The State of Emulation topic

[Udderdude]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjKaYBDVL9Y Nice video on Polygonet Commanders, which was recently emulated in MAME.

[copy-paster]

I never needed DGVoodoo 2 to make Kega Fusion work, and I'm on Windows 10.

You are right!

All you need is to change backward compatibility with Windows 7 and run as administrator, and the game runs nicely with proper fullscreen support. Sadly it looks like Fusion won't let to capture through OBS with "Game Capture" but works nicely with "Window capture" or display capture.

[Udderdude]

I think there are better options for Genesis emulators these days, though. Kega Fusion is almost 13 years old, closed source, and is never getting an update. Might be time to move on ..

[OmegaFlareX]

Genesis Plus GX is the go-to these days. Although it doesn't do 32X, and I was surprised to learn that is something Kega Fusion actually supports.

https://emulation.gametechwiki.com/inde ... _emulators

[Udderdude]

Major improvements to Hyper Neo Geo 64 in MAME, and also .. Namco System 10 working?! Oh shit. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xO9M5NdFfRA

[null1024]

For 32X, there's Gens GS, Ares, and PicoDrive... but all have more issues with 32X games than Fusion, which IIRC runs every commercial 32X release. Apart from 32X support though, AFAIK Genesis Plus GX is just better all around. There's also BlastEm, but I had weird frame pacing issues with it when I tried it.

I kinda wish Fusion would get one last update to bring it up to spec on Windows 10/11 machines.
alternatively, someone mucks about with Ghidra and decompiles it

[Nate123]

fusion's dev is back on full work

[Sanguis]

Not exactly on topic, but :

Does anyone here manage to run Gradius V on PCSX2 with less than 6 frames of input lag ? Many improvements have been made on PSCX2 with regard to input lag over the last years, but it is still too much for me.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Apparently running one of the Nightly builds of PCSX2 gives you the option to reduce input lag by selecting the Optimal Frame Pacing option. Disabling VSync might help too as that usually contributes to input lag.

[Sanguis]

Indeed, those two things are really effective in reducing input lag. But sadly, it didn't bring me under the 6 frames . So I was wondering if by any chance, somebody had found a miraculous combination of settings...

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Ah, then yeah, if you're already doing that then I guess you're just running up against the inherent lag that remains in the emulator.

[copy-paster]

Yeah PCSX2 is good for anything but shmups sadly. Gradius V feels laggy than I played on real hardware but still playable and clearable, meanwhile Gradius III and IV just total bonkers. Your last option is probably try Gradius V on RPCS3 emulator (via PS2 Classics edition) and see if it makes difference. I only tried Raystorm HD on the emu and the controls are tight as hell.

[Sanguis]

I didnt know PSN games could work on RPCS3. Do you know a resource to help about that ? Thanks.

[copy-paster]

Just checked how to setup and sadly, RPCS3 doesn't emulate it's ps2emu program which emulates PS2 Classics through software method. So yeah right now it's PCSX2 or real hardware. Still like I said before Gradius V on PCSX2 is still playable and clearable despite the somewhat laggier than real thing.

[sunnshiner]

Playing Gradius V on the latest PCSX2 nightly feels pretty responsive, even on my laptop (7th gen i3, HD620, 16GB ram).

[BryanM]

For the most part I haven't been too interested in emulator-specific, game-specific enhancements. You know what I mean, adding FMV or CD audio or what have you. The best of the stuff is usually just stuffing in content from a later official release of the game.

The Zelda 2 overlay project would be a very rare exception. And it's almost entirely because there hasn't been a remake or sequel to the thing, unlike the majority of popular games that exist.

[copy-paster]

Playing Gradius V on the latest PCSX2 nightly feels pretty responsive, even on my laptop (7th gen i3, HD620, 16GB ram).

I feel like shmups on Hardware renderer did shave off some frames of lag on latest version, for example Gradius III and IV (the laggiest game on PCSX2 imo) feels kinda tight on Hardware/Vulkan but laggy as usual on Software.

But still, some shmups on PS2 are designed with 240p display and using Hardware would make some things look weird/glitchy, like the black lines across all stages in Gradius III.

