Hacking State of SNES emulation in 2017

[daphnis]

After lots of trial and experimentation with multiple titles and about four different SNES emulators, I'm generally finding SNES emulation to be OK but definitely some titles that are basically unplayable no matter what the emulator or setting. SMW 2, for example, and Star Fox are some of those that may work if you can tolerate a frame skip of like 4, but you either have to tolerate that or unbearably slow speeds. Even something like Megaman X2 where at the boss of the intro stage experiences significant delay because of all the on-screen elements requires a frame skip no matter what the emulator. So the answer I've found for my question as to the present state of SNES emulation on the PSP is best summed up as "ehh, may work, but leaves a lot to be desired."

 

[rpgbeater]

Even something like Megaman X2 where at the boss of the intro stage experiences significant delay because of all the on-screen elements requires a frame skip no matter what the emulator. So the answer I've found for my question as to the present state of SNES emulation on the PSP is best summed up as "ehh, may work, but leaves a lot to be desired."

How did you get Megaman X2 to work?
Im using the Snes9xTYL 0.4.2, but for me both Megaman X2 and X3 dont show the sprites of the characters and enemies. All i see is the background. I tried messing around in the settings, but nothing changes. Megaman X(1) and Megaman 7 work fine though.

 

[esmjanus]

How did you get Megaman X2 to work?
Im using the Snes9xTYL 0.4.2, but for me both Megaman X2 and X3 dont show the sprites of the characters and enemies. All i see is the background. I tried messing around in the settings, but nothing changes. Megaman X(1) and Megaman 7 work fine though.

Try with this version: https://github.com/esmjanus/snes9xTYL/releases

 

[rpgbeater]

Try with this version:

Just tried it.... but the same thing happens, everything else seems fine... i just cant see any character and enemy sprites.

 

[esmjanus]

Just tried it.... but the same thing happens, everything else seems fine... i just cant see any character and enemy sprites.

It works fine for me using default settings, maybe your rom is corrupt, try getting other rom. I'm using a rom with .sfc extension and CRC32:947B0355.

 

[rpgbeater]

It works fine for me using default settings, maybe your rom is corrupt, try getting other rom. I'm using a rom with .sfc extension and CRC32:947B0355.

huh.... will you look at that... it works now i swear i re-downloaded this four times the last time i was trying to get this to work....hm... well, thanks either way

 

[GIZMOSNAX]

I enjoy snes games a lot on my psp. Almost all games run flawlessly, but you have to use the right version. Mine even runs Donkey Kong Country smoothly. There is a level much later in the game where I set frame skip to 1 but that's it. SMW2 Yoshi's island is problematic though. You don't have to use frameskip but you do have to deal with slowdown during many parts of the game. You can alternatively play the GBA version on the psp. I just play the game on a modded Wii with a snes controller.
I dont know about any other games that dont run well but I am sure there are a few more.

I couldnt find my snes emulator version anywhere so I sent it to Nico (nico blog) who added it as option 2 on his website. I dont think there is a better version out there for the psp.

I would go for the psp 3000. It has a beautiful, very vivid lcd screen and you can finally install permanent cfw (6.61 pro c2 infinity).

I only had the 1000 and 3000 versions. Definetly recommend the slim revisions but someone might want to clarify if the 2000 is a better option. Alot of people didn't like the scanline issues on the 3000.

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By the way the GBA emulator I got required a GBA bios. How am I supposed to know whether an emulator requires a bios or not?
That is something which should really be told in advance. Instead of me leaving the PC, going upstairs, turning on the PSP eager to play something only to be told "no, see, you were supposed to download more things". There's just no sense...

I can't think of any other emu for PSP that required a bios so don't worry about it. If you get a Vita.... there are a few and you will find any info on the ones that require it here on the Retroarch, uae4all etc. threads. Sorry for going off topic. For the PSP, I think that's only emu that requires one.

 

[supermist]

Last time I tried, most games wouldn't hit 60fps without frameskip which I find a bit jarring. I generally went with the GBA version for a lot of snes re-releases. Has there been significant improvement in the past couple of years?

 

[eyeliner]

Nope. Unless someone wants to continue development on an emulator, SNES emulation is a hit and miss like before.

 

[esmjanus]

If someone want to give it a try, this is the last mod version of snes9xTYLmecm: https://github.com/esmjanus/snes9xTYL/releases. I added/ported several optimizations from snes9x 3DS and improved compatibility.
s9xTYLcm_mod is for PSVita with Adrenaline, eCFW ARK, VHBL, etc.
s9xTYLme_mod is for any PSP model.

 

[yeshuachrist]

If someone want to give it a try, this is the last mod version of snes9xTYLmecm: https://github.com/esmjanus/snes9xTYL/releases. I added/ported several optimizations from snes9x 3DS and improved compatibility.
s9xTYLcm_mod is for PSVita with Adrenaline, eCFW ARK, VHBL, etc.
s9xTYLme_mod is for any PSP model.

