Gba Emulation

[evol]

maybe they are using the wrong mmuhack.o or just a older version of the emulators ??

 

[craigix]

Yeah you need the right mmuhack and the latest notaz release of gpsp.

 

[Burbruee]

Well, most of the GBA-games I've tried on the 2X report a steady 55-60 fps.
This includes Pokemon Emerald, Gyakuten Saiban 3, Super Mario World, Mario Kart, Wario Land 4, and more. And I own a GBASP and the speed is pretty much the same. Except the GBASP doesn't freeze as often.

 

[Akuma no Houkon]

QUOTE

I don't remember if DrPocketSNES allowed me to select the rom dir or not, but here's my setup:

sd:\roms\snes\


Its not DrPocketSnes that I have that problem with, it lets me choose. I have that exact same setup, its SquideSNES that wont let me navigate, and doesnt say where the roms need to be. So the rom selector shows nothing...(I would really like to try this emu...any help?)

Btw I have the proper mmuhack and I have a correct GBA bios (same md5 as the one suggested in the readme), and have the latest versions of all the emulators, and OCed to 250 most are still not even playable. Metroids are sometimes and so are the Castlevainas (depending on the situation), but the Marios, Zeldas, FF3/6 and most others are not even close.

Even if they ran at a steady 60 fps not OCed, I still couldnt use the GBA emulator because when in unscaled mode it doesnt center the screen, I cant stand that.

A lot of it, I dont think, is purely an FPS issue, its flicker, the screen flickers like crazy. Some of the FPS drops I can deal with, but not the massive flicker.

 

[Alex.]

Make sure the LCD slider bar in your firmware Settings panel is all the way to the left.

 

[Squidge]

SquideSNES that wont let me navigate, and doesnt say where the roms need to be. So the rom selector shows nothing...(I would really like to try this emu...any help?)

Rom dir is shown at top of file/rom selector.

 

[Akuma no Houkon]

SquideSNES that wont let me navigate, and doesnt say where the roms need to be. So the rom selector shows nothing...(I would really like to try this emu...any help?)

Rom dir is shown at top of file/rom selector.


The one I have just says "roms". It has no directory dividers or any hint about where thats at. I had thought that was simply the title of the list, not naming the dir that its in. Since I already have them in /roms I assume its ./roms ? Or do the roms have to actually all have to be in /roms and not /roms/<system> ? Ill figure it out when I have the time, although a short note in the readme would be helpful

QUOTE
Make sure the LCD slider bar in your firmware Settings panel is all the way to the left.

It wasnt, it was default which was almost all the way to the right. Ill see later if that makes a difference

 

[Exophase]

A couple of you guys are super super picky, I can understand not liking frameskip but saying that skipping less than 50% of the frames makes the game unplayable is outrageous! I personally won't play a game if it runs below fullspeed (that does NOT mean no frameskip) but I would never go so far as to call it "unplayable", that's like calling fast food "inedible." MOST people will tolerate around frameskip 1 most of the time - in fact, even DaveC allows that in his "standard", and he's one of the pickier people around here...

Be that as it may, to anyone saying that it can't get any better, I do believe that in theory renderer speed for GBA (and SNES) can be improved substantially for a majority of games (but not all). So you should shut up and be patient (talking to you, Dunny )

BTW, saying that something that skips frames isn't full speed is grossly inaccurate - frame skipping is a sacrifice made to attain fullspeed. That doesn't mean it doesn't diminish the gameplay experience but one thing it does NOT diminish is actual speed. If time in the game passes the same as it does on a real platform then by such an obvious self defining term it is full speed.

 

[Akuma no Houkon]

If I had lots of scratches on my CDs and they skipped a lot, even if they only skipped every couple seconds, I would still not listen to them. Its horrible and takes all the fun out of it.

I see no difference here.

Its not some small, hardly noticeable missing frame, its "mario jumps, skips whole sections of his animation, then lands" Thats like random words taken out of the songs on that CD.

I havent tried yet with the LCD all the way left (crossing my fingers), but with only having a 2-3 hr battery life at 200mhz, I get very little playtime at 250mhz (not to mention I get no warning if the battery is going to die, because if it gets too low, before that light comes on, the 250mhz locks up...)

Personally I would rather have the game Play Slow then skip frames, but that doesnt fix the flicker.

Dont get me wrong, I love the system and give kudos to all developers, emu developers included. I am just a realist.

 

[Exophase]

If I had lots of scratches on my CDs and they skipped a lot, even if they only skipped every couple seconds, I would still not listen to them. Its horrible and takes all the fun out of it.

I see no difference here.

Its not some small, hardly noticeable missing frame, its "mario jumps, skips whole sections of his animation, then lands" Thats like random words taken out of the songs on that CD.

I havent tried yet with the LCD all the way left, but with only having a 2-3 hr battery life at 200mhz, I get very little playtime at 250mhz (not to mention I get no warning if the battery is going to die, because if it gets too low, before that light comes on, the 250mhz locks up...)

