ZSNES is no longer in active development.

[nintendo_nerd]

Gil: Meteor causes massive amounts of slowdown in the PS1 port and the mode 7 effect of the spell is totally nerfed.

Which is odd since it's not a mode 7 effect, and shouldn't be particularly challenging to reproduce.

Damn, that's even worse, and kinda sad, really. I can't stand the GBA or PSX ports of V or VI (V has a pretty horrid translation, esp. for the enemy names), GBA version was more refined when it came to localization, and the sound restoration hacks, but Super Famicom version has superior audio in the end. Methinks the ports were just plain rushed.

[pagefault]

Some updates, we have most games that use mode 0,1,2,3 (mode 4 is mostly working). Mode 7 is up next to get going since a lot of games use it and will probably be the most challenging to do properly and quickly. I had a few questions from the community on how I should do this.

Are you interested in any kind of enhancements to mode 7 like high-res mode we had in ZSNES 1.0. We could probably also do some kind of HQ4X filtering on the mode 7 data to give it a bit more definition. Another possibility is completely having it hardware accelerated in 3d to draw it and shaders could be applied to it. Keep in mind it is a primitive 2d surface so can only do so much. I would always keep all these enhancements as an option but would like to plan for them if people are interested.

With the new Android studio out it's making it a lot easier to develop the mobile version of it as it now offers easy debugging of C and C++ code so thats helping out a lot. This will be good for not just phone but set top boxes and TV's that run Android. We are also looking into getting steam streambox support going so you will be able to easily stream from your PC to the TV.

I am looking into acquiring a raspberry pi so I can start optimizing for that as well since as I understand it a lot of people use these as set top boxes and it would be nice to have it run nicely on it.

It looks like a iOS/Mac port will not happen. My mac is broken now so I have no way to develop it and I don't have any funds to buy a new one right now, so I guess that's the way it is for that. The project has been rather expensive (time and money) out of my pocket but it's been fun so far, hopefully I can stay interested in it.

You certainly learn a lot about what not to do by reading the old code, but it was good for the time in getting things working at optimal speed on potato powered (by today's standards) computers. I'm still looking at a working preview hopefully sometime this summer but I'm pretty busy with my personal life right now so I try to do things when I can.

Anyway that's the update for now.

[pagefault]

Oh yeah there will be probably a ZSNES 1.52? release coming in the following days, with some stuff we had unfinished in SVN and some security fixes. Don't expect anything major different from 1.51 and this is not reflective of what is in development.

[Truth Unknown]

Are you interested in any kind of enhancements to mode 7 like high-res mode we had in ZSNES 1.0. We could probably also do some kind of HQ4X filtering on the mode 7 data to give it a bit more definition. Another possibility is completely having it hardware accelerated in 3d to draw it and shaders could be applied to it. Keep in mind it is a primitive 2d surface so can only do so much. I would always keep all these enhancements as an option but would like to plan for them if people are interested.

The 3D surface rendering would be pretty neat, although I can see it being out of place with rendering the effect could make appear to out of place and be jarring for users. But enhancing the effect with shaders for depth effects (as post filters are really easy to add with things like ReShade and other injectors) like for camera focus and anisotropic filtering for nicer detail with a pixel filter could be fun too.

[paulguy]

I wouldn't mind simple 2D enhancements on mode 7, with maybe a multiplier since 2x or 3x might look good but too much would probably look really bad. 3D would probably look really bad (high res, antialiasing, etc) if there wasn't some intention of kind of emulator-wide game enhancements but that seems a bit silly and impractical.

[nintendo_nerd]

Oh yeah there will be probably a ZSNES 1.52? release coming in the following days, with some stuff we had unfinished in SVN and some security fixes. Don't expect anything major different from 1.51 and this is not reflective of what is in development.

Will it at least use the S-SMP core that Blargg implemented in Bsnes/Snes9x?

[pagefault]

Oh yeah there will be probably a ZSNES 1.52? release coming in the following days, with some stuff we had unfinished in SVN and some security fixes. Don't expect anything major different from 1.51 and this is not reflective of what is in development.

