New Snes Development?

[sand_man]

But if that's the case then, why would anyone try to make a PSX emulator?

Considering the progress the PSX emulator has made, I think that GP2X developers could make a fullspeed SNES emulator for GP2X.

Maybe they just don't feel like it

 

[Adventus]

QUOTE
Maybe they just don't feel like it
Its probably because all homebrew programmers are secretly (or not so secretly) graphics/attention hoars. Hence the dominance of the demoscene. XD. From my own experience, we also have a tendency to never finish things.

I dont blame them, i would certaintly find PSX emulation on a GP2X way "cooler" then SNES.

 

[Squidge]

Yes, SNES could run much faster than it does, but that would be difficult and take a long time to do. Since we all know there are faster devices round the corner, it's easier to just wait for those

 

[Exophase]

I really don't know much of anything about computer programming I guess. All I'm learning right now is Java :lol: (what a n00b)

Just thought I'd at least start a discussion on SNES emulation. It's still a shame that SNES emulation doesn't work fullspeed. I think that the GP2X would be capable of full speed SNES emulation.

Maybe someone will continue work on SNES emulation. I sure hope someone does soon.

Well yes the GP2X hardware could do fullspeed SNES. It would take highly optimised code that was tailored for the hardware. The problem is most of these emus are all ports of fairly inefficient PC SNES emus with some optimisations. The SNES graphics chips etc are not documented enough to be able to make a efficient renderer on small devices I guess.


It's really well documented (people spend more time crunching at SNES cycles than any other console I've seen, just check anomie's doc). I think the thing is that SNES has so many different rendering modes and options and you have to account for a lot of them being active at once. The best you can really hope to end up with is having many different renderer versions to allow for the different combinations but it'll end up getting pretty out of hand. I think you really underestimate the code used though. They're not that inefficient, they're just not insanely optimized. I know people think that ZSNES on a 133MHz Pentium is the benchmark to compare with but actually ZSNES didn't really run that great there all of the time either, and the GP2X isn't really any better than a 133MHz Pentium in a lot of ways. I'm sure SNES rendering can be improved (I have a lot of ideas, but it's a serious pain to even try to rewrite a renderer around someone else's emulator framework) but I don't really know how people like you think it can, I think you just like being demanding.

 

[mju]

It would be great to see snes emulation on gp2x improved, however, its weird i can play most games i want quite happily (thanks to everybody involved!) so long as i dont turn fps counters on, as soon as i do thats it, its all about playing about optimising and fiddling to try and get things right, which invariably results in me flicking through roms and not actually playing anything. I guess its just speed-greed or something, maybe we should be happy with what we've already got. Then again, i suppose its the "optimising" that makes the gp2x attractive and if a new/updated emulator were released it would make me happy to have more to play with :rolleyes:

 

[quadomatic]

I really don't know much of anything about computer programming I guess. All I'm learning right now is Java :lol: (what a n00b)

Just thought I'd at least start a discussion on SNES emulation. It's still a shame that SNES emulation doesn't work fullspeed. I think that the GP2X would be capable of full speed SNES emulation.

Maybe someone will continue work on SNES emulation. I sure hope someone does soon.

Well yes the GP2X hardware could do fullspeed SNES. It would take highly optimised code that was tailored for the hardware. The problem is most of these emus are all ports of fairly inefficient PC SNES emus with some optimisations. The SNES graphics chips etc are not documented enough to be able to make a efficient renderer on small devices I guess.


It's really well documented (people spend more time crunching at SNES cycles than any other console I've seen, just check anomie's doc). I think the thing is that SNES has so many different rendering modes and options and you have to account for a lot of them being active at once. The best you can really hope to end up with is having many different renderer versions to allow for the different combinations but it'll end up getting pretty out of hand. I think you really underestimate the code used though. They're not that inefficient, they're just not insanely optimized. I know people think that ZSNES on a 133MHz Pentium is the benchmark to compare with but actually ZSNES didn't really run that great there all of the time either, and the GP2X isn't really any better than a 133MHz Pentium in a lot of ways. I'm sure SNES rendering can be improved (I have a lot of ideas, but it's a serious pain to even try to rewrite a renderer around someone else's emulator framework) but I don't really know how people like you think it can, I think you just like being demanding.


I probably am being a bit demanding, so I'm sorry for that. I did play ZSNES on an AMD 586 back in the day though, and it played roms just fine.

I do very much appreciate the work that all the developers have done on emulators and homebrew though. Thanks a lot.

 

[Exophase]

I probably am being a bit demanding, so I'm sorry for that. I did play ZSNES on an AMD 586 back in the day though, and it played roms just fine.

I do very much appreciate the work that all the developers have done on emulators and homebrew though. Thanks a lot.