[KAI]

Was trying the namco system 10 games on the latest mame build and I realized the emulator now has an analog threshold option, any idea when that feature was included?
A lot of racing games that had wheels with huge angle degree are finally playable with joystick. Namco's Dirt Dash in particular works like a charm now.

[Udderdude]

MAME now supports even faster 68k macs; the Quadra 800, which has a 33 MHz 68040. Equivalent of a low-end 486 .. unfortunately, from my testing, even this isn't enough to run Doom at a playable framerate w/o dropping the screen size down to a postage stamp. And I made sure to check that MAME itself wasn't dropping frames. Oh well, at least it's still faster at .. something. Warcraft II? lol.

[null1024]

I've been pretty impressed with MAME lately!

I didn't realize MAME's Hyper Neo Geo 64 emulation had gotten so good. Yeah, sound is totally borked still, but the games I tried [admittedly, just the fighting gamaes] are entirely playable and run well on my desktop [the CPU is a Ryzen 5 3600X, so it's admittedly not a particularly slow machine ]. There's still a fair bit of work to be done, but what's there is more than I ever expected and again, it's actually playable. Didn't put the driver through it's paces long-term to see if it crashed, but like, what I played was great.

I'm actually going though a lot of stuff marked "not working" and finding out to my delight that like, a fairly surprising amount of it works, much of it to the point where I decidedly remember seeing games that were worse off historically being marked as working.
I tried out a few NAOMI games in MAME and although they ran kinda badly [like 50% speed], they also didn't look that visually broken? Yeah, it's still not particularly good in that regard, but things are starting to look right. Most visual screwyness seemed to be related to transparency [one goofy bit was how the other cars on the road in Crazy Taxi are transparent for some reason].
I'm pretty sure the DDR games should be marked working... but it could be due to sync issues -- DDR MAX2 lost sync with the audio pretty quickly.
Taiko no Tatsujin 6's timing seems consistent, if a tad delayed [MAME isn't exactly known for its low latency though, so that's probably not an emulation issue]. I'm just assuming this one didn't get enough testing to get promoted, because like, it genuinely seems to work just fine.
Time Crisis 2... I think someone mentioned that you can get through the entire game maybe? I remember the game locking up pretty early on in the first stage, just slowly breaking until you couldn't progress anymore, but I was able to play through the first stage and get into the second without any game-breaking problem. Definitely still has a lot that's broken here with some pretty major graphics issues, and the driver hovers around 80-90%, but like, I'm super glad that this much work got done on it.
Time Crisis 1, I remember not being able to shoot certain objects, but the game seems to work great now. I think the fix got put in ages ago, but like, it's new to me.
One minor bummer was that Crusin' Exotica just killed MAME after a bit, despite seeming to run with some graphical issues. Timing of the crash seems inconsistent, I just tried again and like, it didn't die at the same spot. Runs great, at least.

Overall though, things are going pretty well.

Was trying the namco system 10 games on the latest mame build and I realized the emulator now has an analog threshold option, any idea when that feature was included?
A lot of racing games that had wheels with huge angle degree are finally playable with joystick. Namco's Dirt Dash in particular works like a charm now.

I just tried Dirt Dash and I didn't see the option.

[KAI]

I just tried Dirt Dash and I didn't see the option.

Check the game's .ini file. You can adjust all these values aside from the analog input adjustments in-game:

joystick_deadzone 0.00<->1.00
joystick_saturation 0.00<->1.00 (higher value = less sensitive/end of axis)
joystick_threshold 0.00<->1.00 (higher value = more precise)


Btw, the Handle Sensitivity option in-game is different according to the game/hardware (0-400 or 0-255), and a lower value will result on a less sensitive analog movement, try messing with that too if you can.
Mame uses fixed values on all games by default, and they can be really crappy for some racing games ("0.30" for deadzone and "0.85" for saturation iirc).

[Lemnear]

i'm a newbie about it but, how can i extract and merge several BIN file into a single one? i have some BIN and 1 CUE in my folder. I have CDImage.
EDIT: Solved using another program, there are difference in the result? (FPS loss or graphic downgrade?) I've seen that this game in particular is hard to run...

