Anyone know how to keep Gens from lagging?

Icecap Veiwin · Post by **Icecap Veiwin** » Thu Jul 28, 2005 3:54 am

So yeah, I just got hungry for Genesis emulation. I set up Gens and started playing a game, and it began lagging after a while. After that, it lagged about every thirty seconds.

I'm running it on fullscreen; anyone know how to stop this problem? Thanks in advance.

Neon · Post by **Neon** » Thu Jul 28, 2005 4:18 am

How fast is your processor?

Close anything using CPU power besides the emulator (excluding the obvious crap like explorer.exe, etc.)

Specineff · Post by **Specineff** » Thu Jul 28, 2005 5:23 am

Also try disabling the fancy high quality Yamaha sound chip emulation, or lowering the playback rate of the sound.

Shearie · Post by **Shearie** » Thu Jul 28, 2005 6:44 am

Use Kega, it's better.

roushimsx · Post by **roushimsx** » Thu Jul 28, 2005 9:22 am

Shearie wrote:Use Kega, it's better.

Quoted for truth.

Gens isn't bad at all, but it doesn't even begin to stand up when compared to Kega Fusion.

Vexorg · Post by **Vexorg** » Thu Jul 28, 2005 5:32 pm

I guess it's been a while since I used it, but I wasn't particularly impressed with Kega Lazarus back when I last tried it. I don't usually use Gens in full screen mode, but with minor exceptions, I haven't had any problems with it (TF4 locks up on occasion, but I just play that on the real system anyway.)

roushimsx · Post by **roushimsx** » Thu Jul 28, 2005 8:29 pm

Vexorg wrote:I guess it's been a while since I used it, but I wasn't particularly impressed with Kega Lazarus back when I last tried it.

That was...what.. basically Kega 2.0? He's since rewritten everything for the Fusion release. 32x, genesis, and SegaCD support that's better than anything else available short of the real hardware (and even then more reliable considering how flimsy and shitty the SegaCD was

).

My one complaint? No AVI recording. Yet.

GIANT SQUID · Post by **GIANT SQUID** » Fri Jul 29, 2005 10:52 pm

pomegranate: password is watermellon.

Elixir · Post by **Elixir** » Fri Jul 29, 2005 11:42 pm

Shearie wrote:Use Kega, it's better.

Buy the real thing?

roushimsx · Post by **roushimsx** » Sat Jul 30, 2005 1:42 am

Elixir wrote:Buy the real thing?

and deal with durty carts, a shitty cd rom, dirty low resolution output, a big ass brick of a power cord, the need for a capture card and/or a seperate tv, etc etc etc?

Yea...no. The best bet is just to use Kega Fusion

Elixir · Post by **Elixir** » Sat Jul 30, 2005 2:10 am

roushimsx wrote:
Elixir wrote:Buy the real thing?
and deal with durty carts, a shitty cd rom, dirty low resolution output, a big ass brick of a power cord, the need for a capture card and/or a seperate tv, etc etc etc?

Yea...no. The best bet is just to use Kega Fusion

Dude, I have a Super Mario World cart for SNES. I also have(had) the rom running through some SNES emulator. The emulator was slow, the music was lagged, and everything seemed so much easier due to the fact that it was so slow, you can perfect your movement.

If you really love a game, you'll buy the real thing.

Icecap Veiwin · Post by **Icecap Veiwin** » Sat Jul 30, 2005 3:21 am

Thanks for the advice guys. I'll try Kega Fusion; if it still lags, I'll tinker with the sound properties in Gens. And a few other things.

-Icecap

PS. And, I'd buy the real thing, but it's incredibly rare and expensive, and my family is on a tight budget.

Icecap Veiwin · Post by **Icecap Veiwin** » Sun Jul 31, 2005 5:43 pm

Alright, I tried Kega, but it still lags, I screwed with the sound in Gens, but it still lags. Any tips? Is my processor too weak to run them? Should I get an earlier version, perhaps?

roushimsx · Post by **roushimsx** » Sun Jul 31, 2005 6:01 pm

Elixir wrote:Dude, I have a Super Mario World cart for SNES. I also have(had) the rom running through some SNES emulator. The emulator was slow, the music was lagged, and everything seemed so much easier due to the fact that it was so slow, you can perfect your movement.

If you really love a game, you'll buy the real thing.

