bsnes v0.039 released

FitzRoy · Post by **FitzRoy** » Sun Jan 25, 2009 7:36 pm

Gil_Hamilton wrote:But.... the Genesis doesn't have square pixels either.

And it's the video chipset that defines the resolutions available, not the CPU.

The 320x224 mode was close enough that you could port the game to a modern device without having to redo all of the original artwork. Even if Nintendo couldn't foresee the portable market in 1983, they should have at least wanted to make it easier for artists by having as close to square pixels as possible. The Master System had 256x192, why couldn't Nintendo?

And it's the video chipset that defines the resolutions available, not the CPU.

But how many frames a game can pull at a given resolution is what makes it useful.

I'm mostly just annoyed by anal-retentive CRT holdouts who ask for non-desktop display mode options every 2 months. Screw that, it's going extinct and simulated correction just isn't that bad. You need the point filter to even see it.

Panzer88 · Post by **Panzer88** » Sun Jan 25, 2009 10:32 pm

oh I would agree that the system could have been better, and like the architecture of the sega systems.

That's not the point though, nor is what the future of display technology. This is an emulator that is about documenting and simulating the way the original hardware was run and what it was run on right? Then we shouldn't be making decisions based on what display medium is popular right now because that will continue to change from 20 to 50 years. I just thought it would be good to support running it at original spec.

I can see you are not interested in that. what does anybody else think?

tetsuo55 · Post by **tetsuo55** » Sun Jan 25, 2009 10:50 pm

rayno wrote:byuu:
Could it be possible, in any way, to make the auto-detection of the game region as an option? I know that there are only a handful of people who actually would need this feature, but I'm one of them

Enable advanced settings.

Then under system you will get "Region"
Here you can force a region

FitzRoy · Post by **FitzRoy** » Sun Jan 25, 2009 11:24 pm

Emulators allow us to keep playing games designed for old hardware on ever-changing new hardware. That is the point of emulation. Not to include options that only have operational relevance on the very hardware we're trying to emulate/simulate.

And as far as I know, the future is indeed fixed, square pixels. OLED will address all of LCD's shortcomings and can be printed onto thin flexible substrates. The only thing better than that is a cerebral implant, in my opinion.

Panzer88 · Post by **Panzer88** » Sun Jan 25, 2009 11:45 pm

the purpose of most emulators and the purpose of accuracy emulators are two very different things.

If you think that OLEDs are the pinnacle of visual display technology then your view of technology is short sighted. Technology will always continue to change not to mention CRT vs. LCD, OLED vs. FED, these are subjective debates, there is no right answer and that is not the point.

It's not like it is an unreasonable request, it's a simple feature and it's not about square pixels or not square pixels. It's about being able to run snes games at native resolution, fullscreen.

it wasn't meant to be a big deal and I'm surprised you are so up and arms about it. what gives man?

h4tred · Post by **h4tred** » Mon Jan 26, 2009 12:14 am

these are subjective debates, there is no right answer and that is not the point.

Exactly. There is zero right or wrong way to do things. Even if that includes doing stuff on the GPU to allow the CPU to do more emulation work (like offloading image filtering via shaders).

Panzer88 · Post by **Panzer88** » Mon Jan 26, 2009 12:20 am

well that was taken slightly out of context, all I meant is it shouldn't be the focus for making such decisions.

FitzRoy · Post by **FitzRoy** » Mon Jan 26, 2009 2:24 am

Panzer88 wrote:If you think that OLEDs are the pinnacle of visual display technology then your view of technology is short sighted. Technology will always continue to change not to mention CRT vs. LCD, OLED vs. FED, these are subjective debates, there is no right answer and that is not the point.

