how come there's not much development in the "next gen" consoles such as saturn, psx, n64 in the like past year.. .

anyreason for these? I mean epsxe and pj64 are pretty decent but there can still bel alot of develompnetns left to do

Probably because the same people who worked on PSX and N64 emulators were the same authors who had no qualms about emulating systems for which games were still being developed, so now they're working on emulating the PS2 and GameCube.

Probably because the entire lot of them as above said they were attention grabbers for new systems.

BUT...

I think there is an even larger reason. General stupidity and complacency. Take both Project64 and 1964 for example. Each has a strong backbone but are useless with out plugins. These plugins sadly are limiting and can only go so far. PJ64 1.5 had a good year or so lead over 1964 0.99 release from a year ago. 1964 claimed it would be the best, yet they lied and just bet the farm off the stupid RICE plugin. If you inject the plugin into PJ64, both run all the same shit just as well as the other does.

Disgusting no?

This is an issue with both the N64 and PSX and sadly I doubt unless someone who is not incompetent shows up to correct the problem and makes a full on non-plugin bullshit emulator for either system it will never get any better.

You see so many people doing emus for systems that have already been as well emulated as can be ( Atari, Nes, genesis, etc. ). Why bother doing something that's already been done, and done better most times? Focus that energy and knowledge into something that's still in need of attention, as is the case with PSX and N64.

I know, i know, it's a completly different thing writing an Atari emu and writing an N64 emu, but i'm sure there's plenty of people out there with the brains to take on the task.

I dream of a day with emus for N64-PSX-Saturn at the same level as Zsnes or gens today.


Gives us a kiss precious.

Two reasons I bet.
1) Popularity (with fanboys to get attention)
2) Laziness (easy to copy another and add a feature than new)

I don't care about xbox or ps2 emu now since I know my sytem can't run it properly at decent speed.

but i DO want to run the games I bought for n64 and psx on my computer as I no longer have or keep the system plugged into my TV

with N64 I think HLE and hacks took it as far as possible, true emulation would be slow, unpopular and 'look like crap' to the kiddies, anybody who wrote one would probably be flamed to death like mamedev get for the 'slow drivers'

Last time I checked PSX seemed pretty well covered between the emus, with the vast catalogue of games the PSX had there are bound to be a couple of games that don't work without 100% exact emulation, again more difficult when using recompilers and hle techniques to speed things up.

> Probably because the entire lot of them as above said they were attention
> grabbers for new systems.
>
> BUT...
>
> I think there is an even larger reason. General stupidity and complacency.
> Take both Project64 and 1964 for example. Each has a strong backbone but are
> useless with out plugins. These plugins sadly are limiting and can only go so
> far. PJ64 1.5 had a good year or so lead over 1964 0.99 release from a year
> ago. 1964 claimed it would be the best, yet they lied and just bet the farm off
> the stupid RICE plugin. If you inject the plugin into PJ64, both run all the
> same shit just as well as the other does.
>
> Disgusting no?
>
> This is an issue with both the N64 and PSX and sadly I doubt unless someone who
> is not incompetent shows up to correct the problem and makes a full on
> non-plugin bullshit emulator for either system it will never get any better.
>
>


Tell Me Why You're Here, I Came To Disappear
http://haze.mame.net/

6-8Ghz needed? :-)


Gives us a kiss precious.

> 6-8Ghz needed? :-)
>
Its very hard/impossible to guess, but I'd have to say if you're looking at accurate emulation you'd be looking at around somewhere between the psx and seattle drivers in mame, edging towards the high end...

Six...

System16 - The Arcade Museum

> 6-8Ghz needed? :-)
>
>
> Gives us a kiss precious.
>

I don't think that even 1/2 of the N64's library is functional through emulation, and even less on a playable level.
Guess it's something to hope for in the next few years i guess.


Gives us a kiss precious.

Actually...I'd putit around 80% at perfect or near it playable, and another 5-10% usable with the latest Rice plugin using Project64 1.5(w/upgrade packs.)

