ZSNES is no longer in active development.

[nintendo_nerd]

Been awhile since I've been here. The forums look great and nice to see that the team is still together.

I have used snes9x before and the record feature never worked right for me particularly the sound in recordings was horrible or didn't exist at all. For some reason, I don't mind the inaccuracies in ZSNES. I only wish it had a better recording feature, but the one it does have works well enough. I love that ZSNES is so lightweight and fast which I value over precision accuracy. Most of the time, I don't even notice the accuracy stuff. I hope that ZSNES 2.0 does not sacrifice the lightweight and speedy qualities too much. When I had my old computer, it ran ZSNES perfectly despite it being slow, old as hell and quickly degrading.

Not dead either, because that won't happen unless we do.

I was glad to read that. Can't wait for 2.0 no matter how long it takes.

Oh, I bet if I pointed out the inaccuracies, you'd never look at Zsnes the same, but I'd only be wasting time here. It's nostalgic to be sure, but that's where its novelty ends in all honesty. But I digress.

[pagefault]

ZSNES 2.0 will be everything you would expect from ZSNES with an updated code base (rewritten).

Off topic, does anyone have some SNES hardware they don't need or want to sell? I need to get another one as my SNES is screwed up right now, if I touch it the cart will fly out of the socket and the console will freeze. I either need to repair it somehow or get another one. I'm also looking for a Sega CD unit for an unrelated project

[Yuber]

Sorry dude but I wanna keep my SNES; it's my original SNES from 1992 and I still play it fairly often. Amazon has some used ones available for fairly reasonable prices, but it's risky as you already know.That said, I've bought used games/controllers on Amazon & ebay without problems, but my rule is that I don't buy from anyone with less than a 97% positive rating and at least a few hundred reviews. I need some new SNES controllers myelf; only my old Ascii turbo pad works(almost as good as official pads) so I need a few spares.

I'm glad 2.0 is being worked on and I can't wait to test it out and compare it to the newer 9x test builds. I know I'm not an old-school poster here but it's nice to see the admins talking about progress being made.

[joe_devore]

why bother with Anazon for a SNES...

eBay is the place to be otherwise check out your local pawn shops some times u can find one that has old console games.

eBay has plenty of old SNESs and some new most used and varying price tags.

[Gil_Hamilton]

I just wanna know what this "unrelated project" is. You finally fallen to the dark side and embraced Sonic as your lord and master?

[pagefault]

yes I know I can get it from eBay but the problem is that you don't know what you are getting half the time, if I buy it off someone I know I can be sure it works properly. The one I have now came off eBay and it has problems so I don't really want to go down that route again. I guess I'll look at somehow replacing the cart slot.

[Yuber]

Sorry I can't help dude; wasn't trying to be a dick or anything but many of the used ones listed are only like $50(bare bones, no controllers or anything) so if I were in your position I'd go ahead and take the risk as long as the seller has a very good record/lots of positive user reviews. This guy would probably be the one I'd buy from instead of the $50-$60 offers simply because he has a 98% positive rating with 618 total ratings. I only searched a tiny bit but used SNES consoles seem to be in the same price range on both Amazon and ebay.

Shit like paying a lot for used old consoles and games is why I love emulation. Saves me a massive amount of money.

[pagefault]

Yeah it sucks, oh well. That's the way it is, I'm going to look but it may be like $100 or something for one that isn't totally abused. I wish I could just change the cart connector since that is the main problem with mine right now. Anyway I'm going to post some screenshots soon of what is working, until then I will need to acquire and wait for new hardware to arrive probably.

[joe_devore]

Eyy Pagefault did u ever get that $50 I donation I sent via PayPal?
Item Title: zsnes donation

Date: Aug 7, 2014
Note: To PF and the other ZSNES Dev's My Eternal gratitude for all the happiness and good memories ZSNES has brought over the past 14+ years ;;^_^;;

I can do another $50 next Month ;D ^_^

[pagefault]

We got it, thank you. Donations are nice but they are not required. This is stuff we do in our spare time and not a full time job. I'm looking at ebay to buy some broken SNES and try to get some parts from it.

[joe_devore]

nah np, If I ever won the lottery
I would be doing a H.U.G.E. DONATION!!

idk how $10k or $20k sound?! ;D

[pagefault]

Most expenses come out of our own pocket and we don't ask for money, if we wanted money we would charge for the product. Donations are just like a tip jar, if you like it and you have some extra money you want want spend not on hookers and blackjack then you can send it our way.