There is no debate that if OLED solves its longevity problems that it will be superior to other technologies. Even if you consider CRT's ability to paint pixels of varying width to be an advantage, brute density of square pixels would be able to accomplish the same perceived effect. More to your point, technology may always be advancing, but advances may not always offer tangible benefits to humans. If I'm short-sighted, you're looking over the fence. That's why DVD-audio failed and the only advancements now is in how the content is distributed. That's why I also think OLED will also have a hard time being supplanted by another 2d technology, it is literally capable of everything we expect in a 2d display technology. Even in the tube days, we were able to imagine flat screens with the best colors, contrast, and refresh that we can biologically perceive, and we've been striving towards it ever since. Once it arrives with OLED, the only logical successor would be some kind of 3d technology, possibly one that interfaces with the brain. Once that becomes indistinguishable from reality, we'll have reached the pinnacle and reduced the human race to a placated mass that prefers unreality to reality.

Panzer88 wrote:It's not like it is an unreasonable request, it's a simple feature and it's not about square pixels or not square pixels. It's about being able to run snes games at native resolution, fullscreen.

it wasn't meant to be a big deal and I'm surprised you are so up and arms about it. what gives man?

The option is generally in opposition to the current, simpler modus operandus, which does not incur laborious, confusing frequency/resolution input boxes. Before I hear the accuracy mantra again, yes, there was a small technological window where you could do some of the things a television CRT could with a computer CRT. But they're both dead now, so why should emulators structure their fullscreen method around this tech? You can't buy them in stores anymore, they can't avoid simulation for interlace and overscan, and they're about to be completely outclassed by OLED. The holdouts should succumb, this isn't in the spirit of emulation.

Snark · Post by **Snark** » Mon Jan 26, 2009 2:38 am

Panzer88 wrote: I can see you are not interested in that. what does anybody else think?

I'm mostly just annoyed by anal-retentive CRT holdouts

Anal-retentive yourself man, if the simple fact that some people have uses for CRTs is actually bothering you.

The fact is, afaik even the fastest LCDs have much poorer response time, or whatever you call it, compared to CRTs. I can play Virtua Fighter 5 on both CRT and LCD display and the difference is really apparent. On CRT I get the same smoothness as on the arcade monitor.

I don't know if that will change in the future but for now, they just don't match.

Panzer88 · Post by **Panzer88** » Mon Jan 26, 2009 2:54 am

I'm not some CRT holdout, I know the type.

Snark has good points though.

guess what, I'm typing from a LCD laptop. I have an LCD widescreen tv. I also have a CRT monitor for high resolution and low resolution testing etc. incorporating 3D imaging is already happening with projectors, lcds, oleds, and just about every display technology imaginable, see sony at CES 2009. Guess what else, you are short sighted and opinionated. for example, have you even heard of FED technology? Probably not as it us only being used in the commercial realm right now (medical, etc), but it has promising possibilities.

http://www.engadget.com/2008/11/20/sony ... t-240-fps/

http://www.fed-tv-reviews.com/very-good ... 008/07/26/

It is the best of all panel display technologies, and at it's core it operates similar to CRTs. Shocker. but this is not the point of or debate, you would like to make it that. You say the technology is obsolete, guess what, there is technology coming around the corner that uses these so called "obsolete" methods. so now that you are educated can we get to the point.

it's not archaic, it's just an option, and you are arguing against it why? because for whatever reason you don't like it or have some baseless bias when in fact you aren't even the one who has to put forth work to make it happen.

I'd like the opinion of other users and byuu too, this isn't something that only my opinion, or only your opinion matter.

Panzer88 · Post by **Panzer88** » Mon Jan 26, 2009 3:03 am

and furthermore, this doesn't need to be some kind of technology war, options are great, it allows everyone to get along. Seriously why are you being so anal about this? First I'm too archaic and then I'm too videophile. make up your mind man.

having more options and the ability to have an emulator operate on old hardware and hardware that is yet to be released is NOT a bad thing.

Snark · Post by **Snark** » Mon Jan 26, 2009 3:28 am

Just my opinion, but currently, LCD is better for most computer uses, be it internet browsing or anything involving working in front of a computer screen. Only for certain type of gaming (which could arguably include emulation) does the lower screen performance can become a problem.

Panzer88 · Post by **Panzer88** » Mon Jan 26, 2009 3:35 am

exactly, they are great for static environments, and also things that use standard resolutions. I love my laptop, you don't have to attribute some display technology to yourself and then try to defend it. They all have advantages and disadvantages. Just like projectors are better at displaying different aspect ratios correctly at large sizes with no borders, such as different widescreen formats, vertical shooters, etc. crt based technology is better at displaying multiple low and high resolutions fullscreen, including non-standard resolutions, it's a GOOD tool.

