NeoGeo MVS Emulator

[oninotsume]

I know this is the 100th time that this subject has been brought up here, but there have been some more advances in the portable NeoGeo MVS emulator area.

It seems the GP2X has got a nice version going down right now
www.dcemu.co.uk/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=21667

Are any of the resident NeoGeo programmers thinking about porting this to the PSP?

Some guy on the thread said that the GP2X has a larger memory than the PSP, is that true? Even if it is I imagine that the PSP is a more powerful machine.

In any case if anyone here is thinking about porting this to the PSP that would be great.

Back to dreaming of this emulator and CPS1 and CPS2 emulation

[Tinnus]

Depends on what you call "powerful". The (single) CPU in the PSP is faster than (each one of the 2) CPU(s) in the GP2X. But having less memory is bad... NeoGeo needs LOTS of memory, something around 20MB at times... and also 16MB of contiguous space, etc.

[oninotsume]

Thanks for the reply.

I guess "power" just depends on how you look at it.

How do the memory constraints and processing power compare to that of the Dreamcast? As I'm sure you know, there are great NeoGeo emulators on the Dreamcast. I suppose being able to emulate on the Dreamcast is not an accurate reflection of whether or not something can also be emulated on the PSP.

[corsican]

The dreamcast has 16MB main ram. The NG MVS emu Neo4All / AES uses on-demand loading for games larger than 16megs, with many games requiring prefetching info to be available, so the right data is available without glitching.

Neo4All/AES by Chui & Fox68K allows you to play Neo Geo AES and MVS games on your Dreamcast.

Features:

* Emulates Neo Geo MVS & AES games
* 100% Full speed without frameskip on most games
* 2 Players
* Great compatibility
* MMU technique for playing games larger than the DC's RAM
* High quality sound playback
* Optional bilinear filtering
* Easy to use menu system with music
* Disc swap with your ROMdiscs
* Options to over- or underclock the 68K & Z80 CPUs
* Free frameskip settings: Auto, 0 (off) - 5 (very fast)
* Options to deactivate or sync sound playback

(Button config is not yet available unless the game offers it, the C+Z buttons of the Arcade Stick are not recognized in the current Alpha version)

General Information

This open source emulator is based on Neo4All/CD and uses MMU for loading large MVS/AES games. The MMU technique enables the emulator to load portions of the game on demand while playing. This allows to play games that otherwise would not fit into the Dreamcast's RAM.

Games below 16 MBytes will be loaded completly into the DC's main RAM. Games that are larger than 16 MBytes will be partially pre-loaded and missing data, graphics and sound will be loaded on demand while playing. However, this technique does not allow to play ALL large games perfectly. While some certainly do, others definitly need optimized prefetch information to run like they would do on your Neo Geo MVS arcade or AES home console system.

As of now, prefetch information for 10 large games is available:

* Art Of Fighting.
* Blazing Star.
* Captain Tomaday.
* Magical Drop III.
* Metal Slug X.
* Shock Troopers.
* Aero Fighters 3 / Sonic Wings 3.
* SNK vs Capcom - SVC Chaos.
* Tecmo World Soccer '96.
* Zed Blade / Operation Ragnarok.

After beeing converted to Neo4ALL's .AES format, these games store graphics and sounds in specially optimized ways so loading times during emulation are reduced to a minimum.

Of course it's still possible to play large games even without an existing prefetch and some certainly do run perfectly, but in most cases it's suggested to wait until someone added prefetch information for your game.

I assume this technique would work for the PSP... but I know MY programming isn't up to the task...