Somehow I don't think it played them better than they're played on GP2X. Maybe you just had lower standards then?

 

[abertalia]

Since we all know there are faster devices round the corner, it's easier to just wait for those

 

[rokdcasbah]

I probably am being a bit demanding, so I'm sorry for that. I did play ZSNES on an AMD 586 back in the day though, and it played roms just fine.

I do very much appreciate the work that all the developers have done on emulators and homebrew though. Thanks a lot.

Somehow I don't think it played them better than they're played on GP2X. Maybe you just had lower standards then?


maybe he had a turbo button

(i would run zsnes on a pentium 100 or 133 or so as well. and i do remember it being pretty snappy. but that was a while ago so who knows. and in any case i enjoy the snes on the gp2x as it is right now. just can't resist a good turbo button joke.)

 

[quadomatic]

Since we all know there are faster devices round the corner, it's easier to just wait for those

Ditto, but I guess SNES emulation will be fine the way it is

 

[DaveC]

Yes, SNES could run much faster than it does, but that would be difficult and take a long time to do. Since we all know there are faster devices round the corner, it's easier to just wait for those

Yes SNES will be near perfect on the "Craiginator" but it will still be nice to have a better one on the GP2X. I won't want to take the Craiginator to many places and take the chance of getting it mangy, I will use the Gp2X as my "beater"

 

[Exophase]

I probably am being a bit demanding, so I'm sorry for that. I did play ZSNES on an AMD 586 back in the day though, and it played roms just fine.

I do very much appreciate the work that all the developers have done on emulators and homebrew though. Thanks a lot.

Somehow I don't think it played them better than they're played on GP2X. Maybe you just had lower standards then?


maybe he had a turbo button

(i would run zsnes on a pentium 100 or 133 or so as well. and i do remember it being pretty snappy. but that was a while ago so who knows. and in any case i enjoy the snes on the gp2x as it is right now. just can't resist a good turbo button joke.)


I ran it on a Pentium 75, and then later on same Pentium 75 overclocked to 133MHz (sure wish I knew how to do that in the first place, would have made me a much happier 13 year old), and I think a PPro 150 at some point.. maybe I was just playing the wrong games but it was NOT snappy, remember it has auto frameskip too.. It seemed incredible compared to the competition, sure. I remember playing Chrono Trigger at the end of time, with CPU underclocked to like 30% and of course it frameskipping like utter mad, just so I could hear the character music at the correct speed on the P75. The fact that anything could play the music fullspeed on that computer seemed like a feat of God, but nonetheless there's no way ZSNES could get fullspeed w/o frameskip on a P100 or even P133. Especially with any degree of accuracy in the rendering.

Although if someone would like to run it on a P133 or so I'd love to see the results. I could have just been trying bad games on those (most of my testing was on the poor old P75)

 

[quadomatic]

lol

I'd try running ZSNES on my 586, but I believe I threw it out about a year ago

 

[trooper]

I have a Toshiba Libretto CT100, Which has a p166 processor with mmx and a 2mb Neomagic 128XD Graphics chip and 64mb or ram. Ok, It`s not a desktop machine, But all i can say is, It does not run zsnes anywhere near full speed, Well not via win98 or winME. I not tried it via DOS, As i can not really be arsed with playing around with soundcard and graphic card drivers etc in DOS. On a side note, Gens (Megadrive emulator) doesn`t even run full speed in this same enviroment.

Trooper

 

[Exophase]

I have a Toshiba Libretto CT100, Which has a p166 processor with mmx and a 2mb Neomagic 128XD Graphics chip and 64mb or ram. Ok, It`s not a desktop machine, But all i can say is, It does not run zsnes anywhere near full speed, Well not via win98 or winME. I not tried it via DOS, As i can not really be arsed with playing around with soundcard and graphic card drivers etc in DOS. On a side note, Gens (Megadrive emulator) doesn`t even run full speed in this same enviroment.

Trooper

Yeah, I think you take a big hit with anything in Windows, losing that direct framebuffer access. You shouldn't have to configure anything for graphics in DOS so long as you stick to VGA modes (although the non-linear ones come at a hit, I think there are some hacked linear ones.. there's Mode X but that'd cut off a lot of resolution which would probably skew the results too)

Forget sound, you should try it though, I'm curious ^_-

 

[PokeParadox]

Remember that the older ZSNES would have more speed-hacks than newer builds. (e.g The SuperFX support was rewritten a couple of years ago to improve accuracy, and usually improved accuracy means it will run slower, but the things is that because generally people have faster hardware this is ok.

Anyway I remember ZSNES running very well with most games on a P133 but like most I could not say if it was fullspeed, I'm guessing the frameskip was skipping 3 frames or so.