Nester DC 5.0 pre-3 ROCKS!!

Optimus · Post by **Optimus** » Mon Jan 07, 2002 11:55 pm

Just wanted to let everyone know who hasn't tried it, because this hasn't been made very clear on this board, or anywhere else I've looked. I just got Nester burned this afternoon, and played it for a few hours (this is not the full-screen version).

I was disappoined with FrNES 0.60, as I felt it didn't live up to what ReGex claimed even in the readme; lots of slowdown here and there... this new version of Nester, on the other hand -- superior sound, superior compatibility, save and save state support, faster loading/exiting of ROMs and navigation... and most important, superior SPEED! Almost everything runs great with auto-frame skip; I'm quite picky about frame rate (I would never THINK of playing a game on an emu with frame skip of 1; 2D games just don't work at 30fps), but this seems to be running 50+ fps, with minimal chopiness and almost no slowdown. And this is a pre-release version! The only thing FrNES has over it is full-screen and bilinear support (the full-screen has now been added to Nester, but at a loss of speed), but full-screen has a downside too (the resolution is stretched so every 1 pixel wide on the original game is represented by 1.3 pixels on-screen or so... that's one way of explaining it, at least), which leads to scaling artifacts).

As good as this is, I'm looking forward to the final Nester 5.0. It just needs a little bit more optimization and it'll be running at a constant 60. And there are still a few games that don't work with it, like Battletoads, Battletoads & Double Dragon, and Castlevania 3.

DeGamer1 · Post by **DeGamer1** » Tue Jan 08, 2002 10:55 am

The Japanese version of Battletoads and Castlevania 3 (Akumajou Densetsu, which translates to Demon Castle Legends) work just fine. I think BT & DD was NOT released in Japan.

Captain Skyhawk · Post by **Captain Skyhawk** » Tue Jan 08, 2002 1:54 pm

Great review. But you say:

(the resolution is stretched so every 1 pixel wide on the original game is represented by 1.3 pixels on-screen or so...

But if you think about it, the real original game was made for the tv-screen. So princibly it must have it's original format back again. My questions are:
1. Are the roms in there original format or "patched" to fit a monitor (don't think so). Or,
2. Is the emulator originally purely written for the PC monitor and only the gameimage is made wider in Nester DC (without size corrections to exactly fit a TV).
3. Isn't it easier to make display the game with its original sizes. The pc emu had made a point where it corrects it to fit a monitor. Can't you just delete that part to go back to the original size?

I've been always curious about this. Who can answer one of these questions?

Optimus · Post by **Optimus** » Tue Jan 08, 2002 4:53 pm

Captain Skyhawk wrote: Great review. But you say:

(the resolution is stretched so every 1 pixel wide on the original game is represented by 1.3 pixels on-screen or so...
But if you think about it, the real original game was made for the tv-screen. So princibly it must have it's original format back again. My questions are:
1. Are the roms in there original format or "patched" to fit a monitor (don't think so). Or,
2. Is the emulator originally purely written for the PC monitor and only the gameimage is made wider in Nester DC (without size corrections to exactly fit a TV).
3. Isn't it easier to make display the game with its original sizes. The pc emu had made a point where it corrects it to fit a monitor. Can't you just delete that part to go back to the original size?

I've been always curious about this. Who can answer one of these questions?

OK, the NES has a resolution of 256 x 240. That doesn't match with the 4:3 proportions of a TV if we want perfectly square pixels; for that vertical resolution it would have to be 320 wide (for 320 x 240). The NES resolution works fine on a TV -- NTSC is a completely analog format with no set resolution, and the NES is able to display full-width just fine on a standard TV. But when we emulate the NES on 640 x 480 resolution, the display turns out closer to 1:1 than 4:3. As far as I know, all DC emulators are running at 640x480, so most emulators have to do some stretching to go full-screen.

To address your questions directly:

1) The ROM is an image of the original cartridge, it is not patched. Any modifications to accomodate the screen size are done in the emulator, not in the ROM.

2) I'm a bit unclear on what you mean here, hopefully it's clarified by what I've written above.

3) Again, I'm not sure I completely understand this question, but hopefully I clarified it.

