What About Saturn Emulation?

[jbr]

The Saturn happens to be one of my favorite video game consoles ever (although one of the reasons I like it is for its obscurity). The best emulator (on windows) I know is called Satourne, although there are some other popular ones too. The only open source, cross platform Saturn emu I know, however, is Yabuse (ported to the Wii, for example). Linux ports are also available. Unfortunately, speed and compatibility for 3D games is low. Many 2D games seem to work great, however.

I would be happy with a port of Yabuse, because I think it's a good balance between ease of porting and functionality. I'm certainly not going to ask anyone to write a Saturn emulator from scratch!

 

[Exophase]

A Ransom technique would be better

I thought of doing this one myself one day h34r:

But there are problems.

Problem: Pictures and videos aren't enough, since it could be a giant scam no one is going to believe you unless you have really cold, hard proof.

Solution: Have several trusted people vouch for you. But that's not very foolproof either, and ups the risk of someone leaking your proof.

Solution: Do an interactive webcam demonstration where the audience decides what you should do. Although this could be rigged.

Solution: Release a critically limited version, like one without video (but would need sound). But that wouldn't give a good indication of the speed it'd have with video. Still, would help corroborate your pics/videos.


Problem: What do you do if your goal is not reached? Release it anyway and the people will feel slighted for paying when they didn't necessarily have to. Don't release it and they'll feel even more slighted.

Solution: Give a deadline, like a year, where you'll eventually release it regardless of what you get.


Problem: Someone else could come in and release their own emulator while everyone's waiting for yours, what happens then? Should the money be transferred? But what if your version is better?

Solution: Tell the other person to go to hell then ignore them.


Problem: How do you know how much people are really going to pay? Ask for too much and no one's going to give you anything. Ask for too little and, well, it'll be too little.

Solution: Ask high then drop it if no one pays.


But I don't know, the whole thing feels a little dodgy to me. Still a much better way to actually get money than bounties.

 

[Chip]

What's wrong with the tried-and-true shareware model? Release a version that is crippled in some minor but annoying way - no save states, a "SHAREWARE VERSION" overlay in the middle of the screen, a 10 min time limit, whatever. People can play that version, see if they think it's worth what you're charging, and buy it if it is.

Sure, pirated copies of the full version will get out or somebody will figure out a way around the shareware handicap. That's inevitable. But I suspect you'll get a better return from saying "This software is for sale, please pay for it" than from saying "This software is free, but I wouldn't mind a donation" or "Send me some money now and I'll try to make some software for you later."

But I'm sure it couldn't hurt to try asking for donations up front Heck, you could even try combining the two. "Send me $10 now and you'll get a full copy when it's done, or wait and pay $20"

 

[Exophase]

What's wrong with the tried-and-true shareware model? Release a version that is crippled in some minor but annoying way - no save states, a "SHAREWARE VERSION" overlay in the middle of the screen, a 10 min time limit, whatever. People can play that version, see if they think it's worth what you're charging, and buy it if it is.

Sure, pirated copies of the full version will get out or somebody will figure out a way around the shareware handicap. That's inevitable. But I suspect you'll get a better return from saying "This software is for sale, please pay for it" than from saying "This software is free, but I wouldn't mind a donation" or "Send me some money now and I'll try to make some software for you later."

But I'm sure it couldn't hurt to try asking for donations up front Heck, you could even try combining the two. "Send me $10 now and you'll get a full copy when it's done, or wait and pay $20"



Tried and true? Shareware rarely works well, and I imagine it'd fare even worse on a platform where people are used to getting everything for free.

If you really want money you have to twist their hands and make it so they have no alternative.

 

[Zor Prime]

Your reasoning is facetious and your claims are inaccurate. There are more, better, and more efficient Saturn emulators than Jaguar emulators. The best Saturn emulator has very high compatibility, just a lot of people don't realize it exists even though it has been in development for several years. There are ones behind it that aren't bad as well.

I wasn't aware there were Saturn emulators. Over the years when I've visited emu websites I've never seen one yet I don't exactly go looking for them either. So cool, we have full speed working Saturn emulators running around, eh?. I'll have to check one out sometime.

