SMEG, how is it, is it full speed with sound???

[drybed]

SMEG, the sega master system and game gear emulator for dreamcast, all i want to know is if this emulator is full speed with sound?

[mankrip]

Yes, it runs full speed with sound, but has a few bugs and doesn't support saves, so I recommend you to get SMS Plus. SMS Plus has great compatibility, savestates, many options and full speed with sound.

[drybed]

hmmmm, thanx man, so SMS Plus is better than SMEG, thanx man
By the way, what is the latest version of SMS Plus, i dont think dcemulation has the latest version of it
I think 0.2B is the latest, it says at http://www.pascalorama.com/, and dcemulation only has versoin .1

[LyingWake]

You're right.

[impact135]

is there a reason the emus on this site arnt updated very often? this emu came out months ago and its still not on the site.. where can i get the emu?

i know this site is a lot of work and everything and im just greatful that its still here.. but hows about putting some current emus on the site?

[Christuserloeser]

The site update is in the works if I am correct. Darc could tell you more I guess...!? http://www.DCEmu.co.uk is pretty up-to-date.

SMSplusDC v02b is fantastic, but SMEG still is a pretty good emulator.

Click on the link below to download a nice, if not the ultimate SMS/SEGA 8bit fan disc It does contain SMEG & SMSplusDC but also features Dream-O-Rama for SG1000 emulation:

http://dcevolution.net/goto.php?id=54

[Sweater Fish]

Actually, I still think SMEG is a better emulator. It's something very ephemeral and maybe only my imagination, but SMEG seems to do a better job of capturing exactly the way that the SMS's graphics were drawn and the sprites were moved, etc. It's in these very fine details that no emulator will ever be perfect, but SMEG seems to get closer than SMS Plus in my opinion. There's no save support, of course, but only a couple SMS games had battery save anyway. Also, I think the newest version of SMS Plus also has support for relative analog, which would be required in Megumi Rescue and a few other nice games. Neither emu supports FM sound, so if a new versionn of SMS Plus with FM came out, I'd switch to it, but for the time, I'm still putting SMEG on my compilation discs.


...word is bondage...

[alb3530]

The sound in SMEG has a echo-effect, like a "surround",it differs from the real console,but it's cool.The voices are better played too,and their volume is not so loud,comparated to sms+.The compatibility is almost the same than sms+ 1.2.
But SMEG has some slowdowns,like in the gauntlets of Phantasy Star,which doesn't happen in sms+.But the very best thing in SMEG,that forces me to repeat what was already told here, "you gotta have both smeg and sms+",is the Reset sms,that is identical to the real one.You can use it to do some tricks as well,like infinite lives in Black Belt,and so on.Unfortunately,even the latest sms+ lacks it.

[Heliophobe]

Actually, I still think SMEG is a better emulator. It's something very ephemeral and maybe only my imagination, but SMEG seems to do a better job of capturing exactly the way that the SMS's graphics were drawn and the sprites were moved, etc. It's in these very fine details that no emulator will ever be perfect, but SMEG seems to get closer than SMS Plus in my opinion. There's no save support, of course, but only a couple SMS games had battery save anyway. Also, I think the newest version of SMS Plus also has support for relative analog, which would be required in Megumi Rescue and a few other nice games. Neither emu supports FM sound, so if a new versionn of SMS Plus with FM came out, I'd switch to it, but for the time, I'm still putting SMEG on my compilation discs.


...word is bondage...

Hey, Sweater Fish, how's things? Did you leave Santa Cruz yet?

SMSPlus does absolute and relative paddle control now. I have it autodetect which setting to use depending on which game is loaded, but I sort of miss Megumi Rescue in absolute mode, I got used to playing that way.

I remember you mentioned that you thought Smeg had a unique quality to the way sprites moved, and I could never account for that. It ought to be identical to the other emulators. I've heard other people mention that Smeg just feels different in ways they can't quite put into words. I don't know, maybe it's just magic.



alb: not sure what you mean about the "echo" effect. Again, the audio should be about the same as SMSPlus with a higher sampling rate and a somewhat cleaner sample playback. I'll have to do a side-by-side testing some day. Are there any games in particular that are more affected by that?

I did not realize SMSPlus doesn't have real reset button (i.e. 'soft' reset) support, I'll look into that sometime. Another reason it's good to have soft reset is many games keep their high scores even if you hit the reset button, but if you do a hard-reset, they'll disappear.

[Sweater Fish]

Hey, Sweater Fish, how's things? Did you leave Santa Cruz yet?

