Tell me about the state of emulation today.

[ciox]

Most games should fly on this CPU. Just remember not to use the MTVU and EE Cycle Rate speed hacks simultaneously as it may negatively affect the performance and never ever enable VU Cycle Stealing. The latter puts the game in slow motion the further you move the slider to the right while the emulator continues to report the game as running at full speed. And unless a game is performing really bad, the hacks should be left unchecked.

Indeed, for no apparent reason pcsx2 started running at 120 fps, and since I couldn't find how to fix this I deleted every changes I made in the config. Now everything runs fine, followed what you guys said and its perfect, so I guess I just fucked up at some point.
Still have a lot of issues with controls but other than that it should be good.
Thanks for the help, and sorry I kinda hijacked the thread

I guess you turned off the framelimiting from the video options, you can also turn it off just by pressing Tab while playing, so watch out for that

[trap15]

On a related subject: are there actually any working N64 emulators for Linux? Or worst case, that run in WINE decently? I'm under the impression that MESS's N64 emulation is still mediocre at best and dog slow, but maybe I'm wrong.

[7711]

I guess you turned off the framelimiting from the video options, you can also turn it off just by pressing Tab while playing, so watch out for that

No, framelimiting was on, I'm sure of that. With framelimiting off it was jumping to 400+ fps, there it was just capped to 120 fps instead of 60.
When I tried to change some graphic options this morning it did it again, but I waited for a bit and it was back to normal. I have no idea whats causing this.

[KAI]

are there actually any working N64 emulators for Linux?

Mupen64 Plus, I've heard it's ok.

[Jonathan Ingram]

No, framelimiting was on, I'm sure of that. With framelimiting off it was jumping to 400+ fps, there it was just capped to 120 fps instead of 60.
When I tried to change some graphic options this morning it did it again, but I waited for a bit and it was back to normal. I have no idea whats causing this.

Pressing F4 in-game disables the frame limiter while pressing Tab sets a new frame cap that`s 200% of the current frame rate. Perhaps you pressed the latter by occasion? If the issue persists, try playing with V-Sync on or vice-versa.

Thanks for the help, and sorry I kinda hijacked the thread

No biggie. That`s what this thread is for.

[Ed Oscuro]

Mupen has always been tantalizing but I've only found a command-line version and a strange program which promises to be a "frontend" which is a bit too cumbersome for my liking, and could lead to a lot of time messing with parameters and details that could screw up the system. Having a good GUI is really important, because if you have to mess with all kinds of custom parameters in a command line, you could mess up what you're doing and you have to take time to see it working.

Savestates don't affect memory pak usage - at least they shouldn't

I remember reading this exact situation in the ePSXe documentation:

Question : When I save my game using the memory cards after loading a save state, it saves fine, but the save data is missing/older when I play it the next time, what gives?

1. You start the game in ePSXe and the memcards you have selected in the GUI are used.
2. You make a SaveState - this includes PSX RAM, GPU VRAM, SPU RAM, and memcards (<- important!)
3. You quit ePSXe, go do something really important in RealLife™, and then come back
4. You start the game in ePSXe and the memcards you have selected in the GUI are used.
5. You load the SaveState - here is the problem: what should happen to the memcards? They need to be restored from the SaveState, but should they overwrite the ones that you have selected in the GUI? That _could_ trash some important saves! So the safe route is taken: some memcards called temp.000 & temp.001 are created from the SaveState, and ePSXe then uses those for the rest of the game, until closed.

I can see the rationale for including memory cards / memory pak information in a savestate. Project64 (and probably 1964) do not, and I'm fine with that decision.

What I totally don't understand is how simply loading a different controller layout - the memory pak option remains ticked the whole time - not only failed to load the desired configuration (in this case, for Turok 3), it also unloaded memory paks for all games, even after the controller layout was switched back to the default - which apparently means making a magic incantation of selecting the "default" profile, because apparently Project64 doesn't pay attention to these / actually do anything with them, except unload the memory pak (which of course is an unintended change).

