General Emulation Questions

[Godmil]

I have a couple of questions that I've been very curious about for months but been unable to answer.

1. Do emulators improve the performance of the machines they emulate? If a game displayed slowdown on it's original machine, but the GP2X emu has cpu time to spare, would the slowdown be evident on the emulator?
Also are the limitations that some machines had, like the number of sprites that can appear in a line (which resulted in flickering if the number was exceeded), still apparent in emulators?

2. Are European roms more efficient than US/Jp? Everyone knows that Japanese and US machines run at 60fps, and European ones are only 50fps. Since it requires more power to get more fps in an emulator does this make it easier to play European games? Or do the lower fps in European games mean that they actually run slower (in which case US games should be favoured)?

Any thoughts/opinions would be appreciated

 

[Shikaku]

No (everything bad about the machine will still be bad) and yes/negligible.

 

[gaterooze]

Isn't it theoretically possible to overclock emulated CPUs (the way we underclock them in MAME and PSX4ALL)?

 

[Shikaku]

Yes. It can help but it slows down the program to emulate a faster processor.

 

[slaanesh]

1. Do emulators improve the performance of the machines they emulate? If a game displayed slowdown on it's original machine, but the GP2X emu has cpu time to spare, would the slowdown be evident on the emulator?
Also are the limitations that some machines had, like the number of sprites that can appear in a line (which resulted in flickering if the number was exceeded), still apparent in emulators?

Actually, I've seen some emulators which do improve on the original hardware. The Sega Master System suffered from horribly sprite flicker because of it's limitation on the number of sprites per line. There are emulators which correct this problem so that you don't have to suffer through the epilepsy inducing display that the original machine generated.
Also, some emulators will allow you to overclock the emulatred CPU, thus allowing the native machine to run faster. A good use of this would be on an Amiga emulator for instance if you are trying to run something like Frontier. You want the emulated machine to be as fast as possible so that it can draw the smoothest possible display. SNES games and some Megadrive games had a tendency to slow down so "overclocking" the emulated CPUs may help, though could also lead to other timing issues.

 

[skeezix]

Few emus are anywhere near hardware perfect; ie: Many times a slowdown would occur in real hardware and not in emulation (since the emulation could be throttling, while the original is struggling.) Just like you can't emulate 'glow' like arcade monitors have... or emulate the sound of the arcade cabinet environment on the speaker inside, etc.

Usually they just look sharper though, which is okay

(Some emus can improve performance.. ie: emulating PS1, you could do anti aliasing and higher framerate, without directly effectin the emulation quality)


Some few games will run better on a US or Euro version due to the speed differences etc.. but not too often

jeff

 

[Instantjewmix]

From what i have seen, there is no emulator that can outdo the real deal. For instance, the GP2X has a 200 mhz processor (if you are poor like me) and it still has some problems (i.e. donkey kong country). The original super nintendo had some 3.48 mhz(and ran games flawlessly) The ones for computers are even more intensive becoause computers have more to spare.
Another example is a ps1 emulator. The original playstaion has 33.5 mhz processor. Flawless. My computer can run an emulator at 60 fps, but it takes up 100% of my processor in task manager. I have a 2.2 ghz amd processor. It would really kick ass if there came a time when the normal clock speed in squidgesnes was like 5 mhz, and the overclock max was 10 mhz.

 

[slaanesh]

From what i have seen, there is no emulator that can outdo the real deal.

I believe that UAE on the PC is better than the real Amiga Hardware. It's so much easier to run software (no physical disk changes) and it seems more compatible (as you can swap between different versions of Kickstart and emulated hardware).

There's a SNES emulator called BSNES which is amazingly accurate - indeed it's aim is accuracy of speed. To run at full speed requires hefty hardware. There's a port for the Mac by Mr Bannister. Check it out

 

[darkman]

On Squidgesnes, when playing Super R-type I have no slowdown. I can turn on my SNES and play Super R-type and I get slow down. Maybe the emulation not being perfect helps, but there does seem a lot of difference to me.

 

[skeezix]

On Squidgesnes, when playing Super R-type I have no slowdown. I can turn on my SNES and play Super R-type and I get slow down. Maybe the emulation not being perfect helps, but there does seem a lot of difference to me.

The trick is the games being designed with hardware limits in mind -- they're designed to slowdown (knowing they would slow down, rather), so sometimes emulation makes them harder since there is no slowdown....


jeff

 

[Trip]

From what i have seen, there is no emulator that can outdo the real deal.

The Bleem! Playstation 1 emulator for the PC used DirectX to vastly improve on the graphics without any slowdown.
The games always looked a lot better on the PC thanks to this & everyone I know that had a Playstation 1 at the time thought so too.

Shame there's not that much power to spare with the 2X

 

[saehn]

A bit off-topic, but: Vive la émulation!

I love being able to carry around some of the all-time greatest games. IMO, 3D is best for FPSs and flight simulators. RPGs, SHMUPs, platformers, arcade? 2D FTW, baby. There are exceptions, of course. Katmari Damacy, Battle Arena Toshinden, Soul Calibur...

Note: This post contains gratuitous use of abbreviations.

 

[Godmil]

they're designed to slowdown (knowing they would slow down, rather), so sometimes emulation makes them harder since there is no slowdown....

That's an interesting point, but I seriously doubt any game developers would let the game slowdown when they could avoid it. I've never seen a review of a game which went along the lines of: "fantastic use of slowdown when lots of characters appear on screen at once."
It's a limitation of the hardware, not a feature of the game.
(also where it appears in otherwise well made games I think it would tend to be in convertions where they didn't want to deviate from the original design)

 

[vampire8bit]

When I want to play any emulated game, I want to play it exactly as it was on the original hardware.

 

[vaustein]

A good test - fire up GPFCE2x and play Castlevania 2: Simon's Quest.

In the first mansion, just after Simon Belmont leaps from the entrance to the first long platform, several slimes and armors attack. This part *always* slowed down on a hardware NES as the number of concurrent sprites increased. If you recall, the slimes would often fly up through false floors on the upper platform, and this typically triggered the slowdown.

 

[fluffyhamster]

they're designed to slowdown (knowing they would slow down, rather), so sometimes emulation makes them harder since there is no slowdown....

That's an interesting point, but I seriously doubt any game developers would let the game slowdown when they could avoid it. I've never seen a review of a game which went along the lines of: "fantastic use of slowdown when lots of characters appear on screen at once."
It's a limitation of the hardware, not a feature of the game.
(also where it appears in otherwise well made games I think it would tend to be in convertions where they didn't want to deviate from the original design)

I think he meant that if the machine couldn't take a certain part of a game, they would design it where they could still use that part of the game if they did something different to make it feel better and be easier.