FitzRoy · Post by **FitzRoy** » Mon Jan 26, 2009 4:04 am

Snark wrote:Anal-retentive yourself man, if the simple fact that some people have uses for CRTs is actually bothering you.

Pff, don't try and turn this on me. It doesn't bother me that some people still use CRTs, it bothers me that they want to turn fullscreen mode into a headache of input boxes and frequency selections just to defeat some minor defect visible under point sampling.

Panzer88 wrote:Guess what else, you are short sighted and opinionated. for example, have you even heard of FED technology?

I know all about FED, and while it might serve as a stopgap until OLED gets going, OLED has a broader set of potentials that FED cannot surmount; material costs, energy efficiency, flexibility, and durability will likely relegate FED to a niche market of larger panels where OLED has difficulty scaling up to.

Panzer88 wrote:It is the best of all panel display technologies, and at it's core it operates similar to CRTs. Shocker. but this is not the point of or debate, you would like to make it that. You say the technology is obsolete, guess what, there is technology coming around the corner that uses these so called "obsolete" methods. so now that you are educated can we get to the point.

Sort of, except without the pixel-stretching capability that this whole debate has been about. And yes, it was an annoying idea which allowed the creators of material to choose whatever the hell pixel size they wanted. Turns out that created a bit of a conversion nightmare when succeeding technologies used square pixels, which seems as sane now as it should have back then.

Panzer88 · Post by **Panzer88** » Mon Jan 26, 2009 4:07 am

it's plenty sane, you're completely right in that regard, but we can't change the past now can we so it doesn't seem that unreasonable to support it. Honestly this is not going to break bsnes for pete's sake.

FirebrandX · Post by **FirebrandX** » Mon Jan 26, 2009 7:44 am

Panzer88 wrote:I realize you already addressed the real fullscreen question byuu, but it just occurred to me is there no way to run bsnes fullscreen at the snes native resolution on my CRT? That is something I occasionally like to do with other emus, or maybe run it at double original resolution but still fullscreen.

Just asking because I'm sure I'm not the only one that likes to run low res content at an actual low resolution.

You might want to try powerstrip. It lets you add custom resolutions to your video card, whihc avoids software aspect correction. For example you can make a 1024x896 custom resolution with powerstrip, which is 4x the original res of 256x224. I did this for every emulator of non-squared pixel systems back when I was still using CRT. I still use it in fact, for bsnes on my 16x10 LCD display, using a custom res of 1440x1050 and having bsnes set to 4x scale. The resultant horizontal stretch done by the monitor is better than internal software correction because the pixels are averaged evenly as opposed to the random oblong pixels you'd normally get. CRT works even better for this method as it can be done both horizontally and virtically, but I've been quite satisfied with allowing for black borders on the LCD screen.

The downsides are you have to experiment a little bit with the custum timing while adding new modes to your card. and also you have to have a card that allows custum res modes in the first place. Most do though anyway.

Panzer88 · Post by **Panzer88** » Mon Jan 26, 2009 7:59 am

Wow that's great, thanks a lot, FirebrandX

Gil_Hamilton · Post by **Gil_Hamilton** » Mon Jan 26, 2009 9:13 am

FitzRoy wrote:
Gil_Hamilton wrote:But.... the Genesis doesn't have square pixels either.

And it's the video chipset that defines the resolutions available, not the CPU.
The 320x224 mode was close enough that you could port the game to a modern device without having to redo all of the original artwork. Even if Nintendo couldn't foresee the portable market in 1983, they should have at least wanted to make it easier for artists by having as close to square pixels as possible. The Master System had 256x192, why couldn't Nintendo?

You're now saying Nintendo should have used a lower resolution display than the NES's (de facto) resolution for the sake of making square pixels?

SMS ALSO supported 256*224, for the record, which was unique to the SMS and is the resolution used in (almost) all SMS games.

