Homebrew RetroArch - A new multi-system emulator

[nakata6790]

wow

[As a friendly advice, i would suggest trying not to lose your temper everytime a user is going to throw out a suggestion or criticism

No, it's about clearly communicating to users what I am going to do and what I am not going to, and having those users come to grips with it. That's not 'losing my temper', that is about drawing a line in the sand and saying - 'here is what is going to happen, and here is what is not going to happen'.

While i do think it came across as a bit offensive, that's not the point, this is the internet after all.

The point is that i don't think it hurts to ask if you don't know something. For what it's worth, if i knew beforehand about the team's stance on zip support, i wouldn't even bother asking, again i apologize for any inconvenience.

I get what you 're saying now, like i knew about gui after you explained the situation way back in the first pages.


@ the_randomiser
for now, mednafen is a better choice for gba than either vbagx or next

 

[the_randomizer]

wow

[As a friendly advice, i would suggest trying not to lose your temper everytime a user is going to throw out a suggestion or criticism

No, it's about clearly communicating to users what I am going to do and what I am not going to, and having those users come to grips with it. That's not 'losing my temper', that is about drawing a line in the sand and saying - 'here is what is going to happen, and here is what is not going to happen'.

While i do think it came across as a bit offensive, that's not the point, this is the internet after all.

The point is that i don't think it hurts to ask if you don't know something. For what it's worth, if i knew beforehand about the team's stance on zip support, i wouldn't even bother asking, again i apologize for any inconvenience.

I get what you 're saying now, like i knew about gui after you explained the situation way back in the first pages. I


@ the_randomiser
for now, mednafen is a better choice for gba than either vbagx or next

For now, quite possibly, but the next version of VBA Next will have most ROMs running at full speed, even Mother 3.

Just to reiterate, LibretroRetroArch did not say anything offensive.

 

[drakorex]

I don't suppose there is somewhere I can download the retroarch setup in which someone has personally tested and verified that they work as they should. The reason I ask is because I updated when the first update came out, figure I did something wrong.

 

[Jacobeian]

Fair enough, i was reacting to your answer to hielkenator which sounded very aggressive to me for not much reason, did not see your response to my post yet.

Well, i understand now the problem you are having is having to deal with multiple cores which all use different ways of loading roms and does not necessarily have zip support, am i right ?

If so, the right way to do it seems to add a loadfile function in libretro API which take care of that and call this standardised function instead of emulator core specific load function. Since loading file is bound to be platform dependent and retroarch is initially designed to make platform transparent to the emulator, it also makes more sense this way.

And in this function, you don't need to load rom in chunks and "hope it fits in ram", what you would do is first check the size of the file (compressed or not) using standard existing functions before reading or uncompressing it then throw an error if it's too big. If it fits, you load it to appropriate location(s), specific to emulation core, just like the similar emulator function would have done. No matter how these emulators are designed, there is always a function that needs to be called externally to load a rom into ram and start emulation. That is this function that you need to replicate. Maybe what i am throwing out here is basic stuff or easier said than done but i can honestly not found any reason why you should be forced to uncompress zip files into temporary files instead of directly using ram.

 

[LibretroRetroArc]

@ the_randomiser
for now, mednafen is a better choice for gba than either vbagx or next

Actually, I just tried it out today - and I must say I do not see where you people are coming from. Did you try VBA Next before stating this or is there something I'm not aware of that makes you think it's a better choice for GBA emulation?

I'm running Super Mario Advance on Wii Mednafen 0.1.1 - it looks like it's running at frameskip 1/2 and it's STILL audio popping from time to time.

Same thing when I load a game like Mario Kart Super Circuit into it - it runs at frameskip 1/2 or whatever - not fullspeed at all like on VBA Next with RetroArch Wii.

Try the same games on VBA Next and you might be pleasantly surprised.

 

[the_randomizer]

^ This, times over 9000.

