Somebody explain.

[corona]

Ok, here's the dealy.
Im rather confused by this. Since the PSP is so much more powerful that the Super Nintendo was, and since it has much more advanced processing, and other yatta....
And since the PSP can play games that far exceed anything that could have ever been done on the Super Nintendo,
I was just wondering.... Why can't the PSP accuratly emulate something so simple?

Is it simply because we lack the programming know-how to write PSP games and application in its native language?
Is it because no one has the time to create a perfect emulator?
Is it because the PSP is secretly weak and pitiful?
Is it a combination of any of the above 3 questions?

[bl@ckm@ge987]

It is because know one has the time to create the perfect emulator. People have lives, jobs, relationships, and personal time. It is quite hard to program an emulator, or anything for that matter. And unless someone out there has all the time in the world (example, some nerdy, rich person who knows the in and outs of programming) , there just isn't the time.

[corona]

I say we kidnap someone who does know the in and outs and GIVE them the time to create a perfect emulator.....
Where does Yoyo live again?
France?
Excellent!!
BWUHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!

[F2DaR176]

Lmao wtf is wrong with you people. People just don't care about Snes. Its OOOLLLLLDDDD & Yoyo is doing it because he want to you don't have to donate. Also an advice to Yoyo can you try to get assistants come on 1 person can't do it all. The more people the faster it can be done.

[corona]

I CARE ABOUT SNES d**n IT!!
Snes was one of the greatest systems of all time.
A great many of the best games in history have been done on the SNES.
People dont just care about SNES, many are obsessed.
And as for Yoyo handing out tasks for the public servents of tyl to do, thats a good idea.
The only problem is that very few people have the technical know how.
Those who do know how, probably have jobs involving their thechnical know how, leaving them without time to do the project.
See the problem?!

[F2DaR176]

Yea you have a point BE PATIENT!!!! YOYO CAN HEAR US. LOL

[bl@ckm@ge987]

That would be cool if he maid like beta testers for new features or something like that.

How come people don't care about the Nintendo 64. The PSP could so pull that off.

[craig588]

It most definatly could not. That's a 100MHz R4300 CPU with a dedicated undocumented GPU with 8 MB of memory. N64 ROM images go up to 32MB (Or 64MB, I don't remember well) Loading an image would take up all of the PSPs memory, then you need another 8MB allocated for the system memory and you need some more for the emulation code.


The SNES has a few special features that make it very hard to emulate. Its transparancy engine supports all sorts of blending modes which no one ever impliments on modern hardware so they need to be adapted through software, meaning they have to run on the CPU, a powerful GPU can't help. The SPC700 and the 65c816 need to be synced up fairly perfectly because most games rely on feedback from the SPC700. Those are the main reasons, the extra CPUs in some carts didn't hurt the complexity though.

[bl@ckm@ge987]

It was just a question, and ya, I think N64 ROM's go to about 64megs.

I was just wondering because someone released a PSone emu beta, it was slow, but at least someone tried it.

[laxer3a]

Hi,
>> For corona :

Well none of the 3. Because your assertion is simply WRONG.
- PSP is a wonderfull piece of hardware for such price, architecture and battery life.
- The skill of the snes9x and TYL member has nothing to be ashamed of technically... Really.
- No one has time ? Well, even if we had all our time to do it (= implement full technology just toward increasing speed...) we could not improve more than a 10 or 15% I believe.
This emu is ALREADY the result of cumulated of years of work from the original snes9x team, fine tuning by yoyo and me (and thunder may be for the gp32 core). Lot of hard work from other snes emu that we have taken idea from (asynchronous audio emulation for the next release)
The code was 90% as it is before the PSP was even released.

So simple as the snes ? :-)
Make me laugh... I think this it is even harder to emulate than a PS1 !!!

A complex graphics chip (4 plane), lots of graphic effect (blending, windowing, mode7, Z buffer, transparency...) and messed-up registers(nice in hardware, but a nightmare to emulate), weird VRAM structure...
An audio chip quite evoluted with its own cpu and DSP feature inside.
And yes a simple cpu... but still need to emulate 1.3 millions instructions per second.
DMA/HDMA...etc...etc...

Now try to emulate all these simultaneously at an accurate CYCLE precision.

I can garantee you that a PSP at 333 Mhz is quite busy doing such !!!

Most the emu outside on the PSP have half of the tuning we have done on TYL or tuning done by the original snes9x team.

NOW... <RANT>
I notice that you "abuse the system" as one of the thread you created says.
So, stop messing with the board and go play back with your lego...
We dont need spoiled children here or act as a mature person.
You are bored fine, but dont be bored on THIS board.

