Pandora Emulator Features ?

[Trip]

There is 0.000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001% chance that you'll find someone else in your life with a pandora.

I've got 2 other guys in my apartment that also preordered one

Not to mention the fun that people can have at the GP32X+Amiga and open source get togethers

 

[nubie]

FAIL!

There is only one must-have feature of an emulator: EMULATING. IE this is the only must-have in the list:
VIDEO OUT - (EMPLOY PANDORA VIDEO OUT FUNCTION)


QUOTE

NETPLAY (A MUST FOR US PANDORA USERS,WE CAN ALL SHOW OFF OUR RETRO SKILLS)
LOCAL MULTIPLAYER (MABE USE BLUETOOTH FOR POWER SAVING INSTEAD OF WIRELESS)
SINGLE SYSTEM EMULATOR (I PERSONALY PREFER SINGLE SYSTEM EMULATORS)
FILTERS (SCANLNE - SUPER2XSAI -MAKING THE GAME LOOK THE BEST IT CAN BE)
SCREENSHOTS - (MAINLY USED AS A PLACEHOLDER WHEN CHOOSING A GAME)
RECORD - (ABILITY TO RECORD YOURSELF PLAYING A GAME)
FF RW GAMEPLAY - (ABILITY TO REWIND AND FAST FORWARD GAMEPLAY)
SAVESTATES - (WE ALL LOVE SAVESTATE FEATURES)
SEPARATE CFG AND SINGLE CFG - (SAVE GAME CFG AND DEFAULT CFG)
THEMES - (CHOICE OF THEMES WOULD BE NICE BUT WOULD EXPECT AS A FINNISHING TOUCH)
MUTE EMULATOR SOUND - (PLAY OTHER MUSIC/RADIO MEDIA AS BACKGROUND SOUND)


I am not sure what netplay is, if it is pretending another player is connected on the 2nd controller, then NO.

Local multiplayer?? WTF, does the SNES have multi-player? If you mean USB joypad support, most emulators will have that, which would be a must-have feature, also full re-mapping is a must with USB support.

Single-system emulators, what the hell is that? If the same core is used for all the Sega emulators, why not let it be the same emu?

All the theme crap should be handled in a GUI, command-line launching of ROMS will mean that the GUI does all the work for flashy crap (NO BLING, I am sick of that shit.)

Savestates are for cheaters, if you are going to cheat why not have gameshark and cheat searching ability?

I think you just have a poor idea of what an emulator is all around, learn more please. An emulator is not some sort of flash thing for you to pimp to your buddies (well it is, but it doesn't need to be blinged out to do that, unless your buddies are impressed by "DUBS" on their cars, in which case get some friends with a little taste instead of worrying about emulators.)

 

[Trip]

Savestates are for cheaters, if you are going to cheat why not have gameshark and cheat searching ability?

Save states are very useful for people (like me) who don't get a lot of time for gaming. Without them you end up doing a lot of the same parts of the game over and over again; but not for the sake of improving like you would on a normal game. You just spend all your time playing catch up instead of actually playing (and enjoying) the game.

I don't cheat.

Let me enthersize that fact... I have never cheated at a game, EVER! Probably why I suck at gaming so much :lol:

This is a portable games system. It stands to reason that it will be used a lot by people on their way to work etc. and for other short journeys. Save states will be not only be more useful on a device like this, but I would say essential for the enjoyment of the longer games. Especially for some of the bigger Playstation games.

 

[joa]

Netplay, Save/Load state, Fast forward are the most important for me.

*i nearly forgot* - .7z support would be fantastic too.

great thread by the way

 

[paddy]

nubie is just jelious that he didnt think of this idea for a forum post first ""

single system emulators = i prefer to have a single gameboy +colour emulator and a single gba emulator ,same goes for sega master system
and sega gamegear,either that or do the entire sega set of systems as
one emulator ,just dont like mess,same goes for nintendo ,so yer i prefer single system emulators.

i dont cheat ,i have most of these games and the consoles to go with
it = didnt cheat on them,some games should have had save sram features but didnt and its good to play on the go,yes it can be used as a method of cheating if you think about it, but i wasnt thinking of cheating
thats something the kiddies do.

i dont have many close friends but for all the friends and family i do have ,i dont try to impress them with videogames ,thats just bizzare
and offensive.

cant wait for this dam pandora ...

 

[nubie]

nubie is just jelious that he didnt think of this idea for a forum post first ""

single system emulators = i prefer to have a single gameboy +colour emulator and a single gba emulator ,same goes for sega master system
and sega gamegear,either that or do the entire sega set of systems as
one emulator ,just dont like mess,same goes for nintendo ,so yer i prefer single system emulators.

i dont cheat ,i have most of these games and the consoles to go with
it = didnt cheat on them,some games should have had save sram features but didnt and its good to play on the go,yes it can be used as a method of cheating if you think about it, but i wasnt thinking of cheating
thats something the kiddies do.

i dont have many close friends but for all the friends and family i do have ,i dont try to impress them with videogames ,thats just bizzare
and offensive.

cant wait for this dam pandora ...

No. Single system emulators are unnecessary, have you never heard of loading from a link to the emu +rom?

