Homebrew Snes9x GX 4.3.8 Release

[Billy Acuña]

Hi @Tantric
I see you are on the race to maintain/improve most of the GX emulators. I know that this has been asked many times to you but. Any hopes to see some love to the WiiU by adding FIX's libwudrc for gamepad controls + proper WiiFlow support on your forks? @fledge68 recently added libwudrc support to WiiFlow Lite and would be amazing to use it in combination with your forks with gamepad controls! Thanks in advance!

 

[Edu64]

That's good news overall. The slowdowns in Yoshi's Island, those are no worse though, right? It sounds like this is good enough for another release.

Top Gear, no idea what's up there but all of the code has been reverted so if it's still not working then perhaps it's a gcc optimization change that broke snes9x.

The topic "gcc" is related to "devkitPPC"? In other words with the tools to compile the application?

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The sound and video are freezing/stuttering on MSU1 games now, on version 4.3.9, tested a lot of them.

Thanks for your efforts!

In what time range does the error occur? Yesterday I did a test of about 10 minutes and everything was fine.
You could try the beta version of the previous page:
snes9xgx-sound-anti-collision.zip
I did the test with that beta.

 

[rafaelsb]

In what time range does the error occur? Yesterday I did a test of about 10 minutes and everything was fine.[/QUOTE]

It happens very frequently, less than 20 secs range. Strange, i tested retroarch snes9x 1.56 core with MSU1 games and the same error occurs, maybe its a problem with this core

 

[Edu64]

In what time range does the error occur? Yesterday I did a test of about 10 minutes and everything was fine.

It happens very frequently, less than 20 secs range. Strange, i tested retroarch snes9x 1.56 core with MSU1 games and the same error occurs, maybe its a problem with this core[/QUOTE]

You could try the beta version of the previous page:
snes9xgx-sound-anti-collision.zip
I did the test with that beta.
Maybe the game is corrupt or your SD card has some problem ....

 

[rayabusa]

It happens very frequently, less than 20 secs range. Strange, i tested retroarch snes9x 1.56 core with MSU1 games and the same error occurs, maybe its a problem with this core

You could try the beta version of the previous page:
snes9xgx-sound-anti-collision.zip
I did the test with that beta.
Maybe the game is corrupt or your SD card has some problem ....[/QUOTE]

• Just found the problem, it only happens when i play roms from my HD, with MSU1 games on SD it works perfectly.
• Edu64, you're playing from SD?

So, there is no problem with Tantric updates, sorry

 

[Edu64]

You could try the beta version of the previous page:
snes9xgx-sound-anti-collision.zip
I did the test with that beta.
Maybe the game is corrupt or your SD card has some problem ....

• Just found the problem, it only happens when i play roms from my HD, with MSU1 games on SD it works perfectly.
• Edu64, you're playing from SD?

So, there is no problem with Tantric updates, sorry[/QUOTE]

Yes, in the SD memory and everything works correctly in the 10 minutes that I did the test, in a few hours I will do more tests.
NOTE: I did not have the problem, it is the user rafaelsb.

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

Yes, in the SD memory and everything works correctly in the 10 minutes that I did the test, in a few hours I will do more tests.
NOTE: I did not have the problem, it is the user rafaelsb.

 

[rafaelsb]

• Just found the problem, it only happens when i play roms from my HD, with MSU1 games on SD it works perfectly.
• Edu64, you're playing from SD?

So, there is no problem with Tantric updates, sorry

Yes, in the SD memory and everything works correctly in the 10 minutes that I did the test, in a few hours I will do more tests.
NOTE: I did not have the problem, it is the user rafaelsb.

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

Yes, in the SD memory and everything works correctly in the 10 minutes that I did the test, in a few hours I will do more tests.
NOTE: I did not have the problem, it is the user rafaelsb.[/QUOTE]

Yes, the problem was playing MSU1 games from HDD, with SD runs fine

 

[Edu64]

That's good news overall. The slowdowns in Yoshi's Island, those are no worse though, right? It sounds like this is good enough for another release.

Top Gear, no idea what's up there but all of the code has been reverted so if it's still not working then perhaps it's a gcc optimization change that broke snes9x.

I've done tests with version 4.3.9 with about 20 games of different types and everything works correctly, not in long sessions, only a few minutes per game but in that time I have not seen any anomaly.

The sound is really good, it shows a big difference with version 4.3.7, plus I have not noticed any extra anomaly in this section.

I tried another MSU-1 game and everything worked fine in the time I played, the save states work, this is maybe part of the emulation design, but when loading a saved state, the music starts from the beginning and not in the point where it was saved.

I really appreciate your work enormously, I noticed a huge dedication in the changes, congratulations!
If in some future you decide to make some change, you can count on me to carry out the tests.

Thanks again for everything!

 

[SieKensou]

So I found if the sound sync option is turned off the crashes stop. I also found that the real culprit was the way the audio was written, using LWP threads and mutexes. So I've rewritten the audio code to not use the threads or mutexes. It seems to be behaving pretty well and turbo mode works again and sound sync can be turned on.

