snes9xTYL status update

[manias]

nobody said:

There will never be a need to upgrade past 1.50, as homebrewers such as MPH will always make it possible for us to use whatever features Sony provides in their future updates. Anybody who thinks they're better off with 2.01+ is simply in denial.

well so far 2.7 hasn't been cracked

[skeldwar]

It is now possible to load most 2.00, 2.50, & 2.60 games on a 1.50 PSP. I am so glad I have a 1.50 - Amazing developments now allow for 2.50 & 2.60 PSP's to run a good amount of homebrew. But 1.50 is the best firmware to go with if you want to fully realize the PSP's potential IMO. Don't let the low # fool you. Even if Sony releases firmware 5.0 or a new hardware revision of the PSP, People will still be playing their original 1.50 PSP's because of all that it can do.

In barely over a year, so much has been accomplished with PSP homebrew. Imagine what could possibly be capable in another year from now.

[liquidtenmillion]

So ports of 10 year old emulators designed to emulate 17 year old consoles display the PSP's full potential?

I hate to say it, but games like the new MGS game display the PSPs full power. And it requires 2.7 firmware, which has not been cracked at all yet, which means you can't run that game on 1.5. Homebrew is often amatuerish, and very simple, and far from displays the power of the PSP.

[cronos]

Sorry liquidtenmillion, but I just HAVE to post something about that - you don´t know nothing man. Bringing an emulator like snes9x to the psp - fully working and FULL SPEED - is QUITE an achievement. Do you think coding that stuff is "easy" or the results are "less-potential-showing" just because it´s an old console? Do you even know the interior of an SNES? What hardware you have to emulate here to even get some music? Do you know ASM?

By the way - Konami demands quite some MONEY for their games so something like MGS is showing psp´s potential sure - but it´s also THE LEAST we should expect for that d**n amount of money you have to pay to play these days. This emulator is also FREE, and emulating an SNES full speed on current-gen portable console like the PSP is - potentialwise - on the same level as any MGS game.

[nobody]

As of now there are only a few PSP games that cannot be played on a 1.50 PSP. There is no reason to believe that MGS and other 2.70+ games wouldn't eventually be playable on 1.50 PSPs. Remember, only a few months ago people were wondering if GTA would ever be playable on 1.50, and look now.

[liquidtenmillion]

cronos said:

Sorry liquidtenmillion, but I just HAVE to post something about that - you don´t know nothing man. Bringing an emulator like snes9x to the psp - fully working and FULL SPEED - is QUITE an achievement. Do you think coding that stuff is "easy" or the results are "less-potential-showing" just because it´s an old console? Do you even know the interior of an SNES? What hardware you have to emulate here to even get some music? Do you know ASM?

By the way - Konami demands quite some MONEY for their games so something like MGS is showing psp´s potential sure - but it´s also THE LEAST we should expect for that d**n amount of money you have to pay to play these days. This emulator is also FREE, and emulating an SNES full speed on current-gen portable console like the PSP is - potentialwise - on the same level as any MGS game.

1. You do not know ASM, assembly is different for every processor type.
2. Yes, emulators require a lot of power, but no matter how good the emulator is, it shows the potential of the SNES not the PSP. The power of the PSP to emulate an SNES is shown, but no matter how much power that takes, what it shows is an SNES game.
3. This emulator is still not perfect, infact no emulator is perfect, native code always runs better, therefore the only way to show off the psp's power is to run native code natively. Should make sense no?
4. How much something costs/how much something costs to make has nothing to do with raw power.
5. Opinions differ between different people.

[larry]

Can we get a quick list of bug fixes for 0.4.2
We know some, like added 300mhz.
But will there be any quick fixes to the cheat system?
Im finding the cheats to not be working. game genie and par seem to be bugged.

Just wanted to know whats all being fixed and all.

[prettzv]

Liquid, I reccommend not fighting. Everyone understands the PSP is powerful. But in mos the ways that make it powerful, it also makes it limited. Sony developers and major brand name developers are all fighting with it's limits to get what they want achieved.

Now, in case you are not familiar with it. Homebrew is generally the products taht creat the biggest rise. Many "third party" projects have revolutionized the way you play games. Simple things like Ulitma and Elder Scrolls. Small teams came together to create something that was amazing. So what if these guys are giving up their free time and not getting paid. They are all talented programmers, wether they are beggingi or extremely advanced. They also have the guts to put out a product they made, adn enjoy playing themselves to share with you, free of charge. Don't flame them. Get off your ass and contribute and make it worth their while.

Yes, 10 years old, 20 years old and 5 years old does show the raw power of the system. You knwo why, because PC's with the same specs as the PSP can't accomplsih nuts next to it. hell a large number of home pc's still aren't as nice as teh PSP is terms of power.