Will it at least use the S-SMP core that Blargg implemented in Bsnes/Snes9x?

No, that is coming in 2.0.

[nintendo_nerd]

Oh yeah there will be probably a ZSNES 1.52? release coming in the following days, with some stuff we had unfinished in SVN and some security fixes. Don't expect anything major different from 1.51 and this is not reflective of what is in development.

Will it at least use the S-SMP core that Blargg implemented in Bsnes/Snes9x?

No, that is coming in 2.0.

Cool cool, just curious is all, and keep up the good work ^_^

[Yuber]

Gil: Meteor causes massive amounts of slowdown in the PS1 port and the mode 7 effect of the spell is totally nerfed.

Which is odd since it's not a mode 7 effect, and shouldn't be particularly challenging to reproduce.

Huh, just assumed it was because of the cool ass zoom effect but that does make it even shittier that the PS1 port bugs out during the animation. I guess it simply provides the illusion of sprite scaling but either way it looks cool and it sucks that the effect is ruined in the PS1 and GBA versions. In the PS1 version, even the trademark beep or whatever you call it when you're going through menus is really off. I can't think of a single sound effect or piece of music that isn't fucked up in the PS1 release, but the worst part is the loading. It even takes a while to load the menu screen after pressing triangle! It's a terrible, terrible port but at least the art isn't ruined like in that mobile abortion.

Pagefault: High resolution mode 7 would be cool but I don't really care either way as long as it's accurate. I do like good CRT shaders and such though and the hi-res mode 7 in the original ZSNES was a really cool option that I always loved.

[Gil_Hamilton]

Gil: Meteor causes massive amounts of slowdown in the PS1 port and the mode 7 effect of the spell is totally nerfed.

Which is odd since it's not a mode 7 effect, and shouldn't be particularly challenging to reproduce.

Huh, just assumed it was because of the cool ass zoom effect

Remember, there can only be a single mode 7 object on a given scanline, and no background layers. That there's multiple layers of asteroids, and the battlefield background doesn't disappear, both contraindicate mode 7.

but that does make it even shittier that the PS1 port bugs out during the animation.

Does X-Zone glitch out too? My best guess is they're handling the "portal" opening wrong, and to my recollection X-Zone used the same effect.

I guess it simply provides the illusion of sprite scaling

Yup. Easy trick, and they move fast enough that you can't see the size steps.

... but the worst part is the loading. It even takes a while to load the menu screen after pressing triangle!

The joys of hitting the disk like it's a ROM cart.

It's a terrible, terrible port but at least the art isn't ruined like in that mobile abortion.

Yes it is.

[pagefault]

Ok I won't spent too much time on mode 7 enhancements.

I am working on the debugger right now as I have run into some games that are having some problems and a debugger will help out a bit to figure out what is going on rather than the cpu trace dumps I have right now.

That said I need to find other SNES as the one I was using gave up. I guess it doesn't like the stuff i'm running on it.

[OxLa]

I'm interested in "fullscreen" 3d hardware acceleration, something that RockNesX 2.0 already does. Even on current modern hardware, I see it capable of running mario in 1920x1280 resolution. Although it is using Direct3D, I would prefer zsnes 2.x to use OpenGL based hardware acceleration for the sake of cross platform compatibility.

I hope your 2.x is future sync technology compatible (gsync and freesync).

I was also hoping that emulator associates *.smc file type and behaves like background decoder if a user starts a game by opening *.smc on any file manager.

I also like Retroarch type "core" builds that blends in with any such multi-system-emulator.

-good luck!

[pagefault]

I would like to add gsync support to it, but I don't have such a monitor right now. I think it would be a good feature to add though especially for emulators.

[paulguy]

freesync too? (would be nice for there to be a somewhat universal wrapper for *sync)

[blackmyst]

Gsync for a SNES emulator? Isn't that a bit pointless?

