What Are Your Favorite Emulators For Each System?

[patrickp]

I haven't tried the WIP yet but I will, and I can confirm that I had the same glitch as GM.

[byuu]

Hi. Noticed the referral link, thought I'd post my two cents.

I did ask not to have my WIP releases publically linked to -- I can't afford the bandwidth. No worries though, I will be sure to hide the links in the future.

If in fact DeJap's Star Ocean translation's custom title screen graphic works in my latest WIP, I'd be surprised and it would most likely be due to some really poor NMI/IRQ programming code hacked into the translated ROM. I'll admit to not having looked into the issue personally.

If it doesn't work, then there is a 99.9+% chance it is a problem with the translation patch code and not my emulator. It's not possible for me to test the translation on hardware, as it uses a special chip. I can think of at least five fan translations that are confirmed to not work properly on real hardware. Given Dark Force probably wasn't able to test his translation on real hardware (for the same reasons I can't), I'd cast serious doubt onto the claim that this is a problem with bsnes. If you insist that it is, then please provide solid proof and I will quickly correct the issue.

Further, over 3,000 games (100% of all commercially released and dumped cartridges that lack unsupported special chips) have been tested thorougly by two separate testers, and only two issues that an end user would ever even notice have appeared; one of which also happens in every other emulator with emulator hacks disabled. You can comment all you like on how accurate or inaccurate you think bsnes is, but the simple fact is that SNES9x has ~15 times as many hacks as I have known bugs. ZSNES has less hacks, but far more problematic games that don't have hacks. The exact number is unknown since each new WIP both fixes and breaks different games, but is probably somewhere in the ~50-150 range.

I've gone over the speed of bsnes enough that I don't care to argue that point anymore. Use it or don't use it.

Lastly, as far as cheats, I'm not sure why everyone's made a big deal of that. I don't have a problem with the use of Game Genie cheats if someone wants to use them. I have a problem with the use of game-specific emulator hacks to "fix" broken games. SNEeSe and Super Sleuth are the only other SNES emulators that also do not use such hacks. If you don't mind emulator hacks to play games, have a slow computer, won't touch an emulator without savestates/netplay, or require SuperFX / SA-1 support, then again: use ZSNES or SNES9x.

None of these emulators are my competition (and in fact we all work together), so it's kind of pointless to rate and compare them. I never meant for anyone to use bsnes at all, as it's more of an experiment in just how accurate an emulator really can get, as well as of some brand new emulator programming techniques; but I've since added all of the basic features people have asked for, so it works good for some. I'm not ever aiming to surpass ZSNES or SNES9x, so don't expect that to ever happen. In fact, I'll most likely never even add SFX/SA1/savestate support, and it will never run at fullspeed on anything less than 1.5ghz.

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By the way, wanted to mention how much I enjoy pSX. Keep up the great work, pSXAuthor :D

[Ultima]

I offer you my sincerest apologies for inciting link-leeching in my previous post, I wasn't thinking earlier when that link was posted. Even though it's probably too late now, out of courtesy, I edited the link out of kinghanco's post ;o

About the cheat thing -- yeah, I had misread your website before, but corrected myself. I brought bsnes up in this thread not in hopes of making it into a comparison, but to inform people that I'd heard awesome things about it. Much kudos to you -- even if it isn't your aim to make bsnes "surpass" ZSNES/SNES9X, you've still have made it so in its own right

Not for flattery or anything, but from the things I've read about your emulator since I brought it up in this thread, I'm starting to lean toward it as my favored SNES emulator, even though I've yet to test it (at the start, I'd leaned toward ZSNES purely out of familiarity over any real opinions). In case it weren't obvious enough already, I switched over to pSX from the PSEmuPro-based emulators due to its focus on accuracy over extraneous things and its no-bull approach to emulation. As bsnes shares much of that philosophy, I'd happily take the high system requirements for it accuracy Even if you don't care, I'm definitely keeping an eye on bsnes's development from now on

[kinghanco]

Sorry about the link guys.

Sorry byuu. It won't happen again.

Ultima, I removed the snapshot on the last post.

[TheCloudOfSmoke]

Like I said before, I'm keeping my eye on bsnes. I hope I didn't say anything to offend you byuu (with not having save states atm). Excellent emulator and keep up the good work (not kissing ass either, I really mean it ).

My main purpose in creating this thread was so we can suggest and try out different emulators (not to pointlessly compare and rate them) that we may not have known about unless someone else had suggested it to us. In fact, I wouldn't have found out about your emulator as well as a few others if it wasn't for this thread. Some people actually got onto Kega because of it as well. I have respect for any emulator author (no matter how incomplete or good their emulator is) who is willing to release their hard work free to the public.

[emulover]

thanks for the Reply Byuu, Bsnes is my favorite snes emu.


Star Ocean translated is definatly not ment to run on real hardware.

Star Ocean works fine, but the Translated version doesnt work, its a bug in the titlescreen hack.

I'M disappointed that the WIP was posted here after i said that it was not public, glad you removed the link.

