WIP status update

[yoyofr]

here's a quick update :

- no netplay in next release, or perhaps only a adhoc mode.
I've done lots of testing with TCP/UDP and it's still to slow
and to unstable. I'm not sure a wifi connection is reliable enough to provide netplay... :-(
- new mode 7 optimization from Laxer3a. It provides special boost in performance for some special cases, like the rendering of a map in RPGs, ... (fzero, mario kart & other 'free direction' mode 7 games aren't concerned).
- some bug fixes & minor improvement
- some new features

should be a christmas release and not the last one ;-)

[spu]

A adhoc mode is very very interesant
And the optimization mode 7 is very interesant

The next release with this updates he would be very impressive!!

[isotropy]

Cool! looking forward to it Honestly, i'm not that concerned about net play, and I'd rather see more mode 7 optimizations so that mario kart and F-zero play smoothly.

[jetkey885]

i really want to see a gameginie cheat system so i could finally get ride of uo_snes9x from my memory stick.

[majes]

Hi, Im Majes from the biggest psp spanish community (PSPAIN.COM).

I would like to thank you in name of this entire community for your hard work expecting nothing by your program's users.

I hope you have good luck in your projects, and wish you a happy life after doing all of this for us all.

Thank you and keep it up!

(Sorry for my extremely poor english xD)

[miemt]

admin said:

here's a quick update :

- no netplay in next release, or perhaps only a adhoc mode.
I've done lots of testing with TCP/UDP and it's still to slow
and to unstable. I'm not sure a wifi connection is reliable enough to provide netplay... :-(
- new mode 7 optimization from Laxer3a. It provides special boost in performance for some special cases, like the rendering of a map in RPGs, ... (fzero, mario kart & other 'free direction' mode 7 games aren't concerned).
- some bug fixes & minor improvement
- some new features

should be a christmas release and not the last one ;-)

A Christmas gift

[socalforever]

Can we expect a speed increase in general? FFIV is almost perfect, but not 100%.

Amazing work so far, man. I cant wait until this emulator is perfect.

[laxer3a]

Hi guys,

For "general" deformation using mode 7, it is quite hopeless to get more performance with software rendering.

Hardware acceleration also would be very difficult to implement and most likely result in SLOWER performance than this current software implementation.

I optimized it as much as it could be done for both general and special cases.

In 0.2c, I had already optimized some stuff in the mode7.
This time I have even optimized even more...

But the result is not as good as I would have expected.
(Personnally expected a gain a +5% to +10% for the general cases of mode7 compare to 0.2c)
I think I got +1 or 2% compare to the 0.2c version of mode7 for the general cases. No more...

Now in the new version, I have optimized the cases where the rendering is a 0 degree of rotation...
Which is the case in many RPG maps :-)
(Zelda, FF, etc...)

In these cases, the performance boost is simply huge.
Roughly 40-30%. Now of course, it is a 30% boost ONLY IN DRAWING... As the emulator is also doing the audio, cpu emulation stuff, don't expect a HUGE general performance jump. But a good one !!! :-)

Now, on the FF6 map, with character walking on the map, audio desactivated, 333 Mhz, pure software approximation...
I reached a wooping 82~84 fps.

I asked yoyo if he could "blend" the approx mode of mode7 with the rendering of other part of the accurate mode. Because I believe we could probably run FF6 with high frame rate and still have the map in blending in the corner (which is not the case in approx mode, it disappear).

But once yoyo release that, we will not work on the mode7 anymore. There is no room left for optimization.

I even took a look to the assembly code and started to play with it, I am no mips expert but the code seems to be quite efficient enough. (17 instruction per pixel in the best case)
The number of instruction per pixel is quite low and the register dependancy and pipeline seems to be optimized as well by the GCC compiler.
I even started to optimize some stuff manually in assembly (register dependancy between instruction) and just managed to break the pipeline and got a -5 fps in my test compare to the C compiled code.

[prettzv]

Awsome, this is gonna be pretty kewl. I am looking forward to it.

