State of SNES Emulation - 2010

[Agozer]

I've had 4 official controllers and they've all broken

How on earth did you manage something like that?

[odditude]

I've had 4 official controllers and they've all broken

How on earth did you manage something like that?

seriously. i managed to wear out the d-pad on one original controller (digital-only) from crazy amounts of street fighter in HS, but i've only just killed my first ds/ds2/ds3 (circle button failing; if the contact's just loose i can probably fix it).

[grinvader]

I've had 4 official controllers and they've all broken

How on earth did you manage something like that?

Quite easily, we apparently both ended up with cheap piece of shits. Three official pads, all shoulder popped under a few weeks of use each.
Before extraction, those bits can actually end up in a place where the L2/R2 get stuck in that weird angle franpa mentionned, however a mere 'open the damn thing and remove the tiny broken pieces of plastic, then close up' is enough to remove any jammed shoulder buttons issue. All three pads have been perfectly working ever since (a few years now).

I got the typical PS1 drive thingie issue, using the glass plate trick to fix it; and my firstgen ps2 went CD-blind (could read dvds just peachy) a month before disgaea got out (pal and jp versions disgaea = CD), so it got baleeted pretty fast and replaced with a slim for OBVIOUS REASONS.

Issues with nintendo consoles: 0 for all 4 of them over a span of 20 years. Am I seeing a pattern here ? You tell me.

[Agozer]

I remember wearing out the left analog stick on my old DS2, so that it was always tilted slightly to the upper-right, even though it was supposed to be centered. I always had to extra-carefully center it, so my game avatar wouldn't run into some damn pit on his own.

[Gil_Hamilton]

I had a PS2 pad's buttons stop working unless you mashed htem hard.
I applied my 5200 know-how and cleaned the contacts with a pencil eraser. Good as new, and the issue never resurfaced.

Had a 3rd-party PS1 pad die to static shock. Moral of the story: don't hold the gamepad in one hand while wiping dust off the screen with the other.

Had another where the springs got absurdly loose and the stick wiggled way too much. It eventually stopped working totally for no discernible reason.

Had a PS1 joystick where the stick mechanism warped in such a way that hitting cardinal directions was very difficult.

My NES, bought used, came with a pair of pads where the contacts for the fire buttons had actually worn off of the circuit board. God only knows how much use those pads had seen.

I had an NES Advantage that suddenly decided walking right was not an option, only down+right. No discernible reason.

SNES Advantage that I still use to this day decided it didn't want to center anymore. Big deal, guiding the stick back is an easy habit to get into.

Vectrex controller had fire flake out. Again, open it and clean the contacts. Vectrex controllers are a bitch to open if you don't wanna punch holes in the decal.

[magitek369]

I've had some older controllers stop working properly but nothing that popping then open and cleaning out the gunk didn't fix. The only major problem I've had was with the Xbox, where I had two controllers die due to twisted wiring, but I was able to fix those by making some cuts and soldering them back together.

[badinsults]

Mudlord has completed an article on the start of N64 emulation, modeled after my article:

http://www.mudlord.info/article_stateof ... ation.html

[paulguy]

Good, informative article, but I'm going to nitpick a bit with some typos and stuff.

After version 1.4, its popularity exploded and now its at version 1.6 for the *public* release and a tenative version 1.7 *beta* release, which requires a "donation" of $20 AUD or more.

There is many bugs in the emulator still, such as crashes when enabling cheats, glitches in the GUI, several outstanding emulation errors, as well as other problems.

GUI wise, the GUI is nothing special, apart from the ability to set per-ROM plugins like 1965.

However, what it makes up for compatibility bears a very strong speed hit: it takes quite a powerful video card as well as a extremely powerful CPU to operate well, and even then there is speed issues.

There is two plugins, one based on Direct3D6, another based on Direct3D8.

Instead, it just similates the audio code for a particular game.

"Also, the scene itself is dwindling as the amount of developers in the scene aresmaller, while scenes like the Wii/PS2/Dreamcast scenes just grow in popularity." <-- This one just sounds a bit awkward, but I don't know much about grammar.

[badinsults]

I don't think mudlord comes here, so nitpicking spelling errors is kind of pointless.

[paulguy]

Ah, thought I recalled seeing him here, must be not anymore. Well, I guess they'll just stay there until someone more insulting points them out where ever else he posted it that he visits.

[snkcube]

He was banned, if I recall.

[grinvader]

He was banned, if I recall.

HAVE A SLICE OF CAKE HE WAS...

HE WAS...



DOUBLE BANNED

[Sessh]

Wow, you guys go through a lot of controllers. I still have the controller from my original PS2 and the only complaint from that one is the analog started creaking when it was moved and the analog light doesn't come on, it only flickers when you move the analog. More annoying than anything, but a shot of WD-40 into the analog box cleared the creaking up. I've had the D-pad wear out in one direction, though, sometimes quite soon after being bought. I never thought to use a pencil eraser on the contacts, so I might give that a try. The only issue I've had with the top buttons is getting them back in place while putting the controller back together. Usually takes a few tries to slip the contact strip under the buttons properly. Do you guys throw your controllers by any chance? Hehe.