Hell even Mystical Ninja which ran at 2-3fps outside is now running full rate after all these years. Game owns,better than Ocarina in some ways.

> with N64 I think HLE and hacks took it as far as possible, true emulation would
> be slow, unpopular and 'look like crap' to the kiddies, anybody who wrote one
> would probably be flamed to death like mamedev get for the 'slow drivers'
>
> Last time I checked PSX seemed pretty well covered between the emus, with the
> vast catalogue of games the PSX had there are bound to be a couple of games that
> don't work without 100% exact emulation, again more difficult when using
> recompilers and hle techniques to speed things up.


I don't want to sound ungrateful, I do appreciate all the PSX emulators out there, but there's one thing which winds me up about them. Maybe I'm not alone... it's the plug-in system.

When I download an emulator I don't want to spend half an hour paging through a whizzy Wizard, configuring Null gamepad adaptors and 'John Does optmized DX9 renderer', figuring out whether I need a IRQ hack or Audio CD sound. I just want it to work. Sometimes it feels like the user is doing half the programming to make the stupid thing work (ok slight exaggeration there!).

I mean, Nesticle, Genecyst, KGen, you downloaded it, selected a rom and then ran it. Simple as! It worked out of the box. I appreciate the fact that you need a BIOS with PSX, but surely that's only one more step.
Why this obsession with increasing amount of fluff and complexity? Why not just make the thing run out of the box? Would it be so hard?

Okay a plugin system has it's reasons for being there, but why not provide some sensible defaults so the user doesn't have to configure it so much?


> > Probably because the entire lot of them as above said they were attention
> > grabbers for new systems.
> >
> > BUT...
> >
> > I think there is an even larger reason. General stupidity and complacency.
> > Take both Project64 and 1964 for example. Each has a strong backbone but are
> > useless with out plugins. These plugins sadly are limiting and can only go so
> > far. PJ64 1.5 had a good year or so lead over 1964 0.99 release from a year
> > ago. 1964 claimed it would be the best, yet they lied and just bet the farm
> off
> > the stupid RICE plugin. If you inject the plugin into PJ64, both run all the
> > same shit just as well as the other does.
> >
> > Disgusting no?
> >
> > This is an issue with both the N64 and PSX and sadly I doubt unless someone
> who
> > is not incompetent shows up to correct the problem and makes a full on
> > non-plugin bullshit emulator for either system it will never get any better.
> >
> >
>
>
> Tell Me Why You're Here, I Came To Disappear
> http://haze.mame.net/
>


Emulation is the sincerest form of flattery

Plugin systems used to be a good idea but the only reason they appear to be there anymore is an easy cop out for quitters who can't do something themselves. N64 and PSX emulators prove that with all the crazy ass off the wall plugins that work for 1 game and not for 3 others. I don't think you sound like an ingrate in the least bit as I'm with you on that. All those systems have managed to do is complicate the crap out of PSX/N64 emulators and have caused them to stangnate for years.

I await the day some author will a nice set of brass balls has the nerve to just shovel out of nowhere a big fat N64 (or PSX) emu something title v1.0 that runs like 90% of shit on the first try and doesn't use one fucking plugin. I miss competence in emulation projects I really do.

Connectix Virtual Game Station did a great job of PSX emulation. It had great speed and compatibilty (ran full speed on my K6-3 400MHz), and it did all this without a plugin system and without the need for a PSX BIOS.
Too bad they got sued by Sony, and when Sony couldnt win in court, just bought out the emulation.

> how come there's not much development in the "next gen" consoles such as saturn,
> psx, n64 in the like past year.. .
>
> anyreason for these? I mean epsxe and pj64 are pretty decent but there can
> still bel alot of develompnetns left to do
>


-------------------------------------------------

> Plugin systems used to be a good idea but the only reason they appear to be
> there anymore is an easy cop out for quitters who can't do something themselves.

They are mainly useful for allowing more people to work on closed source emulators. It also allows you to switch between different rendering methods.

