Homebrew Emulation Seen "Sprite Limit" ON/OFF toggle on FCE Ultra GX and Snes9x GX. But can this be added also to Visual Boy Advance GX?

[SaulFabre]

Hi there all GBAtemp

I've seen that now FCE Ultra GX (from Tantric, later also added to Tanooki16's FCEUXTX) and Snes9x TX/RX (also on GX since i've added it to main GX) have the option for enable or disable the sprite limit.

I've seen that if you remove the sprite limit, some games gets benefitied of it (no more sprite flickering, no more slowdown on some games, etc.)

But by now only NES and SNES emulators have this.

But... anyone will try to add an option for enable/disable the sprite limit to GB/GBC/GBA emulators? (Specifically Visual Boy Advance GX).

GB/GBC/GBA games also gets affected by the sprite limit.
The most common examples are the Zelda games for GB/GBC (sprite flickering) and Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins (the game runs slow when too many sprites are shown).

Any chance to see VBA-GX with a Sprite Limit toggle option?

Thanks, and lots of regards, @SaulFabre

 

[FAST6191]

Do we have any GBA examples?

On Mario 6 Golden Coins then I should note there are some hacks that variously (some by turning into a GBC game and others do other things) fix it. https://www.romhacking.net/?page=ha...e=20&order=&dir=&title=&author=&hacksearch=Go should contain some.

I shall have to look into what sprite limit removal entails for the NES and thus for the GB/GBC. I am not sure what particularly goes for the GBA -- you usually run out of memory ( http://pineight.com/gba/managing-sprite-vram.txt ) before you run out of sprites on screen without it chugging.
Generally I am not a fan of exceeding system limits in this manner (the SNES has a number of hacks troubled to this day because of such things) though as it can lead to bad habits. At the same time it would not be a thing I lose sleep over.

 

[N7Kopper]

Generally I am not a fan of exceeding system limits in this manner (the SNES has a number of hacks troubled to this day because of such things) though as it can lead to bad habits. At the same time it would not be a thing I lose sleep over.

Developing game mods that rely on limit-breaking emulators is one thing, but developing game mods that rely on a hardware-compatible addon chip that you also developed is quite another. Even though I've never seen a physical SNES in person, I still adore the MSU-1. (I think it's called that?)

 

[SaulFabre]

Do we have any GBA examples?

@FAST6191
Yup, GBA games also gets affected by the sprite limit.

At section "Interframe blending" in this page https://mgba.io/2020/01/21/mgba-0.8.0/ it mentions two examples of GBA games affected by the sprite limit, causing some sprites to start flickering:

Left screenshots are with sprite limit, right ones are without them.

F-ZERO: Maximum Velocity

Golden Sun

These are just two examples, i don't know more GBA games affected by this but as i said disabling the sprite limit can benefit some games.

 

[FAST6191]

Developing game mods that rely on limit-breaking emulators is one thing, but developing game mods that rely on a hardware-compatible addon chip that you also developed is quite another. Even though I've never seen a physical SNES in person, I still adore the MSU-1. (I think it's called that?)

I am not following. There are some old hacks that want specific versions of ZSNES to work as they do fun things with memory limits in certain aspects and rely on game specific hacks in others.
I would view the MSU-1 stuff (and more recent sega CD emulation/addition stuff) as no different to what the NES crowd would know as a HK mapper/pirate mapper when it pertains to emulators -- better to support such things as they are things out there in the world but at the same time not necessarily a big loss if you don't.

I would put disabling such limits as closer to the emulator level hack which will trouble things when different systems get involved (it was not so bad for the SNES for the longest time and it was mostly a few handheld emulator users and console emulators that troubled things but then android and ios became as popular as they are, as did raspberry pis and console emulators also got huge. If it is as I think and almost a "smart" CRT latency equivalent then it is not so bad but it is still not something I would push for.

 

[Extrems]

@FAST6191
Yup, GBA games also gets affected by the sprite limit.

At section "Interframe blending" in this page https://mgba.io/2020/01/21/mgba-0.8.0/ it mentions two examples of GBA games affected by the sprite limit, causing some sprites to start flickering:

Left screenshots are with sprite limit, right ones are without them.

F-ZERO: Maximum Velocity

Golden Sun

These are just two examples, i don't know more GBA games affected by this but as i said disabling the sprite limit can benefit some games.

This isn't sprite limit. The former is pseudo-transparency and the latter is anti-aliasing. These are intentional effects.

 

[SaulFabre]

This isn't sprite limit. The former is pseudo-transparency and the latter is anti-aliasing. These are intentional effects.

@Extrems

my confusion
but what about this another issue found on Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga?:


EDIT: mGBA has this issue apparently fixed, but what about GB/GBC games?

 

[Extrems]

That's not sprite limit either. It's a timing problem in the game when a frame is taking too long.