Temper Bugs/suggestions/compatibility Issues

[notaz]

At first the results were rather disappointing - just couldn't keep up playing CDDA. I wrote buffer, readahead, and everything I could until it was very close. Then I changed the synchronization code and I haven't had any problems since.

Be aware that these things are much, much worse when you do them from the SD card (I assume you are testing these from NAND or smb mounts). I would still suggest using some audio compression or something.

 

[Exophase]

At first the results were rather disappointing - just couldn't keep up playing CDDA. I wrote buffer, readahead, and everything I could until it was very close. Then I changed the synchronization code and I haven't had any problems since.

Be aware that these things are much, much worse when you do them from the SD card (I assume you are testing these from NAND or smb mounts). I would still suggest using some audio compression or something.


I'm actually testing from SD card.

 

[DaveC]

Update time (urgh, I'm so tired from working on this instead of sleeping, it's nearly 8AM here.. heh oh well)

Over the last week I've been working hard on improving compatibility, as you all know. I've got things to over 80% of the tested games (over 100 in total, from my one diligent tester) working without any problems, and a good percentage of the ones left over only exhibiting minor to very minor issues.

Thanks Exophase for the hard work and time spent on this. We appreciate it very much.

Your work is incredible thanks for sharing it with us

 

[slaanesh]

I'm very much looking forward to this release.

I bet it was rewarding seeing that first PCE CD game appear on the GP2X's screen!

 

[Rivroner]

Yihaaaa!

Thank you

 

[moxie]

Excellent!

 

[notaz]

I'm actually testing from SD card.

Nice work then. I wonder how you got around those I/O problems, dedicated thread? Are there any games streaming data (like FMVs) a lot? I wonder how would those run, if there are any (I'm not familiar with TGCD games).

 

[geise69]

I'm actually testing from SD card.

Nice work then. I wonder how you got around those I/O problems, dedicated thread? Are there any games streaming data (like FMVs) a lot? I wonder how would those run, if there are any (I'm not familiar with TGCD games).

There's very few FMV's in any of the Turbo PC-Engine CD's. There are a couple though. I don't know if they stream any data like the Sega CD games. I know Vay didn't do any FMV but it streams data like crazy during cut scenes. The intro for instance.

 

[Exophase]

I'm actually testing from SD card.

Nice work then. I wonder how you got around those I/O problems, dedicated thread? Are there any games streaming data (like FMVs) a lot? I wonder how would those run, if there are any (I'm not familiar with TGCD games).


No dedicated thread for CD streaming, here's what I'm doing, any one of these things might be doing the trick:

- with a small buffer to audio (2048 bytes, which is under 1 60Hz frame's worth) there's no benefit in trying to have delay based synchronization, it just makes things worse (and I think this is what I was fighting against half the time). The audio thread will block when it needs more data, and the sound generation will block when the audio thread is too far behind (and each will signal each other otherwise) Once I set the LCD refresh rate for non-MK1s I'll try vsync based synchronization as well.

- fcntrl is used instead of stdio to circumvent the overhead + buffering this does. I've found on PSP that stdio can be much slower so I decided to throw this in since I didn't want any implicit buffering anyway.

- There's a block cache of a few blocks (and a table to map them, it's probably not worth it to have a table for so few now.. at first I was doing like 8MB but there's no point whatsoever in that). It loads 4KB at a time - this is mainly to try to get around the boundary issues of 2352 byte sectors and fit to something that's a good fit for the filesystem.

- After rendering a frame the next CDDA audio sector will be preloaded into the block cache. This could be modified so that it does the next data sector during loads too.

I don't have a lot that streams video (nothing that works -_-) but I have things that stream ADPCM which should work out the same. I don't really see any reason why data streaming should work any worse than audio streaming though.

 

[DaveC]

There's very few FMV's in any of the Turbo PC-Engine CD's. There are a couple though. I don't know if they stream any data like the Sega CD games. I know Vay didn't do any FMV but it streams data like crazy during cut scenes. The intro for instance.

From the games that I remember the "video" was basically anime' type cartoon page flip animation. I don't know if that has the same bandwith requirements of FMV.

 

[Exophase]

From the games that I remember the "video" was basically anime' type cartoon page flip animation. I don't know if that has the same bandwith requirements of FMV.

For the video no, but they usually play CDDA at the same time which amounts to about the same. Actually CDDA bandwidth is even higher because more of the sector is read, but that doesn't make a difference in emulation since you don't benefit from not reading the remaining little chunks.

A few games do have FMV, it usually takes up a quarter of the screen. They're also really grainy because of dithering used. I don't really understand why they dithered at all for anime scenes which consist of a lot of solid colors, but it might look better on a TV.

