Homebrew [RetroArch] Nightly builds here!

[Vague Rant]

Wow. I didn't think SonicCD would work. I just tried it and I was getting mostly good speeds. Oddly enough, Palmtree Panic Past was full speed, but the Present was more or less 50-55. I'd say that's still pretty impressive!

Present and Future use CDDA audio (as in, regular CD, put it in a CD player and listen stuff) while the past use PCM; I'd assume the speedup is a benefit of not doing CD audio playback at the same time as running the game. You can probably get better speed throughout the game (and save a bunch of space) by lopping all but the data track of the CD out of your ISO, such that the game would run silently. Probably won't be much fun playing in silence, but if performance is more important to you it's a workable idea. A better option might be for RetroArch to have a core option to disable CDDA playback, so you could flip it on or off depending on what you wanted at the time.

 

[ubergeek77]

Present and Future use CDDA audio (as in, regular CD, put it in a CD player and listen stuff) while the past use PCM; I'd assume the speedup is a benefit of not doing CD audio playback at the same time as running the game. You can probably get better speed throughout the game (and save a bunch of space) by lopping all but the data track of the CD out of your ISO, such that the game would run silently. Probably won't be much fun playing in silence, but if performance is more important to you it's a workable idea. A better option might be for RetroArch to have a core option to disable CDDA playback, so you could flip it on or off depending on what you wanted at the time.

Hmmm... I wonder if SonicRetro has a patch or something that changes the normal music into custom sequenced tracks like the Past levels are. That sounds like something they'd do, at least.

I wonder what would happen if I went through and downsampled/compressed the normal music. It would sound worse, but maybe it would provide a reasonable speedup (or not, I like to experiment).

Edit: Oddly enough, the latest build of PicoDrive will play the title screen of Sonic CD at full speed, but gameplay is pretty slow at around 39-43fps when CD music is being used (but full speed when CDDA music is being used). Genesis Plus plays the title screen just as slow as the actual gameplay, both being around 50-55 when CD music is being used, and full speed when CDDA music is being played.

 

[dirtybeagles]

Sorry if this has already been asked, but this thread is getting pretty big to search through... Does anyone know if the Final Burn Alpha or MAME retroarch cores will be ported over to the nightly's at some point?

 

[X_Frost]

I think this has been mentioned before, but for some reason whenever I load "Super Mario All Stars + World" I can select the games , but the controls become unresponsive when actually starting the game.

System info

CATSFC on 9.5 Emunand N3DS

 

[teampleb]

I think this has been mentioned before, but for some reason whenever I load "Super Mario All Stars + World" I can select the games , but the controls become unresponsive when actually starting the game.

System info

CATSFc on 9.5 Emunand N3DS

Known problem.

 

[ubergeek77]

I think I might have found something worth looking in to. I'm sure we're all familiar with how CatSFC sacrifices sound accuracy for speed, and how it produces sound/music that is higher pitched than normal.

Here's the strange thing: if I load Secret of Mana first, and then, without closing the content or exiting the emulator, load another game, the sound issue appears to be fixed. However, if I load a game other than Secret of Mana first, or close SoM completely before loading another game, I'll get the high pitched sound again.

For some reason, I always seem to get accurate sound from Secret of Mana, and that apparently carries over to the second game I load.

Strange workaround, but I've been able to reproduce it several times.

I am using the CIA build of CatSFC as it is available at this time.

 

[teampleb]

I think I might have found something worth looking in to. I'm sure we're all familiar with how CatSFC sacrifices sound accuracy for speed, and how it produces sound/music that is higher pitched than normal.

Here's the strange thing: if I load Secret of Mana first, and then, without closing the content or exiting the emulator, load another game, the sound issue appears to be fixed. However, if I load a game other than Secret of Mana first, or close SoM completely before loading another game, I'll get the high pitched sound again.

For some reason, I always seem to get accurate sound from Secret of Mana, and that apparently carries over to the second game I load.

Strange workaround, but I've been able to reproduce it several times.

I am using the CIA build of CatSFC as it is available at this time.

It's a minor difference to me. I'd rather have higher frame rates then slightly more accurate sound.

 

[ubergeek77]

It's a minor difference to me. I'd rather have higher frame rates then slightly more accurate sound.

It's better to have higher framerates, yes, but at least in my case, even the slowest parts of games run at the same rate with or without this little quick fix. I don't know if the same is true for the o3DS.

 

[NEO117]

Asking this again because my question got ignored. Why is it that gPSP can't use native saves? Just curious.

 

[SkyDX]

Possibly a dumb question but what aspect ratio do I have to pick in gPSP so the picture is full-screen vertically and not stretched horizontally? None I pick seem right o.o

 

[teampleb]

Asking this again because my question got ignored. Why is it that gPSP can't use native saves? Just curious.

If we don't answer it's probably because we don't know the answer.

Possibly a dumb question but what aspect ratio do I have to pick in gPSP so the picture is full-screen vertically and not stretched horizontally? None I pick seem right o.o

It's 3:2.

 

[dirtybeagles]

teampleb, dont forget about my question

 

[teampleb]

Sorry if this has already been asked, but this thread is getting pretty big to search through... Does anyone know if the Final Burn Alpha or MAME retroarch cores will be ported over to the nightly's at some point?

No, we don't and it was already asked multiple times.

 

[Ambassador]

It works with ninjhax2 ?

 

[teampleb]

It works with ninjhax2 ?

Yes, you could have just tried it. You really didn't need to ask that.

 

[Jacobeian]

Hmmm... I wonder if SonicRetro has a patch or something that changes the normal music into custom sequenced tracks like the Past levels are. That sounds like something they'd do, at least.

I wonder what would happen if I went through and downsampled/compressed the normal music. It would sound worse, but maybe it would provide a reasonable speedup (or not, I like to experiment).

Edit: Oddly enough, the latest build of PicoDrive will play the title screen of Sonic CD at full speed, but gameplay is pretty slow at around 39-43fps when CD music is being used (but full speed when CDDA music is being used). Genesis Plus plays the title screen just as slow as the actual gameplay, both being around 50-55 when CD music is being used, and full speed when CDDA music is being played.

CD music is CDDA (digital audio), you probably mean FM music (which the past levels are using).

The reason it's slower with CD audio tracks being played is usually that the emulator needs to constantly read the audio data from the CD image file on SD and storage device access usually adds some latency (compared to RAM access), compressing audio or resampling it can not improve this, faster SD card access can.

 

[NEO117]

If we don't answer it's probably because we don't know the answer.

That's all I wanted to know. Thanks.

 

[dakotaaesoph]

What's strange is that I was using native saves before an update, and then now they don't work.

 

[Sizednochi]

should already be fixed

Well maybe I'm not phrasing it better, vsync itself is fine but the framerate isn't consistent. It falls down to 58fps occasionally and that makes it stutter for a bit together with audio. It's a bit annoying. Not sure if it's completely related to vsync.

 

[SkyDX]

It's 3:2.

That's strange, I delete my config and it was back at 3:2 too but I still have black bars at the top and bottom aswell, it only happened after I messed with the aspect ratio yesterday but not even deleting my config has helped o.o

EDIT: Had to disable integer scaling, now it works again