SNES4All / SuperFamicast

Printable View

October 5th, 2005, 22:46
Christuserloeser

SNES4All / SuperFamicast

Quote:

Originally Posted by chui

What do you think about another SuperNintendo emulator for Dreamcast?

I think that this is a fantastic idea!

I'd like to ask you to please get in contact with Scherzo (SuperFamicast) for this. Maybe he'd like to join the SNES4All team ? I think a team of great coders that love the SNES could really create a fantastic SNES emu for the Dreamcast. I also like 'SuperFamicast' as a name for a SNES emu.

I think you really should start with porting the DreamSNES source code from Libdream to KOS. I know they did a fantastic amount of optimizations to the DreamSNES code. It even surpassed SNES9x v1.38 which DreamSNES is based on by far!
They also made some improvements (DreamSNES v0.99) that never were released publically, so maybe that would be even a lot better than starting from scratch with the current SNES9x source.

I really recommend DreamSNES to start with. There are only very minor disadvantages compared to the current SNES9x version. DreamSNES really is highly compatible!

Scherzo already stood in contact with Marcus Comstedt, maybe he could ask him for the full DreamSNES source code. Afaik, there currently is only the SH4 65c816 CPU core implemented into the SNES9x CVS.
I know the DreamSNES team is interested in releasing the source. In late 2004 Peter Bortas wrote that a new DreamSNES release will only happen if "someone gets a lot of spare time: Note that parts of DreamSNES are slowly being integrated into the Snes9X upstream source. The SH4 assembler core is already there in the latest WIP release. - Peter Bortas"

Anyway, I wish you all the best with this project :)
October 6th, 2005, 07:21
obelisk

hoorah to this. i was thinking of noting something about how there's the other stuff to work with. and i know chui is one bad ass dude and so is scherzo, and so is the dreamsnes people. Let's have em get together one bad ass Snes emu. Then, they can shoot for hella complex junk, like Vic20, C64, Intellivision, and more.
here's to dreams, Chris. may they come true, and on the system with dream in the name.
October 6th, 2005, 20:45
Coagulus

I thought c64 was done? Frodo seems to run fine apart from not liking Turrican!
October 6th, 2005, 22:14
ron

yeah it's being time to join an international team , snes is a pendent emu for DC
October 7th, 2005, 01:33
obelisk

okay, please help me then. Coagulus, where do you live, and what settings did you use, and what version? FrodoDC crashes on me like a rockstar with 90 cocktails and a ferrari. i think it runs better in europe than in the us. or somehing, every time i would load a game, it would glitch and shut down the dc/ reset it. i live in northern california, i know there's settings, (PAL and NTSC) but i don't know what to do. i would much rather there be a C=64 emu that ran as nice as DCaSTaway, and a vic20 and intellivision, and the rest as easy to run as that one is. and i also think it's time for a stella facelift and speed up, and atari 800/ 5200 for a facelift, and savegame/ virtual disk via vmu, for rpg saves, and pinball construction kit designs, and Dungeon Maker dungeons.
the cpc, spectrum and other euro systems i would love them to be re-wrapped and fine tuned so that myself, and the other US people can enjoy them, i really need to know exact file extensions and file limits though, so i can use em.
October 11th, 2005, 04:30
1stvinicius

Good idea Man! Im sure that a team with Chui and those guys will finnaly Get Street Fighter Alpha 2 emulated on dreamcast at a minimum of 50 fps! Yeah dude. woa! heyho les'go!
October 11th, 2005, 16:22
chui

I propose Fox68k as project manager for the new supernintendo emulator team. His technical capacity is awesome and he perfectly speak english and spanish.

I think that we need next steps:

1- Decide a project manager.
2- Join members: coders, testers, etc..
3- Collect source codes, technical notes, ideas and comments.
4- Analyze and integrate code.
5- Resources: website, ftp and forum.
6- Coding, tunning and testing.

Anybody propose another project manager or another steps?
October 11th, 2005, 17:33
fox68k

Errr... well... many people is interested in a good Super NES emulator for DC and since Chui is currently heading several projects, that decision could be ok.

I am currently trying to focus my efforts in a fast Z80 emulator. The scene really lacks in this point and many emulators could benefit from this work.

I am going to start studing machine components and source codes. It would be nice to see DreamSNES source code released. I hope someone around there could help us. Chui also did a good work setting up a SNES emulator for DC.

Anyway, the team will probably need Chui's coding skills as much as we need have lunch everyday.
October 11th, 2005, 17:48
quzar

The DreamSNES source code has been released.

Personally, I think that more time should be given to scherzo with Superfamicast before too much effort is put into this because when the next version comes out it will be significantly faster.

Better to re-focus efforts on already started projects than to start new ones.