Project64's approach is pretty simple; just like the original hardware, you should avoid using or making savestates while write or read operations are in effect, and otherwise you can manage data with the paks (or should; the single per-game only memory paks, i.e. "rush.mpk," don't allow a really comprehensive set of saves for multiple users, and would also be too simple if games could interact with other games' saves as Metal Gear Solid does, but I don't know if the Nintendo 64 has any of these; the Ice Key from Banjo Kazooie is an example of a failed attempt at this). I could imagine situations where, for the sake of research, you might want to see what happens if you pull or swap memory cards during a read or write, but in practice this is idiot-proofing that should prevent people from making bad mistakes, and probably ePSXe can't be criticized as putting playability above accuracy for this. I don't think that any of these emulators come close to an exacting duplication of actual read and write operations so it's a moot point for accuracy anyway, unless you want to look for generic error messages.

[e_tank]

@trap15: keep an eye on this project

[null1024]

my machine: 2.1GHz Pentium Dual Core, 3GB RAM, some really crap Intel video

Eh, "shit" is a bit of an overstatement. SSF runs a lot of games just fine, so long as minor sound/graphical issues don't bug you. The biggest issue with SSF for me is that there seems to be a bit of input lag, which is noticeable with games like NiGHTs and obviously STG/fighters.

SSF is odd, I've noticed lag on some machines I've used it on and not on others [was playing Sonic R on it on one machine, and there was nearly a fifth of a second delay, so all my jumps were fucked].
Runs damn near everything, stick a Saturn CD into your machine and away you go. Much faster than everything else. Crank the compatibility settings to max [some games like Guardian Heroes need it to get anywhere]. Has stopped me from buying a new Saturn, especially since I can plug in my Saturn controller into my PC anyway.
Nothing like playing some Bulk Slash and Radiant Silvergun on a laptop, yeah.

Only issue I've had is with Virtual On not booting for me and 480i games running like ass [my computer is really crap, so that doesn't really count]. Really wish VO did work, it's different enough from the arcade/PS2 versions for me to want to play it as a separate entity.

My machine has garbage Intel video so I can't do DC/NAOMI emulation for the most part, although I do remember playing Senko no Ronde in nullDC at 60fps on this machine. Border Down [NAOMI] and Ikaruga [DC] ran like garbage. Demul is unusably slow for me with anything.

My CPU is outright too slow for PS2/GC/Wii emulation, combined with the shit video chipset. Although, I did get DDP:DOJ running at 60fps on this machine, back before it was supported in MAME. Had to run in TATE mode, or it would drop to 40-50fps.

My inability to have full-speed PSP emulation is probably just an issue with the terrible, terrible video on this machine.

are there actually any working N64 emulators for Linux?

Mupen64 Plus, I've heard it's ok.

For some reason, I remember this having a GUI under Linux. Maybe I'm misremembering? Does anyone know of a front end for it?
Man, N64 emulation is universally terrible.

http://psxemulator.gazaxian.com/ is the pSX we're talking about, right? It seems flawless - BUT - it's not been developed in some years now. It doesn't seem like there's particularly many reasons for it to be, but I suppose you could always sprinkle some of the new filtering options over it. Don't think it has screen-flipping modes for e.g. arcade ports with tate mode. There also aren't any of the "make it pretty" options seen with other emulators, but with the pSX I have always preferred to play it "chunky," as it originally looked, instead of N64 emulation which seem to benefit from running in high resolutions more.

pSX would be my PS1 emulator of choice if it weren't for the somewhat large amount of games it has terrible and often fatal issues with [it really needs an update].
But, it is quite fast. Fast enough that my netbook is fairly happy with it [with some frameskip].
Xebra is pretty good from what little I've used it for [I've mostly been using it because pSX screws up the sky in Rage Racer and has horrible, horrible graphical glitches with Ghost in the Shell], although it has some of the most arcane configuration options with nearly no documentation on what they do. Also, it's a bit more CPU intensive [but that won't matter on most machines]. It also comes with a version that doesn't need a PS1 BIOS ROM [and might be faster?].
I would like to use no$psx [especially since it apparently supports system link, so I can get four player Wipeout 3 action], but it dies horribly at random on me.

The best thing about pSX and Xebra is that they do framebuffer effects properly without any configuration.

