Homebrew Megaman - FCEU slowdowns vs. VC slowdowns

[Hanafuda]

So I recently softmodded the Wii and promptly installed FCEU GX. (And SNES9X GX, which I admittedly haven't put too much time into yet b/c I don't yet have a classic controller pro and I waiting till I get one for the proper button layout)

Anyway, I'm playing Megaman and from time to time I'm encountering some staggering slowdowns. Cutman and Fireman had some minor ones, but in Iceman its just bad. I know the original Megaman games had some slowdowns on the NES hardware but were they this bad? I've seen some mention of slowdowns on the NES games sold thru the VC (though not Megaman specifically), so are the slowdowns I'm encountering in FCEU playing Megaman no worse, or do the VC versions play better? I know a lot of people are critical of Nintendo's VC emulators, but I haven't really tried any VC other than the original SMB and N64 games.

 

[koji2009]

If you're asking this, you obviously haven't played many real nintendo games on a real console. Megaman games in particular are known to have slowdowns and large amounts of "flash" or disappearing sprites while playing... This is simply a matter of Capcom pushing the original nintendo hardware too far.

 

[badchad]

In my limited experience the timing on some NES games is just a tad "off".

For me, it's most notable on punchout. It's tough to compete with Tyson.

 

[Hanafuda]

If you're asking this, you obviously haven't played many real nintendo games on a real console. Megaman games in particular are known to have slowdowns and large amounts of "flash" or disappearing sprites while playing... This is simply a matter of Capcom pushing the original nintendo hardware too far.

I was already in college when the NES came out. I remember playing a good bit of SMB, Contra, and Mike Tyson Punch Out. I grew up through jr. high and high school on the Atari 2600 and going to arcades. But I didn't really start playing video games as a regular hobby until I was out of school for good and working. I've got kids now I share the fun with, and some nights after they go to bed I play old games cuz I enjoy them more than much of the newer stuff. So no, never played Megaman on a real NES. But I'm just wanting the smoothest running experience on the modern hardware, whether it be with FCEU or the VC version.

 

[koji2009]

Sorry, I think you misunderstand... This is how the games acted on a REAL NES. Emulators strive to be as accurate as possible. Many NES games had graphic issues or slowdowns (or in the case of megaman games, both). These are reproduced faithfully whether you play them on VC (which is nintendo's emulator) or FCEU (which is a homebrew emulator).

If you want a "perfect" classic megaman experience on your wii, play Megaman 9 and 10 which are new megaman games designed to simulate the oldschool games.

 

[DownSince86]

Playing them through FCEU is a lot better than playing them with VC for two reasons:

1. FCEU has the ability to display the game in 4:3 mode when playing them on a widescreen display. The VC games simply stretch out the image to fit so you never really know how close you are to something.

2. The VC Mega Man games suffer from a lot of bugs that were not present on the real hardware. For example when the screen scrolls Mega Man's sprite "jumps" all over the place. There are probably a lot of other oddities too but that is the main one that I remember.

The NES emulator isn't perfect but it is the best experience you'll get on the Wii. If you want to play the game as intended buy a NES and the carts. Other good options: emulation on the PC (not much better than the Wii to be honest). If you own a Dreamcast console there is a _really_ good emulator for NES games and it looks awesome when the DC is hooked up to a display with a VGA input.

Honestly though the slow down that your describing is present on the real hardware and you probably just aren't used to it. A lot of NES games are like that: slow down when a lot of sprites are on screen, "flickering" sprites when a lot of things are on screen. It is part of the charm of the console.

O yea I almost forgot: Most emulators allow you to turn the sprite limit off and play around with settings that remove this slow down and flickering. Just keep in mind that the real console had those limitations so you aren't playing the game as it was intended to be played.

 

[Hanafuda]

Thx guys. I run Nestopia on my PC and have been using emus since about 1999, so what you've been assuming I don't know about emulators - I pretty much do know. But I don't have a lot of experience on the original NES hardware, at least not in the last 20 years, and never with the Megaman games. But I can say the slowdowns I'm seeing using FCEU on the Wii playing Megaman seem a bit worse than what I see playing the same parts of the game on Nestopia with my PC. I haven't done any direct comparison testing, so I can't say more than it's just a 'feel' thing. This is why I started wondering whether Nintendo's VC version might play the game a little better (i.e. closer to the feel I get with Nestopia).

 

[aml435]

There is also a setting in FCEUGX to remove the NES sprite limit, which makes the emulation much less true to the original hardware, but it does fix flickering & slowdown on a lot of games by using the Wii's hardware above and beyond what was available to an NES.

 

[Vague Rant]

1. FCEU has the ability to display the game in 4:3 mode when playing them on a widescreen display. The VC games simply stretch out the image to fit so you never really know how close you are to something.

I wish all emulators had the ability to waste what precious little horizontal resolution the Wii has by rendering black bars on the sides to do something I could probably do by pressing one or two buttons on my TV remote without sacrificing image quality.

