Snes9xbox V3 Possibly Up And Coming, Get yer word in now or forever hold your peace. Options

[madmab]

Uhhhh... no.. unless we find a way to make up for the 10 frames per second lost on most games you aint gonna see much. People with overclocked xboxes are the ones that are gonna get NTSC filter enjoyment out of this one..

This post has been edited by madmab: Apr 30 2011, 07:25 AM

[XTecuterX73]

Uhhhh... no.. unless we find a way to make up for the 10 frames per second lost on most games you aint gonna see much. People with overclocked xboxes are the ones that are gonna get NTSC filter enjoyment out of this one..

lol i mean the trusty upgrade will pretty much do this full speed right? the 128mb ram and 1.4 thing right? lol.

[madmab]

lol i mean the trusty upgrade will pretty much do this full speed right? the 128mb ram and 1.4 thing right? lol.

Yuppers!

[Dante_Ali]

I think honestly you guys should just give up on blargg's NTSC filter - it's not realistic you're ever going to get that running again on a modern version of SNES9x at fullspeed - they have simply upped the system requirements by too much for it to be realistic.

I don't even bother with blargg's NTSC filter on PS3 becaue I know a CPU filter will cause a massive speed hit.

One solution to this for PS3 would be to write a shader version - but it being very difficult code, nobody has yet succeeded.

You could look at HLSL on Xbox 1 - it will probably be very, very limited compared to what you have on Xbox 360, but perhaps it still provides you with all the necessary stuff you need to offload CPU filters like Blargg like that to the GPU.

I wonder though, has any Xbox 1 coder used shaders in the past? I don't seem to remember it.

This post has been edited by Dante_Ali: Apr 30 2011, 02:10 PM

[madmab]

None that I know of. However the filters are not affected on a speed modded xbox. So I'm leaving them in there for the 5 or 6 people on the planet that have one. Maybe someday I'll be lucky enough to be able to get my hands on one. Maybe one with more memory so I can maybe have winuaex take advantage of that. The filters dont have to be used and there are some games where they actually run fine.

But yeah with the age going against it and the era of 720p and 1080i coming upon us the xbox emulators are definitely reaching their limits.

[XTecuterX73]

None that I know of. However the filters are not affected on a speed modded xbox. So I'm leaving them in there for the 5 or 6 people on the planet that have one. Maybe someday I'll be lucky enough to be able to get my hands on one. Maybe one with more memory so I can maybe have winuaex take advantage of that. The filters dont have to be used and there are some games where they actually run fine.

But yeah with the age going against it and the era of 720p and 1080i coming upon us the xbox emulators are definitely reaching their limits.

yea i will have a trusty upgraded xbox soon. i decided to bite the bullet and just buy one. so thanks for thinking of us 5 or 6 people. even with this age upon us i still the black box of death is the most versatile and king of the term "virtual console"

[pkbunghole]

thanks madmab, i really appreciate any features left in for trusty box users. It would be great to see these boxes in the hands of developers, as they probably have the potential to keep xbox emulation relevant for another 5 years or more (oh and they dont cost all that much...)

This post has been edited by pkbunghole: Apr 30 2011, 06:02 PM

[Dante_Ali]

Oh, believe you me - Xbox 1 is still relevant - when I compare it to Wii and PS3 right now - PS3 has the advantage of shaders, more main RAM (and the untapped potential of the SPUs - that nobody right now uses for anything) - but Wii has almost no advantages over Xbox 1 from a homebrew/emu perspective - in fact, there are only disadvantages since it's PPC out-order.

What I've noticed on the Wii is - they put a lot of effort into the GUI and making things look nice, but when it comes to the actual core stuff, things are left wanting. That is not to rain on all homebrew so far, but it is something I have noticed when running SNES9x and FCEU on Wii. They also have a chip up their shoulder about 'piracy' that I find to be totally BS to be honest, but let's not get too deeply into that - I'm kind of an iconoclast in that regard.

Straight PC ports like SNES9x and FCEU really suffer on Wii unless core modifications are done - I did some core modifications to SNES9x and FCEU on PS3 and got rid of a lot of lag that way - but it seems the Wii devs like the source to stay untouched - well, that simply won't fly on PPC from a performance perspective.

The fact that you have a games console with an x86 processor (even though it's only 733MHz) is a huge advantage - you have far less stuff to worry about that is a major pain in the ass on PS3/Wii. Having a PPC processor also limits your options - there is no emu to port on PS3 that has 32X/Sega CD support - Gens is x86, so there goes that option. The same with N64 - Project64/1964 - same with UltraHLE. With all due respect to the Wii64 team (who make a big deal about the fact that 'every game' runs fullspeed when that's really not true), it can't hold a candle against Surreal64 XXX. I know a lot of work went into the PPC dynarec and related stuff - so it's all the more grating I guess when Surreal 64 simply makes a mockery out of it in comparison. They can't honestly believe that all of the delays (it uses some type of virtual memory system to even be able to load the entire ROM in) and all of the framerate dips in Ocarina of Time can possibly qualify as 'fullspeed' - it was one of the first games I tried on it. GoldenEye meanwhile is a 16-12fps slugfest. I tried the same game on Surreal64 - framerate is lots and lots better. So even with a heavily modified Mupen64 codebase with a PPC dynarec - it's still very poor.