Here is a breakdown of what is done so far:

ZSNES rewrite:

658c16 CPU = 98%
SPC700 = 100% (using blargg's code and actually works now but not producing sound yet, see later)
PPU = 50% (lots of work needs to be done on DMA and HDMA specifically around timing, we also only support modes 0, 1 and 2 currently)
DSP1-4 = 100% (ported from ZSNES 1.x)
S-DD1 = 100% (ported from ZSNES 1.x)
SPC7110 = 100% (ported from ZSNES 1.x)
SA-1 = 0% (have not started to work on it)

Non-emulation stuff:
GUI = 5% (we have a window that displays stuff but thats about it)
Input = 5% (can use keyboard currently)
Sound = 0% (no sound yet, although it is being emulated)
Video = It works, currently only OpenGL ES is supported but more stuff will come soon probably.

Currently everything is written in C99, we like the low level way of things (coming from assembly anyway) and at least this time it's portable and working on multiple platforms (x86, x86-64, ARM tested).
Main development OS is currently Linux but it should work on anything, I have it running on Android Jellybean and I started work on a Windows version. Mac is still unknown since none of us have any hardware to test or develop on currently but there is no technical limitation why it shouldn't work.

The important parts:
ETA to release is unknown, this is all being done in spare time and we all have real lives that take priority over this. But this is probably the first real attempt at doing something in a long time. We will probably release something when we feel it will live up to the standards of the people who use it.

[joe_devore]

Dearest Pagefault,
Thank you so much for the honest status update

no worries it makes my day just to know ZSNES is NOT dead ;^_^;
and its Devs are in good health ^_^.



ps:
have you seen any of my old bug reports...?

particularly the enabling/disabling (via GUI, .cfg editing does not cause a crash)
- NTSC Filter
- HQ Filter

Crashes occur on Windows XP Pro (x86 & x64), and do NOT occur on Win7-Ultimate-64bit <-- O_o?
I have always used, 768x672 DR W

if u ever should feel like it and can manage a quick fix thx.

[pagefault]

I don't believe there are any plans to update the old code at this point. All work is going into the rewrite.

[Yuber]

Ideally, how fast will the rewritten ZSNES be compared to SNES9x 1.53? I know it's still early but if everything turns out the way you want it to, what would be the minimum system requirements to run ZSNES 2.0 at full speed with sound? I have a slow computer atm which is why I'm asking, but it can run stuff like SF3 3rd Strike with 4xBR filters(In Finalburn Alpha, haven't tried it in MAME) just fine but I'm just curious what your general goal is as far as speed. I'm guessing there will be an x64 version too, or possibly only a 64-bit version.

If I've used any technical terms incorrectly, excuse me. I'm illiterate when it comes to hardware or coding of any kind.

[pagefault]

Ideally, how fast will the rewritten ZSNES be compared to SNES9x 1.53? I know it's still early but if everything turns out the way you want it to, what would be the minimum system requirements to run ZSNES 2.0 at full speed with sound? I have a slow computer atm which is why I'm asking, but it can run stuff like SF3 3rd Strike with 4xBR filters(In Finalburn Alpha, haven't tried it in MAME) just fine but I'm just curious what your general goal is as far as speed. I'm guessing there will be an x64 version too, or possibly only a 64-bit version.

If I've used any technical terms incorrectly, excuse me. I'm illiterate when it comes to hardware or coding of any kind.

It should run fine on any modern CPU, it's targetting to run nice on mobile ARM but i'm also testing it with Windows 10 on a quad core 1.8ghz Atom CPU and it runs pretty darn fast at this point. I am keeping close attention to all the code changes I make to ensure I don't introduce something unnecessary to slow it down. ZSNES was always known for being fast so we would like to keep that, but we would also like to improve on the emulation as much as changed since it was originally written.

I don't imagine adding sound will affect the CPU requirement that much. I am guessing the slowdown will be from using software filters but those are completely optional. We are trying to do graphics in hardware as much as possible to minimize the impact on the CPU as well as make use of multiple threads as much as we can (can be challenging with the way the SNES is so sensitive to timing).

There will be an x86 and x86-64 version. We won't be offering MMX as far as I know at this point since we would like to steer away from using assembly but I think on even old computers this shouldn't be much of a problem.

We are all very experienced programmers at this point and we know what works and doesn't work, backed with over 40 years combined industry experience doing this sort of thing. So you can be sure we will at least have a well performing product.

I can't really give any exact figures since we are still in an early stage but probably any dual core CPU running at at least 2 ghz should run most things at 60 fps. When other things like SA-1 are being used probably this requirement will go up a bit since the nature of those processors being faster.

We are still far off from a release, but will keep you posted as we progress. The main issue right now is I need to obtain some new hardware so it puts a stick in some of my plans but hopefully I can get a hold of some soon. I still like running things on the real thing to make sure we are still sane code wise.

