ZSNES is no longer in active development.

General area for talk about ZSNES. The best place to ask for related questions as well as troubleshooting.

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ZZSnes
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Re: ZSNES is not dead - Still in development

Post by ZZSnes »

paulguy wrote:My assumption is that sinc ethe SNES doesnt' have speific character ROMs and typically evne uses compressed graphics, that'd be a lot harder. I could be wrong though. At best it'd probably have to be game-specific...
I think it should work for all games like it does in Dolphin, N64 emulators and HDNes, the only problem is to make it work in Zsnes.
Gil_Hamilton
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Re: ZSNES is not dead - Still in development

Post by Gil_Hamilton »

ZZSnes wrote:
paulguy wrote:My assumption is that sinc ethe SNES doesnt' have speific character ROMs and typically evne uses compressed graphics, that'd be a lot harder. I could be wrong though. At best it'd probably have to be game-specific...
I think it should work for all games like it does in Dolphin, N64 emulators and HDNes, the only problem is to make it work in Zsnes.
There are massive differences in how different systems work. Why should it be doable in Super Nintendo emulation?
Squall_Leonhart wrote:
You have your 2s, 4s, 8s, 16s, 32s, 64s, and 128s(crash course in binary counting!). But no 1s.
DirectInput represents all bits, not just powers of 2 in an axis.
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ZZSnes
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Re: ZSNES is not dead - Still in development

Post by ZZSnes »

Gil_Hamilton wrote:
ZZSnes wrote:
paulguy wrote:My assumption is that sinc ethe SNES doesnt' have speific character ROMs and typically evne uses compressed graphics, that'd be a lot harder. I could be wrong though. At best it'd probably have to be game-specific...
I think it should work for all games like it does in Dolphin, N64 emulators and HDNes, the only problem is to make it work in Zsnes.
There are massive differences in how different systems work. Why should it be doable in Super Nintendo emulation?
It's possible for any system but how exactly that's another matter.
blackmyst
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Re: ZSNES is not dead - Still in development

Post by blackmyst »

As far as I can tell with my limited knowledge, there would be two ways to do it, which both seem equally farfetched:

1) Manually document the way each individual game loads graphics. Good luck with that. Then again, if you're an artist and you're really making a big project out of redoing the graphics of a certain game, maybe you could find a romhacker to help you with that particular game.

2) Let the program "read" the pixels of the actual tiles on-screen as a code to identify which graphic it is, which would be like, what, 64 bytes per 8x8 tile? Dunno what that would come to for a whole screen, or if that's doable in terms of speed etc.


Either way, don't think it's easy or that there's some universal way to do this for all systems, just because other emulators have done it.
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Re: ZSNES is not dead - Still in development

Post by Gil_Hamilton »

ZZSnes wrote: It's possible for any system but how exactly that's another matter.
On what do you base this claim? My understanding of the Super Nintendo hardware says it's not really possible.
Squall_Leonhart wrote:
You have your 2s, 4s, 8s, 16s, 32s, 64s, and 128s(crash course in binary counting!). But no 1s.
DirectInput represents all bits, not just powers of 2 in an axis.
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ZZSnes
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Re: ZSNES is not dead - Still in development

Post by ZZSnes »

Could you put Zsnes on Github with Git? It may find more contributors that way.
someone
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Re: ZSNES is not dead - Still in development

Post by someone »

I honestly don't see how people can make claims to things being doable without having any knowledge in the subject. I deal with it all the time at work and its so aggravating! And I quote " Just weld that piece of aluminum to that piece of stainless. What, you wont even try? Why not? Welding is easy for you! " Its insulting.

Now, I know people saying " this should be done, or that should be done " don't mean to be rude, but when you say things like " I know it can be done " or " its easy " or " just do this " are simply rude, insulting comments. Be grateful for any work being done on the project.


Just make it work with the oculus rift, its just a little more line of code, its easy.

See how stupid and ridiculous that sounds?
Gil_Hamilton
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Re: ZSNES is not dead - Still in development

Post by Gil_Hamilton »

someone wrote:
Just make it work with the oculus rift, its just a little more line of code, its easy.