If I was yoyo, I would have simply locked your account.
</RANT>

If you are bored, get a C/C++ book, get an assembly MIPS book, use your friend google about SPC, 65HC816, and get the snes9x code and help us to make it better.
In the worst case, you will get better at technology and it may help you to get a well paid job.

>> For craig588
Hi,
Actually your assumption are wrong too :-)
Yoyo managed to use the stencil buffer in the GPU to simulate the additive mode of the Snes (especially masking/priority issue also). It is a real pain in the ass but it worked.
So there is a lot of multipass rendering... That's why even with the PSP GPU the speed is not THAT huge. (yoyo correct me if I am wrong here).

[craig588]

Oh wow, that's really impressive. That per layer priority drove me crazy and I never was able to make it work well on other projects. You guys are far better than me.

[F2DaR176]

blackmage987 said:

That would be cool if he maid like beta testers for new features or something like that.

How come people don't care about the Nintendo 64. The PSP could so pull that off.

Nintendo 64 has more buttons than PSP have you going to play it. Explain me that?

[F2DaR176]

laxer3a said:

Hi,
>> For corona :

Well none of the 3. Because your assertion is simply WRONG.
- PSP is a wonderfull piece of hardware for such price, architecture and battery life.
- The skill of the snes9x and TYL member has nothing to be ashamed of technically... Really.
- No one has time ? Well, even if we had all our time to do it (= implement full technology just toward increasing speed...) we could not improve more than a 10 or 15% I believe.
This emu is ALREADY the result of cumulated of years of work from the original snes9x team, fine tuning by yoyo and me (and thunder may be for the gp32 core). Lot of hard work from other snes emu that we have taken idea from (asynchronous audio emulation for the next release)
The code was 90% as it is before the PSP was even released.

So simple as the snes ? :-)
Make me laugh... I think this it is even harder to emulate than a PS1 !!!

A complex graphics chip (4 plane), lots of graphic effect (blending, windowing, mode7, Z buffer, transparency...) and messed-up registers(nice in hardware, but a nightmare to emulate), weird VRAM structure...
An audio chip quite evoluted with its own cpu and DSP feature inside.
And yes a simple cpu... but still need to emulate 1.3 millions instructions per second.
DMA/HDMA...etc...etc...

Now try to emulate all these simultaneously at an accurate CYCLE precision.

I can garantee you that a PSP at 333 Mhz is quite busy doing such !!!

Most the emu outside on the PSP have half of the tuning we have done on TYL or tuning done by the original snes9x team.

NOW... <RANT>
I notice that you "abuse the system" as one of the thread you created says.
So, stop messing with the board and go play back with your lego...
We dont need spoiled children here or act as a mature person.
You are bored fine, but dont be bored on THIS board.

If I was yoyo, I would have simply locked your account.
</RANT>

If you are bored, get a C/C++ book, get an assembly MIPS book, use your friend google about SPC, 65HC816, and get the snes9x code and help us to make it better.
In the worst case, you will get better at technology and it may help you to get a well paid job.

>> For craig588
Hi,
Actually your assumption are wrong too :-)
Yoyo managed to use the stencil buffer in the GPU to simulate the additive mode of the Snes (especially masking/priority issue also). It is a real pain in the ass but it worked.
So there is a lot of multipass rendering... That's why even with the PSP GPU the speed is not THAT huge. (yoyo correct me if I am wrong here).

So what you trying to say is SNES is very complexing & making a PS1 emulator is easier to do. One question if you can make a emulator for PS1 how you going to play it if PSP has fewer buttons? (same goes for Nintendo 64)

[bl@ckm@ge987]

Well, for the N64, they would not need to implement the d-pad (name 2 games that actaully use them), it has an analog stick, the d-pad could suffice as the c-buttons, the triangle, cross, etc.. could be a,b, and z. I'm not saying in any plausible way this would be easy, but I'm saying it would be possible.

And he doesn't mean SNES is harder that PS1, but the amount of work it takes to successfully emulate a system/console is almost overwhelming. Apparently, to emulate a system/console, the device running the code needs to be at least 10x more powerful, and thats the minimum to get it to work! And the SNES emulation scene has been around for a very long time, just to get it to this point, and it still has room for improvement, N64 is not yet perfect, PS1 needs at least 2ghz to run smoothly, and don't even bother with the XBOX and PS2!

I agree with what laxer3a said, "get a C/C++ book, get an assembly MIPS book, use your friend google about SPC, 65HC816, and get the snes9x code and help us to make it better.
In the worst case, you will get better at technology and it may help you to get a well paid job."

