Emulation central - recommendations in 1st post

[A user named cat]

Tried out Gliden64 1.1 (released yesterday) and cannot believe this is all they have to show for it after getting crowdfunding, what a joke. It really does run like a bog in plenty of games, much worse than old Glide. "007 - World Is Not Enough" I was getting like 40fps which caused lots of stuttering. Still lots of glitches apparent too. Goldeneye still has those messed up side borders, Dark Rift backgrounds still fucked and I even encountered games with flickering textures. Tried different RSP plugins too but that didn't help.

Basically N64 emulation is still garbage and absolutely annoying to deal with. The per-game config guide is required and likely will be until Cen64 becomes usable.

Here is an updated zip with everything you'll need, spekkio will need to update first post with new link:
http://www.mediafire.com/download/jw4dtwtkj46zn0x/N64_Emulation.zip

 

[Athelas]

What's wrong with Project64?

 

[A user named cat]

What ISN'T wrong with Project64? Glitches galore, inaccurate, buggy and still sucks all these years later. Almost every game requires you to change or tweak plugins. Hell, many games require you to use different emulators altogether unless you don't mind bugs. Check the guide:

http://bhemuhelp.co.nf/n64mgcl/source/a.html

Even Saturn emulation is less problematic and SSF rarely gets updated, and it emulates a much more complicated system.

 

[spekkio]

Here is an updated zip with everything you'll need, spekkio will need to update first post with new link

Updated my journal.

BTW, I've completed my 1st PS1 game on Mednafen - RE1 DC.
Only problem I've enocunter was a sound lag - sometimes the emu accesses the image (HDD can be heard) and then there's short sound hiccup. Probably can be solved by moving the image to SSD drive or tweaking some options.
Except of that, perfect emulation with 0 fucking around (launch and play). Quicksaves and turbo button make the game even more playable.

 

[A user named cat]

Here is an updated zip with everything you'll need, spekkio will need to update first post with new link

Updated my journal.

BTW, I've completed my 1st PS1 game on Mednafen - RE1 DC.
Only problem I've enocunter was a sound lag - sometimes the emu accesses the image (HDD can be heard) and then there's short sound hiccup. Probably can be solved by moving the image to SSD drive or tweaking some options.
Except of that, perfect emulation with 0 fucking around (launch and play). Quicksaves and turbo button make the game even more playable.

What kind of HDD do you keep your games on? I never encountered that before with Mednafen, only Dolphin and PCSX2 from time to time. I store all my roms and iso's on a WD Caviar Black which is pretty fast for a mechanical drive.

 

[spekkio]

WD20EARX - 2TB WDC HDD drive. Fast and not that fragmented, methinks. But I have my torrent folder there, so it could be that.

 

[A user named cat]

Yeah that's a green drive, no wonder you were having issues. While not exactly a turtle, those are the slowest amongst WD's lineup. They're mainly meant for cheap storage or to use in raid.

Blues are pretty fast and an improvement, but Blacks are the performance drives and most reliable. They'll give you the best seek and access times, thus no hitching. Try to grab one sometime and you'll likely notice a difference. They're a bit expensive though.

Also are you sure you don't have the parking issue?

http://www.amazon.com/review/R17DKS...detail-glance&nodeID=172282&store=electronics

http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=609&sid=113

 

[spekkio]

It's not a big problem, since I keep my OS, programs and PC games on a SSD drive.
I kept the RE .bin on my HDD out of lazines. Doesn't happen with psX or epsxe, though.

 

[spekkio]

BROs, how about a nice cup of tl;dr?



I've spent 1/2 of Sunday playing around with different PS1 emus/plugins, looking for "proper" aspect ratio for PS1 games.
I'll share my findings - not that anybody sane cares... + / - means the image is stretched (+) or squeezed (-) vertically or horizontally.
I was always using "window", 640x480 or "original" resolution and no aspect correction whatsoever, since using full screen can fuck things up, especially with widescreen resolutions...

1) epsxe 1.9.25 + gpuBladeSoft 1.42, "Perfect" visible area.

