Newbie Wondering General Opensnes 9x Questions


manalone

Still Fresh
Joined
Oct 26, 2005
Messages
48
Hey, I had a couple questions about this emulator, but I see that it seems to get people kind of mad so I apologise if I offend anyone. Here goes.

I have basic understanding that it's an emulator or emu like any other one, but am I right that this one isn't as perfect as the other ones or something? What's the sound core or AMS or whatever that people talk about?

Second, I saw a compatability list by "warmfluffy" that seemed helpful but didn't mention a lot of games. Is there a more up to date list or anything? (I saw the reviews page which was helpful too but I still don't know if I can expect to be able to play some favorites).

Last, sorry to sound dumb but I'm new- why are people getting upset when someone asks about the opensnes9X? I don't want to add to that so I just wanna understand.
 
Some people religiously believe that the search function is the end all answer to the forums, although I can say that it is a great way to learn TONNES about this system I don't always understand the flaming but sometimes it is also deserved.

ANYWAYS.... OpenSNES9X does pretty good for emulating a SNES on GP32 but it doesn't perform perfectly... There are transparency issues (you can use hacks to see stuff) and other little things but recently Reesy fixed up the sound really nice, there's no more crackling and it works on the BLU+ so maybe check it out, it's still a little slow with sound but without sound it plays rather smooth.
 
Oh okay so the problem is that it had bad sound but now there's transparency issues? Does that mean that if a game has an effect like mist or something the mist won't be displayed?

I still don't know whata sound core is though. I know somehow it must account for game sound or something like that, but does that mean for it to be perfect the emulator needs a new or better one? Because if it has sound I don't know why that would be important.

Anyway, will continue trying to search. Nothing wrong with doing so, it's just that sometimes you wonder more specific stuff than is answered on old topics.

anyway thanks again Hooka
 
Hiya
to address you follow on comments

opensnes has always had transpancy problems but the the games are now faster because Reesy fixed the damaged sound core - the sound core takes up CPU time to recreate the game sounds. if it is switched off the games run faster, if its on some games run at a resonable speed with good sound but others are too slow.

There are some tricks to allow games to appear to run correctly like frame skip.
Frame skip drops so many frames of animation per second (well a period of time)
so the movements are slightly more jerky but the game plays at the correct speed

I find upto Frame skip 2 does not effect my perception of the game animation above that the game animation can get jerky.

Transparency can be tricked but I find I do not need to fiddle with that.
( yes it is used for Mist or water )

I play 'Putty Squad' and 'Super Mario World' and these are fine for me

You will need to run your GP32 at its highest speed though (I can get 166Mhz)

hope that helps -

PS - if anyone see's I have misunderstood something please correct me Thanks
Tarka
 
Not to sound ungrateful or anything but I actually noticed no difference in Reesy's version of OpenSNES9X and YoYo's. I tried Super Mario World on Reesy's then played it on YoYo's straight after and there was no difference. The sound seemed exactly the same. Unless Reesy has done a newer version.
 
Try these settings as posted by Reesy.

Video
Frameskip = anything but A because I'm working on it
Fastmode = OFF
Audio
Frequency = 11Khz
Quality = 16bits
Stereo = OFF

No sure if he's updated things since then but I have left my settings like this and it sounds good. Almost crackle free at 160 Mhz
 
Thanks guys, this does help but raises a bit more confusion:

How was the sound core "broken"? If it crackles at all (which it seems like it does) then it still needs work, right? If so, is anyone continuing to do so?

What does it mean to hack the transparencies?

And I still don't know why some people are angry about talking about opensnes9x, you guys seem totally cool about it. Sorry about these questions too by the way. I know new guys can be a pain but I've been doing some searching too.
 
Billy Lee: That depends which version you have. Reesy did release one version that was just the same emulator as the old ones but with more clock speed options. The last version he released had much improved sound. If you can't hear a difference, I'm fairly sure you're not using that one.

manalone: Reesy has finished working on opensnes now, but he made the source code available and easier to work with than it had been, so it may yet get worked on by someone else. It's no simple task though!
 
barnesy posted on Oct 26 2005 at 05:29 AM said:
manalone: Reesy has finished working on opensnes now, but he made the source code available and easier to work with than it had been, so it may yet get worked on by someone else.  It's no simple task though!

No, I have no doubt of that. I don't think i could do it..

What makes the emu especially hard? Or are there others that are as difficult to nail down too?

Oh and is anyone else working on it or is it running perfect? The sound core thing still confuses me..
 
