A Doc That May Help Squidgesnes Transparency Issues

[craigix]

I wonder if the rendering in Zsnes is in C?

 

[DaveC]

DaveC, remember, it can only get better, and it WILL get better. 2007 is the year of the GP2X

I hope so but it doesn't look like anyone is working on it It seems many have come, do a little here and there, and then run off to something else just as fast.

Notaz did a fantastic job and gave it a nice boost, but he is on to other things like Sega CD etc. I guess it is just too much of a pain in the ass to mess with. If Notaz is right, that perfect SNES will probably come only with new more powerful hardware, then it doesn't bode well for the GP2X having it. The bad thing is this "new hardware" will probably have shitty 16:9 widescreens etc that will make SNES look bad. I have SNES on PSP and the stretching and blurr is terrible. too bad there isn't good documentation on the SNES hardware somewhere. Who is going to come along and be the hero of GP2X

 

[Squidge]

I wonder if the rendering in Zsnes is in C?

An incredibly small part of it is (few conversions between formats, video recording/playback etc). The rest is in pure intel x86 assembler.

I hope so but it doesn't look like anyone is working on it sad.gif It seems many have come, do a little here and there, and then run off to something else just as fast.

People are still working on it. They are just not releasing updates every day or so.

Yes, snes is a pain in the ass, but things will improve and no doubt there will be new hardware in the future that will either run homebrew stuff, or can be hacked into doing so. The Gizmondo would have been almost perfect if it wasn't for it's rediculously slow video memory & small screen.

 

[moz]

its good to see squide posting again :_)

 

[Stevie_Mac]

How come everyone says SquidgeSNES is the best? I thought this too untill recently alot of my Roms didn't seem to load in SquidgeSNES so i tried snesgp2x(nk's) Modded Version. This seems to load everygame with sound & Zelda works with the rain so i guess the transparency works better in this? It's a bit of a lower framerate but it plays with the rain in the right places. It also seems to play Yoshi's Island & Starfox, ok a bit slow but its playing it.

Can't we mix the 2 somehow? I know its not that simple but surely someone should look at the sourcecode or carry on with the other emu as well its not been updated since 15/07/2006!

I do have to say tho just seeing the old SNES working on a small screen is fantastic, so great job to all who work their asses off to make these things happen!

 

[Squidge]

How come everyone says SquidgeSNES is the best?

because I say so

Can't we mix the 2 somehow? I know its not that simple but surely someone should look at the sourcecode or carry on with the other emu as well its not been updated since 15/07/2006!

NK's snes is basically a straight port of Snes9X, whereas SquidgeSNES is an optimised port of Snes9X. You can't have them both, but I suppose you could have a "rendering mode" which says whether to use fast or slow/accurate rendering.

For most of the problem games in SSNES however, you can just turn off the troublesome layer (such as the fog in DKC).

 

[Stevie_Mac]

Ah that explains it thanks. Yeah a rendering mode would be good.

So how come most of my roms don't work in SquidgeSNES but do work in NK's snes? Is there something i'm missing in SquidgeSNES?

 

[HEP]

It's a bug in the sound code. You will see that when you turn sound emulation off the games will also run in SquidgeSNES.

 

[DaveC]

People are still working on it. They are just not releasing updates every day or so.

Yes, snes is a pain in the ass, but things will improve and no doubt there will be new hardware in the future that will either run homebrew stuff, or can be hacked into doing so.

Yeah I know that future hardware is always a possibility. But the move to widescreens with odd resolutions and custom batteries will make it less than ideal there too but for other reasons than speed.

If SNES was near perfect (or at least close) on the GP2X there would be no real need to wait for and have to buy more hardware. I was hoping that it would get further on the *GP2X* that is all. If it is being worked on that would be great.

 

[Reesy]

If anyone's interested I hacked together another version of Snes9x. This version is based on PocketSnes but I added the ASM cpu core and sound core from SquidgeSnes. So basically its SquidgeSnes but with the rendering routines from PocketSnes. This means you should have correct tranparencies (as long as you enable them from the menu ) I haven't tested this so I could be talking out of my ass.