256*192 is a result of being backwards-compatible with the Texas Instruments TMS9918A used in the SG-1000.

F-16 Fighting Falcon is the only SMS game to use 256*192(which is why this is the only SMS game that won't work on a Genesis with a Power Base Converter, as the Genesis does not emulate TMS9918A modes).
Perhaps not coincidentally, F-16 Fighting Falcon was designed for the SG-1000 and "rolled over" to the Mark 3/Master System.

The "SMS used square pixels" argument is misleading at best.

As far as making things easier for developers goes...
They're using the exact same pixel aspect as most NES developers used(the NES was officially 256*240, but everyone ignored the first and last row of tiles and treated it as 256*224), greatly easing the transition from the old platform.

Worst-case scenario, artists drew everything by hand. A run of non-square graph paper wouldn't be a great hardship.

If they were using computers... well, MOST computers of the era, be they game console or general-use machines, had non-square pixels. And even different pixel ratios in different graphics modes.
Including, incidentally, the Apple IIgs that Nintendo distributed as an early devkit(whch, however, did NOT use the same aspect as the SNES, and was actually rectangular in the OTHER direction).

And it's the video chipset that defines the resolutions available, not the CPU.
But how many frames a game can pull at a given resolution is what makes it useful.

But the SNES graphics chip doesn't offer a square pixel in ANY mode, so CPU speed is a moot point.

byuu · Post by **byuu** » Mon Jan 26, 2009 9:59 am

Man, I don't have time to read all that ... >_>;

New WIP. Lots of UI refinements.
- re-added power on / power off / reset to main menu (expansion port / region won't be coming back here)
- re-added status message system
- figured out a way to hide the child indicators in list boxes, as well as enable sorting while starting with default ordering (so headers are now clickable to sort, you can even rearrange them)
- merged driver settings and input focus policy into advanced panel
- old advanced panel list is dead, driver panel is dead
- replaced scale 5x with scale max; minor help to 1920x1200+ resolutions
- re-added smart scaling + window size clamping
- Linux port should build out-of-the-box, but there's definitely some issues in regards to window sizing (even Qt has trouble with this)
- new $(ui)/Makefile system -- as if I weren't abusing GNU make enough before, new automoc rules are madness -- fear:

Code: Select all

# automatically generate .moc files from .hpp files whenever:
# - they don't exist
# - .hpp file was modified after .moc file
%.moc: $<; $(moc) $(patsubst %.moc,%.hpp,$@) -o $@
$(foreach object,$(moc_objects),$(eval $(object): $(patsubst %.moc,%.hpp,$(object))))
ui_build: $(moc_objects);
ui_clean:; -$(foreach object,$(moc_objects),@$(call delete,$(object)))

- lots of other crap

http://byuu.cinnamonpirate.com/images/b ... 090126.png

Now to update the locales for v039 finally ...

kick · Post by **kick** » Mon Jan 26, 2009 10:07 am

Panzer88 wrote:Guess what else, you are short sighted and opinionated. for example, have you even heard of FED technology?

...or Laser TV (LaserVue) which is nothing but old-fashioned Trinitron CRT technology with high-powered laser diodes in place of the electron guns.Beats anything out there,including OLED.

kick · Post by **kick** » Mon Jan 26, 2009 10:22 am

FitzRoy wrote:That's why I also think OLED will also have a hard time being supplanted by another 2d technology, it is literally capable of everything we expect in a 2d display technology. Even in the tube days, we were able to imagine flat screens with the best colors, contrast, and refresh that we can biologically perceive, and we've been striving towards it ever since. Once it arrives with OLED, the only logical successor would be...