[F2DaR176]

Either way nobody is going to make a Nintendo 64 emulator. Can they make a Dreamcast or Sega Saturn Emulator for PSP?

[bl@ckm@ge987]

Dreamcast and Sega Saturn could be done, but someone has to want to do it.

[craig588]

Dreamcast couldn't. Saturn is unlikely.

The PSX is easier than the SNES to emulate, just as the SNES is easier than the NES. The more constrained the hardware is the more developers relied on cycle accurate hardware oddities to pull off anything. Once you have enough power you don't need to spend two weeks making something perfect to hit the limits of the system, you can just use the functions in the documented, speced, manner. Number of buttons is one of the easiest things to deal with though, that's not a reason any emulator hasn't been done. They have Spectrum emulators for the GBA and that has even fewer buttons than the PSP. (If you don't know the spectrum is a full computer, keyboard and everything)

[siddy]

And SNES is quite complicated cause of the FX chips and additional graphics used in some games. This is a GFX chip (GPU) in the game cartrige, and it requires a fair bit more, even Snes9x x86vr (for PC's) and ZSNES has had a lot of problems with them. Mario RPG, Winter Gold FX, Star Wing, are jsut to name a few who have these chips. There are also other cart. chips in many other games, eg Chrono Trigger is actually a 32-bit game, but the SNES is only 16-bit, so once u emulate the 16-biy system you have to add to it to run these complex games. Ull find simple games of 8 and 16bit work perfectly, even on previous beta's but its the larger bit games that need more work.

Plus the fact that the PSP is emulating SNES and SNES cartrige hardware first, then it has to run the software, so its doing a lot more than the SNES ever could.

[siddy]

and Dreamcast couldnt be done...

[socalforever]

To say the least, I'm extremely impressed with all of the work that's been put into this emulator. I can see why, Laxer, you're saying it's hard to get more out of it, but I reckon you guys will move a couple more mountains before you're done.

GJ guys, keep up the good work!

[zshadow]

blackmage987 said:

Dreamcast and Sega Saturn could be done, but someone has to want to do it.

Can be done, so can PS2 etc .. but don't except to get anywhere near playable speeds on any.

PS1 emulation is indeed possible .. if coded in MIPS, the GP2x can run 2D PS1 games @ around 60FPS, and I don't think its that much more impressive spec wise than the PSP, plus it has an ARM cpu not MIPS like the PSP. So actually the PSP should be able to run PS1 games as good or better.

[corona]

I agree,
Our current level of emulation is impressive as it is.
Thank you for all you're work so far.
Im gonna go donate 10 dolla to you by paypal.

[axeus]

Sega Saturn is more complicated than both the PS! and SNES combined! When we get a PS! emu at 70% speed is when whe can think about a Saturn at .5%.

Besides PacManFan is still working on PSPSone (the ps1 emu- he made a site on the Dec 8th)
home.comcast.net/~shernandez1337/PSPSOne.html

[bl@ckm@ge987]

Cool, I thought it was it was just a proof of concept, like the first GBA.

[craig588]

siddy said:

And SNES is quite complicated cause of the FX chips and additional graphics used in some games. This is a GFX chip (GPU) in the game cartrige, and it requires a fair bit more, even Snes9x x86vr (for PC's) and ZSNES has had a lot of problems with them. Mario RPG, Winter Gold FX, Star Wing, are jsut to name a few who have these chips. There are also other cart. chips in many other games, eg Chrono Trigger is actually a 32-bit game, but the SNES is only 16-bit, so once u emulate the 16-biy system you have to add to it to run these complex games. Ull find simple games of 8 and 16bit work perfectly, even on previous beta's but its the larger bit games that need more work.

Plus the fact that the PSP is emulating SNES and SNES cartrige hardware first, then it has to run the software, so its doing a lot more than the SNES ever could.

Most of this doesn't even begin to make sense. No SNES carts are 32 bit, with a possible exception of the FX carts. None of the CPUs added into SNES carts are really graphics chips in the sense that people recognise them today. The FX just handles geometry, the SDD just handles decompression, same as the C4, the SA1 is essentially a 65c816. I havn't researched much into the DSP, but I belive it's just a math coprocessor.

[F2DaR176]

Forget about Dreamcast or Sega Saturn.

Can someone perfect the GBA Emulator for the PSP I mean people are taking there sweet time making a good GBA emulator to work OK or at least good. Isn't GBA almost like the SNES emulator well about the same except that the GBA has better graphic than SNES. Yoyo do you think you can do a GBA emulator for the PSP? If so try to do it. FOR EVERYBODY WHO'S WAITING FOR A GOOD WORKING GBA EMU. THAT WOULD BE THE BEST EMU OUT THERE PERIOD.

