from 538 is retained.

SemaOS desktop, scaling and themes

• Whole-desktop percentage scaling keeps text, buttons, borders and icons together. Settings offers 75%, 100%, 125%, 150%, 175% and 200%; Ctrl+/− adjusts by 5% and Ctrl+0 resets. These shortcuts also work while app editors have focus. Smaller windows apply a fit limit, shown in Settings, to keep controls reachable.
• Small, normal and large desktop icons have consistent label placement, wrapping and spacing. Reflow preserves saved icon positions and also handles custom folders and game shortcuts.
• Settings is reorganised into Appearance, Display, Behaviour and System, with persistent navigation and scrollable content.
• Violet, Teal, Amber and Crimson Retro palettes now cover controls, windows and the animated sky, sun, mountains, stars and grid. GEM retains its own Atari-style typography, light windows and green desktop.
• Buttons, fields, window controls, menus, taskbar and scrollbars have consistent hover, pressed, selected and disabled states in both styles. Labels fit their controls, narrow toolbars wrap, and smaller app windows remain usable.
• Folder renaming supports selection, clipboard shortcuts and caret movement; renamed items stay visible. Folder contents scroll below their search bar, with a visible scrollbar and more room at the minimum window size.

SemaPaint and disk artwork

• The 320 × 200 editor gains quieter 8/16/32-pixel grids, independent snap, selection/cut/copy/paste, flips, rotation, colour replacement, improved undo/redo and corrected ST/STE palette editing. Grid and snap sizes refer to image pixels; drawing guides are not exported.
• Browse supported artwork on the selected game disk, a drive or the Workshop disk. Edit PI1, NEO and recognised raw screens, then save into a new named disk copy while preserving the original disk and unrelated files.
• Inspect unpacked planar artwork inside ordinary disk files using a chosen byte offset, dimensions, one/two/four planes, three planar layouts and an optional palette offset. Writes are restricted to the selected file bytes in the new disk copy.
• Snapped selections cover the intended tile without an extra pixel. Paint strokes finish correctly on mouse release or focus loss, including when there is no final motion event.

Maker: larger intros and games

• Save named projects containing artwork, settings and embedded music, with undo/redo and complete generated 68000 assembly that reassembles to the exported program. Builds create separate ST disk images.
• Intros support up to eight editable scenes, individual backgrounds, scrollers, cut/fade/reveal/palette-cycle effects and four moving sprite layers per scene.
• Games support up to eight levels, a 20 × 12 tile playfield, walls, hazards, collectibles, patrols, exits, timers, lives and three objective types. The playfield uses 192 lines, leaving eight for the HUD.
• Edit sixteen 16 × 16 assets with up to four animation frames each, and exchange backgrounds and sprite selections with Paint. The larger preview, scrolling controls and corrected file-picker input improve editing on smaller windows.

Program Lab and embedded playtesting

• Open assembly source directly and start from four editable examples. The editor follows the caret across long lines, preserves syntax colours and reports unreadable or oversized source files. Builds use their own disk without disturbing Workshop edits.
• Maker and Lab offer Build & playtest inside a movable SemaOS window. Create > Playtest also opens disk copies, so editors stay available while the program runs.
• Pause, step one frame, stop, or rebuild and restart. Test ST 512 KB, ST 1 MB and STE 1 MB presets. Each session has its own working disk copy and data directory.
• Inspect and change Maker game lives, score, timer and player position. Lab can expose up to sixteen unsigned byte, word or long values through live_ declarations. Compatible edits to those source values can be applied while the program runs; other code or layout changes require rebuild/restart.
• Click the game picture to capture keyboard, mouse and controller input; Ctrl+Esc or a click outside returns control to SemaOS. Game colours remain intact in both themes, guidance stays readable, and stopped inspector values are labelled and read-only.

Disk Workshop, files and everyday apps

• Workshop gains a direct file picker, nested folders, file import/replace/move/rename/delete, recursive extraction and undo/redo. Invalid directory links, cross-linked chains and failed full-disk edits are rejected without changing the working disk.
• Explorer keeps complete filenames and handles larger lists, with path entry, search, history and sorting. Documents searches nested folders; Pictures exposes older screenshots and Continue retains more saved games.
• Notes adds selection, find, word wrap, copy/cut and export. Viewer adds search, wrapping, text size and image zoom, and keeps disk context when sending artwork to Paint.
• Code Reader adds bookmarks, line copy and routine navigation, and rejects malformed PRGs. Help adds search and contents; Console adds export and horizontal navigation.
• Jukebox gains named playlists, reordering and available-song playback. Missing tracks stay listed, and removing a playlist entry leaves the music file intact. Naming, scrolling and navigation fixes keep all 32 playlists reachable.
• SemaSynth saves report failures and avoid filename collisions. Keyboard notes release correctly after app or host focus changes, while intentionally latched Hold notes remain held. GEM keeps distinct channel colours.
• Details, Statistics, Jukebox and Synth fit smaller windows more reliably. Hardware Check keeps each run's configuration fixed and improves cancellation, report readability and incomplete-result handling. Machine and Video panels scroll, with Windows system-settings links.

Reliability and interaction fixes

• Maximised windows follow desktop size and percentage scaling while retaining their restore size. Closed window slots can be reused without corrupting window order; reaching the 40-open-window limit produces a clear message.
• Saved layouts reject unsupported views and overflowing numbers. Desktop shortcuts preserve long paths. Deeply nested folders cannot be moved into their descendants, and damaged parent links recover items onto the desktop.
• Losing host focus releases transient drags and input cleanly. Shared shading respects clipping; empty artwork and music lists open safely.
• Find has clearer titles and context, includes Playtest and Interface scale, and opens the relevant Settings page. Find, update status and clock fit together on smaller desktops.
• Fixed reversed Notes/Console scrollbar dragging, unscrollable code/source pickers, long-line filtering, blank overscroll and overlapping controls. Failed saves retain edits, with improved recovery and exit checks across the creative apps.

Updating and current limits

Windows x64 and Linux x86-64 public preview. The release provides both platform ZIPs and signed updates for the existing in-app updater. Settings, saves, artwork and library data are preserved. No game disks or new Android/macOS binaries are included.

Disk-art editing requires supported standalone pictures or known unpacked layouts; arbitrary compressed/protected graphics still need specific decoding. Live editing is limited to supported values. Automatic ST-to-STE conversion, general code hot reload and Windows/Linux game exports are not included.