I've been messing around with the Project64 (N64) emulator and it runs pretty good. Harvest Moon runs flawlessly (after the little file upgrade, that is). Perfect Dark and Jet Force Gemini run great as well despite having a high performance requirement and I don't even have a fancy video card. Goldeneye is a little jerky though.

[kode54]

Goldeneye is a little jerky though.

Just like the real thing, eh?

[Sessh]

Goldeneye is a little jerky though.

Just like the real thing, eh?

I didn't play the N64 game, so don't know if it's the same way.

[I.S.T.]

Goldeneye has a notoriously low/skippy framerate.

[Sessh]

Goldeneye has a notoriously low/skippy framerate.

I would imagine it's worse on the emulator as it's pretty much always skippy, but not unplayable. It did freeze on me when opening a door, though. Perfect Dark only skips when changing guns, but it's not that bad. I must say I am impressed with how good the N64 looks. I can't believe they crammed so much into a little cart.

[Gil_Hamilton]

Goldeneye has a notoriously low/skippy framerate.

I would imagine it's worse on the emulator as it's pretty much always skippy, but not unplayable. It did freeze on me when opening a door, though. Perfect Dark only skips when changing guns, but it's not that bad. I must say I am impressed with how good the N64 looks. I can't believe they crammed so much into a little cart.

They're actually pretty big carts... well, for the time, in a non-arcade environment.
And the 64 has more RAM than the PS1, which was a huge obstacle for PS1 games trying to look good.

[kode54]

It can't be worse in the emulator than on the real console without also causing the audio to skip as well. If the audio is flowing smoothly without interruptions, and the vertical interrupts counter is showing the full frame rate of either 50 or 60, then the choppiness is entirely the game's fault. The only way to prevent such choppiness would be to overclock the emulated processors and hope that the game is capable of using the extra power to increase frame rates, rather than merely throttling itself to a low frame rate to spare the CPU for something else.

[Sessh]

It can't be worse in the emulator than on the real console without also causing the audio to skip as well. If the audio is flowing smoothly without interruptions, and the vertical interrupts counter is showing the full frame rate of either 50 or 60, then the choppiness is entirely the game's fault. The only way to prevent such choppiness would be to overclock the emulated processors and hope that the game is capable of using the extra power to increase frame rates, rather than merely throttling itself to a low frame rate to spare the CPU for something else.

The audio skips as well even when there's just text on the screen. During gameplay, they both skip at the same time. It happens way too often for it to be just the cart because it would have never made it to shelves like that. The game is definitely still playable as they are mostly just little hiccups (it skips pretty bad on the level where you can use a tank and fly the plane away to complete the mission, though), but happens way too much to not be the emulator to some degree. The emulator could also be blamed for Perfect Dark skipping every time I change guns, but again not that big a deal.

Then again, I guess it could be my computer too, but it's a decent system. It's an Intel Dual Core, 4300 @ 1.80GHz and 1.79GHz, 1.99GB RAM. All cards are "stock" so to speak. I have a very old Diamond Monster in it, but it's not hooked up because it's old and messes with my screen.

[franpa]

I get random pauses/stutter in games like Banjo Kazooie on Project64 which I don't get on my PAL N64 console so it very likely is the emulator at fault. (I play it with the Glide64 "Napalm" WX plugin). I'm not talking about sudden area transitions like hitting a switch etc. that triggers something in another area.

Though it could be just a fault only experienced in the US versions of the game which overall run at significantly better frame rates.

[badinsults]

http://byuu.org/articles/bsnes-future

Looks like everything came to a head here. I had a good chuckle reading this article, which is full of hyperbole and outright false statements. Too bad that byuu doesn't realize that bsnes isn't popular because he is a jerk with an inflated sense of self importance, and he turns off the very people who should be the biggest backers of the emulator (e.g. me).

[I.S.T.]

As I said in #romhacking.net, I don't think that's why bsnes is so unpopular. It's that people think SNES emulation is 100% accurate/good enough(When it most certainly isn't) with ZSNES and SNES9x.

I mean, let's face it. Much of the ZSNES team is acidic as well, yet you don't see people stop using ZSNES because the devs are assholes.

That said, byuu is acting like a little pussy here. If you put your program out on the internet, there's bound to be people being assholes about it. It'd be best to just ignore the haters, and work on what you want.

At the same time, the straw that broke the camel's back for him is just... ugh. Yes, that project should have used MSU-1, but I doubt that guy knew about it when he began working.

[magitek369]

http://byuu.org/articles/bsnes-future

I have instant dislike of him.

[grinvader]

Much of the ZSNES team is acidic as well, yet you don't see people stop using ZSNES because the devs are assholes.

it probably has something to do with the subliminal drugs^W^W^W what was i saying already