Thanks gona grab this! Speaking of Which, the SNES has aged very well. (those "raspberry pi" snes mini machines, seems like you can build your own for less than 70 dollars or so, quality wise, the psp/vita is still the best bet compared to other options.............since these are more or less open source, anyone can update it)

(Add contents to .zip archive, rename to .vpk and install with vita shell) Guess everything looks on order!

 

[isoboy]

I fired up my psp go and it has snes9xtyl on it from way back in 2010 or whenever I hacked it. I can't remember the emulator running as bad as it does. It's shit. Don't settle with psp emulation in 2017. Still love my psp go with that great screen and sharp psp games but I tend to use my Vita now.

 

[kraat]

If someone want to give it a try, this is the last mod version of snes9xTYLmecm: . I added/ported several optimizations from snes9x 3DS and improved compatibility.
s9xTYLcm_mod is for PSVita with Adrenaline, eCFW ARK, VHBL, etc.
s9xTYLme_mod is for any PSP model.

Wow! I made my own build from the old code a few months back undoing a breaking HEAP_MAX_SIZE change in the hope of getting something more stable but it didn't matter much.

For normal games your build is a little (5%?) slower but for games with speedhacks... Super Mario RPG doesn't dip under 45-50fps here, used to be 15. And you've added sleep support! I've also noticed it fixes some small texture glitches (MarioKart). Great work!

 

[esmjanus]

For normal games your build is a little (5%?) slower

Thanks for your feedback. Could you name a game that run slower on this version please?.
snes9xTYL is mostly based on snes9x v1.39 and in order to improve performance on games that use SA1 chip and to improve compatibility, I updated some modules to a higher version (some to snes9x v1.43 and others to v1.51). Maybe that is the reason that some games run slower.

 

[kraat]

You're welcome! MarioKart, when starting the mushroom cup race you'll see 43fps in the old R27 and 40fps in this version when counting down at the start of the race. The difference stays throughout the game.

I haven't played many others that do not run at full speed yet.

When compiling my build I've tried to get gcc code profiling to work, I saw up to ~30% free speed increases on another MIPS platform with -fprofile_generate + -fprofile_use.
However, while I managed to get a working libgcov.a (had to change some compile flags in the toolchain build scripts) profile file generation was still broken. The binary did profile, but simply didn't write any files for the compiler to use. I don't have any C/C++ experience other than some simple hacks so I gave up there. Maybe this is a useful lead for you.

 

[esmjanus]

You're welcome! MarioKart, when starting the mushroom cup race you'll see 43fps in the old R27 and 40fps in this version when counting down at the start of the race. The difference stays throughout the game.

I haven't played many others that do not run at full speed yet.

When compiling my build I've tried to get gcc code profiling to work, I saw up to ~30% free speed increases on another MIPS platform with -fprofile_generate + -fprofile_use.
However, while I managed to get a working libgcov.a (had to change some compile flags in the toolchain build scripts) profile file generation was still broken. The binary did profile, but simply didn't write any files for the compiler to use. I don't have any C/C++ experience other than some simple hacks so I gave up there. Maybe this is a useful lead for you.

Which SDK did you use to compile your build? I'm using the minimalist pspsdk 0.11.2 but it seems that doesn't recognize some commands

 

[kraat]

Ah, that's using GCC 4.3 which might not have the profiling stuff yet... I've used github dot com/pspdev/psptoolchain . If I remember correctly (this was a few months back) I had some problems with the version where GCC was updated to 4.9.x, so I built mine using this version: github dot com/pspdev/psptoolchain/tree/820386024b06bb31b72ae95209a835a9f6c37a51 . The latest version might be fine now, I see there were some commits since then. To compile with this toolchain you need to remove a PSP old/slim model check from the snes9xTYL source, it uses some function not present in the included libraries. Can't tell you where since I don't have it set up right now but the error points straight to it.

I've tried the minimalist SDK too and found no speed differences in the resulting binary with the different SDKs/GCC versions.

** I had to butcher the links due to the forum's spam filter

 

[bbking67]

I have a 3000 as well.
Try this one instead:
https://nicoblog.org/psp/on-emulator-roms
Not the first one, but the one under 'option 2'. It works better than euphoria (and also better than any other on the gbatemp wiki).

GBA can be great also by the way, but again it depends on the emulator you are using. I think the popular conception is that gpSP kai 3.4 test 3 build 152 or test 4 build 225 are the best ones to use. But I mainly want to use the GBA emulator for SMW2 Yoshi's island and on both those emulators the sound sucks. I hear a lot of plops and the sound constantly switches between the left and right speaker.
But then if you try the much older gpsp v0.9 you will notice the sound emulation is near perfect.
It's all trial and error but with a bit of effort you can play both snes and gba just fine on psp.

Thanks for this post... the version of SNES listed as "Option 2" seems to be beneficial for me over the other version... what is it doing differently?

 

[Snapdragon625]

It's 2019, what's the best snes emulator on PSP? Are FFVI and Chrono Trigger playable?