[laxer3a]

Hi,

What I meant was than PS1 is really easier to emulate.
To my understanding, it is just a "digital sample player" : or it plays the sounds from the CD,
or it plays audio sample directly to the DAC.
So it is FAR EASIER and less costly to emulate the sound of the PS1 than the Snes.

Now I would like to make clear that the ability of having a so much accurate Snes emulator, you should not thank US... You should thank the ORIGINAL SNES9X TEAM.
They spent years to find all the details about emulation, especially all the weird chipset.
Debugging the main cpu, graphic and audio was probably a lot of nightmare to them.

Now when it comes to the ps1 cpu... SURPRISE : A MIPS CPU TOO.
Which means that basically if you a program access the working ram, it just need a remapping of the code : no emulation to do.
Of course access to adress must "filtered" somehow by the emulator.
Basically a kind of hybrid between a cpu emulation and a JIT.(just in time compiler)

Theorytically, I would believe that the 33Mhz CPU of the PS1 could be emulated with only two or three time the CPU clock.
Which would basically mean as an example, that the ME chipset in the PSP could emulate the complete CPU of the PS1 to me (166 Mhz).

For the audio features of the ps1, except if you want to play mp3 instead of the cd track (well no cd drive on PSP right ? It should be pretty easy and not that costly to emulate.

Now for the graphic chipset of the ps1 -> VRAM structure may be causing some issue as the PSP and PS1 may have different format (=lot of work by cpu of the PSP to do conversion).

When it comes to rendering, the PS1 graphics system call could be translated to PSP graphic system call... I feel it would be rather simple. From my understanding the PS1 just has a display list that you transfer to the graphic chip which does the rendering for you.
In this case the emulator would just need to parse the renderlist and convert it to calls to the PSP render list... I bet with 5% or less CPU on the PSP all these calls could be translated to the PSP graphic chipset instruction format.

Until now the ps1 emu has been slow because they dont use ONE IMPORTANT FEATURE WHICH IS : THE CPU OF THE PS1 IS COMPATIBLE WITH THE PSP CPU.
In this case, they "emulate" completly the chip, which is very costly...
(33Mhz CPU cant be emulated on a 333Mhz cpu unlikely)
I heard also that the RENDERING was done in software, which is really a shame actually because translating the calls to PSP system call shouldnt be THAT difficult.

Of course, the reason for that is time and energy : using already existing C source of emu is easy, porting time is not that much... Writing a JIT and validate such technology would require many month man of work I believe.

Update : I read the site of PSPSOne, it seems that he implemented such technique but it didnt work as excepted (I tought register would be an issue but...)

I really believe that he should switch to hardware graphic acceleration. His first attempt gave him a 7x increase in cpu emulation performance. Even he can do may be x15 with a full JIT. I would have switched to the graphic emulation... Software is just TOO slow spending your time with for-loop to draw pixel.
------

About the GBA, well if you read the upper text you understand something now :
one need to emulate a 16.7Mhz ARM CPU to a 333Mhz MIPS CPU.
To be honnest I dont think a GBA emu will ever be fast on a PSP because of that.
Basically if you consider that the SNES has a 1.7Mhz (or 1.2 ? never remember) CPU, roughly the same graphic ability as the GBA and you see that emulation is difficult enough to get full speed.

I really believe that just the full speed of the mips cpu at 333 Mhz is not enough to emulate the CPU only of the GBA. When you think about graphics, synchronization, audio (there is a FM chipset inside right ?)...

When I think about emulating a system, I dont really give a nuts about "is there more button on the joypad or not ?"
What I look at is : "How much power that system has, how much complex is the original system, what kind of trick can I apply, what can of technology can I apply to make it happen."

For me, even if the ps1 cpu is THE issue, globally a ps1 emu from scratch is FAR EASIER than a snes emu to write from scratch on a PSP.

When it comes to a GBA emu, I would just forget about it... But thats my personnal opinion, may be with a lot of effort, work, analysis of the graphic chip (it seems more honnest and less weird that the snes one), may be one can find a good design to have a "decent" speed of emulation of a GBA.

[bl@ckm@ge987]

Thanks for the info laxer3a. Keep working hard . And we really should thank the original snes9x team, they did do most of the hard stuff.

[F2DaR176]

Thanks for the info laxer3a. So why don't you emulate the PS1 seems like you really know what to do to make a PS1 Emulator.

[bl@ckm@ge987]

Because then he can't work on TYL as much!