My last little bit, get overyourself and STFU!!!!

[liquidtenmillion]

Well that was unnecessary.

No matter what you say, i'd still rather play Xenogears, MGS, Chrono Cross, Final Fantasy 7, and 8 than FF4, FF6, Chrono Trigger, Star Ocean.

And there are many like me, and that was my point. Upgrading beyond 1.5 is something that many people are going to do. I mean look at existing 1.5 PS1 emulators. Oh wait, you can't. Because the only one that is being worked on has no public release at all and hasn't been updated in a very long time.

My point is that people should stop designing apps that use 1.5 only features, and should focus on improving speed by improving code, as in maybe 1 year, there will be maybe 1 out of ever 5,000 PSPs will have 1.5 on them still, which means that the other 4,999 will not be able to use the emulator.

It should be the other way around, by making it so that the 4999 other people are happy and the other 1 is not.

[shame13]

you listed FF8 instead of FF9? .... any way. keep your 1.5, and buy another psp that you can upgrade. the price should drop even more in time. ive always had 2.01, and just recently found a 2.00 at my local EB for $180. i plan on upgrading the 2.01 just for features they will include in later firmwares.

[manias]

i most definately don't have another 300 euros just lying around

[Tinnus]

Yeah, and you two please stop arguing, because it's clear it won't come to and end... you both have solid opinions. Just a matter of personal preference. liquid'd rather play newer games, yet can't see some of the beauties of the old ones. So what? Let him play the new games and we keep playing the old

Oh, and liquid, the main reason yoyofr and laxer continue releasing 1.5 specific version is, me thinks, they have 1.5 and won't upgrade. Don't forget we always do this stuff because WE want in the first place

[yoyofr]

exactly tinnus
moreover I'll add that if we don't optimize for 2.00 it's only because 2.00 and newer firmwares don't give us any possibility to optimize further.

in fact, on 2.xx firmware, we have less possibilities for optmizing code!

moreover, snes9xTYL is already quite heavility optimized compared to a standard snes9x "optimized" port. for sure you can always optimize more, but it will be about some %, not x2 or x3 speed...
so keep your 2.xx psp, play games you like and enjoy them, but don't hope for miracle regarding snes emulation...

[manias]

admin said:

exactly tinnus
moreover I'll add that if we don't optimize for 2.00 it's only because 2.00 and newer firmwares don't give us any possibility to optimize further.

in fact, on 2.xx firmware, we have less possibilities for optmizing code!

moreover, snes9xTYL is already quite heavility optimized compared to a standard snes9x "optimized" port. for sure you can always optimize more, but it will be about some %, not x2 or x3 speed...
so keep your 2.xx psp, play games you like and enjoy them, but don't hope for miracle regarding snes emulation...

Well tbh we don't need that much more optimization Just some bug fixes here n there.. SO MANY games run at perfect speeds already! It's just amazing what you guys have accomplished already! ;D

[skeldwar]

::Playing Monster Hunter Freedom on my 1.50::

Its true that those who want the best of both worlds may have to get a 2nd PSP. But that is not entirely true just yet. Surely the price of the PSP will slowly decrease. And that PSP will have newer firmware (2.50 or higher). What you'll also see is PSP's with 1.50, 1.51, 1.52 & 2.00 start selling for a LOT of money. I think as time advances and homebrew continues to expand on 1.50 in the way that it is... more people will try hard and pay more to get a 1.50 PSP.

[laxer3a]

Ok, to give a change to the discussion.

I spent most of my week-end optimizing
1/ the tile engine for Snes9xTYL.
(Re-use last tile information and optimize bit and piece)
2/ Switch the texture to swizzle mode.
(Should go from 8 cache miss per tile to 1 in the GPU)

Well... may be I gained 0.5 fps

Anyway very difficult to get more speed on fundamental stuff except a whole rewriting of the gpu calls. Hum... ain't worth it to me. (get what... 1 or 2 more fps ?)

So the next big step for the next big guys...
It is the coprocessor optimization, but let's face it.
I had a discussion with yoyo this WE about it, we are not that much motivated to make only a few games goes faster and spend like the same amount we spent already to speed up this emu in one year. (=hundreds of hours of work)

Some quick and dirty stuff still available to us for the 0.5 (or 1.0 we should say) :
- Swizzle and tile tuning (DONE)
- Use VRAM to store code (the bus width is 4x wider, may be fun for cache miss)
- Is ME not busy enough ? I would like to see some mode7 or other stuff done baby...
May be yoyo got some more ideas in his sleaves.

