What do YOU want to see in the next version of DreamSNES?

win_xp_sucks · Post by **win_xp_sucks** » Mon May 26, 2003 8:24 pm

To speed things up..........
FRAME SKIP capabilities, so the games that run slow can go faster and the games that run at near full speed dont need to have frames skipped.

Anyone else agree?

BlackAura · Post by **BlackAura** » Mon May 26, 2003 10:07 pm

It already does frameskipping - it's just automatic.

impetus · Post by **impetus** » Tue May 27, 2003 1:01 pm

to the couple of people who mentioned the roms loading - use BurnerO's Provlist tool.
http://www.dcemulation.org/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=30576

Also, add a file called no_roms.here into every folder except your roms folder (for obvious reasons, I would hope). You can make one using Notepad

curt_grymala · Post by **curt_grymala** » Fri May 30, 2003 12:18 pm

I would like to see the developers change the name of the Roms directory. Possibly to something like DSNESRoM, so that those of us using DemoMenu are able to use Dreamsnes and other emulators that use "Roms" as their directory on the same disk.

BlackAura · Post by **BlackAura** » Sat May 31, 2003 3:39 am

Hex editor? Just search the BIN for "ROMS", and change it to something else.

Morpheus · Post by **Morpheus** » Sun Jun 01, 2003 11:30 am

I would like gamesharl ability to be added. Like in snes9x you can enter cheats and do cool stuff

Skater_dusto · Post by **Skater_dusto** » Mon Jun 02, 2003 12:18 am

I think that the Dreamsnes team has opted not to impliment gameshark/par support. I think that their reason was because it takes fun out of the games, and I believe that too. If there was gameshark support in dreamsnes then I'd probably use it, then not want to play the games anymore because their too easy. And it's really tempting... guess that they call the shots as well.

Culden · Post by **Culden** » Mon Jun 02, 2003 11:54 am

The only time i would cheat a game is when i beat it normally several time and got everything. When the fun leaves the game(if it does) i use cheats. For some reason, when i beat a game with cheats, i get the urge to play through it normally. So for me, i guess cheating brings the fun back in games that lost their fun factor. Anyways, i believe dsnes is perfect with all the implemented options, i think just about all thats left is to work with the sound and speed. Great Job Dsnes Team!! I appreciate the fact that i can play the classic snes games on the best console system in existence.

Celauve · Post by **Celauve** » Mon Jun 02, 2003 7:05 pm

I would love to see them make more use of the Dreamcast's graphical processors. I know it can handle speeds faster than this. It's main CPU is rather slow compared to PCs, but it's seperate graphics processors are still way up there. If they could find a way to use them in emulating the game, I think we could maybe even see full speed here. I've been using this emulator for well around 2 years now, and I think they should focus on speed issues primarily instead of the cosmetics for the time being.

BlackAura · Post by **BlackAura** » Mon Jun 02, 2003 9:39 pm

but it's seperate graphics processors are still way up there

And are impossible to use for SNES emulation, since they can not reproduce the SNES graphics closely enough from the source data, and converting it into a format that the DC's hardware could understand would be very time consuming, and would look quite buggy compared to software-based emulation.

Anyway, the main slowdown is actually the sound system, which is stupidly complex in a SNES.

FlashPV · Post by **FlashPV** » Tue Jun 03, 2003 9:33 am

The ARM cannot handle the sound system but I'm sure it could have been used for the Snes main CPU emulation which is very slow. Maybe it's a bit late for this now they've got this one in SH4 asm...

racketboy · Post by **racketboy** » Tue Jun 03, 2003 6:10 pm

this was mentioned in the older thread:

mogwai wrote:How about a rom information page? like the beufe frontend, or what neopockett does. You enter information about the game when your burning the cd put in some jpegs, maybe a guide, etc. Make it more like an archive. Is this feasable? It could be done with some html code, it would add a lot to the emulator and it wouldnt slow the actual emulation down any. Any takers?

I still think it's a sweet idea

BlackAura · Post by **BlackAura** » Tue Jun 03, 2003 6:48 pm

FlashPV wrote:The ARM cannot handle the sound system but I'm sure it could have been used for the Snes main CPU emulation which is very slow. Maybe it's a bit late for this now they've got this one in SH4 asm...