Verified on Linux and Windows under Wine, including creative workflows, both themes, scaling, embedded playtests and signed update packages. Native Windows graphics/audio hardware testing remains outstanding.

1.1.538

Fixes black panels and unreadable text in SemaOS and the library on Windows. The fix also applies to other affected rendering backends and remains active after changing the interface scale.

1.1.537

Elite v1.01 on SuperGAU Compilation 386 gets its own profile: SemaTor tells it apart from Elite v1.3, which uses the same loader, and switches to the right options when the game is in memory. Two builds that share an options file keep each other's saved settings. 99 profiles for 75 games.

1.1.536

More disks run: a disk whose first file table is damaged is read through its second copy (Vectronix 910), a disk's shape comes from its boot sector when the rest is not a filesystem (SuperGAU 521), and a menu's chosen game loads right above the menu as on an ST (Blue Software 19, A-Ha Menu, Vectronix 745, Circus Games). Keyboard checks take an ST's time, so games that time their screens by them show them for as long as they should (Out Run's title and hall of fame). A save state made with a game's second disk in drive B loads in a new session and puts that disk back by itself (Gods). Profiles can tell apart two builds of a game behind the same loader (Elite v1.3 and v1.01).

1.1.535

Profiles: 12 new profiles cover more versions of the profiled games - Chaos Strikes Back, Stunt Car Racer on the E.M.T. compilation, Elite v1.01, F-19 v1.02, Kick Off 2 v1.4e, Starglider [a], Captain Blood (Mindscape), Hunter (Replicants), Populous II (D-Bug 078), Llamatron's menu-disk builds and Time Bandit 0.96b - and every profiled game's other editions were checked and fixed; 98 profiles for 75 games in all. A program asked for with its folder starts exactly that file (a compilation with two programs of the same name). Disk sets lettered A, B, C change disks by themselves like numbered ones (F-19 Europe). A save state that needs another disk now says which drive it wants.

1.1.534

Fixes. Game options and cheats beyond the 16th in a profile now work (Wizball's US edition cheats among them). A program chosen from SemaOS or a compilation starts in its own folder, so it finds its files. A profile recognised through a game's launcher or a menu waits for the game itself before it applies. Profiles load in the same order everywhere. Files whose disk chain is shorter than their listed size open as on an ST (custom Dungeon Master dungeons). Running SemaTor with --help no longer sets up a data folder. Out Run: widescreen stays on under the in-race menu, the title loads in about 15 seconds instead of 41, and on a gamepad Y starts a race / opens the menu and the right stick pauses.

1.1.533

Picture: SUPER ST COLOUR (F12 > Picture, per game) shows the game at 2x, 3x or 4x its pixel count: every original pixel stays, and the new pixels between two close colours take their mix, so dithered shades turn smooth while outlines and text stay sharp - on every resolution, including widescreen views. It replaces the old dither blending and smoother-gradient options. Frame generation now works at any picture size and in every mode (CPU, GPU, NVIDIA optical flow): widescreen views, medium and high resolution, opened borders and Super ST colour all get in-between pictures. AUTO HDR for the CRT cabinet turns ordinary pictures into HDR highlights on an HDR display. Colours changed in the middle of a line (Spectrum 512 pictures) appear where they belong. The CRT picture no longer softens when the F12 menu is open, while paused or in widescreen views.

Games: Enhancement profiles now cover 86 versions of 69 games - see the new list of every profile and the disk it was made for on the website. Out Run: widescreen 16:9 and 21:9, smooth 3D at 25 or 50 fps, the radio and the engine together, and the joystick works from the start. Blood Money: disk 2 goes in by itself and a second gamepad is player 2. Widescreen views for Lemmings, Kick Off, Kick Off 2 and Oids. Newly working or fixed include Civilization, SimCity, Damocles, Starglider 2, Stunt Car Racer, Pirates!, North & South, Defender of the Crown, Deuteros, Llamatron and The Chaos Engine's status panel. Multi-disk games get their next disk automatically in many more cases, a save state made on a game's second disk loads in a new session, and F12 > Disks offers a blank disk for games that save to one.

Library: When a game has several versions, SemaTor starts the one its profile was made for. The Enhanced shelf shows enhanced games kept in zips and games with cheats only. Game options and cheats are remembered reliably (they could be forgotten when a game loaded at another address), and options can be on by default.

SemaOS: A Create menu with new tools: SemaPaint (an ST pixel editor), the Maker (turn a picture, a song and a scroll text into a real Atari ST intro or a small game disk), the Code Reader, a Hardware Check that tells whether a disk would run on a real 520 ST, 1040 ST or 1040 STE, and Statistics. SemaSynth exports WAV, YM, SNDH and MP3. A second look for SemaOS in Atari's own GEM desktop style (Settings > Style). Surprise me picks a random game.

Fixes: SemaTor no longer freezes when a widescreen view is switched on with NVIDIA optical flow, and a game no longer stops when the F12 menu stays open. The VERY FAST disk loading setting is removed - games could crash on it; FAST remains.

1.1.532

Compatibility: hundreds more disks start or show their picture. SemaTor's 68000, floppy drive, interrupts and TOS now behave much more like a real ST - boot-sector entry registers, bus-error status, Supexec, the AUTO folder's load address, I/O access times and wait states, VBL and HBL interrupt timing, exact divide timing, DMA and WD1772 details, GEMDOS memory and wait behaviour - each measured against a reference. Newly working include the Medway Boys and Cynix protected menus (Dizzy, Creatures, Mean Machine), many Fuzion and Automation menus, OXYD on SuperGAU 355, 1st Division Manager, Marble Madness and Special Forces.

SemaOS: it no longer crashes after a while when SemaSynth and the Jukebox have both played (a tune ending shut the sound down under SemaSynth), or when you seek in a YM tune. Also: pad A opens desktop folders and icons, Compilations browse with the keyboard, taskbar buttons shrink instead of vanishing, minimised folders reopen, Details > Music shows exactly the game's tunes, saves reload for the selected game, a failed resume says so, per-game notes, and many smaller fixes.

1.1.531

Jukebox: tunes from the SNDH archive play again. The index kept the archive's old location, so after SemaTor was moved or installed elsewhere every tune "could not be read or unpacked" - the Jukebox now follows the archive to its new place (User/sndh or a games folder), and a missing archive is reported as missing.

