Ressurectionxtras And Compatibility Lists, For all major Xbox Emus - Atari, Nintendo, Sega, PCE! Options

[cbagy]

@ MM yeah thats an old command from the tools (sdk / xdk). It takes too much out of them quality wise. Batters the audio and video, i think its too much. Wow that bloody set of tools takes me back. @ RX. Yes any videos that appear in subsequent packs are revisions, either better action of removing some form of fault. You are correct to overwrite any older drafts. I have had a re-think, im doing some bits to my skin to give a more cinematic feel which has led me to look at the videos in a different light again. Im gonna get "all" the official videos done and complete, at the current standard, then probably start again from scratch after a few months break from it. Paying more attention to titles this time. It may make them slightly longer but i think with a few more tweaks i can still get HQ FOR UNDER 8.5 - 9M mb.

This post has been edited by cbagy: Oct 31 2009, 10:51 PM

[Mega Man (?)]

Interesting cbagy...
Rx... 4000 videos coming my way...?
The "c" is an option anyone can do when they want to convert their wmv to xmv... like everyone here has to do "AFTER" they download the (wmv) xtras...

Of course you still have the .wmv files... that is what we have been releasing.. right...?
It's everyone choice really... no need to worry...

I'll see about those other hq boxarts when I finish the Genesis ones... I am busy tonight...
Later Guys

This post has been edited by Mega Man (?): Oct 31 2009, 11:13 PM

[ressurectionx]

Whoops... yeah. I forgot we don't do xmv here... dur

Everyone can make them the way they want to from the WMV files.



4,000 vids coming everyone's way really. I think in about 3 months I'll be ready to put out a giant 8 or more system Xtras release. I might postpone that though if we still have a lot of action on adding new games. Hoping this will be the grand finale for most of them.

[cbagy]

OK Rx... This is a good place to start: Genesis 466 x 640 boxart test
Cbagy made videos for these I think... They are all the sonic games, so you can check them together... They're in .png... but you'll have to name them right...

Just use them as a test and get back to me... if it's a go...I will have the full pack together soon with about 220 HQ boxarts,

Now this test pack couldnt be my artwork resized could it ? Im presuming not after RX bleating on about me pinching his stuff, renaming it and then calling it mine, which as it turns out wasnt the case. I had a feeling this might happen anyway, funny how the worm turns. But i'll leave it at that, end of story.
The link i gave you MM wasnt to be used as a distribution link. After 3 downloads i deleted the online files as i was only expecting one download from the one and only link i gave to you. I do have have a "full" enhanced artwork pack to which i only gave you a small sample. Ive even gone to the effort of building proper custom cases that are accurate to the originals for those boxfronts that dont exist or are of piss poor quality.
Dear me !

[madmab]

In regards to memory useage it works something like this. And I'm trying to keep this simple...

Action shots, title shots, box and cart art completely loaded up and use whatever memory it is that it takes to store them. So the bigger they are the more likely they can cause issues displayed in the right combination. When the interface stops displaying them the memory is freed.

Movies are buffered so they always generally take the same amount of memory (depends on screensize, color depth). The emulator fills the buffer as needed. Obviously things like larger screen sizes, bitrates and color depths will affect performance depending on how often full frames are used, but that is way too technical for me to want to try and explain.

If any of the above elements are on the network the emulator first copies them to the temp drive and then it accesses them. So there will be a delay depending on how good the network connection is and how big the files are. There is no need to worry about the temp drive filling up because it overwrites old pictures/movies with the new ones as it goes.

[cbagy]

@ Madmab

Would re-sampling the title shots to a smaller file and pixel size be an memory improvement even if its only minor. As ive had a hunch that those pics dont necessarily need to be as large as the are as static previews are rarely used at full size.

What do you think ? Even if its a minor ajustment to memory consumption.

[ressurectionx]

Are you being serious?

Arent' those images from thecoverproject? Unless you bought all those games and took the images and touched them up yourself, I think you have no claim to them. Collecting artwork for the project from that site is something that people have done for about 4 other systems now.

I'm holding off getting mad here again because I can't tell if you're serious or not.

[madmab]

Well the map file to texture is a DirectX command so I'm not really sure what is going on there. You basically have three factors...

The file size which probably has the least impact since .jpg's and .png's are generally compressed. Most likely any memory used (for loading, and work space) is released once decoded.

The color depth and screensize of the source (aka the file).

The color depth and screensize of the destination. Color depth = 16bit RGB. Screensize matches the source file, pretty much.

I'm not sure what the OS (xbox) / DirectX does with the actual texture. Whether it keeps it in memory and then just blits it to the screen memory, or how that works. So this may or may not be a factor.

I only personally ran into memory issues twice..

1. Some hi-res Box/Art for the Odessey2.
2. Some hi-res manual sacans for the Odessey2.

One of them seemed more an issue of the actual dimensions of the image and not how much memory it used. But I'm not really sure since it was DirectX that was rejecting it and it was not exactly giving me a whole lot of details on why it rejected it.

What was disconcerting about the above mentioned scenario was that it was happening with the O2 emulator which is not exactly a memory hog.

To be honest HQ artwork is gonna have diminishing benefits (I'll leave it to the math experts cause I'm lazy). But you figure at SD you are at 640x480 and the boxart is only gonna take up a small portion of that unless you stretch it to the full screen. Then the next two highest up are 720p and 1080i. So you get a little more detail. But 1080i REALLY pushes the performance and memory of the Xbox.

In fact some people may consider HQ box-art about as pointless as others may consider titles screens, dual previews, movie previews, and the synopsis.

I wouldn't worry to much about title screen size anyways. Most emulated systems don't really go any higher than 320x400 anyways.

daleswanson brought up a good point. Could there be a way that the emu could just auto save the configurations for new roms if you enter the game by pressing B? I really don't care for my own setup now since I've pretty much got all the saves done, but I could see how this could be valuable for new people who dont' have the Xtras or don't take the time to FTP over the thousands of saves I'll be uploading. I was wondering if that'd be difficult to code in?

Pressing B at the games select screen, exits you out to the main menu. Not sure what your getting at here. Sure we could add an option in the "General Options" menu to "Use configuration defaults on unconfigured games" or something like that. Then the user could just press "X" to "Force the configuration screen to come up" if the above added option was set to "Yes".

I've been wanting to work on some means of transferring configurations easily way back since I started Atarixlbox. But it never came to fruition and the computer based emu's seem to be the only ones that need it the most. So I figured the point was kinda moot unless someone was willing to sit down and make configurations.

It is likely, however, that something may come into existance on my work with winuaex. If waal comes thru with his configurations. Now I just got to get over all these nice little muscle aches created by the nice little flu I caught.

This post has been edited by madmab: Nov 1 2009, 03:58 PM

[ressurectionx]

Whoops. yeah... I meant X button.

That be great if you could do that. I don't mind making the saves, since they're done for about 6,000 or so games total at this point, but maybe somebody wouldnt' want to take the time to FTP all of them over. It really does take a long time since the FTP program has to create all of those folders (which seems to take much longer than just transfering files).

I thought it was a pretty good idea for the console emus. Glad to see you agree.

[ressurectionx]

Now this test pack couldnt be my artwork resized could it ? Im presuming not after RX bleating on about me pinching his stuff, renaming it and then calling it mine, which as it turns out wasnt the case. I had a feeling this might happen anyway, funny how the worm turns. But i'll leave it at that, end of story.
The link i gave you MM wasnt to be used as a distribution link. After 3 downloads i deleted the online files as i was only expecting one download from the one and only link i gave to you. I do have have a "full" enhanced artwork pack to which i only gave you a small sample. Ive even gone to the effort of building proper custom cases that are accurate to the originals for those boxfronts that dont exist or are of piss poor quality.
Dear me !

BTW... the link MM gave me only had about 8 Sonic the Hedgehog images in HD to match up with your videos, using Gilles' skins to see if there were memory problems. Which there weren't.

Should be a cause of celebration. Not more of this bullshit.

And the Sonic the Hedgehog I image wouldn't make it anyways since it has the "Not For Resale" words on it that they have at thecoverproject, so if these were yours, you downloaded them and cropped them from thecoverproject like about 4 other people have done for 5 or 6 other systems already including SNES, NES, Atari 2600, Atari Lynx and Atari 7800.

Tell me you're kidding cbagy. I love your work, but you're certainly rubbing everyone here the wrong way with your comments at times.



EDIT: I think you need to realize that this is a project where people have developed personal relationships and worked with each other for over a year, many hours of free time, without pay. We welcome people who want to help out and contribute and you could even be a valuable team member some day, but I think right now you're just very concerned in making a name for yourself and fighting with everyone every step of the way.

You're not going to make it to the top in a few weeks, and definitely not by pissing off somebody everytime you post something.

Help me out here. I want to enjoy having you along for the ride, but it's becoming a chore. Let's just work together.

Later,
~Rx



This post has been edited by ressurectionx: Nov 1 2009, 05:20 PM

[madmab]

Whoops. yeah... I meant X button.

That be great if you could do that. I don't mind making the saves, since they're done for about 6,000 or so games total at this point, but maybe somebody wouldnt' want to take the time to FTP all of them over. It really does take a long time since the FTP program has to create all of those folders (which seems to take much longer than just transfering files).

I thought it was a pretty good idea for the console emus. Glad to see you agree.

Well the whole point of my "auto configuration database" system would be that it would be CRC based and not dependant on filename. Plus the user could always select it from a list if they wanna take a chance...

[ressurectionx]

Well the whole point of my "auto configuration database" system would be that it would be CRC based and not dependant on filename. Plus the user could always select it from a list if they wanna take a chance...

CRC could be cool. I just figured you'd keep it filename like it is though. Just when you press "A" for a new rom it would skip the whole "making a new save and asking you if the standard settings are okay" process".

I don't think this should be a project at all for anyone. Just get the emu to automatically press "B" after the emu brings up the config menu (all behind the scenes, of course).

[waal]

I've been wanting to work on some means of transferring configurations easily way back since I started Atarixlbox. But it never came to fruition and the computer based emu's seem to be the only ones that need it the most. So I figured the point was kinda moot unless someone was willing to sit down and make configurations.

It is likely, however, that something may come into existance on my work with winuaex. If waal comes thru with his configurations. Now I just got to get over all these nice little muscle aches created by the nice little flu I caught.

Yeahh I'm still around.
Been testing the U folder at the moment. There was a huge number of games I've set before that and 182 are to be replaced right now (already got them). In the end I'm glad to tell we will be close to Gamebase in number. I think I'll need two more weeks to finalize, though. And for sure, will talk of the actual emulator then.


Until then, good recovery.

From my side I caught a stiff neck strength to move from one screen to another.

Edit.

CRC seems to be the good way. At least for computer games as they are so many different versions.

This post has been edited by waal: Nov 1 2009, 07:06 PM

[ressurectionx]

Like waal said, I think this could be a benefit to use CRC files for computer emulators. That's going to take a whole lot of controller programming to make worthwhile though. I did it with Chip8 this weekend and it took nearly two days to set up around 45 games for perfect playablity and the Xtras and synopsis. Console emus on Xbox = Good, computer emus = bad. We can probably expect our favorites on these systems to have some sort of Xtras treatment, but it's really a lifetime project that I'd have to be paid for if I was to configure every Commodore game for every Commodore system.


Other than that, I think the romnames are fine for console configs, since they rarely deviate. No need to even make it CRC. If people use the Xtras names or not, they will have automatic configurations for their games without that annoying config screen. That way, they could be lazy or completely ignorant of the Xtras and still not ever look at that screen if they ddidn't press X.

[pkbunghole]

Hey, sorry if you're aware already, but your megadrive dat doesn't include the lock-on roms for sonic & knuckles. Loving all the video previews atm