After that... I bet yoyo and I will slow down and move to other projects.
Would be glad to have fully motivated youngster writing a dynarec for the SuperFX and rewriting the DSPx chip with VFPU stuff inside. :-)

To liquidtenmillion : are you so sure that it is nice that we release the code as the same time as the binary ? And like we did before ?(Source of the previous version release with current version binary).
I personnally am not so sure about it. People can do a lot of branching, breaking stuff...
Source beeing open is definitely a MUST but this allow for people to make a tweak, release that stuff as a sudden 0.4.3 or whatever...

I dont want to get in war with people making daily release like Y did.
If it was my source and hard work at the base, I would be pretty pissed.
(changing a IF everyday doesnt sound like an update to me)

The fix you did for the white screen problem is nice.
But report to yoyo to have a key to skip the intro is also a nice way and avoid to have multiple versions running everywhere. People with problems can wait a few days before we release a new version.

[r7i1c3k]

laxer3a & yoyofr, thank you so much for your hard work on snes9xTYL. This release is a marked improvement, making so many games run so much better. Your software is actually the reason I got the PSP in the first place. Thanks again.

I wanted to make a small suggestion that could improve gamespeed a bit, perhaps. Is there any way, rather than just choosing "Sound Emulated, Outputted at xxHZ" that you could put in a stereo/mono option? I'm just remembering SNES9x back in the day on the slower computers, processing mono sound, rather than stereo, increased the gamespeed quite a bit.

I'm not sure that the same situation would apply here, but I hope that might help.

Thanks again.

[manias]

thank you so much guys, you are AWESOME

[laxer3a]

Hum... that would not be something bad for the people WIHTOUT ME. >> Sound stuff.

Now if you put it MONO you will have to choose between LEFT OR RIGHT.
Because... if we compute both channel and mix them, it actually cost MORE to do the mixing.
I am not sure so many games use fully the left and right stuff, still BGM are probably less enjoyable but who cares with the PSP speakers anyway...

Why not why not...

[yoyofr]

What can be done is to mix all channels in one and to use the average volume value between left & right.
it can improve a bit the performance, but I'm not sure it will be noticeable....

[Cheeezy]

How much processing power does the current mode 7 take up on the main CPU?

And how much does sound emulation take up on the ME?

The media engine is 111mhz right?

Just wondering if adding Mode7 to the ME is actually plausable.

[liquidtenmillion]

To liquidtenmillion : are you so sure that it is nice that we release the code as the same time as the binary ? And like we did before ?(Source of the previous version release with current version binary).
I personnally am not so sure about it. People can do a lot of branching, breaking stuff...
Source beeing open is definitely a MUST but this allow for people to make a tweak, release that stuff as a sudden 0.4.3 or whatever...

Well i'm not exactly the best person to ask that to. I've been following the FOSS movement for over a decade now, and am pretty fanatical when it comes to thinks like the gpl...

The only thing i know about dual source/binary release is that i was able to remove the intro in 0.4.2, and therefore i was able to spend 5 minutes or so fixing the eboot to work on my PSP instead of having to wait for an official release.


(not to mention i have access to a 2.6 psp, so i am able to test my build against a 2.6 directly, so i can tell if it will work exactly, instead of having to guess around)


See ultimately, how many people really DID branch this release? I'd say that anyone who does edit the code is only doing so to fix a problem that they are having, and aren't claiming it as their own emulator, or anything like that.

I'm all for complete open source.

The fix you did for the white screen problem is nice.
But report to yoyo to have a key to skip the intro is also a nice way and avoid to have multiple versions running everywhere. People with problems can wait a few days before we release a new version.

I was actually thinking that before i released my build of it. I was just going to make my build that fixed my problem, and then never release it to the public, but then i came here and saw that other people where having the problem too. Besides, i'm sure that as soon as you release a 0.4.3 that fixes this problem, everyone that used my build will upgrade anyway, and nothing would be different.


My solution was only temporary, so that i wouldn't have to see 500 messages of, "LOL this emulator sucks, all it does is show a white screen"

[laxer3a]

I definitely agree with you liquid.

Basically if we were in an ideal world, we would have released source at the same time with the binary.

It was a subject that was really discussed a lot with yoyo.
If it was a fully open sourced project we would have done it actually...
Still people are free to join, just drop a mail.

At that time, biggest problem was that "Y" was doing like daily release, and we didnt want to have somebody like this doing daily release with our base code, thus appropriating our code (this one thing) and also creating a kind of fan boy community that spit at you if you dont release something within 3 days or a week (thats the second thing).
The third problem was that homebrew CD are/were sold on the internet. People are buying software they should have for free. Moreover, other people are/were making money with our work.
So we needed to have a build that we could control so nobody could removed the message at the beginning.(it was... still may be encrypted so people could not patch the text)

The fourth problem was various sites (and pspupdates actually) that, a year ago were not giving credit for the work of other people. Here again, this was a kind of unbearable situation.
(NFO file deleted and so on...)

