What's the deal with BSNES?

[regnad]

It seems, for whatever reason, the developer of BSNES has decided the emulator will support .sfc ROMs only.

Frankly I have never even seen an .sfc ROM. 99% of SNES ROMs I have seen are .smc file extension.

What's the deal?

 

[Schlupi]

Here is the deal. Use a different emulator. Problem solved, don't worry about BSNES it sucks anyways, for the most part.

 

[iceissocold]

Here is the deal. Use a different emulator. Problem solved, don't worry about BSNES it sucks anyways, for the most part.

This.

I'm not even sure what the differences between the extensions are and google yielded no results. There are plenty of very nice emulators out there you can use. ZSNES, snes9x, etc.

 

[DigitalDeviant]

I guess its BS...NES

 

[drewmerc]

I understand the appeal of speed-focused emulators. They serve a specific niche: running on cell phones and handheld gaming systems, and conserving battery power when playing on the go.

This article is not meant to say that inaccurate emulators are without merit. Instead, it is to say that accurate emulators do in fact have merit of their own. The system resources necessary for extremely accurate SNES emulation become cheaper and cheaper every day. Currently, a refurbished system capable of running bsnes at full-speed will set you back $99USD.

Perhaps you don't play any of the above games, and none of these issues affect you. That is fair enough. But why take the chance? You never know when an emulation bug is going to destroy your gameplay experience. So if you have the system resources, why not put them to good use, and demand accurate emulation? I'm not even saying it should be bsnes. Encourage other emulators to also care about accuracy, as I have been. Focusing on accuracy will not harm the people reliant on faster emulators, they are free to use the older versions of these emulators for as long as their old hardware remains functional. Catering to the unfortunate poor and the technological luddites should not hinder the progress of our entire community, is all I'm saying. The real SNES will not be around forever, and if we do not preserve it properly now, nobody ever will.

And please, the next time you hear someone espousing that the most popular SNES emulators are just as accurate as bsnes, ask them what drugs they are on for me, and link them here. Thanks for reading this.

http://byuu.org/bsnes/accuracy
so i guess sfc are more accurate dumps

 

[Schlupi]

I understand the appeal of speed-focused emulators. They serve a specific niche: running on cell phones and handheld gaming systems, and conserving battery power when playing on the go.

This article is not meant to say that inaccurate emulators are without merit. Instead, it is to say that accurate emulators do in fact have merit of their own. The system resources necessary for extremely accurate SNES emulation become cheaper and cheaper every day. Currently, a refurbished system capable of running bsnes at full-speed will set you back $99USD.

Perhaps you don't play any of the above games, and none of these issues affect you. That is fair enough. But why take the chance? You never know when an emulation bug is going to destroy your gameplay experience. So if you have the system resources, why not put them to good use, and demand accurate emulation? I'm not even saying it should be bsnes. Encourage other emulators to also care about accuracy, as I have been. Focusing on accuracy will not harm the people reliant on faster emulators, they are free to use the older versions of these emulators for as long as their old hardware remains functional. Catering to the unfortunate poor and the technological luddites should not hinder the progress of our entire community, is all I'm saying. The real SNES will not be around forever, and if we do not preserve it properly now, nobody ever will.

And please, the next time you hear someone espousing that the most popular SNES emulators are just as accurate as bsnes, ask them what drugs they are on for me, and link them here. Thanks for reading this.

http://byuu.org/bsnes/accuracy
so i guess sfc are more accurate dumps

Not necessarily true, but it does hold some water with that arguement...

either way, they claim to strive for "accuracy" when what they do is drain the ability of compatibility. Less game types supported, less games supported, slower emulation...

for PRACTICALITY there is not reason to use anything besides SNES9x and ZSNES.

 

[Bitbyte]

"either way, they claim to strive for "accuracy" when what they do is drain the ability of compatibility. Less game types supported, less games supported, slower emulation..."

You're contradicting yourself here. bsnes aims for accuracy and by that they are able to accurately emulate all the hardware of the SNES (including the special chips found in some carts), thus having the best compatibility of all emulators out there (since it exactly emulates a SNES). There are 2 builds of bsnes, each with a different profile, one for accuracy and one for speed, so if you can't run the accurate one, you can still run the faster profile and still get great emulation.

