Emulation central - recommendations in 1st post

[Taxnomore]

Nice. A shame it will never get finished.

Somebody should just find a way to mod high res textures in the Dreamcast emulator.

 

[agentorange]

Anyone know how to get rid of stuttering lag in NullDC? Seems to only happen during cutscenes; I tried adjusting video settings, audio sync stuff, nothing seems to work.

 

[Blaine]

It finally came to my attention that someone has in fact applied the War of the Lions translation to the original English PSX ISO of Final Fantasy Tactics. Frankly I'd prefer a "normal" English translation to either an Engrish one (the original) or a faux Old English one (War of the Lions), but WotL will do.

nice ePSXe setup guide
translation patch
video settings for FFT on ePSXe

After a lot of fiddling about made easier by the fact that I've been fiddling about with emulators and DOSbox for over a decade (and turning off all the stupid texture enhancements and filters that inevitably make emulated games look worse than they do when run in their unfiltered native resolutions), the game runs absolutely flawlessly, aside from some extremely minor and not glitchy-looking "strobing" when characters turn blue during ability targeting.

i cri evrytiem

I'm up to the fight where you can choose to rescue Argas (I always do), and so the grand trolling adventure began anew when the enemy scored a critical hit on him right out of the gate.

 

[spekkio]

Welcome to 2011, Blaine.



But srsly - some rebalancing patches for FFT are interesting as well:

FFT - Kind Of

It's a rebalancing patch that stays very true to Vanilla, unlike some other patches that have been released. It doesn't try to be a Hardtype or anything, but enemies will now properly use their skills and actually have JP to spend on them. Certain battles have new units, and you won't see as many Knights/Archers as there were before.

GENERAL GAMEPLAY CHANGES:

All enemies scale with the party's level.
Enemies now have gear equal to what you can buy in stores.
Some enemies (particularly later on) have smart setups.
All rare Move-Find items are 100%.
Brave/Faith modification is no longer permanent.
Math Skill slowdown is removed.
Cursor starts at Continue, rather than New Game.
Class Evasion is global.
Phoenix Downs now deal 25% damage to Undead.
The Soldier Office can be used to rename any unit.
Special characters can do Propositions.
JP Scroll Bug is fixed.

FFT - Rebirth

Final Fantasy Tactics: Rebirth is a modification centered around re-balancing classes, characters, items, and encounters in Final Fantasy Tactics. Some of our guiding principles were differentiating the classes and making all the classes more comparable with the best classes, such as Ninja.

Weaker characters such as Meliadoul and Agrias were improved while Holy Swordsmen type characters had their abilities altered to compete more with other abilities and normal attacks. Weak or unused items were buffed incredibly while encounters were slightly increased in difficultly (after Chapter One) in order to keep pace with the improved classes.

Another large change in Rebirth was the complete overhaul of the speed system to shut down level up/down to uncap speed. We also made standardized speed growth across classes with speed multipliers being grouped into tiers – one speed for slow classes, one speed for medium speed classes, and another for fast classes. We also reduced access to speed increasing items and increased monster speeds. With a buff to spell speed the end result is that spells are valuable even in the late game rather than just the mid game and monsters get more turns in battles.

FFT - Rebirth + FFT - KO Story Battles

I wanted some more difficulty in story battles so I combined rebirth with the changes to story battles made in FFT Kind Of (i.e. enemies lvl scales with yours and have better gear).

LFT / LFT + Complete (PSP Translation)

LFT is a modification of Final Fantasy Tactics, making some dramatic changes to its gameplay while preserving non-gameplay aspects (the story, characters, etc. have all been left unmodified). Through all these changes I would like to believe that I have preserved the spirit of the gameplay itself - the vast array of options it offers, the tactical potential it has always boasted over most SRPGs out there, and above all else, the things that make it such an enjoyable game that has weathered the test of time admirably.