Now the situation is different, time has past, TYL is definitely seen as a good emulator...
In bad words, I could say that "our marketing strategy to dominate the world" was efficient. :-P

I would really like to see a bunch of talented programmers jumping on the wagon to reprogram the last part that need development manpower...

Anyway, for the records, I am testing some new secret weapon for TYL.
Last night my test showed a 5% increase of performance in Super Mario World for a specific screen. (my reference)
So, most likely to be integrated in TYL 0.5

Here is the bench for my PSP :
fs0, 333 Mhz, Sound 44 Khz on ME (except 0.2),
no speed limit, pure PSP Accelerated.

- 0.4.2 ME : 80 fps.
- Laxer Current custom ME (base old 0.4 code) : 84 fps.
- 0.2C No Sound : 99 fps. (all on main cpu then)

Other (not sure about the value dont remember)
- 0.3 ME : 76 fps
- 0.2C Sound 44 Khz : 74 fps.

Sound good isnt it ?
Still I need yoyo to confirm the changes when my code will be integrated with 0.4.2 code and SDK.

[r7i1c3k]

laxer3a said:

Hum... that would not be something bad for the people WIHTOUT ME. >> Sound stuff.

Now if you put it MONO you will have to choose between LEFT OR RIGHT.
Because... if we compute both channel and mix them, it actually cost MORE to do the mixing.
I am not sure so many games use fully the left and right stuff, still BGM are probably less enjoyable but who cares with the PSP speakers anyway...

Why not why not...

Exactly. See, most games I play actually have a "Stereo/Mono" option in the options menu of the game, such as Final Fantasy 3 US. So, if given the option through TYL/Non-ME to pick left or right channel only, I could just turn the game to mono and get both channels through one.

I'm not sure if this is correct, but I think a single process of 22khz/Mono is the same as 11khz/Stereo, which should use a lot less processing power.

Is there any way to check the PC source for SNES9x? I believe it had a feature similar to process mono sound, rather than stereo... It was long ago, but I remember having a slow computer and just by switching to mono sound (not downmixing to a single channel), the speed of the game went up nearly 25%.

Again, I appreciate everything you guys are doing. Thanks!

[larry]

To yoyofr and laxer3a

I dont know if you guys take suggestions.
But as i was twadling my thumbs in a game, i was wondering if you guys could add a simple txt notepad.

You have the typing set up already in the emu for the cheats names.
And a file viewer.

Would think it would be easy to make a quick notepad.
With simple. save/open options and the ability to type and name the file.
(sounds a little complex but looks easy when i imagine it)

purpose for it? to write down level codes in games without save options. Without using state saves (since people have problems with that still)

Most games that state saves are really required for are games with no normal saves. but rather give you some stupid code at the end of each level.

other games with normal saves, you only have to make a new state save after loading a normal save to fix the bug.

Just an idea. from one of your fans.
Larry

[tsurumaru]

Hi Laxer3a, I read your earlier posts in which you went into some detail regarding the processes of emulation. I just wondered what you thought about the Dynarec approach that strmnnrmn is building in his Daedalus N64 emulator.

strmnnrmn.blogspot.com/

[laxer3a]

If you look at the web page, you will see that it is something we have taught about since day one.
Even when we started the porting of Snes9x on GP32 like 3 years ago...

If you read deeply what I wrote I already explained what I was thinking about such actually.
Anyway, dynarec for Snes cpu is a real pain compare to mips->mips.
Because :
- cpu support 4 instruction set actually.
- self modifying code is possible.
- getter/setter are a big mess inside the Snes emu.
- A lot of work to debug and make such program work...

[larry]

but if it was done would it still pay off? hypothetically that is.

like would it offer a better gaming experience in the end IF it was done?

[yoyofr]

perhaps yes, perhaps not....

another way would be to have a psp2 running at 666Mhz. then for sure, we could have
something running at frameskip 0 and 44Khz sterero sound

[mistressaimii]

liquidtenmillion said:

So ports of 10 year old emulators designed to emulate 17 year old consoles display the PSP's full potential?

I hate to say it, but games like the new MGS game display the PSPs full power. And it requires 2.7 firmware, which has not been cracked at all yet, which means you can't run that game on 1.5. Homebrew is often amatuerish, and very simple, and far from displays the power of the PSP.

To be totally honest here, you can play the new MGS game on a 1.5 PSP, buy it, dump the ISO, run with Dax Ziso, and it'll work. Not that I condone using iso loaders, but I've seen it done.

That's all, really. Oh, and anyone who takes the time to code an emulator, one that can run so many many games, is one I have respect for, considering the only coding I can do is basic HTML and some hex editing of snes roms >.>. Good Job Yoyofr, you are my, and many people's hero. Keep up the good work.