Standard Windows GUI In The Future?

[denzilla]

C'mon guys, just come out and say it: "We know the GUI sucks ass, but the fact is no one wants to deal with it." Acceptance is the first step toward healing


Disclaimer: This post was in no way intended to piss off or harass ZSNES developers. I was only joking

[badinsults]

I think a lot of old zsnes users would be very disappointed if the current GUI was dropped. I think it gives the program character, and it comes from a time when most people ran the program in DOS.

That being said, having a compile time option for a more "modern" GUI might not be such a bad idea.

[franpa]

I think a lot of old zsnes users would be very disappointed if the current GUI was dropped. I think it gives the program character, and it comes from a time when most people ran the program in DOS.

That being said, having a compile time option for a more "modern" GUI might not be such a bad idea.

why waste time maintaining 2 GUI's? i'd rather them focus on emulation etc. and keep the current GUI.

[Gil_Hamilton]

I've always been amused by people insisting that emulators aspire to an aesthetic that would be burned at the stake in any other application.

Even productivity software doesn't leave it at a single gray bar. They add pretty multi-colored toolbars.

[creaothceann]

[...] having a compile time option for a more "modern" GUI might not be such a bad idea.

why waste time maintaining 2 GUI's?

Because people are bitchin' about it on the forum?

[CyberBotX]

Just because people bitch about something on the forums doesn't mean the developers need to give in to the bitching. Like I said, it's better they keep the GUI the way it is so they don't have to deal with multiple GUIs. And like it was said before, emulation should be the main focus of the emulator, not the GUI.

[TheCloudOfSmoke]

i'd rather them focus on emulation etc. and keep the current GUI.

And like it was said before, emulation should be the main focus of the emulator, not the GUI.

I thought that since the emulator is already bloated to hell with features that are not neccessary and are just for fun or enhancement, that inquiring about a GUI would be the least hardest things to implement compared to the other useless stuff that have been added in over the years. All of those enhancements don't have anything to do with the emulation of the SNES like many people keep saying that the devs should focus on. They contribute to any but the accurate emulation of the SNES. I didn't know the devs goal with the current GUI was to keep it portable across platforms. Now I know.

[sweener2001]

someone hasn't been following the development of this program. you'd realise how stupid you sound right now.

when it started, it was full of hacks to be playable and fast. features were added. lately, you'll notice that netplay has been removed completely, the movie recording was replaced with much more solid recording because many of the devs are TAS fans, there is a sound core replacement thread at the top of this forum, and on more than one occasion, people have been told to wait for the new emulation core because of inherent flaws in the current one.

i think that now you're just getting angry, and that won't bode well for you. a qt gui is not a main concern at the moment. the devs are striving for accuracy right now.

[TheCloudOfSmoke]

The thing with the internet is that you can't tell if a person is angry or not judging by their words. I am in no way not angry at all. Maybe you are. I don't know. I think that if anyone sounds stupid, it's you for wanting some purpose to say something negative to my responses when I have not said anything negative to deserve it. I said I now know the purpose of the original GUI. Damn, everytime that I say that I understand what someone has told me and accept it, someone else gets mad because I have accepted the answer that was given to me. I just posted my opinions, I got told why it wouldn't be benificial, I accept it, and then someone gets mad about something else. I'm not begging or demanding anything to be put in. I just told my side and POV, if someone wants to take that into consideration, great. If not, oh well, move on to the next subject to get things back on track. BTW: I am in no way trying to be negative in this post just to be clear. Honestly.

[sweener2001]

I thought that since the emulator is already bloated to hell[...]

...

[...] inquiring about a GUI would be the least hardest things to implement compared to the other useless stuff that have been added in over the years.

you're going to tell me that that doesn't sound angry? how did i sound angry? i merely commented on what i read into your post, and it sounds angry. i was just trying to help. but if you don't want it, that's fine.

[TheCloudOfSmoke]

When I say bloated to hell, I didn't mean it in a negative way. I meant that it was really full with features. Using bloated to hell helps exaggerate my point of there being many features. Meaning that there are other things that have been distracting the focus away from emulation in the past.

When I said useless features, I meant useless when it comes to the goal of accurate emulation. I like those extra features and I don't find them useless personally, it's only useless to the emulation of the SNES. I should have been more clear on that. I can understand how you can come to the conclusion that I sounded angry though. Like I said, it's just text, you can't see emotions and it's easy to interpret anothers words the wrong way.

[Kajuru]

By "bloated to hell" you mean feature rich.

An interesting fact is that even if it is bloated or not, it runs faster than many Genesis/GB/Nes emulators. People in high end PCs might not even notice, but I find absurd when a GB(not gba) emulator runs much slower than Zsnes.

[creaothceann]

An interesting fact is that even if it is bloated or not, it runs faster than many Genesis/GB/Nes emulators. People in high end PCs might not even notice, but I find absurd when a GB(not gba) emulator runs much slower than Zsnes.

You're seeing a correlation where there is none.

[Kajuru]

You're seeing a correlation where there is none.

It's weird to see a 16bit console emulator running faster than a 8bit handheld one, especially when both machines were made by the same company.

The emulators are written by different people in different languages based in different hardware(but sometimes backward compatible, as seem in SGB), and I'm not trying to imply other emus are pieces of bad code, instead, I was telling the guy, that Zsnes is not only accurate and feature rich, but also very optimized.

[funkyass]

You're seeing a correlation where there is none.

It's weird to see a 16bit console emulator running faster than a 8bit handheld one, especially when both machines were made by the same company.

The emulators are written by different people in different languages based in different hardware(but sometimes backward compatible, as seem in SGB), and I'm not trying to imply other emus are pieces of bad code, instead, I was telling the guy, that Zsnes is not only accurate and feature rich, but also very optimized.

you really can't prove optimazation by comparing zsnes to emulators of other hardware.

