I'd just join the Discord. I'll usually holler before a release if there's something to be tested - the traffic levels in there aren't too high: https://discord.gg/u94mmuCzgB :)
Thanks for the feedback. I can provide development builds in future with better stats if you're interested in helping measure performance improvements on real hardware. It might make sense to setup a Discord group to do this.
I tend to remove the granular measurements from the release builds themselves, as the extra code probably adds a bit of bloat/speed loss in itself.
The 040 build uses a faster C2P algorithm for that architecture and some limited use of the 040 move16 instruction to move data about in the codebase.
I reworked some of the original sub/road CPU code to be more register efficient with less reliance on memory access. I also changed the road rendering to minimise drawing of the secondary road layer (at the expense of a small amount of additional computation elsewhere). I also found a dumb bug where during certain situations I was clearing parts of the screen that didn't need to be.
It's created by the script as part of the conversion process. As mentioned in the changelog.txt you can just copy the previous gfx/audio files over if you've already run the conversion process previously.
I don't have an A600GS but have definitely completed the game via that route on hardware and UAE. Will have a look into it for the next release to see if I can figure out what might be causing the issue.
I would also use the version I've provided first - before switching to WHDLoad. Just in case it's causing problems. Earlier WHDLoad versions did indeed have a slowdown from what I've read online.
I would stick to 25fps by default if you're having issues with 30fps mode. Reason being this targets PAL (50Hz) machines, 30fps effectively has to be able to support 50fps, as it has to be capable of rendering a frame per screen refresh. If you didn't understand what I just wrote, and it's pretty confusing to explain, just go for 25! :-)
Interesting. And to confirm you're running the binary obtained from here, not the WHDLoad version?
It's always difficult to provide a guarantee of speed considering there's a lot of different configurations out there, but I would hope you were getting better than what you've reported. It sounds slower than I would expect.
That's slower than some get with an 030. What's the accelerator card out of interest?
One button joystick support - something I'll address in a future version yes. In the meantime, Megadrive/Master System pads work if you have one. Or obviously there's keyboard support too.
In theory, installing the latest version of python will work on windows, mac etc. What happens when you follow the instructions and type 'python -h'? Does it show a working install?
Feel free to drop me a line (my e-mail is in the readme) or jump in Discord if you need help. I'd recommend running the python script on a PC or MAC though. Raspberry probably isn't the best platform for that, even though it may be possible...