[Gil_Hamilton]

Gsync for a SNES emulator? Isn't that a bit pointless?

Not really. Adaptive VSync is actually MORE important to an emulator, where the stagger of a missed frame can be quite jarring.
Just because you're actually running fast enough to do the thing at 4x speed easily doesn't mean you're still guaranteed to get your VBlank update done in a multitasking environment. One badly-timed interrupt and your entire VBlank window is gone. And then the game stutters.

[blackmyst]

Well I was thinking of slowdown happening in game which would still be tied to the console's native frame count, but you're right I didn't think of emulator-related stutter.

I wonder if it'll be useful to accurately run SNES emulation at 60.0988 hz...

[pagefault]

Yeah I mean right now you can use the adaptive vsync that nvidia provides with the latest code or you can lock it to 30 fps (if you want to). I am not sure what FreeSync is but I will look into it, I order a GSYNC monitor so I will be supporting it, I think it would be worthwhile because even on a fast computer you can't always get a perfect sync when a frame is ready and triple buffering adds a bit of lag (minor albeit). In the long sort of things it's not really a big deal but I guess it would add that that extra polish of smoothness on your gameplay.

[pagefault]

Project is on hold for a while, my PC is not working properly right now. Need to get a new motherboard, ram and cpu since i'm still on an old Core 2.

[paulguy]

Freesync (AMD's brand name for it) or adaptive sync is the more standard version of gsync. Gsync is just some gay nvidia thing that only their stuff works with because they're assholes.

[Gil_Hamilton]

Freesync (AMD's brand name for it) or adaptive sync is the more standard version of gsync. Gsync is just some gay nvidia thing that only their stuff works with because they're assholes.

Also note: nVidia's recently-announced laptop GSync uses VESA variable refresh just like AMD.

[nintendo_nerd]

Project is on hold for a while, my PC is not working properly right now. Need to get a new motherboard, ram and cpu since i'm still on an old Core 2.

Damn, that sucks, well, take as much time as you need, man, these things happen.

[paulguy]

Would you accept donations for this?

[ZZSnes]

Some updates, we have most games that use mode 0,1,2,3 (mode 4 is mostly working). Mode 7 is up next to get going since a lot of games use it and will probably be the most challenging to do properly and quickly. I had a few questions from the community on how I should do this.

Are you interested in any kind of enhancements to mode 7 like high-res mode we had in ZSNES 1.0. We could probably also do some kind of HQ4X filtering on the mode 7 data to give it a bit more definition. Another possibility is completely having it hardware accelerated in 3d to draw it and shaders could be applied to it. Keep in mind it is a primitive 2d surface so can only do so much. I would always keep all these enhancements as an option but would like to plan for them if people are interested.

With the new Android studio out it's making it a lot easier to develop the mobile version of it as it now offers easy debugging of C and C++ code so thats helping out a lot. This will be good for not just phone but set top boxes and TV's that run Android. We are also looking into getting steam streambox support going so you will be able to easily stream from your PC to the TV.

I am looking into acquiring a raspberry pi so I can start optimizing for that as well since as I understand it a lot of people use these as set top boxes and it would be nice to have it run nicely on it.

It looks like a iOS/Mac port will not happen. My mac is broken now so I have no way to develop it and I don't have any funds to buy a new one right now, so I guess that's the way it is for that. The project has been rather expensive (time and money) out of my pocket but it's been fun so far, hopefully I can stay interested in it.

You certainly learn a lot about what not to do by reading the old code, but it was good for the time in getting things working at optimal speed on potato powered (by today's standards) computers. I'm still looking at a working preview hopefully sometime this summer but I'm pretty busy with my personal life right now so I try to do things when I can.

Anyway that's the update for now.

What about HD tile replacement like in HDNes? Would be incredible to have Snes games with modern graphics.

[paulguy]

My assumption is that sinc ethe SNES doesnt' have speific character ROMs and typically evne uses compressed graphics, that'd be a lot harder. I could be wrong though. At best it'd probably have to be game-specific...