Homebrew [Release] PicoDrive for 3DS

[Flame]

@bubble2k16 emulator is like crack to me.

love me some crack right now.

 

[bubble2k16]

Ok, so this is what I found out so far. As mentioned above, the .md files are visible, but the .smd ones are not. Maybe you could add this file ending to those which are visible.
Also Picodrive should be able to play 32x and SG1000 games. Could you add these file endings as well, so that we can test the functionality? SG1000 games have the .sg ending. Since the SG1000 and the Master System are very similar, no changes should be nessesary to make these games work (they already work when you rename them and add .sms, but you can't see an image).

Keep up the good work!

Not sure about SG1000 on PicoDrive. Didn't see anything online that says if SG1000 is supported on PicoDrive. Did you try if it works? Will do a quick update tonight to support the other extensions.

This is awesome! Always great to see a new emulator from you @bubble2k16!

Here are some initial results from a few minutes of playing:

• The Adventures of Batman & Robin - Runs well, but has graphical distortions and some minor audio slowdown
• Puyo Puyo 2 - Graphical glitches on the main menu, otherwise runs full speed
• Zombies Ate My Neighbors - Definite audio problems, BGM seems to be missing some instruments and sound effects are pretty crackly. Graphically fine, though.

I am super excited to see more of this! The Genesis would have probably been my favorite system back in the day... I just like the music in the majority of the games so much more (Streets of Rage, anyone?). Thanks again for yet another awesome emulator! Also, I still absolutely love your UI design. It is miles ahead of any other emu I've used, period. It just looks so fantastic!

Thanks for the feedback. Will have a look at some of those games. No promises I can fix them though...

For some reason, the UI only shows master system (.sms), but not genesis ones (.smd, .bin).

Edit: Wow, Mortal Kombat now working at 60 fps huge thanks @bubble2k16 [emoji16]

Ok thanks for the feedback. I'll do a quick update tonight to support these extensions. Those MD roms that I have .md extension, so I thought that was the only extension that needs to be supported.

Sounds very scratchy but tolerable to me, and once in game I'm not really noticing the sound quality when everything's smoothly running at 60fps... Haven't tried that many games but everything that I've thrown at it so far is perfect! Thanks again

I wonder if a low pass filter will help to smooth out the scratchiness.

Does this emulate the low pass filtering that was standard for the YM2612?

I don't think so. I wonder if implementing one on my own helps...

omg thnks for bring this emulator , there is some possibility of use game gear roms and the possibility configuring the buttons to 6 buttons like sega genesis 6 buttons controller thnks bubble2k16 good work , i prefer your emulators more than those of retroarch

Yes this emulator allows you to configure all 6 buttons. But seeing that the 3DS only has 4 in the front, you'll have to map the L/R buttons for those.

Edited.

 

[MaverickWellington]

Please, PLEASE implement low-pass filtering. If you have decent headphones, listen to these and compare them.

Emulated:

Real hardware:

The low pass filtering really helps make the tinnier sounds a lot more pleasing and possible to stand, and a lot of games have soundtracks specifically made for it and accounting for it. The Genesis is a really unique console imo, and a lot of emulators don't do it's soundchip justice.

 

[speedyartoria]

Adding onto the post above, I want to mention that the LPF is only somewhat responsible for the sound being less grating on real hardware than an emulator. The LPF only really helps in cases where the programmers made instruments with grating high ends not knowing that they could be played back via a method that lacks a filter (Thunder Force IV distortion guitars, some GEMS games); games like Verytex will sound good regardless of whether or not your system has an LPF in it because they were composed on systems that didn't have one implemented (Hitoshi Sakimoto, who composed Verytex, did all of his music on a PC-98 which had no filter). It's still worth implementing one though because they can hide some emulation faults, make the sound more pleasing on some games, and are more accurate to the original hardware design.

I also want to mention that you'll want to look into using Nuked's OPN2 core instead of what PicoDrive uses. PicoDrive uses an old version of MAMEs YM2612 core, which is, like every other FM core in MAME up until recently (maybe), ear grating and headache inducing if you're familiar with how the system SHOULD sound in most cases. In particular the OPL core makes me want to rip my ears off but that's another topic entirely. The cores that Nuked makes are of significantly higher quality, partly because they're reverse engineered off of the actual die of the chips.

well that's one heck of a first post

 

[Instandhaltung]

Not sure about SG1000 on PicoDrive. Didn't see anything online that says if SG1000 is supported on PicoDrive. Did you try if it works? Will do a quick update tonight to support the other extensions.

I can only test the super old 1.45 build, and this one doesn't allow file endings other than .bin . But if you change the file extension to .sms you can already hear the sound and you can "play" the game, only the graphics are not visible. Would it hurt to try it and to allow the extension?

After some more playtesting, it seems that the games with multi region releases (Sonic) seem to play at 50 Hz, no matter what I write on the title. For example, (US) is not working as it would on the SNES emulator to set the game to play at a higher framerate. Could you add a function to manually change between 50 and 60 Hz?

 

[speedyartoria]

I can only test the super old 1.45 build, and this one doesn't allow file endings other than .bin . But if you change the file extension to .sms you can already hear the sound and you can "play" the game, only the graphics are not visible.

The emulator is likely trying to load the game as an SMS title, which, assuming PicoDrive is trying to be accurate to the Genesis/Mega Drive and not the SMS, will not work because the MD doesn't support the SG1k graphics mode.

 

[Instandhaltung]

The emulator is likely trying to load the game as an SMS title, which, assuming PicoDrive is trying to be accurate to the Genesis/Mega Drive and not the SMS, will not work because the MD doesn't support the SG1k graphics mode.

