Nearly two years ago, I remember reporting a bug on a certain SNES game (Battletoads in Battlemaniacs) - basically, Deterministic mode breaks the intro part of the game, causing both the video and audio speed to fluctuate. You can't TAS without Deterministic mode, so there's no way around that. The main problem is that this also translates to the dumped .avi file. If it were to play correctly, it'd not be a problem.
This isn't the only game with this issue, though. If you pause any of the DKC games, the speed breaks and audio starts playing really fast. If those two games are affected, there are likely many others with similar issues that we just don't know of.
It was said that those bugs seem to be caused by "Deterministic Emulation hacks". While those are helpful for some games, they end up breaking others. My question is, why are those hacks even there in first place? Isn't it a dirty way to help some games run "properly"? Other than that, only reason I can think of is to help users with lower end specs to run those games at full speed. While it could prove useful some years ago, it shouldn't be a problem anymore. It's 2017 and I'm sure most people have decent enough hardware to run bsnes at stable 60fps. It runs perfectly on my machine, and it's from 2012. Even higan's accuracy core runs at full speed.
Furthermore, bsnes's compatibility core already runs all SNES games perfectly apart from Air Strike Patrol. So, why the need of hacks? I think they only break the purpose of keeping emulation faithful to real hardware. It could also cause other significant problems such as preventing movies of those hacked games from running on a real SNES.
Note that those bugs are Bizhawk exclusive. They don't exist on the actual bsnes/higan or even the less accurate snes9x. It's present on all Bizhawk versions except for really early ones where Deterministic mode wasn't a thing.
My suggestion is to remove those hacks as they apparently cause more problems than good.
Why not? Snes9x 1.53 is 89.8% accurate. SnesHawk is 93.2%. That's only a 3.4% difference. But nobody uses the former due to the lack of TAS tools.
It's true that earlier versions of Snes9x sucked (like 1.43), but they improved things a lot over the years. Moreover, SnesHawk has some problems that don't exist on Snes9x, such as fluctuating framerate on some games.
Koh1fds wrote:
For me that human can't notice a difference is the first. Everything including movie sync and accuracy tests comes after this
I agree with you there. When it comes to emulation, I'm mostly concerned with graphic or audio bugs. The rest comes next.
The Compatibility Core is the default core. Using the Performance Core might help a little.
By the way, will it ever be possible to make movies with the Performance Core? I noticed a very significant speed boost by using it (at least on my computer), and that helps a lot on making longplays. But sadly, you can't record movies with it.
I know emulator speed is irrelevant for actual TASing, but when you want to just make just a longplay using basic emulator tools, performance does help a lot in making the process faster.
Thanks, Sour. Really nice to see it was implemented! :)
As for features to be added, I'd recommend compatibility with at least three codecs: Lagarith, Camstudio and x264. The first two are lossless, x264 is lossy by default, but you can activate "Single pass - lossless" under configuration.
Those are among the most popular and better codecs out there.
Koh1fds is right. It's impossible to get the same result with external capture software. Screen capture programs record "what they see" so if you experience lag/hiccups or the like, that will be recorded as well. Built-in .avi record on other hand gives you a perfect frame-by-frame video dump.
I agree with him that .avi record feature is essential and should be a staple for any good emulator.
Well... I'm not having much luck finding the version it was fixed, I'm sorry. The thing is that it's hard to reproduce the bug since it happens at random.
So, I guess I will wait for when you start working on the new mame.
Hey feos, I made a small movie with v0.1-alpha. Just stage 1 and 2 of daimakaimura. It synced perfectly: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ht9yq97amuqmfpp/daimakai.mar?dl=0
I think the emulator has potential, but it's a shame it's based on such an outdated build. If the code could be ported over to the latest mame version, it'd be really sweet.
I think I found a small error on 2.2.3. If you make a movie with it and then go on the "Play Movie" window, it says "Emulator Used: FCEUX 2.20.20".
http://i.imgur.com/R1MDneT.png
Should not it say "2.20.30" ?
@Sour
I tested Mesen last night and I must say it's pretty nifty. I like the features and it got a really nice interface as well. You did a pretty good job. :)
By the way, I tried to record a movie but if you load state, the movie automatically ends. Is there any chance to implement rerecording functions eventually?
* Frame advance - not implemented.
* Read only & Read+Write functions - not implemented.