1.1.530

SemaOS with a gamepad: the D-pad moves a focus over everything, A opens or starts, B goes back, X details, Y favourite, LB / RB switch windows, Start the menu, the right stick scrolls and its press opens a game's menu. A hint when a game waits on its title for one input. What's new after an update, with Restore my previous look. Report a problem from a game's menu. Details gathers the play count and time, the saves with their pictures, your notes, the enhancements and the game's music. New shelves: recently added, most played, never played. Next disk for games on several disks (F11 Disks, F12 Session). The joystick in the mouse port fires with the right button. Saves of disks that boot from their boot sector show in the library and Continue. Return to Genesis: Return, then 1 or 2, starts a game. Windows minimise; the Jukebox minimised is a mini player in the menu bar. An update button in the menu bar installs new releases. Each game window keeps its own sort order; Fetch all artwork from the File menu; a redesigned What's new; the question about a game not yet confirmed answers to the keyboard (Enter plays anyway, Esc goes back); a deep round of SemaOS fixes.

1.1.529

Dungeon Master runs again (1.1.528 showed a white screen). SemaOS shows its own icons and disk labels on every install: installs that began before SemaOS, and Linux installs made with the installer, showed stand-in shapes and blank floppies. The handwritten disk labels are in the public download. SCP flux images load, and READ TRACK reads a track as the drive does - Return to Genesis's flux dump passes its protection. Untested editions of profiled games boot from their own boot sector (Buggy Boy & Ikari Warriors shows its menu). The retro desktop is the default and the desktop icons sit in pairs that belong together; SemaOS's look settings are refreshed once, your library, saves, music and desktop folders kept. The Windows program and its update file are much smaller.

1.1.528

Start-up as TOS does it: the AUTO folder on every boot and AUTO programs where TOS loads them, the reset vector, the boot sector's stack, the floppy lines and sound chip as TOS leaves them, Setscreen's registers. 9-sector filesystems on 10-sector disks; the program named after the disk starts first; writes above RAM no longer stop a game. Kick Off 2, Alpha Waves, Sapiens, Crazy Boy, Rock Star and many menu disks now run. SemaOS: two-line desktop labels, fuller Help, quieter logs.

1.1.527

SemaOS is how SemaTor starts (the classic library is a setting away). No more freezes on Wayland when the window is covered. The Jukebox keeps playing your favourites in order. A SemaSynth crash fixed.

1.1.526

The public release is built on SDL3.

1.1.524

SemaOS's Video window: screen resolution and refresh rate, variable refresh, HDR and pointer speed.

1.1.521

An I/O address nothing answers is a bus error, as on a real ST: programs probing for hardware find what an ST has.

1.1.520

SemaTor moves to SDL3 3.4.18, carried with the app; sound through SDL3 streams.

1.1.519

A MIDI keyboard for SemaSynth, and Find.

1.1.518

Save as SNDH: SemaSynth songs as real ST tunes.

1.1.517

SemaSynth: A/B comparison, the song library, the screensaver.

1.1.516

SemaSynth makes what real ST tunes make.

1.1.515

Open a tune in SemaSynth without playing it first.

1.1.514

SemaSynth becomes a music studio.

1.1.513

Covers for files named by hand; favourites in the Jukebox.

1.1.512

Covers for every disk of a game, covers that stay put while resizing, launch sources in SemaOS.

1.1.511

Compatibility from a library-wide test run: disks that never started now do.

1.1.510

Bigger disks, a card size you choose, scroll bars that work, look-alike disks told apart.

1.1.509

Pictures no longer sit too high; your floppy on the handwritten labels.

1.1.508

Disks labelled by hand, like a copy from a mate; game cards drawn twice as fast.

1.1.507

SNDH tunes play live, with everything their timers do; SemaOS and the Jukebox much lighter.

1.1.506

The Jukebox's channel scopes, windows that stand off the desktop, typing that stays typing.

1.1.505

The 68000 runs on the ST's bus: counted delays, borders and raster effects land where they should.

1.1.504

Menu disks boot as on an ST, mouse clicks reach VDI programs, the Jukebox browses the SNDH archive.

1.1.503

SemaOS polished: the Jukebox rebuilt, every window checked, compilation counts and disk numbers, new icons and floppy cards, full-resolution logo, new retro wallpaper; Enter no longer swallowed.

1.1.502

The SNDH archive in the Jukebox; ICE fixed (613/613 real files); SNDH player plays 89% of real tunes; tunes inside files.

1.1.501

SemaOS: Jukebox plays SNDH and LHA YM files and records game music; Disk Workshop; Program Lab with a 68000 assembler.

1.1.500

SemaOS scrollbars and search bars, Documents and Details; SemaSynth: 32 patches, a sequencer, Record to WAV.

1.1.499

Boot sector first (TOS order); STOP is a wait; low stacks served by the trap gate; unhandled ILLEGAL stops. Brat plays.

1.1.498

'Nam plays (AES double-clicks, Line-A mouse position, 640x400 headless pictures); SemaOS wrapped Help, richer cards, sorting, window snapping.

1.1.497

The boot sequence: the rest of the AUTO folder and the desktop autostart run after the start program ends; writes above RAM swallowed by default.

1.1.496

Timer C saves all registers around a game's timer handler (Dogfight, babytor group B); TOS-like defaults for exception and TRAP vectors; STX revision 1 and unformatted tracks.

1.1.495

Any-size frame generation made good: scrolls work, measured quality beats the 320x200 generator, analysis thread, GPU for medium/high resolution.

1.1.494

Frame generation for a picture of any size: wide views, medium and high resolution, same-size in-between pictures on the CPU or GPU.

1.1.493

SemaOS game windows show a search field.

1.1.492

Programs that call or chain to the OS's disk and critical-error hooks no longer jump to address 0.

1.1.491

Disks whose boot sector says 0 reserved sectors are no longer refused as an unrecognised format.

1.1.490

IPF disk images play (5th Gear); Angel Nieto Pole 500 gets past Space; 'Nam shows its picture; SemaOS has desktop folders, a right-click menu and icons on a grid, and windowed SemaOS's Settings button works.

1.1.489

SemaOS: drag the desktop icons anywhere; they stay where you put them.

1.1.488

SemaOS's desktop icons grouped, the Bin top right; Drives, Documents and Console off the desktop.

1.1.487

Programs calling the Line-A mouse and timer vectors no longer crash at $28 - 1000 Bornes runs.

1.1.486

A save state that will not load now says exactly why; keyboard and save-state tests up to date.

1.1.485

68000 bus/address error frames match the manual again; 33 silently broken tests run again.

1.1.484

OpenGL and Vulkan draw identical pixels through every effect; a Vulkan wrapper fault with other renderers' textures fixed.

