Too close for comfort? the revival?

[Never_Scurred]

There is no one "true purpose", because the purpose varies with the intent of each user.

With free games being a nice benefit.

[bcass]

There is no one "true purpose", because the purpose varies with the intent of each user.

99.99% = piracy
0.01% = a couple of geeks who tinker with the hardware, and even they most likely use it to play copies.

Okay, I understand. The JTAG mod can't ever be used for anything legimiate, ever, and if it is it doesn't count because even legit users are also "most likely" warez monkeys. Heads you win, tails I lose.

I'm so glad we had this discussion.

Nobody said it can't be used for anything else. I was talking about its primary purpose for the vast majority of people who own one.

[emphatic]

SH3 emulator for j-tag onry, please.

[Never_Scurred]

SH3 emulator for j-tag onry, please.

LOL

[1up]

how did the games get sound all of a sudden? Was the games redumped?

[Vamos]

how did the games get sound all of a sudden? Was the games redumped?

They emulated the sound chip?

[BPzeBanshee]

So yet another Mushi Futari video popped up - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XrK8ReOGNo

Also,

someone knows, is the slowdowns correct ?

I gave a thumbs up to the guy that suggested releasing the thing already so us Shmups Forum members who've played the real thing can figure out if the slowdown's being emulated accurately or not. The only slowdown I saw in the emulated vid was when the boss died, but in this footage by SFKhoa here there appears to be a small amount of slowdown when Stage 1's midboss shows up.

To me it looks like its still missing a bit, but then again this is Original mode and there doesn't seem to be a hell of a lot going on to make it lag anyway. I'm out of my league here.

[burgerkingdiamond]

So yet another Mushi Futari video popped up - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XrK8ReOGNo

Also,

someone knows, is the slowdowns correct ?

I gave a thumbs up to the guy that suggested releasing the thing already so us Shmups Forum members who've played the real thing can figure out if the slowdown's being emulated accurately or not. The only slowdown I saw in the emulated vid was when the boss died, but in this footage by SFKhoa here there appears to be a small amount of slowdown when Stage 1's midboss shows up.

To me it looks like its still missing a bit, but then again this is Original mode and there doesn't seem to be a hell of a lot going on to make it lag anyway. I'm out of my league here.

WHAT? Futari in MAME? It doesn't really matter cuz I have it for 360, but this is awesome nonetheless. I wonder what kind of computer do you need to run it smoothly? For example, my laptop can run Crimzon Clover OK. There is too much unwanted slowdown for me to really play original mode properly, but it can play Simple mode pretty well. Would it likely run Futari in MAME?

[Jockel]

I doubt it.
I think a low-to-mid-range dual core CPU should be minimum.
Check if you can emulate Dreamcast games properly, should be in the same ballpark.

[TrevHead (TVR)]

To me it looks like its still missing a bit, but then again this is Original mode and there doesn't seem to be a hell of a lot going on to make it lag anyway

Yeah I find it quite annoying with beta emulation vids as the always only show the first 2 stages. Its better if we can see stage 5 on hard mode so we can get a real picture of how good the emulation is.

[IseeThings]

WHAT? Futari in MAME? It doesn't really matter cuz I have it for 360, but this is awesome nonetheless. I wonder what kind of computer do you need to run it smoothly? For example, my laptop can run Crimzon Clover OK. There is too much unwanted slowdown for me to really play original mode properly, but it can play Simple mode pretty well. Would it likely run Futari in MAME?

The videos are not from MAME.

MAME does not emulate the Cave SH3 board.

There is a skeleton driver to document the sets which are dumped, nothing more. The emulation is 0% complete in the current public MAME source trees, and may remain that way for a long time.

The videos are taken from Demul, which is a Dreamcast emulator. The Cave SH3 boards have a similar CPU to the DC (SH3, which is near enough binary compatible with the SH4, although the Cave board has the CPU endian swapped) so it's fairly natural for them to emulate it there.

The video system is a lot less complex than the Dreamcast (it's basically an accelerated framebuffer, using 'blit' commands to draw stuff)

The lack of slowdowns comes from 2 sources. Firstly the real blitter chip, used to drawing, takes time to complete the operations. The exact amount of time is unknown, and probably depends on the size of the data being copied, possibly the draw modes, maybe even some memory contention issues depending on exactly how the chip works.

Secondly, the SH3 is more complex than the 68k used by the earlier games. With the 68k the system memory was usually as fast as the CPU, so reading / writing to memory had no speed penalty (CPS2 being a noteworthy exception). With newer and faster processors there can be a speed hit to accessing RAM, but accesses to RAM depend on the CPU cache and other issues. Emulating that is incredible complex.

If the blitter is slowing the CPU down, and then the real hardware is relying on a mix of RAM and cache for the remaining CPU time then getting the exact balance of slowdown will be nearly impossible under emulation. You might be able to get within 95% of it, but the intricate details of it are much harder, in a similar way to how the sprite flicker in the older Cave games is missing in MAME (sprite limits can be very hard to measure, and doing it wrong would be worse than not doing it at all) IMHO it's unlikely the SH3 plays a big role in this however.

This is why in many cases emulation is 'too good' and why emulation of old computer systems is so hard, and demanding on the your PC. Emulating every last imperfection and quirk of the hardware is much much harder to do than simply getting the basics running.

[burgerkingdiamond]

WHAT? Futari in MAME? It doesn't really matter cuz I have it for 360, but this is awesome nonetheless. I wonder what kind of computer do you need to run it smoothly? For example, my laptop can run Crimzon Clover OK. There is too much unwanted slowdown for me to really play original mode properly, but it can play Simple mode pretty well. Would it likely run Futari in MAME?