 

[tueidj]

I wish all emulators had the ability to waste what precious little horizontal resolution the Wii has by rendering black bars on the sides to do something I could probably do by pressing one or two buttons on my TV remote without sacrificing image quality.

Exactly how much horizontal resolution do you think the NES originally had?

 

[Vague Rant]

Exactly how relevant is that to the concept of scaling aspect ratios? Answer: it isn't and you appear not to know anything. Reducing the horizontal aspect ratio by rendering black bars means reducing the Wii's horizontal resolution from 640 to something like a 480*480 square stretched to 4:3. This means more pronounced filtering from your TV, or, if you have filtering disabled, a greater degree of horrible pixel doubling that makes everybody ever want to kill themselves.

 

[tueidj]

Maybe you should go look at the source code and see what video mode FCEUGX actually uses before you start trying to tell people how things work.

 

[Vague Rant]

ÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂ#ifdef HW_RVL
ÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂ// widescreen fix
ÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂif(CONF_GetAspectRatio() == CONF_ASPECT_16_9)
ÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂ{
ÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂmode->viWidth = 678;
ÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂmode->viXOrigin = (VI_MAX_WIDTH_NTSC - 678) / 2;
ÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂ}
ÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂ#endif

Oh wow, so if your Wii is set to widescreen, it outputs a massive 678 pixels?!?!!?! What is that, like ... 38 more pixels than 4:3? So that must mean ... we're only blowing like 226 pixels on black emptiness? And we're only reducing the effective x-width to 452 pixels? And somehow that's still less than 640?!?!?!?!?!

Maybe you should start looking at numbers before you tell people how those work.

EDIT: That last bit was dicky, but here's the easy version. Regardless of what horizontal resolution the Wii is outputting, you're spending 1/3 of that amount on black bars. The only way to get a higher resolution image out of that than 4:3 is if you output an image that is, in pixels, at least 1/3 wider, i.e. 854+ pixels. Until then, the effective resolution is always going to be

 

[tueidj]

Uh, no. For a start try quoting the correct code:

#ifdef HW_RVL
ÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂif (CONF_GetAspectRatio() == CONF_ASPECT_16_9)
ÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂmode->viWidth = 678;
ÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂelse
ÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂmode->viWidth = 672;

ÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂif(vmode_60hz)
ÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂ{
ÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂmode->viXOrigin = (VI_MAX_WIDTH_NTSC - mode->viWidth) / 2;
ÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂmode->viYOrigin = (VI_MAX_HEIGHT_NTSC - mode->viHeight) / 2;
ÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂ}
ÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂelse
ÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂ{
ÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂmode->viXOrigin = (VI_MAX_WIDTH_PAL - mode->viWidth) / 2;
ÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂmode->viYOrigin = (VI_MAX_HEIGHT_PAL - mode->viHeight) / 2;
ÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂ}
#endif

But that's not relevant anyway, it only changes the active area of the signal (gasp! The black bars don't change the number of pixels at all! Next thing you know I'll probably say horizontal lines don't even have pixels!).

The relevant numbers are here:

/*** 3D GX ***/
#define TEX_WIDTH 256
#define TEX_HEIGHT 240

This is the NES framebuffer. That's how many pixels you get. The wii upscales this image, either by a lot (widescreen) or not so much (4:3). It outputs a 720x480/576 YUY2 image (ohnoes half resolution chroma!) and your tv then scales it again to either widescreen or 4:3. Since every scaling operation distorts the image, don't you think it would be better to target 4:3 right from the start instead of blowing the horizontal size way out only to have the tv shrink it back down for letterboxing?
Oh I forgot, apparently you know everything there is to know about wii graphics just from this little convo in #wiidev:

I'm curious, do Wii homebrew run in any sort of pixel-based widescreen, or just stretched with aspect-corrected graphics?
the latter
the same with the Wii itself
anamorphic widescreen
OK, makes sense. So if I run something which is inherently 4:3 (e.g., a SNES game), I should disable 16:9 correction and set the aspect on my TV instead for improved resolution?
ye
s
Cool, thanks for the help.

Yeah, you're the expert aren't you.

 

[Vague Rant]

So what you're saying is that the Wii when running certain homebrew emulators displays a wide-ish 720 image but only outputs a signal for the 4:3 area? If that's the case, then that's pretty cool, and I'll submit that I was not aware the active area was variable.

Less cool and more creepy is that you're quoting chat logs from months ago in order to disprove my knowledge or lack thereof of the Wii's resolution. Of course, whether my knowledge as of months ago and a quick question in an IRC channel reflects my current knowledge is another question, but I think the more important one is why you're so butthurt that I disagreed with you that you needed to actually expend effort to discredit me by digging through your little treasure trove of digitally stored memories. "He asked a question once, QUICK A WEAKNESS." Kind of weird is all.

Regardless, kudos on the correction, and good luck with that stalking thing.

 

[tueidj]

Disagreeing with someone is one thing, calling them a moron for it is another.

 

[Vague Rant]

OK, so where does "Digging into my chat logs for an instance where this guy professed to not know something and made an inquiry about it" sit on that scale?

 

[Wiisel]

I joined temp for the wealth of knowledge that's here or was it drama?

but thanks for what has been an interesting read either way.