Beta Pocketsnes Hack

[Hitnrun]

Ok, I have no frame of reference, not having used either of those versions. Should indeed be easy enough to speed up. Maybe also add controls to skip a page at a time (L+R?).

What's the verdict on which button to use for the menu? I'd love to use the Pandora button, but Minimenu users won't thank me for that. Maybe you should get Skeezix to fix that ;-P

To skip a page press left or right.

And the background animation for the menu is slow compared to other platforms, but the menu navigation seems fine to me.

 

[EvilDragon]

Wow, impressive!
Even with Compatible emulation mode, all features (transparency, etc.) enabled and frameskip set to 0, Yoshi's Island stays at a constant 60fps with 500MHz.

That's cool, I didn't try Yoshi's Island yet. I guess SuperFX is covered then? How's Starfox? The only thing I found that really slows stuff down is Mode7 (Pilotwings, for example) but even that's still playable at 500.

StarFox runs with 35 - 40 fps with 500MHz. That's where v7.0 sourcecode will be interesting - as they sped up SuperFX
With 700 MHz, it's about 45 - 55 fps.

 

[Hitnrun]

I would use the space button for the menu.

This is no longer a "Proof of Concept" is it? Will this be the best SNES emu now?

It's working absolutely great for me! Just weird sound problems which have been addressed before. Keep up the awesome work!

I think that when the audio skips are fixed, this is ready for a first release.

 

[cosam]

To skip a page press left or right.

Aaah! Thanks.

And the background animation for the menu is slow compared to other platforms, but the menu navigation seems fine to me.

Yeah, I think the background is meant to scroll a bit faster, but not mental fast like it does on GINGE. The navigation is of course the main thing. I think a small speed increase there would be OK.

StarFox runs with 35 - 40 fps with 500MHz. That's where v7.0 sourcecode will be interesting - as they sped up SuperFX
With 700 MHz, it's about 45 - 55 fps.

OK, not bad. 7.0 is indeed becoming interesting!

I think that when the audio skips are fixed, this is ready for a first release.

I agree, we need that fixed first. But as I said, I'm not really the man for the job. There are two issues: the lag, which might just be some kind of sync issue (it writes directly to /dev/dsp) and a bit of noise now and again (speech in Axelay, and the wind sound effect in Pilotwings are good examples).

 

[God Ginrai]

What's the verdict on which button to use for the menu? I'd love to use the Pandora button, but Minimenu users won't thank me for that. Maybe you should get Skeezix to fix that ;-P

Yes, I completely agree. We need to tackle this Pandora button issue.

-God Ginrai

 

[HackModford]

To skip a page press left or right.

Aaah! Thanks.

And the background animation for the menu is slow compared to other platforms, but the menu navigation seems fine to me.

Yeah, I think the background is meant to scroll a bit faster, but not mental fast like it does on GINGE. The navigation is of course the main thing. I think a small speed increase there would be OK.

StarFox runs with 35 - 40 fps with 500MHz. That's where v7.0 sourcecode will be interesting - as they sped up SuperFX
With 700 MHz, it's about 45 - 55 fps.

OK, not bad. 7.0 is indeed becoming interesting!

I think that when the audio skips are fixed, this is ready for a first release.

I agree, we need that fixed first. But as I said, I'm not really the man for the job. There are two issues: the lag, which might just be some kind of sync issue (it writes directly to /dev/dsp) and a bit of noise now and again (speech in Axelay, and the wind sound effect in Pilotwings are good examples).

Where's Notaz? He always fixes sound problems...

 

[Starmix]

Wow! I've just had a play with this & it looks really promising.

 

[Hitnrun]

What's the verdict on which button to use for the menu? I'd love to use the Pandora button, but Minimenu users won't thank me for that. Maybe you should get Skeezix to fix that ;-P

Yes, I completely agree. We need to tackle this Pandora button issue.

-God Ginrai

I think Space is a good option, it is out of the way, and is bigger than other keys so you don't hit it accidentally.

 

[Prometheus]

Ooh, this works quite well already - good work.

One thing I did notice is that the ambient noise in, for example, Donkey Kong Country 2, drowns out the music and sound effects almost completely, but otherwise it works beautifully.

 

[HackModford]

notaz is tweaking wi-fi, let him alone, let him alone

But Notaz is just so good... he could figure this out in a weekend I bet. And he fixed the sound issue that was driving me nuts...

Notaz is great...

 

[cosam]

New PND uploaded with:

• Menu buttons: both space and Pandora button work - take your pick.
• Menu autorepeat 3x faster.
• Preview pic in PND.

Changes pushed to the git (hopefully... still learning).

 

[God Ginrai]

What's the verdict on which button to use for the menu? I'd love to use the Pandora button, but Minimenu users won't thank me for that. Maybe you should get Skeezix to fix that ;-P

Yes, I completely agree. We need to tackle this Pandora button issue.

-God Ginrai

I think Space is a good option, it is out of the way, and is bigger than other keys so you don't hit it accidentally.

That's walking around the issue. It does not fix the problem.

-God Ginrai

 

[Pleng]

What's the verdict on which button to use for the menu? I'd love to use the Pandora button, but Minimenu users won't thank me for that. Maybe you should get Skeezix to fix that ;-P

How about making it user configurable? That's how it works in Picodrive and I personally mapped mine to Fn-Q (Esc). It always seems natural to me to press escape to get to a menu (dunno why).

 

[naples39]

This is amazingly fast just at 500 mhz! Tried DKC, Mario Kart and Contra 3, none of which ran particularly well on gp2x, and they were all rock solid 59-60 fps.

Did notice the scratchy/laggy sound issues though. Hope they're not too complicated to sort out.

I will also hold out hope that one .cht support gets added to a SNES emu for pandora.

 

[skeezix]

Just found this thread (thanks ED); saw the first post when it came out (same result I did, I did the same hack back a few months ago and left it, not enmough time, spread too hin, yadda yadd.) Chekcing in.. nice to see all this.

I think I can leave snes9x4d4p alone in good consience - I'm not much of a SNES fan as never had one, and just not had the time to delve into it, so always been hoping someone else would carry the snes torch; I god enough things to do without carrying a system I dont' een play games on

So huge _yay!_ from me .. this is looking very promising, and best (for me) is that I can work on other stuff instead

Kudos all,

jeff

Without looking at the code -- did you cary the size of the blocks written to dsp (ie: increase frequency, smaller chunks.) Its always a fun game to try and get the best balance between lag and how much audio to send.

 

[cosam]

I'm not much of a SNES fan

Ah well, nobody's perfect ;-) If there's still some love for Snes9x I'd be happy to adopt it. I guess time will tell whether it's worth maintaining two emulators. Probably more likely that the best bits get merged into one.

So huge _yay!_ from me .. this is looking very promising, and best (for me) is that I can work on other stuff instead

I think that's probably good for the rest of us, too!

Without looking at the code -- did you cary the size of the blocks written to dsp (ie: increase frequency, smaller chunks.) Its always a fun game to try and get the best balance between lag and how much audio to send.

I really hope it's something simple like that. I've not looked at it in any detail yet, but I'll have a play with this soon (unless someone surprises me and fixes it). I'm very much the trial and error programmer when it comes to audio ;-)

 

[Hitnrun]

I remember on the gp2x to overcome the audio lags I just increased the audio buffer size on SDL, but looking at the current code I did not saw something "simple" like that. I am sure it is a 5 minute fix from someone who knows about audio programming.

 

[skeezix]

stevem - pocketsnes is snes9x too, same base version too; pocketsnes was akin to squidgesnes .. start chopping out or repacing stuff that was too slow for the older machines; snes9x4d is a fresh snes9x port to SDL. Same emu, different hacks snes9x4d4p is of course just a port of that dingoo version to pandora; nice and easy and solid, just doesn't have the asm cores and some other business, but probably very comparable feature set etc.

jeff

 

[HackModford]

I noticed a delay in the audio... made playing supermario rpg kinda hard...

But I hope the audio gets fixed ASAP!

 

[cosam]

I remember on the gp2x to overcome the audio lags I just increased the audio buffer size on SDL, but looking at the current code I did not saw something "simple" like that. I am sure it is a 5 minute fix from someone who knows about audio programming.

Worst comes to the worst, there's always the possibility of switching to SDL audio without too much effort.

stevem - pocketsnes is snes9x too, same base version too; pocketsnes was akin to squidgesnes .. start chopping out or repacing stuff that was too slow for the older machines; snes9x4d is a fresh snes9x port to SDL. Same emu, different hacks snes9x4d4p is of course just a port of that dingoo version to pandora; nice and easy and solid, just doesn't have the asm cores and some other business, but probably very comparable feature set etc.

Yeah, I'm familiar with the lineage, I just mean if people prefer your port for whatever reason it'd be a shame to see it abandoned completely. Plus it's always nice to have a choice.