A summary of changes follows:
- Classes have been revamped significantly in every factor - stat multipliers and growths, wearable equipment, ability effects, JP costs, unlock requirements, innate RSM, etc.; they are all still very recognizable from their FFT designs, but have been retooled and rebalanced to all be viable. Special jobs are included in this criteria.
- Monsters have been reworked in a similar manner and are more challenging than their FFT incarnations, as well as being worthwhile PC replacements in their own right. All monsters have innate Monster Skill, which allows them to access new abilities when near each other. Random encounters are no longer complete fodder.
- Equipment has been tweaked to be more versatile and offer a wider range of effects available. Traditionally underused equipment was given special emphasis in finding new niches and roles to fill.
- All of these changes apply to the enemy side as well, making them more well-rounded and generally more challenging on their own, as even the common Knight and Archer are respectable foes now.
- In-game documentation changes for all of the above have been included in-game. Rare battle directions are noted on location descriptions. Additional information that was previously invisible to players (such as innate abilities on PC classes or actual CT values on spells) has been added for greater transparency.
- Storyline encounters have had enemy job selection diversified to give a wider range of enemies and strategies you face against.
- Bosses have been improved in general (the majority now have innate Defense UP and Magic DefendUP) to give them more of a fighting chance, especially in assassination missions.
- Random encounters now only occur when you deliberately select to move to the map location with the random encounter (i.e. you will never get random encounters while transitioning over a spot). The direction of your approach still matters for which encounters you can get.
- Move-Find Item rewards for non-DD locations have been altered to be more worthwhile (the panel locations themselves are unchanged). You may find some fun stuff at some of the more unique panels (like the previously inaccessible one in Bervenia Volcano!) DD panels remain mostly unchanged with a few shuffles.

 

[A user named cat]

nice ePSXe setup guide
translation patch
video settings for FFT on ePSXe

After a lot of fiddling about made easier by the fact that I've been fiddling about with emulators and DOSbox for over a decade (and turning off all the stupid texture enhancements and filters that inevitably make emulated games look worse than they do when run in their unfiltered native resolutions), the game runs absolutely flawlessly, aside from some extremely minor and not glitchy-looking "strobing" when characters turn blue during ability targeting.

Why still use ePSXe? Mednafen supports save states now and is very accurate, haven't encountered a signifcant bug in ages. Time to dump those shitty, plugin-based PS1 emulators in the garbage. I was very happy to.

On an N64 emulation note - I came across this the other day: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/gliden64-graphics-plugin

Would rather see Cen64 progress faster but finally having a decent N64 plugin would be nice if this comes through. Sad that it took a damn indiegogo for some real work to be done in that scene. Been having to dick with various RSP and separate emulators to avoid glitches for far too long with terrible N64 emulation and all the inadequate graphic plugins.

 

[spekkio]

I'm even worse ancientfag, since I prefer pSX 1.13 over epsxe (as long as it works with specific title).

 

[A user named cat]

What am I fanboying? Mednafen? lol I actually didn't even use it for PS1 until it finally got save state support a few months back, and even recommended against it for ages because of bugs that are now ironed out. It is really nearly perfect at this point, just needs a native UI. Also unlike other emu scene devs, the author isn't a faggot like squarepusher, byuu and some of those other guys.

 

[Gragt]

Why still use ePSXe? Mednafen supports save states now and is very accurate, haven't encountered a signifcant bug in ages. Time to dump those shitty, plugin-based PS1 emulators in the garbage. I was very happy to.

I spoke against ePSXe a long time ago. Mednafen PSX was good enough to be used before the addition of save states. Of course being WIP it can only get better with time. But people don't like change in general and will prefer to stick with what they know rather than try something new—same reason why so many stick to ZSNES instead of using higan.

My only fear though is that we might move away from "plugin hell" emulators to "one size fits all" like Mednafen, Retroarch or MESS.

Also unlike other emu scene devs, the author isn't a faggot like squarepusher, byuu and some of those other guys.

byuu is annoying but at least he knows how to program and the value of open-source for emulation. Using higan doesn't turn someone into one of his fanboys.

