Homebrew RetroArch - A new multi-system emulator

[Hielkenator]

A good way to compare Snes9xGx's use of frameskipping versus Snes9x Next would be to run an intensive game like Yoshi's Island, and go to level/area where the game had the framerate dip. In World 6, this was especially noticeable; if you compare the two emulators, Snes9xGx uses frameskipping where Next does not, so naturally, Next runs the game full speed regardless of how big the levels are.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to attack Tantric and how he ported Snes9x to the Wii, but for one reason or another, he wanted to use frameskipping and I can respect that. But at the same time, it can act as a double-edged sword and give one a false perception of how a real Snes runs, and some games can lag where it shouldn't.

this situation could affect some users but , in my case snes9xGX works without problems but mentionated games could exceptions, but in my case playing on snes9xGX with minor querys

But your point is respectable from your point of vision

Yes, I agree.
Though trying to emulate the system without the help of frameskipping is something to aim for, it's also important to understands that those emu are meant to play games on.
If this would mean that frameskips make the expereince more enjoyable, for some problematic games this would be a good choice from a "users" perspective, as he's able to enjoy his game.

 

[Dogway]

I'm not trying to attack Tantric and how he ported Snes9x to the Wii, but for one reason or another, he wanted to use frameskipping and I can respect that.

I don't see how you can play without frameskipping. I understand RetroArch stance on this, they want to do things the right away, avoiding the need to frameskip, and while this means well, it's just not practical because old games rely on timing, and frameskipping allows that, things occur evenly real time despite missing frames here and there, while by not using frameskipping you expand and contract the game (time) making it impossible to play. If adding frameskipping doesn't have an impact on the real framerate performance of the game I think it should be added, for gameplay purposes (probably not emulation accuracy purposes though)

Anyway, I don't care much about it, just giving my opinion, I only care for FBA.

 

[LibretroRetroArc]

I'm not trying to attack Tantric and how he ported Snes9x to the Wii, but for one reason or another, he wanted to use frameskipping and I can respect that.

I don't see how you can play without frameskipping. I understand RetroArch stance on this, they want to do things the right away, avoiding the need to frameskip, and while this means well, it's just not practical because old games rely on timing, and frameskipping allows that, things occur evenly real time despite missing frames here and there, while by not using frameskipping you expand and contract the game (time) making it impossible to play. If adding frameskipping doesn't have an impact on the real framerate performance of the game I think it should be added, for gameplay purposes (probably not emulation accuracy purposes though)

Ummm...... scratches head....

I think you have some mystical notion of frameskipping that is not in my version of reality. Frameskipping is nothing but an ugly speedup hack that should be used as a VERY, VERY last resort.

If you honestly think that the SNES used frameskipping of any kind or that you get 'better timing' by doing frameskipping, then I honestly don't know what to say anymore.

Here - I regularly post on an IRC channel where there are various emulator authors and developers around - I posted this and here was the response -

http://pastie.org/4670046

Seriously people - you guys are all over the map - needless to say - frameskipping is to be avoided like the plague if you can do without it. If anything, frameskipping will fuck up your timing - not the other way around.

I hope I don't have to 'debate' people on obvious empirical things from this point on and we can go on to more substantive subjects.

 

[mightymuffy]

Well then peeps it's good to have 2 different emulators for your favourite console on our Wii's then: one with frameskipping, one without - best of both worlds for us the players then ehh.... personally speaking I'll play my SNES games on Next from now on, and feel the games are that much smoother on it over gx, and others above me agree... ditto VBA Next... those that disagree can simply use this emu for FBA as has been mentioned and stick to Tantric's emus... personal choice and all that

 

[the_randomizer]

I'm not trying to attack Tantric and how he ported Snes9x to the Wii, but for one reason or another, he wanted to use frameskipping and I can respect that.

I don't see how you can play without frameskipping. I understand RetroArch stance on this, they want to do things the right away, avoiding the need to frameskip, and while this means well, it's just not practical because old games rely on timing, and frameskipping allows that, things occur evenly real time despite missing frames here and there, while by not using frameskipping you expand and contract the game (time) making it impossible to play. If adding frameskipping doesn't have an impact on the real framerate performance of the game I think it should be added, for gameplay purposes (probably not emulation accuracy purposes though)

Anyway, I don't care much about it, just giving my opinion, I only care for FBA.

