Should I bother with Saturn emulation?

blackmyst · Post by **blackmyst** » Mon Feb 12, 2007 10:09 pm

Should I, considering I'm moderately concerned about having my experience spoiled by missing transparency effects, palette errors, missing sounds and other such glitches?

From what I've seen the best two right now are SSF and Satourne. Any opinions?

Post by **Agozer** » Mon Feb 12, 2007 11:34 pm

Yes, you should bother yourself with it, especially with SSF.

Deathlike2 · Post by **Deathlike2** » Mon Feb 12, 2007 11:50 pm

I paid attention to the SNES scene even when it had inaccurate sound, and no transparancies. Minor gripes mind you, but I was still able to play the games.

blackmyst · Post by **blackmyst** » Tue Feb 13, 2007 12:32 am

Maybe I should have worded my post better: I'd like to hear about the state of Saturn emulation from anyone with some experience. Is it anywhere near PSX levels?

clessoulis · Post by **clessoulis** » Tue Feb 13, 2007 4:50 am

Not nearly as good as psx emulation. I like Yabause because its constantly update and probably likly to be the most promising.

Gil_Hamilton · Post by **Gil_Hamilton** » Tue Feb 13, 2007 6:24 am

SSF is worth using.
*affixes Seal of Quality(tm)*

It requires a decent machine, though.
3GHz P4 or an Athlon64 3200+ at the minimum.

Post by **grinvader** » Tue Feb 13, 2007 1:32 pm

Gil_Hamilton wrote:

Please, feel free to leech from me in these cases.

alexz721 · Post by **alexz721** » Tue Feb 13, 2007 4:43 pm

Deathlike2 wrote:I paid attention to the SNES scene even when it had...and no transparancies.

Haha, I remember those days. It was hell playing underwater levels, let me tell you.

sweener2001 · Post by **sweener2001** » Tue Feb 13, 2007 9:24 pm

panzer dragoon saga

Panzer88 · Post by **Panzer88** » Tue Feb 13, 2007 9:58 pm

there are a couple, SSF works for me the best now and I'm quite an avid saturn player. There is compatability for great games like panzer dragoon saga etc. It is nowhere near the PSX scene though, and some of my favorite games like Astal (see my pic) do not run at all on any Saturn emulators.

casualsax3 · Post by **casualsax3** » Tue Feb 13, 2007 10:34 pm

I found a 66GB torrent with every US Saturn game - so I'll definitely be bothering.

Panzer88 · Post by **Panzer88** » Wed Feb 14, 2007 1:38 am

I wonder how compressed it is, for uncompressed that would be too small.

casualsax3 · Post by **casualsax3** » Wed Feb 14, 2007 3:48 am

Astal (which I own) is 529 MB for example. I'll put the CD in later and see how big it actually is. Keep in mind that there weren't too many US Saturn releases.

Panzer88 · Post by **Panzer88** » Wed Feb 14, 2007 4:53 am

right, I still play my actual saturn more, the emulators still don't have full emulation, but give em a try!

SonGoku1905 · Post by **SonGoku1905** » Wed Feb 14, 2007 7:14 am

I had 'bothered' with Saturn emulation a lot in the past but after some time I got fed up and quit. Saturn emulation is very inaccurate compared to N64 or Psx emulation and my 2.2 Ghz pc with 128 MB Radeon card is not enough for getting good performance.Even DC games have better performance
It's because of the diffferent structure that it's a multi-processor console.
It's harder to emulate it, as far as I know, although it's old, it needs hell a lot of cpu power . Also it's games are very big and need to be mounted on a virtual drive ....Look at N64,you open the list , select the Zelda Oot which is 32 mb, click on it and play...wow...
Not much worth it unless you have lots of time and patience or a die-hard Saturn fanatic, I think

sweener2001 · Post by **sweener2001** » Wed Feb 14, 2007 8:42 am

panzer dragoon saga

nights

Snark · Post by **Snark** » Wed Feb 14, 2007 11:13 am

SonGoku1905 wrote:I had 'bothered' with Saturn emulation a lot in the past but after some time I got fed up and quit. Saturn emulation is very inaccurate compared to N64

Somehow, I doubt that. Speed + compatibility does not necesaarily reflect accuracy.

Seems the N64 allows for a lot of "high level" emulation. Apparently, becaus the games are coded in C. (or so says Wikipedia). I doubt Saturn emulators are similarly innacurate, first because the Saturn may not be a good console to use HLE and secondly because it's probably not the goal of emulators such as SSF to be coded in such ways. That being said I have no way of knowing just accurate or not Saturn emulation is...Just saying it's highly unlikely it's less accurate than N64

I never tried SSF (system too weak) but this is the most up to date SSF compatibility I found (Just a few days old)

http://www.segasaturn.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SSF_%28emulator%29
(Homepage ) http://www7a.biglobe.ne.jp/%7Ephantasy/ssf/index.html

It's compatibilty is in the 80-90% range... It looks like many people have the old picture of many years ago where you were lucky if a Saturn emulator could boot the Bios. Looks like Saturn emulation has been making great progress, it just went unoticed for some reason.

Also it's games are very big and need to be mounted on a virtual drive ....

Virtual drives are great, even if you have the original disc. And the size is no big deal to dl (since we're probably not talking about ripping your own disc) for anyone on ADSL/cable.

Snark · Post by **Snark** » Wed Feb 14, 2007 1:06 pm

Well, I've just tested SSF and the emulator simply rocks.