 

[A user named cat]

Not a fan of Higan really at all, used it once then deleted. Far as SNES emulation is concerned, it offered nothing that bsnes already didn't long ago aside from a few obscure fixes. No reason not to just use RetroArch or Mednafen for bsnes, then not have to deal with bullshit like converting roms or the lack of features.

Not sure why you'd be actually be against Swiss army knife emulators. Especially when said emulators use accurate, stable cores. RA even recently added a decent PPSSPP libretro. The Genesis Plus GX core is also easily the best Sega CD/Gen/Master System emulator out there. It doesn't even have a standalone version either far as I know.

 

[BLOBERT]

ALLRIGHT BROS MY FUTURE MAME MACHINEN IS STILK COMING ALONG

GOT TURBOGRAPX WORKING WITH MEDNAFFAN AND SATURN WITH SSF AND MY GENESIS LISFT OF GAMES I WANT IS COMPLETE WITH TITLE SCREENS CAPS

USING FCEULTRA FUSION AMND ZSNES MYSELF BASICALLY FIND SOMETHING I GET RUNNING WITH MALA AND CALL IT GOOD MAYBE ILL DIG INTO OTHER EMUS LATER

NEXT UP I WANT TP ADD C64 AMIGA AND INTELLIVISION AND MAYBE 3DO AND PS1 AND N64 THOUGH THAT RAN LIKE SHITR WHEN I TRIED IT LAST

 

[spekkio]

What am I fanboying? Mednafen?

So, I finally decided to give Mednafen a go (Win7 x64, x64 version). And...

Pros:
- very good level of emulation for all tested platforms (see below),
- plenty of configuration options,
- everything is platform / game related - you get separate memcards / screenshots / other files for every game you run,
- no nex-gen (upping internal res, etc).

Cons:
- no GUI (config file + command line options) + p. shitty frontend,
- input configuration system is bizarre / overwhelming: you can configure 1-8 inputs for EVERY input device of EVERY platform. Since you can use up to 3 different keys (gamepad / keyboard / mouse) for every single source input key (Start, 'A' button, etc)... Well, configuring all this shit takes fucking ages.
- no nex-gen (upping internal res, etc).

BTW, I've tested some PSX games known for emulation problems (graphical bugs, problems with sound): FM3, Valkyrie Profile, Vagrant Story - all of them work great. Savestates work as well. Huge:



And now, a couple of pics...

psx

nes

gba

gen

snes

Now compare the shiat above with current PS4/XBone/WiiU gen...

 

[A user named cat]

Now compare the shiat above with current PS4/XBone/WiiU gen...

Better than current-gen but looks like you forgot or chose not to disable billinear Trent Oster blurry enhanced filter ('videoip 0' per system in cfg). I prefer SNES at its raw 3:2 aspect ratio too. Not sure why yours appears to be 4:3 since I don't believe that's default in Medna.

Superior Pixelation

I agree about the GUI and controller setup being a pain, the author really needs to ask someone to design a simple menu system for him. The third-party frontend is wonky and buggy.
Also you'd probably find me mentioning RetroArch just as much if you did a search

 

[spekkio]

I prefer SNES at its raw 3:2 aspect ratio too. Not sure why yours appears to be 4:3 since I don't believe that's default in Medna.

Dunno, I have the "Correct aspect ratio" in SNes segment of MedGui enabled and that what the income is.

Also: Bilinear 4 lyfe!

 

[A user named cat]

I prefer SNES at its raw 3:2 aspect ratio too. Not sure why yours appears to be 4:3 since I don't believe that's default in Medna.

Dunno, I have the "Correct aspect ratio" in SNes segment of MedGui enabled and that what the income is.

Maybe it's a bug with MedGUI then but that whole 4:3 vs 3:2 debate is entirely up to preference anyway. I just prefer the latter when it comes to emulating SNES.

