Zsnes

[rum runner]

Hey I was just wondering how this emulator would run on the pandora since they have a linux version of it. Or if some one would have to go and tweak it so that the game controls would function with it or how that works.


If any one wants to take a look at it here is the web site:


http://www.zsnes.com/


And the source code page:


http://www.zsnes.com/index.php?page=files

 

[ari64]

Hey I was just wondering how this emulator would run on the pandora

Let us know after you finish rewriting the x86 assembly code for ARM.

 

[Nintendo]

^ lol, do you feel like being in a funny mood today, Ari?

 

[3jane]

Why zsnes in particular?

 

[Blue Protoman]

ZSnes has more features.

 

[mysticmaus]

I think ZSNES is the best SNES emulator and always has been.


Almost perfect graphics conversion.


No lag.


Many feautures.


Perfect Audio.


All games work.


All other SNES emu's are also very good but will never be as good as ZSNES , there always a game not working.


Or graphics are bad in some games, audio lag etc etc..


Too bad ZSNES is only ment for windows

 

[Nintendo]

I always thought that Snes9x was the best?

 

[mysticmaus]

Well SNES9X is very close at perfect emulation indeed too , but the fact that it's open source makes it for most people the best indeed. Understandable.

 

[rum runner]

Zsnes is open source though and there is a version for linux. That is the only reason I ask. And I agree to me and from what I used it was all ways best that I could find.

 

[mysticmaus]

OMG , you are right , there IS a linux version of ZSNES , I didn't even know that


Well I must try that sometime in Ubuntu B)

 

[chris_r]

Zsnes is open source though and there is a version for linux. That is the only reason I ask. And I agree to me and from what I used it was all ways best that I could find.

As Ari already said in a roundabout way, the emulator relies heavily on x86 assembly code so it would be a huge task to convert that all to ARM assembly, or even C and then lose the speed benefits. It's highy unlikely to happen and would probably be less effort just to code in the features you want into snes9x

 

[rum runner]

Hmm that would be cool still, to bad it couldn't just be that simple.

 

[WizardStan]

Nothing worth doing is ever that simple

 

[Nintendo]

I find playing Tetris worth doing...and simple too.

 

[timothee]

IIRC, the zsnes team itself was trying to replace many of its x86 asm code with ansi C (I have no idea what's the status of that now).


Also, while zsnes is open source, the zsnes dev repo is no longer publicly accessible; only releases will have their fixed source tarball available. That means you can't check the latest and greatest code by yourself until zsnes 2 comes out, which should be, *cough*, "soon".


The zsnes forums are active, so if you have zsnes questions, in particular how arm-friendly zsnes 2 is going to be, you should ask there.

 

[Exophase]

I think ZSNES is the best SNES emulator and always has been.


Almost perfect graphics conversion.


No lag.


Many feautures.


Perfect Audio.


All games work.


All other SNES emu's are also very good but will never be as good as ZSNES , there always a game not working.


Or graphics are bad in some games, audio lag etc etc..


Too bad ZSNES is only ment for windows

ZSNES is inferior to many SNES emulators when it comes to accuracy and even compatibility, and at this point many would prefer it's used less because its prominence causes some problems. Like ROM hacks that only work on ZSNES and not real hardware (or other emulators). I'm not one to knock someone using something that clearly works for them and I think the ZSNES hate can get pretty overblown, but I see where people are coming from on this one. It's not that ZSNES is bad per se, it's just old, really old. For its time it raised the bar on completeness of SNES emulation (you've got to look at its competition back then), but time has marched on and much more is known about SNES, along with more time to do a more thoroughly correct emulator.


For PC users who aren't using a super old CPU bsnes is the most faithful emulator (and has a load of other features). If your CPU is on the slow side the "performance" version may work while still offering the most faithful SNES emulation compared to any other emulators (except the more accurate forms of bsnes of course). Of course, even bsnes/performance is still far too slow to work on Pandora.


ZSNES still hast the fastest performance/compatibility ratio by far; when it plays a game correctly (or correctly enough) it plays a game efficiently (although this has diminished a bit over the years). A naive conversion from x86 ASM to ARM would probably lose some of this, but would still fare okay so long as there's support for misaligned loads/stores and they aren't too slow (should generally be the case on Cortex-A8).


There's one other big advantage ZSNES has, and that's a very efficient (if pretty buggy) netplay. Unfortunately I don't even think it's enabled in the most recent version..

 

[Nintendo]

A naive conversion from x86 ASM to ARM

Why would the conversion be naive?

 

[Exophase]

Why would the conversion be naive?

Because people who understand enough to do better probably would be writing their own in the first place.

 

[WizardStan]

A naive conversion from x86 ASM to ARM

Why would the conversion be naive?

"naive" in programming typically means "the most immediately obvious way of doing it, but probably isn't actually the best way of doing it".


A naive conversion of ASM would simply take instruction ABC in x86 and map it directly to one or more instructions in ARM, and a few tweaks to memory mapping as needed. Even though there are probably better ways of doing it, a direct mapping is "easy" and should work "well enough".

Because people who understand enough to do better probably would be writing their own in the first place.

Ok, that too, right.