The State of Emulation topic

[Udderdude]

Ms. Pac-Man Twin hack discovered after 22 years of searching. Crazy stuff. Pretty ironic considering Ms. Pac-Man itself started as basically a ROM hack.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YW-0G9sRrTE

Edit: And Dinosaur Planet for N64 just got leaked .. holy crap.

[Udderdude]

I know this is something most won't care about, but MAME 0.230 moved most of the Macintosh 68k models to working status. This is pretty big for me personally, mostly because the existing Mac emulators outside of MAME are buggy, kludgy crap and have been forever (Seriously, Basilisk II crashes more than any other emulator I've ever used. And MiniVMac is better but still full of kludges and the II emulation is admittedly unfinished).

[WelshMegalodon]

Good catch! It looks like there are still some issues with the sound emulation (as there have been for a long time), but progress is progress. Really nice to see the Macintoshes getting some attention in MAME since Basilisk II is so hacky.

Now if only I could remember how to get MAME to recognize .hfs files. (EDIT: Figured it out. I just had to add "-nbe image" and load the image with "-disk".)

[null1024]

I know this is something most won't care about, but MAME 0.230 moved most of the Macintosh 68k models to working status. This is pretty big for me personally, mostly because the existing Mac emulators outside of MAME are buggy, kludgy crap and have been forever (Seriously, Basilisk II crashes more than any other emulator I've ever used. And MiniVMac is better but still full of kludges and the II emulation is admittedly unfinished).

Man, it's been forever since I've used BII for anything -- the absolutely ancient pre-JIT build is the only one that has ever resembled stable.
I really should take a personal look into MAME's actual compatibility with the Mac II -- was using minivmac's Mac II emulation to run a few programs, but that isn't exactly stable either [being explicitly alpha-quality software], and I decidedly remember having a nasty file corruption issue with it at one point.

[BPzeBanshee]

I know this is something most won't care about, but MAME 0.230 moved most of the Macintosh 68k models to working status. This is pretty big for me personally, mostly because the existing Mac emulators outside of MAME are buggy, kludgy crap and have been forever (Seriously, Basilisk II crashes more than any other emulator I've ever used. And MiniVMac is better but still full of kludges and the II emulation is admittedly unfinished).

Been keeping tabs on this myself, great news indeed!

As far as I was aware though, the models listed aren't quite on parity yet with what Basilisk II covers like the Quadras/Performas. Any tips on alternative models I should try out, if that's a thing you've dabbled in yet?

[Udderdude]

You probably want to look at the IIci. It's not quite on par with the Performas, but it's close.

Also keep in mind that since MAME is more accurate, you can't really expect Basilisk II-like performance where everything is instant and runs as fast as it possibly can. Maybe if you go into the menu and overclock the CPU .. lol

[WelshMegalodon]

I mentioned it last week in a different thread, but the last two releases of MAME incorporate some long-needed rewrites for various Yamaha FM chips. The YM2612 sounds better than it ever has, and Wonder Boy III with the new YM2413 emulation is just a delight to play. I'm less familiar with the OPL and OPN series of chips, but they've also been rewritten, so PC-98 and Neo Geo games should also sound much nicer.

[Udderdude]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFfaUyB19WY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUW2Gc21TCI

Some new & rare goodies added to MAME recently. Warp-1 (0.231) and Mrs. Dynamite (0.232).

[WelshMegalodon]

m64p now uses the ParaLLEl-RDP graphics plugin as its only graphics plugin, meaning that you can get pixel-accurate N64 emulation without having to use RetroArch. It's about time.

The latest release also emulates the VRU, which means that Hey You, Pikachu! can finally be played as it was intended.

[WelshMegalodon]

https://ares.dev/posts/20210626235137

I've released ares v121. Because it is not fully complete or stable, it is released as source code only.

Master System, WonderSwan, and WonderSwan Color compatibility have increased to 100%, with no remaining known bugs.

The Neo Geo Pocket is very close to 100% now with one issue remaining, where sound effects sometimes mute in games.

