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Hacking CATSFC released

  • Thread starter Thread starter ShadauxCat
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Ah, I see! I don't think the amount of code I actually changed in this release would qualify a "significant update," but I will certainly see how many new features I can add before the deadline comes in and submit it.
smile.gif
Thanks for the tip!
 
Also a valid point. I'll send him a ping and discuss it with him. If I do enter and CATSFC wins, I'll make sure to share the prize with him. Regardless, I would definitely want to be able to say I contributed more than he did (which at this point, I have not yet done so) before I even thought about entering it.
 
Great news!
I didn't have time to test it yet, will do so once I get home today. Just one question: Does it support BG Mode 5 (I think it was 5, may also be 4)? That's a mode used in a very few games, like for example for menus in Secret of Mana and Seiken Densetsu 3. What it does is basically giving screens double the width. In the previous versions of the SC2DS Emulators it wasn't emulated well, causing every second letter in those menus to be cut out. Is it emulated yet? If it isn't I could help you by giving more information.
 
Quick question - does this accept the ARG() command
- So that we can autorun SNES ROMs straight from iMenu ??

There are 2 'versions' of Bagsfc - one with & one without ARG() support, which is your's based on
 
Now that's awesome.
smile.gif

Might give Super Mario RPG a try now (I don't like playing on emulators on PC, dunno why).
I also hope the text bug with fan-translated Seiken Densetsu 3 ROMs is fixed.
frown.gif
 
I gave this a testdrive mainly with games that suffered alot of slowdown before
C = CATSFC
B = BAGSFC

Super Mario RPG (About 1 hour playing)
C = HUGE improvement. Although it still suffers from slowdowns, mainly when a dialogue or a cutscene is active. Some minor/medium slowdowns when walking around areas, which improves if you enable
fast forward during those times. Some minor slowdowns in battles as well, but since it's mainly turnbased, it's still fully Playable as it seems for now if you don't mind the slowdowns.

B = Alot of slowdowns, can slightly be improved by disabling sound and enabling fast forward after the castle part. But Imo still very Unplayable.

Super Mario Kart
C = Has alot of slowdown but you can actually play it. Although I wouldn't recommend it. Unplayable

B = Lag spikes all over the place along with huge slowdowns, Unplayable

StarFox
C = The improvements blew my mind in this one. Although it has alot of slowdowns, it's actually playable as in you can aim, steer etc. Like it's running at 5-10 FPS. Although it's still in a Unplayable state.

B = Once you get ingame, it runs at like 0.1-1 FPS. Unplayable

Axelay
C = Very Playable with some slowdowns. This is a very action packed game, so I still wouldn't recommend playing it, but if you don't mind the extra difficulty level the slowdowns brings, then it is playable.

B = Major slowdowns, although it is playable as you can steer your ship and shoot etc. But considering the slowdowns would bring the game to some kind of an impossible difficulty mode, I wouldn't recommend it. Unplayable

Super Star Wars (So I decided to try out a game that worked near perfect before to compare if there was any difference) Playable
C = At first it seemed just fine. But after trying it again after trying it with BAGSFC, I noticed there was a tiny tiny lag in the game. As it were running at frameskip 1.

B = Runs perfectly smooth. Just some minor slowdowns if there are alot of enemies on screen, same for both versions.

After discovering that tiny lag in Super Star Wars, I noticed there was a tiny lag in general in all games. As if the emulator is running at frameskip 1 now.
So basically my conclusion after the tests is:
- All games that ran poorly with alot of slowdown, were improved GREATLY to an almost very enjoyable playable state.
- All games that ran (near) perfect before, suffers from a tiny tiny lag now.

Anyways, very amazing work ShadauxCat! Just wondering if you still have any tricks up your sleeve to make this even better? Again, very good work!
 
Thank you for this, I play a lot of SNES on my DSTwo, and I love BassAceGold's emulator, any improvement to it is a huge bonus. I too am interested to see if the Secret of Mana menu problems can be fixed - I really want to play that game on my XL.
 
Alright, lots to respond to here, so let's get started...

RPG Hacker said:
Great news!
I didn't have time to test it yet, will do so once I get home today. Just one question: Does it support BG Mode 5 (I think it was 5, may also be 4)? That's a mode used in a very few games, like for example for menus in Secret of Mana and Seiken Densetsu 3. What it does is basically giving screens double the width. In the previous versions of the SC2DS Emulators it wasn't emulated well, causing every second letter in those menus to be cut out. Is it emulated yet? If it isn't I could help you by giving more information.

My answer to this is: I don't really know, as I didn't write the emulator from scratch and I haven't tested that. But I do know that the emulator was built from the source code of snes9x, so maybe? If the original supercard NDSSFC didn't support it, then the answer is no, I haven't explicitly added support for that; I'll look it up and see what I can find out.


CannonFoddr said:
Quick question - does this accept the ARG() command
- So that we can autorun SNES ROMs straight from iMenu ??

There are 2 'versions' of Bagsfc - one with & one without ARG() support, which is your's based on

This version includes arg support.


SignZ said:
Now that's awesome.
smile.gif

Might give Super Mario RPG a try now (I don't like playing on emulators on PC, dunno why).
I also hope the text bug with fan-translated Seiken Densetsu 3 ROMs is fixed.
frown.gif
Click to expand...

Since I wasn't aware of that bug, it probably isn't fixed. The bugs I fixed mostly had to do with random graphical freezes that made a lot of games entirely unplayable.


