Super Famicast pre-pre-pre-alpha release

Q-Wi-Q · Post by **Q-Wi-Q** » Wed Jan 21, 2004 8:52 am

I can make a grungy interface if you tell me what you need

Strapping Scherzo · Post by **Strapping Scherzo** » Wed Jan 21, 2004 11:26 am

Check out this topic for details on what I need:
http://www.dcemulation.org/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=44140

karsten · Post by **karsten** » Wed Jan 21, 2004 11:39 am

What about sound emulation? any progress?

Strapping Scherzo · Post by **Strapping Scherzo** » Wed Jan 21, 2004 12:10 pm

karsten wrote:What about sound emulation? any progress?

Yes, some progress has been made on sound but it's still crusty right now. Sound programming is such a delicate deal. This is basically all that's holding me back from a first release. Don't fret. Be patient. I might sound full of myself when I say this but I'm quite happy with how this first release is going to turn out.

Alexvrb · Post by **Alexvrb** » Wed Jan 21, 2004 4:13 pm

You don't sound full of yourself, you sound confident. Which is good.

mastakilla · Post by **mastakilla** » Wed Jan 21, 2004 5:59 pm

chuck the sound if its the only thing holding you back from a first release

ren6175 · Post by **ren6175** » Wed Jan 21, 2004 6:43 pm

I think he has said elsewhere that he would like to make the basics all his own, so this would include sound I assume. Then he will open source the code for updates, improvements, etc.

I personally would choose to have sound implemented, but I can see why someone would want to get there hands on the first release to play around with it themselves.

erreth · Post by **erreth** » Wed Jan 21, 2004 7:06 pm

No way go for sound...I remember when Dream Engine was released out of nowhere running at a decent speed but it had no sound. Never saw another update, if only it had sound

Not saying this project is only gonna see one release, just the opposite.
I love the way this is like a community project with people helping out where they can and so much communicatuin from scherzo.

nakamichi · Post by **nakamichi** » Wed Jan 21, 2004 8:29 pm

Get sound working.
A game without sound loses half of it's fun.

Strapping Scherzo · Post by **Strapping Scherzo** » Wed Jan 21, 2004 8:44 pm

nakamichi wrote:Get sound working.
A game without sound loses half of it's fun.

That was my thought behind holding off the release until sound is working.

I've put so much into this upcoming release that there won't be much to do after it except optimization. Yeah, there will be feature here and there to add and fix, like cheats, but all releases following the first will be mainly because I will have hit a new speed milestone. I'm guessing that I'll just release the source on the first release. Why the heck not. If spin off projects are born then oh well. But what I would like best is that if people optimize or improve something that they forward me their changes to be merged into the main source, giving them the deserved credit. We'll see what happens.

Back to coding now.

mastakilla · Post by **mastakilla** » Wed Jan 21, 2004 8:45 pm

ok. FINE i retract my statement, dont chuck the sound for the first release (even though a sluggish game looses 90% of its fun nakamichi

)

nakamichi · Post by **nakamichi** » Wed Jan 21, 2004 8:51 pm

yes,but I'd rather set up with low-quality 8kHz mono sound that doesn't slow things much,than no sound at all.

What fun is to play a fighting game with no sound effects.

Sound effects = 40% of the fun in fighting games,music = only 10%,
BUT for RPGs,music - 50% of the game

mastakilla · Post by **mastakilla** » Wed Jan 21, 2004 9:01 pm

you got a point but since this next release will be the first true release i just want to see what it can do with speed so far (and yes i know this is not the holy full speed snes emulator --yet--)

nakamichi · Post by **nakamichi** » Wed Jan 21, 2004 9:14 pm

I want sound,but I also want an option to completely disable the sound emulation.
That way everyone will be happy - those who want pure speed AND those who want sound.

Lavalord · Post by **Lavalord** » Wed Jan 21, 2004 9:29 pm

Scherzo... I love your attitude. You're dedicated to the scene and your a father of a young girl... and you still manage to make an awesome Emulator...Hell, I have a 17 month old brother at the house and and he's a handful. Props to you

Strapping Scherzo · Post by **Strapping Scherzo** » Thu Jan 22, 2004 12:11 am

Thanks a lot Lavalord.

NEWS: Sound is now working! It slows the emulation down pretty good though no matter what frequency I set the sample rate to. The sample rate isn't the issue, it's the extra processing required to emulate the SNES APU. I have put in a new menu item on the options menu to toggle sound. Just like the windows version of snes9x, enabling or disabling the sound processing requires that the emulation be reset. No, you don't have to reset your DC. Just any rom that is currently loaded will have to be reset.

You might be wondering why this is necessary. Well, the SNES APU is a seperate chip that handles the wonderful sound that the SNES produces. This CPU has it's own RAM and state. You just can't start emulating it in the middle of the game and expect things to work right.

Since DreamSNES doesn't force you to reset your rom when you toggle sound, I wonder if it is always emulating the APU even when sound is "disabled". It's the only possible way to explain the way it works. Of course you gain a little by turning of the DC sound processing, but not nearly as much as disabling the sound chip emulation altogether.

The speed difference is large between sound and no sound. Most games are emulated fullspeed with sound disabled, just many frames are dropped. However, enabling sound takes snes9x over the threshold of how many frames it will drop and in turn slows down the emulation. So I will have sound disabled by default.

Oh well, sound is working. AND I did it using the snd_stream API in KOS which might interest BlackAura and other coders. It turned out that I was making things much more complicated that they needed to be.

Now I just have to clean up a few more things and you will all see a release soon.

Must sleep....

Q-Wi-Q · Post by **Q-Wi-Q** » Thu Jan 22, 2004 1:23 am

go go go go !

you seem to be doing great

BlackAura · Post by **BlackAura** » Thu Jan 22, 2004 2:53 am

Interesting... Nice job, scherzo!

kyslug · Post by **kyslug** » Thu Jan 22, 2004 4:07 am

scherzo wrote:Most games are emulated fullspeed with sound disabled

Wow! Seems as if you've made some great progress.

Hilltopper · Post by **Hilltopper** » Thu Jan 22, 2004 2:20 pm

He said fullspeed, but with frameskip. Still, it sounds awesome.