I Love The Idea Of The Gp2x..... But

[Nelligan]

Sorry for venting, but some people ARE hard on SNES emu quality. I mean, sure you can say that overall it is not to your liking, but what about all the games that run 60fps at 250mhz with great sound(headphones) and little to no glitches? You can at least say that quality varies like I think others said. I understand the need to make an overall comment, but when it is negative and not specific enough, all that is good passes completly under the radar, and that is a shame. Speaking for myself, I want more specifics and less generalizations.

For example, I'm having a blast with Actraiser right now. It runs well at 200mhz but slows down when too much moving stuff on screen, so I play at 250mhz for no slow down at all and still have decent battery life. I did have to disable transparency on at least one stage. I play on my old TV with garbage bin homebrew svideo to composite adapter, I use earphone plug to send sound to TV. I'm not an expert, but the sound is perfect to me. Sure it is an old game, but I assure you it feels like having a SNES in my living room. Just have to restrain from throwing controller on the wall like a friend once did.

 

[Epicenter]

The problem is DaveC doesn't really know what he's talking about, or hasn't used SquidgeSNES in a long time. He recently said Super Mario World took a huge overclock to run-- it runs at full speed with the GP2X at the default speed the vast majority of the time, NO overclocking. Of all the games I try, the vast majority run fine without any major frameskip, usually no frameskip at all, and near 60 FPS. For example, Super Mario World runs at ~60 FPS all the time, Megaman X1-3 run great in all but a few spots (transparencies off, they do very little anyway), Sparkster runs very well nearly everywhere. Even mode 7 games are usually over 20 FPS which is pretty damn good considering they're using slow C code for those graphical tasks. The only game I like to play that I can't run acceptably is Gundam Wind Endless Duel.

As for audo, it's not perfect but it doesn't sound crunchy or like it pops a lot-- but no emulator audio is perfect. If you are at Frameskip 0 as I always run, it doesn't sound bad at all. Static and garbage are introduced with skipping excessive frames.

 

[drodd]

If you want yet another opinion: I'm surprised at the (albeit few) negative comments about the SNES emulator. So far almost everything I've thrown at it has been perfectly playable. In fact, it runs faster than the SNES emulator I have on my PocketPC, for what that's worth. Maybe the people complaining have defective devices?

You see what I'm saying? The emulator nuts...

And I'm not sure I understand this, either. Everyone who has both a GP2X and a PSP seems to agree that for new games, go with PSP, and for emulation, go with GP2X. So why complain about emulation on the GP2X if that's its greatest strength?

Seems about as silly as someone going on the PSP boards and complaining about all the "new game" talk. :rolleyes:

 

[Yono]

If you want yet another opinion: I'm surprised at the (albeit few) negative comments about the SNES emulator. So far almost everything I've thrown at it has been perfectly playable. In fact, it runs faster than the SNES emulator I have on my PocketPC, for what that's worth. Maybe the people complaining have defective devices?

You see what I'm saying? The emulator nuts...

And I'm not sure I understand this, either. Everyone who has both a GP2X and a PSP seems to agree that for new games, go with PSP, and for emulation, go with GP2X. So why complain about emulation on the GP2X if that's its greatest strength?

Seems about as silly as someone going on the PSP boards and complaining about all the "new game" talk. :rolleyes:

Oh don't listen to JaqMs, he's just the resident XGP fanboi.

I don't have any problems with SquidgeSNES, I find it works fine for Megaman, SMW and Chrono Trigger, which is what I use it for.

 

[DaveC]

The problem is DaveC doesn't really know what he's talking about, or hasn't used SquidgeSNES in a long time. He recently said Super Mario World took a huge overclock to run-- it runs at full speed with the GP2X at the default speed the vast majority of the time, NO overclocking.

Try Castlevania IV. It has alot of frameskip and the sound is distorted It is hard to explain it is like it is fluttering or the audio is frameskipping too. I can't run at 325 MHz to get the smoothness. All I know is that anyone buying a GP2X just for SNES would be hugely dissappointed. It is 10X better on the PSP yes. It runs full speed with good sound WITH transparencies. Maybe the advice should be to buy a PSP for better SNES. As long as you don't mind some screen stretching the PSP version is the best handheld SNES you can get.