Nintendo 64 compatibility has increased to above 80% thanks to corrections to controller pak handling.

[null1024]

So, I've been hearing a lot of talk about Xbox emulation starting to become actually playable thanks to xemu, an xqemu fork, and I decided to try it out.
It works! Really well. Loads of games don't work yet, but it has dramatically higher compatibility than anything else right now.

In particular, I can play JSRF [the map in JSRF is bugged] and Panzer Dragoon Orta at full speed on my computer [RTX 2060 GPU, Ryzen 5 3600X CPU, dunno if the system requirements are actually high as a result], and it's fairly stable!
Or at the absolute least, it hasn't crashed on me yet.

I had to fiddle around to get the disc images to boot, but the documentation has the command needed to convert the images.

[Udderdude]

I tried Gunvalkyrie and it crashed/froze up before I could even get into a game. The title screen lagged at times, depending on what was on the screen.

[null1024]

I was able to get in game with GunValkyrie in xemu, but when the tutorial had me do a dash, it crashed. Seems to be a regression -- the compatibility list entry for the game says that there are graphical issues with the dash, but it didn't crash.

[Licorice]

So, I've been hearing a lot of talk about Xbox emulation starting to become actually playable thanks to xemu, an xqemu fork, and I decided to try it out.
It works! Really well. Loads of games don't work yet, but it has dramatically higher compatibility than anything else right now.

In particular, I can play JSRF [the map in JSRF is bugged] and Panzer Dragoon Orta at full speed on my computer [RTX 2060 GPU, Ryzen 5 3600X CPU, dunno if the system requirements are actually high as a result], and it's fairly stable!

Nice. I've wanted to play Panzer Dragoon Orta for a while. How is it overall? Any major glitches?

[null1024]

Nice. I've wanted to play Panzer Dragoon Orta for a while. How is it overall? Any major glitches?

Haven't gotten too far in Orta yet.
Stage 1 runs great, Stage 2's water effect seems to slow down badly when running at 2x resolution [like, sub-40fps], and mostly ran fine at 1x [a few dips to the upper 50s].
No major issues apart from that so far.

[Marc]

Nice. I've wanted to play Panzer Dragoon Orta for a while. How is it overall? Any major glitches?

Haven't gotten too far in Orta yet.
Stage 1 runs great, Stage 2's water effect seems to slow down badly when running at 2x resolution [like, sub-40fps], and mostly ran fine at 1x [a few dips to the upper 50s].
No major issues apart from that so far.

Water effects seem to do that in X360 b/c as well. I tried to play through Burnout 2 a few years ago, and every time I hit a rainy track, the frame rate tanked.

[Blinge]

Where's teh best place to emulate arcade shmups these days?

[WelshMegalodon]

I believe Progear and other Capcom Play System games are slightly more accurate on the MiSTer these days (since it actually emulates wait states), but other than that, it's still MAME and DEmul as far as I know.

In addition, the PlayStation and Saturn ports of various late 90s arcade shooters are often better in Mednafen than the arcade versions are in MAME, but I can't speak for every single title.

[Bassa-Bassa]

I believe Progear and other Capcom Play System games are slightly more accurate on the MiSTer these days (since it actually emulates wait states)

I'm surprised an actual Mister-PCB comparison of the Capcom shooters hasn't been made yet but I guess the people were actually more interested in Super Turbo and the Marvel fighters (despite being the ones with essentially flawless emulation in Mame for years).

In addition, the PlayStation and Saturn ports of various late 90s arcade shooters are often better in Mednafen than the arcade versions are in MAME, but I can't speak for every single title.

I'd say very, very few are better in port form than Groovymame these days. Aside of the Playstation/Saturn-based arcade hardware games (which may not be that well emulated in their console counterparts, on the other hand), maybe some Taito F3 and Konami GX stuff, but many of these ports were clearly inaccurate to begin with.

How many more decades to get some improvements on F3 and GX/pre-GX in Mame, by the way. Home of some of the best 2D games ever made yet the attention they get by the devs is zero. Oh well, they're not Mortal Kombat I guess.