I'm not sure what setting in the cfg affects that, maybe try "snes.stretch aspect" if you want to change it.

 

[Gragt]

Mednafen is cool but I am not fond of "all-in-one, one-size-fits-all" emulators. The best part about Mednafen are its own cores, which are pretty much the most accurate emulation you can get for those system, i.e. PC-Engine, PC-FX, or PSX. Cores based on other projects tend to lag behind, and in some cases are based on very outdated sources—I am not au fait regarding Mednafen's development, but it would make sense that efforts are directed towards the emulator's strenght, that is its own cores, rather than those you can find elsewhere.

 

[felipepepe]

I'm in a bit of a dilemma regarding pixel aspect ratios, so I would like some help: What's the correct pixel aspect ratio for old 4:3 monitors?

Some games seem to be at 0.8, others at 0.9 and some are perfectly proporcionate at 1:1. What the hell?

People at the Watch linked me to this article: http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.de/2013/10/320x200-resolution-of-choice-for-ibm-pc.html

It's cool, but it doesn't explain properly why some games must be corrected and others don't. It's really just dependent on the artists laziness?

 

[tuluse]

I'm in a bit of a dilemma regarding pixel aspect ratios, so I would like some help: What's the correct pixel aspect ratio for old 4:3 monitors?

Some games seem to be at 0.8, others at 0.9 and some are perfectly proporcionate at 1:1. What the hell?

People at the Watch linked me to this article: http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.de/2013/10/320x200-resolution-of-choice-for-ibm-pc.html

It's cool, but it doesn't explain properly why some games must be corrected and others don't. It's really just dependent on the artists laziness?

I'm not sure you asked the question that you meant to. CRTs by their nature could display arbitrary resolutions and then stretch the image to fit.

So the 320x200 thing. The resolution of the monitors in most cases during the VGA era was 640x480, that's what your desktop resolution would have been in windows. The trick with 320x200 was that they drew the pixels knowing they would be stretched in the vertical (a simliar technique was used many years later with DVDs--they called it anamorphic), so the image is actually stored "squashed". Your monitor didn't strongly care about how many pixels you were sending it would just fill the screen with them.

Modern LCDs have a set number of physical pixels, so they can't do this, which is why many old games look stretched and ugly on them.

That article goes into detail about other resolutions that were common, but it's the same idea. You can have any "internal" ratio, as long as you draw the pixels so when they're expanded onto the monitor they look right.

With games that are 1:1, I would actually guess the company forgot to account for the fact that the pixels would be stretched.

I hope this rambling makes sense.

 

[felipepepe]

So I simply cannot keep a consistent layout in the book, some old games must be stretched and others not?

Man, what a annoying thing. Now I get why every fucking book/magazine/website never corrects the ratio...

 

[spekkio]

Bros, moar testing.

Newest PPSSPP compilation (22.10.14), x64, Rendering Res: 3x, Filtering: Auto, Shader: FXAA (to show you what it does).

Silent Hill - 0rigins: previously broken - heavy flickering, now works great (no flickering), I've noticed only small problems with sound (clacking - probably can be fixed by playing around with settings).

screens

FFT: works fine, "Nearest" filtering + FXAA shader looks better than "Bilinear" filtering:

Jeanne d'Arc: works great (fast, no glitches, good audio). With original PSP fonts it looks like this (1680x1050):

a) FXAA on

b) FXAA off

 

[Gragt]

So I simply cannot keep a consistent layout in the book, some old games must be stretched and others not?

Man, what a annoying thing. Now I get why every fucking book/magazine/website never corrects the ratio...

Yeah, some people think that games had a 16:10 aspect ratio back in the day, and that it would fit your widescreen monitor if you simply scale it, but it was designed to be stretched to 4:3. Doom is notorious for that and some source port can display the view correctly but have problems with the map—a good source port like Chocolate Doom can display everything correctly. Dune II also assumes that it will be stretched, and you can easily see that the planets in the House selection screens are not perfectly round if you don't compensate.

