Topic by Wockes

maybe could you work with pcc to make us a nice sms rerecording emulator. and if meka was the target, maybe could you invite Bock (if he's still alive...) to help you both... what do you think the best solution would be ? - pcc's rerecording dega, improve this - add rerecording to meka - add sms (from meka ?) support into rerecording gens

I am alive. I'm just busy with one trillion things, it's just a matter for me to shut up and start doing something, this could get the ball rolling. Adding "SMS (from Meka)" into Gens seems pretty much nonsense. It's not much about the code nowadays, it's about emulation quality and this derivate directly from knowledge. Today in 2007 we have enough knowledge (see SmsPower wiki or ask in forums) so that someone competent could theorically do a great SMS emulator from stratch in not much time. I think that MESS or SmsPlus would be a better choice than Dega or Gens. MESS is being worked on by pretty competent people, and generally I'm sure that Charles Mac Donald's work is accurate enough. One reason I'm not moving fast with recording in MEKA is that's I'm overally paranoid about data preservation and I don't like very much the idea of providing a version with recording and breaking data compatiblity every 6 months. Simple thing such as "2 bytes per frame for inputs" are not accurate when it comes to handling the various peripherals, slots, ports, etc, supported by the system. This kind of things makes me slow to react. Can you tell me how other emulators behave on this matter? IF YOU WANT SOMETHING DONE AND DON'T CARE IF DATA COMPATIBILITY GETS BROKEN REGULARLY: I can probably do that.

Posted: 7/7/2007 6:55 PM

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Bock

Joined: 5/15/2006
Posts: 15
Location: Paris, France

stanski wrote:

Meka has such a terrible user interface, and i really hate the flashy backround graphics/everything how fickle it can be sometimes.

Look, I pretty much agree that MEKA is stuck in the past for many things, user interface included. I think it gives it some charm (+ the benefit of portability), thought, but I'm open to any constructive criticism that could help making it evolve. What do you feel is particularly flashy in MEKA? A background with a grid and an old picture of a Sega Master System? I myself always use MEKA using the "Ocean" theme and this is perhaps a sign that the default theme is annoying even to me. Suggestions welcome. You can post on MEKA forum or e-mail me if this gets off topic for this forum. MEKA arguably has the best debugging/hacking tool around so that would be of help doing TAS ihmo.

Posted: 7/7/2007 9:35 PM

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SXL

Joined: 2/7/2005
Posts: 571

all rerecording emulators evolve, and have their movie format evolving, refining version after version. it's something tas'ers are used to, it's not a real problem. new movies must be created with the best version for that game, and watchers just download the appropriate emulator (as told in the submission's description) to watch it. to avoid format mistakes for the movies produced by Meka, you might want to talk with the coders here, they have studied this a lot. do read the specs of the rerecording emulators already existing on the wiki. ask what the best is. (I believe that the savestate format you created is very solid now, as it's even used in the other sms emulators.) yeah it is complicated to think about all the possibilities, you're not asked to create a perfect format at the first try, it just has to include the mandatory information, for example : - rom name + crc - start from reset/savestate - number of players - pal/ntsc settings - number of frames, rerecords - header with reserved space for the future - enough bytes for the input of each player - others I can't think of... almost every rerecording emulator has been created on a new developing branch, and it always takes several tries to get it accepted here, in fact their development only stops when no coder wants to deal with it anymore, so a quest for perfection is useless. we're lucky enough if we get an accepted rerecording emulator for sms, the rest does not matter much.

I never sleep, 'cause sleep is the cousin of death - NAS

Posted: 7/7/2007 9:43 PM

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moozooh

Senior Moderator

Joined: 8/4/2005
Posts: 5770
Location: Away

Actually, I think at least half of the compatibility problems can more-or-less be solved by making the movie format more extensible since the beginning. There's no need to update the format specs every half a year — for example, about 90% of FCM and SMV content from 1.5-2 years ago can be played back even now despite numerous emulator version/movie features revision, and it's not the limit. I don't know much about it, but I think it wouldn't hurt if you add more space into the specs for future functions now (instead of breaking everything later).

Warp wrote:

Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.

Posted: 7/7/2007 10:11 PM

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Bock

Joined: 5/15/2006
Posts: 15
Location: Paris, France

moozooh: It's not much of a problem about the file format - of course, I intend to add some kind of versionning and extension possibility to it. The problem is about subtle emulation change that could affect playback. I know that some non-determinism code in the emulation of certain inputs (analog paddle control, sports pad, etc.) would certainly affect playback. Not mentionning switching Z80 core as I plan to, and a single opcode emulation change might affect playback (not in all cases).

