Joined: 4/11/2004
Posts: 155
Location: Fairfax, VA, USA
Features:
- 60 fps
- Accurate playback speed
- Mutable sound (set BufferSize to 0 in the .ini)
- Selectable frameskip
- Sound in sync, despite the audio sampling rate or frameskip
- No CPU spike/lockup
- 240 scanlines
Misfeatures:
- Auto-frameskip disabled
Bisqwit wrote:
Is the frameskip now to be controlled using the "frame skip" input or the "occupation" control? What is the difference?
"Occupation" is just the term Famtasia uses when it writes the frameskip value to its .ini file. They're interchangeable.
If you think this version is working well, maybe you could post an updated .zip file and let people have a crack at it.
Joined: 4/11/2004
Posts: 155
Location: Fairfax, VA, USA
New patch. Setting buffer size to 0 will now disable sound. I found out while testing this that this patch will only run at frameskip 1. Running at any other frameskip screws up the sound, so this version is hardcoded to run at 1 (60fps).
I found another minor error in the C code for the patch so I'll just re-post the whole thing.
Joined: 4/11/2004
Posts: 155
Location: Fairfax, VA, USA
Well, I finally managed to fix the sound glitch in the new 60 fps patch.
Bisqwit, please test this new version on your machine. I think I fixed the problem you were experiencing.
Thanks for the tip, finalfighter, but it didnt work for me. :(
The slider remained broken.
I noticed that you can change the frameskip from the "Speed Configuration" dialog box, just by typing a number next to the "Refresh" option, so you don't have to hand-edit the .ini file after all. Still, I don't really like including "instructions" with my releases; I'd like it to run at 60fps by default. What do others think of this?
Joined: 4/11/2004
Posts: 155
Location: Fairfax, VA, USA
Well, the choice seems to be between inaccurate playback but accruate sound, or accurate playback and inaccurate sound (presuming famtasia would be nice enough to behave the same on everybody's machine :P ). There are good reasons why each version acts like it does.
Anyhow, if you want to remove the CPU spike from the original 60fps patch, this sinlge byte fix should hopefully do the trick:
$30010 : c3
They're the same of course. I was afraid of that.
It's a shot in the dark, but you could try applying these changes:
$272e2 : e9 8e 04 00 00
Otherwise, I don't know what to say. :(
Joined: 4/11/2004
Posts: 155
Location: Fairfax, VA, USA
Bisqwit wrote:
Sorry to say but it doesn't work properly. After a while, it started going like an inchworm. Normal speed, lag, normal speed, lag, normal speed, lag...
Maybe I should check your version against mine. Is there a way I can get your copy?
Joined: 4/11/2004
Posts: 155
Location: Fairfax, VA, USA
I've just completed the new 60fps patch.
The good news:
. fixes the playback rate at 60fps. I tested this against sleepzteam's zelda run and linnom's batman run, timing them at 26:55 and 10:17 respectively, which I think is correct.
. fixes the cpu lock-up (yay!)
. fixes the screen size miscalculation for 3x magnification
Now for the bad news:
. causes audbible "popping" in the audio
Unfortunately, the sound "popping" glitch might be difficult to fix even if I did have the source code, so I might not manage to fix this for a while.
Now for the patch. You should apply this to an unmodified FAMTASIA.EXE.
Edit: I fogrot to mention that this patch completely removes the auto-frame skip functionality from Famtasia. If you want 60fps, you'll have to manually set frame skip to 1 by hand-editing your famtasia.ini file. Look for the line "Occupation=3" and set it to 1. If people find this a nuisance I can easily hard-code the frame skip to be 1.
Joined: 4/11/2004
Posts: 155
Location: Fairfax, VA, USA
feitclub wrote:
When I switch to Fullscreen, the picture disappears. All I get is a black screen and my mouse pointer. If I press Esc, I can see (part of) the menu bar. The sound continues, so i know the emulator is still emulating. But I can't see anything.
