fruitbane
He/Him
Joined: 3/28/2005
Posts: 216
Would someone with the ability to make this kind of thing happen please indicate what it would take for the rest of us, those without such ability, to convince you to help out?
mz
Emulator Coder, Player (79)
Joined: 10/26/2007
Posts: 693
Boco wrote:
Calling Hu-Go "excellent" is a bit of a stretch. Both Ootake and (my personal favorite) Mednafen have savestate and movie recording/playback, and, more importantly, run more than 2 or 3 games, and run them without significant graphics and sound errors.
Mednafen uses code from "PC2E", it seems. :/ Also there's Xe, which is great and it uses original code, but doesn't even have savestate support.
fruitbane wrote:
Would someone with the ability to make this kind of thing happen please indicate what it would take for the rest of us, those without such ability, to convince you to help out?
It looks like Mednafen uses almost the same movie playback/recording source code as FCEU. So, I just asked to the main FCEU developer if he could add re-recording support to Mednafen, and he said he will look into it after he finishes working on the new FCM format (probably in a few days). So if you want to help somehow, join #fceu at irc.freenode.net and bug zeromus about this. :P
You're just fucking stupid, everyone hates you, sorry to tell you the truth. no one likes you, you're someone pretentious and TASes only to be on speed game, but don't have any hope, you won't get there.
fruitbane
He/Him
Joined: 3/28/2005
Posts: 216
Wonderful idea. Perhaps I shall :)
Post subject: bump with substance
Experienced player (591)
Joined: 1/11/2007
Posts: 103
I made some test movies with mednafen 0.8.A http://mednafen.sourceforge.net/ Bloody Wolf (USA cartridge) Bonk III (USA CD) Akumajou Chi no Rondo (JAP CD) download Play them and see if they sync. I don't know any of these games. I picked them because they were mentioned here. It seems there's no way to record from power on, only from savestate. If you loadstate during recording, it doesn't re-record and it doesn't stop either--instead I think it inserts the savestate into the movie, loads it, and keeps recording. This makes a really big movie file and looks awful so I didn't use them. There's no GUI and no error messages, so here's some preemptive troubleshooting. Run a (optionally zipped) cart with:
mednafen "rom path/rom name.pce"
mednafen "rom path/rom name.zip"
To run CD games, first specify a (optionally zipped) v3.0 CD bios in mednafen.cfg:
pce.cdbios rom path/rom name.pce
pce.cdbios rom path/rom name.zip
Run a CD with:
mednafen -loadcd pce "rom path/rom name.cue"
Cues must not refer to anything besides iso, bin, wav. Put the movie files in the mcm folder, match the name with your rom, load the rom and hit shift+F7 to play back. Some personal config prefs: Exclude md5 from save filenames:
dfmd5 0
Make your bram/sram saves compatible with other emulators:
filesys.disablesavegz 1
Display 256x240 games (most of them) in the authentic aspect ratio:
pce.xscale 2.4
pce.yscale 3
or some integral multiple of 0.8:1 For 342x240 games, use a 1.06875:1 multiple. (There have already been some forum complaints about this.) Overscan (full) display:
pce.slstart 0
pce.slend 239
Plain old scaling:
pce.videoip 0
pce.special none
fruitbane
He/Him
Joined: 3/28/2005
Posts: 216
The Bloody Wolf movie file played back with no desync. I haven't tested any of the CD-based games because I do not have them right at hand. Did you record the CD games across many loading gaps? Those are likely to be the most deadly. As for ROMs, it looks like Mednafen is getting closer to being usable for PC Engine TAS purposes.
Post subject: so what about...
Joined: 2/23/2008
Posts: 21
I've had MagicEngine 1.0 for years now, and I see a greyed out record option. Does anyone know what's up with recording on it? As an emulator it seems excellent, nice GUI and every game I've thrown at it works great, and they feel like the real thing in terms of speed (yeah I got a TG-16 still collecting dust). I don't know much about programming but having something record keypresses and then play them back within the rom doesn't sound very difficult to implement. Is this emulator not considered much because it costs money? Are the others out there just as good? I see he has an update posted just 4 days ago so I know it's still being actively developed. Maybe if people clamor for some recording tools it'll get done...
Post subject: Re: so what about...
Editor, Expert player (2080)
Joined: 6/15/2005
Posts: 3284
CreeDo wrote:
Is this emulator not considered much because it costs money?
I'll reply so that you don't think everyone is ignoring you. Yes, you are absolutely correct. Costing money also means that it is inevitably closed source. I don't believe authors of closed-source programs have rerecording or other TASing tools anywhere other than near the bottom of the priority list.
Player (206)
Joined: 5/29/2004
Posts: 5712
But aren't those same tools also good for debugging?
put yourself in my rocketpack if that poochie is one outrageous dude
fruitbane
He/Him
Joined: 3/28/2005
Posts: 216
Magic Engine is the prettiest TG-16 emulator, but in addition to being for-pay, it's also not that great in the compatibility department. Many CD games have volume problems and sound quality issues. Mednafen is one of the hardest to use for newbies (no GUI) but also the most accurate at emulation. Ootake is in-between Magic Engine and Mednafen in that it has more accurate emulation than ME and is easier to use than Mednafen, but isn't as slick in appearance as ME. I think Ootake and Mednafen both have lots of TAS potential in that some of the hooks are already there. It's just a matter of developing them such that they are acceptable with the technical requirements of this site so as to be suitable for TASing. I'm not a programmer so there's jack shit I can contribute, but once an emulator is approved I'll just right in with TAS submissions.
Skilled player (1327)
Joined: 9/7/2007
Posts: 1354
Location: U.S.
fruitbane wrote:
I think Ootake and Mednafen both have lots of TAS potential in that some of the hooks are already there. It's just a matter of developing them such that they are acceptable with the technical requirements of this site so as to be suitable for TASing.
What about Mednafen? Didn't Jerfo use it for Bonk's Adventure?
Former player
Joined: 10/30/2008
Posts: 29
Sonikkustar wrote:
What about Mednafen? Didn't Jerfo use it for Bonk's Adventure?
Yes, I'm using it to TAS Bonk's Adventure, albeit without any sort of official approval. Since it only supports a small rewind/re-recording window, I'm using it in conjunction with VMWare snapshots to make it suitable for TASing. I'm able to produce files that can be replayed consistently on both Windows and Linux. I record the TAS in a Linux virtual machine on a Windows physical machine. Whenever I get to a break point, I take a VMWare snapshot, save the movie file, and test playback on the Windows side. I'll try it on OSX one of these days, too. I tested Ootake, but it was fairly useless for TASing. I looked at Magic Engine very briefly a few months ago, and I remember liking it the least out of the three. Your mileage may vary... - Jerfo
Emulator Coder, Former player
Joined: 8/12/2007
Posts: 102
I got re-recording working in Mednafen, but there are no additional features at the moment, so it's still mostly unsuitable for TASing. Right now the movie filename is hard-coded. EDIT: Fixed some bugs state.cpp movie.cpp movie.h
adelikat
He/Him
Emulator Coder, Site Developer, Site Owner, Expert player (3576)
Joined: 11/3/2004
Posts: 4754
Location: Tennessee
Moved this topic to the TG-16 forum. And now there is an official emulator for making TG-16/PC Engine TASes: http://code.google.com/p/mednafen-rr/
It's hard to look this good. My TAS projects