QUOTE

Jaguar is also significantly easier to emulate than Saturn, and Saturn is significantly more powerful.


And you thought I was being facetious yet you say that? Looking at the hardware the Saturn is indeed more powerful but it isn't going to squash the Jaguar like a bug. They have their own advantages but Saturn wins out. You must be a big Sega homer. If I were you I would had said the Jaguar is hard to emulate (come on, is it really "significantly" easier? Did you write an emu for both and compared?) but the Saturn is harder.

QUOTE

And Saturn has far more games recognized as being high quality than Jaguar does. Look on gamerankings.com. Saturn has at least 100 games that score 70% or higher, including 51 that are 80% or higher. Jaguar doesn't even HAVE 100 games, and only 8 scored 70% or higher (and a miserable 4 80% or higher). That's TERRIBLE in comparison.


You missed the point, and didn't read what I wrote, or you did and you misunderstood.

I stated that there is not one game on the Saturn, not 1 single game on the Saturn that instills someone with enough passion to write an emu for it with one game in mind. I know the Jaguar doesn't have as many games as the Saturn, I even lead on to that.

QUOTE
Man, I don't know what alternate reality you come from, but you look like you got lost on your way between here and atariage.com. What good games does Jaguar have? T2K? Alien vs Predator... maybe? A lot of the other games considered at all "good" were ported to other platforms. While Saturn has Shining Force 3, NiGHTS, Panzer Dragoon series (including Saga), Virtua Fighter 2... hell, it even has a port of Tempest 2k, although that looks much worse in comparison with all of those other big name titles.



OK, I finally get you and see where you are coming from. You're one of those people who care about graphics and not game play. BTW if I was a homer of anything it would be NEC/Hudson Soft stuff. There's just nothing on Saturn that compels me and I even love Shining Force. Maybe I would had scored a Saturn for Tempest 2K, but guess which system it came out for first. I even got that AvP game but for some reason I didn't really like it but all my friends did who came over back in the day but who cares I wasn't talking about AvP.

So ... Thanks for informing me that there are Saturn emu's out there, but not a lot give a damn about the Saturn so nobody really knows there's out there? (... yet Jaguar emu's get more attention than the Saturn? .. it must be that extensive list of blockbusters on the Saturn you mentioned)

I was talking about *1* game. I didn't intend to get into a pissing match about irrelevant material I'm too old for this crap say what you want I'm done with this thread I just want a Pandora like everyone else on these forums and have wonderful fun with it. I haven't been as enthusiastic about a console since when I got a 'Duo.

 

[CyruzDraxs]

I will pay $1000 to the first person to make an emulator for the Pandora that can run Radiant Silvergun at 30fps+. $100 bonus if it's fully open source and programmed with portability in mind.

 

[timofonic]

I will pay $1000 to the first person to make an emulator for the Pandora that can run Radiant Silvergun at 30fps+. $100 bonus if it's fully open source and programmed with portability in mind.

That's good, I hope it's more than words.

But the $100 bonus is not enough. You could do a 50% ($500 for doing it and $500 if FOSS) or donate some more money with help of other people.

 

[dak]

Saturn emulation will be possible on the Pandora when someone decides to port Yabause.

 

[scrag_10]

I will pay $1000 to the first person to make an emulator for the Pandora that can run Radiant Silvergun at 30fps+. $100 bonus if it's fully open source and programmed with portability in mind.

That's good, I hope it's more than words.

But the $100 bonus is not enough. You could do a 50% ($500 for doing it and $500 if FOSS) or donate some more money with help of other people.



If you are paying someone to do it, and it is not a donation, you would own all the source and be able to choose the license.

 

[Kyo]

We need more eccentric rich people who will buy programmers for the pandora! They could even make some ads on TV! It'd be great!

 

[benjymous]

A Ransom technique would be better

I thought of doing this one myself one day h34r:

But there are problems.

Problem: Pictures and videos aren't enough, since it could be a giant scam no one is going to believe you unless you have really cold, hard proof.


Yeah, I remember someone posting video and screenshot "proof" of a Dreamcast emulator running full speed on a PC...



