Mednafen: best PCE emulator (quick guide)

[nimitz]

I was using Magic Engine (1.0) to emulate the pc engine but since you cannot output low-res with magic engine the games look pretty bad compared to the original beauty of the pc-engine even if playing on a CRT TV (like me).

But not with Mednafen
http://mednafen.sourceforge.net/
a great PCE and PCE-CD emulator which is totally customizable and also a PITA to set up. But once it is you will never go back to anything else as far as pc-engine emulation is concerned.





quick How to set-up guide:
(this guide is mostly for winXP users)

-first get the latest win32 release which can be found here

-Then simply extract the zip file to any folder

-run mednafen once, directories and a config file (mednafen.cfg) should appear

**You could start playing hucards already. all you need to do is drag a rom to the mednafen.exe file or set up your .pce files to be automatically opened with mednafen (best way to do it)
but if you want to use mednafen to its full potential, keep reading.




lets starts with the usefull stuff in the config file
-open the config file in word or wordpad NOT IN NOTEPAD YOU WILL GET GARBAGE you can use ctrl+f to find these quickly

Enable fullscreen mode the acual command is "fs" but searching for "fs" takes longer. default is 0 (windowed)

pce.xres and pce.yres: pretty self explanatory, the fullscreen resolution of the emulator. But the great this about it is that this can be any real number. so no limits resolution wise (the actual pce resolution is 256x240, more on that later). That being said your video card has to be configured to display the resolution you choose if not the emulator will use the closest avaible resolution.

pce.xscalefs pce.yscalefs the scaling of the image in fullscreen mode. for some very strange reason the default 1:1 corresponds to 320x240 wich means the image IS SCALED in 1:1 in order to get the real pc engine resolution with no scaling you need to use pce.yscalfs 0.8 (0.8 of 320 equals 256 which is the native pc engine resolution for most games)

under these in the config file you have things like scanlines, bilinear filtering, stretching and so on...if you are using a TV in low resolution (optimally 256x240) these setting should be left to 0 (or off). also i think bilinear filtering in ON by default it is advised to turn it off(if some kind of filtering is really need because you cannot outpout low-res scanlines are much better for the job)

soundrate the soundrate in hertz, default is 48000. I would say 44100 is better for pce-cd game and maybe 22050 is more accurate for hucard games.

in the next post: gamepad and PCECD configuration

[nimitz]

Mednafen guide (continued)

now for the options of the emulator:
during gameplay ctrl+shift+1 selects the device pluged in the pce (gamepad, mouse, none) for player ONE (ctrl+shift+2 = player 2)

alt+shift+1 lets you configure the player one game pad you can use keyboard input or joystick input. every button has to be entered twice (you don't have 2 mapping options for the same button). alt+shift+2 sets up player 2

F10 is soft reset F11 hard reset

alt+enter: toggle fullscreen

escape(ESC) quits without asking for confirmation




now for the PCE-CD configuration

in the config file you need to set up

pce.cdbios the path to the pcecd bios example: pce.cdbios C:\mednafen\bios\Syscard3.pce

pce.cddavolume the volume of the music from the cd the default is 100 (which is 100%) but I found somewhere near 200 feels much better.


then to play you can either drag and drop a cd image on the mednafen icon or if you have the actual cd-rom or a mounted cd-image you can make a small bat file or shortcut with the command : "mednafen -loadcd pce f:" (replace "f:" with the letter of the cd-rom drive)


So thats it! a quick guide to get Mednafen running smoothly, it was a PITA to set it up myself so I hope this topic can help people save some time.

cheers

[GaijinPunch]

I was using Magic Engine to emulate the pc engine but since you cannot output low-res with magic engine the games look pretty bad compared to the original beauty of the pc-engine even if playing on a CRT TV (like me).

You have the worst record here for low res claims (0 for 2 now by my count). Magic Engine indeed does support 15khz output. The setup is far easier than Mednafen or Ootake, and it doesn't require a System Card ROM to run SCDs.

http://www.gamengai.com/forum/viewtopic ... 5318#15318

[nimitz]

Well i have magic engine 1.0 and I am pretty sure it doesn't support low res

I did not know magic engine 1.1 did support 256x240, That being said mednafen is free and it may the the most accurate of them all.





not related but heres a screenshot of Winds of thunder running in 256x224 fullscreen in mednafen (its beautifull on a big tv)

[GaijinPunch]

Well i have magic engine 1.0 and I am pretty sure it doesn't support low res

1.0 does not support it. It forces 480i. .99 beta and 1.1 do though.

and it may the the most accurate of them all.

My aunt *may* have balls... but it's a claim I don't make.

[klausien]

This man may be out of his element by Shmups.com standards, but Mednafen on the original XBox ROCKS for several systems. PCE CD game support is only so-so though.

[GaijinPunch]

This man may be out of his element by Shmups.com standards, but Mednafen on the original XBox ROCKS for several systems. .

Xbox version would be a moot point for this thread though, due to lack of 240p.

[Ghegs]

Moved to OT.

[filevans]

thanks a lot for this brilliant guide!! this has helped me, i know this is an old thread, but the negative comments after it are unnecessary, you deserve appreciation for making the effort to do this, and you are right, most versions magic-engine do not support native resolutions, and even the ones that do are buggy and don't work well

there was just one mistake in the guide, the X scale should be 0.8 not the Y, as 320 / 256 is the horizontal = X, not Y

X=256
Y=240

pce.xscalefs 0.8

thanks mate!

[Ed Oscuro]

Have you checked out Ootake? It seems to have covered a lot of ground since these times, and it might be more responsive too.