A pretty interesting read about pscx2 emulation and tas.
<rama2> pcsx2 won't support tas anytime soon btw
<delroth> rama2: what's the GS?
<rama2> delroth: the Graphics Synthesizer (tm)
<AngerFist> oh shit, speaking of which, WHY NOT rama?
<rama2> it's a legacy custom chip with analog circuitry and it really badly leans to emulation
<delroth> ah, why is it so hard to emulate compared to Wii's GPU?
<@Billiard> everything else doesn't run :p
<delroth> oh, ok
<rama2> supports too many operations that are hard (slow) to do or that aren't possible at all
<rama2> and it's fast in a ps2
<rama2> so it's a major speed hog in emulation, too
<no_cluez> rama2: are there any public docs for that, like yagcd for gc?
<rama2> yea, sure
<rama2> ps2dev.org :)
<no_cluez> ah, thx
<AngerFist> rama, apparently, there is pscx2-rr.
<rama2> and there's the awesome official documentation of the linux kit
<rama2> which you need to buy though to get access
<AngerFist> but i think its fubared.
<rama2> it is
<AngerFist> so cant we like start from there?
<rama2> i doubt any single coder can take pcsx2 as it's now and just slap on a working TAS
<no_cluez> meh, ps2dev has 503...
<rama2> prove me otherwise (please) :p
<rama2> ps2dev is up and down all the time
<rama2> ><
<rama2>
http://forums.ps2dev.org/
<rama2> there's the action anyway
<no_cluez> oh, ok
<delroth> rama2: why couldn't that be implemented as an input plugin which reads from a file?
<delroth> timing issues?
<delroth> or things like that?
<rama2> our savestates are complex and slow (due to the complex machine)
<rama2> and not really very safe either
<AngerFist> there has been a few minor brief tases of ps2 games thank to that pscx-rr, but i believe those authors tried thousands of rerecords just to tas a few mere seconds after suffering tremendous amount of desynchs.
<delroth> ok
<AngerFist> *have
<rama2> first you'd have to fix all the issues with saving the machien state properly
<rama2> some stuff isn't documented or known
<rama2> like a unit called SIO, which is for pad and memcard in/output
<rama2> or the sound chip
<rama2> then there's the dma controller.. a huge problem even without savestates
<rama2> (ps2 is a couple fast cpus and a beasty dma controller, basically :p )
<delroth> ok
<rama2> the controller has several states and does smart bus arbitration
<rama2> we don't even emulate that correctly
<rama2> leading to a couple hangs
<rama2> that's all minor, compared to the GS though