That's also the reason why I want to try this core on Xbox 1 - it's going to be really hilarious if Xbox 1 does a better job at it right now than the PS3 - but hey, that's what you get when you have in-order PPC processors in modern games consoles (Wii has PPC out-order but it's almost as poor as the PS3 PPU from a performance perspective) and the homebrew coders right now (unlike commercial game devs) don't know how to properly optimize and program for it - you get sub-par performance where even a 733Mhz Celeron can beat it.

BTW - about the DreamXbox - sorry to say, I know modifying Xbox 1 consoles like that must not be cheap for the outfit doing it, but for 376/478 Euros, I can get a PS3 or 360 devkit - I can't justify that kind of money for what's essentially a 1400MHz, 128MB Xbox 1 - as much as I love the Xbox 1.

Perhaps they could give a discount to devs and then end-users after that - that could go some ways to revitalizing the scene in general - just artificially keeping the price high like that will certainly not draw any new customers in - at least IMO - whereas with a cheaper pricetag, it could revitalize it somewhat.

This post has been edited by Dante_Ali: Apr 30 2011, 06:24 PM

[pkbunghole]

ah it isnt the dreamXbox.

a trusty modded (1.4ghz 128mb) board costs less than 170 euros shipped...

the mods are done by the user: 'Trusty' on this board

still a lot more than a standard xbox for sure, but for me it was worth it for the PS1 and N64 emulation

(and yes i believe he should offer developer discount, as surely it would up his sales a great deal to have great stuff being produced and aimed at running on his boards)

btw i still have my old 1ghz 128mb xbox that i would happily sell to a UK based dev for very little...

This post has been edited by pkbunghole: Apr 30 2011, 06:40 PM

[xyteam]

interesting topic happening here,jtag360s have the same systems emulated on them as the ps3 but with the hacked xbox1 compatibility emu you can use a good amount of xbox1 emus.
most of the madmab/xport emus work on a jtag apart from snes,megadrive and pc engine.
can a hacked ps3 play PS2 homebrew?

[madmab]

Well I have to say when I updated the core to msdosxbox and then added mt32 support that I was pretty impressed at how well it runs on the 'ol xbox. While tweaking around with it I realized that the emulator itself does a real fine job of adjusting the speed of it's different "parts" to accomodate slowdown from other parts. Hence the mt32 emulation which can be a little bit slow actually runs pretty nice.

The only downsides is it screws with the mouse emulation which still has me a little baffled. (This would be left analog stick emulated mouse, and not a normal mouse). Well that and memory.. the games that need the dynamic recompiler unfortunately also need the most memory so as a result it creates quite a dilemna since the dynamic recompiler uses a honking amount of memory itself.


This post has been edited by madmab: Apr 30 2011, 11:58 PM

[Dante_Ali]

can a hacked ps3 play PS2 homebrew?

Only if you have a PS3 with PS2 hardware backwards compatibility support - these were the first models of the PS3 that were released in Japan and US - Europe is automatically excluded by default.

The PS2 software backwards compatibility that they included as a last resort in the models after that - they successively took out somewhere around 2007/2008 in later models (yes, Sony sucks like that - but they took out a whole lot more than that - as I'm sure you have learnt by now with the whole OtherOS/jailbreak fiasco).

So, my current 80GB PS3 has

a) no PS2 hardware backwards compatibility, and
b ) no PS2 software backwards compatibility (which sucks anyway).

The latter might be possible to re-enable at some point - but unfortunately, what you have running the scene right now (and the ones that consider themselves the 'masters of the PS3 brew universe') are a bunch of worn-out former Wii devs that have a huge chip up their shoulder about anything that might, and could, enable 'piracy' or 'copyright infringement'. These bunch are such a huge pain in the arse that they actually hold the scene back more than anything. I will let you form your own opinions about this bunch by just quoting one 'Wii dev' here on NeoGAF who had the following to say about the kind of 'code' he produced:

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php...77&page=179

I'm surprised how many people this tricks on both sides of the argument. Having written that app, I can tell you exactly what that option does. If you pick the piracy option, it undoes what it just did, deleting IOS236 from your Wii and then chastises you for being a pirate. If you try to immediately rerun the app, it remembers your previous response and chastises you even further for attempting such a thing.

Even if you turn the Wii off and then back on, it remembers how many times you have tried to run it and refuses to do anything else. It also stalls your Wii for a longer period each time before returning to the HBC. It is rather easy to fool the app, but I do enjoy the occasional heated private message or post on the GWHT forums from some stupid pirate who was too stupid to figure it out.