Fullscreen works in regular Famtasia on my computer, for the record. And I still can't get 240 to work properly at any size.
I've never seen this behavior, so I'm not sure I can help. :(
Any more info you could provide might be helpful. What happens when you run in windowed mode? Are you running win98 or xp?
Joined: 4/11/2004
Posts: 155
Location: Fairfax, VA, USA
Bisqwit wrote:
Blip, I'm little in understanding, but to me it seems like in this patch you replaced this formula:
(a/3) * 5000 / b
with this:
(a * 1766) / b
Why did you use 1766 (0x6E6) anyway? 1666 (0x682) is nearer...
The formula is timer_interval = (1766 * frame_skip) / execution_speed
I chose 1766 so that the emulator would set the timer every 17msec, instead of 16msec, based on the erroneus assumption that the minimum timer interval useable was 16msec. I've since found out that there's no restriction on the minimum timer interval in windows. Either constant used in the equation (1666 or 1766) gives roughly the same timing error at 60fps; 1766 runs slightly too slow and 1666 runs slightly too fast. The timer actually needs to be firing every 16.6667 msecs.
I'm working on a new patch that reworks the timer code, to take into account the fractional part of the timer interval. The new patch should be much more accurate at 60fps.
Also, I *think* the CPU spike is related to the messages that show up on the bottom of the screen, "movie stopped", etc. But I need to verify this.
Joined: 4/11/2004
Posts: 155
Location: Fairfax, VA, USA
Boco wrote:
Michael Fried wrote:
Blip, do you think you would be able to hack Famtasia in such a way that would let allow you to redo early parts of a video without having to redo the whole thing?
That's impossible to do, just so you know.
Actually, I can think of a way to do it. You could embed save states in the movie file.
I'd like to see it done just because it'd be a great tool for perfecting time attacks. But it arguably crosses the line to cheating since the movie files are no longer just controller input.
It'd be an awful lot of work to hack into Famtasia. VirtuaNES would be more doable since they already have savestates in their movie files... but still not likely to happen I'm afraid. :/
Joined: 4/11/2004
Posts: 155
Location: Fairfax, VA, USA
Sleepz wrote:
Now about the video time, I played both the FMV and the AVI side by side, and the AVI is playing significantly slower than the FMV file. Right now, I'm not 100% sure which one is giving the correct completion time. Does anyone know whats going on here?
I really should make an important point here. The 60 fps hack will NOT give accurate time results. This is because Famtasia uses a really innacurate method for controlling time. At 60fps there's an average error of about 4%, or roughly 24 seconds every 10 minutes. If you want an accurate guage of the playing time, you MUST play back at 20fps (20fps evenly divides into a second, avoiding rounding errors).
I sincerely apologize but I only just now realized this. I dont know if you've been using the 60 fps version for playback, but that might account for the error.
This adds fullscreen support. You might notice that the very top scanline has been cut off and an extra one placed at the bottom of the screen -- this is apparently a glitch in Famtasia's emulation. For some reason the x3 magnification is uneven -- not all the pixels are uniform in size -- but I'm not going to worry about it too much right now. :)
I'm sorry that I released the previous version before fullscreen support was added. I dont know why it slipped my mind...
Joined: 4/11/2004
Posts: 155
Location: Fairfax, VA, USA
I just want to congratulate Sleepz and the team on a superb time attack video. It was hugely entertaining, and it was clear from watching it that a good amount of cleverness and trickery went into its creation.
Bravo!
Joined: 4/11/2004
Posts: 155
Location: Fairfax, VA, USA
We're in luck. It turns out that Famtasia was emulating the full 240 scanlines; it simply wasn't displaying them. Thus, the patch was rather simple.
You can apply this patch directly on top of the 60-fps patched version. It's possible that I've missed a few spots in the patch, since the rendering routines are very spread out and there are a lot of rendering options in Famtasia. I'd like people to let me know if they find a configuration that isn't showing the full 240 scanlines.