So:
- no more audio blips
- no more crashes
- dynamic rate control seems to be keeping the number of unplayed samples to sensible amounts
- turbo mode works

The only thing that isn't solved is a big one: if the buffer being filled happens to be the same buffer being played, the audio becomes terrible. This generally doesn't happen but if it does, you either have to wait a minute for the two to stop colliding, or going back to the menu for a second or using the turbo stick will fix it. You can also force this collision to happen by using the turbo stick and if you're "unlucky" enough you'll have synced up the read buffer number with the write buffer number...which is what we want to avoid.

I'm not sure how best to solve this programatically. Basically it's a variant of a ringbuffer. It would be nice if there were other developers who could take a look and either code a fix or suggest a fix.

Anyway here's the beta for anyone interested.

… and a quick and dirty attempt to prevent the buffer collisions. I think this is the best you're going to get from me.

@Tantric I tested some games and they work fine. I only noticed that the "Robocop vs The Terminator" fix was gone, so the game flashes the screen again... and the weird bug with "Top Gear 3000".

 

[Tantric]

That's right, the fix disappeared when snes9x itself was downgraded. I guess the compatibility is what it is unless the snes9x team or someone else goes into the current snes9x source and does performance optimizations. Which probably isn't going to happen.

 

[Hozu]

That's right, the fix disappeared when snes9x itself was downgraded. I guess the compatibility is what it is unless the snes9x team or someone else goes into the current snes9x source and does performance optimizations. Which probably isn't going to happen.

So wait, this doesn't use Snes9x 1.5.6 as mentioned in the first post?

 

[SieKensou]

That's right, the fix disappeared when snes9x itself was downgraded. I guess the compatibility is what it is unless the snes9x team or someone else goes into the current snes9x source and does performance optimizations. Which probably isn't going to happen.

Okay, this are really bad news
This emulator is really good and it's my prefference to play the SuperNes on the Wii. I really thank you for the effort and the good job you have done.
It would be great if someone with good knowledge could take a look and try to find a way to do that optimizations.
It's not possible to identify just that fix the Robocop Vs Terminator game or to contact with the team that fixed it to try to add the fix to this release?

 

[Jayro]

@Tantric I see you reverted back to the 1.52 core... Will we ever get the 1.56 core again, and why did you revert back? We want the newest core...

 

[David B.]

"WE want the newest core".....who exactly is "WE"?

Speak only for yourself, please. I would prefer an emulator that isn't buggy. If going back to a previous core helps that then I don't have any issue with it.

Should speak only for yourself and not others.

 

[Hozu]

1.5.6 isn't buggy - there were different problems that got fixed. It's just a bit slower due to being more accurate. It works fine on games without enhancement chips, AFAIK, but it had slowdowns on certain games that needed them.

Ideally there could be two versions, one with 1.5.6 and one with the earlier one, but that's extra work.

Edit: Apparently there's a way to have vWii homebrew use more of the Wii U's hardware (I dunno if it's a thing devs or users have to do), but surely that would allow 1.5.6 to run at full speed on a Wii U. Possibly even with the more accurate sound core...

 

[rayabusa]

1.5.6 isn't buggy - there were different problems that got fixed. It's just a bit slower due to being more accurate. It works fine on games without enhancement chips, AFAIK, but it had slowdowns on certain games that needed them.

Ideally there could be two versions, one with 1.5.6 and one with the earlier one, but that's extra work.

The only true advantage that 1.56 has is that theres less input lag than 1.52, its most noticeable playing on a CRT TV using retroarch. Other than that, Snes9xGX is the best emulator for the wii in my opinion, thanks to Tantric efforts.

 

[Deleted User]

@Tantric Is the MSU1 still supported with Snes9X GX Version 4.3.9 after reverting back to the 1.52 core?

 

[Tantric]

@Tantric Is the MSU1 still supported with Snes9X GX Version 4.3.9 after reverting back to the 1.52 core?

Yes, it is.

 

[Deleted User]

Thank you for your reply! I couldn´t find the info on the github page for 4.3.9.
I´m glad it´s still supported.

 

[morpheous]

Hello fellas...

Running vwii via wii u here....

Anyone have a version of Snes9x GX that doesn't freeze, when browsing the game list's cover box art?

Snes9x GX 4.3.1 was the last version that was giving me trouble....

I looked at the credits says cios 58, so i downloaded the 202 version, wiipathy linked in page 16 or 17, then i opened up the rar, dragged and dropped only the .dol and other files from the rar in my Snes9x GX 4.3.1 directory to copy over the existing install.

Then when i boot up my wii u, go into vwii mode, launch Snes9x GX 4.3.1 and look at the credits. It still says 58....why didn't it reflect 202 after i copied over the Snes9x GX 4.3.1 58 dol file? Am i missing something?

Do i need to delete the files in the Snes9x GX folder on the root of my USB drive with the info.xml & settings.xml files in order for the 202 version to kick in?



Then wiimpathy responded by saying, "That's already been discussed in the neogeo cd thread. Cios 202 doesn't work on Wii-U.

You may have less random freeze with the latest Tantric's releases (no cover wall but 1 cover next to the filebrowser)."

So this led me here...

This version, does it support the wii u's vwii?

Does it have a cover art mod, where it shows various cover art versions, depending on which covers folder you point/set it too?



What does MSU1 stand for? is it a game? i keep seeing it referred too but i don't know what the acronym stands for..