Best Genesis/Mega Drive emulator for DC?

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Christuserloeser
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Post by Christuserloeser »

Glad you got it to work. :) Will replace the SBI over at DCHelp now.

Ranger X actually runs way too fast with HW and FAME :o
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Post by BlackAura »

Christuserloeser wrote:No 6 button support as far as I can tell. No VMU support either I suppose.
There is 6-button support in there, but I don't think it's enabled.
I think BA got FAME working, but IIRC half of the games were broken...
Yep. Out of the games I test the emulator with, switching to FAME broke about 80% of them in some way - they either crash the emulator, don't do anything, lock up after a few seconds, get stuck in a reset loop (usually displaying the Sega logo over and over again), or malfunction in some other way. Some games seem to be playing way too fast even though they're only running at 60FPS, like Ranger X.
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Post by Christuserloeser »

BlackAura wrote:Yep. Out of the games I test the emulator with, switching to FAME broke about 80% of them in some way - they either crash the emulator, don't do anything, lock up after a few seconds, get stuck in a reset loop (usually displaying the Sega logo over and over again), or malfunction in some other way. Some games seem to be playing way too fast even though they're only running at 60FPS, like Ranger X.
So far I can't really verify the 80% you gave when testing my games with gpwt-3c, but there definitly is a good number of them that runs perfectly with C68K and refuses to load with FAME. I'd say it's about 50% maybe ? Odd enough as it seems to work pretty much perfectly in Neo4All... :eyebrow:

I wonder if it's because of something that went wrong when compiling it with GPDC ?


Btw: Regarding C68K I've recently stumbled over this old topic over at DCEmu UK, where Quzar seems to have found some interesting compiler settings for C68K and CZ80. :)
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Post by BlackAura »

It seems like my list of test games just doesn't work. Interestingly, there are a very small number of games that are on both my test list, and Fox's test list. They all work, even if they have some behaviour glitches. About 80% of the games on Fox's list work, and about 80% of the games on my list don't.
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Post by johnson »

It is odd that different games work properly under different engines and stuff...

Revenge of Shinobi works flawless under FAME, but has glitches with C68
Shadow Dancer works near perfect on C68, but doesn't even boot up on FAME.

I do have to give ya kudos on the sound tho, it runs nice :D
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Post by DcSteve »

do many games like the sonic series and shinobi series have the glitching player sprite fixed. This was an issue in pvr3
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Post by johnson »

Sonic works perfect in game from what I have seen. It doesn't glitch, in fact in no game have I seen that odd glitchiness, but this emu has glitches of its own though. For example, some of the graphics in the Streets of Rage series are off color or "boxed". Some games like Strider don't even display the characters. Raiden and Fire Shark have missing graphics. The ship isn't even on screen in Fire Shark!
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Post by curt_grymala »

Christuserloeser wrote:Glad you got it to work. :) Will replace the SBI over at DCHelp now.
Good news.

Sorry I didn't pop in to offer my advice, but you got it all figured out.

Yes, regarding hyphens (-) within filenames in SBI's, they do cause big problems. Unfortunately, when the files are actually burned, the hyphens are converted to underscores, so the link within the dxl file starts pointing to a file that doesn't exist anymore (because it's now got an underscore where the hyphen used to be).
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Post by johnson »

Good news is a lot of big titles work nicely:

Contra
Castlevania
Sonic series
Gunstar Heroes

The C68K seems to have a bit of higher compatibility for sure. I'd say 80 to 90 percent of the games work with it compared to about 60 or so for FAME (out of what I tested). The games that work good make this emu worth it though.
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Post by Christuserloeser »

DcSteve wrote:do many games like the sonic series and shinobi series have the glitching player sprite fixed. This was an issue in pvr3
I would say that it's fixed for most games. :D

Remaining glitches in player sprites are in Streets of Rage II and (only when walking/running) in Golden Axe III.

In Mazin Saga I noticed an odd color bug for the player.
BlackAura wrote:It seems like my list of test games just doesn't work. Interestingly, there are a very small number of games that are on both my test list, and Fox's test list. They all work, even if they have some behaviour glitches. About 80% of the games on Fox's list work, and about 80% of the games on my list don't.
We really need to have an compatibility chart with test reports based on verified good dumps...

