Homebrew WADS vs emulation

[SG]

Now that space isn't an issue on the Wii, what are peoples opinion on WADs vs emulation on easy-to-emulate things like SNES games?

WADs have a nice dedicated channel and a (shit) e-manual, but it does feel more polished.

However, am I right in saying that there are less framerate issues? For example DKC3 lagged quite a bit in certain places.

Cheers!

 

[sonny615]

Emulation was always there but something about the Wii makes it more fun to play. I like to have wads only for a few games that I like the most. For the rest I use an emulator (which I launch from a forwarder; technically it's a wad too

).

 

[SG]

Ah, could you tell me about this?

 

[Sir_Shaggy]

The VC games are easier to access than the emulators in the homebrew channel. My sister just started playing Super Mario RPG the other day because she saw it on the wii menu screen. 'Oh you have Super Mario RPG!' Well, I've always had it. Have the cartridge, have the rom, have the snes emulator for the Wii but yet she started playing the Wii VC version because it was there.

 

[Jacobeian]

Depends on how Nintendo optimized their emulators: since they release each ROM file separately, they can always customize/hack the emulator for a particular game
, which homebrew emulators generally don't do.

They can also patch games and includes precalculated game data or textures (like N64 VC emulator is doing).

However, except maybe SNES and GBA, all emulators are running every games full speed and I would say they are also often more accurate (regarding sound/video) that their VC counterparts because the original emulator author (not speaking about those who ported them on Wii) put many years and a lot of efforts in them...
In all case, they offer lot more options (not hard to do since VC does not have ANY options) which is a big advantage.

Regarding estethical aspects, which seems to be the most appealing feature of VC WADS for noobs, I'd say it doesn't matter once you are playing the game, which is what is was done for

And I don't see how VC are more polished (except the banner maybe, which you only see on startup so what's the big deal ?), they don't even have a fully featured menu, contrary to most emulators. E-manual does not count, they look like shit and I never used them.

For people who are too lazy to launch the homebrew channel or just want direct acces, there are emulato wads as well, forwarder or not. I think it would also be possible to inject a ROM into an homebrew emulator and make it launch automatically, I've already done this during the gamecube good old time

Then there are those just excited at seeing all their wads dancing in the system menu

 

[spotanjo3]

Many people dont know what emulators is. That's why they are happy to buy Wads games that are available for them.

 

[s3phir0th115]

Now that space isn't an issue on the Wii, what are peoples opinion on WADs vs emulation on easy-to-emulate things like SNES games?

WADs have a nice dedicated channel and a (shit) e-manual, but it does feel more polished.

However, am I right in saying that there are less framerate issues? For example DKC3 lagged quite a bit in certain places.

Cheers!

Well, they are both emulation, they are just done differently.

Nintendo's is more user friendly of course, and the emulator is generally optimized for each game, you can tell this by different compatibility found when you inject your own n64 roms into different titles. So yes, there will be less framerate issues because virtual console games are a commercial product, so slowdown would result in customer complaints.

Something that pisses me off in particular, is that each game comes with its own emulator. So if you have several virtual console games, you waste ungodly amounts of space when you have several emulators for the same system, instead of using the better of system of one emulator and many games.
Some may say that would result in lessened compatibility, but I don't see it. Nintendo could have easily elected to have different emulator configurations included with the game, and just have the emulators be installed as hidden channels or something and be updated as needed by the shop channel.

The homebrew method uses the more efficient system of one emulator and several games for a given system. However, you don't see compatibility fixes for each game from what I've seen for the wii, although I have seen it done on emulators made to run on the gba and psp. Of course, there is less user friendliness unless you have something like an animated forwarder channel there installed as I do. And the newer versions of snes9xgx, vgagx, and fceugx make it look a lot more polished in my opinion. I would say they even beat virtual console. (And yes, I have tried it, and I don't like the lack of compatibility of save files between the nintendo emulators and homebrew ones.) But even then people have trouble understanding homebrew emulators. Of course, if you have the skill to mod the Wii to begin with, operating a homebrew emulator shouldn't be a problem at all.

 

[koji2009]

Jacobien: Take a look at emulator source code (specifically, zsnes) and you will see that there are quite a few game hacks. Both game specific hacks for popular games, as well as general hacks that remove the needless waiting cycles when the games aren't using the entirety of the SNES CPU.

Also, nintendo themselves have been working on these emulators for years. Take a look at the legend of zelda collector's edition for the Gamecube... You have fully working and full speed emulation of NES and N64 right there (though there are a few glitches and minor slow downs). Nintendo has been working on console side emulation of former systems since at least the start of the gamecube days (Interesting note, if you have an original gamecube owner's manual, you can turn to the page dealing with saves and you will see there is a Mario64 save listed... implying nintendo may have had N64 emus developed for the GCN at launch as part of some other project that didn't manifest itself till the virtual console for Wii)

s3phiroth: The emulators themselves will take up a lot less data than the roms themselves (aside from maybe the NES games which can be as small as a 100k or less). Having a single emulator introduces other problems though... such as when you fix a timing issue that makes some games work but in doing so messes up timings for other games. The best way to prevent future versions breaking previous versions is packaging in a single emulator for each game that has been proven fully functional. And if you think this isn't an issue for general emulators, I suggest you read through the changelogs of any major emulator and count how many times there are comments like "fixed XXXX again" or "adjusted timings to regain past compatibility" etc etc.