Original PS1 graphical output, which is actually stretched vertically, since the image on TV was "squeezed" a little. It looks a little bit stretched indeed (V+):

Bios tiles aren't square:

FM2 looks like this (check the "Muddy Otters" logo - circular?):

Font looks different than in other emus:

VS looks like this (check the circle in the background - it's not 100% round; same with the copyright sign):

Notice that the "square" button isn't actually 100% square (same with the light blue squares):

And finally VP (check the circular elements - both main menu and ingame look wrong):

2) epsxe 1.9.25 + Pete's OpenGL2 2.9. It looks almost identical as before.

Bios tiles aren't square as well:

Otters logo is circular, font looks like before:

VS main screen is borked:

But ingame looks like on Blade's:

VP looks identical as on Blade's:

And now for something different - I think that's the "proper" aspect ratio... Maybe.

3) epsxe 1.9.25 + gpuBladeSoft 1.42, "Normal" visible area.
This is the "squeezed" output - it should look like on CRT TV.

Logo looks good:

Tiles are square:

To my surprise, FM2 looks 100% identical as before

VS looks squeezed (the circle still isn't round):

But the "square" button is square:

VP main menu is identical as before (why the fuck it hasn't changed - because of HiRes mode?):

But the game itself isn't - it has proper AR:

BTW, good old pSX 1.13 has proper AR as well:

But wrong colors and low compatibility, compared to epsxe and mednafen. Speaking of which...

4) mednafen 0.9.37.1, "show horizontal overscan" enabled. Stretching options have no effect on display in window (it looks the same).
IMO mednafen has incorrect AR ATM. Compared to screens above, images looks squeezed horizontally:

No bios tiles, since I don't know how to access bios via mednafen...

FM2:

VS's main menu's background is perfectly circular for the first time, but...

The "square" button isn't 100% square:

VP's main menu's background is round for the 1st time:

But the game itself looks squeezed:

Still, Hi-Res modes (VS and VP menus) look perfect...



Mednafen's AR can be "fixed", if you disable the horizontal overscan in .cfg and switch to full-screen + stretch=full (which will stretch the H-cropped image).
Only full-screen looks like this, window looks the same (it's simply 604x480 instead of 640x480).
The outcome looks similar to Blade's "normal" / Pete's:

Since PS1 had like 7 display modes, it's totally possible that some emus / plugs / settings display "low" / "non-interlaced" modes correctly, while "high" / "interlaced" incorrectly.



Comparison gifs: Blade "normal" / Mednafen (regular).

Which is proper and why?



*Edit:

Screen pack, in case somebody wants it.

 

[Baron Dupek]

Maybe that's me but proportion problem is not an issue from me, it's the last thing for me to bother. I have high tolerance for some uneven displayments as long as game is playable, not flick or stutter and else.

And thanks for that pack Phnatasmal, that didn't know that plugin was crowdfunded and I couldn't explain more details how badly it worked with my games (Turok and DukeNukem).

 

[spekkio]

But BRO!

 

[Gozma]

This is the kind of thing I care just enough about to hope someone else fixes it for me

 

[SCO]

This is probably relevant to your graphicswhore interests spekkio http://www.reddit.com/r/Megaten/comments/35ixub/pcsx2_progressive_scan_mode_patches_for_nocturne/

 

[Nikaido]

For those who'd like to emulate arcade games without fiddling too much with configuring MAME, it seems like RetroArch using the MAME core has "sane" defaults for all intent and purpose. No screen tearing and other pesky issues. So far I haven't seen any downgrade/issue uniquely related to RetroArch and I'm using the nightlies build.

 

[A user named cat]

Wow, that's a lot of research spekkio but I can attest that Mednafen is pretty much 100% correct aspect ratio. To my eyes, your idea of correct looks a tad stretched out but that's entirely subjective. Using your last VP gif, the sun rays look more like ovals than circles when stretched to full. It's the same thing with people who prefer to play SNES at 4:3 (which is what tv's displayed) while I prefer the original system aspect of 8:7 (which may look squished to some). Maybe it boils down to what you're used to.

The author of Mednafen has discussed all this regarding PS1 before but I can't find the topic: http://forum.fobby.net/

Have you tried out RetroArch with Mednafen-PSX core yet though? It has a shitload of aspect and screen options in the menu to fiddle with, so it's much easier to tweak on-the-fly.

http://buildbot.libretro.com/

 

[tuluse]

WD20EARX - 2TB WDC HDD drive. Fast and not that fragmented, methinks. But I have my torrent folder there, so it could be that.

