State Of The Gp2x?


geniv posted on May 15 2006 at 08:25 PM said:
I do notice is the fanboys here are willing to take faults of the gp2x up the arse with no problem.
and they do make thing seems less of a problem than it is... especially with the batterylife..

one thing that pisses me off is in the beginning. the gp2x rated batterylife as 8 hours on standard AA. . and people are getting like 1 hour out of it.

one reason I don't like to OC the unit to run emu faster is
1- it might not be stable
2- it drains battery life..
sure you can carry extra batteries they said. but I don't want to have a bunch of battery in my pockets.
sure u can get high capacility battery they said.. but that's adding more to the cost of the unit. as I have plenty of 2000mah battery around already
sure you can use a ac adaptor.. worst than carrying battery in my pockets. and if I use it to play at home. I might as well use my PC with near perfect emulators

I never overclocked, and I got consistent 4 hours+ out of 2500mah Energizers I bought 8 and a charger for $20, I don't complain about that.

Faulty units/batteries and chargers that aren't charging are possible, you can get a replacement if it is impossible for you to get more than 3 hours with any battery.

The official website is kept up by Koreans, luckily we have Craigix from gbax.com on our side, his site is usually better.

I only carried 2 spare AAs with me, 8 hours of play is fine by me, not a huge hassle.

Sorry you seem to have battery troubles.

I guess you could spend your money on anything else you choose, that is the beauty of a free-market economy.

I do recall several debates about the emulators, but in all fairness the Genesis/MegaDrive is a million times better emulated. Don't you recall the mysterious slow-downs? The power bricks that packed it in with the awful stench of exploded oozing capacitors? The crap TV in your mate's room that couldn't quite get the signal in from the MD? So you played with rolling snow over the top of your game. I would bitch about that first, the emulators are doing a really good job, I would need a definition of what you call perfect emulation before I could answer you.

I hope Reesy puts in an option for washed out color just like I used to play it, tuned to channel 3.5 and the image all fuzzy, and the monochrome orange PC monitor (80186 "portable" heh, at 50 pounds, not) I used to play my first MegaDrive on (yes my first unit said MegaDrive across the front of it, Genesis nowhere).

So ask yourself, are you being unreasonable, and are we being fanboys?

1. Yes you are, a little bit, yes.
2. Hmm, what is the name of this forum?

Emulation can never recreate the game as we originally enjoyed it, never.

It can get close, but even if we plug our GP2X into a crap TV and use a Sega pad we hacked the guts of a USB Sidewinder into (yes, I do that) we will still be able to tell the difference, and not because the water is the wrong shade or doesn't "sparkle", because our whole screen is full of "sparkly" snow, and the TV is faded, just like it was when we played at our friends house in high-school. (/me sheds a tear for the bygone days.) But because the real original hardware never ran it perfect or the same speed, no matter how new it was back then. The emulators are shameful in the perfection compared to the original hardware, timing is always on the money, colors are vibrant and full, sprites are clear and sharp, and a million flickies on the screen don't disappear in an interlaced tangle.

Who is with me here?
 
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geniv posted on May 16 2006 at 04:25 AM said:
The Spider Mastermind posted on May 15 2006 at 02:14 PM said:
trickytree posted on May 15 2006 at 06:45 PM said:
I'm aware of that :rolleyes: but...
'Version 4.3' includes GP32 updates - there's only been one GP2X 'port' version and one minor bugfix to that. Nothing since for 5 months, hence my concern.

I actually started a topic asking people their opinion of the emulator (which DaveC posted in), as at the time there weren't any other resources to trust.

The GP2X can code its own programs? Now who's overhyping it? :D
I wasn't criticising the emulator, go and read my post properly.

Well, this is a forum full of GP2X fanboys. If you ask for an opinion on whether a console is good or not on a forum that is pretty much dedicated to it, you should take into account that there will be a little bias in there. At least DaveC tries to be fairly comprehensive.

yeah good point. I guess I'll have to come back her and ask the same question in 4 months LOL

I do notice is the fanboys here are willing to take faults of the gp2x up the arse with no problem.
and they do make thing seems less of a problem than it is... especially with the batterylife..

