State of SNES Emulation - 2010

[Gil_Hamilton]

http://byuu.org/articles/bsnes-future
Looks like everything came to a head here. I had a good chuckle reading this article, which is full of hyperbole and outright false statements. Too bad that byuu doesn't realize that bsnes isn't popular because he is a jerk with an inflated sense of self importance, and he turns off the very people who should be the biggest backers of the emulator (e.g. me).

I thought it was more interesting how well it mirrored MKendora's rant when he "quit the scene."

Just replace "no one cares to do it" with "no one cares I did it."

...

Actually, I believe we were assured that MKendora's rants were baseless and he was blind to reality, too.

That said, byuu is acting like a little pussy here. If you put your program out on the internet, there's bound to be people being assholes about it. It'd be best to just ignore the haters, and work on what you want.

That's actually exactly what he's doing. He's still developing bsnes, just not even bothering with all the features he doesn't care about or trying to maintain a horrific cross-platform GUI.
And no longer bothering with trying to convince anyone of anything.

At the same time, the straw that broke the camel's back for him is just... ugh. Yes, that project should have used MSU-1, but I doubt that guy knew about it when he began working.

I was ugh on that too.
Really, expecting any sort of rationality from good old-fashioned Square whores...

[Sessh]

Well, at least byuu doesn't have an ego. Oh wait...

I just went looking for the last BSNES version to have movie support and couldn't find a single download place, not even on byuu's site. Did he just take all the old versions down as well? I did stumble onto one of his version release threads and saw him whining in there too. "No matter what I do, someone has a problem with it" and other like comments. I guess he thinks he's perfect and his ego can't handle it when someone points something out or has a suggestion. It seems BSNES has speed problems and has a high CPU requirement.

Oh well, was going to give it a look for accuracy's sake. I'm much more content sticking by ZSNES as the accuracy of this emulator increases. I can't say I've played a game on it and had any problems other than in-game saving, but maybe I'm just playing the right games. Heh

[kode54]

Yes, he deletes old versions. And the current version, at least with the supported Phoenix GUI, has no support for movies. (The Qt GUI still supports that.)

[badinsults]

Much of the ZSNES team is acidic as well, yet you don't see people stop using ZSNES because the devs are assholes.

it probably has something to do with the subliminal drugs^W^W^W what was i saying already

I think it is pretty obvious why they are assholes. Look, they are still using VI!

[kode54]

I prefer vim to nano when using a remote shell, and sometimes on local systems as well. On the other hand, I was using KWrite for code editing the last time I was using Linux on my desktop system.

[I.S.T.]

Well, at least byuu doesn't have an ego. Oh wait...

I just went looking for the last BSNES version to have movie support and couldn't find a single download place, not even on byuu's site. Did he just take all the old versions down as well? I did stumble onto one of his version release threads and saw him whining in there too. "No matter what I do, someone has a problem with it" and other like comments. I guess he thinks he's perfect and his ego can't handle it when someone points something out or has a suggestion. It seems BSNES has speed problems and has a high CPU requirement.

Oh well, was going to give it a look for accuracy's sake. I'm much more content sticking by ZSNES as the accuracy of this emulator increases. I can't say I've played a game on it and had any problems other than in-game saving, but maybe I'm just playing the right games. Heh

The CPU requirements aren't that high.

[Sessh]

Yes, he deletes old versions. And the current version, at least with the supported Phoenix GUI, has no support for movies. (The Qt GUI still supports that.)

Yeah, I know. That's why I wanted to find the last one that did have it.

The CPU requirements aren't that high.

Ah, just what I was seeing from people who were using it. It seemed that it uses a good amount of system resources and had a lot of slowdown during emulation from what I saw, but I haven't used it so that's all I have to go by.

<pagefault> i'd break up with my wife if she said FF8 was awesome

I know you didn't write this originally, but it gets a chuckle out of me every time I read it. FFVIII sucked so bad that I didn't even play IX. I still haven't gotten motivated to play it yet since it's long and new to me. I actually thought VIII was average until I saw the ending, then I was pissed that I put all that time into it. The best part of the ending had nothing to do with the story which was the camcorder part. The real ending had maybe 10 words in it and made no sense. Triple Triad was probably the most fun out of everything, though.

[I.S.T.]

FF9 is a very different game. The only real thing in common it has is the graphics engine and the concept of turn based battle.

Anyway, bsnes used to use a shitload of CPU, but for the last 20 someodd versions, it's been fairly fast. Basically any Athlon 64 could run it, along with many other lower end CPUs from the last few years.