Yes, you may be right. For noobs: Does the emulator play the Master System games via "backwards compatibility", is it comparable to the Master System adapter?

 

[Alain Desjardins]

Will there be support for compressed games? All my roms were zips, I had to unzip them all. I noticed this with all your emulators. If there's an obvious reason, I'm sorry... I don't know how this stuff works.

 

[speedyartoria]

Yes, you may be right. For noobs: Does the emulator play the Master System games via "backwards compatibility", is it comparable to the Master System adapter?

Those are both the same thing; the MS adapter was nothing more than a hunk of plastic and a couple of cartridge ports to let you play MS cartridges and cards. The Mega Drive had most of the MS hardware integrated into the main video processor, except they removed the SG1k graphics mode since it was only used by a handful of games that no one really cared about.

In less technical terms: PicoDrive plays Master System games like a Mega Drive with an adapter does.

 

[Instandhaltung]

In less technical terms: PicoDrive plays Master System games like a Mega Drive with an adapter does.

Thanks for the clarification!

 

[CeeDee]

Genesis emulator that isn't RetroArch?

Awesome!

Edit: Seems the file finder can't find .bin files - all my Gen games are named .bin. Any chance this can be added?

 

[hectortillo]

Its awesome i wanna revive some games of my childhood. Many thanks

 

[zwq939681378]

Now I can escape from the poor loading speed of Retroarch at last, thank you very much!

 

[ArugulaZ]

It doesn't recognize bin or gen files. What extension should I use?

 

[ShadowOne333]

It doesn't recognize bin or gen files. What extension should I use?

Try .md or .smd for Genesis games, .sms for Master System.
I would love to give this a try later this week

 

[sieroi]

Awesome.

Of the two games I've tried so far- Panorama Cotton works perfectly, but Sonic 3 Complete (and I assume Sonic 3) has some audio issues- the Credits music's background track (you can trigger it from within the options menu- no need to complete the game) sounds kind of... garbled?

The same issue exists on the libretro core, mind- and it's not a major issue. Still- does anyone know what could be causing it?

 

[ArugulaZ]

Try .md or .smd for Genesis games, .sms for Master System.
I would love to give this a try later this week

SMD didn't work, but MD did! Bubble needs to add that information in his original post.

 

[kenseiden]

So far, so good from what I've tried. Other than the issues that everyone else has mentioned about the sound, a couple of things stick out to me. Screen stretching isn't working properly yet, it seems? Master System games show in a proper aspect when in 4:3 fit mode, but Genesis/Mega Drive won't show in a proper 4:3 ratio unless using the Fullsreen fit option. Also, you can assign the 6 controller buttons just fine, but it seems like the emulator itself isn't recognizing it? It seems like it's not detecting a six-button controller being attached, as it were.

Thanks for all your hard work, @bubble2k16. Looking forward to seeing more updates

 

[bubble2k16]

Will there be support for compressed games? All my roms were zips, I had to unzip them all. I noticed this with all your emulators. If there's an obvious reason, I'm sorry... I don't know how this stuff works.

Yes, sorry for that. I think I'll try to look into it as soon as I have time. But for now, guess you'll still have to unzip the files manually.

So far, so good from what I've tried. Other than the issues that everyone else has mentioned about the sound, a couple of things stick out to me. Screen stretching isn't working properly yet, it seems? Master System games show in a proper aspect when in 4:3 fit mode, but Genesis/Mega Drive won't show in a proper 4:3 ratio unless using the Fullsreen fit option. Also, you can assign the 6 controller buttons just fine, but it seems like the emulator itself isn't recognizing it? It seems like it's not detecting a six-button controller being attached, as it were.

Thanks for all your hard work, @bubble2k16. Looking forward to seeing more updates

Thanks for pointing out. I'll look at it when I have more time. Can you tell me which games require 6 buttons?

SMD didn't work, but MD did! Bubble needs to add that information in his original post.

No worries. I'll try to do an update soon so that it recognizes other extensions.

Genesis emulator that isn't RetroArch?

Awesome!

Edit: Seems the file finder can't find .bin files - all my Gen games are named .bin. Any chance this can be added?

Yes! Do look out for an update tonight.

Adding onto the post above, I want to mention that the LPF is only somewhat responsible for the sound being less grating on real hardware than an emulator. The LPF only really helps in cases where the programmers made instruments with grating high ends not knowing that they could be played back via a method that lacks a filter (Thunder Force IV distortion guitars, some GEMS games); games like Verytex will sound good regardless of whether or not your system has an LPF in it because they were composed on systems that didn't have one implemented (Hitoshi Sakimoto, who composed Verytex, did all of his music on a PC-98 which had no filter). It's still worth implementing one though because they can hide some emulation faults, make the sound more pleasing on some games, and are more accurate to the original hardware design.

I also want to mention that you'll want to look into using Nuked's OPN2 core instead of what PicoDrive uses. PicoDrive uses an old version of MAMEs YM2612 core, which is, like every other FM core in MAME up until recently (maybe), ear grating and headache inducing if you're familiar with how the system SHOULD sound in most cases. In particular the OPL core makes me want to rip my ears off but that's another topic entirely. The cores that Nuked makes are of significantly higher quality, partly because they're reverse engineered off of the actual die of the chips.

well that's one heck of a first post

I'll probably try to do some low pass filtering as long as it doesn't take up too much cycles. The poor 2nd core is struggling to generate the samples when all channels are turned on.

 

[sea]

thanks a lot ,
it's really a good emulator, it works great on my 2ds