 

[DaveC]

Ok. It is of my opinion to not spend too much time and pain (unless you want to of course ) on the FMV. The main games on the PC-Engine don't really rely too heavy on it. I don't think there is a way around the slow SD access anyway from what I heard. Thanks again for the good work on this.

 

[geise69]

Ok. It is of my opinion to not spend too much time and pain (unless you want to of course ) on the FMV. The main games on the PC-Engine don't really rely too heavy on it. I don't think there is a way around the slow SD access anyway from what I heard. Thanks again for the good work on this.

Besides a couple of the FMV games like Sherlock Holmes can be played on Picodrive. I know Exophase is trying to make Temper the best it can be for us, plus I know how annoying it is when something is making and issue and you're trying to figure out what the hell the deal is. All you want to do is figure it out. Exophase just don't burn yourself out working on this. We appreciate all the work you're doing!

 

[Exophase]

I've been held up trying to fix core bugs that have plagued Temper since the beginning (somehow got back into this). The itch won't die >_> I do think the fix is in sight for the Air Zonk scrolling thing at least.

Still trying to fix what CD games I can as well, although having something that works in Temper and not in Mednafen is unlikely. My tester has tested 150 games so far, and he says that 125 have no problems, and about 12-13 only have minor ones.

Charles MacDonald is going to be doing more hardware tests so hopefully we can get more accurate PCE information :> Although I don't know if this will improve emulation for anything.

 

[DaveC]

I've been held up trying to fix core bugs that have plagued Temper since the beginning (somehow got back into this). The itch won't die >_> I do think the fix is in sight for the Air Zonk scrolling thing at least.

Still trying to fix what CD games I can as well, although having something that works in Temper and not in Mednafen is unlikely. My tester has tested 150 games so far, and he says that 125 have no problems, and about 12-13 only have minor ones.

Charles MacDonald is going to be doing more hardware tests so hopefully we can get more accurate PCE information :> Although I don't know if this will improve emulation for anything.

Thanks again for the work on this.

The scrolling thing on Air zonk wasn't that bad. Considering how well things ran it was minor, to me anyway.

It sounds like the CD version you have now is pretty good to me. Only 12 games with glitches out of 150 sounds very good. I think most of us would be thrilled with that

 

[Exophase]

Thanks again for the work on this.

The scrolling thing on Air zonk wasn't that bad. Considering how well things ran it was minor, to me anyway.

It sounds like the CD version you have now is pretty good to me. Only 12 games with glitches out of 150 sounds very good. I think most of us would be thrilled with that

25 out of 150 have glitches, only ~12-13 are considered serious by my tester.

I'm hoping fixing the Air Zonk bug will have fixed at least one of them.

 

[DaveC]

Thanks again for the work on this.

The scrolling thing on Air zonk wasn't that bad. Considering how well things ran it was minor, to me anyway.

It sounds like the CD version you have now is pretty good to me. Only 12 games with glitches out of 150 sounds very good. I think most of us would be thrilled with that

25 out of 150 have glitches, only ~12-13 are considered serious by my tester.

I'm hoping fixing the Air Zonk bug will have fixed at least one of them.

Still, that sounds fantastic.

If you couldn't fix those and had to release it in that state I don't think anyone would mind.

It sounds like it will be fantastic though. I hope the GP2X hardware will be up to task speed wise.

 

[Rivroner]

Very good news.Waiting to test the public version

 

[grahf]

The FMV on the PC Engine isnt really FMV at all, just animations loaded into memory.

Exophase, if you want a real test of access speed, try out a game called "Gulliver Boy". That game, and one or two others used Hudsons "HuVideo". Its actual streaming video, similar in comparison to the SegaCD FMV.

Its pretty damn impressive to see what was squeezed out of this console.

 

[Exophase]

The FMV on the PC Engine isnt really FMV at all, just animations loaded into memory.

Exophase, if you want a real test of access speed, try out a game called "Gulliver Boy". That game, and one or two others used Hudsons "HuVideo". Its actual streaming video, similar in comparison to the SegaCD FMV.

Its pretty damn impressive to see what was squeezed out of this console.

Temper is capable of streaming uncompressed 16bit 44.1KHz stereo audio in real time, which is the most that can possibly be streamed - that's basically what a "1x" CD-ROM means. Any other amount of streaming will stream no more than this (technically less in the end because of more CD-ROM overhead in data sectors)

It'd make a difference if Temper was preloading audio tracks, and/or if they were compressed, but neither are the case. If it can handle playing a CD-DA track without stalling it can handle anything.