The main reason I did this was because Pilotwings does not work on SquidgeSnes but it does work on my hacked version.

http://reesy.gp32x.de/PocketSnes.zip
http://reesy.gp32x.de/PocketSnes_src.zip

Later
Reesy

 

[Jaguarandine]

I just tried it Reesy. Battletoads Double Dragon; it works ok, but slow. Actraiser; can see everything now, but really slow, music is funny and locks up after the mode 7 sequence to the action stages.

 

[craigix]

Looks like the best solution would be a menu option to enable real transparancy when it is absolutely needed so users can pass an area then switch back to fast mode.

 

[tetsuomaki]

If anyone's interested I hacked together another version of Snes9x. This version is based on PocketSnes but I added the ASM cpu core and sound core from SquidgeSnes. So basically its SquidgeSnes but with the rendering routines from PocketSnes. This means you should have correct tranparencies (as long as you enable them from the menu ) I haven't tested this so I could be talking out of my ass.

The main reason I did this was because Pilotwings does not work on SquidgeSnes but it does work on my hacked version.

http://reesy.gp32x.de/PocketSnes.zip
http://reesy.gp32x.de/PocketSnes_src.zip

Later
Reesy

Hi Reesy, thanks for that its exactly what I was looking for. The rain and darkness effects in Zelda are rendered correctly, as someone mentioned it is a little choppy but thats perfectly playable still. Hopefully this can still be optimised a bit and then it would be perfect The diagonal controls don't seem to be mapped though, so Street Fighter 2 is impossible. h34r:

 

[Dunny]

Well, I can play DKC2 at around 25fps now, so I'm more than happy. Might have a bash at some other games, but I only wanted that one

Cheers, Reesy!

 

[gaterooze]

Awesome to see you back (in any form, no expectations), Reesy

Thanks for the port -- it's wonderful! Games run much faster than I expected, I love the ol' Dr interface... wow. Great to see Pilotwings playable (25+ FPS at 270mhz). Front Mission is working great with transparencies

Select is mapped to the menu screen, yet some games need it. And as tetsuo mentioned, there are no diagonal controls.

 

[Stevie_Mac]

Nice one Reesy as i was saying before this is what i was looking for. Zelda works great, i tried the lost Vikings too that now works but Yoshi's island crashed it, overal great tho!

As above for extra's & maybe be able to use the volume controls ingame rather than exiting back to the menu. Loving what you've done mate keep it up!!!!

Stevie

 

[fusion_power]

It is not really the CPU that is the problem. The CPU core in Squidgesnes is ASM. The SNES CPU is very weak too. I bet the GP2X could emulate 5 SNES CPUs at once. I think the problem is the graphics hardware. It seems very hard to emulate and that is not well documented.

That is correct, but you will have almost perfect snes eventually, when it happens is another question entirely though. It could be next month/next 6 months/next year.

For normal People it is really hard to belive, that we can have full-Speed NeoGeo and good-Speed CPS2 Emulators (With QSound!) and Full Speed Quake and.. and... and...on GP2X but non 100% emulated tiny SNES :lol: without immense Overclocking.
Ok, I know the mentioned SNES-Issues (there are interesting WIKI Articles about SNES Unique Chip-Design -*phew* -hard tobaco!)

Maybe someone should ask the japanese guy who do the fabulous CPS2 Emu those days - for me, this Guy can do miracles!

 

[gaterooze]

FYI SRAM saves from PocketSNES seem to work in SquidgeSNES.

 

[Squidge]

For normal People it is really hard to belive, that we can have full-Speed NeoGeo and good-Speed CPS2 Emulators (With QSound!) and Full Speed Quake and.. and... and...on GP2X but non 100% emulated tiny SNES :lol: without immense Overclocking.

Once someone takes the task of writing there own snes emulator, then maybe it'll run at full speed?

Like is usually said when trying to make something go faster: The algorithm needs rewriting rather than just spot-optimizing code that no one actually knows how it works. Once a faster algorithm is written, and thus the code understood and optimised, it could be very fast indeed. But thats a big task, so most people will simply wait for more powerful hardware.

 

[badwolf]

I just tried pocksnes with zelda and i noticed there are no diagonals.