Now that said... I prefer homebrew emulators myself just because I hate having all the clutter on my wii menu. At least in the emulators the games are organized per system and don't take up valuable screen realestate and need to be manually sorted constantly.

 

[s3phir0th115]

s3phiroth: The emulators themselves will take up a lot less data than the roms themselves (aside from maybe the NES games which can be as small as a 100k or less). Having a single emulator introduces other problems though... such as when you fix a timing issue that makes some games work but in doing so messes up timings for other games. The best way to prevent future versions breaking previous versions is packaging in a single emulator for each game that has been proven fully functional. And if you think this isn't an issue for general emulators, I suggest you read through the changelogs of any major emulator and count how many times there are comments like "fixed XXXX again" or "adjusted timings to regain past compatibility" etc etc.

Now that said... I prefer homebrew emulators myself just because I hate having all the clutter on my wii menu. At least in the emulators the games are organized per system and don't take up valuable screen realestate and need to be manually sorted constantly.

I know that different emulator versions could cause compatibility problems, but I still think that it could have been done better using one emulator per system.

Snes9xTYL for the PSP, for instance. You can get dat files that will add speed hacks to make the game run better, which I'm sure alter the emulation settings in some way.

I think one emulator is better if you just have a simple configuration file that tells it to run certain troublesome games differently. Sony's PS1 emulator for the PSP has similar behavior. You can tell this because some games that would otherwise not run otherwise will run using a different game's title ID, implying the emulator can tell to run the game differently due to the different title ID.

Several emulators such as epsxe can work in a similar way, altering emulator settings based on the game. It's really not difficult to do, it's just that they'd rather customize the emulator for each game.

 

[clownz]

this is a toss up. I do feel that the VC's from nintendo are more polished like you said, but I do get annoyed about how big they are, and I am also annoyed I cant put them all on one disc, I dont like SD cards so I am not going to go crazy putting stuff on them. I will probably just stick to emulators except for the few games I truly love.

I do like the dancing menu channels ;X I got tons of them already. Troythezombie makes some good animated channels for the emulators.

 

[IOwnAndPwnU]

Many people dont know what emulators is. That's why they are happy to buy Wads games that are available for them.


QUOTE(koji2009 @ Jun 13 2009, 07:43 PM) Jacobien: Take a look at emulator source code (specifically, zsnes) and you will see that there are quite a few game hacks. Both game specific hacks for popular games, as well as general hacks that remove the needless waiting cycles when the games aren't using the entirety of the SNES CPU.

Also, nintendo themselves have been working on these emulators for years. Take a look at the legend of zelda collector's edition for the Gamecube... You have fully working and full speed emulation of NES and N64 right there (though there are a few glitches and minor slow downs). Nintendo has been working on console side emulation of former systems since at least the start of the gamecube days (Interesting note, if you have an original gamecube owner's manual, you can turn to the page dealing with saves and you will see there is a Mario64 save listed... implying nintendo may have had N64 emus developed for the GCN at launch as part of some other project that didn't manifest itself till the virtual console for Wii)

s3phiroth: The emulators themselves will take up a lot less data than the roms themselves (aside from maybe the NES games which can be as small as a 100k or less). Having a single emulator introduces other problems though... such as when you fix a timing issue that makes some games work but in doing so messes up timings for other games. The best way to prevent future versions breaking previous versions is packaging in a single emulator for each game that has been proven fully functional. And if you think this isn't an issue for general emulators, I suggest you read through the changelogs of any major emulator and count how many times there are comments like "fixed XXXX again" or "adjusted timings to regain past compatibility" etc etc.

Now that said... I prefer homebrew emulators myself just because I hate having all the clutter on my wii menu. At least in the emulators the games are organized per system and don't take up valuable screen realestate and need to be manually sorted constantly.

Kinda noobish question(s) here, but whatever.
Both Virtual Console and emulators (HBC) can pretty much run the same stuff. But VC (through the SD Channel) is just organized by icons (or manually). But emulators can organize the games alphabetically, right? Just wondering what I said is right/wrong/partly right. And in the Wii Menu, that's only if you have it installed on the Wii, not the SD card.

 

[Mr.Leb]

I prefer homebrew emulators because I have ~100 NES roms, ~50 SNES roms, and ~30 Sega Genesis roms. Said emulators have well polished GUIs and tons of features, Troythezombie's channels are nice too. I couldn't live without snapshots, multiple files, cheats, and throttling...