Ideas for Scherzo's NesterDC SE.

DcSteve · Post by **DcSteve** » Tue Aug 23, 2005 9:59 am

Isnt Nesterdc 7.1 not fullspeed/framerate even though it is definetly not noticeable. Wouldnt you want to keep NesterDCSE at genuine full framerate and full sound without sacrificing that for features since genuine fullspeed is important as it is. Is the amount of extra processing time needed for stereo panning already available, assuming that nesterdcse doesnt take up all the system resources currently?

Strapping Scherzo · Post by **Strapping Scherzo** » Tue Aug 23, 2005 10:09 am

Practically all games that I've tested with are fullspeed; all except Castlevania 3. The current speed is fine. I have the auto-skip enabled and it allows CV3 to play "fullspeed". And the auto-skip doesn't affect the other games at all. They are smooth. I will make more attempts at optimization to try to make all this a non-issue. But, really, the speed is very good and everyone should be happy with it.

Have any of one played an NSF through the NotSo Fatso plugin for WinAmp? The stereo separation feature blew my friggin mind. I'd be very happy to do it for NesterDC SE. If it slows down gameplay, then I'll make it an NSF-Player-only feature.

DcSteve · Post by **DcSteve** » Tue Aug 23, 2005 11:07 am

Cless wants me to post a statement for him from AIM:

"All of this was a stupid move to release this publically for everyone to have. It was bad taste of judgement. Of all people I should of respected Scherzo the most as he's given me the most and done the most for me. I've always considered him my friend and this was a pretty low thing for me to have done. My deepest regrets to Scherzo"

I dont talk to cless much, but he bugs me on aim all the time.

Post by **Quzar** » Tue Aug 23, 2005 11:07 am

Strapping Scherzo wrote:A little status update:

Well I got my DC hooked back up for the first time since the move. I double checked that everything is working fine, and it is.

I got curious about what would be involved in doing the stereo separation on the NES sound channels. It actually wouldn't be too hard except for one thing. NesterDC uses what appears to be a single channel (mono-only) AICA sound driver. In order to make the stereo separation possible I'll have to swap out this driver for another. No biggie, really.

The only thing that concerns me is that twice as much data would have to be processed and pumped to the sound hardware. I don't know how big of a performance hit that will be, but it definitely won't be free. It might be negligible.

Also, it adds to the processing time if the panning of each NES channel is to be user configurable. The simplest, fastest way for the stereo separation to work would be to have one of the square channels completely on the left and the other completely on the right. To pan them to something like 25% or 75% would require extra processing time.

I want NesterDC SE to be at least as fast as NesterDC 7.1. Regardless of what nifty little features I put into this project, I don't want to do them if they sacrifice speed.

The processing by sound hardware is nothing, the time killer is the sending of two chuncks to the sound hardware. BUT if you take a look at that spu_dma code i've sent you, you can use the same thing and make it go almost as fast as transferring a single data set.

DcSteve · Post by **DcSteve** » Tue Aug 23, 2005 11:17 am

Does nesterdcse have the same bi-linear filter that 7.1 has or does it have more than that like sai 2X or other types of filters.

linus2k3 · Post by **linus2k3** » Tue Aug 23, 2005 11:30 am

Have any of one played an NSF through the NotSo Fatso plugin for WinAmp? The stereo separation feature blew my friggin mind. I'd be very happy to do it for NesterDC SE. If it slows down gameplay, then I'll make it an NSF-Player-only feature.

yeah, I play all my NSF's through the NotSo Fatso Plugin for Winamp. definately a must have plugin for NSF's. The sound in stereo for them is wicked fresh, and real cool. yeah, that would be good for NesterDCSE, but i'm all for it still if you have to use it as an NSF-Player-only feature.

Strapping Scherzo · Post by **Strapping Scherzo** » Tue Aug 23, 2005 1:20 pm

Quotable Quzar wrote:
Strapping Scherzo wrote:A little status update:

Well I got my DC hooked back up for the first time since the move. I double checked that everything is working fine, and it is.

I got curious about what would be involved in doing the stereo separation on the NES sound channels. It actually wouldn't be too hard except for one thing. NesterDC uses what appears to be a single channel (mono-only) AICA sound driver. In order to make the stereo separation possible I'll have to swap out this driver for another. No biggie, really.

The only thing that concerns me is that twice as much data would have to be processed and pumped to the sound hardware. I don't know how big of a performance hit that will be, but it definitely won't be free. It might be negligible.

Also, it adds to the processing time if the panning of each NES channel is to be user configurable. The simplest, fastest way for the stereo separation to work would be to have one of the square channels completely on the left and the other completely on the right. To pan them to something like 25% or 75% would require extra processing time.

I want NesterDC SE to be at least as fast as NesterDC 7.1. Regardless of what nifty little features I put into this project, I don't want to do them if they sacrifice speed.
The processing by sound hardware is nothing, the time killer is the sending of two chuncks to the sound hardware. BUT if you take a look at that spu_dma code i've sent you, you can use the same thing and make it go almost as fast as transferring a single data set.