 

[LibretroRetroArc]

Fair enough, i was reacting to your answer to hielkenator which sounded very aggressive to me for not much reason, did not see your response to my post yet.

To be fair, since hielkenator seems to be Dutch (I'm Dutch too), I can kind of get how Dutch like to say things in a different and very raw and plain way without much attention paid to sugar coating or making it sound nicely (some would consider it 'offensive' compared to the way people in the US talk) - so his reaction must be viewed from that perspective and he might not have meant it that badly at all - just chalk it up to cultural differences.

 

[nakata6790]

@ the_randomiser
for now, mednafen is a better choice for gba than either vbagx or next

Actually, I just tried it out today - and I must say I do not see where you people are coming from. Did you try VBA Next before stating this or is there something I'm not aware of that makes you think it's a better choice for GBA emulation?

I'm running Super Mario Advance on Wii Mednafen 0.1.1 - it looks like it's running at frameskip 1/2 and it's STILL audio popping from time to time.

Same thing when I load a game like Mario Kart Super Circuit into it - it runs at frameskip 1/2 or whatever - not fullspeed at all like on VBA Next with RetroArch Wii.

Try the same games on VBA Next and you might be pleasantly surprised.

I haven't tried those games, as i stated before i compared Moto Racer and V Rally 3 between the 2 emus.
I wiil give the two games you mention a shot, thanks.

 

[LibretroRetroArc]

@ the_randomiser
for now, mednafen is a better choice for gba than either vbagx or next

Actually, I just tried it out today - and I must say I do not see where you people are coming from. Did you try VBA Next before stating this or is there something I'm not aware of that makes you think it's a better choice for GBA emulation?

I'm running Super Mario Advance on Wii Mednafen 0.1.1 - it looks like it's running at frameskip 1/2 and it's STILL audio popping from time to time.

Same thing when I load a game like Mario Kart Super Circuit into it - it runs at frameskip 1/2 or whatever - not fullspeed at all like on VBA Next with RetroArch Wii.

Try the same games on VBA Next and you might be pleasantly surprised.

I haven't tried those games, as i stated before i compared Moto Racer and V Rally 3 between the 2 emus.
I wiil give the two games you mention a shot, thanks.

It isn't just those two games - it seems to be across the board.

Castlevania: Circle of The Moon seems to perform pitfully too.

If anything, you should be noticing big differences in almost every game going by the way this seems to be performing.

Question - do you notice the frameskipping at all - as in - the jerky updating - or do you figure GBA games actually perform like that? Because I was able to instantly notice it.

 

[the_randomizer]

Most, if not all GBA games run 60fps all the time (aside from the bad FF6 port), so I too, am able to notice a dip in speed. Will test more GBA ROM files tonight.

 

[zerofalcon]

Yoshi's Island has the same slowdowns in snes9x next and snes9xGX 4.2.9, hard to believe? On the first level (see uploaded image) there's a lot of slowdown on that spot, after climbing the flower and reach the rolling rock, even the snes9x PC-win emu has this slowdown, heck.. even the real cartridge has this issue but not very noticeable. Both wii snes9x (GX & Next) emulators are good, but no one is better than the other imo.

P.S. Forgot to tell, this issue only it's noticeable when carrying all six eggs.

 

[nakata6790]

No, i know how these games perform, i have played my fair share of gba games on my gba and ds lite.

It's just that i usually measure the more taxing games, and those that i actually play through and are of interest to me.
The washed out Castlevanias on gba and the MKA are inferior to the DS ones so i haven't tried those either.
The 2 first Mario Advances are ports of superior snes versions and after playing them on GBA i didn't bother with them (the third, is a different story however... i actually completed and used a cheat to access the hidden levels. It was the first Nintendo DLC, to speak of and a compilation of all things awesome about 2d mario).

So,long story short, i'll add the aforementioned in a test folder with FBA too and run them.