Posted: 7/7/2007 10:14 PM

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upthorn

He/Him

Emulator Coder, Active player (388)

Joined: 3/24/2006
Posts: 1802

Bock wrote:

moozooh: It's not much of a problem about the file format - of course, I intend to add some kind of versionning and extension possibility to it. The problem is about subtle emulation change that could affect playback. I know that some non-determinism code in the emulation of certain inputs (analog paddle control, sports pad, etc.) would certainly affect playback. Not mentionning switching Z80 core as I plan to, and a single opcode emulation change might affect playback (not in all cases).

Bock, there have been upgrades to snes9x's emulation core which break movie sync on multiple occasions, including a large on just recently, so that should not be a huge concern. TASers tend to update their emulators every few months in order to keep current. Additionally, it is likely that the standard SMS 2 button pad is the only control that most TASers will ever use.

How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.

Posted: 7/8/2007 7:02 AM

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pcc

Emulator Coder

Joined: 6/24/2007
Posts: 45

Hi Bock, I agree, 2 bytes per frame is not enough for every peripheral. However I designed the format for dega, which doesn't support any peripheral apart from the joypad. If more peripheral support were added it would be trivial to add it to the format because it is extensible (simply by increasing the input packet size). I did have a look at the meka code while I was choosing an emulator and I believe it would be relatively simple for someone familiar with the code to be able to add universal recording support. For the input data I can think of 3 ways to do this: 1. An input packet consists of all the data required to determine the values received from the I/O ports used for user input (0xDC, 0xDD, 0xDE). This means the current choice of input device, joypad buttons held down, position of light gun etc. An input packet is stored every scanline (since meka samples input every scanline). Advantages: - very easy to determine original user input, e.g. for an input display Disadvantages: - large amount of data storage (about 3KB per frame), due to having to store input data every scanline - changing the list of peripherals, or the way that meka converts raw user data into I/O port data, would lead to incompatibilities 2. Same as above but store input packet every frame. This would involve changing meka to sample input every frame rather than every scanline (because any user input that happens between frames would end up unrecorded). Advantages: - very easy to determine original user input, e.g. for an input display - relatively low data rate Disadvantages: - sampling data every frame might have consequences on emulation - changing the list of peripherals, or the way that meka converts raw user data into I/O port data, would lead to incompatibilities 3. One input packet every time the game reads from the user input I/O ports, consisting of the port number and the value the game read from the port. To play back, simply feed the game the same input data. Advantages: - easy to implement initially - guaranteed to be deterministic - no need to change format if peripheral emulation changes Disadvantages: - hard to implement an input display, because we would need to 'reverse engineer' the data in the movie file into the original data

Posted: 7/8/2007 6:23 PM

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Bock

Joined: 5/15/2006
Posts: 15
Location: Paris, France

Not sure where you thought about this scanline thing, but MEKA *does* poll inputs once per frame, so the choice between 1 and 2 doesn't apply. I somehow like solution 3 because as you said, I feel it can be more deterministic than with and less replay breakage if emulation change. I'll see what I can do. Thanks for your infos guys.

Posted: 7/9/2007 4:14 AM

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stanski

Player (74)

Joined: 12/20/2006
Posts: 154

Yea I really hate the defaults on meka. I really never bothered to look how to change it, but nearly every other emulator starts out with a blank backround in a windowed box. Plain, simple, and to me it seems more "realistic" as compared to playing on a console. I'm sure there is a way to change meka's backround, but I just haven't bothered to try and just use other emulators. The other issue I had with meka was the mouse movement/changing input thing. It for some reason was just really annoying compared to some other emulators (I like fceu, snes9x, gens type input configurations). Also, all those lines with "load game blah blah" were annoying and made me again feel like i was playing on a computer. The fact that I couldn't make the game screen larger from default with just a simple "corner click drag" was slightly annoying too. I found the screen too small and it put me off that i actually had to look somewhere to make the screen bigger (again, its probably simple to do, but its off putting for first time emulator use). Again, I don't want to port meka's code into gens. I just know there is a piece of hardware for the genesis that allows you to play SMS games on the genesis. I thought there would be some way to allow you to just emulate this piece of hardware (power base converter) simply in an existing emulator.

http://speeddemosarchive.com/

Posted: 7/10/2007 12:18 AM

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pcc

Emulator Coder

Joined: 6/24/2007
Posts: 45

I've released Dega 1.13 final. I fixed some minor bugs and added PAL/NTSC and Japan/world flags to the movie file. The new version should be backward compatible with old movie files but if your movie file is recorded in PAL or Japanese mode you should convert it with the included mmvconv utility. Full details in the dega.txt file. I tested the utility with all the runs that people have posted in this forum but do make a backup before converting your file. I now have a web site for this project. You can get the latest version here: http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~pcc03/dega/ As always do let me know of any bugs.

