ZiNc on pSX engine

[Heihachi_73]

I was recently playing Tekken 2 in MAME (as I generally do, just for the better graphics over ZiNc's Pete/PEOpS derived plugins) and it occured to me, why don't they axe the ageing PSEmuPro structure in favour of something like this?

Hopefully it isn't any offence to the original coders of course - if it wasn't for PSEmu so long ago we'd be stuck with basically nothing like with N64 emulation...

pSX is a lot faster than MAME/MESS, but still retains the all-important pixel-perfect display of the games which makes for a great deal better experience, rather than resized 3D and badly stretched (or blurry) static stuff like the health bars, and the lag of Devil's stage at the end (as with Pete's hardware graphics rendering, which seems to hate most ATI cards but works perfectly on a 16MB Geforce 2!).

Anyway, let's see some posts to see if anyone (dis)agrees!

[patrickp]

I think the problem is twofold, Heihachi_73: first, there's not much development going on in Playstation emulation any more, with the shining exception of pSX.

And the other reason is the obsession the ePSXe/SSSPSX etc fans have with enhancement as opposed to accuracy. They're more into getting more and more powerful graphics cards/systems, and boasting about what options they can turn on in Pete's plugins and how good it looks, than into the accuracy of emulation.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if this is simply because they've never really tried pSX - when I first tried it, I thought it ran nicely, but wasn't convinced until I realised just how accurately it was rendering. in fact, there were some visual distortions (in NTSC games which, of course, I'd never seen on a Playstation), which I'd thought were actually correct for their games. It only became clear how distorted they were when I finally saw them in pSX.

But there's one problem with pSX - it runs so well, that you can't get any kudos from having the biggest, fastest rig in town and having pSX run much better on it. Everyone will just point to _their_ screenshots, which are just as good, and point out that the game runs equally well on their systems... end of bragging rights...

I still like ePSXe, although I hardly ever run it now and, unlike a lot of pSX converts, I always enjoyed messing around with plugins. But the fun rather fades when you have an emulator that runs perfectly straight off with hardly any configuration.

[Sune]

(@ Heihachi)

I guess this is what smf is aiming for - the accuracy I mean.
smf.mameworld.info/?cat=5
But when his driver is finished, it will probably be even slower than it is now!

Because it is a standalone emulator, pSX can do things that aren't possible within the framework and the philosophy of MAME.
MAME favors accuracy, portability and code readability over speed.
But being a veteran on the sk3n3, you should already know this..

[kinghanco]

Forget about MESS. I'm staying with pSX. MESS won't be better than pSX because...

1. It will not let you uses rumble at all.

2. It will not let you uses the memory card save.

3. It probably be lagging on the speed.

4. There won't be any PocketStation.

5. You can't switch from disc 1 to disc 2 to play Final Fantasy VII disc 2.

6. MESS is messy anyway.

[Heihachi_73]

I don't mind having games play slow - I'm used to it in MAME, and my previous computer (1.2GHz, no AGP, and a crappy Intel 82810 24-bit chipset). It's just the way ZiNc has been lately, I just don't want it to end up dead like Viva Nonno. The only posts on their forum seem to be from people who can't figure the emulator out ("what's the coh-1000c rom? it's not even in the game"), or about games that are missing but are in MAME.

I was thinking of ZiNc as a standalone program like it is now, but using pSX code instead. In other words, it would be great to have the speed of ZiNc but with the accuracy of pSX, and of course, no plugins!

On a side note, I'd be happy if SMF's fixes one day put an end to the old Tekken 3 hangs, but fighting games are a big no-no due to the clueless "g4m3z k1dd13z", and probably all of my Tekken spam over the years!

[Sune]

In the past there's been some talk about doing the opposite - Playstation home console emulation in ZiNc, plug-ins and all.

But I guess by now RB must be thinking something along the lines of 'why bother'. I mean, after pSX came out.

It looks like everyone on the sk33n who has (or has had) a hand in Playstation emulation are working together and sharing what they know.
For example a while ago on the MW forums, RB mentioned pSX Author sharing his source code with smf. I would be surprised if they aren't still collaborating.

So I guess whatever cool things happen in the course of development, be it on the pSX, MAME or ZiNC side, will benefit all sides in the end.

Oh yeah, did you ever try Pete's soft GPU?
www.pbernert.com/html/gpu.htm#SOFTWIN
I've used it since passing 1400MHz and never looked back!

[Heihachi_73]

I've used the PEOpS plugin in ZiNc since 1.1 came out, the only thing it lacks is a decent set of options. There isn't a way to disable the filtering or the way it starts up unthrottled. I suppose it's still way better than 30fps on Lei's stage in Tekken 2 (just tested) when using the original renderer.znc.

I still wish this coder was still active in the PSX scene - IMO (and only mine!) nothing ever beat this GPU plugin for accuracy and usability. Unfortunately it didn't work with Tekken 1 or 2 and still had a few glitches in the MDEC department.

KingHanco: In the future MESS will get past the locked solid BIOS screen, but yes it will be slow. Memory cards can/will be supported by using the seemingly unused .\memcards directory with a filename like psx0000.nv or whatever. Disc swapping will be possible if there is a DIP switch option. Then you would just use the file selector to select the other CHD file. As with multi-tap support; a DIP switch which enables P3 and P4 control input.

[kinghanco]

On MESS there will be mouse and gun support.

RB mentioned pSX Author sharing his source code with smf! Wtf!