See how stupid and ridiculous that sounds?
It's not THAT hard. Just render the background in 3D!
Squall_Leonhart wrote:
You have your 2s, 4s, 8s, 16s, 32s, 64s, and 128s(crash course in binary counting!). But no 1s.
DirectInput represents all bits, not just powers of 2 in an axis.
KHDownloads
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Re: ZSNES is not dead - Still in development

Post by grinvader »

We've been over this too many times already... Even if we ever make some sort of API that lets people do it, only the simple games, with always graphics statically loaded from the ROM, could ever be done at the price of days of RE work to pinpoint each tile group to swap with their HD counterparts.
Any game that generates their sprites on the fly in wram before shoving that into vram whenever they please would necessitate a nightmarish system that noone would be arsed to design/implement/work with.

And it would still look like massive, utter shit when any special effects like hdma offset-per-tile, mosaic, colour math or even just windowing get thrown in the mix.

As I already stated many times, the kind of effort needed to pull this kind of disappointing feature would be bigger than coding a brand new fucking PC game that does exactly what you want. Go badger those indie devs into making your HD whatever, you'll have more chances to see it done.
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pagefault
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Re: ZSNES is not dead - Still in development

Post by pagefault »

Yeah guys I only said I was exploring features like this, some of it seems like it may not be possible in the way you might expect. I'm more focused on getting the emulator part of it working right then working on the bells and whistles.

There is a problem right now with getting the SPU and DSP working properly together, I suspect it's not my code but byuu has pointed out to me that blargg's SPU may have some issues. Some games that are SPU sensitive are freezing or locking up but I know the cycle count ratio for the SPU is spot on and it's getting enough execution time so I will be investigating this some more.

I have also decided to scrap the current design and start again, this doesn't mean I am throwing it all away. I just want to redesign how it works. The CPU, PPU and other things are fine but the glue that holds it together I would like to redo. I have learned a lot doing this and found that there is a better and more efficient way to write it.

This I guess is becoming my devblog. I will also be trying to involve more people on the project who are interested and make this more than a one man show.
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Re: ZSNES is not dead - Still in development

Post by nintendo_nerd »

pagefault wrote:Yeah guys I only said I was exploring features like this, some of it seems like it may not be possible in the way you might expect. I'm more focused on getting the emulator part of it working right then working on the bells and whistles.

There is a problem right now with getting the SPU and DSP working properly together, I suspect it's not my code but byuu has pointed out to me that blargg's SPU may have some issues. Some games that are SPU sensitive are freezing or locking up but I know the cycle count ratio for the SPU is spot on and it's getting enough execution time so I will be investigating this some more.

I have also decided to scrap the current design and start again, this doesn't mean I am throwing it all away. I just want to redesign how it works. The CPU, PPU and other things are fine but the glue that holds it together I would like to redo. I have learned a lot doing this and found that there is a better and more efficient way to write it.

This I guess is becoming my devblog. I will also be trying to involve more people on the project who are interested and make this more than a one man show.
While it sucks that there is this setback, I can only wish you the best of luck and only if I knew how to program....bleh....I wish I could help somehow, you know? I'm glad you'll be getting more help from other people though, keep it up, man ^_^
"Just because I don't LISTEN doesn't mean I don't CARE!" -Homer Simpson
pagefault
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Re: ZSNES is not dead - Still in development

Post by pagefault »

I'm doing development on an older linux machine now so it gives me more motivation to make it run faster. I'm going to wait on the new intel processors to buy anything I think.
Watering ur plants.
someone
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Re: ZSNES is not dead - Still in development

Post by someone »

Yea, I wish I had money to build a new system now because a lot is happening / being released.

1 - AMD Fury X ( Looks really promising )
2 - Intel Skylake
3 - Intel z170 chipset
4 - DDR 4 will be getting cheaper
5 - SSD's are dropping in price

If you got the money, this is going to be an awesome time to build a new system.