-Very good compatibility (see link)
-Full screen support with vsync option
-Scanline option
-Joypad support
-Can work without the Bios (although probably not recommended)
-Autoframeskip support for those that don't have a 4Ghz cpu.

-An option to select, more or less, the level of compatibility (basically affecting accuracy and speed I suppose)

I tested one game only but no sound or graphic glitch were present.

And man...does the Saturn version of Symphony of the Night destroy the Psx one or what.

So yes, I think to answer the first post: Anyone with a (very) fast PC SHOULD most definitely bother with Saturn emulation...as there were gems on that console (just don't overlook some of the imports that never made it outside Japan)

edit: For the record my PC is an average P4 2.4. Games play full speed but frameskip is pretty severe...ranging between 2 to 10+ frameskip...and that's on the "lowest compatibility" Looks like bsnes has a good competitor in term of emulator needing high specs :D

Snark · Post by **Snark** » Wed Feb 14, 2007 1:59 pm

blackmyst · Post by **blackmyst** » Wed Feb 14, 2007 3:58 pm

Gil_Hamilton wrote:SSF is worth using.
*affixes Seal of Quality(tm)*

It requires a decent machine, though.
3GHz P4 or an Athlon64 3200+ at the minimum.

That's me. :)

Minimum, as in, minimum to reach full speed?

Anyways, thanks for all the good replies.

clessoulis · Post by **clessoulis** » Thu Feb 15, 2007 5:16 am

Seriously who the fuck likes scanlines?
It doesnt accuratly represent a tv and just looks like shit on a moniter.

Deathlike2 · Post by **Deathlike2** » Thu Feb 15, 2007 5:30 am

clessoulis wrote:Seriously who the fuck likes scanlines?
It doesnt accuratly represent a tv and just looks like shit on a moniter.

I wouldn't know why, but they do for some strange reason.

Snark · Post by **Snark** » Thu Feb 15, 2007 6:09 am

clessoulis wrote:Seriously who the fuck likes scanlines?
It doesnt accuratly represent a tv and just looks like shit on a moniter.

Well, it's the only thing that could be considered a filter on SSF. It's better than nothing. Pure unfiltered image is even worse. Anyone that ever played the Nes on a monitor without filters know what I means. No (older) TV will produce images that are this pixellated and clear..

Gil_Hamilton · Post by **Gil_Hamilton** » Thu Feb 15, 2007 6:39 am

Snark wrote:
SonGoku1905 wrote:I had 'bothered' with Saturn emulation a lot in the past but after some time I got fed up and quit. Saturn emulation is very inaccurate compared to N64
Somehow, I doubt that. Speed + compatibility does not necesaarily reflect accuracy.

Seems the N64 allows for a lot of "high level" emulation. Apparently, becaus the games are coded in C. (or so says Wikipedia).

Wikipedia is funny.

I doubt Saturn emulators are similarly innacurate, first because the Saturn may not be a good console to use HLE and secondly because it's probably not the goal of emulators such as SSF to be coded in such ways.

I suspect HLE would be difficult to do given the system architecture.
Not that HLE is accurate emulation.

I never tried SSF (system too weak) but this is the most up to date SSF compatibility I found (Just a few days old)

http://www.segasaturn.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SSF_%28emulator%29
(Homepage ) http://www7a.biglobe.ne.jp/%7Ephantasy/ssf/index.html

It's compatibilty is in the 80-90% range... It looks like many people have the old picture of many years ago where you were lucky if a Saturn emulator could boot the Bios. Looks like Saturn emulation has been making great progress, it just went unoticed for some reason.

2 reasons no one noticed.
One is the Saturn isn't that popular. The other is that SSF is a japanese emu(though quite usable for english speakers).

blackmyst wrote:
Gil_Hamilton wrote:SSF is worth using.
*affixes Seal of Quality(tm)*

It requires a decent machine, though.
3GHz P4 or an Athlon64 3200+ at the minimum.
That's me.

Minimum, as in, minimum to reach full speed?

Anyways, thanks for all the good replies.

Yes.
My machine is a tad short of that(Sempron 2800) and I could hit full speed in several games.
Others slowed to a crawl. I gather it's mainly because SSF is dependent on SSE3, and my proc was the last to not have SSE3.

I need to test the latest version, as it's suposed to be much faster.

blackmyst · Post by **blackmyst** » Thu Feb 15, 2007 10:05 am

clessoulis wrote:Seriously who the fuck likes scanlines?
It doesnt accuratly represent a tv and just looks like shit on a moniter.

....somehow I don't think you've played very many consoles on a lot of different configurations. The fact simply is that the way a low-resolution image is transmitted to a screen produces these lines. Yes, sometimes they're so close together and hidden by the phosphor glow that they're virtually invisible. But try a few different TV's and you're bound to get to one where they show up clearly. And use an RGB cable with a PSX for example, and they'll will be so in your face it's almost as if you're looking at Zsnes with 100% scanlines on.

My SNES has a 50/60hz switch, and it's interesting to see how when you flip it from 50 to 60, the image gets "stretched" vertically and the spaces between the lines become a lot more visible.

Anyway, who the fuck likes scanlines? Me. Well, combined with interpolation anyway. They give the illusion of a higher resolution in a way that that ugly HQxX never could, and break up the raw pixels and produce an end result more like a "image" instead of a tiled mosaic. Of course, if you're sitting with your face 2 inches from the screen, anything will look bad, because it's an old game at sub-320x240. That's your own fault. You don't do that with a real console either.