*Sigh*. Frameskipping works well in some cases, but most of time, it creates issues. To be brutally honest, GBA emulation on the Wii prior to this emulator just wasn't that good, many games, like Golden Sun, or Iridion 3D ran horribly, all due to frameskip. The Wii CPU is more powerful than originally thought, as was stated by LibretroRetroArch, and as such, Snes and GBA will run more efficaciously in the next major release of RetroArch. LibretroRetroArch isn't being mean at all with what he said, he's being honest and stating his reasons why he does what he does, and I support him 100%. From an emulation stance, it's better to use a little as hacks as possible, and frameskipping is a form of a hack; it isn't authentic to real hardware, so why should an emulator have to use it if the CPU is powerful enough?

To my knowledge, Snes9x is pretty dang accurate when it comes to timing, emulating the Sony SPC700/Nintendo S-SMP, Ricoh 65816, SuperFX, SA-1, S-DD1, Cx4, etc processors and co-processors requires as little as hacks as possible to get the best synchronization/timing. Bsnes is considered the "most accurate" in existence, but Snes9x is close enough to Bsnes in terms of accuracy to the point of the average user not being able to tell much of a difference. I consider myself to be very thoroughly familiar with emulation. Not to mention that being a CS major helps knowing how emulators execute code, how hardware is reverse engineered, how x86/x64 CPU architecture communicates with game console CPU languages (MIPS, ASM, etc), and so on.

In essence, skipping frames will seriously jack up the timing to high heaven, games like Mother 3 suffer horribly in VBA GX because of frameskipping. But, the game will run full speed in gPSP, which will be ported to the Wii in the near future.

Maybe I'm just BSing my way through some tangent, I don't know. I hope that I got something right in what I said.

 

[Wiimpathy]

Thanks for CPS2, I didn't take the time to try it yet but it's good news. A fully working neogeo emulator (SNK vs Capcom !?) would be great too.
That's my only wish, oh and maybe less blah blah and "I'm the best attitude" : it's essentially just based on other's work, we can thank eke-eke for his great achievements in genplus-gx for example (tueidj's advices could be useful too?).

 

[LibretroRetroArc]

OK, last post for now in this thread - in case youhave to wonder, this last post sums it up pretty much -

I didn't take the time to try it yet but it's good news.

This is the reason why you get a lot of 'blah blah blah' and why I have to be dragged into a shitstorm argument with people that don't have the facts at all - because you people don't try out anything before voicing your opinions ever so loudly, which then turn out to be DEAD WRONG.

But I'm the bad guy - of course - because I care about this shit to such an extent that I try to set the record straight and don't just shrug and say on iRC: "Well, they're a bunch of idiotic end-users - don't talk to them' like so many of my peers would do.

it's essentially just based on other's work,

But without having tried it at all and without having read the source, there's no way you could state that for sure anyway.

And ekeeke based his port off somebody else's work too Sherlock - or do you think Charles McDonald didn't write Genesis Plus and ekeeke did it all on his own? (this is not to defame what ekeeke did - but more about setting something straight - AGAIN)

That's my only wish, oh and maybe less blah blah and "I'm the best attitude" : it's essentially just based on other's work, we can thank eke-eke for his great achievements in genplus-gx for example (tueidj's advices could be useful too?).

Where do you see this 'I'm the best attitude' coming from dude? All I'm doing so far is correcting uninformed crap that has been thrown my way - god forbid that I (as one of the authors that has put half a year into just this specific port) try to correct the misinformation that comes up here after release time.

But less 'blah blah' here anyway - you get your wish granted - last post for now.

 

[Wiimpathy]

No problem if you can't accept some persons have more knowledge regarding Wii coding such as eke-eke or tueidj. They only study this specific platform for about 5 years after all. Sometimes it's good to admit others can help you.
I admit my limits myself in some fields but well you do what you want, I don't care.

 

[LibretroRetroArc]

No problem if you can't accept some persons have more knowledge regarding Wii coding such as eke-eke or tueidj. They only study this specific platform for about 5 years after all. Sometimes it's good to admit others can help you.
I admit my limits myself in some fields but well you do what you want, I don't care.

For the record, ekeeke is my friend - we get along well, and there is no animosity between us despite your best trolling attempts in here - and secondly, I don't consider any of this a contest - if you had a clue, you could see that Ekeeke has committed the libretro port to the Genesis Plus GX trunk now. So, the only douchebag here that tries to make a non-existent 'problem' where none exists is exactly you.

Secondly, I have no interest at all in getting into a turf war with what's left of the devs in this scene - I have my sights set on bigger things than just the 'Wii' scene.