...Turned out it was a TV card :lol:

 

[darkstorm classic]

OK, I finally get you and see where you are coming from. You're one of those people who care about graphics and not game play. BTW if I was a homer of anything it would be NEC/Hudson Soft stuff. There's just nothing on Saturn that compels me and I even love Shining Force. Maybe I would had scored a Saturn for Tempest 2K, but guess which system it came out for first. I even got that AvP game but for some reason I didn't really like it but all my friends did who came over back in the day but who cares I wasn't talking about AvP.

Care about graphics over gameplay....the SATURN? The saturn had some of the best games of all time, Shining force 3 scenario's 1 through 3, Panzer Dragoon Saga, Burning Rangers, Guardian Heroes, Dragon Force, NiGHTS, etc. If you're saying the saturn library in general regards graphics over gameplay, then your definition of gameplay is rather odd, to say the least. The saturn saw huge amounts of arcade ports, where gameplay is at a premium, many RPG's with diverse battle systems, and was released in an era when Sega where creatively at the top of the gaming world, as seen with Virtual On, Virtua Fighter, the Panzer series, and the aforementioned Nights & Burning Rangers.

So ... Thanks for informing me that there are Saturn emu's out there, but not a lot give a damn about the Saturn so nobody really knows there's out there? (... yet Jaguar emu's get more attention than the Saturn? .. it must be that extensive list of blockbusters on the Saturn you mentioned)

The fact that you don't know about saturn emu's hardly relates to "nobody really knows there's out there?", it just relates to you not knowing anything with regards to the state of saturn emulation. There has been generally good saturn emulation for 3 years, and before that, there was still good saturn emulation if you had a powerful enough system.

 

[Pleng]

Care about graphics over gameplay....the SATURN? The saturn had some of the best games of all time, Shining force 3 scenario's 1 through 3, Panzer Dragoon Saga, Burning Rangers, Guardian Heroes, Dragon Force, NiGHTS, etc. If you're saying the saturn library in general regards graphics over gameplay, then your definition of gameplay is rather odd, to say the least. The saturn saw huge amounts of arcade ports, where gameplay is at a premium, many RPG's with diverse battle systems, and was released in an era when Sega where creatively at the top of the gaming world, as seen with Virtual On, Virtua Fighter, the Panzer series, and the aforementioned Nights & Burning Rangers.

Yes I found that statement a little odd too, as at the time of release it was widely accepted that the Playstation games had better graphics than the Saturn. And Saturn owners were very proud of the fact that the games for the system were extremely playable even if not quite as visually appeasing as the (imho dull and repetitive) Playstation library.

I'd just like to add a couple more classics to your list: DaytonaCCE, Sega Rally, Christmas NiGHTS, Fighters Megamix


I'd cream myself if Saturn emulation ever became a reality!

 

[Rivroner]

Thank you very much to all for the comments about this theme

I hope some other expert coders will add some words to the thread.

 

[Exophase]

I wasn't aware there were Saturn emulators. Over the years when I've visited emu websites I've never seen one yet I don't exactly go looking for them either. So cool, we have full speed working Saturn emulators running around, eh?. I'll have to check one out sometime.

I guess you missed a lot of "SSF is updated again" posts on emulator news sites...

And you thought I was being facetious yet you say that? Looking at the hardware the Saturn is indeed more powerful but it isn't going to squash the Jaguar like a bug. They have their own advantages but Saturn wins out.

Yow, do you actually know what facetious means? ;P I've studied hardware for both in great depth and Saturn wins in every way. The 2x RISC on Saturn are superior to the 2x RISC on Jaguar (not just clock speed, Jaguar's RISC CPUs have serious bottlenecks), the 2D acceleration is superior, the 3D acceleration is superior, the Saturn has 2 DSPs in addition, real audio acceleration instead of just having a couple DACs - do you see where I'm going with this? If you want to substantiate what you said do so with a sound technical argument. I said Saturn was significantly more powerful, not "will squash Jaguar like a bug." But Jaguar has zero advantages IMO.

You must be a big Sega homer.

Absolutely not, I don't even have a Saturn (or a Jaguar), I'm going entirely off of technical documents I've read, numerous reviews, etc.. as far as platforms owned, I've had a Genesis and a Gamegear but I've also had a 2600 (clone) and a Lynx so really I don't think I'm company biased? You on the other hand...

