ZSNES...buggy?

[JadussD]

I've noticed that more recent versions of ZSNES have problems playing games. Actraiser 2 doesn't work anymore, and Street Fighter II Turbo has graphical problems. These are all good ROMs I have, so I was wondering if Snes9x is the better emulator at this point?

[JadussD]

> I've noticed that more recent versions of ZSNES have
> problems playing games. Actraiser 2 doesn't work anymore,
> and Street Fighter II Turbo has graphical problems. These
> are all good ROMs I have, so I was wondering if Snes9x is
> the better emulator at this point?
>

Nevermind that, I can't even map buttons to my Joypad on Snes9x. They haven't fixed that problem yet? That's a pretty serious problem. What the hell is going on with SNES emulators?

[MegaManJuno]

For Actraiser 2, if you mean where it freezes up when it does the roto-zoomer thing upon selecting a stage to play, that issue has kept coming and going between various ZSNES versions for a while now.

[MonsieurSirhan]

> I've noticed that more recent versions of ZSNES have
> problems playing games. Actraiser 2 doesn't work anymore,
> and Street Fighter II Turbo has graphical problems. These
> are all good ROMs I have, so I was wondering if Snes9x is
> the better emulator at this point?
>

Try (E) for ActRaiser 2

[daikgd]

>
> Try (E) for ActRaiser 2
>

It should do the trick ? I'll try it!
Cause of the nonworking Actraiser 2-Rom there's always a copy of Zsnes 1.36 on my disk...

[JadussD]

> I've noticed that more recent versions of ZSNES have
> problems playing games. Actraiser 2 doesn't work anymore,
> and Street Fighter II Turbo has graphical problems. These
> are all good ROMs I have, so I was wondering if Snes9x is
> the better emulator at this point?

Well, I haven't played FF6 on ZSNES in a long time, but now, in battles where the characters are supposed to be posititioned in such a way that they're hidden behind the bottom menu (such as when the characters leap into battle, right at the start, or when Terra casts magic for the first time and Edgar and Locke are all freaked out and "swoon"), the priority gets all messed up and the characters appear to be on TOP of the menus. I'd bet money this is a problem with the HDMA emulation; the menus use an HDMA technique where the background color is changed slightly as each line isdrawn to the menu, giving it a gradient effect..

[Cornellius]

Works fine for me with the last WIP release.

[JCE3000GT]

> Nevermind that, I can't even map buttons to my Joypad on
> Snes9x. They haven't fixed that problem yet? That's a pretty
> serious problem. What the hell is going on with SNES
> emulators?

Solution: use an older ZSNES. I refuse to update when the older version works just fine for me.

[Kaji]

I've always considered SNES9X to be the superior emulator, myself. Only reason I ever kept a copy of ZSNES on hand is because it's like NESticle, it's the only one people bother programming hacks for.

[MonsieurSirhan]

The general problem with snes emus nowadays is the intent of getting rid of game specific hacks. Zsnes used to have been infested with usch. Supposedly nowadays most is being cleaned up. Which is why some stuff that used to work right with such workarounds now are all weird.

[The 9th Sage]

> I've always considered SNES9X to be the superior emulator,
> myself. Only reason I ever kept a copy of ZSNES on hand is
> because it's like NESticle, it's the only one people bother
> programming hacks for.

I seem to recall reading somewhere of StarFox 2 working as well as it does in Snes9x because of a hack. <img src=smilies/magbiggrin.gif> It was a dev forum somewhere...can't remember where exactly.

[Kaji]

> The general problem with snes emus nowadays is the intent of
> getting rid of game specific hacks. Zsnes used to have been
> infested with usch. Supposedly nowadays most is being
> cleaned up. Which is why some stuff that used to work right
> with such workarounds now are all weird.

So the short of it is that the old development paradigm was to build a shell to run stuff, and then test ROMs on it and design things specifically to deal with the ones that didn't run properly, whereas now they're trying to take that stuff out and make it all run based off the core shell? Considering the fact that almost every SNES game out there has been successfully emulated under one emulator or another at some point, it seems a bit counterproductive...

[MegaManJuno]

The whole point is to try and emulate the games properly, instead of using hacks in the emulator in order to get them to run.

Basically, if it requires a hack to run the game, something's wrong with the emulation core, and they're trying to fix that.

[Kaji]

> The whole point is to try and emulate the games properly,
> instead of using hacks in the emulator in order to get them
> to run. Basically, if it requires a hack to run the game,
> something's wrong with the emulation core, and they're
> trying to fix that.>

Ah, I think I see what you're saying there. Wouldn't you still need a couple hacks to accomodate things such as StarFox's FX chip that was built into the cartridge, or is it being built with the expectation that support for that would be put into the ROM so as to maintain a purer core?

[Lillymon]

> I seem to recall reading somewhere of StarFox 2 working as
> well as it does in Snes9x because of a hack. It was a dev
> forum somewhere...can't remember where exactly.

Must be a bloody good hack then. I have never seen ZSNES run it as good, not even in versions that were specifically modified to run it.

[MooglyGuy]

> Ah, I think I see what you're saying there. Wouldn't you
> still need a couple hacks to accomodate things such as
> StarFox's FX chip that was built into the cartridge, or is
> it being built with the expectation that support for that
> would be put into the ROM so as to maintain a purer core?

Why would you need a hack to support the SuperFX chip, the DSP chips, or the SA-1 chip? According to the SNES hardware docs that Nintendo provided to developers (I have both books in my possession), there's a byte in the ROM's internal game information section (this is separate from the SNES ROM header, mind you) which says what type of add-on chip the game uses. Therefore, it would not be a hack to read that byte and then enable whatever add-on chip the game used. Besides, SuperFX emulation is not a game-specific hack. A whole bunch of games used it, including (but not limited to) Starfox, Yoshi's Island, Vortex, and Stunt Race FX.

[The 9th Sage]

> Must be a bloody good hack then. I have never seen ZSNES run
> it as good, not even in versions that were specifically
> modified to run it.

Well that's what I heard it was. I don't hate SNES9x or anything. And from what I heard, the timing of the SFX 2 is apparently a pain in the ass to get right. I dunno though, could be just hearsay. :P

[SivakDrac]

Yeah. I've seen this too. I think it was there since the beginning stages of ZSNES. Sometimes the cursor disappears in combat too. Who knows what it could be?

[RaiBlastoise]

Is that what "Mode 7" means?

[puzzl]

> Is that what "Mode 7" means?
>

This ('http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mode_7') is mode 7. Never played the game in question, so I don't know if he was refering to it or not, but that should clear it up anyhow.

[MegaManJuno]

> Is that what "Mode 7" means?

Umm... what?

Yes, the effect makes use of "mode 7" if that's what you mean. Otherwise, I don't know what in the hell you're asking...?