Save state is fine, if not used to cheat. (ie only to save your place and not to skip a real save spot in-game).

"Cheating", or modifying the game parameters on the fly, is a game in its own right. I mean doing your own cheats, not using ones someone else made. More fun than the A-> B gameplay of most games.

Your 'list of features' is obscene to me, show some respect to the coders or do it yourself. I don't understand you at all.

 

[ultm8]

a local multiplayer compatible with the Psp would be cool but unlikely.
(no I'm not asking I'm just suggesting.)

 

[nubie]

Still trying to understand.

1. You don't like M.E.S.S.
2. You want unpaid people (who don't know you) to do everything you wish.
3. You don't really understand how emulators work.
4. You can't add this functionality to the emulators yourself.

Is this about correct?

1. Get a MESS front-end
2. Do it yourself
3. See #2
4. See #2

I don't understand what you were with your list. I usually only ask if added real functionality or technical improvements are planned to emulators, if they are in development still. And in the thread for the actual emulator.

 

[qwerty15]

QUOTE
I think you have been a little bit too optomistic with that list of features; do you realise how difficult it would be to implement all of that into an emulator? Most of the emulators you use on PC have been in production for around a decade, with a large base of programmers working on them. When they were first released, they were even more basic than the current GP2X set. Over the years new features have been added as new versions were released, but it has still taken many years to reach this advanced state.


Yes, these emulators have been in development for decades, however, what we are looking for on the Pandora is a port of them, not a complete rewrite. For example, the Gp2x Snes emulator uses Snes9x code.

In fact, Snes9x comes with a wonderful porting guide.

I'd port it myself, but I have very limited programming knowledge.

 

[nubie]

QUOTE
I think you have been a little bit too optomistic with that list of features; do you realise how difficult it would be to implement all of that into an emulator? Most of the emulators you use on PC have been in production for around a decade, with a large base of programmers working on them. When they were first released, they were even more basic than the current GP2X set. Over the years new features have been added as new versions were released, but it has still taken many years to reach this advanced state.

Yes, these emulators have been in development for decades, however, what we are looking for on the Pandora is a port of them, not a complete rewrite. For example, the Gp2x Snes emulator uses Snes9x code.

In fact, Snes9x comes with a wonderful porting guide.

I'd port it myself, but I have very limited programming knowledge.


So take a list of the top 20 emulators (as the Original Poster is hinting at), and then try to add every one of these functions to all of those emulators.

The Original Poster is a big ASS for even asking this. Maybe he was raised by donkeys, maybe he will put up $1 Million in dev fund money, we just can't be sure yet.

One thing is painfully clear, it gives us something to argue about before we get a Pandora to play anything on

 

[john4p]

definately agree with fast forward / rewind, especially on the NES emulator, was so good to finally be able to beat some games by taking 'advantage' lol

If you used that feature you haven't beaten the game.


Only MUST-HAVE features for me are:

- being able to resume the game after the Pandora was put into sleep mode
- full screen-height option with smooth pixel filter (using the full height of the screen in pixels while pertaining correct x:y aspect ratio)
- configurable controls

Savestates would be nice to have solely for faster loading of the game.

 

[ashdjones]

Good grief... not everyone is a programmer Nubie, what's your problem?

None of these features are asking the impossible, and you can't blame people for not understanding the work it takes a single person to implement them. The average person never meets the programmer(s) of the software they use every day, and the whole rest of the world is geared towards user satisfaction so why don't you try not to give people a hard time?

:rolleyes:

 

[conso]

I'd love autosaving and autoloading on emulators. I always forget to save the current game-state when leaving my favorite genesis-games, while I would prefer to go on from the same place when launching the game again. I think that fits to all other emulators as well.

 

[paddy]

nubie,can you read ? all of the above from the original post are only suggestions,nothing more
and i did write that i am in no way asking or begging for these features,i really do understand
that its a dificult task just to port an emulator and i also wrote that,i would just like to put my
ideas forward,the same ideas most of the guys using these emulators would want and yep we
dont all have the ability to contact the authors of these emulators and so it would be nice if
seeing as the pandora is just starting out that the devs might actuly read some of these posts
and try to implement some of the key features that make using an emulator a more fun
experience.

hell i really dont know what your problem is man ,but i guess you were born in the same stable
as PoisonV ,if you have nothing of interest,fact or basis to say then stay off the forums untill
you can think of something ,i dont have a problem with you but you seem to have a problem
with me,and i think most of the readers posters on here can see that and it only makes you
look silly.

These forums are volitile and flames seem to come from everywhere,some of the older users of
the forum need to get off their high horse and chill out ,im not taking any crap of anyone on here
as i simply dont deserve it,and i dont need the crap insults - thats the real shortcut to thinking.

 

[Dio]

Rewind gets very tricky on 16-bit home computers and post-SNES consoles. You've got megabytes of RAM in there, and you can't copy that around in an instant. (Which isn't to say it's not possible, but it rapidly starts to be complex and a drag on performance, just as the machines are starting to get challenging enough that you can't waste cycles).

On a small-memory machine like the Pandora it may get expensive to keep dozens of copies of it around as well.