Err... No. The CPU emulator needs to be able to directly use the video emulation and sound emulation code. There is no way for the ARM to interact with anything other than the DC's sound system. The SH4 could have been used to "talk" to the sound emulator running on the ARM, but the ARM could not be used to control anything running on the SH-4. Besides which, the ARM doesn't have enough RAM to hold the entire ROM, and the RAM it's connected to is pitifully slow.

mankrip · Post by **mankrip** » Tue Jun 03, 2003 11:23 pm

The speedometer is a joke. People here have asked for a FPS meter before, but they got a "speedometer" instead.

I only saw one reasonable request here: to turn DSNES in an open-source project. More people would be working on it, there would be more releases, and maybe the speed could be improved sooner.

I don't know why the DSNES team didn't release the source yet, but this indicates that they won't release it, or will release it when the DC emu scene is dead.

There will never be any SNES emulator running at full speed, because the DC can't handle it. The DC's CPU works at 200 MHz. I had a 233 MHz PC, and the DOS version of ZSNES worked at a good speed when I set the resolution to 320x240x16bits, but it wasn't full speed. If even ZSNES that's written in assembly can't work at full speed in a 233 CPU, there will never be a full speed SNES emulator for the DC.

ZSNES is the fastest SNES emulator ever, but it has a big problem. It's more than 90% written in assembly. It makes it extremely hard to work on the source. If you look at the ZSNES forums you'll see that people makes many simple requests that aren't implemented because the assembly code makes it too much difficult.

Porting ZSNES to the DC would involve translating the code from x86 ASM to SH4 ASM. Putting it simple, people would have to rewrite the whole source, and this would be an insane task, if even possible.

The DC could run an SH4 assembly coded SNES emulator at a very good speed, with all games being playable with sound and transparencies, but making such an emulator is a nearly impossible task.

But I don't care about it because now I have a PC fast enough to run ZSNES at full speed (60 FPS) with hardware-stretched full screen Super 2xSaI, 48KHz stereo sound with Cubic Spline filter and all the other goodies.

Now I only need to mod a pair of SNES controllers to use them to play ZSNES, but I gave my SNES to my sister and she won't be happy if I cut the cables of the SNES controllers to put a LPT connector in. I'll have to buy another pair of SNES controllers to do it.

FlashPV · Post by **FlashPV** » Wed Jun 04, 2003 3:20 am

For now we can just hope they'll release a new version for the next hollyday

bender · Post by **bender** » Wed Jun 04, 2003 7:21 am

would be very nice and easy if they release something like a 0.9.8.1 version with some options that lets you to choose the best speed rate(like the single arcade optimizations).

People could test it for all the roms and send them the results(or post a thread here) so they can make a 0.9.8.2 version that it selects automatically the options depending of the rom.

This will speed up things without coding anything hard.

Next idea, to use the g2 bus dma once it becomes possible(now it isn't but it will)

frogcoin · Post by **frogcoin** » Wed Jun 04, 2003 11:15 am

bender this is the best idea i have ever heard, specially the features in 0.9.8.2

maybe the options of the roms can be saved in the same save of the rom.
anyway if the save cant be the same i dont care spent a few more blocks.

i know this should be in this topic, but what is that memory compression?? how much i can compress lets say.. 200 blocks? how do i do it? i have heard that there are problems too with them, isnt very recommended the memory compresion?
thx and sorry for the big pile of... questions

racketboy · Post by **racketboy** » Wed Jun 04, 2003 11:53 am

frogcoin wrote:bender this is the best idea i have ever heard, specially the features in 0.9.8.2

maybe the options of the roms can be saved in the same save of the rom.
anyway if the save cant be the same i dont care spent a few more blocks.

I thought of this earlier, but forgot to mention it.

It's a good idea IMO -- that way you don't have to change the settings for a particular game each time you play it

djray · Post by **djray** » Wed Jun 04, 2003 1:32 pm

Fragger wrote: There will never be any SNES emulator running at full speed, because the DC can't handle it. The DC's CPU works at 200 MHz. I had a 233 MHz PC, and the DOS version of ZSNES worked at a good speed when I set the resolution to 320x240x16bits, but it wasn't full speed. If even ZSNES that's written in assembly can't work at full speed in a 233 CPU, there will never be a full speed SNES emulator for the DC.

So true! One of my old coms has a 200 MMX CPU and ZSNES (DOS version) could run sufficiently, but not that great.

Fragger's right.

FlashPV · Post by **FlashPV** » Wed Jun 04, 2003 2:46 pm

The SH4 is a 200Mhz 64 bits CPU, maybe it's more powerful than a 233Mhz 32 bits
CPU... Could someone confirm this or not?

What do YOU want to see in the next version of DreamSNES?

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