Better yet, if you want to start writing another asm cpu emulator, why not try sh2? It would probably be possible in very little code, since it would mostly require only interception of data addresses and endian conversion.
October 11th, 2005, 21:41
bender

wow quzar, I didn't know about the dreamsnes source code been released...so there'll be at least a new version of superfamicast merging dsnes code, I guess :)
I think quzar is right here. There's a lot of work already done for SC and with the dsnes code merged you all will win a lot of time if you don't have to work on things that are already done ;)
fox, what about a sound cpu core in sh asm? (after the faze, and if you want for fun of course... ;) I think this is one of the biggest things that dsnes needed

thank you guys
October 11th, 2005, 22:55
quzar

Quote:

Originally Posted by bender

wow quzar, I didn't know about the dreamsnes source code been released...so there'll be at least a new version of superfamicast merging dsnes code, I guess :)
I think quzar is right here. There's a lot of work already done for SC and with the dsnes code merged you all will win a lot of time if you don't have to work on things that are already done ;)
fox, what about a sound cpu core in sh asm? (after the faze, and if you want for fun of course... ;) I think this is one of the biggest things that dsnes needed

thank you guys

it's called superfamicast v2.
October 11th, 2005, 23:37
bender

sorry. I was under the impression that dsnes was a bit faster and I mixed things in my head :(
I knew that the main cpu source code was released a while ago but not the whole thing :p
thanks
October 12th, 2005, 04:43
1stvinicius

Can I join the team?

I know Im asking too much but i'd like to be in this project on GUI/Artwork. I got some work made here. if you want i can send it to you chui. Take look at http://www.cdcovers.cc/covers.php to see one of my cd covers for the old IMR neo cd emu.
October 12th, 2005, 13:09
chui

Everybody can join the team, of course. But first, we need accept a project manager and decide that can make.

I'm thinking develop a new SDL menu system for all emus, when i will finish, i will avise you.
October 12th, 2005, 14:13
1stvinicius

Quote:

Originally Posted by chui

Everybody can join the team, of course. But first, we need accept a project manager and decide that can make.

I'm thinking develop a new SDL menu system for all emus, when i will finish, i will avise you.

Thats great! thanks man :) Hey, are you two, Chui and Quzar, working together already? If not you should start right away guys...
October 12th, 2005, 15:17
quzar

I've been told that before and have my reasons not to. Our emulators fork in completely different paths from the original port. Mine attempts to be as low level as possible and use absolutely no faking to gain speed (underclocking, frameskip, etc) whereas chui has gone higher level, adding more layers above SDL and using the much larger fame cpu emulator.

The difference between them can be seen greatly in the difference in the total bin size, with neo4all being up to 4x larger than NeoDC(depending on the versions). I feel that taking up as little space as possible will be a great help when I get MVS/CPS/taito_* games running as I will have that much more space availible to me. I don't know Chui's specific plans or design path for the emulator, but simply from the sources I can tell it deviates greatly from this.
October 12th, 2005, 15:55
1stvinicius

Quote:

Originally Posted by quzar

I've been told that before and have my reasons not to. Our emulators fork in completely different paths from the original port. Mine attempts to be as low level as possible and use absolutely no faking to gain speed (underclocking, frameskip, etc) whereas chui has gone higher level, adding more layers above SDL and using the much larger fame cpu emulator.

The difference between them can be seen greatly in the difference in the total bin size, with neo4all being up to 4x larger than NeoDC(depending on the versions). I feel that taking up as little space as possible will be a great help when I get MVS/CPS/taito_* games running as I will have that much more space availible to me. I don't know Chui's specific plans or design path for the emulator, but simply from the sources I can tell it deviates greatly from this.

Theres nothing to be called faking on neo4all quzar.. the real fact is that his program is an almost perfect neocd console inside dreamcast... you must admit it. you two could come to deal to make these things faster and better.
October 16th, 2005, 03:55
fox68k

Quote:

Originally Posted by bender

fox, what about a sound cpu core in sh asm? (after the faze, and if you want for fun of course... ;) I think this is one of the biggest things that dsnes needed

thank you guys

We should profile the emulator first. In adittion, sound is not the main goal. I prefer optimize other things.

Anyway... who knows what my future holds? ;)
October 16th, 2005, 08:24
Christuserloeser

I propose to get Scherzo on board too. He got contact to Marcus Comstedt and lots of expierence with SuperFamicast. The menu system he works on for NesterSE uses Flash, maybe that's an option for SNES4All/SuperFamicast v3 too ? I remember him mentioning that he planned to use it for a future version of SuperFamicast back when he first got Flash to work on DC. Iirc, he also speaks Spanish. :)

Quzar: I am not sure if the DreamSNES source has already been completly released... I think it's (still) only the SH4 CPU core ?!
October 16th, 2005, 17:40
quzar

It doesn't use flash and superfamicast v3 will be finished way before this gets to any usable stage.

Yes, but that was the important part of it, according to them most of the rest were minor things.