Posted: 7/10/2007 12:57 AM

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Bag_of_Magic_Food

He/Him

Active player (277)

Joined: 5/29/2004
Posts: 5712

Is the region setting supposed to work for all games? For a while now I've been messing around with Tails' Adventures, which is a game that displays Japanese text when your Game Gear is set to Japan and English text when it isn't. But in Dega, it displays English text regardless of whether I check the Japan setting, while the setting actually worked when I tried it in Meka on the same ROM.

put yourself in my rocketpack if that poochie is one outrageous dude

Posted: 7/10/2007 1:38 AM

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pcc

Emulator Coder

Joined: 6/24/2007
Posts: 45

Thanks for that. It looks like that game detects the region in a different way which wasn't supported by dega. Since meka supports it it was trivial to find the appropriate code and port the fix to dega. I wish fixing all emulation bugs would be this easy :). Website updated with new version.

Posted: 7/10/2007 2:08 AM

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N._Harmonik

She/Her

Joined: 8/27/2006
Posts: 502
Location: Canada

Great! Now the list of compatible video games for this emulator has to be expanded.

Bag of Magic Food wrote:

Is the region setting supposed to work for all games? For a while now I've been messing around with Tails' Adventures, which is a game that displays Japanese text when your Game Gear is set to Japan and English text when it isn't. But in Dega, it displays English text regardless of whether I check the Japan setting, while the setting actually worked when I tried it in Meka on the same ROM.

Tails Adventure?! Eeeeeyaaaaaaaahhooo!

Why, oh, why do I even <i>try</i> to understand my own species?

Posted: 7/10/2007 10:28 AM

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AngerFist

Active player (432)

Joined: 4/21/2004
Posts: 3517
Location: Stockholm, Sweden

pcc, It would be really great to add a pop-up window whenever you load a WIP = work-in-progress so you can see if you are using the same ROM version as the author, how long the WIP is etc.

Nitrogenesis wrote:

Guys I come from the DidyKnogRacist communite, and you are all wrong, tihs is the run of the mileniun and everyone who says otherwise dosnt know any bater! I found this run vary ease to masturbate too!!!! Don't fuck with me, I know this game so that mean I'm always right!StupedfackincommunityTASVideoz!!!!!!

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

Cooljay wrote:

Mayor Haggar and Cody are such nice people for the community. Metro City's hospitals reached an all time new record of incoming patients due to their great efforts :P

Posted: 7/10/2007 12:10 PM

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Frenom

Former player

Joined: 3/30/2004
Posts: 359
Location: Borlänge - Sweden

Hi Pcc I know that this has nothing to do with the re-record funtion at all, but Is it hard to implement buttons for player 2? In some some games you have to press the second controller to enter the menu(This is really silly I know). Games like like Cyborg Hunter and Zillion. On Zillion you can reach it thru the Pause button. But on Cyberhunter you cant. Thanks for all the work you have been done so far :)

Wheeeehaaa.. Yaaayy..

Posted: 7/10/2007 1:06 PM

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moozooh

Senior Moderator

Joined: 8/4/2005
Posts: 5770
Location: Away

How does an emulator tell if a movie is or isn't a WIP? On a related note, I like FCEU's Play Movie dialogue the best. It would be nice to have an identical one here as well. I've just opened this emulator for the first time and have a lot to say on its usability: 1. There is no "Graphics" (or "Display", or at least something similar) menu. Settings that would go here: red/blue 3D toggle, maintain aspect ratio toggle, overlay switch, input display toggle, status bar toggle, frame counter toggle, fullscreen toggle, any filters or scalers added later. So far they just occupy other menus. It would be nice to be able to choose 1x, 2x, 3x and 4x resolution now, instead of starting with what looks like 4x by default. 2. More than a half of the "Video" menu items is superfluous and thus the menu is cluttered for no reason. For instance, you don't need to stop playback or recording if there is no movie loaded whatsoever — they should appear either in place of the respective items or be greyed out until then. "Reset and start recording" and setting the author's name should both go into the "Start recording" dialogue. There is no reason to have them separately. Also, the menu itself should rather be named "Movie". 3. Menus should be revamped and regrouped. "File" menu should contain a list of the recently used ROMs and "Properties" item to display ROM properties (and movie properties as well, if possible — would be a very useful function. The information to display in this case: movie author, amount of frames and realtime length, rerecords, recording start condition, stored ROM name and checksum). "Free Rom" should be "Close ROM". "State" and "Video"/"Movie" menus should be closer to "File" because their functions are more related to each other. "Pause" and "Screenshot" should go to "File" menu. "Input" should rather be renamed to "Config", and it should contain what it does now (except "Show button states") and have "Customize hotkeys" option in addition to that. The resulting root menu items are: File, State, Movie, Config, (Tools — added later as/if the development continues up to that point), Options, Graphics, Sound. 4. There is no need to have frame advance as a menu item — no-one will use it there, anyway. Speedup/slowdown should change the speed in fixed increments instead, be it percent scale (10%, 25%, 33%, 50%, 66%, 75%, 100%, 150%, 200%, 300%, 400%, etc.), or fps scale (5, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 90, 120, 180, 240, etc.), or any other you can come up with. Fastforward button should default to something like 400% (ootherwise it should be customized). Obviously, the emulator still needs other useful tools, such as RAM search/watch, rewind, basicbot, debugger/tracer, etc., but that is to be discussed later. Otherwise, good job.