If I were you I would had said the Jaguar is hard to emulate (come on, is it really "significantly" easier? Did you write an emu for both and compared?) but the Saturn is harder.

If you were me - why, are you an emulator author and have emulated both and compared? No, I haven't emulated either of them, but I've emulated more than enough to understand relative difficulty. What I said does not contradict what you said, Jaguar isn't easy to emulate at all, but Saturn is one of the most difficult things that you can emulate. Ignore the facts that it simply has far more components that must be emulated, and that the documentation is more jumbled Sega speak than surprisingly clean Atari speak (Jaguar has excellent documentation); Saturn is going to be much harder to emulate simply by virtue of having several times more games that actually do push the hardware to its limits, not to mention are CD sized. It's much more of a compatibility nightmare than Jaguar is.

You missed the point, and didn't read what I wrote, or you did and you misunderstood.

Of course I read what you wrote. Are you going to argue your "point" long after I completely invalidated it anyway?

I stated that there is not one game on the Saturn, not 1 single game on the Saturn that instills someone with enough passion to write an emu for it with one game in mind. I know the Jaguar doesn't have as many games as the Saturn, I even lead on to that.

MY point was that the number of high quality Saturn games blows the number of high quality Jaguar games out of the water, not that the Saturn has more games. Did YOU read what I said?

Anyway, not only are you dead wrong, but it's such terrible reasoning. I can think of many, many people who have attempted Saturn emulators in the past and gave up because it's just too difficult, and because computers were not powerful enough at the time. How you take this to mean that they weren't inspired enough is a load of crap (and if you would look up facetious reasoning you would understand what I mean by this)

OK, I finally get you and see where you are coming from. You're one of those people who care about graphics and not game play.

You are so full of crap, I have no idea how you possibly reached this conclusion ;P

BTW if I was a homer of anything it would be NEC/Hudson Soft stuff. There's just nothing on Saturn that compels me and I even love Shining Force. Maybe I would had scored a Saturn for Tempest 2K, but guess which system it came out for first. I even got that AvP game but for some reason I didn't really like it but all my friends did who came over back in the day but who cares I wasn't talking about AvP.

Right, so Jaguar is worth emulating for one game.

Even though that game was ported to PC. For crying out loud. (long before any Jaguar emulators existed)

So ... Thanks for informing me that there are Saturn emu's out there, but not a lot give a damn about the Saturn so nobody really knows there's out there? (... yet Jaguar emu's get more attention than the Saturn? .. it must be that extensive list of blockbusters on the Saturn you mentioned)

Okay, this is more you existing in a parallel universe. Just because you somehow weren't aware of Saturn emulators and somehow were aware of Jaguar emulators doesn't mean that the latter actually gets more attention than the former. The state of Jaguar emulation right now is far from ideal, whereas Saturn emulation is totally different. The reason why you know about Jaguar emulation and don't know about Saturn emulation is incredibly obvious - it's because you wanted Jaguar emulation and couldn't care less about Saturn emulation. For anyone who doesn't care about EITHER (me) and who therefore have a less biased view, and have looked at those emulator websites, it's obvious that both were released over the years but that Saturn ones have done better.

I was talking about *1* game. I didn't intend to get into a pissing match about irrelevant material I'm too old for this crap say what you want I'm done with this thread I just want a Pandora like everyone else on these forums and have wonderful fun with it. I haven't been as enthusiastic about a console since when I got a 'Duo.

What you appear to have intended was to jump in a thread where people wanted Saturn emulation and say "you guys all know no one wants Saturn because it had no good games, let's roll out the Jaguar emulator instead", then hopefully giving everyone a few moments to recover from the massive irony. And obviously you're not too old for this Instead of arguing about it you should just admit that you knew nothing about Saturn's library and drop it - I'm sure you don't like it when people tell you that nothing on Jaguar was worth playing (and I'm sure people say this all the time).

 

[Balzac2m]

It's the first time in my life, but it's time to say it:

Owned.

In every respect. Thanks exophase.

 

[CyruzDraxs]

I will pay $1000 to the first person to make an emulator for the Pandora that can run Radiant Silvergun at 30fps+. $100 bonus if it's fully open source and programmed with portability in mind.