Its nothing to do with the timescale. You'd get the same """Overhype""" if you went onto a PSP forum and said "Hey guys why should I buy a PSP over a GP2X??".

As far as the faults go, its not End of the World problems. Its not like the unit lasts "1 hour" when you put good batteries in it. Its not like its constantly unstable to the point its not useable. Its not at all like all of the time and effort developers use has produced little in the way of playable emulators.

But if the community trying to support this little korean device of fun is too much for you, feel free to come back in 4 months.

And I'm with nubie, I'm gonna go play Flicky B).
 
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The GP2X hasn't been out a year and I'd say the main emulators are near perfect.

Megadrive/Genesis: Perfect IMO. Yes, some games don't run properly, but the majority of games I've tried have run perfectly.

SNES: Okay, it's not perfect, but it's been coming on leaps and bounds! I can now run Mario All Stars, Mario World, Mario Kart etc perfectly fine. The sound is still a tiny bit iffy, but it's getting there. My only disappointment is not being able to get Yoshi's Island running (may be a bad rom).

SMS/GG: I think all the games I've tried have run perfectly.

NES: Same as SMS.

NeoGeo: The majority of games run really well, even the really detailed ones (they take a while to boot up initially, but once the files are copied they'll run farily quickly second time round). My only disappointment is that Kickback (think it's called that) 2,3,4 all have graphic issues - this could be due to bad roms tho as they're all off the same site.

PCEngine: Not actually used this, but it was great on the GP32 so I can only assume it's the same on the GP2X.

MAME: Fab.

GBC: Seems fairly pointless an emulator (given NES/SNES emulation) but it runs well from what I recall.

Video playback - Damned sweet. Having the ability to use SD cards makes it all the sweeter. Despite complaints about scanlines I think the screen looks fantastic. My flatmate even commented that he thought the screen was "sweet!".

Audio playback - Can't comment, never actually used it.

Photos/Pictures - Err, well you can't really go wrong!

Text viewer: Used it once for reading a readme. Worked as expected.



Honestly, I only bought mine recently and had been a bit concerned about peoples' issues with it, but once you have it in your hands it's amazing. I mean I could've bought a PSP and paid through the nose for "state of the art gaming" and probably bricked the thing trying to get it run emulators, but I didn't. And I'm glad I didn't! One of my mates who has a PSP is incredibly jealous of the video playback (buying UMDs? Not for me) and would love his PSP to play old school Megadrive/PCE/NeoGeo games.
 
JaqMs posted on May 15 2006 at 09:52 PM said:
Trickytree, why do you need *perfect* Genesis emulation if you aren't even going to play a majority of Genesis games.
Because a lot of the games I do want to play are either unplayable (Herzog Zwei) or glitchy as hell (Afterburner, Mercs etc.)

It's still a great emulator, I'm just getting twitchy about these problems not being fixed, given the time since the last release. Of course if we had the source code we could try to fix them ourselves ;)

My complaint was about bizarre, contradictory and downright mental comments like this:
Megadrive/Genesis: Perfect IMO. Yes, some games don't run properly, but the majority of games I've tried have run perfectly.
It can't be perfect if games don't run properly! :lol: :wacko:
 
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What I mean is that it's perfect for me. I only use it for the Sonic series of games, SOR and a few others and they all work perfectly. The only game I've found to be flawed was MicroMachines. I mean I doubt even the PSP can run emulators #perfectly#. I know the NDS can't.

I doubt many people are going to buy the GP2X to specifically play a particular game, and if they do then they must have money to burn! I mean if you want absolutely perfect emulation then buy a Sega Nomad - yeah, the screen is crap, the battery life is woeful, but it'll run them ALL perfectly ;-)

Like is said, the screen brings to life some of these games. I can't recall Sonic 3 ever looking as good on the MD (it's been a while since the ol' MD was out the cupboard!)
 
Fair enough, I did buy the GP2X mainly to play Megadrive games as not much else appeals to me (MAME is nice, but a bit fiddly). I probably play a much wider range of games than most, so I've found more problems than most!
 
trickytree posted on May 16 2006 at 04:39 AM said:
Fair enough, I did buy the GP2X mainly to play Megadrive games as not much else appeals to me (MAME is nice, but a bit fiddly). I probably play a much wider range of games than most, so I've found more problems than most!

