Emulation central - recommendations in 1st post

[InD_ImaginE]

Can you make a seedbox torrent instead lol

Not that I even have half the space required to save those files lol

 

[Goi~Yaas~Dinn]

Not that I even have half the space required to save those files lol

External HDDs and flash drives are your friend. A little discretion with what sets you archive also does wonders. If the GDrive link stays up tomorrow (ie Mods don't nuke it, we all know Google will eventually) would you dudes and dudettes be interested in some Retrogamer PDFs? I can't claim they're WOWW SUPAR EXCLOOSIVE PREEMYUM CONTENTZ or anything, but I thought they were neat.

 

[flyingjohn]

There is a simple way of keeping a large selection of roms:

Anything below 5th console gen can be downloaded in full romsets considering the sizes are small enough(less then a gb).
The exception are the cd variations of consoles(neo geo,sega,turbografix),those range in the several hundred of gb's.
For 5'th and upper gen you look at recs and download individual files.
Racketboy,/v/ recs,retrosanctuary,mobygames are more then enough of a resource to select top games.

 

[Great Deceiver]

Yeah at this point in my life I have no interest in completion when it comes to emulation. I have my own curated list and it's more than enough for me.

 

[Baron Dupek]

he got the keys

So what does this mean for the PS3 Scene?

• Homebrew in any hardware revision (right now the Superslim is most restricted)
• BOOT PROCESS ACCESS
• Easier CFW installations (eventually)

It might be worth finding yourself a nice clean PS3 eventually.

 

[Goi~Yaas~Dinn]

he got the keys

So what does this mean for the PS3 Scene?

• Homebrew in any hardware revision (right now the Superslim is most restricted)
• BOOT PROCESS ACCESS
• Easier CFW installations (eventually)

It might be worth finding yourself a nice clean PS3 eventually.

Meh. From what I understand, the early PS3s are insanely fragile, with later ones achieving both cost reduction and increased reliability through tossing large amounts of HW backwards-compatibility overboard in favor of much more flaky emulation in SW. No amount of haXX0r'ing fixes that. Which leaves you with just the PS3 library itself. It's impressive, don't get me wrong, but it also sounds like the internet intrudes constantly into the gameplay experience (with your "trophies" this and your "friends list" that). I'm a disagreeable, antisocial little bugger. The way it's supposed to work is: I buy the game console, I buy the games, and unless I specifically hook the damn thing up to WIFI I never hear from the bastards who sold it to me (or anyone else, for that matter) ever again. No running home to mama for firmware updates. No dialing Jewllywood over some shit to make the Blu-Ray VM copacetic again.

I fail to see how this discovery helps with any of that. PS3 emulation, maybe. But for the physical console? Blech.

 

[Steamboat Willie]

Until you have all the romsets you ever wanted and realize you don't have enough lifetime to play them all, not even a sizable portion of them

It's not about playing all of them. It's about someday wanting to play one of them and having the peace of mind that you'll already have it in your collection.

 

[Puukko]

I only really seek out games when I know I'm about to play them, don't want to make that difficulty of choice worse by having everything readily available at hand.

 

[Abu Antar]

^On top of that, my backlog is huge.

 

[Great Deceiver]

Yeah, at least for me, having absolutely everything available at once brings about a paradox of choice and I either get paralyzed or cycle through roms for a few minutes at a time without actually spending time and playing anything.

 

[Goi~Yaas~Dinn]

It's not about playing all of them. It's about someday wanting to play one of them and having the peace of mind that you'll already have it in your collection.

This. In addition, datahoarding sets guards against particularly devastating forays by the copyright gestapo. The trap people like me face is the "keeping up with the Joneses" loop-

1. Download all your sets.
2. Get 'em just how you like.
3. Oh no! It appears they've already updated to next year's sets!
4. Throw out obsolete set.
5. Repeat until insanity sets in.

I'm trying not to give in to that kinda OCD madness anymore. Actually play the damn games, 'ya know?

 

[Grauken]

Until you have all the romsets you ever wanted and realize you don't have enough lifetime to play them all, not even a sizable portion of them

It's not about playing all of them. It's about someday wanting to play one of them and having the peace of mind that you'll already have it in your collection.

I was like that, still am a bit, but once you reach a certain age you realize that you don't have an infinite amount of time left

 

[Puukko]

Why do you think people become liches?

 

[Grauken]

Why do you think people become liches?

Alas I haven't found out how to do that yet

 

[Puukko]

Anyone familiar with Beetle PSX HW? I'm emulating Persona 2 EP and whenever I use a Persona it gets this stacked black outline which is quite distracting.

(trying out filters meanwhile, this one's heavier than I'd usually go for but I quite like it in motion)

Edit: managed to fix it either via default settings or disabling some software shaders.

 

[Goi~Yaas~Dinn]

Beetle PSX HW

Don't use it unless you love fiddling with settings, 'cause that's what you'll be doing per-game. Your graphics card is not a PSX, and does not render like a PSX. Therein lies the fundamental problem of this approach.

 

[Puukko]

Beetle PSX HW

Don't use it unless you love fiddling with settings, 'cause that's what you'll be doing per-game. Your graphics card is not a PSX, and does not render like a PSX. Therein lies the fundamental problem of this approach.