Last edited by a moderator:
manalone posted on Oct 25 2005 at 11:34 PM said:
Second, I saw a compatability list by "warmfluffy" that seemed helpful but didn't mention a lot of games. Is there a more up to date list or anything? (I saw the reviews page which was helpful too but I still don't know if I can expect to be able to play some favorites).


The best list I can think of for compatibility is actually playing the game. Much faster to just play it and see how it work rather than spend tons of time searching forums and the interment to find out if "this" emulator plays "that" game. If you don't yet have a GP32 in your posession, then I guess searching is the only way. WarmFluffy's link is probably the best, unless there is one off of yoyofr's site. I think I might have seen a link on one of the sites that i grabbed the source code from.... hmmm....

As for the sound core, thanks once again to Reesy for improving the sound. Single best improvement that could have been made, IMO.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Yeah I'll just keep searching in the meantime. I do get answered here and there, but theres so much difference of opinion. For as many people that say Super Metroid works great, there's as many that say it freezes during the intro or similar things.

Same with opensnes. Lots of people say it doesn't work perfectly but then I do see many who say it works as good as it's "ever going to". I guess I just don't know if the possibility is still there to make it better because it sounds good but it even says on the download page that the sound core or whatever hasn't been added yet.

It's just confusing for a non-developer just getting into the system i suppose. The super nes and Genesis were the main reasons that i was curious to check the gp32 out, and i keep hearing the genesis one is great but the snes one still needs work. I just dont know why they're so different, meaning the transparencies and sound cores and whatnot. its confusing.
 
Okay I got my system earlier and like it quite a bit. Opensnes9X seems pretty darn good too, if a little slow. Still worth playing for sure tho.

Is there any way to fix that crackling noise or is that not normal to experience? Searching revealed a lot of different opinions.
 
The problem with emulating snes is that there are a lot of different devices that need emulated all at once, and it is a bit beyond the scope of the hardware in the GP32. As for your "crackling sound", you did download the latest version of Osnes9x right? It's pretty damn crackle free.
 
reaper79 posted on Oct 26 2005 at 06:19 PM said:
The problem with emulating snes is that there are a lot of different devices that need emulated all at once, and it is a bit beyond the scope of the hardware in the GP32. As for your "crackling sound", you did download the latest version of Osnes9x right? It's pretty damn crackle free.

Thanks, that makes as much sense to me as it's going to without more intimate knowledge of the inner workings of these systems. I just think it's strange that this seems to only afflict the super nes, not the genesis too. Well, that's okay, I'm sure it's because of their different inner mechanics, obviously.

As far as the opensnes 9x, yeah I believe I got the newest one (october tenth I think?) I got it from the main page several days ago in preperation for getting my system, so I'm not exactly sure which one it macthes in the download section. It saved as just "opensnes9x.zip" if I recall, with no version number given. For the most part I can hear the sound which is cool, but there's definitely some crackly sound. Is it some options that I need to tweak?
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Thanks, this did seem to work for some games. It seems that playing around with the freqencies does change things for some of the games, and though the crackling is still there, it's more minimal now. Cool.

But what does it mean to hack the transparencies? I got to a part in Final Fantasy 2 where the characters go into a misty cave, and the screen is unplayably white. I tried picking different transparencies but it stays the same. Is there something else I should be doing to get it to work?
 
I've said this loads of times before but why do newbs always try the difficult emulators first :)

Have a go on DRMD and GPengine etc to get a feel for the GP before you start worrying about an emulator that still has issues.

BTW For those asking why the SNES emus have problems and the Genesis ones don't it's because the GP isn't powerful enough to emulate all the SNES chips at a decent speed, well not without some major assembler coding if it is possible at all, which is unlikely.

The Genesis although a capable console is not as complex as the SNES.
 
I don't care much for the genesis. That's why i tried the snes on the GP32 first, and why I guess it's more problematic- I think this system has the better, more complicated games. The drmd is great, but I like snes best so that's why I'm most concerned with that emulator.
 
BaDToaD posted on Oct 28 2005 at 10:21 AM said:
I've said this loads of times before but why do newbs always try the difficult emulators first :)

Have a go on DRMD and GPengine etc to get a feel for the GP before you start worrying about an emulator that still has issues.

BTW For those asking why the SNES emus have problems and the Genesis ones don't it's because the GP isn't powerful enough to emulate all the SNES chips at a decent speed, well not without some major assembler coding if it is possible at all, which is unlikely.

The Genesis although a capable console is not as complex as the SNES.
It's basically because the current sound core in os9xgp use floating point procedures etc.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Back
Top