The videos are not from MAME.

MAME does not emulate the Cave SH3 board.

There is a skeleton driver to document the sets which are dumped, nothing more. The emulation is 0% complete in the current public MAME source trees, and may remain that way for a long time.

The videos are taken from Demul, which is a Dreamcast emulator. The Cave SH3 boards have a similar CPU to the DC (SH3, which is near enough binary compatible with the SH4, although the Cave board has the CPU endian swapped) so it's fairly natural for them to emulate it there.

The video system is a lot less complex than the Dreamcast (it's basically an accelerated framebuffer, using 'blit' commands to draw stuff)

The lack of slowdowns comes from 2 sources. Firstly the real blitter chip, used to drawing, takes time to complete the operations. The exact amount of time is unknown, and probably depends on the size of the data being copied, possibly the draw modes, maybe even some memory contention issues depending on exactly how the chip works.

Secondly, the SH3 is more complex than the 68k used by the earlier games. With the 68k the system memory was usually as fast as the CPU, so reading / writing to memory had no speed penalty (CPS2 being a noteworthy exception). With newer and faster processors there can be a speed hit to accessing RAM, but accesses to RAM depend on the CPU cache and other issues. Emulating that is incredible complex.

If the blitter is slowing the CPU down, and then the real hardware is relying on a mix of RAM and cache for the remaining CPU time then getting the exact balance of slowdown will be nearly impossible under emulation. You might be able to get within 95% of it, but the intricate details of it are much harder, in a similar way to how the sprite flicker in the older Cave games is missing in MAME (sprite limits can be very hard to measure, and doing it wrong would be worse than not doing it at all) IMHO it's unlikely the SH3 plays a big role in this however.

This is why in many cases emulation is 'too good' and why emulation of old computer systems is so hard, and demanding on the your PC. Emulating every last imperfection and quirk of the hardware is much much harder to do than simply getting the basics running.

Sorry. It's an automatic thing for me to think MAME when I see arcade emulation. I do remember seeing that it was Demul though, so it was an oversight I guess.

[BPzeBanshee]

It seems that they are working on having slowdown there and getting down to within 95% of it seems to be their main focus now.

I thought they'd get something close to native slowdown based on just emulating up to the capacity of the system they're trying to, but clearly its a bit more complex than that. As the video uploader has stated on YouTube, comparing the footage of it running within an emulator is way off from the official videos he's gotten hold of, and apparently there's some kind of "Slowpoke mode" where with it on it goes too slow than normal and with it off (as shown) there's almost no slowdown at all. I suppose in this regard its a bit like the YM2612 chip in the Megadrive as it was emulated within a few years (late 90s) but it's only been within the last 5 years that anyone's actually gotten almost every single intricacy of it downpat (Eke-Eke of Genesis Plus GX).

I still think a release would be handy though - if tweaking the settings to get it downpat is so difficult to do having a large group of experienced people constantly testing it like they did for DOJ in MAME etc would help for feedback somehow surely.

[Casey120]

Homebrew isn't especially evolved on the 360 is it? I can't imagine there being much use in a JTAG apart from piracy.

The other major advantage is the ability to play games from japan that aren't region free.

the ability to play games from japan that aren't region free.

play games from japan that aren't region free.

that aren't region free.

[bcass]

Which, for the majority of JTAG owners, will involve piracy.

[Barrakketh]

Which, for the majority of JTAG owners, will involve piracy.

Did a pirate touch you somewhere inappropriate when you were little?

[mjclark]

Maybe if they made piracy illegal it would stop people from doing it.

[Vyxx]

Which, for the majority of JTAG owners, will involve piracy.

Did a pirate touch you somewhere inappropriate when you were little?

Some people are just against stealing. Crazy, I know.

[mjclark]

Some people are just against stealing. Crazy, I know.

I'd never thought of region locking as "stealing" before.
Anyway, like I said, just make piracy, stealing, murder, drugs and fraud illegal and people will simply stop doing it.

[bcass]

Which, for the majority of JTAG owners, will involve piracy.

Did a pirate touch you somewhere inappropriate when you were little?

Which part of "Personally, I couldn't care less about piracy" did you not understand?

[Never_Scurred]

Homebrew isn't especially evolved on the 360 is it? I can't imagine there being much use in a JTAG apart from piracy.

The other major advantage is the ability to play games from japan that aren't region free.

the ability to play games........that aren't region free.

play games...........that aren't free.

play games..........free.

Fixed

[Jockel]

Well played, sir.

[mjclark]

An early version of Demul 0.5.7 has just escaped onto the internet- it's got no sound (though later builds have of course) but it does everything it says on the box.
Just thought I'd post this to generate some more irritating arguments about piracy PROBABLY WITH CAPITAL LETTERS

[charlie chong]

ARRRR SHIVER ME TIMBERZ TEH INTENETS IS STEALED DA ROMZ

[legztec]

screenshot or it didn't happen.

[moozooh]

Where to get working plugins for 0.5.7? 0.5.6 apparently aren't compatible. :\

[Observer]

This just got so close for comfort that it burns like 3.000 suns. Even then, I guess 2012 is the real date where things will collapse. The mayans already predicted it!

[neorichieb1971]

Cave have jumped ship anyways. This always happens. If you remember on the neo geo and Amiga when piracy got out of control it took a matter of 3-6 months before the devs stopped supporting the machines completely.

[ptoing]

Well, there will always be piracy, no matter what. As far as I would be OK with CAVE just doing console stuff as long as they do more shmups. If they do straight to console stuff at least the whole discussion about how accurate the port would be would be over

[Vamos]

CAVE have done shmups to death now , id like to see them do something else like a score heavy run n gun or something .