1.1.483

The YM2149 no longer aliases: folded harmonics went from 16-27 dB down to 61-83 dB down.

1.1.482

The YM2149 envelope has its real 32 steps; release checks for the sound chip and the CRT settings.

1.1.481

Diagnostic runs end with the last 32 OS calls a program made and their answers.

1.1.480

SemaSynth is a YM2149 suite of sixteen ST-style patches; SemaOS no longer opens the Games window every time.

1.1.479

SemaOS: Explorer, Documents, Notes, Help and Console; Drives, Eject and Shutdown icons; drive sounds and icon size in Settings; two fixes.

1.1.478

SemaOS: a damaged or unusual disk in a drive window no longer crashes SemaTor.

1.1.477

Buggy Boy keeps its 16:9 and 21:9 views and its speeds with the game's own motion; the smooth-motion options are removed.

1.1.476

Buggy Boy: RUN-AHEAD MOTION removed - the picture jumped between run-ahead's guess and the real frames.

1.1.475

The F12 menu walk is a release check; tools/burst-check.py checks a burst the same way every time.

1.1.474

From the first library check: false unimplemented reports removed, the CPU's last jumps logged when it stops, log floods folded and capped.

1.1.473

Buggy Boy: the in-between playhead no longer goes back, and the HUD comes from the game's own frame; bursts name each in-between's source.

1.1.472

Buggy Boy: in-between pictures no longer jump back in time; its speed options are one choice; bursts save the game's own frame at each step.

1.1.471

The Tools crash is fixed; crashes leave a report in the log; enhancements are named in the log; Alt+F12 burst capture; Dragon Ninja boots.

1.1.470

SemaOS: David's icon set with soft shadows, the logo on the desktop with a retro shine; HFE and SCP disks; a disk report; CRT on the new frame types.

1.1.469

HFE and SCP disk images play; a disk report says why a disk would or would not start on a real ST; CRT on medium / high-res and border frames.

1.1.468

SemaOS: the retro launch scene as a live backdrop, GEM-style window chrome and buttons; the big-library check no longer lags the desktop.

1.1.467

SemaTor's workspace out of the ST's RAM (the top of memory is the program's, as on a real ST); left and right borders shown at full width.

1.1.466

Games that open the top or bottom border show their extra lines; the sync register is a real register now.

1.1.465

Medium (640x200) and high (640x400) resolution shown properly; checked pixel by pixel.

1.1.464

What a game writes to its disk is kept and loaded next time (the original image untouched); each game's files in their own folder.

1.1.463

The boot reaches the same instruction on every machine and run (the intro ran the machine by host time); proven identical under load, interrupt by interrupt.

1.1.462

CPU core reads plain memory inline, the MFP is asked less, Buggy Boy captures filtered by a bitmap; proven identical on the saved stretch.

1.1.461

Rewind stores only the memory that changed since the last snapshot: a third of the memory, less time, checked byte for byte.

1.1.460

Every game cheaper: the ST's chips serviced when due instead of after every instruction (93% fewer checks), proven identical on a 60-million-instruction stretch.

1.1.459

Faster for every game: adapter checks once per game, display colours once per line; Buggy Boy's rows from a table. Checked bit for bit.

1.1.458

Profiled and cut: rewind snapshots less than half the cost; Buggy Boy's renderer reads rows, not pixels (real tick 17.6 -> 9.6 ms here).

1.1.457

Run-ahead groundwork: whole-program audit of what a guess touches; interrupt statistics and the panel no longer count guessed ticks.

1.1.456

Run-ahead groundwork: the running machine's state in one place, a guess proven to leave nothing behind, and counters a guess could change restored.

1.1.455

AES: editable dialog fields (G_FTEXT / G_FBOXTEXT) were drawn blank - drawn now, and redrawn by objc_edit.

1.1.454

SemaOS: disk windows as on TOS; disk reads timed and sounded as a real ST drive would (motor, steps, sectors).

1.1.453

SemaOS: folders on disks can be opened; double-clicking a program starts it, from any folder.

1.1.452

GEM programs can start the next program when they end (shel_write), tested with a two-program disk.

1.1.451

AES: evnt_dclick, clipboard, shel_get/put, graf_rubberbox and objc_edit implemented and tested; SemaOS arrow keys without a click first.

1.1.450

Buggy Boy's in-between frames drawn on their own thread; SemaOS driven by keyboard or pad, and remembers its windows.

1.1.449

Buggy Boy: run-ahead re-predicts on a change of input, so steering reaches the picture about twice as fast.

1.1.448

Buggy Boy gates hold together; F12 tabs fit their content; SemaOS at the display's refresh rate; Details keeps the covers; run-ahead's gain said plainly.

1.1.447

Run-ahead's state and gain on the performance panel; sound no longer drops out during run-ahead guesses; SemaOS starts a .PRG on double-click.

1.1.446

SemaOS fast with big libraries (category windows no longer re-sort the library every frame); Xenon run-ahead no longer switches off in pauses and menus.

1.1.445

Buggy Boy wide view: the horizon no longer slips a pixel at the wing seams in smooth motion.

1.1.444

Buggy Boy smooth motion: objects reused within a pair of real frames; panel rates no longer garbage with run-ahead; run-ahead cost measured without the idle wait.

1.1.443

SemaOS polish: clicks no longer reach the hidden library (the top-right corner could quit SemaTor); the Bin works; menus reach every window and the selected game; maximise; Esc.

1.1.442

Buggy Boy smooth/remastered much cheaper and an object-cache height bug fixed; F12 Picture: CRT Simple and CRT Advanced; SemaOS pacing and cheaper shadows, clicks and frame times logged.

1.1.441

SemaSynth: play the YM2149 or the SemaTor synth from the SemaOS desktop, with the computer keyboard or on-screen keys.

1.1.440

SemaOS Jukebox and Pictures; Tiny pictures in the viewer; screenshots no longer overwrite earlier sessions' shots.

1.1.439

F11: Record / Replay tab and a Discord button on the main menu; the lower row fits its buttons when split.

1.1.438

SemaOS: drag games onto drives, type-to-search, Details and Continue windows, disk sets, accent themes and wallpaper, Spectrum 512 pictures.

1.1.437

SemaOS: Insert into Drive A / B with Eject (Drive B goes into the ST's second drive), a file viewer for text, Degas and NEOchrome pictures and hex.

1.1.436

SemaOS: fades into a game and back; covers fade in as they load.