I've just set up a page over at Dreamcast-Scene.com:
http://www.dreamcast-scene.com/index.ph ... patibility

Best thing is that everyone can contribute by editing the page and list their reports:
http://www.dreamcast-scene.com/index.ph ... ction=edit

curt_grymala wrote:Yes, regarding hyphens (-) within filenames in SBI's, they do cause big problems. Unfortunately, when the files are actually burned, the hyphens are converted to underscores, so the link within the dxl file starts pointing to a file that doesn't exist anymore (because it's now got an underscore where the hyphen used to be).
Ah, now I understand what's causing the problem. This also means that burning your /Inducer/ folder with BootDreams is another way to 'fix' this problem (next to 'SBI2Boot') as BootDreams has Joilet support and thus hyphens will remain hyphens. :)
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Post by Juan »

Now for a quick question that maybe nobody knows :lol:
Would zipped roms work if they have a .gen extension inside? (GoodGen 3.00 standard)
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Post by Christuserloeser »

I dunno, but I would guess it's just a renamed .bin file. Just give it a try and let us know what's up ;)
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Post by Juan »

OK, I just got cdrs so I might just waste one for the community :lol:
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Post by Juan »

It does work. And very nicely.

Keeping in minds what most of you said about compatibility, I ran the first couple of games using C68. To my surprise, both froze and hung the system. So I tried again with FAME, and both Sonic 1 and Gunstar Heroes ran great (maybe GH had the music a little accelerated, but that's better than having to reset the DC :P)
SW rendering doesn't seem to help much, tried it on a couple of glitchy games and it fixed like 2/10 games, and in some cases fixed minor glitches to create bigger ones.

So, from what I tested so far, I'd say try first FAME with HW rendering. Chances are it'll work better, but if it doesn't work, you'll still be able to go back to the rom list (L+R+Start)
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Post by jessman »

Sorry to ask, but can someone invent a program that will add your roms for you? It's really a long and boring process to type games in, one at a time.
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Post by Juan »

I used the romlist maker for DreamSNES, then renamed the files from smc back to zip.

http://krypt.dyndns.org:81/dcfactory/utils.phtml
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Post by jessman »

Okay, after testing this emulator, I must say that it's DEFINATELY the best out there. It's pretty bland, and unstable in areas, but many games run flawlessly. I mean, Sonic 2! Many awsome titles like Castlevania, Crusader of Centy, Bomberman, Streets of Rage 2, Sparkster, and an assload of others run GREAT! Sure, a couple games have occassional sound skips, but if you could just optimize the frame-skipping a little, this would be the best emulator since NesterDC! Please, guys. Continue working on it. It's already better than the PSP emulators! C'mon! You're so close!
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Post by BlackAura »

Sure, a couple games have occassional sound skips, but if you could just optimize the frame-skipping a little, this would be the best emulator since NesterDC!
Well, the frameskipping is as good as it's ever going to get, and the occasional sound skips happen because the emulator isn't quite keeping up. Basically, it needs to be made another 10% faster.
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Post by Christuserloeser »

Juan wrote:So, from what I tested so far, I'd say try first FAME with HW rendering. Chances are it'll work better, but if it doesn't work, you'll still be able to go back to the rom list (L+R+Start)
Added to the GPDC article ;)

So, what did you do with your '.gen' files ? Did you rename them or just ZIP them ?
jessman wrote:Sure, a couple games have occassional sound skips
Hm, I didn't notice any... Are you sure you didn't choose SW instead of HW ?

I mean, you mentioned frameskip and that's definitly not needed as it already seems to run full speed ! The only thing that frameskip could be useful for, would be for the SW (as that's much slower than the HW).
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Post by BlackAura »

Christuserloeser wrote:I mean, you mentioned frameskip and that's definitly not needed as it already seems to run full speed ! The only thing that frameskip could be useful for, would be for the SW (as that's much slower than the HW).
It quite definitely does use frameskipping, but it's pretty difficult to notice unless you're looking for it. For most games, it just skips the occasional frame here and there, and that's mostly to keep the video synchronised with the sound.
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