Yeah, I'm gone. I'm actually what you'd call a hobo these days.

As for this certain-something in SMEG, I dunno it really could be my imagination. However I'm a person who just can always tell when something is emulated (at least when I've played the orignal system as much as I've played the SMS). It's funny because I'm usually not an audio- or video-phile, MP3s sound fine to my ears and VCDs look good, but emulation I'm always aware of. I just don't think perfect emulation is possible. That doesn't stop me from using emulators and enjoying them, but I'm aware of them, you know.


...word is bondage...

[alb3530]

About the voices,you may want to play Great Basket in both emus,and you'll see the voices are too loud in sms+,while in SMEG they're in a good volume.Basically,all the voices are louder in sms+.
Let me see how can i explain the echo-thing....
...kinda...the sound in sms+ is "dry",while in SMEG it's "wet"...
...there's no way to explain it,you know.The best is testing and hearing by yourself.The "surround-effect" happens with all games,but i think a good game for you to realize the difference is Enduro Racer.Just hear the title song in both emus....

Reset:Sms+ only has a Reset Emulation option,while SMEG has reset sms "button",what means you can hold the button if you want,and the effect is the same than Master System reset.That's it...

But how is the sms scene on DC,heliophobe?Will some emu have a update?

[Heliophobe]

...kinda...the sound in sms+ is "dry",while in SMEG it's "wet"...
...there's no way to explain it,you know.The best is testing and hearing by yourself.The "surround-effect" happens with all games,but i think a good game for you to realize the difference is Enduro Racer.Just hear the title song in both emus....

Well , I'll check that out. I wonder if it has to do with the sampling rate or if there's something else at play.

Reset:Sms+ only has a Reset Emulation option,while SMEG has reset sms "button",what means you can hold the button if you want,and the effect is the same than Master System reset.That's it...

But how is the sms scene on DC,heliophobe?Will some emu have a update?

I think Pascal wasn't actively working on SMSPlus anymore and neither am I, but there should be occasional bugfixes and maybe small feature additions.

Smeg is officially retired, but I'm glad that some people still enjoy it.

[alb3530]

Well,i don't understand such technical questions,but i think it doesn't have anything to do with sampling rate,once the sound quality is very good in both emus...just think...
Besides the volume,it seems like SMEG plays the voices better than sms+.If you wanna hear it by yourself,choose some sonic for game gear that features Sega screen.Sonic the hedgehog,for example.In sms+,the voice is a little bit noisy,as in SMEG it's nice.Maybe SMEG has a higher sample rate,i don't know.

And yes,it'd be very cool if some of these awesome emulators had a update...

[Heliophobe]

I'm just wondering out loud, really. The sampling rate is the number of times a second that the audio stream is updated. Audio CD's update 44100 time per second, which is also Smeg's sampling rating. 22050 is considered adequate for speech recordings. SMSPlus for DC is in between - 31440. That number comes from Pascal's simple but clever method for supporting voice samples in his port, which was not supported in SMSPlus, at least not the version he used for porting - it restricts you to using sampling rates which are multiples of 15720 (I can explain why if anyone's curious) and sample playback is always at 15720. Smeg's audio engine is much more convoluted, but supports any sampling rate and plays samples more cleanly. To tell you the truth I probably would have done in Smeg what Pascal did in SMSPlus if I had thought of it, my sound engine took forever to write (and rewrite, and rewrite, and...)

Lower sampling rates cause an overall muffling of the sound, distortion in higher frequencies, and a muddy or metallic sound overall. 31440 is still a high sampling rate, but you might still be able to notice the difference between 44100 and 31440.

[BlackAura]

I can explain why if anyone's curious

One sample per scanline, 262 scanlines per frame, 60 frames a second. 262 * 60 = 15720.

That's actually a neat idea. Certainly saves on doing any funky calculations. Might be worth using that for the DAC emulation in Genesis Plus - it'd certainly save some effort that would be better used elsewhere.

[Christuserloeser]

I think Pascal wasn't actively working on SMSPlus anymore and neither am I, but there should be occasional bugfixes and maybe small feature additions.

