How Important Is Having Sound In Emus?

[DaveC]

It is mentioned from time to time about emus that are slow with sound or don't have it at all. I was wondering how many really think it is important or not.

 

[c0ncept]

A game actually working is more important than it working with sound in my opinon. But if sound is even marginally possible it should be attmepted because I prefer to play games as close to their original intentions as possible (ie full speed with sound) but speed is to me more important than sound.

 

[toxibunny]

I vote YES- playing games without sound removes about 33% of the experience for me. I only do it when there *is* no sound...

edit: i'm not so bothered about the games that have shit sound, but for something like SNES RPGs, it's pretty much essential.

 

[DaveC]

For me sound is so much a part of the experience, especially for retro stuff. Pac-Man with no sound ? meh. I don't bother playing without sound, so the SNES emu never gets used by me. It seems that sound gets neglected the most for emus.

 

[toxibunny]

pacman's a complete anomaly for the time though, maybe... when everything was the odd 'blip -bloop' (except for williams games) pacman was like 'woowwoowwoowWEHWOOWEHWOOWEHWOOWOOWOOWOOWOOWOOWOOWOO!!!'


it was *so* good hearing that on the GP... was it skeezix that did the pacman emulator ages ago? craig maybe?

and you're right... sound *is* neglected on emulators... it's a shame...


edit again: no home version of pacman has come close to recreating the sound of the arcade... I reckon developers thought it was too scary

 

[DaveC]

pacman's a complete anomaly for the time though, maybe... when everything was the odd 'blip -bloop' (except for williams games) pacman was like 'woowwoowwoowWEHWOOWEHWOOWEHWOOWOOWOOWOOWOOWOOWOOWOO!!!'


it was *so* good hearing that on the GP... was it skeezix that did the pacman emulator ages ago? craig maybe?

and you're right... sound *is* neglected on emulators... it's a shame...


edit again: no home version of pacman has come close to recreating the sound of the arcade... I reckon developers thought it was too scary

​

Have you tried MultiPac from the compo? It is not perfect with regards to sound but is is not too bad. The other emu was Xcade, but the sound was distorted some.

 

[Octavious]

sound is neglected because of lack of raw power
we lack the CPU and RAM to do sound in some things

~Octavious

( I dont mind no sound, as long as my picture quality is bettet than everyone elses lol )

 

[look]

Sound is vital for blind users like myself

 

[DaveC]

sound is neglected because of lack of raw power
we lack the CPU and RAM to do sound in some things

~Octavious

( I dont mind no sound, as long as my picture quality is bettet than everyone elses lol )

​

Or it is neglected because the coder doesn't want to bother with it as it is too much work.

I still say alot of the "feeling" of retro titles is gone without the classic sounds, it just doesn't make it worth while playing.

 

[toxibunny]

sound is neglected because of lack of raw power
we lack the CPU and RAM to do sound in some things

~Octavious

( I dont mind no sound, as long as my picture quality is bettet than everyone elses lol )

​

Or it is neglected because the coder doesn't want to bother with it as it is too much work.

I still say alot of the "feeling" of retro titles is gone without the classic sounds, it just doesn't make it worth while playing.

​

or is it neglected because people say they don't give a shit as long as the picture quality is good?

 

[Esn]

I never play games unless the music is close to perfect. h34r:
Except for slow puzzle games, that is...

Playing without music isn't half as fun to me.

 

[Quiest]

I would say a mix between point one and two.

Depends on the game I want to play...

 

[Alpha2]

In many cases sound is a nessesary aid to the actual gameplay, I dont mean the music which is great to have, I just mean the sound effects of the things occuring around you. It's hard to concentrate if you cant hear your enemies.

As for music, I like to have it, it makes a differeance between just being a technical achievement in emmulating the gameplay and an entertaining achivment in both audio and video. In the 16bit era the impresive sound and score in games was a factor that mades stars of people like Yuzo Kashiro and Tommy Tallarico as music had finally grauated from the realm of bleeps and bloops and static sounds for "drums".