> I await the day some author will a nice set of brass balls has the nerve to just
> shovel out of nowhere a big fat N64 (or PSX) emu something title v1.0 that runs
> like 90% of shit on the first try and doesn't use one fucking plugin.

Thats the idea behind the code in MESS. No idea about the compatibility rate, but it will work the same everywhere. It's not finished yet, so no games are playable but you never know what may happen :-)

Unfortunately making it work on every platform in the same way you end up needing a more powerful computer & people don't seem to like that.

smf

> > Plugin systems used to be a good idea but the only reason they appear to be
> > there anymore is an easy cop out for quitters who can't do something
> themselves.
>
> They are mainly useful for allowing more people to work on closed source
> emulators. It also allows you to switch between different rendering methods.
>
> > I await the day some author will a nice set of brass balls has the nerve to
> just
> > shovel out of nowhere a big fat N64 (or PSX) emu something title v1.0 that
> runs
> > like 90% of shit on the first try and doesn't use one fucking plugin.
>
> Thats the idea behind the code in MESS. No idea about the compatibility rate,
> but it will work the same everywhere. It's not finished yet, so no games are
> playable but you never know what may happen :-)
>
> Unfortunately making it work on every platform in the same way you end up
> needing a more powerful computer & people don't seem to like that.
>
> smf

I dislike that (in general case of 'playing' game rather than simply preserving them) for completely different reasons. I don't want to have to get a new PC to play old games at a decent rate. (Or put it another way, I don't want my laptop burning my balls on highest performance setting... ;)

See I don't really mind high-level emulation of graphics, as long as it isn't too different from the original. That's just my personal opinion though, I do respect the ethos of MAME and MESS.


With N64 I agree that you do need something close to the MESS ethos to emulate it properly. With PSX, I'm not entirely convinced, I would guess you could HLE the graphics using OpenGL or DirectX 6 and still run every game without any kind of irritating plug-in configuration.

Feel free to correct me though, as I have never tried PSX emulation ;-)


Emulation is the sincerest form of flattery

> Connectix Virtual Game Station did a great job of PSX emulation. It had great
> speed and compatibilty (ran full speed on my K6-3 400MHz), and it did all this
> without a plugin system and without the need for a PSX BIOS.

There you go, see I thought it was feasible.
A happy medium between the ridiculous plug-in configurations of the 'popular' PSX emulators, and the extreme of MESS. Hmmm, now if only more talented PSX emu authors would actually DO it :-(



> Too bad they got sued by Sony, and when Sony couldnt win in court, just bought
> out the emulation.
>
> > how come there's not much development in the "next gen" consoles such as
> saturn,
> > psx, n64 in the like past year.. .
> >
> > anyreason for these? I mean epsxe and pj64 are pretty decent but there can
> > still bel alot of develompnetns left to do
> >
>
>
> -------------------------------------------------
>


Emulation is the sincerest form of flattery

>With PSX, I'm not entirely convinced, I would guess you
>could HLE the graphics using OpenGL or DirectX 6 and still
>run every game without any kind of irritating plug-in
>configuration.

the term "HLE" doesn't apply correctly to PSX emulation, you cannot emulate some graphic library calls (like in N64 emulation), you have to emulate the real PSX GPU hardware (therefore: no "HLE").

Btw, I cannot see "much irritating" options in the psx gpu plugins. Most stuff is for tweaking the display for your own taste (and there exist as many tastes as peoples, therefore many options), the only confusing stuff may be the "Compatibilty" options. And those are still needed, since certain PSX GPU abilities are hard to emulate on PC gfx cards.

Anyway: if somebody wants an "easy to configure" psx emu, which runs most stuff out of the box without tweaking:

easy... get ePSXe and the P.E.Op.S. soft gpu plugin. ePSXe has an build-in spu and cdr emulation, and the soft gpu plugin doesn't have much options and will play near everything correctly.

And if you want to get "more" (enhanced gfx, enhanced sounds, support for your Futjasimuro cdrom drive), you have to hunt for the proper plugins, go figure.