[prettzv]

My official vote is if you can get the system up enough to run Super mario rpg efficiently, then I would be happy with that as opposed to net play. But both options seem really really appealing. Wish we could share the games to a later ver. PSP so we could play together though.
Either way, this is a great project and you guys are doing AWSOME!!!! Thank you for all the effort.

[isotropy]

Thanks for all the effort you've put into mode 7! Even though there's not much of a speed increase, I'll take what I can get Thanks for all the effort that you're putting into this emulator. I'm sure you will be making tons of people happy this christmas

Thanks again, and keep up the great work!

[miemt]

laxer3a said:

Hi guys,

For "general" deformation using mode 7, it is quite hopeless to get more performance with software rendering.

Hardware acceleration also would be very difficult to implement and most likely result in SLOWER performance than this current software implementation.

I optimized it as much as it could be done for both general and special cases.

In 0.2c, I had already optimized some stuff in the mode7.
This time I have even optimized even more...

But the result is not as good as I would have expected.
(Personnally expected a gain a +5% to +10% for the general cases of mode7 compare to 0.2c)
I think I got +1 or 2% compare to the 0.2c version of mode7 for the general cases. No more...

Now in the new version, I have optimized the cases where the rendering is a 0 degree of rotation...
Which is the case in many RPG maps :-)
(Zelda, FF, etc...)

In these cases, the performance boost is simply huge.
Roughly 40-30%. Now of course, it is a 30% boost ONLY IN DRAWING... As the emulator is also doing the audio, cpu emulation stuff, don't expect a HUGE general performance jump. But a good one !!! :-)

Now, on the FF6 map, with character walking on the map, audio desactivated, 333 Mhz, pure software approximation...
I reached a wooping 82~84 fps.

I asked yoyo if he could "blend" the approx mode of mode7 with the rendering of other part of the accurate mode. Because I believe we could probably run FF6 with high frame rate and still have the map in blending in the corner (which is not the case in approx mode, it disappear).

But once yoyo release that, we will not work on the mode7 anymore. There is no room left for optimization.

I even took a look to the assembly code and started to play with it, I am no mips expert but the code seems to be quite efficient enough. (17 instruction per pixel in the best case)
The number of instruction per pixel is quite low and the register dependancy and pipeline seems to be optimized as well by the GCC compiler.
I even started to optimize some stuff manually in assembly (register dependancy between instruction) and just managed to break the pipeline and got a -5 fps in my test compare to the C compiled code.

Good News, Can't wait to see the result

[pikamus]

ok guys Gratz on the emu

i think i wanna add... did you guys move sound emulation to the media engine? i though you had it sorta working ages and ages ago?

what happened to that?


caio caio

[bobbin]

Thx laxer3, interesting read. Any news on utilizing the Media Engine? Seems to be the last option for further optimizations it seems.

[yoyofr]

I'm currently working on it, right now sound mixing seems to work on media engine.
sound emulation is harder to move to media engine since main cpu & sound cpu emulation are
linked...

[F2DaR176]

Making the sound better thats Great. YEAH Im going to donated $100 dollar to u Yoyo hope its enought.

[yoyofr]

thx!

regarding the christmas release, I fear I won't have time to finish it....
but I'll try to have a 'preview' version ready.
right now, the sound mixing is working when done by the media engine, but there's annoying technical issues with caches syncronization. It leads to some noise in the sound.

[siso]

The special chip(Super FX, DSP, SA-1, S-DD1...) emulation is possible on media engine?

[Tinnus]

No.

[blou]

any news about release?

[miemt]

blou said:

any news about release?

Be patient, it will release when it ready

[hucklebuck]

I really appreciate the nice details you guys are informing us on your project here! ;D Very interesting stuff.

With the release of the new version you can expect a donation. Though I was wondering, will there be a cheat feature like game genie added? Love them cheat codes!

[spu]

Hi yoyo in this moment, as works mode 7? Battles in Chrono Trigger run better? Multiplayer wifi as implemented in next release? ^^