That's a horrible analogy, but if you feel that way. The fact is most people don't, so...

(since I know you'll ask, it's horrible because showing say, every other frame out of 60 is much less noticeable than missing chunks of audio, especially when said audio dominates the experience and the animation smoothness is only a fraction of the gameplay experience, behind the actual gameplay, static graphical quality, and music. Most people will rate gameplay as the most important aspect, and a proper framerate of around 35-40 frames drawn out of 60 will almost never hamper gameplay. And your Mario description sounds very exaggerated.)

I recommend the following:

First, stop talking about SNES emulation until you actually use SquidgeSNES like everyone else does.

Second, try manual frameskip 1 on gpSP and tell me if you still find it "unplayable", the auto frameskip is still a little bit dodgy.

Third, don't complain about the screen not being centered on startup, that's a simple BUG that I accidentally let in and WILL be fixed, it isn't some kind of inherent flaw in the emulation - in the mean time why not take the second or so necessary to go to the menu and back to fix it (I'm sure if you'd read around you'd have realized this was the "fix")

Finally, to anyone saying a reported 60 (60) in gpSP is rendering less frames than a real GBA or an NDS, you're full of garbage. Although it might not be vsynced as well. I don't know if anyone made that exact claim, because the value on the right might not have been 60.

Now, I personally have ran the PSP version of gpSP vs. a Nintendo DS, with Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance on both - on the one hand, the colors were more washed out and the image was more blurry due to the filtering (although it was MUCH larger). On the other hand it was noticeably SMOOTHER. I haven't really been able to achieve that smoothness on the GP2X version in most cases, but this is probably more a speed issue than anything.

 

[Akuma no Houkon]

Its not just missing a frame here or there, in Minish Cap, I can Roll and its like the sprite teleports in small chunks. I can actually see him disappear sometimes. I swear if I just pause it quick enough I can catch him disapearing!

Now as I said the castlevainas seem to play pretty good (I havent gotten to an action point yet, but so far its playable, other then the non centered issue) And my boy has been playing metroids, those dont seem horribly bad.

No insult to the authors intended, the GBA plays 10x better than the one we had for the GP32. The SNES still seems about the same though.

As for not talking about snes emulation until you played Squidge, I get conflicting arguments to that as well. I havent tried that emulator for the earlier stated reasons, but will soon.

Basically, I get tired of all these Yes men candy coating something that isnt close to perfect. There are some games that run fine, many that dont.

And its really opinion about what is playable or not, but something that in NOT opinion it does not run the majority of games at the full 60 FPS it just doesnt. You can skip frames and pretend all you want, and if that works for you, cool, but that is not full speed stop lying.

I was...duped..really, into getting my original GP32. I read many many topics on the forums, and from everyone posts it sounded like SNES emulation was fullspeed. Now I am VERY happy that I got that GP32, but I never did get to use it for SNES emulation. It wasnt even close to the speed everyone was pretending.

I dont want ppl new to the GP2x to have to same experience.

 

[Exophase]

You can skip frames and pretend all you want, and if that works for you, cool, but that is not full speed stop lying.

Yes it IS. Don't make me repeat myself, "fullspeed" means nothing more than running in correct synchronization with the original's gamespeed - in the case of GBA, if the music plays without skipping it's fullspeed. If you want to know if something skips frames to achieve fullspeed, ask the right question. There's a huge fundamental difference between the two things.

Anyway, your version of gpSP sounds buggy (somehow I wonder if it's the latest?).. for everyone else, you go to the menu on startup and go BACK (not selecting anything in the screen options, but it shouldn't make a difference) and this will center the screen. And I can't imagine why Link would ever disappear.

So please make SURE that you're using Notaz's build, and try the manual frameskip of 1 like I recommended as well.

Hopefully with notaz's recent investigations in configuring the framerate we should have smoother emulation soon too. I guarantee you, if I can get gpSP on GP2X anything like the PSP version for a majority of cases then things will look very nice, on a game that runs quickly the thing never tears and never skips a frame (there's some minor ghosting but it isn't anywhere close to as bad as it is in some other emulators like the TG16 one and NesterJ). But that's far from trivial given that PSP is a faster platform.

 

[Akuma no Houkon]

I disagree, that is not the common useage of fullspeed and you know it.

On GPSP, if I switch modes a couple times it centers, I tried a couple times initially and when it didnt work I assumed it wasnt able to yet. That helps alot.

I think setting the LCD down helped alot, and forcing 1 frameskip not auto, not Link moves a little slower, but doesnt teleport, thats almost playable now

I dont know what Notaz is, and if I downloaded the latest version from this site, why I wouldnt have it?

Anyway I didnt say that you couldnt make the emu better and faster, I just said, in my experience its not that way now. Today.

I havent tried the PSP version, the last emu I tried on the PSP was slower that the GP2x ones, but its been awhile.

 

[Exophase]

I disagree, that is not the common useage of fullspeed and you know it.