[Ed Oscuro]

Haha, yeah, I was gonna say - Mupen64 with a good GUI might be the killer app for Linux gaming. But the emulator itself needs to be not crap.

[ZellSF]

About pSX: I really never used this for anything. I think its main strength is that it's user friendly, for just about any game I tried I could get the same or better results in another emulator (ePSXe, Mednafen, PCSX-Reloaded, Xebra). And as mentioned, pSX has some compatibility issues of its own.

While writing that I noticed that PCSX-Reloaded finally made another release so you don't have to hunt down SVN builds to try its latest features (1.9.92 was released in August 2010, 1.9.93 August 2013 so quite a release gap). I think it's the only emulator that has implemented a widescreen hack.

[shmuppyLove]

Stupid question, and may the mods strike me down if it's not allowed, but why can't I find a build of RetroArch for Windows that includes the emulation cores? Are they not allowed to distribute them, or is it just an attempt to keep it modular?

Is building the cores from source the only way?

[ZellSF]

Run retroarch-phoenix.exe in the RetroArch directory, menu item RetroArch -- update RetroArch and there's your GUI for downloading cores.

If you're on 32-bit Windows you want to replace it with this:
http://www.mediafire.com/download/8hvku ... -win32.zip
because something went wrong with compiling it for 32-bit Windows apparently, why they haven't fixed the package they are distributing I have no idea.

[shmuppyLove]

Run retroarch-phoenix.exe in the RetroArch directory, menu item RetroArch -- update RetroArch and there's your GUI for downloading cores.

If you're on 32-bit Windows you want to replace it with this:
http://www.mediafire.com/download/8hvku ... -win32.zip
because something went wrong with compiling it for 32-bit Windows apparently, why they haven't fixed the package they are distributing I have no idea.

Awesome thanks. Yeah I wondered why the Pheonix GUI always crashed

Edit: Weird, so by default the mednafen PSX core looks for "scph5501.bin" for the PSX BIOS ... I didn't have this one, but a different version, so I just renamed it and it works fine. But I don't see anywhere in the Core options in the normal RGUI to set which BIOS it should use ... actually there are no options at all, which I find kind of weird.

[ZellSF]

Run retroarch-phoenix.exe in the RetroArch directory, menu item RetroArch -- update RetroArch and there's your GUI for downloading cores.

If you're on 32-bit Windows you want to replace it with this:
http://www.mediafire.com/download/8hvku ... -win32.zip
because something went wrong with compiling it for 32-bit Windows apparently, why they haven't fixed the package they are distributing I have no idea.

Awesome thanks. Yeah I wondered why the Pheonix GUI always crashed

Edit: Weird, so by default the mednafen PSX core looks for "scph5501.bin" for the PSX BIOS ... I didn't have this one, but a different version, so I just renamed it and it works fine. But I don't see anywhere in the Core options in the normal RGUI to set which BIOS it should use ... actually there are no options at all, which I find kind of weird.

mednafen PSX core automatically selects PSX bios based on game region I think. You'll need more than scph5501.bin (though you could just copy and rename it and the emulator won't care).

You need to start a game and go back to the menu while ingame to adjust options. Don't think there are many, or a need for many.

[Hagane]

My machine has garbage Intel video so I can't do DC/NAOMI emulation for the most part, although I do remember playing Senko no Ronde in nullDC at 60fps on this machine. Border Down [NAOMI] and Ikaruga [DC] ran like garbage. Demul is unusably slow for me with anything.

Demul in general is pretty bad. For NAOMI, try Makaron. It's much faster and accurate than Demul; maybe you can run games decently with it. The only problem is that the default build has no front end and it's extremely annoying to configure, but you can solve that by using MakaronEX.

[undamned]

I'm more excited about emulators making their way to newer hardware like the Rasberry Pi. Supposedly FBA is running full speed on the Pi, now. They just need to iron out some controller lag issues.
-ud

[quash]

Demul in general is pretty bad. For NAOMI, try Makaron. It's much faster and accurate than Demul; maybe you can run games decently with it. The only problem is that the default build has no front end and it's extremely annoying to configure, but you can solve that by using MakaronEX.