* Ability to bind savestates to multiple slots - currently you can only bind them to one slot, and have a separate hotkey to switch slots.
It's possible to frame advance by pausing (pause break) the game and pressing F1 continuously. Each F1 press will advance 1 frame.
It's possible to load a movie in either Read only or Read+Write on "Replay > Replay input". Unless if you mean something beyond that with "functions".
The keys to switch slot are F8 (previous slot) and F11 (next slot). Just leaving this here just in case.
Okay, thanks.
One more thing: is there a way to do "ConvertToYV12(chromaresample="point")" through virtualdub's filters? I have avisynth installed, but I prefer to use virtualdub alone if possible.
I know how to point resize the video's resolution on "filters = resize (nearest neighbor)" but how can I resize the chroma?
Unless if I'm missing something, I noticed that pixel perfect lossless quality is only kept on the RGB color space format.
Below is a side by side comparison (all recorded with Lagarith, then I took pics of the videos):
Is it possible to make it so the pixels will look lossless perfect on Y′UV, YUV, YCbCr, YPbPr, etc as well?
There are some games where seeing the bottom-most part of the screen is important. And whenever I save/load state, the save/load message pops up and obstructs my view. I actually have to pause the emulator right after loading state and wait a bit so the message will go away so I can see what's on the bottom. This happens more frequently on puzzle games.
Is there a way to make the message pop up on the top of the screen instead? Either that or make it transparent (and/or smaller) so it won't cover so much of the bottom.
On v1.54 (and v1.54.1) if you close the emulator while playing a movie, the emulator crashes. This happens even after the movie has finished. It gives the following error:
Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: BEX
Application Name: snes9x.exe
Application Version: 1.5.3.0
Application Timestamp: 580219c5
Fault Module Name: snes9x.exe
Fault Module Version: 1.5.3.0
Fault Module Timestamp: 580219c5
Exception Offset: 002cdb50
Exception Code: c0000417
Exception Data: 00000000
OS Version: 6.1.7601.2.1.0.256.1
Locale ID: 1033
Additional Information 1: 1838
Additional Information 2: 1838afc55b97bcb0e9c66fd54ea523b3
Additional Information 3: 4800
Additional Information 4: 4800c51ebdbf5fd193e45c1fe4bb754b
Bumping the thread cause I had a pretty interesting dream last night.
I was speedrunning Mega Man X, but it was a little different.
I played the intro stage as Zero, and could use his saber very fluidly, like on the Zero series. I could do horizontal and vertical slashes, spinning attacks, downward and upward thrusts, etc.
By reaching Vile at the end, instead of being forced to lose the fight, I destroyed him (on his armor) with multiple frontal stabs. I then saved X and absorbed his power, but it went to X instead.
Then I played one of the 8 maverick stages (don't remember which, but probably Flame Mammoth) as X using Vile's power. It was basically riding his armor, and it was pretty overpowered. I remember crushing everything on sight as if they were nothing.
Finally, the game's graphics were also quite different. They were more advanced, like 32 bits instead of 16 bits.
This is probably not really a bug, but while loading GoodNES "Double Dragon II - The Revenge (J)" on BizHawk 1.11.7, I got a message saying "Warning: ROM of Unknown Character"
Here's a pic: http://i.imgur.com/vXRAFOa.png
What does that mean exactly?
May be a hack?
I played the game all the way to the end and didn't see anything that would make it a hack. I also have a movie of it and it synced perfectly with that trained version: "Double Dragon II - The Revenge (J) [t1]" which according to BizHawk's gamedb, is the only good dump of the original Japanese version for some reason.
This is probably not really a bug, but while loading GoodNES "Double Dragon II - The Revenge (J)" on BizHawk 1.11.7, I got a message saying "Warning: ROM of Unknown Character"
Here's a pic: http://i.imgur.com/vXRAFOa.png
What does that mean exactly?
I still didn't get around to testing headphones on the TV, but I figured out that if you focus the whole audio on one speaker (i.e: Left = 100 / Right = 0 or Left = 0 / Right = 100), then I can listen to the game's audio properly. But if I leave things balanced (both L and R with the same value), then those audio problems happen.
As I mentioned before, leaving the game on monaural also fixes the issue, but I guess I will just leave it on stereo with the audio focused on a single speaker.
Is it possible to make it so the pixels will look lossless perfect on Y′UV, YUV, YCbCr, YPbPr, etc as well?