[Rashidi]

but i sure enjoy my popcorn, whenever mudlord .vs. byuu on codes optimizing 'talk'.

[Gil_Hamilton]

I did stumble onto one of his version release threads and saw him whining in there too. "No matter what I do, someone has a problem with it" and other like comments. I guess he thinks he's perfect and his ego can't handle it when someone points something out or has a suggestion.

Or he's sick of dancing around Qt for months to implement a feature, only to be told he did it wrong by one loudmouth, that he should take it out because it's a horrible idea by another loudmouth, and that he should've done some other feature instead by a third loudmouth. And the people he put the feature in to appease... don't care.

That's why something as dumb as a Chrono Trigger hack that only works in a hacked ZSNES was the final straw. It's an uncommonly apt analogy this time. Usually the "final straw" is something big, but this time it was something trivial and straw-like.

Oh well, was going to give it a look for accuracy's sake. I'm much more content sticking by ZSNES as the accuracy of this emulator increases. I can't say I've played a game on it and had any problems other than in-game saving, but maybe I'm just playing the right games. Heh

Not playing Mario RPG, then?

The CPU requirements aren't that high.

Ah, just what I was seeing from people who were using it. It seemed that it uses a good amount of system resources and had a lot of slowdown during emulation from what I saw, but I haven't used it so that's all I have to go by.

It's worth noting that at this point there are THREE different cores in bsnes.
The new high-accuracy core with the per-pixel renderer, the one that runs Air Strike Patrol correctly, IS pretty power-hungry.

The old mainline core is quite reasonable. I can get better than full speed on my overclocked E2140, which is well overdue for an update.

The new high-speed core will run full-speed on a netbook. What more can you ask?


You've also hit one of byuu's long-standing gripes. bsnes is just "the really slow SNES emu" because, well, the early releases WERE really slow. They aren't now, but he can't shake that reputation.

[magitek369]

Not playing Mario RPG, then?

I own the original.

I can understand the desire for accuracy in emulation, but when the majority of games are already playable, it's not hard to see why his crusade didn't attract many followers.

[grinvader]

Not playing Mario RPG, then? :P

hahahahahahaha

sigh ;_;

It's worth noting that at this point there are THREE different cores in bsnes.
The new high-accuracy core with the per-pixel renderer, the one that runs Air Strike Patrol correctly, IS pretty power-hungry.

The old mainline core is quite reasonable. I can get better than full speed on my overclocked E2140, which is well overdue for an update.

The new high-speed core will run full-speed on a netbook. What more can you ask?

The accuracy of the high-accuracy core with the speed of the high-speed core. OBVIOUSLY if I have to sacrifice accuracy for speed, might as well go with the other emus that have better features for similar accuracy abilities.

And no, it's not impossible. That's where design kicks in, and the fact that it's impossible using his design doesn't rule out everything else (but the fanbois have a hard time understanding that due to having a large p◯n◯s jammed down their face).



sigh

I really have to find more free time.

They aren't now, but he can't shake that reputation.

It's still the slowest snes emu all around. See above the "hey, i become faster when i drop accuracy that was my initial goal !!" issue.

[Sessh]

Or he's sick of dancing around Qt for months to implement a feature, only to be told he did it wrong by one loudmouth, that he should take it out because it's a horrible idea by another loudmouth, and that he should've done some other feature instead by a third loudmouth. And the people he put the feature in to appease... don't care.

I see your point, but he should probably just tell those people to fuck off instead of taking a bunch of stuff out of it as if it was a giant F-U to everyone using BSNES including the ones who were happy with it. I saw one site where BSNES for the Mac had over 175,000 downloads, so I don't know where he gets 7,000 from. Anyways, it seems a little extreme, but I guess that's easy for me to say since I'm not him. You can't please everyone. It's impossible, I tried once upon a time. He seems to take it all personally and that only wears you down. Makes that straw easier to snap as soon as the wind changes direction.

It's worth noting that at this point there are THREE different cores in bsnes.
The new high-accuracy core with the per-pixel renderer, the one that runs Air Strike Patrol correctly, IS pretty power-hungry.

The old mainline core is quite reasonable. I can get better than full speed on my overclocked E2140, which is well overdue for an update.

The new high-speed core will run full-speed on a netbook. What more can you ask?


You've also hit one of byuu's long-standing gripes. bsnes is just "the really slow SNES emu" because, well, the early releases WERE really slow. They aren't now, but he can't shake that reputation.