 

[latiosu]

I don't know why some people gets so upset.
Well, this is not a Must Have list of features, it's more like a Wishlist of features, for those who didn't understand. It's a kind of Brainstorming.

About the features the most important for me are:

SAVESTATES - Cool for those games which forced you to play 5 hours without stop because you couldn't save (Hey Sonic! Do you remember me?). Also cool if you hate writing in a sheet of paper a 20 char length code.
SCREENSHOTS - Would be great to remember some funny facts.
FF RW GAMEPLAY - Well, mostly FF (I don't really care of RW). Some games have very long intros and half an hour of credits.
VIDEO OUT - Would be great using a TV for multi with 2 controllers.


But having every listed one would make a perfect emulator.

 

[nubie]

None of these features are asking the impossible, and you can't blame people for not understanding the work it takes a single person to implement them. The average person never meets the programmer(s) of the software they use every day, and the whole rest of the world is geared towards user satisfaction so why don't you try not to give people a hard time?

Maybe it is time they learned . I see your point, but we have been over this a hundred times before. I guess I need to not take the bait and steer clear of the topic if it is emulators.

nubie,can you read ? all of the above from the original post are only suggestions,nothing more
and i did write that i am in no way asking or begging for these features,i really do understand
that its a dificult task just to port an emulator and i also wrote that,i would just like to put my
ideas forward,the same ideas most of the guys using these emulators would want and yep we
dont all have the ability to contact the authors of these emulators and so it would be nice if
seeing as the pandora is just starting out that the devs might actuly read some of these posts
and try to implement some of the key features that make using an emulator a more fun
experience.

You can reach all of the authors of these emulators, if it is worth wanting it is worth posting in the thread for that emulator, or in the forum of the emulator author, or sending them a personal email, or donating to their paypal or any other way of reaching them.

If you have the time to actually use the feature then you have the time to drop them a line. I am serious here, go to the source.

hell i really dont know what your problem is man ,but i guess you were born in the same stable
as PoisonV ,if you have nothing of interest,fact or basis to say then stay off the forums untill
you can think of something ,i dont have a problem with you but you seem to have a problem
with me,and i think most of the readers posters on here can see that and it only makes you
look silly.

These forums are volitile and flames seem to come from everywhere,some of the older users of
the forum need to get off their high horse and chill out ,im not taking any crap of anyone on here
as i simply dont deserve it,and i dont need the crap insults - thats the real shortcut to thinking.

Eeep. OK, sorry for bugging you then. (Why the messed up grammar btw, no caps and run-on sentences with either no space for the comma or the space on the wrong side?)

As I said above, I think it is the acme of poor taste to "shout out" to all the emulator authors in one go that "all these features are neat". Most people are satisfied with just accurate emulation. Period.

IF you are going to go for more features, then why not some actually cool ones? Like the ability to modify the RAM/ROM on the fly or search and replace? How about emulating 2 Gameboy systems; one on an external screen and one on the internal screen?

I honestly don't even see why to post this, it won't accomplish as much as asking the individual authors (if you can play the games enough to use all of the features then a few minutes isn't going to kill you).

In fact maybe these features are on the to-do list, have you a list of authors (or even of emulators) and perhaps their future plans for their emulators?

And to complain about multi-system emulators is just silly. I don't understand how it hurts you at all to use them.

I am out, bye

 

[paddy]

Hi Nubie

You are right about adding support for two gameboy screens that would be really cool and tho i am
not sure what you mean with the rom advance feature would that mean you can edit the rom while
running the rom ? meaning you could hack the rom like nester nes emulator on windows,that would
be great as well as i used to hack nes roms and really enjoyed hacking the pallete and level data.

Your also right when you say that it would be best to keep all this stuff on separate threds to the
actual emulator in question instead of just creating a thred about ALL emulators as that does seem
like i am asking for everything from everything,tho its not want i meant from my original post but
i can see why it would come across like that and your point is valid.

I also agree with you when you say that the devs could possibly be thinking of the same ideas
and planning to implement them anyway so me writing them in a new thred doesnt really help
and it would have been better that i just read up on each emulator thred and possibly comment
if i wanted a feature that ddidnt seem to be discussed.

I do agree with you man and all i was doing was putting it out there as i wanted to know
what others would have wanted as features,brainstorming as you never know what cool
ideas someone might come up with that has never been seen in an emulator,my ideas were
not really new ideas as they have all been seen in one emulator or another,i was going to
keep thinking of ideas and post other things that might be cool and was hoping to simply
spark some interest in what we will all be messing around with once we get our pandoras.

Im sorry if it came across wrong to you,if you had put that last comment across at the start
i would have understood what you were saying,anyway chillout my friend and count down
those days and we can all get stuck in to the pandora.

 

[TaG]

Group hug.

The one thing I am grateful for whenever I come across it is savestates. B) When you have kids to look after it can save a lot of frustration.

 

[Tobriand]

Title changed to something slightly less inflamatory ("must have" eliminated, replaced with ideal). It's always good to avoid seeming grabby.

Seeing as the gentle smouldering seems to have died out, let the conversation continue!