Interesting, out of curiosity have you tried PM'ing or emailing Reesy? (Edit:I was corrected by DaveC, no use bothering people needlessly, he is either working on it or not, I am sure if I can find it in 10 minutes on google he knows more about it then us ;) )

In this or any scene help is always appreciated, if you can find out exactly why the problem or problems are occuring and see how other emulators deal with the problem (usually by checking the history.txt or FAQ or changes.txt, and looking for the game that is currently unsupported, and how they fixed it, or what is causing it), you can pass this information along and see if it is any help to Reesy, of course you are welcome to write your own emulator, Reesy's work is by no means secret, the processor cores he is using are well known, as are some of the methods he uses for making the emulator.

Finally, does everyone have a problem with the Rom you used? have you tried a couple different Roms of that game? did you try it on 2 or more PC emulators, turn off compatability options and see what happens in the PC emulators.

I will look at the games you mentioned and see if there is a problem emulating your particular game on other platforms.

Edit, qoute here(http://www.classicgaming.com/rotw/herzog.shtml)
In terms of emulation, KGen 0.34b is the only emulator which runs the ROM properly. Genecyst and Megasis have serious raster problems in split screen mode, and KGen98 has a really annoying screen flicker.

I found that by Googling:
genesis emulation herzog problems

I am sure you realize that this means that this is by no means an unfixable problem, and if such great emulators as Genecyst and Megasis have a problem with it, it means it is the games fault more than the emulators fault, the game is doing "something weird".
 
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I wouldn't bother Reesy though. I think he knows the problem and will or won't fix it depending on if he wants to do it or not. He reads these forums so a message here will work. One thing I hope he fixes is the ROM selector, it is doing my head in with the flicker in 2.0 :blink:
 
DaveC posted on May 16 2006 at 08:19 PM said:
I wouldn't bother Reesy though. I think he knows the problem and will or won't fix it depending on if he wants to do it or not. He reads these forums so a message here will work. One thing I hope he fixes is the ROM selector, it is doing my head in with the flicker in 2.0 :blink:

True, don't bother the devs needlessly.

He is either working on it or not, I am sure if I can find it in 10 minutes on Google he knows more about it then us ;)
 
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I downloaded MameGP2X to see what games are currently compatible according to the readme and it's just what I expected intially; most of the games that I was talking about earlier and others that I'm interested in are not supported, particularly:

ANY Cotton game,
Megaman 1/2 (US versions, I see only the Asian version of Megaman 1 is supported, so I have to track that version down)
NBA Hangtime (Was kind of pushing it, but I was under the impression that it'd at least run)
The Simpsons (Kind of surprised that at least this wasn't supported as it isn't anything graphically powerful)
Super Puzzle Fighter 2 Turbo (The game I was looking most forward to playing on MAMEGP2X)

So, could the gamelist.txt file just be horrible outdated and insignificant, or is it accurate? I'm asking because it seems that MAME emulation it seems that MAME emulation isn't all that people make it out to be (No, I'm not complaining or anything, I'm just trying to figure out exactly how good MAME emulation is/will be on the GP2X since I asked about it earlier and got rather enthusiastic replies).

EDIT: Oh yeah, which emulators currently support TV-Out without any bugs (I remember reading about some people requesting the TV-Out to be fixed for certain apps, so I'm guessing TV-Out doesn't work perfectly for everything)?

Also, how well does Tyrian run with the DosBox config for Tyrian (Along with speed set to turbo and details set to low)?
 
Azure posted on May 22 2006 at 10:51 AM said:
Super Puzzle Fighter 2 Turbo (The game I was looking most forward to playing on MAMEGP2X)

Wow, you've got high hopes, don't you? Puzzle Fighter, and all of it's variations, I believe are CPS2 and higher. CPS2 is I remember not that easy to emulate in the first place (I remember it lagging quite a bit on my old P3 500mhz) so I feel you're being a little unreasonable expecting it to work straight off the bat.

Allan.
 
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Well, I was expecting Super Puzzle Fighter based on the impressions I got from others in this thread about MAME emulation being all that and a bag of chips. It's clear that I was mistaken and that my previous assumptions about MAMEGP2X's capabilities were roughly true.
 
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