Player (70)
Joined: 8/24/2004
Posts: 2562
Location: Sweden
Has anybody tried this? It's supposed to be able to handle SMS files as well. I'm going to check it out. Perhaps it would be easy to patch to get re-recording? http://www.retrobase.net/gensplus/ Home page http://www.retrobase.net/gensplus/files/gens+00339.zip Windows Binary http://www.retrobase.net/gensplus/files/gens+00339s.rar Source
Player (70)
Joined: 8/24/2004
Posts: 2562
Location: Sweden
Ok. I have tried it now. Works very well I must say. I recorded a small movie for wonder boy 3: The dragons trap (SMS). The output file will be a .gir. When movie is stopped the program asks if you wanna compress the file. I hit no. Play back worked just great. All we have to do now is to make it work with re-records.
Joined: 4/26/2004
Posts: 213
Location: Montréal, Québec
If you look at the source code of the movie code of Gens+ you will see my name... The story: When I heard about Gens+, I contacted the author about adding movie support. I agreed to so I started copying the GMV code from Gens. I couldn't compile it at the moment so I sent him a code without knowing if it worked. Of course, it didn't so he trashed most of my code and made his own movie format GIR (wich is a better format anyway). The rerecording part was left over. He's agaisnt this concept. A few days later, Gens+ becomes the official Gens 3. GIR is the official movie format. Gens 3 is in closed beta and I don't know when it will come out. When it's out, i'll add the rerecording code in an unofficial release and put an end to the suffering Gens Movie.
SXL
Joined: 2/7/2005
Posts: 571
bumped from this topic :
Highness wrote:
Shoulden't there be support for SMS in the new Gens version? Wonder when they'll release it?
as I'm also interested in those questions and that I believe this topic is more appropriate (correct me if I'm wrong). never owned any of the consoles supported by emulators having rerecord-support, so would love to see (and maybe contribute to) SMS classics (and yeah Dragon's Trap would rock !). any news Jyzero ?
I never sleep, 'cause sleep is the cousin of death - NAS
nesrocks
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Joined: 5/1/2004
Posts: 4096
Location: Rio, Brazil
SXL
Joined: 2/7/2005
Posts: 571
could a coder please implement the functions needed for TAS, present in gens9f, into the current (961) gens+ emulator ? the last version has its source code available, and supports sms/gg games, which would be a much requested feature. I've read that the gens+ author (contacted by Jyzero, if my memory is good) does not like those features, and does not wish to implement them himself. since Jyzero is the author of gens9f, he would be the best choice, unfortunately he hasn't had time since a while to update his version. I'm asking if there would be a kind-enough coder, with enough free time and knowledge, to cook us a sms/gg rerecording emulator, from gens+/gens9f or any other base. currently the only solution is DrSMS, sms emulator for gba (hence usable within vba), but it's not approved. thanks in advance, and let's hope that the classics could be done someday, not too far from now ;)
I never sleep, 'cause sleep is the cousin of death - NAS
Player (70)
Joined: 8/24/2004
Posts: 2562
Location: Sweden
Woah! Didn't notice the new release. :D Sounds great. If the coders starts crunching code. *pokes the coders*
Active player (278)
Joined: 5/29/2004
Posts: 5712
Just because they coded it once doesn't mean they'll code it again!
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Active player (433)
Joined: 4/21/2004
Posts: 3517
Location: Stockholm, Sweden
I will TAS a hundred SMS games if some encoder can make this happen.
Nitrogenesis wrote:
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Arc wrote:
I enjoyed this movie in which hands firmly gripping a shaft lead to balls deep in multiple holes.
natt wrote:
I don't want to get involved in this discussion, but as a point of fact C# is literally the first goddamn thing on that fucking page you linked did you even fucking read it
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Former player
Joined: 3/30/2004
Posts: 359
Location: Borlänge - Sweden
Well.. Im not that big fan of MEKA, so I would love if this happens rather then to MEKA. According to me MEKA got some big flaws. First off it starts in a own fullscreen program window and the game itself in a small window in the emulator. The "game window" cant be resized, its either that or a fullscreen and this I really dont like. Old DOS emulator that was shipped to WIN9X and Linux. Nothing bad about DOS, I loved DOS in the old days and I still do. Im not into that programming and compiling thingy. But... isnt it just to copy all the code from GENS 9F to GENS+(source code)? Please? ^looking sad^ :(
Wheeeehaaa.. Yaaayy..
upthorn
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Emulator Coder, Active player (388)
Joined: 3/24/2006
Posts: 1802
Actually, porting the rerecording code from gens to gens+ shouldn't be too difficult. The question in my mind, though, is whether I should just port the rerecording part to Gens+, or the whole GMV format. Gens+ already has it's own movie format, which may be better than GMV, or may be worse. Either way, it'd take a while to track down and port the slow-down and frame advance functions.
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
Former player
Joined: 3/30/2004
Posts: 359
Location: Borlänge - Sweden
Yeah, Ive been reading about that GIR format. But... maybe Im dumb or something. But I cant find that option in the lastest release of it.
Wheeeehaaa.. Yaaayy..
upthorn
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Emulator Coder, Active player (388)
Joined: 3/24/2006
Posts: 1802
Well, after doing a bit of poking about in the source code and a hex editor, I have discovered that the .gir format is nothing more than a GMV file compressed via 7zip
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
Player (80)
Joined: 3/11/2005
Posts: 352
Location: Oregon
I've documented the GIR format here. It's up-to-date for 0.0.9.61, which is what's out now. It's similar to GMV, but there are a few important differences.