I tried out the new BSNES version last night for a few minutes with F-Zero and it seemed decent, but I'm all into N64 games ATM and not playing SNES at all. I'll probably mess with it some more later on, but I miss the movie feature. As far as the slow thing goes, that was just based on reading other people's opinions and not from personal use. F-Zero ran fine, but I will mess with it more.

Mario RPG? Nope, don't even have the ROM. The last Mario game I played through was SMW and then I just got burnt out with Mario and there are games I'd rather play than that. If I do play it, I know to use BSNES.

[IglooBob]

I see your point, but he should probably just tell those people to fuck off instead of taking a bunch of stuff out of it as if it was a giant F-U to everyone using BSNES including the ones who were happy with it.

He didn't take anything out, the Qt version is still intact and current. He's just only releasing binaries for the phoenix version which has a minimalistic gui and feature set.

[ehasis]

Looks like the State of SNES Emulation -2010 will have a curious end. What you guys have to say about the http://byuu.org/articles/decap ? It's good stuff or bad stuff?

And looks like BSNES managed emulate DSP-3:

[adventure_of_link]

if it matters, badinsults wrote an article on the recently leaked beta of "Firearm"... good stuff.

[Gil_Hamilton]

Looks like the State of SNES Emulation -2010 will have a curious end. What you guys have to say about the http://byuu.org/articles/decap ? It's good stuff or bad stuff?

And looks like BSNES managed emulate DSP-3:

So... we now know (for a fact) the specific processor used, and have images of the internal ROMs they're programmed with. AND have a working core running(albeit one that's still got a few bugs).
It's ALREADY exposed inaccuracies in the existing DSP-1 emulation, in addition to making the rest of them emulatable.

How could actual emulation of the entire DSP-x family of coprocessors be anything BUT good stuff?

[mudlord88]

I eagerly await until the SNES is 100% emulated. Then it would be very interesting to see what byuu attempts next....

[I.S.T.]

I eagerly await until the SNES is 100% emulated. Then it would be very interesting to see what byuu attempts next....

I never fucking thought I'd hear you say those words.

[mudlord88]

Why?

I am entitled to have differing opinions sometimes? Or am I not allowed? >.>

[jj_frap]

Byuu's brilliant; it's too bad is charisma score's not a bit higher. His contributions to SNES emulation and preservation are laudable (and do not have the reputation they deserve both because of his acerbic personality and because BSNES has been typecasted as the slow emulator...A $500 CAD lappy can run that sonbitch at nearly 3x fullspeed using the compatibility core) and his attempts to consolidate the SNES community around single standards with respect to things like ROM formats, file names, and patch files are appreciated by far too few. The guy's right about pretty much everything, has the accomplishments to prove it, and is able to attract brilliant minds from outside of the SNES emulation community (i.e. Dr. Decap) to take his craft to the next level. It's just unfortunate that he's had to burn so many bridges to accomplish what he has and that he takes so much so personality.

[grinvader]

- it's not a standard when it's just one guy yelling really loud
- you are not qualified to determine if "the guy" is right or not, especially about everything
- his accomplishments prove many things, good and bad
- burning bridges doesn't accomplish much
- noone likes boring stuff when better alternatives are present
- amount of characters / usefulness ratio too high - core dumped

[badinsults]

Yeah, that is basically the thing I stated in my original article. Byuu's attitude is largely "my way or the highway", and it is not constructive. And his "standards" are not necessarily perfect either. He has recently acknowledged that UPS (a largely unnecessary format when it comes to SNES patches) is imperfect. Many people see MSU-1 as an unnecessary add-on that is unlikely to see wide use due to its obscurity. It is awesome he has created an emulator that by and large simulates the SNES hardware with a high level of accuracy, but there is a reason why zsnes is still a popular program, especially in places like Brazil. I don't have $500 laying around to purchase a new laptop that can play bsnes, myself.

[DataPath]

And his "standards" are not necessarily perfect either. He has recently acknowledged that UPS (a largely unnecessary format when it comes to SNES patches) is imperfect. Many people see MSU-1 as an unnecessary add-on that is unlikely to see wide use due to its obscurity.

Yeah, no one likes a primadonna, but gotta give him props for actually going out and doing something. Too many people sit around and whine, but do nothing. Byuu at least whined and DID something, which makes him ~100.5 times better than the whiny useless chumps.

[badinsults]

I don't think anyone was whining about the capacity limitations of the SNES, considering that the homebrew scene is non-existent (and still is, despite the existence of MSU-1). If someone wants a homebrew scene for the SNES, they should poke the author of SNAsm, and convince him to finish porting it to Linux and Windows.