 

[rei_yano]

The problem is DaveC doesn't really know what he's talking about, or hasn't used SquidgeSNES in a long time. He recently said Super Mario World took a huge overclock to run-- it runs at full speed with the GP2X at the default speed the vast majority of the time, NO overclocking.

Try Castlevania IV. It has alot of frameskip and the sound is distorted It is hard to explain it is like it is fluttering or the audio is frameskipping too. I can't run at 325 MHz to get the smoothness. All I know is that anyone buying a GP2X just for SNES would be hugely dissappointed. It is 10X better on the PSP yes. It runs full speed with good sound WITH transparencies. Maybe the advice should be to buy a PSP for better SNES. As long as you don't mind some screen stretching the PSP version is the best handheld SNES you can get.

Ive been making some decisions lately. I want a gp2x. its fine if snes doesnt work 100%. to tell you the truth another thing that has been itching my brain has been to try my hand at coding. at first i was thinking to code emu for it but now im thinking I surely want to make games for it. thats what I want. its been swimming in my head since i even heard of the whole "open source handheld" I still really really want a good snes emu and hopefully itll come around but im gonna shoot for a pipe dream here. i wanna dev games for it. years of work? yeah i know. no need to tell me I shouldnt or cant. Ive made my decision. this is kind of a big step for me lol. its always been a dream of mine but I have never tried to fullfill it cuase Ive always been to hard on myself. my wife is pushing me into it at this moment actually. she thinks I can. I think I can too. thanx for the help again. Im gonna buy one!

 

[Nelligan]

I agree with DaveC about PSP snes emulation being better and buying GP2X solely fot snes emulation wouldn't be the best choice. I saw with my own eyes FF6 running on psp snes emu, streched but with beautifull filter, full speed with transparancies. Wow, it was really something.

But please, those remarks that seems to imply having to overclock >=300mhz to get anything out of the 2x snes emu, that is just not true.

Oh and Rei, from someone that is not an expert at coding,you'd be surprised at what you can accomplish if you keep at it. Good luck and have fun.

 

[Epicenter]

The problem is DaveC doesn't really know what he's talking about, or hasn't used SquidgeSNES in a long time. He recently said Super Mario World took a huge overclock to run-- it runs at full speed with the GP2X at the default speed the vast majority of the time, NO overclocking.

Try Castlevania IV. It has alot of frameskip and the sound is distorted It is hard to explain it is like it is fluttering or the audio is frameskipping too. I can't run at 325 MHz to get the smoothness. All I know is that anyone buying a GP2X just for SNES would be hugely dissappointed. It is 10X better on the PSP yes. It runs full speed with good sound WITH transparencies. Maybe the advice should be to buy a PSP for better SNES. As long as you don't mind some screen stretching the PSP version is the best handheld SNES you can get.

Just turn Frameskip to 0 or 1 and it'll slow down when it lags instead of skipping frames and fucking up the audio. That's how a real console slows down anyway; frameskip looks unnatural. Sure I wouldn't recommend the GP2X for someone with their heart set on SNES emulation and nothing else, but it runs most games I've tried superbly, so I can't slander it the way you have been.

 

[stormyandcold]

Squidge is 1 of our elite but snes emulation for me just isnt enjoyable atm. (thanks anyway for all the hard work you've put into ssnes squidge).

On the other hand, megadrive and neogeo absolutely rocks!

Ok, most snes games run but speed isnt up to the standards of the above 2 emus.

Regardless, i will be donating to squidge in the hope his SE edition of squidgesnes finally gives us near-perfect snes emulation.

We may yet see the day when Super Mario Kart runs at 99-100% speed (for me, SMK is the benchmark for Snes emulation).

 

[DaveC]

Squidge is 1 of our elite but snes emulation for me just isnt enjoyable atm. (thanks anyway for all the hard work you've put into ssnes squidge).

On the other hand, megadrive and neogeo absolutely rocks!

Ok, most snes games run but speed isnt up to the standards of the above 2 emus.

Regardless, i will be donating to squidge in the hope his SE edition of squidgesnes finally gives us near-perfect snes emulation.