Oh I agree that if you really love a game then you should go out of your way to buy a copy at some point. My game library is somewhat extensive right now (still recovering from "the great trade in of 1996")

What emulator were you using to play Super Mario World? Any recent version of ZSNES or SNES9x released in the last 5 years plays it just fine assuming you're not running on a P2-400 at 1024x768 with scale3x enabled or some such. Make sure the game is running ~60/60 and not 30/60...

Seriously, from a playability standpoint there's very few reasons to play a SNES or Genesis game on the actual hardware over in an emulator unless:
a) you just HAVE to play on your TV and you're incapable of hooking your PC up to it
b) you just HAVE to use the original controller and you're incapable of hooking it up to your PC
c) you're playing a game that's not properly emulated, the number of which is quite low right now (SuperFX games still have speed issues, Virtua Racing on Genesis, etc)

If you're a purist, you should enjoy the perfectly clean look that you can achieve via emulation that just isn't possible via the console's output (though if you so desire you can easily emulate the RF and Composite video noise in Kega and BlueMSX).

As for Fusion lagging, try going to Option -> Enable High Priority mode and see if that fixes it for you.

Did you disable all gee-whiz graphical enhancemenets and leave vsync enabled?

Icecap Veiwin · Post by **Icecap Veiwin** » Sun Jul 31, 2005 6:04 pm

Nevermind, it's still lagging like a bitch.

roushimsx · Post by **roushimsx** » Sun Jul 31, 2005 6:11 pm

Icecap Veiwin wrote:Roushimsx, thank you...I set it to high priority mode, and it stopped lagging period. Thank you very much.

But since this topic is obsolete, I should change the discussion...what genesis games SHOULD I be playing, right now?

Sweet, glad that helped. Actually ran into the same problem on a friend's laptop last weekend while he was playing Phantasy Star 4 (.....at work)

Have you ever played the Shining Force games? The first one is still enjoyable if a bit simple and hindered by a well intentioned but poorly executed interface, but the second one is fucking HOT. About a third of the way through the second one right now, though I'm currently distracted by Shadowgate 64 (which I just got in the mail yesterday and I'm currently loving)

Dynamite Headdy is a pretty difficult but fun platformer and Shadowrun is just a really sweet RPG (story isn't too hot, but just the freedom to hack corporations and do runs had me hooked for weeks). Starflight is another rather awesome game.

Beyond Oasis is a winner if you liked Legend of Oasis on Saturn. Ever play the Streets of Rage / Bare Knuckle games? You need to. Warsong? More like SOLID FUCKING GOLD. Uncharted Waters 2 is pretty much one of the most underrated/overlooked games of the 16 bit era.

edit poop

Icecap Veiwin · Post by **Icecap Veiwin** » Sun Jul 31, 2005 6:13 pm

Icecap Veiwin wrote:edit: Nevermind, it's still lagging like a bitch.

And yes, I've played all those games. I'm pretty much this close to giving up, because nothing's helping.

BTW, I have a Pentium 4 processor, 1.5 GHz. I think I might have a virus or something.

BUHA · Post by **BUHA** » Wed Aug 03, 2005 5:11 am

You probably have viruses/spyware or something. My friend had the same trouble with his computer and he finally restored it and now his emulators work perfectly.

Elixir · Post by **Elixir** » Wed Aug 03, 2005 6:01 am

roushimsx wrote: Did you disable all gee-whiz graphical enhancemenets and leave vsync enabled?

Leaving vsync on doesn't improve anything.

Damocles · Post by **Damocles** » Wed Aug 03, 2005 10:10 am

Off-topic, but Gens is also giving me a minor annoyance. It doesn't lag, it just won't load games anymore. If I try to load a game, it simply goes back to the fuzzy screen. However, if I load a game from the recently played lists, they work fine. It's odd, and not a big deal since I run Kega also. I just prefered Gens.

roushimsx · Post by **roushimsx** » Wed Aug 03, 2005 10:27 pm

Elixir wrote:Leaving vsync on doesn't improve anything.

You mean other than screen tearing/hiccups?

Icecap Veiwin · Post by **Icecap Veiwin** » Thu Aug 04, 2005 1:05 am

It's funny, because all my other emulators work fine EXCEPT for Gens/Fusion. Maybe I do have a virus...