To sum up:
If you want to just create a show of technical prowess no sound is fine, if you want it to be an enjoyable and entertaining show of technical prowess it needs to have sound.

 

[Tobriand]

I really put myself somewhere between the first two options - I think its very important to have sound if possible, because it adds so much to a game. However, the number of times I couldn't be bothered to get out my headphones to play with sound when say on a bus must say something about its actual importance.

I suppose I'd say my percieved prioority of sound is very high - especially on SNES (only system where I've thus far not played quite a lot of the good ole RPGs like CT on account of the sound being too good to lose), but once I'm actually into a game, the actual importance is somewhere around the second one.

 

[Winterkid]

Sound is all part of the experience, in fact a lot of the games I play require or have audio clues or warnings or have sounds that indicate game play shifts.

 

[Ringo]

As most of you mention - it really depends on the game. Actually in my case it's more depending on the system.

I can't play C64 games without sound... I just can't
However a system like Sega Master System I allways turn the sound off. Actually I also tend to do this on Mega Drive and SNES most of the time.
But I play with sound on PC ENgine :blink:

I guess I'm just flakey....

 

[johncross85]

I put option 2 but I'd really like to have an option between 1 & 2.

I really don't care at all about music in games but I really miss the odd sound effect - it adds to the whole feedback thing. Somehow getting killed in a game just doesn't work without a corresponding crunch or scream.

Personally I'd like to see more emus like GP Engine where you can set how much sound you want. Presumably emulating just one channel of sound uses less processor power than emulating all the channels? If the system being emulated had 6 sound channels (for example), and in game XXXX channels 1 to 4 were used for music and channels 5 & 6 were used for effects, I'd happily disable channels 1 to 4 if it meant a better frame rate.

J(ohn)

 

[Reesy]

I put option 2 but I'd really like to have an option between 1 & 2.

I really don't care at all about music in games but I really miss the odd sound effect - it adds to the whole feedback thing. Somehow getting killed in a game just doesn't work without a corresponding crunch or scream.

Personally I'd like to see more emus like GP Engine where you can set how much sound you want. Presumably emulating just one channel of sound uses less processor power than emulating all the channels? If the system being emulated had 6 sound channels (for example), and in game XXXX channels 1 to 4 were used for music and channels 5 & 6 were used for effects, I'd happily disable channels 1 to 4 if it meant a better frame rate.

J(ohn)

​

Hmm interesting... I'll add that option to DrMD. You can currently switch off PSG, FM or both but I never really considered switching just individual channels off. I'll probably only add this option to the FM emulation as switching off individual PSG channels will not increase frame rate as the emulation is soo fast, you just wouldn't notice the difference.

 

[MaDsk8tard]

i vote yes because sonic, mario and other without sound is not sames games^^

 

[johncross85]

I put option 2 but I'd really like to have an option between 1 & 2.

I really don't care at all about music in games but I really miss the odd sound effect - it adds to the whole feedback thing. Somehow getting killed in a game just doesn't work without a corresponding crunch or scream.

Personally I'd like to see more emus like GP Engine where you can set how much sound you want. Presumably emulating just one channel of sound uses less processor power than emulating all the channels? If the system being emulated had 6 sound channels (for example), and in game XXXX channels 1 to 4 were used for music and channels 5 & 6 were used for effects, I'd happily disable channels 1 to 4 if it meant a better frame rate.

J(ohn)

​

Hmm interesting... I'll add that option to DrMD. You can currently switch off PSG, FM or both but I never really considered switching just individual channels off. I'll probably only add this option to the FM emulation as switching off individual PSG channels will not increase frame rate as the emulation is soo fast, you just wouldn't notice the difference.

​

Wow! Ask and ye shall receive!

DrMD = the benchmark for emulation on the GP32.

J(ohn)