You should be able to just rename your files from .smc to .sfc btw.

 

[regnad]

You should be able to just rename your files from .smc to .sfc btw.

Tried that. Didn't work. 19 FPS, blank screen. And it's not my computer's fault, either -- I can run Dolphin on it.

Seems idiotic, in the name of "accuracy", to make an emulator that accurately runs a ROM file format that doesn't exist.

 

[Bitbyte]

Sure it's not your roms? All of mine were .smc, from the GoodSNES set, and work just fine when renamed.

 

[FireEmblemGuy]

SFC is the 'proper' SNES ROM extension. SMC was a dumped file from a particular brand of copier, and somehow that extension became the default for just about all SNES ROMs regardless of how they were dumped. Renaming the file to SFC is all that needs to be done for BSNES compatability, and last I knew the BSNES package contained an executable that would basically batch-'fix' ROMs - rename them to a .sfc extension (which all emulators support anyways) and maybe strip headers too, I don't remember.

Also, if something's not working double-check your config or your ROM source. I can run most Wii and PS2 games at a steady 40 FPS, and BSNES has yet to give me a problem with anything official, and the only 2 hacked game I've tried with it ran fine too.

But yeah, byuu's already stated that his goal is accuracy, and that it's his ideas that go into it rather than the public's. If you just care about your game booting up, playing close to right, and displaying a tidy 60FPS, then chances are you'll be fine sticking with SNES9X or ZSNES.

 

[updowners]

Use 'snespurify v10' to clean up SNES roms for use with bsnes.

Edit: As stated above it should already be included in the bnses directory as snespurify.exe

 

[Rydian]

http://byuu.org/bsnes/

"Why accuracy matters"
"Legacy formats (and why I do not support them)"

Hey look at that, the first two articles on the damn download page explain it all!

And bsnes comes with the tool you need to convert your ROMs, it'll scan a directory and automatically make whatever changes are needed, and your ROMs will still load in other emulators afterwards.

Also last I checked bsnes has the best compatibility.

 

[Schlupi]

http://byuu.org/bsnes/

"Why accuracy matters"
"Legacy formats (and why I do not support them)"

Hey look at that, the first two articles on the damn download page explain it all!

And bsnes comes with the tool you need to convert your ROMs, it'll scan a directory and automatically make whatever changes are needed, and your ROMs will still load in other emulators afterwards.

Also last I checked bsnes has the best compatibility.

You tryin' to pick a fight?

Spoiler

Just messing with you.

 

[Rydian]

I know bsnes is a recent addition so it's not like it's been in a "stable" state forever like the other SNES emulators, but now it's the most accurate.

 

[Covarr]

It just so happens that bsnes is the only emulator with full, proper Super Game Boy support. I'm not just talking about sticking borders around games like Visual Boy Advance does either, I mean all the features you'd see in a real SGB in a real SNES, such as being able to draw custom borders and modify palettes and all that. This is because bsnes contains a GB emulator, emulates SGB hardware, and requires an original SGB rom. No other emulator in the world can make this claim (except SSNES).

I've found that a good midpoint is SSNES. It's basically the core of BSNES, stripped down to the very basics with a new interface. Unlike BSNES, it *does* support SMC roms, though I'm not sure if it supports headered roms. It seems to run faster, though I can't say for sure since I haven't done any benchmarks.

edit: It's also worth noting that both BSNES and SSNES receive frequent updates, often only a week or two apart. byuu pushes out bugfixes faster than almost any other emulator, the only exceptions being those with frequent svn/git revisions and buildbots such as Dolphin and JPCSP.

 

[Rydian]

The difference between SMC and SFC is just the extension anyways, the header is the main issue.

Idunno' what's going to happen with the new dumps, though.

 

[Cheeseburgermafi]

I imagine the fixed goodsnes dumps will either be in a torrent pack somewhere, or rarely seen in the wild like no-intro fixes for older systems.