When you go out of your way to 'screw' with people out of whatever 'moral convictions' you have - that is when IMO you're totally crossing the line - your 'sole job' as a homebrew developer should be putting out great code/great apps - nobody elected you to start playing morality police or Mr. Judge Dredd himself.

So, their hardboiled stance on 'no piracy, blahblah' has unfortunately meant NPDRM keys have never been released - and this prevents the PS1 emu from ever being hacked so it can run ISOs, and similar stuff like the PS2 software emu ever being usable.

Really, I'm hoping (by just putting enough ports/updates out) that at some point some real good devs can come in and reinvigorate the scene by unlocking more keys to paradise - because being dependent on Mathieulh and pals is really becoming a huge pain in the 'you-know-what'. It's a huge achievement when you actually get to 'hate' a 'dev' (well, calling him a 'dev' is one leap of faith right there) - but that is what is happening here. The guy continually teases on his little Twitter page about how he did this, that, got the T-shirt, invented the calculator, blabla, but always with the caveat "OH but I won't release it because - oh Sony might get me - or because oh - it would enable piracy/I know what consequences my actions would have - blahblahblah'.

This guy has been engaging in this circus act now for the past four/five months - always saying he has the latest exploit, the latest stuff, but 'won't ever release it'. And he gets thousands and thousands of hits to this Twitter page, makes all the latest newsrounds ,and on and on - all on the back of having written a README for Dark_Alex's PSP custom firmwares back in the day and for having been involved in PSGroove (which is totally obsolete nowadays anyway).

Anyway, sorry for dragging this conversation off-topic - no need to bring the PS3 'dramaz' in here - it's bad enough as it is - and these guys have been namechecked enough by now and they sure get a kick out of it - so best not indulge their egos.

This post has been edited by Dante_Ali: May 1 2011, 06:06 AM

[cheema201]

Damn Squarepusher, sounds like some of the ps3 devs are a bit annoying haha...

I guess we are lucky in the xbox scene but, our devs never seem to let it get to their head and are always willing to lend a hand. Have a look at how much madmab has done with the xport sources and never even brags about it!

I tell you wat, if I had upgraded one emulator I'd be pretty stoked with myself. madmab just keeps the good fight going, bringing updates for most emulators you see on xbox these days. And then he answers all my stupid questions haha, thanks again madmab for that.

Maybe we're just luck, or maybe the xbox is just a more chilled out console haha.

Anyways Squarepusher, I have read about this psx key garbage. I was actually looking forward to playing some psx games on my ps3, but with only an early port of pcsx and currently no chance of getting the keys needed to play the actual "eboots" would you call them? or disc images created for ps3, I dunno. Yeh I was a bit dissapointed. But hey, pcsx reloaded has shown some good things with the revival of pcsx. Maybe we'll see an update of pcsxbox... hmmm, Squarepusher might even be keen do try it out haha.

And madmab, good to hear your looking into lightgun for v3. I am starting to get excited for this new release, especially since I am a PAL user!

Keep it up mate,

[madmab]

I was looking at lightgun/mouse this morning (taking my usual notes) but I was not feeling well so I stopped.. However I think I did get most of it down. So it's just a matter of modifying it to work with snes9xbox.. plug it in and see what happens..

[gilles9999]

Yo madmab,
After few tests of the latest beta (Snes9xBox_V3_Beta3_Rumble) 27/04/2011
Here's my results and it confirms my issues:(all my tests are on a regular xbox ntsc with us games like 90%of the users; tested on a SDTV and on my HDTV, all filters OFF even the new ntsc filter OFF.

The PLUS:
sound is almost perfect (a good example to test is to try Toys (us version), yes the crappy game from the movie: in the latest snes9x v2 you don't have the background music (you just hear some instrumental)
trying with snes9xbox v3 beta 3: i hear all the background music.secret of mana: the music inside the temple and castle is much more better (in v2 you don't have all the instrumental).And finally the music and sound effects of super castlevania IV are almost perfect!
In general the sound effects of games (mario world items/powerups, super punch out sound effects are better also)
The mode 7 is better (no more garbled mode 7 in secret of mana)
New games are now playable: BS zelda 1 now runs great
dragon quest 5 english trad is now playable
parodius 3 is now playable

The CONS:
Serious slowdowns in some games (even with all the filters off)
- CONTRA 3 stage 2 (mode 7) reeaally sloow; (in V2 it runs perfectly fluid and smooth)
- Super mario world 2 yoshi island: major slowdowns everytime (in V2 it runs perfectly fluid and smooth)
- Final fantasy VI :major slowdowns in animation and music as soon as you enter the first town (Narshe after 5 minutes of playing)again (in V2 it runs perfectly fluid and smooth)
- axelay : occasional slowdowns in animation and sound on the first level (in V2 it runs perfectly fluid and smooth)
- the 3 megaman x suffer some occasional slowdown in animation and sound (in V2 it runs perfectly fluid and smooth)

Here's my results hope it could help lol
just a question is it technically possible to choose between 2 cores for the games with slowdonw/problems if the issue can't be solved?
Thx for all your hard work madmab