Does Makaron support .gdi/.cdi yet? It is the most accurate, but last time I used it it didn't support either.

I realize that some emulator authors don't care about convenience, but that to me (and I'm sure many others will agree) is the biggest flaw of Makaron.

[Leandro]

pSX gives me tremendous input lag, I never found a fix for it

[ZellSF]

Demul in general is pretty bad. For NAOMI, try Makaron. It's much faster and accurate than Demul; maybe you can run games decently with it. The only problem is that the default build has no front end and it's extremely annoying to configure, but you can solve that by using MakaronEX.

Does Makaron support .gdi/.cdi yet? It is the most accurate, but last time I used it it didn't support either.

I realize that some emulator authors don't care about convenience, but that to me (and I'm sure many others will agree) is the biggest flaw of Makaron.

Makaron always supported .gdi (GD-ROM disc image) and that's the format you should be using.

.cdi (CD-ROM disc image) you have no idea what was done to make the GD-ROM fit on a CD-ROM, there could be ripped or downsampled content. It's only used to make pirated games run on a Dreamcast, for emulation it has no purpose. Makardon does support it though.

[quash]

Demul in general is pretty bad. For NAOMI, try Makaron. It's much faster and accurate than Demul; maybe you can run games decently with it. The only problem is that the default build has no front end and it's extremely annoying to configure, but you can solve that by using MakaronEX.

Does Makaron support .gdi/.cdi yet? It is the most accurate, but last time I used it it didn't support either.

I realize that some emulator authors don't care about convenience, but that to me (and I'm sure many others will agree) is the biggest flaw of Makaron.

Makaron always supported .gdi (GD-ROM disc image) and that's the format you should be using.

.cdi (CD-ROM disc image) you have no idea what was done to make the GD-ROM fit on a CD-ROM, there could be ripped or downsampled content. It's only used to make pirated games run on a Dreamcast, for emulation it has no purpose. Makardon does support it though.

Oh? Well shit, then. Time to try out the latest release.

[Obiwanshinobi]

Another horse in the room - how do the games where Wiimote controls can't be simply emulated by mouse, hotkeys or button mashing, such as Zack & Wiki or Excite Truck, play emulated? Now, Excite Truck I can imagine played with analogue joypad, but Zack & Wiki controls seem like a tougher nut to crack.

[shmuppyLove]

Another horse in the room - how do the games where Wiimote controls can't be simply emulated by mouse, hotkeys or button mashing, such as Zack & Wiki or Excite Truck, play emulated? Now, Excite Truck I can imagine played with analogue joypad, but Zack & Wiki controls seem like a tougher nut to crack.

The Dolphin site has a section on how to get full Wii remote support

http://dolphin-emulator.com/support.html#wiimote

[KAI]

Any news on Supermodel?

[liteon]

Hello everybody

the last build of UME contains cave SH3 driver http://www.sendspace.com/file/00a07c

Fuck Yes

BIG Thank HAZE

even if no correct slowdown in futari blk original for the rest i am not testing

BUT Thousand THANK HAZE

[liteon]

Not emulation but
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGHD1Vogt-c

Game working but control not work.

[LordHypnos]

What are the options for PC89/98 and X68000 emulation?

I got decent performance as far as I can tell with T98-Next for Mystic Square and Lotus Land Story, though I think it might not have english language GUI.
Best X68000 emulator for general games emulation seems to be WinX68k High Speed, which even has an english language version

Both of those ran just fine on default settings on a netbook with frameskip.

Some games that are unsupported by WinX68k can be played with XM6. Additionally, I was able to boot an scsi hard drive image with XM6, and couldn't figure it out with WinX68k. However, I don't know if it affects all games, but I remember getting some terrible input lag trying to play Hatenkou with XM6 (and motion blur).

Also, don't forget to configure the emulated system according to minimum system requirements. That's kind of important for computers.

EDIT: Can anyone tell me how the min sys req for nullDC and Makaron compare? My graphics card is too shitty to quite get good performance out of nullDC for DC games, in spite of the impressively low ones that nullDC has.