Have you tried the load disk image into ram option?

Also, a lot of developers back in the day didn't account for the TV stretching the image. So if you played it on a TV you would get ovals.

 

[spekkio]

Have you tried out RetroArch with Mednafen-PSX core?

I did just now. Had to upgrade to nightly build, since old mednafen core in stable 1002 wasn't even quicksave-compatible (you can use the new core with old exe, though). Aaaand configuring nightly build takes fucking ages, since it's a gigantic piece of bloat now (100 cores, 200 libraries, 10000 options). But once it's set up, it's a goddamned monster, able to replace 90% of emus and totally configurable (you can change p. much any option gui / vidya / sound / input / emulation related).

Mednafen core uses 0.9.36.5 sources ATM, so a little bit oldish, but whatev. AR on default setting:

(BTW, DAT GUI)



Looks the same as in Blade's "Normal", at least ingame (no vertical bars / squeezing, present in mednafen itself):

NTSC bios (stretched):

PAL bios (squeezed horizontaly):

FM2:

^ circle is correct.

VS:

^ squares are correct

VP:

^ correct circles (checked in Paint Shop Pro)

PAL games aren't squeezed the way bios is:

BTW, emu perfectly emulates the "screen shaking" effect in Wipeout 2097. Previously it was only emulated in Blade's plugin.

Anyway:

 

[A user named cat]

Yeah, not a fan of the newer nightly builds either. They've been adding too many dumb bloat options like you mentioned, such as having to toggle an annoying popup that asks if you want to extract an archive. What's nice about the UI though is if you use a 360 controller for Windows, you can bring up the menu by hitting the big "X" button and navigate it easily. Just wish it had mouse support, fucking consolitis design.

Here, use this version. It works perfect with all the latest cores and includes all the bios files you'll need for like every system. Doesn't have some of the annoying option bloat from nightly builds.

http://www.mediafire.com/download/5wn1o853laa5h2t/Retroarch.zip

 

[Edward_R_Murrow]

All right emulation mastermen, here's tricky one.

I've been playing around with a softmodded Wii (old model), playing Gamecube .isos or .gcms from an external HDD. Because P.N.03 is such a brilliant, monocled game that any gentleman of erudition would gravitate towards (), I've played a bit of it, but run into a snag. At a specific point (Chapter 8, right before entering the boss room), the game crashes. I've tried:

-Different boot methods. Dios Mios, Nintendont, and Devolution with the crash occurring on each one.
-Toying with settings (e.g. enabling/disabling No More Memory Cards, Widescreen, etc). Same deal, always a crash.
-Running a different frontend via a different IOS. No dice.

A little bit of Google-fu brings up some pages that list this issue, but document it as a random crash, implying that it doesn't always happen. My experience, though limited, seems to contradict that.

So, I'm wondering if there are any others who have fiddled with this sort of emulation or something tangential to it. Are there best practices for troubleshooting crashes? Does this happen on Dolphin too? Was there a bad print run, with corrupted data written to disks?

And if all else fails, does anybody have any experience hex-editing Gamecube save files? I doubt it will be as easy as hex-edits of Goldbox character/gamesave files, but it shouldn't be impossible...right?

 

[spekkio]

^
How about importing the savefile (.gci) to PC and trying to bypass this section on the Dolphin?
https://forums.dolphin-emu.org/Thread-transfer-gc-wii-memory-card-saves-to-dolphin

And of course check if the .iso has correct checksum (isn't corrupted):
http://redump.org/disc/6071/

 

[tuluse]

Just wish it had mouse support,

Pretty sure there is an option to turn this on.

 

[SCO]

BROS BROS https://github.com/PCSX2/pcsx2/pull/540


emulation does it again

 

[ghostdog]

Nice. Now I might actually finish this game.

 

[SCO]

I watch the pull requests of programs i'm interested in like a hawk ofc.

 

[Hirato]

Didn't the demi-fiend used to have a shadow?
It was buggy, but he had one nonetheless.