That's good, I hope it's more than words.

But the $100 bonus is not enough. You could do a 50% ($500 for doing it and $500 if FOSS) or donate some more money with help of other people.

FOSS, to be honest, is not really that important to me. It'd certainly be nice for the other emu devs out there so I decided to include a bonus for that, but mostly I'm just offering as much as I can to hopefully give some motivation to create a Saturn emulator for the Pandora, open source or not. I'm not some rich guy throwing money around...that's over half my monthly earnings and nearly 2/3 of my rent. I just really want to see a playable Saturn emulator running on a portable device like this.

Hopefully this will set an example for more people to donate to the cause, or even to put toward porting the many fun open source linux games out there.

 

[timofonic]

QUOTE

I explained wrong, sorry. I did mean with mono-emulator the approach taken by companies like Square when porting games to PC in the past, making an custom emulator just for running their games of PSX or PS2. So yes, that can be a partial emulation and certain part implemented natively.

I always kinda wondered if some ports were done this way, but do you have a reference for it? Especially for PS2 games. Of course, they have source code so that changes a lot. Would also like to know where the term "mono-emulator" comes from, would be interesting to see if there's more background to all of this than I'm aware of..


Maybe the term is incorrect, I tried to "invent" a term for describing it (sorry for my inaccurate English). You know about the ZX Spectrum ports to MSX and such. If you explore the files in the FF7 and FF8 PC ports, you will see certain interesting files out there. I did that many years ago so I don't remember the details.

Maybe they just did the winelib approach when you compile natively and just use the library for emulate the calls, like Codeweavers did with the Chromium (the name of the Google Chrome open source project) build for Linux.

Not sure about Square PS2 games ported to PC, maybe I was totally wrong in that.

I will pay $1000 to the first person to make an emulator for the Pandora that can run Radiant Silvergun at 30fps+. $100 bonus if it's fully open source and programmed with portability in mind.

That's good, I hope it's more than words.

But the $100 bonus is not enough. You could do a 50% ($500 for doing it and $500 if FOSS) or donate some more money with help of other people.

FOSS, to be honest, is not really that important to me. It'd certainly be nice for the other emu devs out there so I decided to include a bonus for that, but mostly I'm just offering as much as I can to hopefully give some motivation to create a Saturn emulator for the Pandora, open source or not. I'm not some rich guy throwing money around...that's over half my monthly earnings and nearly 2/3 of my rent. I just really want to see a playable Saturn emulator running on a portable device like this.

Hopefully this will set an example for more people to donate to the cause, or even to put toward porting the many fun open source linux games out there.


Craig is doing some kind of bounty system or something equivalent for motivating the creation of software for Pandora, maybe he can help to spread your proposal and make it totally credible by the developers.

FOSS is not important to you and most users directly, but it's important for the developers that make the software you enjoy. Closed source means the project will die some day and probably nobody will be able to rescue it and continue the development. What benefits developers, benefits the users too.

A project like a HLE Saturn emulator for ARM platforms deserves to being FOSS so people can port it to every other ARM platform in the future and improving it even if just by sending little patches that solves certain bugs.

A perfect example of this is the Pandora project itself. It wouldn't exist if there wasn't the FOSS world offering the source code to both users and developers, remember developers can be (and usually are) both things too.

 

[polkunus]

omg...

 

[junker]

Yes I found that statement a little odd too, as at the time of release it was widely accepted that the Playstation games had better graphics than the Saturn. And Saturn owners were very proud of the fact that the games for the system were extremely playable even if not quite as visually appeasing as the (imho dull and repetitive) Playstation library.

I'd just like to add a couple more classics to your list: DaytonaCCE, Sega Rally, Christmas NiGHTS, Fighters Megamix





Actually, the Saturn had superior 3D and 2D. With most arcade ports on both systems, the Saturn versions were better. Also 3D games didn't have the jumpy textures, and were more "solid" on the Saturn. That's how they appear to me, and I'm sure the Saturn hardware was more powerful.

Check out this classic ad: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQW6-cbnHvY

Also, the best emulator I've seen is SSF. It IS the best, isn't it? Perfect aside from inability to make the 3D graphics look smoother with AA etc.