1.1.435

SemaOS visual pass: glass menu bar and taskbar, vignetted desktop, rounded shadowed windows that open and close with animation, dark menus.

1.1.434

F12 reorganised into seven tabs (Display, Picture, Motion, Sound, Machine, Game, Tools); game-specific settings only under Game. Crop black borders is per game (Game > View), off by default.

1.1.433

Buggy Boy races at the ST's own speed by default (10 fps steady); FAST SPEED, ST SPEED EXACT and 60 HZ MACHINE options; SemaOS window drags paced by the display, titles fitted to their cards.

1.1.432

RUN-AHEAD for 50 fps games, switched on by measurement: kept while a guess fits in a quarter of a frame on your computer.

1.1.431

RUN-AHEAD motion setting for any game: frame generation gets the next picture early (Buggy Boy: 88 ms -> 8 ms behind the game); detects tick rate and buffering itself; leaves no trace.

1.1.430

Buggy Boy: remastered objects move and grow continuously until they pass the player; the tunnel is drawn again and walls sit between far and near objects - pixel-identical to the game on both test stretches.

1.1.429

Buggy Boy: REMASTERED OBJECTS (TEST) - sub-pixel object growth from close-up art, supersampled; run-ahead now smooths the game's alternate-tick object steps without lag.

1.1.428

Buggy Boy: RUN-AHEAD MOTION (TEST) - smooth motion without holding the picture behind the game (input lag as on a real ST); proven to leave no trace in the machine.

1.1.427

Buggy Boy: BB2 is now the adapter (wide view and smooth motion in one path, pixel-identical to the game at 4:3); smooth motion's rate estimate fixed; water drawn; LOW LATENCY MOTION option.

1.1.426

User data in a User folder beside SemaTor (existing data copied in once); recording status reworded and the file named in the log; no empty saves folders per library title; "Buggy Boy motion" statistics line; BB2, the rewritten Buggy Boy adapter, behind a private switch (pixel-identical to the game at 4:3; one path for wide view and smooth motion).

1.1.425

Buggy Boy smooth object scaling: sizes from the game's own per-type table (no shape guess), tall pictures no longer cut at capture, lamp posts follow the game's quarter-row sizes; in-between frames paced by a continuous playhead on host time (no hitch at every game frame); "motion clock" line in the session log.

1.1.424

SemaOS: one card per title, clicks and right-click menu, clipped covers, window animation; AES form_alert/form_do/file selector/pointer.

1.1.423

screenpt starts at zero (the flickering menu since 1.1.416; old states migrated); Buggy Boy in-between frames whole; SemaOS 2 part 1: AES windows and menus.

1.1.422

screenpt starts at zero (the flickering menu since 1.1.416; old states migrated); Buggy Boy in-between frames: HUD lines from the pass, gate rows whole.

1.1.421

SemaOS polish: resize from any edge, X close box, category windows with the Enhanced glow, compilation folders, right-click menu, the logo.

1.1.420

Native picture is the frame at the last VBL (no more half-drawn menus at high frame caps); Buggy Boy wings keep objects whole in the HUD lines.

1.1.419

SemaOS 1: Boot into SemaOS, a GEM-shaped desktop drawn by SemaTor - Games, Drives, Settings, windows and menus.

1.1.418

SemaTor's guest workspace moved from $e000-$ffff to the top of RAM; programs load where TOS does. Switchblade (Replicants) plays.

1.1.417

OS audit: deferred Setpalette, GEMDOS/XBIOS clocks in step, keypad key tables, CON:/AUX:/PRN: names and negative handles; honest sweep labels.

1.1.416

OS audit fixes: Getmpb/BPB memory collisions, root DTA, VBL stub to TOS's contract (vblsem, vbclock, screenpt to hardware).

1.1.415

Disk sets by trailing number; automatic insertion into drive B. War in Middle Earth plays with all three disks.

1.1.414

GEMDOS 8.3 names keep their extension; Line-A honours the program's screen variables; a stand-in Line-A font; Malloc(-1) capped at a 1 MB ST's. War in Middle Earth comes up.

1.1.413

F12 from a pad no longer opens and shuts on one Start press.

1.1.412

Buggy Boy wings: objects from the game's sprite calls (no more sky-to-road posts); Lombard WIDE WINDSCREEN 21:9 (TEST).

1.1.411

Desktop library add-on card (diagonal gold-green glow, ADDON plate); no frame generation on Wizball's wide picture.

1.1.410

Sharp sampling for the 3x picture (Lombard road, Wizball art) - the overall blur is gone.

1.1.409

Library: add-on games get ENHANCED on top, ADDON below and a diagonal gold-green glow; Wizball pack tiles' holes filled at load.

1.1.408

Lombard RAC Rally: HIGH RES ROAD (TEST) - the road redrawn at 3x from the game's own road spans, no art.

1.1.407

Wizball: SemaTor draws objects from the table as the game drew them (copied when its object routine returns) - no more split enemies at the join.

1.1.406

F11 Restart on the bottom bar; Wizball: ground in front of tile bases from row 15, edge strips draw only culled objects, tiles stay within the map.

1.1.405

Wizball intro: the overlaid face, ball and mask parts are the pack's redraws too.

1.1.404

TOS call sweep (132 checks; Getmpb and Ssbrk added); the whole core suite passes.

1.1.403

Wizball: no camera hold at a level's edge - the backdrop and fixed pieces stay put; a side view past the map shows backdrop only.

1.1.403

Wizball: no camera hold at a level's edge, solid cans/pipes in the side views; 68000 bus-error frame I/N bit fixed.

1.1.402

Wizball wide view rebuilt: the game's routines draw only floor and tiles; SemaTor draws every object from the object table.

1.1.401

Wizball: the intro's wizard frames are the pack's redraws; the intro no longer passes as a level (1.1.400 fault).

1.1.400

Wizball: no extra ball at a level's edge (the middle is the game's own frame moved); wide view and art through the warp's fades.

1.1.398

Wizball: landscape = floor and tile routines only; the Wizball and pickups are sprites (no copies in the wings, not under the ground band).

1.1.397

Sealed, signed add-on packs; Wizball: front ground band before the landscape, no enemy-culling strip beside the score panels.

1.1.396

Artwork add-ons are sealed, signed .semapack files (encrypted; SemaTor loads only packs signed with its key).

1.1.395

Glowing green ADDON tag for games with artwork add-ons; Wizball side-view drawings no longer fail (OS traps return at once in a drawing).

