Emulation central - recommendations in 1st post

[Goi~Yaas~Dinn]

also the RA mednafen core doesn't run SF3 well

More like the SF3 fan patch was made for PCSX or ePSXe, and thus shits the bed on anything close to actual hardware, I'd wager. It's "This patch only works with ZSNES!" all over again.

I'd be pretty amazed if you got Shining Force 3 working on a PS1 emulator

Disregard, am retarded.

1. How does the English Patch work?
The English Patch works by taking the original discs (Scenario 1, 2, 3 and the PD) and creating an ISO file for each of them, whilst replacing the Japanese from the original disc with the English translation. Each ISO can then be burned to a CD and played on a mod chipped Sega Saturn. Although a mod chipped Saturn is the recommended way to enjoy the translation, the Swap trick (search YouTube for Sega Saturn Swap Trick) can be used if a mod chipped saturn isn’t available. The ISO can also be played using a Sega Saturn emulator, such as SSF or Cassini. See Emulation page for additional information.

If it's confirmed working on an actual Saturn then by definition the patch cannot be at fault...

I fired up Shining Force 3 with the english fan-translation patch and had to go through quite a few emulators before finally finding one that works.

- SSF runs it but sound skips.
- Yabause runs it but has slow performance/frame rate.
- Kronos runs it but has even slower performance and frame rate.
- RetroArch saturn cores:
- RA mednafen saturn core runs it but with TERRIBLE performance and stuttering.
- RA yabause core doesn't work.

Finally found YabaSanshiro, the modern incarnation of yabause (a different dev forked yabause and has been steadily updating it) and finally got joy:

- YabaSanshiro runs it at 100% speed without sound skipping AND also offers custom internal resolution.

In any case I don't have any particular opinion on the game as I have barely played a few minutes' worth but I do have to say it is a profundly ugly game in terms of aesthetics. It did NOT age well. Sadly i can't use CRT shaders because I'm not on RetroArch and YabaSanshiro doesn't feature any.

Here's a screenie (notice the 720p resolution barrels to the left of the room while the 2d art is raw and ugly):

TLDR: SF3 currently only runs at 100% and with correct sound on the YabaSanshiro saturn emulator; normally this would be fine but the emulator has no options for custom shaders to help the 2d and 3d blend better. Game doesn't work on RetroArch saturn cores and/or runs slower than it does on YabaSanshiro, which hasn't been ported to RA.

EDIT: Another quirk of YabaSanshiro is that it doesn't let you map multiple inputs, for example you have to choose whether you want to map the DPAD inputs to your controller's DPAD or to the analog stick. I normally like mapping to both simultaenously in order to move around the map with the left analog stick but navigate menus with the DPAD, unfortunately YabaSanshiro doesn't allow that.

Does anyone know of any way I can my controller's left analog stick send DPAD inputs simultaenously? I tried using x360ce in order to map the dpad to the left analog stick but it didn't work in-game/in-emulator.

EDIT 2: Is there any way to implement CRT shaders if you're not on RetroArch? Like I said, none of the saturn cores in RA run SF3 well enough, and YabaSanshiro doesn't feature custom shader support. Maybe reShade? Is that a thing? This game really needs something because it is a very harsh blend of 2d and 3d.

Bingo. What's your CPU again?

 

[aweigh]

i5 8400 6-core

 

[Goi~Yaas~Dinn]

i5 8400 6-core

GHz? I'm getting a huge value range for that model.

 

[aweigh]

boosts up to 3.8ghz, idles at 2.8ghz

 

[Goi~Yaas~Dinn]

boosts up to 3.8ghz, idles at 2.8ghz

That's what I thought; you're right on the edge for being able to use mednafen at all for Saturn emulation. Minimum is a Core i5 with a base clock of 3.4 Ghz! Multi-core usually gets you nothing with emulation; it's all about the single-core raw speed. The reason YabaSanshiro is working for you in this case is because it's less accurate but in return demands fewer resources. This could continue to pay off (recommended emulator for that specific patch is SSF per the group itself) or it could bite you in the ass in the form of an uncompletable game at any point. It's all with how much of a gambling man you are.

 

[aweigh]

i'm not a fan of cycle-accurate emulators mostly because they have too-beefy cpu requirements, whereas i just want the game to run and to be able to increase resolution and pretty-fy the graphics via filters or shaders or polygon correction, which are amenities those kind of emulators rarely offer. i can do these things on yabasanshiro, but cannot on RA's mednafen saturn core, and that's really all I care about.

point remains that if you want to play SF3 then the best choice is yabasanshiro and that was what i wanted to get across with my original post. i tried all the other emulators and had no joy until i tried that one so i wanted to let y'all know.

EDIT: also from what i understand savestates and the saturn virtualized memory (i.e. what games save to) can be passed around between the different SS emulators, so there's that as well.

 

[Goi~Yaas~Dinn]

EDIT: also from what i understand savestates and the saturn virtualized memory (i.e. what games save to) can be passed around between the different SS emulators, so there's that as well.

Thanks, I actually didn't know that particular bit.