Laser TV

tetsuo55 · Post by **tetsuo55** » Mon Jan 26, 2009 12:29 pm

byuu wrote:Man, I don't have time to read all that ... >_>;

New WIP. Lots of UI refinements.
- re-added power on / power off / reset to main menu (expansion port / region won't be coming back here)
- re-added status message system
- figured out a way to hide the child indicators in list boxes, as well as enable sorting while starting with default ordering (so headers are now clickable to sort, you can even rearrange them)
- merged driver settings and input focus policy into advanced panel
- old advanced panel list is dead, driver panel is dead
- replaced scale 5x with scale max; minor help to 1920x1200+ resolutions
- re-added smart scaling + window size clamping
- Linux port should build out-of-the-box, but there's definitely some issues in regards to window sizing (even Qt has trouble with this)
- new $(ui)/Makefile system -- as if I weren't abusing GNU make enough before, new automoc rules are madness -- fear:
Code: Select all
# automatically generate .moc files from .hpp files whenever:
# - they don't exist
# - .hpp file was modified after .moc file
%.moc: $<; $(moc) $(patsubst %.moc,%.hpp,$@) -o $@
$(foreach object,$(moc_objects),$(eval $(object): $(patsubst %.moc,%.hpp,$(object))))
ui_build: $(moc_objects);
ui_clean:; -$(foreach object,$(moc_objects),@$(call delete,$(object)))
- lots of other crap

http://byuu.cinnamonpirate.com/images/b ... 090126.png

Now to update the locales for v039 finally ...

Where are you going to put expansion port / region ?

FitzRoy · Post by **FitzRoy** » Mon Jan 26, 2009 4:22 pm

Gil_Hamilton wrote:You're now saying Nintendo should have used a lower resolution display than the NES's (de facto) resolution for the sake of making square pixels?

Yep. Actually, since I understand the SNES res was chosen because of the initial intention of backwards compatibility, the NES should have used it and we consequently would have gotten the same for the SNES. Then 256x192 should have been used on the GBA and DS, and we'd have a uniform, square pixel transition that would have yielded far more portable versions of the games we love without any graphical cropping or defects.

Gil_Hamilton wrote:SMS ALSO supported 256*224, for the record, which was unique to the SMS and is the resolution used in (almost) all SMS games.

The "SMS used square pixels" argument is misleading at best.

Whatever, wikipedia doesn't go into this much detail. The entire era was just a mess of arbitrary rectangular choices, but it's nice to know chips were made that could do square.

kick wrote:...or Laser TV (LaserVue) which is nothing but old-fashioned Trinitron CRT technology with high-powered laser diodes in place of the electron guns.Beats anything out there,including OLED.

Laservue is a form of DLP rear-projection (I think). As such, it is going to have a hard time competing against plasma and LCD, let alone OLED. Its performance is comparable to the latest plasmas. Contrast is similar to current plasmas. Its viewing angles are poor like LCD and no match for plasma and OLED. It's nowhere near as thin as OLED, it's cost to manufacture won't go down as fast. There is apparently a "sparkling" issue that consumers have complained about. And worst of all, it can't be scaled down to small sizes like OLED can. Who the hell would want to invest in this over something that has the potential to be sold in anything from phones to billboards? This is merely rear-projection's last gasp, it is going to get toasted by cheap direct-display technologies before OLED even has a chance to.

tetsuo55 · Post by **tetsuo55** » Mon Jan 26, 2009 4:58 pm

Just played Chrono Trigger on the DS.

Audio is VERY different, and they didn't bother to fix the aspect ratio.

Looks like Square/Nintendo do not really care about having it look and sound like it did on the snes.

They did however make a great port, using the touchscreen for all menu/battle stuff is pretty handy

blargg · Post by **blargg** » Mon Jan 26, 2009 5:48 pm

FitzRoy wrote:
Gil_Hamilton wrote:But.... the Genesis doesn't have square pixels either..
The 320x224 mode was close enough that you could port the game to a modern device without having to redo all of the original artwork. Even if Nintendo couldn't foresee the portable market in 1983, they should have at least wanted to make it easier for artists by having as close to square pixels as possible. The Master System had 256x192, why couldn't Nintendo?

You're ignoring the fact that 256x192 almost definitely had black borders on the top and bottom, rather than vertically scaling the image. TVs are not multisync displays; the number of scanlines is fixed, and the game system is what determines how much of the width those 256 columns fill. Having more than 256 pixels across would have complicated the hardware register interface, and vertical resampling is out of the question. They could have shrunk the image horizontally so that pixels came out square, but then there would have been black borders on the sides, and a more color fringing.