[joe_devore]

ZSNES was always known for being fast so we would like to keep that,
but we would also like to improve on the emulation as much as changed since it was originally written.

and ZSNES will always be the best of the best in my book ;^_^;
TY Pagefault and all other Devs that have contributed!!!

There will be an x86 and x86-64 version. We won't be offering MMX as far as I know at this point since we would like to steer away from using assembly but I think on even old computers this shouldn't be much of a problem.

COOL 64bit here we come soo long 32bit you brought us much joy and many headaches ;D

as for MMX if you don't plan to support it anymore will u move up to say [SSE, SSE2, SSE3] in order to keep ZSNES very fast?
CPUz Report for my desktop PC: http://valid.canardpc.com/fakxfs
CPUz Report for my laptop PC: http://valid.canardpc.com/vfz8pk

my PC supports at max: SSE3 <-- cool?
my laptop supports at max: SSSE3 <-- obscure?

We are all very experienced programmers at this point and we know what works and doesn't work, backed with over 40 years combined industry experience doing this sort of thing. So you can be sure we will at least have a well performing product.

I can't thank you and the other enough ZSNES has brought me much happiness over the years and even $100,000 would not be enough to express my gratitude ;^_^;

over 40 years huh? =D

I can't really give any exact figures since we are still in an early stage but probably any dual core CPU running at at least 2 ghz should run most things at 60 fps. When other things like SA-1 are being used probably this requirement will go up a bit since the nature of those processors being faster.

well my 3.4GHz Intel Pentium D should be able to handle it no prob and running with a future build running native as x64 on my XP64 it should run as smooth as lightning! =D

We are still far off from a release, but will keep you posted as we progress. The main issue right now is I need to obtain some new hardware so it puts a stick in some of my plans but hopefully I can get a hold of some soon. I still like running things on the real thing to make sure we are still sane code wise.

well I can do that donation April 1st
I have my old SNES never failed me ;^_^;

[pagefault]

I don't think we will work on SSE or anything like that unless we really need to. We want to keep it as portable as possible to run on as many devices as possible..

40 years refers to everyone who will be working on it. Combined that's a lot of experience.

I'm going to look at getting a SNES this weekend. I need to find a seller on eBay that can actually answer my questions about it other than "uh it's new and it works" or some nonsense. Also does anyone recommend a backup unit? My trusty SuperUFO finally gave up on me so I am in the market for something newer. I would like something that isn't the first generation but not SNES 2 which was a terrible thing.

I also want to pick up some accessories as well as some of the support for them are not quite right so I would like to do some more research on these as well.

[joe_devore]

well I came across this site years ago...
http://www.tototek.com/store/index.php? ... ath=1_8_11

hoho
Super UFO Pro 8 SD Version
http://www.tototek.com/store/index.php? ... cts_id=145
or
http://www.amazon.com/Saves-Backup-Cart ... B007O3MWVG





or this is as new as it gets as far as I know
http://www.stoneagegamer.com/super-ever ... xe-na.html
nvm this one is not a copier...

[Gil_Hamilton]

COOL 64bit here we come soo long 32bit you brought us much joy and many headaches ;D

Awww, 32-bit x86 wasn't ever really a problem.
Well, unless you were hand-coding for it... or trying to use a 64-bit Lunix distro.


It seems to me that the compilers should be able to figure out where MMX and SSEx instructions belong. Just because ZSNES isn't coded explicitly to take advantage of them doesn't mean the x86 builds won't use them to some degree.
Unless I'm missing something.

[grinvader]

There will always be some cases where a coder could squeeze some MMX code to process bigger chunks, but equivalently good C code just won't lay it out the same.
In return, compilers use their own voodoo that outmatches readable assembly in several spots. Should work out in the long run.

[Yuber]

Sounds like it's going to be significantly faster than 9x 1.53 then which is awesome. I had some audio problems with 9x when playing SA-1 & SuperFX games until I fucked with the settings for a little while(AMD 6120 3.5ghz, 6 cores but it's MUCH slower than Intel CPUs of similar speeds/# of cores) SA-1 games like Kirby Super Star are definitely more demanding and are more likely to produce audio crackling in 9x if I don't have it properly set up, so good point there. I wasn't even thinking about emulating the accelerators. Thanks for all the updates and I'm looking forward to testing the new ZSNES when it comes out.

[pagefault]

I don't know how it compares to other emulators right now as it still too early to tell, but the goal is to make it as fast and compatible as possible.

[paulguy]

Looking forward to this.

[nintendo_nerd]

I don't know how it compares to other emulators right now as it still too early to tell, but the goal is to make it as fast and compatible as possible.

That's freaking awesome and good to hear, I look forward to the Android port too