And then you get weird animals like Dungeon Keeper: the menu displays at 640x480 but the game plays at 320x200 and 640x400, and that's the actual size without need for stretching, so on a 4:3 monitors you should have black bars on top and bottom of the screen.

Other than aspect ratio, another thing that is often erroneously displayed in books and websites and Let's Plays are the colours. The PC version of Wizardry, for exemple, was made for CGA, yet most people insist to take screenshots in VGA mode and it screws things up a bit.

This is how you are used to see it:

But it should look like this:

 

[tuluse]

So I simply cannot keep a consistent layout in the book, some old games must be stretched and others not?

Man, what a annoying thing. Now I get why every fucking book/magazine/website never corrects the ratio...

The proper way to do it would be to have a 4:3 ratio space with a border, and then have the game fill an appropriate amount. So if it's not meant to be stretched there will be some empty space between the game screenshot and the border. This is of course an insane amount of work and research to figure this out.

 

[spekkio]

Bros...

More of PPSSPP:



And Pcsx2 1.2.1-639, 2x internal

a) ICO Platinum - everything looks fine, emu sets up proper EE/VU options automagically (via Gamefixes).

b) SMT - DDS1 - shadow glitch is still present, game runs visibly slower than on 1.2.1 (solid 60 FPS all the time, as long as it's 2x internal)

c) Jak and Daxter - shadow bug:

can be fixed on DX11 renderer (HW hacks - Alpha):

"Eyes" bug is still present, though.

d) Shadow Hearts 1 - slowdowns in all Hardware modes (even worse than on 1.2.1)

Verdict:

 

[spekkio]

Bros, multikill - Desmume X432R

Castlevanias work fine / upping internal res is pointless (2D):

Bee looks kinda low-res in default internal:

Using 3x internal (Opengl) adds some polygones, but disables filtering / shaders (am I doing something wrong?).

 

[A user named cat]

spekkio I'm sure you're aware but any graphic issues you come across in PCSX2 can 9 times out of 10 be fixed with DX11/9 software mode. While it is very cpu-heavy at times and ugly as shit at native res, it's better than nothing. There are quite a few games where just having auto fixes enabled won't cut it either. Socom II, Enthusia Racing and Spyhunter are a few off the top of my head which'll freeze without their manual fixes checked. There are also certain games which require the use of legacy MicroVU and changing clamp mode to either zero or extra+preserve (i.e. most EA sports games). I use PCSX2 through a frontend which supports per-game configs, so I don't have to screw with that stuff everytime.

Another handy tip I learned: if you encounter any games which spit out vertical lines or other odd graphical glitches, the first tweak you should try (before HW hacks or software mode in GSDX) is setting the internal resolution to custom, then 1260x any number. For some bizarre reason, 1260 is the maximum magicical horizontal res which fixes many problems like that. The vertical res doesn't matter for whatever reason. I first learned of it when fixing Star Ocean and Tekken 5. If that doesn't work, then I found that going into HW Hacks and setting TC Offset X/Y to 500 is a great band-aid too. I'm sure you know what you're doing but hey, just in case you didn't know those tricks.

 

[spekkio]

BROS, tested Dolphin 4.0.3785 x64

First, to run the OpenGl backend on Nvidia, you have to use moderately new drivers (335.xx don't work, 344.xx work fine). Opengl, 3x internal, AA disabled.

Perkel reported a visible speed increase in recent builds, and I can confirm that as well.

1) Resident Evil 0: game no longer needs special options to run at normal speed (30FPS).

2) Zelda - Twilight Princess: runs visibly faster (I was getting heavy slowdowns in GPU-intensive areas, now it's solid 60 FPS).

3) Metroid Prime: works faster, but 3x internal + high external res is still too much for my rig. Requires additional testing, since in older versions performance was degrading in time, AFAIR.

4) Rayman - Origins: opening FMVs work fine (previously they were borked in OGL).

Verdict: