Beta Snes9X4D4P - Another New Build, Now With Hi Res And New Rom Picker

[mvickers03]

Hi skeezix, Thanks for your work on this emulator.. it get's lots of love here.

I like your new ROM picker but due to the amount of ROMs I have I would like to revert to the old way of picking ROMs. The old way was better for me because if I knew the name of the game I wanted to play, I could just type it and it would go straight to that ROM.

My friend wanted to play Zelda on my Pandora the other day, and by the time I scrolled past the S section my friend didn't want to play anymore.

So my friend, Is there an easy way for me to get the old XFCE browser to pick my ROMs or would that require a recompile of the Emu??

Many thanks

 

[jonlad1]

Or just enable using left/right to scroll through the rom list quicker hehe!

 

[skeezix]

I'll add left/right paging soon, and also woudl like to add 'jump to letter' ..

But once hitnrun sorts out the sound issues there, is snes9x4d4p dead? I'm pretty tight, so is it worth investing time on?

jeff

 

[jonlad1]

I'll add left/right paging soon, and also woudl like to add 'jump to letter' ..

But once hitnrun sorts out the sound issues there, is snes9x4d4p dead? I'm pretty tight, so is it worth investing time on?

jeff

Honestly? I think it is worth having two.

Pocketsnes isnt there yet and SteveM hasnt advised anymore on it. I'm sure he has good things planned for it though.

I think adding paging/jump to letter would make the emu a lot more user friendly. I personally wouldnt ask for anything else.

Also, is there a config file or something I can edit to make full screen default?


Cheers Jeff

 

[Hitnrun]

I'll add left/right paging soon, and also woudl like to add 'jump to letter' ..

But once hitnrun sorts out the sound issues there, is snes9x4d4p dead? I'm pretty tight, so is it worth investing time on?

jeff

Well, I am using PocketSNES to play Zelda even with the sound issues, and it is perfect in every aspect (except sound obviously), no slowdowns at 500mhz, state saving and loading, I think that when the sound issue is sorted, PocketSNES will run better than snes9x.

That said, the sound problem looks like will not be an easy fix, there will be a need to port some other snes9x sound code (or hack a sound buffer size parameter on the current one) that maybe will make it run not as well as now, who knows.

So I think that for some time yet snes9x4d4p will be the better snes emulator for Pandora.

 

[ivanovic]

But once hitnrun sorts out the sound issues there, is snes9x4d4p dead? I'm pretty tight, so is it worth investing time on?

I'd guess that it is not worth to invest time in this emulator. Though it would be great if you could maybe lend a helping hand to fix the sound issues in the other emulator. Once that is fixed it is clearly superior in basically every aspect (especially speed).

 

[Prometheus]

Whilst PocketSNES runs nicely, I've personally found that its sound seems a lot less accurate in PocketSNES, so I don't think I could call it superior at this point, myself. That's not to knock it, as I do think it works very well - it's just to say that it isn't for me right now.

It still seems to have an issue that I recall Snes9x had around the year 1999 or 2000 or so, where ambient noise drowns out all other audio (the best example of this is in Donkey Kong Country 2 - Diddy's Kong Quest, as it occurs right from the start of the very first level). For that reason, I would sorely miss Snes9x4D4P, personally.

 

[SiENcE]

I'm the developer of Snes9x4X. X means its for several Platforms. (D-Dingoo, C-Caanoo, W-Wiz, P-Pandora).

One code, several ports.

The question is not, wheater it's dead, the question is, who wants to maintain the Pandora port?

As i said, i don't own a Pandora, so i can't test or support it.

I own an Dingoo and a Caanoo (thanks to GPH) and i'm going to release the Caanoo Version soon. Later i will relase the Wiz port, because it's nearly the same.

But Pandora...???

 

[Exophase]

SiENcE, will your Caanoo and Wiz ports use ARM cores? Then they might be more competitive with PocketSNES performance-wise.

 

[cosam]

One other point: I don't think PocketSNES has proper hi-res support yet, it just omits the "extra" pixels. It could use some more scaling options too, à la MAME4ALL (although this shouldn't be too taxing as it's using the frame buffer for video already). Both things I've been planning to look into eventually, but don't let that stop anyone from implementing them...

 

[SiENcE]

SiENcE, will your Caanoo and Wiz ports use ARM cores? Then they might be more competitive with PocketSNES performance-wise.

Currently no. Where can i get the arm core? Are they compatible using all special chips? Because Snes9x4d supports all special chips except bss.

 

[Exophase]

I don't know if you'll find them standalone anywhere. But as far as I know there are 65c816 and SPC700 cores in ARM ASM that originated with SNES emulators on GP32 (iirc OpenSNES). I have no idea how well they can be dropped in to replace the existing SNES9x cores, but the emulators they were used in are SNES9x ports too.

Another avenue are the DS SNES cores, which look more optimized, but I have no idea what the relative accuracy is or how well they'd fit with SNES9x.

 

[skeezix]

If theres sufficient interest in snes9x4d4p I don't mind being some level of maintainer for it; I had assumed PocketSNES would take over on the Pandora, so I can put my energies elsewhere (and there are a lot of elsewheres But of we really need to maintain two SNES emus on the platform, I can do my part.

ie: I can at least do refresh bulds to keep up with SiENcE's changes, but I don't think he's put out a build in a few months so I didn't sweat it

Maybe my beta rom-picker up front can be replaced with pickle-launcher, too, or maybe I need to finish my picker.

As to ASM cores, prtobably not too hard to bring them onboard unless pocketsnes modified things away from the snes9x core quite a bit; just not prioritized it as per above.. (as a person who never played SNES, its easy to prioritize away for me

jeff

 

[Hitnrun]

Well I did some more study of PocketSNES (even asked some things to Reesy), PocketSNES is based on Yoyo's port, and is heavily modified, I download lots of versions os snes9x, and compared then using WinMerge, none was even close to the gp2x PocketSNES. It is based on snes9x 1.39f, but there are lots and lots of modifications, I wouldn't assume it should be easy to port code from it to your version.

Reesy also removed the code that manages configurable sound buffer size, and did heavy modifications to the sound code, I am not too confident that the fix will be viable.


One problem I had with Snes9X4D4P, is that after playing for a while (about 15 minutes), it begins to slow down, and become unplayable until I restart it, is this a known problem?

 

[EvilDragon]

One problem I had with Snes9X4D4P, is that after playing for a while (about 15 minutes), it begins to slow down, and become unplayable until I restart it, is this a known problem?

Hmm, played through Chrono Trigger and usually played a few hours at once - no problem.

 

[jonlad1]

- Quicker way to cycle through rom list

- Broken save states

- Option to set fullscreen as default


If anyone had the time and/or inclination to fix the above, SNES9xd4p would be nigh on perfect (IMHO). Performance issues could be sorted out later when ASM is added, performance isnt that much of an issue now?

EDIT: I have also played through Super Metroid for a good few hours continuously with no performance issues whatsoever.

 

[EvilDragon]

- Quicker way to cycle through rom list

Can be done with Picklelauncher.
Wanted to update the PND with it soon

 

[Hitnrun]

One problem I had with Snes9X4D4P, is that after playing for a while (about 15 minutes), it begins to slow down, and become unplayable until I restart it, is this a known problem?

Hmm, played through Chrono Trigger and usually played a few hours at once - no problem.

Really? I tried 2 games, Super Mario World (played ~90% of the game, but always had to restart every 15 minutes) and Zelda: Link to the Past, had the same problem. Hmmmm, very strange...

 

[jonlad1]

Sorry if this has been posted elsewhere, Skeezix/ED/Science have updated snes9x4d4p (i hate typing that out!). Thanks guys!

Download here: Total awesomeness

 

[SiENcE]

It's now called Snes9x4P and not Snes9x4D4P anymore, because Snes9x4D was meant 4D (for Dingoo).

Developed by me and maintained by:
Snes9x4P - Pandora (Maintainer Skeezix)
Snes9x4C - Caanoo (Maintainer SiENcE)
Snes9x4D - Dingoo (Maintainer SiENcE)
Snes9x4Wiz - Wiz (possible, but i have no Wiz to test)