[Udderdude]

Try using CDMage. https://www.romhacking.net/utilities/1435/

[Lemnear]

Try using CDMage. https://www.romhacking.net/utilities/1435/

The result would be different? (stability..idk)....but in the end, i don't know what the original frame rate was for old games. Maybe it runs as intended..maybe not

[Lander]

Solved using another program, there are difference in the result? (FPS loss or graphic downgrade?) I've seen that this game in particular is hard to run...

Not if all you're doing is converting between formats. It'll either run correctly, run without CD audio because of a missing table-of-contents (i.e. CUE file), or not run at all.

As a rule, any differences in FPS and graphical quality vs original hardware will be down to the emulator.

[PerishedFraud ឵឵]

Which frontend do you guys use for mame these days? I got used to mameui and noticed that it is no longer getting updated a while back.

[Udderdude]

Try MAMEUI Classic. https://messui.1emulation.com/index.html
Or if you just want the arcade machines, ARCADE64. https://arcade.mameworld.info/

[PerishedFraud ឵឵]

Hey, that's pretty cool. Thanks for letting me know it exists!

[Lemnear]

Solved using another program, there are difference in the result? (FPS loss or graphic downgrade?) I've seen that this game in particular is hard to run...

Not if all you're doing is converting between formats. It'll either run correctly, run without CD audio because of a missing table-of-contents (i.e. CUE file), or not run at all.

As a rule, any differences in FPS and graphical quality vs original hardware will be down to the emulator.

This explain why the PAL version of Rage Racer was without music .
The NTSC version runs at 30fps , with music, and some occasional random slowdown to 20-24. It happen when the graphics is demanding, but at the next lap, in the same section, it runs smooth. I don't know how or why
This is the ONLY weird case for now for unstable FPS...with Ridge Racer Hi-Spec Demo that goes to a freaking 60fps!!! , but are not so stable.

Other games have 0 FPS drops (stable 25-50PAL and 30-60NTSC) running on a PSC (yeh i like to use it in every room at home).
Weird fact, the Playstation Classic Mini got the same power of a DreamCast, and can run SoulCalibur (Dreamcast Version) at 60fps no-stop! but it can't handle an old racing game of a previous gen ?
It even runs Jet Set Radio and Unreal Tournament at 60fps!!!.

PS: MAME is a no-no-go for the PSC, but FinalBurn works wonder!

[Lander]

This explain why the PAL version of Rage Racer was without music .
The NTSC version runs at 30fps , with music, and some occasional random slowdown to 20-24. It happen when the graphics is demanding, but at the next lap, in the same section, it runs smooth. I don't know how or why
This is the ONLY weird case for now for unstable FPS...with Ridge Racer Hi-Spec Demo that goes to a freaking 60fps!!! , but are not so stable.

That sounds like it could be a caching thing, i.e. the game spending CPU loading backgrounds / track segments / etc the first time you reach them, then keeping them in memory for the rest of the race.
Increasing your emulator's CPU overclock and / or disc read speed might improve it. Some emulators also have a 'disc image mode' setting that can load the whole thing into RAM at startup, which speeds up reads even more.

Other games have 0 FPS drops (stable 25-50PAL and 30-60NTSC) running on a PSC (yeh i like to use it in every room at home).
Weird fact, the Playstation Classic Mini got the same power of a DreamCast, and can run SoulCalibur (Dreamcast Version) at 60fps no-stop! but it can't handle an old racing game of a previous gen ?
It even runs Jet Set Radio and Unreal Tournament at 60fps!!!.

That's an occupational hazard of emulation if the original hardware couldn't hit 60, neither will an accurate emulator - hence why we have CPU / GTE / Disc speed settings that can be used to create an artificial 'PS1 Pro' that can.

Unfortunately it's not a magic one-size-fits-all solution; a lot of games for old consoles make assumptions and shortcuts in their code that rely on the original fixed-hardware speeds to work right, and will break if you change them. So you have to experiment a bit and see what works for a given game.
Take King's Field 2 as an example; you can apply a gameshark code to boost its internal FPS cap and then overclock to make sure it hits it, but that makes it lock up on the title screen, so you have to fiddle around turning things on and off each time you do a cold boot.