I'm very very happy to hear that

It's a bit late here, so I'm gonna keep this post short - I had some thoughts and ideas for a new version of SMSplusDC:

- Add CZ80 by Stef D or SH4 Z80 by Fox68K (based on Sayten's code?)
- Add FM Sound emulation (I never had the chance to hear your FM preview in action )
- Add Korean mapper for e.g. 'Sangokushi 3'
- Fix compatibility for games like 'Dodgeball (J)'
- Fix SG1000 compatibility mode
'Saly' & 'Fri For Fransk' by Marc Klemp
'Music Station' by Ricardo Bittencourt & Raul Tabajara
'Loletta No Shouzu (J)', etc.
- Basic MP3/OGG sound player while browsing the menu (like DreamSNES) [and/or]
- VGMplayer in menu - front end with CD player style controls [maybe even better: use Maxim's VGM player: see the DreamEmulationProject: SMS Edition, there are some notes in the Extra/Sources folder on disc]
- Screenshot slideshow ('intelligent pre-caching' / put all snaps in a ZIP archive to prevent CD streaming)
- Optional real DC Light Gun support
- themable alternate menu system (like NesterDC v6.0?)

Would it be possible to add 44100hz sampling rate? The 31440hz mode might be the reason for the wrong tone during Micro Machines' title and menu music...

Incompatibility list [PD-ROMs]:
GG Turrican 2005 by Martin Konrad
SMS Cast by Bock (works with SMEG and on real hardware)

Incompatibility list [Commercial ROMs]:
-SMS-
Cosmic Spacehead - Now starts but ingame grfx are messed up
X Men: Mojo World - Colors still aren?t displayed correctly
Zool - Still crashes at the beginning of stage 1 (no sprite displayed either, same as SMSplusDCv01)
-GG-
Chicago Syndicate - Game still crashes at SEGA screen
Mortal Kombat 2 ? Still crashes after license screen
Pop Breaker (J) ? Not playable as you won?t get past the title screen (controls?), it?s the same problem with all emulators that I have tested this game with...
Stargate ? Still crashes at the Acclaim logo
World Series Baseball '95 ? Still doesn?t start

[Heliophobe]

I can explain why if anyone's curious

One sample per scanline, 262 scanlines per frame, 60 frames a second. 262 * 60 = 15720.

That's actually a neat idea. Certainly saves on doing any funky calculations. Might be worth using that for the DAC emulation in Genesis Plus - it'd certainly save some effort that would be better used elsewhere.

Yeah. The only problem with that (Aside from the limitation on sampling rate) is that it means you can't do sample playback faster than 15720 hz because the CPU updates the status of the sound chips directly on the SMS (and on the Genesis DAC if I recall correctly). That's actually a problem with pulse-width-modulation samples (the 'scratchier' type in most SMS games where the volume oscillates between the highest and lowest setting) as the sampling rate is much high that pulse code modulation samples, by my estimates it updates close to 50,000 times per second, so 15720 doesn't provide enough granularity. Probably not a problem with the Genesis DAC.

I guess you could do half a scanline's worth of cycles, do a sample update, and then another half scanline's worth of cycles.

[BlackAura]

Probably not a problem with the Genesis DAC.

No, not a problem. The DAC does PCM only.

That said, if you were feeling especially insane, you do have a PSG in there too. The only game I know of that used the PSG to play samples is Afterburner 2 (is uses both the DAC and the PSG playing different samples at the same time). I suspect that Afterburner 2 is not doing PWM, because that wouldn't really leave any Z80 CPU time for anything else, such as the DAC.

Anyway, Genesis Plus already generates samples on a per-scanline basis, and there just isn't enough CPU time to go much higher than 12KHz (the current sampling rate). It can't really make it sound any worse.

[alb3530]

I've comparated the emus' sound with the original system's,and the real Master System has a "dry" sound,just like sms+.
However, musics and sound effects are very good in both emulators,but the difference between the voices is noticeable.SMEG plays'em better.

But the best add i think a sms emu could have is a support to find roms in the VMU too.So i could hex edit my roms using vmu tool's hex editor.It's improbable to happen,once just a few players will care with it.So i'd be happy with a better compatibility only.
Some differences I've noted between SMEG and sms+ are:
Street Fighter can be played against the cpu in sms+ only.
Some games has their music played faster,like sonic 2 and sonic chaos.GG versions doesn't have this problem in sms+.

By the way,why does sonic 2 level select work only in the real console?

[Christuserloeser]

Some differences I've noted between SMEG and sms+ are:
Street Fighter can be played against the cpu in sms+ only.
Some games has their music played faster,like sonic 2 and sonic chaos.GG versions doesn't have this problem in sms+.

I think the 50/60Hz thing causes the difference between the speed of the music played in SMSplus and SMEG - try with both emus set to 60Hz and see what you acchieve.