What Do You Guys Use For Nes Emulation?

[pcp]

I've tried GPFCE, which forces one of those ugly filters on, which I don't think is needed at all, considering the Pandy LCD is perfect for lowres games as is. This works decently on some games, but some games (e.g. Megaman 2) suffers from a slowdown. GPFCE-GP2X is about the same as GPFCE, doesn't run 100% full speed on all (most) games. Both emulators suffer from jerky scrolling (e.g. SMB3).

NESEmu is just terrible at it's current state and it doesn't seem to run any game right.

So, .. I refuse to believe that there aren't a single good NES-emulator for the Pandora, as NES is a fairly common system to emulate perfectly on most platforms.

Are there any tweaks I need to know of to make sure the NES games run perfectly? Thanks!

 

[goldenegg]

Have you tried raising the CPU speed in GPFCE-GP2X? That's what I us and I don't get any of the slowdown or jerky scrolling you mention. My CPU speed in the emulator is set to 500Mhz (no specific reason what I went that high).

 

[Prometheus]

I second the recommendation to use the GP2X version of GPFCE via GINGE. It's what I use, and it works perfectly for me. It's full-speed at the Pandora's stock clock-speed (no overclocking), with the display looking as I want it to, and with slow-down only where it exists on a real NES or Famicom.

It's also perfectly smooth for me - I'm not sure what's going wrong there for you. :blink: Are you using the GINGE-bundled one, or just running the GP2X one via GINGE manually? (I'm doing the latter, personally.)

 

[pcp]

I second the recommendation to use the GP2X version of GPFCE via GINGE. It's what I use, and it works perfectly for me. It's full-speed at the Pandora's stock clock-speed (no overclocking), with the display looking as I want it to, and with slow-down only where it exists on a real NES or Famicom.

It's also perfectly smooth for me - I'm not sure what's going wrong there for you. :blink: Are you using the GINGE-bundled one, or just running the GP2X one via GINGE manually? (I'm doing the latter, personally.)

Hmm, I'm using the GINGE-bundled one I guess (the .PND from http://dl.openhandhelds.org/cgi-bin/pandora.cgi?0,0,0,0,71,224). So you're saying that it will run better if I run it via GINGE manually? I will give that a shot today.

I also noticed that the clock speed is set at 150MHz within GPFCE for GP2X, but I assume that feature's disabled as the Pandora runs at 500mhz stock.

I'll give GINGE a try and report back. Thanks guys!

 

[naples39]

I use the ginge-wrapped pnd of gpfce. For whatever reason is works better than when I manually launch it through ginge, not to mention being more convenient.

Default 500 mhz on pandora is more than enough speed, and ignore the gp2x clock speed setting (it doesn't do anything).

Also, in the emulator settings turn frameskip to 0 (don't use auto), and turn on perfect v-sync. Those are the settings I use, and everything runs pretty much perfect.

 

[pcp]

I have now tried both the Ginge-wrapped GPFCE .PND and running it via Ginge. Both are equal crap. I have frameskip=0 and VSYNC enabled of course. It's not scrolling smoothly. Either it's something wrong with my setup or you guys don't see it (e.g. you are "happy with how it works").

 

[naples39]

Sorry those settings aren't working for you. I seem to recall a noticeable change once I used those in terms of smoothness.

Not at home and I don't recall, is there separate setting for v-sync or perfect timing or whatever? You probably tried enabling them all though.

EDIT: Are other emus working? Maybe a new hotfix install could help?

 

[pcp]

Sorry those settings aren't working for you. I seem to recall a noticeable change once I used those in terms of smoothness.

Not at home and I don't recall, is there separate setting for v-sync or perfect timing or whatever? You probably tried enabling them all though.

EDIT: Are other emus working? Maybe a new hotfix install could help?

UAE4ALL has smooth scrolling for the games it support, SNES9x4P is good enough for the games it support. Picodrive is excellent. MAME4ALL is good as well. Out of the systems that interest me, NES is the only one that doesn't run like I'm used to..

I've tried all settings indeed.

 

[naples39]

You know I was trying it again, and I think you are right. There is a very slight jumpiness on games like SMB3. Small enough that I didn't really notice before. It seems if you use the native pandora gpfce port it's smoother, but then again I didn't notice the choppiness in the first place. Of course I don't think vsync works causing the ripples and other issues.

I guess you'll have to pick your poison until someone takes another crack at a native gpfce port, which hopefully won't be too difficult.

 

[pcp]

You know I was trying it again, and I think you are right. There is a very slight jumpiness on games like SMB3. Small enough that I didn't really notice before. It seems if you use the native pandora gpfce port it's smoother, but then again I didn't notice the choppiness in the first place. Of course I don't think vsync works causing the ripples and other issues.

I guess you'll have to pick your poison until someone takes another crack at a native gpfce port, which hopefully won't be too difficult.

Thank you very much for confirming that.

Well, if the emulation isn't perfect then most games are unplayable IMHO. I know I'm terribly picky here, but I can't play side-scrollers with jerky scrolling. Thanks for all the replies guys!