April 29, 2005
Bliss has relocated to a new website. This
is just an archive of the (now extremely outdated) old website available for historical reference.
April 14, 2002 - 18:30PM CST
There is no definite date set
for the next release.
-Jesse
January 28, 2002 - 12:35PM MST
Bliss has been ported to the BeOS! See the official
announcement here.
Download Bliss for BeOS from the links on the left.
In other news, there a distinct possibility I'll
be working on joystick/gamepad support soon. As you
know, Bliss progress has slowed to a trickle in recent
months because of other projects that required attention,
but I hope to be back to Bliss coding again very soon.
December 5, 2001 - 12:05PM MST
Two news items to report on the Intellivision front.
First, Intellivision Productions released a new, officially-licensed
Intellivision
Rocks! CD a few days ago, which includes 30 playable
Intellivision games.
Also, Keith Robinson will appear tonight on an episode
of The
Screen Savers in a segment about the Intellivision.
I believe Keith Robinson is somehow affiliated with
Intellivision Productions, which produces all of the
official Intellivision game compilations such as "Intellivision
Rocks!". If that's true, the segment may be more about
the Intellivision history in general and the new "Intellivision
Rocks!" CD specifically and may contain little or
no information about Intellivision emulation. That's
only speculation on my part, however, and you should
definitely watch and see for yourself. "The Screen
Savers" is a regular show on Tech
TV (formerly ZDTV) which is available in the basic
channel packages from many cable providers. The live
show is scheduled to air tonight at 7:00PM EST, then
re-run at 10:00PM EST and 1:00AM EST. I'll try to
tape the segment on the Intellivision tonight and
digitize it and post it here if possible.
- Kyle
October 15, 2001 - 12:05PM MST
Bliss v1.9d is now available with zip file support
and an official Linux port! In addition to these changes,
the scratchy Intellivoice output has been fixed, and
most of the jerky video and sound latency issues have
been worked out. As usual, download your favorite
Bliss package from the links to the left.
We also have two new members on the Bliss team:
Atani
and Nephrite.
Nephrite is joining the team as an editor/writer and
beta tester, maintaining the docs, contributing to
the web site, and potentially looking over betas before
a release. Atani joins the team as a developer and
many thanks go to him for contributing the zip file
support and the Linux port now available with this
release. He also made a number of source code modifications
to further enhance portability of the source code
base, and he has even hinted at a future Dreamcast
port. I personally think that playing Intellivision
games on my Dreamcast would ROCK! :-)
Also, would anyone out there like to join the Bliss
team to help with the Bliss web site? You can feel
free to take on as much or as little HTML responsibility
as you would like, anywhere from simply helping maintain
the compatibility list or a FAQ all the way up to
potentially taking ownership for all web site content.
Please email us if you are interested. There must
be at least one Intellivision nut out there with HTML
skillz. :-)
- Kyle
September 17, 2001 - 17:30 CST
As promised: Bliss32 v1.9c!
Users who already downloaded v1.9b can quickly update
to 1.9c by replacing their current Bliss32.exe with
the one contained in this zip file: Bliss32v19b_to_v19c_update.
Simply extract it to the directory where you installed
Bliss32 (C:\Program Files\Bliss32 by default).
New users, or users of versions prior to 1.9b should
download the full install from the Downloads panel.
Fix list:
Thanks go out to the users who posted bug-reports
to help identify the issues fixed in this release
(that means you Belgarath <g>).
-Jesse (evil@eternaldusk.com)
September 17, 2001 - 9:40 CST
I just wanted to let you guys know that I found the
cause of the problem last night. Kyle and I have several
possible fixes for it that I will try ASAP.
Sometime this afternoon, I will build new distributions
including the fix. I will also add a new '1.9b to
1.9c.zip' download that contains only the changed
exe. It should be no more than 60k after compression,
so everyone who downloaded 1.9b already will not have
to download everything again.
The 1.9c distribution will also contain Kyle's new
memory model and several other fixes.
Thanks for your patience,
-Jesse (evil@eternaldusk.com)
September 16, 2001 - 20:40 CST
Doh! We've noticed a bug in the v1.9b release that's
causing graphics glitches at the bottom of the screen
in a lot of Intellivision games.
I'm looking into it now. Look for another release
as soon as it's fixed.
- Jesse (evil@eternaldusk.com)
September 16, 2001 - 10:40AM CST
Bliss32 v1.9b released! Here's the rundown:
- Jesse (evil@eternaldusk.com)
September 14, 2001 - 11:00PM CST
Good news! I made some real progress with the performance
of Bliss32 tonight. If all goes well, we should have
a 1.9b release any day now!
- Jesse (evil@eternaldusk.com)
September 9, 2001 - 09:30PM MST
Here they are at last! New releases of everything,
and most importantly, the official releases of Bliss32!
Bliss32 is the rewrite of the Java codebase in C++,
including an integrated front-end user interface.
There are many releases of Bliss available now, and
some of you may be confused about which release of
Bliss is right for you. To help you answer this question,
I'm in the process of putting together a FAQ which
will be posted soon.
Meanwhile, for those of you who already know what
you're doing, there are four new releases available
today: version 1.61 of BlissJ, BlissJX, and BlissJWeb,
and version 1.9 of Bliss32. The release of Bliss32
is available in two different installation formats:
a zip file (for the more advanced users), and a complete
installation executable (for less-experienced users).
You will only need to download one or the other.