Warp wrote:

Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.

Posted: 7/11/2007 7:04 PM

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stanski

Player (74)

Joined: 12/20/2006
Posts: 154

Does this work with vista? It worked on my xp computer fine, but when i load rom, the music plays but the video is still blank.

http://speeddemosarchive.com/

Posted: 7/11/2007 7:22 PM

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AngerFist

Active player (432)

Joined: 4/21/2004
Posts: 3517
Location: Stockholm, Sweden

stanski wrote:

Does this work with vista?

It works.

Nitrogenesis wrote:

Guys I come from the DidyKnogRacist communite, and you are all wrong, tihs is the run of the mileniun and everyone who says otherwise dosnt know any bater! I found this run vary ease to masturbate too!!!! Don't fuck with me, I know this game so that mean I'm always right!StupedfackincommunityTASVideoz!!!!!!

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

Cooljay wrote:

Mayor Haggar and Cody are such nice people for the community. Metro City's hospitals reached an all time new record of incoming patients due to their great efforts :P

Posted: 7/11/2007 7:26 PM

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Bag_of_Magic_Food

He/Him

Active player (277)

Joined: 5/29/2004
Posts: 5712

stanski wrote:

Does this work with vista? It worked on my xp computer fine, but when i load rom, the music plays but the video is still blank.

On my computer with Windows XP, if I use Switch User, then when I log back in, Dega is blank until I load another ROM. Probably not related, but whatever.

put yourself in my rocketpack if that poochie is one outrageous dude

Posted: 7/11/2007 8:17 PM

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SXL

Joined: 2/7/2005
Posts: 571

I might report a bug as well. under xp. - launch latest rerecording dega - open a rom immediatly - the game will start without the menus showing - let's say I want to watch a movie now, I hit escape to show the menu - the bar shows but the lists won't : impossible to select any option, it's ultra super slow. the problem does not appear if I let the game play for at least 20 seconds before trying to reach the menus. please note I let the emu run with all default options, so that's 4x display for you.

I never sleep, 'cause sleep is the cousin of death - NAS

Posted: 7/11/2007 8:46 PM

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pcc

Emulator Coder

Joined: 6/24/2007
Posts: 45

moozooh, most of your usability comments make sense. I'd like any more comments from anyone else regarding usability.

moozooh wrote:

Speedup/slowdown should change the speed in fixed increments instead, be it percent scale (10%, 25%, 33%, 50%, 66%, 75%, 100%, 150%, 200%, 300%, 400%, etc.), or fps scale (5, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 90, 120, 180, 240, etc.), or any other you can come up with

What do you mean by this? Currently the scale is ..., 25%, 50%, 100%, 200%, 400%, ... i.e. powers of 2. Do you mean there should be more choices? I don't particularly see the value of letting the user fine tune this.

Does this work with vista? It worked on my xp computer fine, but when i load rom, the music plays but the video is still blank.

On my computer with Windows XP, if I use Switch User, then when I log back in, Dega is blank until I load another ROM. Probably not related, but whatever.

the bar shows but the lists won't : impossible to select any option, it's ultra super slow.

Can you see if changing the "overlay" option or making the window smaller helps? Failing that, can you check if the problem occurs with the original dega 1.12 so I can see if it's something I've done? I admittedly don't have a great deal of access to windows and do most Windows testing using wine or a slow rdesktop session (I don't have any access to vista at all) so I don't know if I can help with those bugs.

Posted: 7/11/2007 8:57 PM

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Bag_of_Magic_Food

He/Him

Active player (277)

Joined: 5/29/2004
Posts: 5712

Hey, you were right. It was the overlay. YUV and RGB make it not show anything after I switch back unless I choose another overlay option, even the same one.

put yourself in my rocketpack if that poochie is one outrageous dude