Homebrew [Release] Vice3DS (C64 Emulator)

Vegito2121

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I'm having trouble getting Maniac Mansion to run on Vice3DS it loads up to the "Radwar Enterprises International" screen then after pressing any key immediately crashes.
 
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I'm having trouble getting Maniac Mansion to run on Vice3DS it loads up to the "Radwar Enterprises International" screen then after pressing any key immediately crashes.
No time for me to play with it right now, but have you tried it in Vice/WinVice (on your PC)? You have to rule out a bug in the core, or a bad disk image (or an ineffective crack for the copy protection). On the PC version, you can also easily try different emulated drives, true drive emulation, and ram expansion stuff...
 
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I'm having trouble getting Maniac Mansion to run on Vice3DS it loads up to the "Radwar Enterprises International" screen then after pressing any key immediately crashes.
You need to turn on true drive emulation when the "Radwar Enterprises International" screen shows and press a key afterwards. Alas, the gamebase64 database is not very accurate when it comes down to the true drive settings ...
 

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You need to turn on true drive emulation when the "Radwar Enterprises International" screen shows and press a key afterwards. Alas, the gamebase64 database is not very accurate when it comes down to the true drive settings ...
Okay I'll try that when I get the chance. I'm pretty new to C64 emulation so I wasn't sure what the true drive was even for. I'm used to the simpler emulation such as GBA and SNES for example but I've been wanting to give C64 a try for a while because I thought it looked very interesting.
 

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@Badda
I’ve noticed that if I attempt to change the machine from PAL to NTSC, performance very quickly degrades with large hitches in the sound and video. These problems seem to recur across software and resets etc. The fix seems to be simple: just revert to PAL.

Not clear if this is a bug.
 

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@Badda
I’ve noticed that if I attempt to change the machine from PAL to NTSC, performance very quickly degrades with large hitches in the sound and video. These problems seem to recur across software and resets etc. The fix seems to be simple: just revert to PAL.

Not clear if this is a bug.
It's not a bug but rather a performance issue of the 3DS. NTSC has 60 fps, PAL 50fps per default. So if you're running a demanding game/demo, you might run into issues with NTSC. Luckly, most games work with PAL - only very few need NTSC
You might be able to improve performance by doing the following setting in vice menu:
Drive -> Drive 8 settings -> Drive 8 idle method -> Skip cycles
This way, the emulator will not have to care about emulating the drive if there is no drive access.
I would be happy to hear if this has any noticeable impact. If yes, I will set this as default in a future version.

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

Okay I'll try that when I get the chance. I'm pretty new to C64 emulation so I wasn't sure what the true drive was even for. I'm used to the simpler emulation such as GBA and SNES for example but I've been wanting to give C64 a try for a while because I thought it looked very interesting.
You're emulating a home computer from the 80s here, which worked with multiple components and was not plug and play ready ;-)
Games are loaded from an external disc drive. This disc drive was normally VERY slow, so emulators try to optimize disc access to speed up loading times. Howver, some games have their own disc access routines which break when the emulator tries to optimize them. This is what "true drive emulation" is for - with true drive emulation, you have slow disc access speeds but a more accurate emulation.
 
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@Badda
Thanks again. This is the most feature complete emulator I have ever used. It also makes better use of the 3DS unique design than any other emulator I have used.
I do have one request though. Would it be possible to have the emulator auto load game specific settings? I’m aware that I can save individual inis but currently you need to load those inis separately from loading the games, which is ok but not ideal. Thanks.
 
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@Badda
Thanks again. This is the most feature complete emulator I have ever used. It also makes better use of the 3DS unique design than any other emulator I have used.
I do have one request though. Would it be possible to have the emulator auto load game specific settings? I’m aware that I can save individual inis but currently you need to load those inis separately from loading the games, which is ok but not ideal. Thanks.

Thanks for the feedback :-)
It is easy to include additional settings into the snapshot files, but not all settings can actually be included (e.g. ROM-locations or anything that points to files on your SD card). I would need to know exactly which settings you would want to save.
Currently, the following settings are saved in snapshot files: "KeyMappings", "HotKeys" and "Speed"
Can you post your sdl-vicerc file (this is generated after saving you settings in vice menu)? Then I can check which other settings I can include.
 

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Thanks for the reply. To be clear what I have done is confirmed different control mappings for different games since the C64 was notoriously inconsistent when it came to game controls.

When you refer to snapshots I immediately think of save states. Do you mean something else?
 

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That’s what I figured. I’m thinking there’s confusion about the feature I’m requesting. I just want the emulator when loading GameA.T64 to also load the config file names GameA.ini
 

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That’s what I figured. I’m thinking there’s confusion about the feature I’m requesting. I just want the emulator when loading GameA.T64 to also load the config file names GameA.ini
Ah,ok got it. But where can I get GameA.ini from? There are no ini-files in gamebase64 ...
If you want something like this, you currently need to use snapshots: Set up vice3ds as you wish, load a game, pause emulation as soon as the game has started and save a snapshot.
A lot of settings are saved in the snapshot file (like attached ROM images, disk images and some settings variables). This is really convenient because when you start the snapshot again later, you don't have to wait for the game to load anymore ...
 
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MarioKartFan

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@Badda

Users would need to create GameA.ini (a name that I made up). The emulator would check for the existence of the ini with the same name as the game being loaded. If an ini were found, it would be loaded. Otherwise default settings would be used.

That said, I checked out the save states feature that you suggested and am blown away! This is an amazing feature. Skips all the loading screens/trainers and automatically remaps my buttons and keys! Great work.

One possible bug, however. If I load a state for a game that requires a joystick in Port 2, and then later load a state for a game that requires a joystick in Port 1, I need to manually switch the joystick assignments in the settings. Even if the save states were saved with the proper settings. It seems like this setting does not get properly loaded when loading the save state.
 
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@Badda
One possible bug, however. If I load a state for a game that requires a joystick in Port 2, and then later load a state for a game that requires a joystick in Port 1, I need to manually switch the joystick assignments in the settings. Even if the save states were saved with the proper settings. It seems like this setting does not get properly loaded when loading the save state.
@TVL reported this already - this is actually not a big thing to fix. I will check if I can include this in the next version.
 

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Question: Is there a way to toggle screenshots when browsing gamebase64? It doesn't scroll until the picture loads, which can take forever.
 

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Question: Is there a way to toggle screenshots when browsing gamebase64? It doesn't scroll until the picture loads, which can take forever.
Sorry, no, not yet - but you can use the stylus to jump to another entry without having to scroll through lots of other entires. This way, you don't need to load the screenshots. Stylus can also be used to drag the scrollbar on the right side ...
Hope this helps
 

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Amiga next?

What about porting Amiga to 3ds...? Is there any chance? (still thinking about getting me an 2DS/3DS, its just the Amiga missing...)

If you keep in mind that it's an old system, sure. I preferred the 16-bit Amiga, but the C64 had its moments.

Excellent emulator! Now Amiga, ZX Spectrum (not retroarch) and it is complet!

https://gbatemp.net/threads/release-uae3ds-amiga-500-emulator-for-nintendo-3ds.558577/
 
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@Badda You know how much I love your emulator. But I noticed something “off” today. When comparing games running in your port of Vice64 to the same games running in the PSP Vice64 port, the frame rate in the PSP port of Vice64 was much more fluid. It almost seemed like the difference between seeing a game run at 30fps be 60fps. Both work great but wondering what would account for the difference.
 
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