1.1.394

Artwork add-ons are Discord-only (F12 > Advanced > Get add-ons on Discord; "On / no pack"); Getbpb from a mounted image.

1.1.393

Dungeon Master artwork add-on in the private package; F12 audited across every game (EXPERIMENTAL badge, SWIV help).

1.1.392

F12 > This game holds every game option (motion options moved in; test-thisgame390); Wizball pack: level art only, banded pebble ground.

1.1.391

Wizball side views: no more failing drawings (shot list no longer blanked), fixed pieces and the Wizball kept out of the wings, the moon stays put at a level's edge.

1.1.390

Sound: a device left paused with nothing holding it is resumed (Lombard alt-tab).

1.1.389

Wizball: side views drawn as landscape plus objects (no more wiped cans/pipes); pack sprites keyed by graphics address; the Wizball's picture turned per frame.

1.1.388

Wizball art pack: no more dark cans and towers (tile pixels without a colour step keep their own colour); floor past the map's end replaced by the pack's ground.

1.1.387

Wizball: no holes round swapped sprites, left-side spawns at the wide edge, pause keeps the wide picture, tune volume as gain; tests brought up to date.

1.1.386

Wizball: no more last-level objects over the title and credits pages (the 3x art layer only on the adapter's own frames).

1.1.385

Wizball ADD-ON MUSIC on a second virtual YM2149; level-start wing fix; F12 hover and steady height.

1.1.384

Wizball art pack at 3x: the pack's tiles and sprites over its panoramas and sky.

1.1.384

F12 holds its height across a topic's parts; menu text size fixed; the Wizball pack ships in the private package's Add-ons folder.

1.1.383

Wizball art pack, stage A: panoramas, ground, twinkling sky, galaxy and exact colour restore behind the landscape.

1.1.382

Lombard's frame-rate modes really switch now (patches can keep their own variables: work = ...). Every profile checked for the same trap.

1.1.381

F12: each topic's parts in a list on the left (like the CRT studio), the chosen part on the right.

1.1.380

Lombard RAC Rally profile: SMOOTH MODE (50 fps), STEADY 25, ARCADE SPEED, half-speed clock. Zynaps STEADY SPEED.

1.1.379

Xenon layered sound: no louder music after fire presses (the music ghost only fills channels an effect owns). Zynaps: INFINITE LIVES.

1.1.378

Beam simulation in F12; F11-style save naming; toasts in the menus' type; SESSION header; HUD fits short windows.

1.1.377

HUD: frame-time graph against the display's own pacing, 1% low, recent counts, wrapped values; sound dropouts counted only while playing.

1.1.376

Wizball: the wide camera stops at a level's ends; the drifting hills no longer flicker.

1.1.375

Wizball: the laser shows again with the drifting backdrop and in redrawn frames.

1.1.374

F12 sub-pages in the new style with Back; buttons in columns; CRT studio header trimmed; Wizball wing shots fixed; backdrop capture.

1.1.373

F12 in five tabs; game motion beside frame generation; This game in sections; one-line help where it fits.

1.1.372

Wizball: no see-through holes in the wings, no junk past the map's ends, shots redrawn, shadows and layers in the wings.

1.1.372

F12 sized to its tab bar and topic, Picture in columns, Display grouped; Fire and Ice score bar centred again; Wizball wing holes, level-start garbage and missing shots fixed.

1.1.371

F12 sized to its content, tiles for settings and compact buttons for actions; F11 saves, rewind and disks compact.

1.1.370

Wizball looks restyled: pixel shadows, palette-step explosion light on surfaces only, dithered backdrop join.

1.1.369

Wizball EXPLOSION LIGHT (TEST): explosions (object types $18-$1f) light the landscape and backdrop.

1.1.368

Wizball layer map; SMOOTH OUTLINES and COLOUR FADE-IN (TEST); profiles hold 24 options.

1.1.367

Wizball SUB-PIXEL SCROLLING (TEST) with smooth motion; spawn edge moved into the adapter.

1.1.366

Wizball looks: BACKDROP PARALLAX, GROUND SHADOWS, FULL-WIDTH PANELS (all TEST).

1.1.365

Wizball: pickups stay until they leave the wider view; smooth motion draws the Wizball and Catellite with the game's own sprite routine (no grey square); wings at level ends.

1.1.364

Wizball SMOOTH MOTION; enemies arrive at the wider view's edge; 21:9 buffer overrun fixed (560 wide); wide/smooth frames only in play.

1.1.363

Wizball wider view: floor strips reach the edges, the backdrop continues instead of repeating.

1.1.362

Wizball: WIDER VIEW (TEST) 16:9 and 21:9 - the game's own draw list re-run with the camera moved. Zynaps needs its disk.

1.1.361

F12 check at all text sizes: ALL GAMES tags complete, no clipped names, two-line help, correct tab notes, mouse wheel and Home/End.

1.1.360

Performance HUD (Shift+F12) with 68000 work rate, ST blank rate, sound buffer, drive and patch state; open the log folder from F12; docs/DEBUG.md and a list of every debug switch.

1.1.359

Performance HUD (Shift+F12): FPS and frame times, the game's own speed, CPU boost and STEADY SPEED at work, motion, sound and disk, beside the picture. F12 Display order list fixed.

1.1.358

F12 deep check: help of its own on every tile, calmer values, resets ask twice, Effects / speech volume for every game.

1.1.357

Buggy Boy SMOOTH MOTION moves at an even speed: one more game frame of look-ahead evens out the game's 1-2-1 steps (frame-to-frame speed varies ~7% instead of 2x).

1.1.356

F12 laid out like F11: topic bar at the bottom, F11's tiles and help line; This game gets Reset to the shared settings and Use for all games; one Escape leaves the CRT studio.

1.1.355

F12 settings are tiles like F11's; F12 rises from the bottom with a slide; Enter picks a setting up and Left/Right change it.

1.1.354

F12 rebuilt like F11: tabs for Display, Picture, Smoothness, This game, Speed, Sound and Advanced; every setting in one place; ALL GAMES tags; the CRT studio unchanged.

1.1.353

Buggy Boy widescreen: walls near the end of Offroad drawn properly in the wings; no extra buggies beside yours when jumping.

1.1.352

Buggy Boy: SMOOTH MOTION lets the game draw every object again (no gate or board glitches); continuous object scaling moves to its own experimental option, off by default.

1.1.351

Buggy Boy SMOOTH MOTION: objects no longer hop at the game's rate; gates drawn in the game's order; no extra buggies when jumping in widescreen; lamp heads kept at the old edge.