Is zsnes faster than any given gameboy emulator? I can't say,but if it is, its more because zsnes has been in development for over a decade.

[Kajuru]

Don't get me wrong, but if "superior" hardware runs faster than one so called "inferior" when emulated, there's something wrong there, eg. one would expect that a PS2 emulator requires a better computer(demands more resources) than one for Snes.

BTW, I have used emulators where even the GUI(no rom loaded) was slow as hell.

[xamenus]

that Zsnes is not only accurate and feature rich

ZSNES really isn't very accurate, especially when compared to other SNES emulators. It was designed to be as fast as possible, even at the expense of accurate emulation. At least that's changing, though.

[doktor_kris]

I think a lot of old zsnes users would be very disappointed if the current GUI was dropped. I think it gives the program character, and it comes from a time when most people ran the program in DOS.

That being said, having a compile time option for a more "modern" GUI might not be such a bad idea.

Yes!

[Jipcy]

The portability of the code of any program can have an indirect effect on its speed, as well.

[franpa]

isnt Zsnes faster because it was mostly coded in x86 assembly language? what gameboy emulators out there are coded using this language? (or machine code)

[creaothceann]

no$gmb

[Kajuru]

ZSNES really isn't very accurate, especially when compared to other SNES emulators.

Maybe not 3/4 years ago, but right now? It might not be bSnes, but still... Looking at the changelogs, a whole lot of hacks have been disabled/removed, and no noticeable impact on system performance. If I put side by side (in my VERY low end machine), current zsnes vs. a 3 years old build, and run a very demanding game, the diference in FPS will be 1 or 2 frames at most. The exception to this rule is the 2004 Super Optimized build(WIP).

isnt Zsnes faster because it was mostly coded in x86 assembly language?

That's why I mentioned the language used. This helps a lot, but surely isn't the only reason. The dev team is converting bits of it from Assembly > C, and I can't really tell it's any slower.

what gameboy emulators out there are coded using this language? (or machine code)
no$gmb

What makes me sad is that Martin isn't developing it anymore...

The portability of the code of any program can have an indirect effect on its speed, as well.

Yes.

BTW, we're getting way off topic

[sweener2001]

this topic is dead anyway, so it doesn't matter

[Rashidi]

Today's Hint:
If you know where you want to go, you can type the path into the input box below the file and directory listings. For example, enter in there d:\ and see what happens.

Blasphemy!

ekh, i already did what Nach says , since the DOS Era (D.E)

emulator is already bloated to hell with features that are not neccessary and are just for fun or enhancement, that inquiring about a GUI would be the least hardest things to implement compared to the other useless stuff that have been added in over the years.

which part of ZSnes feature is useles??

• screenshot ? i use it to create a complete in game map
• spc capture ? many games has great music, this enables me to listen to them without have to play the game to specific point
• save-state (tm) & their related option ? hardly anyone would call this use-less !!
• screen filtering ? really this is great, especially if you prefer to play the game in full-screen with monitor greater than 15" ! without'em the graphics will look just awful
• Speed control (speed-up / speed-down) ? great to skip boring credits / slow things down for those who have bad reflect (like me)
• Movie capture option ? excellent to brag against snooby pals
• Advance frame-by-frame ? i use it most, in conjunction with spc & screen capture
• Keyboard/device input ? what are game will be without interaction? i also use "layer" disabling/enabling with screen capture, this way i spent less time editing the captured screen, also disabling certain layer / windowing actually helps in certain game that obsure the view

certainly, i can't say they are useless.

feature there aren't avail in real snes hardware,
accuracy is done in core-programming not interface-programming

When I said useless features, I meant useless when it comes to the goal of accurate emulation. I like those extra features and I don't find them useless personally, it's only useless to the emulation of the SNES.

now there, it's quite odd that you complain about accuracy, to feature accesible through interface, as matter of fact that you already know this..


perhaps you like and really old-school emu, with no GUI what-so-ever, only control-pad input for game, no other "feature-config", so when-ever you push [ESC] the emu exit to OS ? ( i remember long time ago that I have such emulator for GB that martin made )


another hint:

if you like win GUI so much, you could register the SMC / SFC / JMA / FIG ext to be open-ed with the emu, so whenever you double-click the rom-z file in window-explorer, the emu starts
i do this to my Gameboy roms file [*.gb; *.gbc; *.cgb; *.sgb; *.gbs], to play with no$gmb, i even made icon for 'em,
in D.E, I also register'em with the trusty & always-useful Norton Comander!

EDIT: Another point that I forgot to mention was that using a Windows GUI would make it easier to navigate to different rom folders (if you have multiple folders where your roms are located) with the "Open File" dialog instead of starting from the C: drive and working all of the way to your rom folders on the desktop or wherever they are located.
In other programs in general, all I have to do is go to the drop down box at the top of the "Open File" dialog and go down and bam, I'm in the folder where my files are.

So, why don't you made a shortcut (links) to the rom'z folder? so when you click'em explorer open in that folder, apply with hint that i suggest above...

[TheCloudOfSmoke]

Damn man. The thread served its purpose already. I will resort to quoting a later post that I made that better clarifies what I meant:

When I say bloated to hell, I didn't mean it in a negative way. I meant that it was really full with features. Using bloated to hell helps exaggerate my point of there being many features. Meaning that there are other things that have been distracting the focus away from emulation in the past.

When I said useless features, I meant useless when it comes to the goal of accurate emulation. I like those extra features and I don't find them useless personally, it's only useless to the emulation of the SNES. I should have been more clear on that. I can understand how you can come to the conclusion that I sounded angry though. Like I said, it's just text, you can't see emotions and it's easy to interpret anothers words the wrong way.