QUOTE(Killermech @ Mar 6 2011, 07:26 AM)
Click to expand...
I gave this a testdrive mainly with games that suffered alot of slowdown before
C = CATSFC
B = BAGSFC

Super Mario RPG (About 1 hour playing)
C = HUGE improvement. Although it still suffers from slowdowns, mainly when a dialogue or a cutscene is active. Some minor/medium slowdowns when walking around areas, which improves if you enable
fast forward during those times. Some minor slowdowns in battles as well, but since it's mainly turnbased, it's still fully Playable as it seems for now if you don't mind the slowdowns.

B = Alot of slowdowns, can slightly be improved by disabling sound and enabling fast forward after the castle part. But Imo still very Unplayable.

Super Mario Kart
C = Has alot of slowdown but you can actually play it. Although I wouldn't recommend it. Unplayable

B = Lag spikes all over the place along with huge slowdowns, Unplayable

StarFox
C = The improvements blew my mind in this one. Although it has alot of slowdowns, it's actually playable as in you can aim, steer etc. Like it's running at 5-10 FPS. Although it's still in a Unplayable state.

B = Once you get ingame, it runs at like 0.1-1 FPS. Unplayable

Axelay
C = Very Playable with some slowdowns. This is a very action packed game, so I still wouldn't recommend playing it, but if you don't mind the extra difficulty level the slowdowns brings, then it is playable.

B = Major slowdowns, although it is playable as you can steer your ship and shoot etc. But considering the slowdowns would bring the game to some kind of an impossible difficulty mode, I wouldn't recommend it. Unplayable

Super Star Wars (So I decided to try out a game that worked near perfect before to compare if there was any difference) Playable
C = At first it seemed just fine. But after trying it again after trying it with BAGSFC, I noticed there was a tiny tiny lag in the game. As it were running at frameskip 1.

B = Runs perfectly smooth. Just some minor slowdowns if there are alot of enemies on screen, same for both versions.

After discovering that tiny lag in Super Star Wars, I noticed there was a tiny lag in general in all games. As if the emulator is running at frameskip 1 now.
So basically my conclusion after the tests is:
- All games that ran poorly with alot of slowdown, were improved GREATLY to an almost very enjoyable playable state.
- All games that ran (near) perfect before, suffers from a tiny tiny lag now.

Anyways, very amazing work ShadauxCat! Just wondering if you still have any tricks up your sleeve to make this even better? Again, very good work!
Click to expand...

I will take a look and see if I can fix this. Thanks for reporting it.
 
I tried Yoshi's Island, but the framerate problems make it far less enjoyable.
But at least it's playable.

I still like the GBA version more.
 
Thx for your smooth work! Playing Super Mario RPG is cool!

Everything worked great, so far no bugs appeared.

Question: Is it possible to enabled Touchscreen for choosing options in the menu?
and
Remebering the last game played were cool,too!?


Both options in GBA EMU,too=Awesome!



Greetz and many thx
 
Tried SA-1 game, Kirby's Dreamland 3.

Unplayably choppy, but an improvement over BAGSFC. Nice work!

Mode-7 games are still weird, though. F-Zero and Hyper Zone are a little skippy and mario kart only renders frames every half-second, with or without FF mode.
 
ShadauxCat said:
You're welcome. ^^

Actually, though, I'm not a sir.
tongue.gif
(Not that it matters that much, but everyone just seems to automatically assume me to be male online. Eh.)
Click to expand...
Most females online in gaming communities hide it, lest everything in sight hit on them (since they tend to be filled with hormonal teens). A decent female programmer is an even rarer find.

But yeah, toss me (or another mag staffer) a PM or something when there's a major update (like a new game or two running, or a new feature or two) and I'll make the news on it. This is definitely a project people like.
 
ShadauxCat said:
RPG Hacker said:
Great news!
I didn't have time to test it yet, will do so once I get home today. Just one question: Does it support BG Mode 5 (I think it was 5, may also be 4)? That's a mode used in a very few games, like for example for menus in Secret of Mana and Seiken Densetsu 3. What it does is basically giving screens double the width. In the previous versions of the SC2DS Emulators it wasn't emulated well, causing every second letter in those menus to be cut out. Is it emulated yet? If it isn't I could help you by giving more information.
Click to expand...

My answer to this is: I don't really know, as I didn't write the emulator from scratch and I haven't tested that. But I do know that the emulator was built from the source code of snes9x, so maybe? If the original supercard NDSSFC didn't support it, then the answer is no, I haven't explicitly added support for that; I'll look it up and see what I can find out.
Click to expand...

The letters were indeed cut out in the old version. I didn't want to make it sound like an assumption, sorry. There reasons for this is that in most BG Modes on the SNES, a tile is 8 pixels width. In mode 5, however, tiles are always 16 pixels width (height can either be 8 or 16 pixels). This makes it possible to have a screen of double the width without needing more tilemap space in VRAM. The games I mentioned used this mode to put more text on the screen. What I think the emulator does right now is still treating the tiles as tiles of 8 pixels width, therefore skipping a few tiles. Well, what am I telling you this, anyways? I have screenshots somewhere. Look at this:

glitch1.png
glitch2a.png


So basically the solution would be to emulate the width of 16 pixels and then scale the screen width to half, to make it fix on the screen again.

In case you want to look into this problem: I reported the bug (along with a few other bugs and more details) here:

http://forum.supercard.sc/viewthread.php?t...extra=#pid48036
 
I just want to say. OMFG! WIN! WIN!
Are you f'in shitting me. Super Mario RPG? WTF? InsanitY!?
ShadauxCat! thankyou. I'll go test some games now. See if DKC2 or Earthbound sped up any.
 

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