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Editor, Reviewer, Experienced player (969)
Joined: 4/17/2004
Posts: 3107
Location: Sweden
If we are changing formats anyway, I think there are a few important improvements we should make while we're at it. (We in this case being the nesvideo community via the sucker that has to code it) For GIR: - an author comment - a rerecord count For GMV: - everything new in GIR (savestate, SRAM, and more players) For both: - ROM checksum and filename - Audio frequency and other options which potentially influences timing Updating GIR seems to be the better option to me.
Former player
Joined: 3/30/2004
Posts: 359
Location: Borlänge - Sweden
Sounds like a great idea... and who will that be? Can't someone try to ask nitsuja? ;) He did a great job with Gens 9F
Wheeeehaaa.. Yaaayy..
Joined: 4/26/2004
Posts: 213
Location: Montréal, Québec
The Gens+ movie code was originaly my movie code, that's why GIR look like GMV. If you make a new format, you should base it on SMV format. The original GMV is too static. I only reserved 4 bytes to add new features.
upthorn
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Emulator Coder, Active player (388)
Joined: 3/24/2006
Posts: 1802
One of the things I like about GMV is that it's static. Input always starts at the same byte. This makes hex-editing significantly less complicated. Also, SMV has a wasted nibble per player per frame. I do like the idea of including SRM data, though. I'm not sure about including the checksum. It would be useful, but as far as I know, Gens doesn't have any routines involving the checksum, so I'd have to write them myself. If someone could tell me how to get the checksum of a Genesis ROM (.smd or .bin), or even just point me to a place which explains, I could probably do something, but it'd be way more effort than I'm prepared to put in to figure it out myself.
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
Emulator Coder, Skilled player (1301)
Joined: 12/21/2004
Posts: 2687
If you do keep it static, reserve a lot more bytes than 4. I agree that it's nice when the data always starts at the same offset for the purposes of hex editing, but in that case there's no good reason to be miserly about the header size. For the ROM filename, usually a ROM has its name stored inside it, and that's better to use than the filename. You could store both, of course. For the checksum, you could look at the code that any of the other emulators use to do this, and might as well just reuse that code since calculating a checksum of a Genesis ROM is the same as calculating a checksum of anything else. Or, even just making something up (looping through the ROM data and adding or XORing every x bytes together) would be better than nothing, albeit probably not as reliable, so I wouldn't recommend it if the other option is doable. Also, if GIR is being updated, it should have the entire movie stored in it somewhere, for the bulletproof re-recording feature. EDIT: Oops, I meant, stored in the Gens+ savestate.
upthorn
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Joined: 3/24/2006
Posts: 1802
Okay, Gens+ has some pretty substantial SMS emulation flaws (like completely freezing up on certain games), so I'm not sure if there's any good reason to make it re-recordable at all.
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
Emulator Coder, Skilled player (1301)
Joined: 12/21/2004
Posts: 2687
upthorn wrote:
Okay, Gens+ has some pretty substantial SMS emulation flaws (like completely freezing up on certain games), so I'm not sure if there's any good reason to make it re-recordable at all.
Well it played Game Gear games well enough when I tried it. Also, since it supports Sega CD already, it might be worth seeing if it doesn't have the same desync problems that Gens has. EDIT: or maybe it would be easier to merge in SMS/Game Gear/some of the Sega CD support to the re-recording Gens?
Player (80)
Joined: 3/11/2005
Posts: 352
Location: Oregon
Gens+ looks like it has plenty of potential, but it bugs me considerably that it's win32/directx-specific right now. Could someone more experienced than me share their thoughts on switching to a cross-platform toolkit like wxWidgets or GTK+ (in a non-broken manner).
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Upthorn: >One of the things I like about GMV is that it's static. Input always starts at the same byte. This makes hex-editing significantly less complicated. Also, SMV has a wasted nibble per player per frame. I like that too, but it also makes it impossible to include "starting from savestate". Perhaps both could be included in some way (Putting savestate last in movie file? Having savestate first but a static (far enough forward) location for movie data?). GMV has 2 whole bytes wasted per player per frame (in the case of one player, 3 buttons). But bytes are cheap these days, so it shouldn't matter. One unused bit could be used for the reset button, perhaps. >I'm not sure about including the checksum. It would be useful, but as far as I know, Gens doesn't have any routines involving the checksum, so I'd have to write them myself. What nitsuja said, just steal it ("borrow") from any of the other emulators. Checksums are calculated the same way regardless of the filetype. >Okay, Gens+ has some pretty substantial SMS emulation flaws That's sad. It sort of invalidates the whole idea of this project. :(
upthorn
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Posts: 1802
Nitsuja
Upthorn
Okay, Gens+ has some pretty substantial SMS emulation flaws (like completely freezing up on certain games), so I'm not sure if there's any good reason to make it re-recordable at all.
Well it played Game Gear games well enough when I tried it. Also, since it supports Sega CD already, it might be worth seeing if it doesn't have the same desync problems that Gens has. EDIT: or maybe it would be easier to merge in SMS/Game Gear/some of the Sega CD support to the re-recording Gens?
Originally I had thought that, but then someone directed me to try Sonic Drift. Sonic Drift locks up as soon as you start a race. I imagine that this would be true of some of the later SMS games, as well. Also, what Sega CD support does Gens+ have besides (40% working) savestates? Edit: I'm going to be checking out Meka, though.
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
SXL
Joined: 2/7/2005
Posts: 571
well it's sad to hear that. as Frenom suggested in the meka thread, this emu with its own windowing system isn't exactly the most practical to alter/use. our third option is dega, it looks just like the other rerecording emulators, don't know if it has windows specific code though.
I never sleep, 'cause sleep is the cousin of death - NAS