We may yet see the day when Super Mario Kart runs at 99-100% speed (for me, SMK is the benchmark for Snes emulation).

Actually SMK is a bit unfair of a benchmark as it uses extra hardware in the form of a DSP chip in the cart. I would be happy with regular SNES running at a decent framerate with sound and transparency. Even that is a tall order with the current hardware.

I agree with DaveC about PSP snes emulation being better and buying GP2X solely fot snes emulation wouldn't be the best choice. I saw with my own eyes FF6 running on psp snes emu, streched but with beautifull filter, full speed with transparancies. Wow, it was really something.

But please, those remarks that seems to imply having to overclock >=300mhz to get anything out of the 2x snes emu, that is just not true.

Stretch? filter? YUK! That is basically the thing keeping me from using SNES on the PSP. The blurr filter and weird aspect ratio is kind of bad but still at 1:1 it looks good if a bit small.

 

[Aninhumer]

Anything is playable when you're on holiday with no computer

I don't think snes is that bad, I only got slowdowns in Chrono Trigger when I did some of the really complex combos, and if I turned off sound I didn't even get those.
(I would normally have left the sound on, but when my dad made me reduce the volume to minimum, I thought I might as well get the extra speed.)

 

[xinfernoofdantex]

If you want yet another opinion: I'm surprised at the (albeit few) negative comments about the SNES emulator. So far almost everything I've thrown at it has been perfectly playable. In fact, it runs faster than the SNES emulator I have on my PocketPC, for what that's worth. Maybe the people complaining have defective devices?

You see what I'm saying? The emulator nuts...

And I'm not sure I understand this, either. Everyone who has both a GP2X and a PSP seems to agree that for new games, go with PSP, and for emulation, go with GP2X. So why complain about emulation on the GP2X if that's its greatest strength?

Seems about as silly as someone going on the PSP boards and complaining about all the "new game" talk. :rolleyes:

i have both a gp2x and psp, overall emulation i prefer the psp but the gp2x is there for ease of use

 

[epitaph]

Plus, there's SquidgeSNES-SE on the horizon... maybe?

 

[Series-8]

There are four criteria for determining how well a SNES game runs on XYZ emulator:


1. Any NON-Squaresoft, NON-Special chip game runs at 60 FPS, a game that uses NO transparency layers.
(quite a few early SNES titles) [countless simple games, early sports titles]

2. Any NON-Squaresoft, NON-Special chip game runs at 60 FPS, a game that uses ONE transparency layer.
(more modern SNES games, trasparency needs some fancy math to approximate the colours, but some VERY good ASM would make it totally possible) [Super Metroid]

3. A Squaresoft game that has good sound (no crackles, weird noises, distortion), NON-Special chip, 1 transparent layer.
(Squaresoft did EVIL things to the sound chip. Go Play Crono Triggers Lavos Theme music, odds are its WRONG. I've seen a grand total of 1 emulator get it mostly right
Go play SOM 2 with a fogged level, and see how playable it is...) [CT,FF3,SOM1/2,you name it]

4. A game using the DSP-1 chip (Mario Kart) running at 60 FPS. [Mario Kart, Pilot Wings]

5. A Game using a Super-FX(1 or 2), DSP-2,3,4, SA-1 or Other co-processor running at 60 FPS.
(90% emulators will fail this test, infact niether of the two best emus get this totaly right)
[Star Fox1/2, Doom, Super Mario RPG]
Each # represents an order of magnitude more difficulty in terms of speed and accuracy.

Edit:

My question is: can somone test out each and all released emulators and make a matrix showing what works where?

I'd be pleasantly surprised to see much past #2 and #3. The SNES is a hard bugger to emulate. Much support hardware like its prediscessor the NES, was needed to help boost its slow CPU.

Ironically if Nintendo had put in a FASTER CPU like a 68000 or fast 65816 (at say 7/8mhz) then it might have been easier to emulate.

 

[Nelligan]

Stretch? filter? YUK!

Well I use filters when playing on my computer as I wasn't able to see pixels when playing a real SNES back in the days. Streching? yes that is not a good thing except maybe when image would be way too small.