.... I do... have... Credit Cards !!!!
Last edited by someone on Thu Jun 25, 2015 12:48 am, edited 1 time in total.
odditude
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Re: ZSNES is not dead - Still in development

Post by odditude »

someone wrote:.... I do... have... Credit Cards !!!!
not that this thread is the appropriate place for this - but if you're ever buying something you can't actually afford using a credit card, you're doing it horribly, horribly wrong.

...and now back to your regularly scheduled dev discussion.
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Yuber
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Re: ZSNES is not dead - Still in development

Post by Yuber »

I can't comment on the technical problems but this sounds like ridiculously hard work, so thanks for continuing to work on it despite the setbacks. It must be rather frustrating getting everything to to run perfectly, emulating all the components of the system, enhancement chips etc. Just sounds stupidly complicated.
someone
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Re: ZSNES is not dead - Still in development

Post by someone »

Yea, back in 5th grade our computer science teacher had us programming with q-basic. I didn't do any of the assignments though. He was really cool with all the re-programming of a game called nibbles where you were a snake that went around eating numbers. I added all sorts of options to it, and it was complicated for me. I can't even begin to comprehend the complexity of an emulator. You need to know the hardware and software of the system you want to emulate, and the system doing the emulating. You have to make them work together and so much more.

I know I don't do much more around here other than annoy people ( We all have our gifts ), but I too want to say that I too really appreciate all of your efforts in producing a new ZSNES. It truly is exciting.
pagefault
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Re: ZSNES is not dead - Still in development

Post by pagefault »

I had a question does anyone use the R (not the DR modes). They are very limited and don't support filters or high-res mode and i'm considering dropping support for them because we need to update the rendering engine in 1.5x to work properly on Windows 8 and later.

Thoughts?
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Re: ZSNES is not dead - Still in development

Post by paulguy »

They were pretty much originally sort of a performance compromise right? Get the game working on slow as hell computers by applying no scaling in software? Personally, I'd say R modes are silly, since TVs weren't 8:7 anyway.
Maybe these people were born without that part of their brain that lets you try different things to see if they work better. --Retsupurae
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Re: ZSNES is not dead - Still in development

Post by blackmyst »

Yeah, throw them out, I'd say.

The only imaginable reason to keep them would be to appease those few weirdos who think SNES games were designed to be seen with unfiltered block pixels (hence needing even pixel scaling) on some mythical 8:7 display.
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pagefault
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Re: ZSNES is not dead - Still in development

Post by pagefault »

Ok done, I think 1.52 is coming close to being done, provided this is not the rewrite I was talking about but it's an excuse to release stuff we forgot about a long time ago and fix security problems.
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Re: ZSNES is not dead - Still in development

Post by nintendo_nerd »

pagefault wrote:I had a question does anyone use the R (not the DR modes). They are very limited and don't support filters or high-res mode and i'm considering dropping support for them because we need to update the rendering engine in 1.5x to work properly on Windows 8 and later.

Thoughts?
I see nothing wrong with that, to be honest :mrgreen:
pagefault wrote:Ok done, I think 1.52 is coming close to being done, provided this is not the rewrite I was talking about but it's an excuse to release stuff we forgot about a long time ago and fix security problems.
Even better I say :D
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Re: ZSNES is not dead - Still in development

Post by paulguy »

Hey, nothing wrong with unfiltered blocky pixels. :p Although aspect ratio adjustment does require a 1px interpolation between pixels to keep them looking more even. Blurry filters can also make the image look washed out, too (but i believe there are ways around that).
Maybe these people were born without that part of their brain that lets you try different things to see if they work better. --Retsupurae
pagefault
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Re: ZSNES is not dead - Still in development

Post by pagefault »

Well we have OpenGL now so you can trilinear filter the image and get the same effect as before if it really bothers you.
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pagefault
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Re: ZSNES is not dead - Still in development

Post by pagefault »

Just an update there will be no mac version of 1.5x because of lack of a mac for those are asking.
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Re: ZSNES is not dead - Still in development

Post by nintendo_nerd »

pagefault wrote:Just an update there will be no mac version of 1.5x because of lack of a mac for those are asking.

It happens to the best of us, I don't know how many on here use that version.
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