[WelshMegalodon]

See, I know that ST-V and some Taito boards were recently improved in MAME (Radiant Silvergun and Psyvariar -Revision-, among others), but given the state of its PlayStation emulation I'm skeptical as to whether or not they're actually better than the ports are in Mednafen.

but I guess the people were actually more interested in Super Turbo and the Marvel fighters (despite being the ones with essentially flawless emulation in Mame for years).

There have been complaints about Hyper Fighting running at the wrong speed for the better part of 20 years, so that isn't surprising.

[Licorice]

Where's teh best place to emulate arcade shmups these days?

I mostly use FBNeo in Retroarch for the CRT shaders, gsync support, and runahead.

For some games I use MAME cause FBNeo doesn't emulate them well, also in Retroarch, which is probably retarded, but I never took the time to set it up properly stand alone.

[Sir Ilpalazzo]

Kind of an esoteric question I hope someone here has an answer for. I'm trying to get PC-88 emulation going, primarily for the original Ys games - but I'm on a laptop that doesn't have a numpad, which is necessary for movement. The PC-88 emulators I've tried don't have remappable controls, which means even though I can start up the games fine, I can't actually play them. What's the best solution for this? I'd prefer to play the game on a keyboard to better emulate the original experience, but I'm thinking I may have to use Xpadder or Joy2key or something to play on controller.

[BrianC]

Does your laptop have spare USB ports? I used this for an external numpad and it worked out well. Not sure how it would do with PC88 stuff, but it's plug and play and works just like a numpad on a full keyboard.

[Licorice]

Kind of an esoteric question I hope someone here has an answer for. I'm trying to get PC-88 emulation going, primarily for the original Ys games - but I'm on a laptop that doesn't have a numpad, which is necessary for movement. The PC-88 emulators I've tried don't have remappable controls, which means even though I can start up the games fine, I can't actually play them. What's the best solution for this? I'd prefer to play the game on a keyboard to better emulate the original experience, but I'm thinking I may have to use Xpadder or Joy2key or something to play on controller.

You can use autohotkey. There's a few hoops to jump through to get frame perfect timing for macros or autofire (I went crazy trying to add a reliable blaster boost macro to the X68K version of Granada, and eventually gave up), but for simple remapping it's very easy.

[Bassa-Bassa]

I'm pretty sure the Ys's for the PC-88 were all joystick-compatible, so you're not forced to use a keyboard to emulate the original experience (except for the save key, that is).

[WelshMegalodon]

I recently did a playthrough of Ys using Takeda Toshiya's PC88 emulator and the numpad is just not great for playing. Trust me when I say you'll have a much better time with a controller in hand.

[Sir Ilpalazzo]

Thanks! Taking that into consideration, I'm probably going to figure out a good controller layout and use Xpadder, then. That said,

You can use autohotkey. There's a few hoops to jump through to get frame perfect timing for macros or autofire (I went crazy trying to add a reliable blaster boost macro to the X68K version of Granada, and eventually gave up), but for simple remapping it's very easy.

How would you go about doing this? I have autohotkey already set up on my computer because of some other issues with my keyboard, so it was actually the first thing I thought of, but I couldn't figure out how to actually remap the number keys using it in a way that emulators would recognize.

[WelshMegalodon]

Takeda Toshiya's PC88 emulator lets you maps whatever controller inputs you want to the emulated joystick and even has a "Joystick to Keyboard" function that lets you map keyboard keys to controller buttons without having to fuck around with Xpadder.

[Licorice]

How would you go about doing this? I have autohotkey already set up on my computer because of some other issues with my keyboard, so it was actually the first thing I thought of, but I couldn't figure out how to actually remap the number keys using it in a way that emulators would recognize.

For Retroarch, I had to switch the input driver to "raw", and in autohotkey use "SendMode Input".

[WelshMegalodon]

RetroArch is garbage when it comes to emulating computers and always has been.