 

[LibretroRetroArc]

Yoshi's Island has the same slowdowns in snes9x next and snes9xGX 4.2.9, hard to believe? On the first level (see uploaded image) there's a lot of slowdown on that spot, after climbing the flower and reach the rolling rock, even the snes9x PC-win emu has this slowdown, heck.. even the real cartridge has this issue but not very noticeable. Both wii snes9x (GX & Next) emulators are good, but no one is better than the other imo.

P.S. Forgot to tell, this issue only it's noticeable when carrying all six eggs.

Thing is, SNES9x GX 4.2.9 does not even run that game at 60fps in that level alone - never mind a few slowdowns here and there. If you had the ability to turn frameskip off (and if you would be able to notice frameskipping - I do for sure) - then this would be immediately obvious after about 20-30 seconds playing.

 

[zerofalcon]

Yes I know, your optimized snes9x next runs great, I just noticed that particular slowdown issues in both emus, seems the only way to play without slowdowns is playing on the real console or with zsnes (too bad this cant be directly ported to wii). Quick question. How can I enable "show fps"? thanks!

 

[nakata6790]

Just done testing

Mario Advance: no hiccups when screen scrolls on vbanext
MK Advance: Better colors and no hiccups on vbanext
Castlevania: Better colors and no hiccups on vbanext
Spyro The Eternal Night: code dumps on vbanext., plays zipped fine on mednafen
I also double checked again for V Rally and Motoracer,they run faster on Mednafen.

So, i guess the edge goes to vbanext for performance in most games.
For me, the support and instaload of zipped roms,saved configs and paths, no need for restart and support for 32mb games, i'll stick to mednafen for now.

 

[LibretroRetroArc]

I also double checked again for V Rally and Motoracer,they run faster on Mednafen.

They don't run better - it just appears that way because they're using frameskipping. VBA Next doesn't have frameskipping so when something falls below 60fps you'll hear the sound skipping due to it not being able to synchronize at the correct speed with the graphics. So it might appear 'faster' but it really isn't if you would enable FPS.

I don't think any single game with Mednafen Wii is actually faster right now - it's mostly the other way around as I suspected.

As for 32MB games support - ToadKing already pushed that to the repo. Somebody can make a new compile with Mother 3 working. I suspect Spyro (being a 256Mbit game - 32MB) would run too with this new version.

 

[Toad King]

Yes I know, your optimized snes9x next runs great, I just noticed that particular slowdown issues in both emus, seems the only way to play without slowdowns is playing on the real console or with zsnes (too bad this cant be directly ported to wii). Quick question. How can I enable "show fps"? thanks!

I pulled my SNES out of storage to test this, and the real hardware also lags at this spot. (If you don't get it yourself, try rapid firing eggs and it'll happen.)

 

[zerofalcon]

Yes I tested with my real hardware and cartridge too, same slowdown but only noticeable when carrying all six eggs and firing them as you mentioned. This makes snes9x (PC, Next, GX) feel more accurate in some way.

 

[the_randomizer]

Tested various GBA games:

Kirby's Nightmare in Dreamland - Perfect speed, no slowdowns and runs at 60fps
Iridion 3D - Perfect speed most of the time, if there are numerous enemies on screen, the audio will start slowing down, slowdowns in the game menus
Iridion 2 - Slowdowns when any action is on screen, but when the levels have gaps of no action, it runs at 60fps
Final Fantasy Advance series - Playable, but the audio and framerate slow down probably to around 50-55fps
Golden Sun - Runs perfectly at 60fps
Golden Sun 2 - Not full speed but certainly runs faster than it does on VBA GX

 

[LibretroRetroArc]

Final Fantasy Advance series - Playable, but the audio and framerate slow down probably to around 50-55fps

Yeah, the FInal Fantasy GBA games don't even run at fullspeed on PS3/360 - neither do they run at fullspeed on a Pentium 4 2.4Ghz.

Hopefully gpSP will be able to nail them at much lower clock speeds.