What's your recommendation then?

I determined the issue to be with Vulkan, which is the only renderer that can handle the game at 4x resolution and has the filter I like, while gl introduces another graphics bug in the form of black voids outside the map turning white during encounter start. I might just give those other emulators a go tomorrow.

 

[Goi~Yaas~Dinn]

Beetle PSX HW

Don't use it unless you love fiddling with settings, 'cause that's what you'll be doing per-game. Your graphics card is not a PSX, and does not render like a PSX. Therein lies the fundamental problem of this approach.

What's your recommendation then?

I determined the issue to be with Vulkan, which is the only renderer that can handle the game at 4x resolution and has the filter I like, while gl introduces another graphics bug in the form of black voids outside the map turning white during encounter start. I might just give those other emulators a go tomorrow.

Regular mednafen core. What you face here, fellow Codexian, is a classic trade-off situation:

1. Vanilla PSX graphics= minimal fiddling, level geometry that migrates with the seasons, very little game breakage, a 3d world rendered at the size of a postage stamp and then stretched beyond the bounds of sanity, no need to have a Moldavian shaman on retainer to keep your ancient PSX ticking, draw distances that would make Carmack drown himself in a vat of Diet Coke.
2. Fancy-pants fucking with the graphics pipeline= games routinely freaking out, non-hallucinogenic rendering of triangle primitives, the entire codebase of your favorite childhood frolic gibbering in madness as it dies horribly, lovely uprezing for eyeballs that aren't 12 years old anymore, wailing and gnashing of teeth as your vidya waifu's polygon face melts off while being exposed to the eldritch environs of your GPU FROM THE FUTURE!

The only thing that makes number 2 even remotely viable is a fuckton of game-specific hacks (on top of what already has to be present in the first place for number 1 because the byuu School of Emulation and Design doesn't scale to the 5th Gen. on today's MOAR CORES CPU approach). It essentially destroys the entire purpose of accuracy-focused emulation on a dubious premise, in my opinion. You're free to pick your poison, though.

 

[Puukko]

I struck a good balance with regular Beetle (Mednafen) running at 2x base res with a filter. 2x is already a huge improvement and I suppose being modest at times instead of dialing everything to 11 just because you can is nice for a change. Comparing PSX EP to PSP IS, I'd say they're different flavors of the game rather than the remake being strictly better. It improves on the UI in most aspects, being easier to read and faster to navigate, but I really just love the PSX aesthetics. Good 90s spritework holds up on its own and trying to make it all HD doesn't automatically make it better, just like the remastered soundtrack probably wouldn't fit the original game.

 

[BLOBERT]

BROS

GOT A PSP FOR FREE

PRETTY FUCKING AESFONE FOR ON THE GO EMULATION

IVE GOT SNES NES TG16 NES ALL UP WITH ALL MY COLECTED ROM SETS

 

[Steamboat Willie]

Imagine of the PSP had never been hacked.

I doubt anyone would still remember it existed by now.

 

[Vorark]

It actually had a nice variety of genres, both by western and Japanese devs, and natively played PS1 games -- it was a nifty piece of hardware for 2004. Being hacked only unleashed its potential. The PSP + DS combo was unbeatable if you enjoyed portables, one complemented the other. The Vita and 3DS never reached their highs, though.

 

[Great Deceiver]

I've been playing some Light Crusader for the Genesis. It's a pretty unorthodox game for Treasure (the makers of action-heavy games like Gunstar Heroes and shmups like Radiant Silvergun and Ikaruga); an action RPG with heavy puzzle elements played from an isometric perspective. It reminded me of Landstalker, but I think it's better than that game.

I completely missed it at the time and it's interesting to play it now. The soundtrack is great but the controls are a little wonky, collision detection is hit or miss sometimes. The art style appears to be more western than the cutesy Japanese games of this kind at the time and it lends a sort of grittiness to the experience.

Recommended as a piece of trivia and as a reminder that once upon a time games were not designed by committee.

 

[Goi~Yaas~Dinn]

It actually had a nice variety of genres, both by western and Japanese devs, and natively played PS1 games -- it was a nifty piece of hardware for 2004. Being hacked only unleashed its potential. The PSP + DS combo was unbeatable if you enjoyed portables, one complemented the other. The Vita and 3DS never reached their highs, though.

I actually don't think the PSP really took off until Sony realized it literally could not stop the homebrew scene from developing for it, and stopped their cat-and-mouse firmware update bullshit. Then they lock the Vita down to within an inch of its life, and SURPRISE SURPRISE it falls on its ass. The 3DS had...other problems...

 

[flyingjohn]

I would just like to recommend that anybody interested in ww2 console strategy games plays iron storm for saturn and advanced daisenryaku 2001.
2001 has most stuff translated and iron storm is in english. The most important parts are the help topics and they are in english.
They are one of the only daisenryaku english games for consoles minus exceed.And they both work on any emulator.
Here is daisenryaku 2001. This game covers most of the war and there is a editor.
A bad day for the german army.

Iron storm has a very unique artstlye compared to the other daisenryaku games.It doesn't cover all of the war unfortunately.