1.1.350

Buggy Boy SMOOTH MOTION: roadside objects grow smoothly as they approach - SemaTor draws them itself, scaled between the game's own sizes.

1.1.349

Buggy Boy widescreen: posts, gates and roadside objects stay whole as they cross into the wide area.

1.1.348

F12 > Speed & loading: CPU boost and Steady speed get proper names and help; Disk loading is no longer labelled Native replacements.

1.1.347

Buggy Boy: the HUD no longer loses its black parts (map outline, flag numbers, gear knob) in widescreen with SMOOTH MOTION.

1.1.346

STEADY SPEED now covers Fire and Ice: busy scenes keep the game's own pace (late frames 59 to 2 in the same play-through).

1.1.345

STEADY SPEED (F12 > Speed & loading, on by default): busy scenes no longer slow the game - the CPU gets more time just for those frames. Buggy Boy's race runs at its designed 12.5 frames a second. Buggy Boy SMOOTH MOTION draws a picture for every screen refresh, up to 240 Hz.

1.1.344

Buggy Boy SMOOTH MOTION: every step of the roadside objects glides now, all twelve rows, including the step where the game moves its object grid on a row.

1.1.343

Buggy Boy SMOOTH MOTION: road stripes slide continuously and roadside objects glide towards you instead of stepping; the game's own frames are unchanged.

1.1.342

Buggy Boy SMOOTH MOTION (test): in-between frames drawn by the game's own code, at 4:3 or with the wider views; speed, timing and controls stay original.

1.1.341

Game profiles can make one option change several places at once, written together or not at all - ready for Lombard RAC Rally's smoother frame-rate modes. Wizball's cauldron cheat uses it.

1.1.340

CPU BOOST in F12 > Speed & loading (AUTO, OFF, 2X to 16X): more CPU per frame while the ST's clocks, sound and disk keep real time. Profiles can link several patches into one option and make options exclude each other. Wizball gets PAUSE+C FILLS CAULDRON.

1.1.339

Buggy Boy in 16:9 and 21:9 (test, F12 > Enhancements > WIDER VIEW): the road, horizon and roadside objects carry on beyond the old screen edge, drawn by the game's own code on a private copy of its memory, with the original speed, timing and controls.

1.1.338

WINDOW SIZE replaces WINDOW SCALE: 1.0x is 1200 x 800, in steps of 0.1x from 0.5x to 3.0x. SemaTor checks for updates every time it starts, and falls back to the releases page when GitHub's API is busy. New profiles for Wizball (seven cheats) and Buggy Boy (infinite time). Fire and Ice in 16:9 and 21:9 moves the score bar to the far left and draws the world beside it (test).

1.1.337

F11 > Controls has two tabs, Gamepad and Keyboard. The pad's own settings - dead zone, autofire, left stick, mouse speed and restore defaults - sit under the button bindings beside the controller picture. The bar's Shot button is now called Screenshot.

1.1.336

F11 is now an overlay along the bottom of the game instead of a separate page. It opens on Save / Load, with Rewind, Disks and Controls beside it on a bar, then Shot, Fast fwd and Pause, then Resume, Library and Quit. Arrow keys and the D-pad move to whatever is next in that direction, so every button can be reached from the keyboard or a pad; Left and Right change a setting, Enter or A presses, Escape or B closes, Tab or the shoulder buttons change section, and F12 or Start opens settings.

Save / Load shows every slot with its picture, which slot quick save and quick load use, and warns when a save will replace one. Keys 1 to 4 choose a slot. Rewind sets how far back rewind reaches and how far each step goes. Disks names each disk by its number, shows which is in drive A, and offers drive B, eject and Restart game. Controls has the live controller picture with its bindings, the keyboard keys, and the pad's own settings. Controls has moved out of F12 into F11.

Restart, Library and Quit ask in a small box in the middle of the screen, and going back puts you where you were.

Ejecting a disk, loading, rewinding or restarting no longer announces that a recording ended when nothing was recording.

1.1.331

Native motion now draws its in-between frames on your display's own rate instead of the Atari's 50 Hz field rate. On a 60 Hz display one frame in five used to be a repeat of the one before, and on a 120 Hz display nearly three in five; both are now around one in twenty. Original game timing and physics are unchanged - only which in-between positions get drawn.

1.1.330

Added MOTION FEEL under F12 > Screen & frame rate, for games using frame generation or native motion. SMOOTHEST keeps the present behaviour; BALANCED and RESPONSIVE show the newest picture sooner, which makes controls feel tighter.

Measured on Fire and Ice with the game's own frame timing, 60 to 240 Hz displays: the picture sits 50 ms behind the game's newest frame on SMOOTHEST, 45 ms on BALANCED and 38 ms on RESPONSIVE. When the game itself has a long frame, the delay used to spike to 120 ms; BALANCED holds that spike to 99 ms and RESPONSIVE to 78 ms. None of the three shows fewer in-between frames than before.

Interpolation cannot show the newest frame immediately - it has to hold it back while the in-between frames play - so some delay remains by design. The original game's own input timing is unchanged.

1.1.329

Fixed the CRT cabinet drawing hard pixel edges instead of the blended picture a tube gives. Filtering now follows the picture mode alone: the CRT cabinet and the screen filters both blend, frame generation never changes it, and the plain picture keeps the ST's own sharp pixels.

Fixed the Picture & CRT page hiding its list of sections (glass, focus, phosphor mask, tube, persistence, calibration, brightness, beam) on wider windows, which left four settings and no visible way to the rest. Every section is reachable from the list at any window size; the side rail remains a shortcut.

Both faults were introduced in 1.1.328. Each is now held in place by a test.

1.1.328

Install this release from the full platform ZIP once: it adds a new artwork file that older updaters will not accept.

The F12 Controls page now shows a live picture of your controller. Buttons glow as you press them, the D-pad glows in the direction you push, the sticks lean the way you move them, and every control is labelled with what it does in the game you are playing. It fills the window instead of sitting in a corner.

F11 and F12 are grouped and quieter: sections are separated, only the row you are on is highlighted, and the Picture page no longer repeats the list of sections already shown beside it.

The Mega lo Mania command centre no longer offers INSIDE BEZEL, which covered the game's own screen. A saved setting that used it opens as the side panel.

Fixed the SemaTor badge on the CRT bezel drawing as diagonal streaks under OpenGL.

Fixed the DISK LOADING option being hidden unless a game profile was loaded.