It's no surprise this scene has dried up on releases with attitudes like yours in here though. Remind me again why I should go through all the effort of having TEV-powered shaders and all this other malarky that has been brought up when the best I can hope to hear in response is 'less blah blah' - right at it sir, because you pay me so well.

 

[Wiimpathy]

Fortunately, eke, tantric or other developer never talked to others that way. They're a lot more respectful, no insult for nothing. You may be used to ps3 agressive scene but there's no reason here. We're all friends and want to share isn't? I wish you the best for your project seriously. I just don't get why you're so defensive. But yeah, good luck man !

It's easy to say someone's stupid, asshole etc... but I really think it's better to understand.

 

[LibretroRetroArc]

Fortunately, eke, tantric or other developer never talked to others that way. They're a lot more respectful, no insult for nothing. You may be used to ps3 agressive scene but there's no reason here. We're all friends and want to share isn't?

You didn't seem all that friendly when saying 'less blah blah' and insinuating I had a 'I'm the best attitude", didn't you monsieur?

 

[Wiimpathy]

What I didn't like is you depreciate other's work (tantric's emu etc...) after all these years and have some nice replies to criticism (insults are too easy). And to be honest the real new (and great!) thing is cps2 support. All other emu are already here, the only thing missing is neogeo large roms.
But don't get me wrong, I really like your project.(not alone ?)

I'm not here for war, it's all about games of our childhood so I won't answer to your lovely words.

 

[the_randomizer]

Thanks for CPS2, I didn't take the time to try it yet but it's good news. A fully working neogeo emulator (SNK vs Capcom !?) would be great too.
That's my only wish, oh and maybe less blah blah and "I'm the best attitude" : it's essentially just based on other's work, we can thank eke-eke for his great achievements in genplus-gx for example (tueidj's advices could be useful too?).

Dude, LibretroRetroArch is HARDLY being a douchebag, whereas your attitude is demeaning to say the least. Tantric's emulators are great, don't get me wrong, but they probably could have used a little more work in the framerate optimization department, but the fact RetroArch does this is a huge milestone in emulation. Stop accusing him of being a jerk,

 

[Wiimpathy]

You're surely right the_ but no insult from myself. It's good for you take his defense, I'm glad for you. At least you won't annoy tantric anymore with your hdd problem .
Maybe I didn't read correctly. Whatever, have fun with this, frame skipping or not.

 

[the_randomizer]

You're surely right the_ but no insult from myself. It's good you take his defense, I'm glad for you. At least you won't annoy tantric anymore with your hdd problem .
Maybe I didn't read correctly. Whatever, have fun with this, frame skipping or not.

Oh, pfft that yeah, I just use Snes9xGx on a 16GB SDHC card and works perfectly. I just accepted the fact that my HDD was one that just so happened to be one of the few incompatible drives with his emulator.

 

[Wiimpathy]

And you don't have problem with unzipped roms on your sdhc with RetroArch ? (very bad joke I know, what a douchebag!)
You really don't have luck, that's about 1/1000000. Fortunately you're a lucky one for love.

 

[the_randomizer]

And you don't have problem with unzipped roms on your sdhc with RetroArch ? (very bad joke I know, what a douchebag!)

I don't care about if they're zipped or unzipped ROMs, 16GB is plenty of space. I fail to see the issue with that aspect, either. If people don't like the way it's handled, use an alternative.

 

[Wiimpathy]

I should avoid the archive debate too. The last one to talk about that was an idiot (just joking Jacobeian!). Compressing files is useless.

 

[Toad King]

I know a lot of people have been voicing their opinions here, but I would like it if we got this topic back on track and stop the fights.

I should avoid the archive debate too. The last one to talk about that was an idiot (just joking Jacobeian!). Compressing files is useless.

Uncompressing to a buffer is difficult on the Wii since we do not have lots of spare RAM to use as we wish. on GBA, copying over 32MB roms as-is is impossible, and we would have to either copy the file in parts or edit the core to use the RetroArch buffer, which in turns will require changes to RetroArch to keep the buffer in memory, which IN TURN will require edits to all the other cores to account for this, and for some cores, that will just be wasted space. libretro's modular approach just does not benefit from this.

 

[Wiimpathy]

Ok Toad King, you're right. That'd even more peaceful if you answer more cause you're more in wii coding, right?
Do you have some ideas for virtual memory or something else for neogeo ?

Yeah I undersdand you don't have unlimited RAM specially with all the cores and the goal is portability. But since all emu exist on Wii, does a fba alone would save a little memory?