No, it really is, what makes you say that? Now I admit this is a semantic issue and I'm coming off as nit picking but it's for a good reason because there's a lot of confusion regarding this and people should be very clear.

What needs to be specified is the speed and (at least, if fullspeed) the frame skipping necessary. IE:

50% speed (the thing is, at this point frameskipping tends to be negligeable)
fullspeed, FS0
fullspeed, FS2

I'm not saying that frameskip is irrelevant, but I am saying that it's not related to speed, if 100% speed synchronization is attained.

On GPSP, if I switch modes a couple times it centers, I tried a couple times initially and when it didnt work I assumed it wasnt able to yet. That helps alot.

For me it has always been recentered by entering the menu and immediately exiting (don't switch modes!).. of course this will definitely be fixed next version, it's just the least of my worries (I have an overwhelming number of things to do or try to do)

I think setting the LCD down helped alot, and forcing 1 frameskip not auto, not Link moves a little slower, but doesnt teleport, thats almost playable now

Does the music skip? If not it's fullspeed, again, not slower.. if it's anything less than that the music will skip very noticeably.

The other questions are: 200MHz or 250MHz this time? And are you playing in an eary with a lot of blending effects (like the first forest), because that will hurt render speed tremendously.

Oh yeah, a third question: Are you using improved RAM timings?

 

[Vimacs]

another thing that will/should/could give you another few fps is setting decent ram timings, like
cpu_speed.gpe --trc 6 --tras 4 --twr 1 --tmrd 1 --trfc 1 --trp 2 --trcd 2

you can add that to your autostart.gpu or make a little script to start gpsp, as in
#!/bin/sh
cpu_speed.gpe --trc 6 --tras 4 --twr 1 --tmrd 1 --trfc 1 --trp 2 --trcd 2
exec ./gpsp.gpe

little question at exophase, how do you archive the centering of the image? just blitting to the right offset? maybe setting gp2x_video_RGB_setwindows (minilib function) would be a "nicer" way?
as in: gp2x_video_RGB_setwindows(160,120) (not sure if thats right, check minilib if you are interested) to set the top left corner to the center.

 

[badwolf]

I consider a emulator fullspeed if the game runs at the same speed it would on the console with frameskip 1 or 2 and sound. Iv been playing pokemon emerald at frameskip 1 at 200mhz. its running great. full speed and everything. (as in the same speed as the console) i would run it at frameskip 0 but the portions that have transparencies slow it down to about 30 fps and a frameskip of 1 works wonders here.

I only have to bring up the menu and go back to the game to center the screen. It works that way for me every time.

And if i remember correctly link wont roll in the minish cap because of a bug in the latest version. I think i first reported it to... Cant test it now though because im running a battery benchmark.

 

[Akuma no Houkon]

Yes I am in the starting woods, 250mhz, I do not have craigxs ram timings turned on (if they help why are they not default?), I cannot tell with the sound because even at full volume, I can hardly hear it (I havent tried headphones yet)

Though games like Mega Man and bass, are almost unplayable (First level, jumping over the lava, is very choppy...)

I didnt see any controller options on GPSP (maybe I missed them) but I _cannot_ play an action game with the current control scheme (A should do what X does now and X should do what B does now...if I could change these settings life would be better...)

Anyway I have said all that I really need to, anything more and Ill just be repeating myself. I hope that emulation in general gets better for the GP2x. I fear because it got to a certain point on the GP32 and then stopped.

 

[badwolf]

It realy sound like your using an old version of gpsp. this is the latest version: http://notaz.gp2x.de/misc/gpsp09-2xb_2.zip

Also if your gp2x is going to crash after 15 minutes at 250mhz why not just over clock to 240mhz instead.... its not going to hurt. But its only 24/25 the performance zomg!

 

[foleyjo]

[
Does the music skip? If not it's fullspeed, again, not slower.. if it's anything less than that the music will skip very noticeably.

Pop Idol doesnt run fullspeed the music is all over the place.
Personally I dont understand peoples problems here. Since the last update to the emulator all my games seem to run at full speed and even though theres frame skip on Its not that noticable and definatly not worth complaining about.

Except for Pop Idol of course

 

[zodttd]

You're either running an early version of my quick and dirty dynarec for gpSP2X or an early version of Exophase's versions after he picked it back up.

I agree with Exophase on the topic of fullspeed with frameskip. What makes a game fullspeed isn't dependant on how many frames are drawn or even rendered to the screen. What matters is that all the core components of the emulator are in sync with each other at the same timing as the original platform. When that syncronization occurs, the emulator is running fullspeed, as in, at the full performance rate of the original system.

So fullspeed, to me at least, can mean someone saying "it runs at fullspeed without the GPU drawing to the screen". Everything in that persons emulator could be running completely fine and have the CPU, GPU, SPU, CDROM, etc. in sync with each other, and there's nothing drawn to the screen. Now you have a fullspeed emulator that draws NOTHING to the screen.

Remember, what you see on screen is the last product of what an emulator shows you, and while it's most important to an end user, it can be less vital to an emulator.