Right, the panning in the sound hardware itself is absolutely nothing. See i have two choices...

1. Set up two channels in the AICA sound hardware, simple, one for left one for right. Then I pan the different NES channels via software on the SH4 side. The benefit is that I'm only sending 2 channels worth of samples. Drawback, I take away from the main emulation speed for the sake of doing this software panning.

2. Set up a channel for each NES channel in the AICA hardware. Send the separate samples for each channel. Benefit: the sound hardware does the panning. So it saves on clock cycles on the SH4 side. Drawback, more IO blocking due to the possibility of up to 6 NES channels getting sent to sound memory. But if Quzar's spu_dma code really makes that much of a difference, then this will probably be the best option.

So tonight, when I get home, I'm going to modify the current sound driver used by NesterDC to support more than one channel. I thought about using the other sound mechanisms in KOS, but they seem to have more overhead than what I see in the NesterDC code. Plus, the stream thing found in KOS doesn't work well with Nester's way of sound scheduling.

Post by **Quzar** » Tue Aug 23, 2005 10:41 pm

The way the spu_dma code works is that it alternates blocking and non-blocking, so for example, if you have one channel, it can simply be non blocking end of story. If you have two though, you have to have one be blocking because there is only one (known) spu dma channel (so you can only have one spu_dma transfer at a time). 6 channels would take only slightly longer than 3 channels w/o dma (same with 7).

anyways, the best thing would be just to write each piece of code and compare, since neither is all that complex.

Strapping Scherzo · Post by **Strapping Scherzo** » Wed Aug 24, 2005 2:54 am

Well, I did it. And, wow, NES in stereo really kicks ass. I did a two channel approach but the hardware still does the panning. The only two NES channels most people care about separating are the two rectangles since they nearly always carry the theme with harmony. So I put one rectangle on one DC sound channel and the other rectangle on the other DC sound channel. The others NES channels get put into both. Then I tell the hardware to pan one channel halfway left and the other halfway right. Tada! Instant kick ass stereo. And speed is not visibly affected.

LyingWake · Post by **LyingWake** » Wed Aug 24, 2005 3:01 am

That's awesome and I can't wait to test it out.

Sir Savant · Post by **Sir Savant** » Wed Aug 24, 2005 10:31 am

SCORE!

Now I just need to mod my old-ass stereo to accept left and right input. Shouldn't be too time consuming.....

Nice to know you are working on it and progressing, Scherzo. And I will be damned if I let kermit hypnotize me with his ass slapping.

Make a NULL VERSION! Sweet Nullness on DC. PLEZ?!?!?!?LOL

Good luck on the rest of your work and I hope noone leaks anymore.

drybed · Post by **drybed** » Wed Aug 24, 2005 10:43 pm

what is an NSF player? is it like a winamp or some device to just play music?
and if it like a winamp, this is for peopel just sitting in front of the TV listening to nintendo music? i find no point in that

Coagulus · Post by **Coagulus** » Thu Aug 25, 2005 4:03 am

NSF players are players or Winamp/other plugins to play NES music files.
It's a nostalgia thing! I love listening to old computer and console music!

OldSkoolGamer · Post by **OldSkoolGamer** » Thu Aug 25, 2005 4:05 am

To each his or her own. I'd like to have some classic game tunes playing from my TV (which is hooked up to my stereo) while I clean my living room.

It's not a necessity by any means, but a nice feature in my opinion.

Strapping Scherzo · Post by **Strapping Scherzo** » Thu Aug 25, 2005 8:07 am

Definitely not necessary. Lots of things in this version are not necessary. But I personally will be jamming to NES tunes on my stereo when I'm done with it.

Syd · Post by **Syd** » Thu Aug 25, 2005 9:23 am

Strapping Scherzo wrote:Definitely not necessary. Lots of things in this version are not necessary. But I personally will be jamming to NES tunes on my stereo when I'm done with it.

Actually thats something I never thought of. Me and my brother make up our own versions of NES tunes all the time (he plays guitar, I play bass). An NSF player would be a lot better to jam with than turning on the actual game. The NESkimos rule!

Strapping Scherzo · Post by **Strapping Scherzo** » Thu Aug 25, 2005 11:02 am

I just made a little page on my site to help me keep track of my progress. You can see it here:

http://www.sch3rz0.com/nesterdcse/wip_features.php

I'm still going through this and other topics to add more to the the list. So keep checking there as I work. If there's something that you feel should be on the list that isn't, either point it out here or IM me.

LyingWake · Post by **LyingWake** » Thu Aug 25, 2005 12:10 pm

I can not wait (I can, but you know what I mean). Good luck!

crt023 · Post by **crt023** » Thu Aug 25, 2005 1:27 pm

If you choose to implement light gun support will it be possible to calibrate the lightgun?

Strapping Scherzo · Post by **Strapping Scherzo** » Thu Aug 25, 2005 3:59 pm

crt023 wrote:If you choose to implement light gun support will it be possible to calibrate the lightgun?

If it's necessary, sure. I would hate to add a lightgun feature and not have it work correctly.