As more and more coding focuses on the Bliss32 codebase,
I eventually hope to phase out the Java versions within
the next few releases of Bliss32. Feel free to try
out the new releases and let us know what you think
in the forums.
- Kyle
September 8, 2001 - 07:00PM MST
Kyle's working on squashing an Intellivoice bug that
crept in during our updates, but a new release of
Bliss32 is impending.
For the new release I have created an installer,
making installation is pretty much a one step process.
Well, two steps, when you consider putting the exec.bin
and grom.bin files in the executable directory.
Kyle has added frameskip support, and it works really
well. So, the minimum system requirement is very reasonable
now.
I've been putting most of the configuration options
into an INI file. Even if we don't have a menu option
yet for what you want to change, you should be able
to fix it in notepad.
The next release may be sans 5200 and joystick support,
because we're anxious to finally get the improved
core/menu version out. Those features should find
their way back into B32 before too long. I expect
we will be able to make releases a lot more frequently
after completing this big Xanadu .62 to Bliss32 1.9
jump.
In the meantime, here's a screenshot of the latest
version:
- Jesse (evil@eternaldusk.com)
September 7, 2001 - 04:00PM MST
Some of you are experiencing broken links to file
downloads. The files linked to the downloads sections
are *definitely* there, but the server is refusing
to serve them, for whatever reason. I'm working to
figure out the issue now.
- Kyle
August 30, 2001 - 05:00PM MST
More good news! Now the Lock 'n' Chase bug which allowed
Lupin to walk through blockades is also fixed. Thanks
to Nephrite for reminding me about it as I almost
let it slip through the cracks. I need to do some
testing to make sure I haven't broken anything new,
but barring any surprises, the v1.61 release of BlissJ/JX/JWeb
should be out very soon.
Progress on Bliss32 continues along at a steady
clip. I'm thinking a release can't be too, too far
away now. I'll let you know more in the next few days.
- Kyle
August 29, 2001 - 05:00PM MST
Awesome news! With the help of some of Joe Zbiciak's
Intellivision emulation accuracy tools, I've finally
found and fixed the Ice Trek bug where you were previously
unable to throw the grappling hook in the second scene.
I've also re-fixed the DirectInput bug which keeps
popping up where the input configuration detects non-existent
joystick movement.
I'm working toward a v1.61 release of BlissJ/JX/JWeb,
so if you know of any other bugs you would like to
see fixed in this next release, you should definitely
post an item in the forum
about it now.
- Kyle
August 19, 2001 - 02:00PM MST
Forums are back online! Woohoo!
August 18, 2001 - 07:30PM CST
Hi all! For my first ever Bliss site update I thought
I'd scoop Kyle and show you some more of our progress.
Since Kyle started merging his core updates with
the new plugins, work on the new video/menu functions
has progressed nicely. Our new menu system is integrated
with the emulator itself (menus show up on top of
the running emulation, instead of the more separated
approach we took in the earlier, unreleased, Bliss32).
This gives us a lot of neat possibilities... should
we start with a random console/game running at startup?
:)
Here are a couple of screen shots. Keep in mind that
the end product may be much different than what you
see here; things are improving at an astonishing rate
now that we've nailed down a good bit of the base
code. Updating the menu skins/graphics is getting
pretty trivial at this point.
-Jesse (evil@retrogames.com)
August 9, 2001 - 05:30PM MST
As we creep toward the next Bliss32 release, there
are some additional features that may be of interest
to end users and developers, so I decided to take
a moment to jot these down. Here are some of the other
more interesting upcoming changes.
- The next release of Bliss32 will be the first
release of the native codebase that will be officially
made available under the GNU Public License (GPL).
- The codebase will now compile entirely using MinGW32,
eliminating the need for other developers to own
a copy of Visual Studio to contribute to Bliss development.
- The DirectX code has been completely removed and
replaced with support for the Simple
DirectMedia Layer. This should make porting
to other platforms that support SDL a relatively
easy process.
- For platforms that do not support SDL, the operating
system-dependent device interfaces have been completely
overhauled and greatly simplified so that other
video, audio, and input drivers should be easy to
write and plug in to the Bliss codebase.
- As mentioned earlier, the core emulation engine
has been nearly completely rewritten so that it
is much easier to understand and so that new emulators
can be more easily written and integrated into the
Bliss codebase. The new algorithm for converting
the audio and video output to the device interfaces
should also bring the audio into near-perfect sync
with the video.
- Also mentioned earlier, work on a complete menuing
system is in progress which will overlay the emulation
action while in use.
- It's possible one additional port will coincide
with the next release. Take a wild guess which OS
it will be! :-)
August 6, 2001 - 05:30PM MST
Check this out!
As you can see, there is some serious work
in progress by Jesse Litton and myself for the 2.0
release of Bliss32. The new title screen above is
Jesse's handiwork. Some of the other major features
include a revamped core emulation engine so that sound
will now be perfectly in sync with the on-screen action
and in-game menus sort of like what you might see
in a PlayStation or Dreamcast-style game. I can't
wait to release it for you, but some work remains
to be done. I'll provide updates as progress continues.
Stay tuned! :-)
August 1, 2001 - 05:00PM MST
Woohoo! Welcome to the new home for Bliss on Retrogames!
Many thanks to the Retrogames staff for providing
the space for the Bliss web site. Note that the message
boards are offline and will likely remain offline
for a bit while I figure out how to get everything
set up again. I will try to preserve the old message
archive if at all possible. Everything else should
be up and running.
I'll also be posting more news of progress in the
Bliss native codebase very soon. Stay tuned! :-)
