I remember back in the day the emulator Snes9x was one of the best emulators for Super Nintendo emulation, but it’s not on the Megathread. Is it no longer trustworthy or was it just missed?
Sorry if this was already asked in this community. I would’ve searched but Lemmy (or at least my Lemmy instance, I suppose) doesn’t seem to have a search function for intra-Community searching.
@EveryMuffinIsNowEncrypted@bogpunk While I agree with your intent here I feel it should be pointed out that if people stopped fucking them, they’d quickly see the error of their ways.
Yeah, Near was a genius, too. They invented the MSU-1 virtual expansion “chip” for the SNES, which allows for CD audio and video on SNES games (and with an appropriate flashcard, it can interface with and run on actual SNES hardware).
Most closely matches the behavior of actual SNES consoles.
This requires very careful emulation of the timings of the various buses and co-processors, as well as on-cart chips which may or may not be present. For instance, a Speedy Gonzales game has a button in the final stage which crashes almost every emulator because enters an infinite loop reading from an open bus and waiting for the value to attain a specific pattern. However reading from an open bus is generally specified to be the last value loaded into the bus, which in this case is the load instruction itself, $18. So the value is read to be $1818 by most emulators, which doesn’t match the pattern expected.
However, this is only if you’re emulating with instruction level accuracy. It is possible for the value of the bus to change in between the instruction being loaded and the value of the bus being loaded due to an HDMA load being triggered, but this requires a cycle accurate emulator.
That the emulator behaves exactly as genuine hardware does.
For one, there are sometimes hardware quirks in consoles that are used to implement features. Like the video screens along the track in Mario Kart 64, the N64 has shared memory between the CPU and GPU, which they used to generate that effect. It’s difficult to replicate that behavior in an emulator.
Then there’s lag. You might argue that an emulator can provide a better experience by obliterating lag via brute force, but that wouldn’t be the authentic experience the real hardware would provide.
Or a simple one I’ve noticed with SNES emulators: None of them get the sound quite right. It’s hard to explain, there’s a high pitched “rattle” that isn’t present on a genuine SNES, it’s almost like any emulation is too perfect and isn’t sanding down a rough edge the original hardware did?
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there are more accurate emulators nowadays, although because the human race is horrible, we bullied the dev of the most accurate snes emu to suicide
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I hadn’t heard of this. My blood is boiling and I’m filled with sadness
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@EveryMuffinIsNowEncrypted @bogpunk While I agree with your intent here I feel it should be pointed out that if people stopped fucking them, they’d quickly see the error of their ways.
This is true. Lol.
Wasn’t that Near? I felt completely sick with that situation. Glad someone in Belfast destroyed kiwifarms.
It was, yeah.
More like temporarily inconvenienced kiwi farms. It’s still a thing and still accessible.
Oh :(
I had not heard of that, and am not sure I want to…
Near, creator of bsnes/Higan/ares. Their story is tragic.
/reads the first few lines of an article.
yeaaah figuring that out quick :(
Oh my … That’s awful. I’m just discovering this myself. Even IGN put out an article https://www.ign.com/articles/near-bsnes-remembrance
Yeah, Near was a genius, too. They invented the MSU-1 virtual expansion “chip” for the SNES, which allows for CD audio and video on SNES games (and with an appropriate flashcard, it can interface with and run on actual SNES hardware).
Oof, that’s…very sad. :(
Bsnes?
And Higan.
And Ares
sorry for my ignorance but what does accurate mean in this context?
Most closely matches the behavior of actual SNES consoles.
This requires very careful emulation of the timings of the various buses and co-processors, as well as on-cart chips which may or may not be present. For instance, a Speedy Gonzales game has a button in the final stage which crashes almost every emulator because enters an infinite loop reading from an open bus and waiting for the value to attain a specific pattern. However reading from an open bus is generally specified to be the last value loaded into the bus, which in this case is the load instruction itself, $18. So the value is read to be $1818 by most emulators, which doesn’t match the pattern expected.
However, this is only if you’re emulating with instruction level accuracy. It is possible for the value of the bus to change in between the instruction being loaded and the value of the bus being loaded due to an HDMA load being triggered, but this requires a cycle accurate emulator.
That the emulator behaves exactly as genuine hardware does.
For one, there are sometimes hardware quirks in consoles that are used to implement features. Like the video screens along the track in Mario Kart 64, the N64 has shared memory between the CPU and GPU, which they used to generate that effect. It’s difficult to replicate that behavior in an emulator.
Then there’s lag. You might argue that an emulator can provide a better experience by obliterating lag via brute force, but that wouldn’t be the authentic experience the real hardware would provide.
Or a simple one I’ve noticed with SNES emulators: None of them get the sound quite right. It’s hard to explain, there’s a high pitched “rattle” that isn’t present on a genuine SNES, it’s almost like any emulation is too perfect and isn’t sanding down a rough edge the original hardware did?
To be fair, interacting with people on the internet is almost always a crapshoot for developers.
It’s why most of them don’t do it.