 

[glass blackbird]

I remember SF3 working fine in SSF back when I tried it, but that was probably about a year ago and it's possible the emulator has been updated in some way or it's hardware reliant. Saturn emulation generally is not nearly as developed as Playstation emulation, sadly, and there's a lot of problems with it. And SSF (which for ages was the Best Saturn Emulator) is closed source from what I remember so the emulator devs can't even share corrections with eachother that might normalize quality.

I've never heard of YabaSanshiro but it's good someone is updating Yaba since it's the only one with higher resolution rendering.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

I just tried Reicast for the first time (downloaded the last beta release), but I was able to play only some games that not require the analog controller. The problem is that I was not able to map the analog on the keyboard or mouse (it is trivial to do that on Demul or any other emulator for any other system I know.) Am I missing something obvious? (I play on a laptop and I don't want to mess with any xbox or PS4 controllers.) Thanks for the help.

 

[HansDampf]

HD Mode 7 mod, for bsnes v107.1, beta 1

Normal Mode 7

HD Mode 7

 

[samuraigaiden]

I don't get the appeal of HD mode 7.

 

[tet666]

I don't get the appeal of HD mode 7.

Well it just doesn't look like a pixelated mess, what's not to get about that?

 

[Goi~Yaas~Dinn]

I don't get the appeal of HD mode 7.

Well it just doesn't look like a pixelated mess, what's not to get about that?

It totally still looks like a pixelated mess. Just a slightly different one. The way most MODE7 was utilized, I'm not sure there's enough visual information there to meaningfully enhance; it was mainly used to convey shit like world maps or abstracted landscapes viewed from a significant height (F-Zero and Pilotwings being the well-known poster children for the latter, of course). This entire thing strikes me as a fool's errand.

It's like crowing that you've made a Rand-McNally Road Atlas "high-definition".

 

[aweigh]

uhh, it looks a ton better?

look at how clean this shit looks

 

[aweigh]

shit looks amazing in motion:

 

[Nifft Batuff]

Look at those huge pixels!

 

[Tarrant]

People who don't see the difference between mode7 and HD mode 7 should be studied in a laboratory. Immediately reminded me of this:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Uxf9X0WNhog

 

[Goi~Yaas~Dinn]

People who don't see the difference between mode7 and HD mode 7 should be studied in a laboratory. Immediately reminded me of this:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Uxf9X0WNhog

Like I said, an HD Rand-McNally road atlas doesn't look that different from one in standard definition. You're crowing about ever-so-slightly cleaner pixels (and I do mean slight).

 

[Vorark]

My dudes, Citra is insane. Decided to try Monster Hunter XX on my humble notebook powered by the majestic Intel HD 620 and it's PLAYABLE at 3x the original resolution. Hoooly shit! Can even hook up my DS4.

Is there a custom build for MHXX or latest Canary is good to go?

 

[Perkel]

I don't get the appeal of HD mode 7.

Well it just doesn't look like a pixelated mess, what's not to get about that?

Look at that F-Zero. In pixelated mode you have depth more or less, with mode 7 whole think looks flat.
Also pixelated mode is not actually supposed to look like that in first place.

pixelated mode is something we get when you use LCD screens instead of CRT as LCD have pixels and almost no black space between pixels and that black space is very much part of artstyle.

This is how pixelated game looks like on LCD

And this is how "pixelated" game looks like on CRT

 

[glass blackbird]

The mario kart one looks shitty cause the background is still huge pixels and it ruins the effect

 

[Rahdulan]

Also pixelated mode is not actually supposed to look like that in first place.

pixelated mode is something we get when you use LCD screens instead of CRT as LCD have pixels and almost no black space between pixels and that black space is very much part of artstyle.

I get why people who emulate these games today, and weren't there when said games were new, either abhor filters to embrace raw pixels or go overboard with hq4x and smother everything in the process. Because modern logic is display games in higher resolution with cleaner output at all costs. They don't fully realize what you said about this intentional obfuscation being an integral method to get the visuals they were aiming for. I wonder if this is where the entire misguided "indie pixel scene" comes from.

 

[samuraigaiden]

I think HD Mode 7 looks stupid. The blurry mess gave space for your mind to fill in the blanks, the "HD" look makes a perfectly visible bunch of nothing. Some 2D geometrical shapes laying down, totally still. Why do you want to see that in HD? It doesn't even look like Mode 7 anymore.

 

[Goi~Yaas~Dinn]

I think HD Mode 7 looks stupid. The blurry mess gave space for your mind to fill in the blanks, the "HD" look makes a perfectly visible bunch of nothing. Some 2D geometrical shapes laying down, totally still. Why do you want to see that in HD? It doesn't even look like Mode 7 anymore.

Same problem Perkel and others try to elaborate on. Some simply can't (or won't) see.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

I think this article has some good points about the problem of this HD fetichism for 2D graphics. I see the same fetichism applied also to retro 3D graphics, such as the PS1 graphics, when it is pumped up to 4K or more. There is an equilibrium, you can increase the resolution of old games up to a certain point (for my taste is about native x 2, but it depends on the specific game), after that the graphics quality decrease and the game looks worse than with the lower original resolution.