Those of you that do have the WIP, please go ahead and test games, by testing i mean log several hours on them and preferably less known but good games.

But please report any bugs through me so i can check them against my bugs that arnt bugs list untill byuu gets my cleaned up list

[Gamesoul Master]

Bah... well, at least I got the WIP. Didn't realize it wasn't public, as I must have missed that particular statement by emulover...

I can under byuu's irritation, but I still think he over-reacted just a little bit...

Anything released that isn't original is open to rating/comparing. It's just the way things are. Me and Ultima aren't competing, yet I have no problem knowing that his frontend is much better than mine. Each one has its own advantages. We take the critiques and ratings and use them to better our frontends. We also help each other out here and there when we can. I guess my point is... it's perfectly ok that bsnes is compared to Snes9x and ZSNES. It's an *honour* to be compared to such great emulators. And the comparisons may even end up providing inspiration of some kind.

You can be sure that I'll be keeping an eye on bsnes, and I'll of course be testing many games with it. Like me and Ultima have already said... it shares a lot of goals and features with pSX. Definitely a good thing.

Would it be in bad taste if I uploaded the original WIP zip that I grabbed from that link, so that others may try it if they please? That way, there wouldn't be any problems with direct linking and bandwidth usage, as it would be my own account's bandwidth being used.

kinghanco: LOL... why did you remove the snapshot?

[kinghanco]

hoshikuzu said:

kinghanco: LOL... why did you remove the snapshot?

Because of what I done. I shouldn't never done that without asking byuu first. That was stupid of me of doing that. These builds for private testing only. byuu keep private testing builds hidden most of time away from bunches of people that doesn't know anything about these builds. Just the people got it is the ones that help him testing it out for bugs. You will not find these on his website.

[emulover]

Wip builds are very different from public builds as they are non-optimised and alot of features are disabled
so they are very slow and user unfreindly, minimum system requirements are almost 1,5 to 2x higher depending on what game your playing.

Also its often pointless to report bugs found with wips unless you got it from byuu himself..

[Gamesoul Master]

Well... WIP18 seems to run quite well. It runs at least as well as the latest public release. With your statement, does that mean I *shouldn't* upload that WIP? And thank you... but I know what a WIP build implies.

kinghanco: Well... it was already done. And while getting that WIP may not have been quite "right", posting a screenshot would not be considered bad in any way.

[kinghanco]

hoshikuzu said:

kinghanco: Well... it was already done. And while getting that WIP may not have been quite "right", posting a screenshot would not be considered bad in any way.

It won't happen again. I hope byuu isn't upset.

How did he find out so quick?

[FitzRoy]

herra said:

Now, I don't know about you guys, but I don't really see how a snes emulator could be more accurate than the snes9x and zsnes are. I mean really, do you see the accuracy differences between zsnes and bsnes, for example? Or do you just know it through some documentation or whatever?

This is a perception that doesn't seem to have an end - that somehow ZSNES is as good as its ever going to get, so why even bother trying bsnes? Let me just say one thing that is true: Chrono Trigger, the most popular game on the system, screws up graphically and audibly within the first 2 minutes using the latest ZSNES WIP. Believe it. People can praise savestates and speed until the cows come home, but as soon as one of your favorite games starts screwing up, you'll be on their forums begging for a fix every year like everyone else.

That being said, bsnes and ZSNES are not competing, but they are separate projects with differing strategies. If people are using a cpu that is more than four years old, bsnes is not feasible for them until their next upgrade. If you do have a newer cpu, bsnes simply deserves to be tried out. It deserves that much. If you don't like it, or can't run it, that's fine. But I hate seeing someone like byuu fix all those damn bugs only to have people say "I refuse to believe it" or "it can't do anything better than zsnes." It can. Tetsuo and I spent months testing every non-special chip game, and byuu practically went nuts fixing what we found. He wrote the emu to have the potential for perfection and figured out practically every bug he was faced with. Nowadays, nothing beats loading a game and knowing there's a 99.9% chance it's going to look, play, and sound just like the real deal. That kind of accuracy comes at the cost of speed and savestates, but for many, it's worth it.

[emulover]

well said FitzRoy

[Ultima]

kinghanco said:

How did he find out so quick?

As I said earlier, the site checks/logs referrers and blocks external linkage. byuu probably noticed some hits from http://psxemulator.proboards54.com and came to check out what was up.

[kinghanco]

ultima said:

kinghanco said:

How did he find out so quick?

As I said earlier, the site checks/logs referrers and blocks external linkage. byuu probably noticed some hits from http://psxemulator.proboards54.com and came to check out what was up.

Oh ok. That explain it.

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FitzRoy, bsnes is more stable than the ZSNES. He will not add hacking drivers or graphics screen saver thing on bsnes.

Anyway nobody isn't forcing byuu to keep on working on it. He chooses to keep working on it. Just like ZSNES team keep on working on ZSNES.

If people like bsnes then he will continue working on it. I will promise you that. Anyway bsnes still the best.