The website's game guides use the new controller artwork, with each control seated on the picture by measurement, and are easier to read.

1.1.328

A live controller page: F12 > Controls > Controller layout draws your pad, lights up each control as you press it - including each D-pad direction and the sticks, which lean the way you push them - and labels every control with what it does in the game you are playing.

Optional fast disk loading, off by default: F12 > Speed & loading > DISK LOADING. It shortens only the drive's waiting, keeps the real data rate, leaves timing-sensitive commands alone and switches itself back off if a game starts re-reading. Measured: Speedball 2 spent 106.5 seconds waiting on the drive, now 0.4.

Switchblade II now loads: a disk whose last track image is a few bytes shorter than declared is no longer refused.

Fixed the SemaTor badge on the CRT bezel drawing as diagonal streaks under OpenGL.

Menus: clearer names throughout, one duplicate brightness entry removed, the Picture & CRT page reordered so the picture mode comes first and no longer repeating its own section list, and a live example on the scanlines, blur and glow page. The Mega lo Mania command centre no longer offers INSIDE BEZEL, which covered the game's own screen; saved settings open as the side panel.

Correction: a package built after 1.1.326 was released briefly carried the 1.1.326 version number as well. Everything it added is in this release; no 1.1.326 download is changed by it.

1.1.326

Frame generation in Turrican II, Return to Genesis, Zak McKracken and Time Bandit widescreen now keeps producing in-between frames when the game and display timing drift slightly apart; previously it could fall back to the game's own frame rate. Fire and Ice native motion uses the same improved pacing. Widescreen gameplay now receives the same CRT shader filtering as 4:3, instead of looking sharp in play and blended in the menu. Returning to the library from a game now opens the same tab and game you launched, without replaying the intro; the next start also opens there.

Correction: earlier frame-generation timing tests assumed exactly matched game and display clocks.

1.1.325

Fixed Fire and Ice native motion falling back to stepping at the original frame rate after a few seconds of smooth motion. The presentation clock now paces each source frame pair to the measured arrival of the next, so small timing differences between the game and the display no longer push it out of step. With native motion on, the session log records how much time was interpolated. Correction: the 1.1.324 clock validation did not cover timing drift or the game’s irregular frame cadence.

1.1.324

Changed Fire and Ice native motion to a 50 Hz presentation clock instead of four fixed steps per source frame. Slower supported source frames receive additional samples, repeated display refreshes reuse the existing sample, and playback speed is respected. Original physics and input timing remain unchanged. Corrected the native-motion FPS label.

1.1.323

Fixed Fire and Ice widescreen bounds for shorter and narrower maps, including partial tile rows. Prevented stale motion frames across level loads and corrected late terrain updates appearing one frame early. Validated all 27 distinct map layouts across 4:3, 16:9 and 21:9 with edge and full-map rendering sweeps. Original gameplay and enemy activation rules remain.

1.1.322

Added experimental Fire and Ice 16:9/21:9 world rendering and native motion interpolation. Intermediate views redraw terrain and actors while preserving original simulation timing and the HUD. Unsupported scenes fall back to the original view. Existing optical-flow modes remain available.

1.1.321

Fixed Dungeon Master held-item replacement artwork when picking up and moving inventory objects. Fixed two startup blockers in Fire and Ice; the supplied ICS two-disk edition now reaches playable gameplay. Added its edition profile, jump-button default and stable uncropped display. Fixed Bubble Bobble gameplay corruption by honoring its verified loader placement and preventing fixed-buffer overlap. Added a separate Dungeon Master artwork add-on, including inventory and held items. Public downloads omit expanded artwork; existing installed artwork is preserved. Update errors distinguish downloading from verification failures.

1.1.320

Fixed Vulkan descriptor exhaustion during busy rendering and optical-flow frames. Improved protected-disk reading and library rescans; corrected Lombard Rally data-disk file lookup and Arkanoid II launcher selection. Added enhanced-edition checksums to the game guides. Dungeon Master now repeats the supplied dark stone background seamlessly, with softer torch lighting. The original package included expanded artwork; a smaller public package was subsequently provided.

1.1.319

Brighter Dungeon Master interface, corrected spell and party alignment, updated close-up mirror portraits, repaired items and HD cursors. Added warm torch lighting and party-formation dragging.

1.1.318

Restored complete desktop packages with Windows/Linux release and debug builds, debug launchers, tools, installers and an offline source/build kit.

1.1.317

Expanded Dungeon Master UI artwork, character portraits, inventory items and controls; repaired mouse-event delivery and interaction handling.

1.1.316

Fixed register preservation across guest VBL callbacks, helping games that rely on those callbacks. Expanded compatibility checks across varied disk editions.

1.1.315

Tightened public packaging and removed development metadata from public binaries.

1.1.314

Improved frame generation for small moving objects and after rewinding. Fixed graphics-copy and clipping issues.

1.1.313

Improved fine-detail preservation with optional graphics filters and their interaction with frame generation.

1.1.312

Corrected CPU bus accesses and floppy seek verification; added text queries and clipping fixes.

1.1.311

Added classic GEM resource loading, relocation, lookup and lifecycle handling, with malformed-file checks.

1.1.310

Expanded GEM bitmap conversion, graphics attributes, dialog layout and image drawing.

1.1.309

Expanded TOS and graphics services; improved drive access, MIDI, file handling and save-state validation.

1.1.308

Added independent drive B, optional procedural MIDI synthesis and per-game dither, gradient and edge controls.

1.1.307

Added live keyboard buffering, guest-timed key repeat and waiting console input; improved save-state handling.

1.1.306

Added loader execution modes, inherited environments and ST-RAM allocation support; improved console errors.

1.1.305

Corrected CPU error-handler information, protected-sector reads, disk swapping and sector-write handling.

1.1.304

Improved floppy timing and hardware/CPU compatibility; made unsupported services report failures consistently.

1.1.303

Improved library sorting/search, F11/F12 navigation, save naming and keyboard/controller focus.

1.1.302

Added clearer compatibility notices and prefilled game-report drafts; improved library empty states, disk-picker cancellation and screenshot saving.

1.1.301

Introduced the experimental Dungeon Master native party interface, packaged its artwork and fixed its Vulkan presentation. Corrected system calls, keyboard waits and stale palettes.

Public baseline: 1.1.230

The historical public baseline for these notes. The entries above cover subsequent builds; version numbers do not imply that every intervening number was publicly released. No separate change records for 1.1.231–1.1.299 are present in this source history.