Captain Skyhawk · Post by **Captain Skyhawk** » Tue Jan 08, 2002 5:47 pm

Thanks for your answers you know a great deal of it. I don't know what I exactly meaned with my second question now I'm reading them again

, but when I wrote them all sort of questions popped out. Yes you answered them all I think.

I don't think all emu's run 640 x 480, I found that out when I captured some. But most of them do. Last question (trying to make this one a litte bit more clear so I can't understand it myself later

); is it possible for an programmer to display the game in its orginal size or can they only strecht the image?

s?lidsnake · Post by **s?lidsnake** » Tue Jan 08, 2002 7:10 pm

You say that FrNes has slowdown, have you tried puting up frameskip or putting on AutoFrameSkip?

Optimus · Post by **Optimus** » Tue Jan 08, 2002 9:13 pm

[quote="Captain Skyhawk"]
Thanks for your answers you know a great deal of it. I don't know what I exactly meaned with my second question now I'm reading them again :?, but when I wrote them all sort of questions popped out. Yes you answered them all I think.

I don't think all emu's run 640 x 480, I found that out when I captured some. But most of them do. Last question (trying to make this one a litte bit more clear so I can't understand it myself later ;) ); is it possible for an programmer to display the game in its orginal size or can they only strecht the image?
[/quote]

I realized that I didn't address that shortly after I wrote the message. My understanding is that, theoretically, the DC could display in the console's native resolution, but that it would run slower... either that, or the homebrew tools only support common resolutions such as 640x480 and 320x240. Also, 640x480 is the only resolution that will work on the VGA box, though this could always be a selectable option...

It would be helpful if someone with some DC programming experience could lend some insight on this.

Optimus · Post by **Optimus** » Tue Jan 08, 2002 9:19 pm

s?lidsnake wrote: You say that FrNes has slowdown, have you tried puting up frameskip or putting on AutoFrameSkip?

I played both with auto frameskip most of the time -- just to give an idea of the difference, I'd say that Mario 3 runs as well on Nester as Mario 2 runs on FrNES (it still skips too many frames for my liking, but it certainly doesn't require a frameskip of 1). There are also big differences in the speed of Little Nemo and TMNT 2 & 3, for some other examples. Then there are games that just plain won't load in FrNES (I thought the ROMs were bad) that work just fine on Nester, such as Fantasy Zone, Twin Bee 3, High Speed (these might be using uncommon memory mappers)...

Even on games where the FrNES readme claims a constant 60fps, I noticed a lot of slowdown (or low framerate with auto frameskip), such as 1943 & Duck Tales. Nester doesn't skip near as many frames when the action gets thick.

s?lidsnake · Post by **s?lidsnake** » Tue Jan 08, 2002 9:30 pm

Also Nester will play some hacked ROMs were Frnes won't and vise-versa, I guess each have there pros and cons.

ReGex · Post by **ReGex** » Tue Jan 08, 2002 11:44 pm

Hi there,
Just to clarify a couple of things:

I have extensively tested those games (1943 + Ducktales among others) and I stand by my claim that they work 60fps, with sound, at least on the version I was using prior to release. Unfortunately, something happened when the .elf executable (which I use when coding) was converted to the .bin executable format (which is required for release) that messed up the byte alignment of the sound routines (something I spent many long hours trying to prevent in the development process). The end result is FrNES 0.60 Final is about 30% slower than it was during development. I had Castlevania running 60FPS with sound... now that I have tested the .bin that was released, I'm a little disappointed because what people have been using isn't quite as good as what I have experienced myself. That being said, everything except Punchout runs 60FPS without sound even on the public release (even hardware killers like Guardian Legend BTW). Anyways, I don't have time for tinkering with FrNES right now, but if someone wants to try playing with build orders and object conversion you could probably coax out some extra performance... the source is out there.

-ReGex

Optimus · Post by **Optimus** » Wed Jan 09, 2002 2:52 am

ReGex, thanks for the reply. I was really disappointed by the speed in FrNES after seeing your claims (in conversations and in the readme), and this explains it. It's a shame that we couldn't experience the emu as it was intended. I'm not sure about everything working 60fps without sound though... Little Nemo still had quite a bit of slowdown without sound, for one. Performance w/o sound is ultimately an irrelevant issue to me, though; I *always* play with sound. Hopefully someone will fix this issue to get FrNES up to speed, and expand the compatibility to compete with Nester. The more competition, the better.