vanfanel

Heh, nice to know what they have announced. This time I will pass: the limited quantity thing is really tiresome, and I won't be left with major bugs in a closed firmware again, NEVER. I had enough of Analogue. -On the MegaSG: Stupidly broken pixel-blending, tearing in Master System games and incompatibilities. -On the SuperNT: Saved settings not applied unless I boot from cartidge. That's what accuracy means for Analogue. Don't be fooled like I was. None of these happen on the MiSTer MegaDrive an SNES cores, which have greatly surpassed mediocre Analogue cores after community collaboration and bugfixing. Also, the only FPGA developer they are know to have (and who created this thread) DID laugh at us with that "I don't post there anymore beacause all they do is complaining, LOL!" he dedicated us months ago. Great way to get the appreciation of the community, sir. I will be sure to buy everything you work on, yes, you can be sure of that. This new expensive an inaccessible piece of junk will also be left with bugs like ALL their previous products. If you can get one to begin with, that's it. This time, opensource projects got there first: on the MiSTer, we have perfect PC-Engine, SuperGrafx and PC-EngineCD cores already. No need for more expensive and bug-ridden closed shit.

Also, selective pixel blending looks horrible and destroys fonts in a lot of games... Option for unselective pixel blending, just like RCA does it, is needed on the MegaSG.

Am I in Australia? NO. Then apply me reasonable rates. But well, I assumed them for SuperNT, and again for MegaSG. As for moving it for the next thing, you can do that when you have finished the previous one. In my work, I can NOT do "the next thing" until I finish the current one. And when you leave behind annoying a very noticeable bugs after marketing perfection (like Master System tearing... perfection my ***), you shouldn't either. Multiple devs? Are Analog prices so low that "they can only afford one dev"? Yeah, it may change in the future, but not with my money. And I hope less and less people will fail for Analogue's next incomplete and bug ridden iteration: seeing how they release the next big thing while they abandon previous implementations with bugs is really infuriating. You guys are in time to save yourselves that feeling. But after all, it comes to this: community-driven projects are way better in the end, because no greedy private business leaves the bugs in CLOSED cores unresolved: we can solve them ourselves. None of the annoying bugs that plague the MegaSG are in the MiSTer Master System, MegaDrive and MegaCD cores at this point. And I have my right to say so here, in this thread, as a MegaSG, SuperNT and MiSTer owner. This is a lesson I had learned a lot of time ago with software, and I had to learn it again with FPGA hardware. Thank you Analogue for the lesson, it just cost me like 800 Euros in wasted hardware and abusive shipping rates. Never again. Only opensource projects from now on.

This ^ Tearing in Master System games is a disaster for a system that's marketed as aiming for perfection, as is the broken pixel blending in the basic MegaDrive core. The "Pocket" can look like a shiny and desirable new machine now, but after a long period of bugs being ignored like the Master System tearing and broken FM while other options don't have these bugs, you start looking at the console with regret, with an uneasy sensation of having been scammed. What Analogue does is release new hardware while leaving small but important bugs in previous products. That way, something always feels "incomplete", so consumers go after the new (and immensely expensive thanks to abusive shipping rates) product, in their need to "get things right this time". Then, they are left with bugs again, and Analogue starts a new cycle. This time, Analogue, I am NOT in, and my friends are not in either. If you had fixed MegaSG and SuperNT bugs by now, it would be different. Yeah, you may sell the amount of Pocket consoles for preorder, but by abusing consumers like you do (bugs, abusive shipping costs) you are digging your own grave. You are not alone in the FPGA market anymore, and community-driven projects tend to be far better than your bug-ridden and privative implementations.

Of course we had RGB compatible TVs here in the 80s. I had my Commodore Amiga compuer connected via SCART, which is great for TV-computers, and it looked fantastic. But Commodore Amiga developers didn't code their games and programs to make massive use of pixel blending, while MegaDrive developers did: good luck enjoying Earthworm Jim without pixel blending, or even Story of Thor (look at the intro, no need to go further in the game). This is very simple: Many major titles look BAD on the MegaSG because of the lack of proper pixel blending. And they look great on the MiSTer because it's core has proper pixel blending. That's not MiSTer advertising: it's reality. In fact, I would prefer things to be the opposite: I would prefer MegaSG doing it right instead of MiSTer, because I would be able to fix the MiSTer core. I am using the MiSTer here as an example of how it could be done very easily, that's all.

You can be sure about Master System tearing. It happens here in two different monitors with two different HDMI cables. People seeing this could be read here time ago, and on the github issue tracker. But most people forget about those problems and move on to another solutions to play better, as I did by moving to the MiSTer (I have native db9 ports there, too). I also tried all kind of settings, like different integer scale sizes. Of course I use zero-lag mode: that's why I use FPGAs to start with. But tearing also happens in buffered modes. Only in Master System games, NOT in Megadrive ones. Music broken in Rastan: you don't know the Master System. I bet you are in USA, where the Master System catalog and importance is almost unknown. Here in Europe, the Master System version of Rastan is a classic of it's catalog: saying that Rastan is a minor game is like saying Wonderboy in Monster Land is a minor game. Pixel blending: I am not the only person that has noticed how broken the selective pixel blending is, and how perfect (yes, PERFECT) the MiSTer core looks with unselective, full-screen pixel blending. Chances are that you never got to know the MegaDrive back in the day: you know it by emulation and now FPGAs, but you did not play the hardware via RF or RCA, like it was played back in the 90s. These methods caused unselective, fullscreen pixel blending that made the games look blurry but very characteristic of the home machine. The MegaDrive games did NOT look sharp like RGB does. Not at all. Game designers took this into account and most games need fullscreen pixel blending to look as intended, blurry and all: basic games like Chakan, Aladdin, Earthworm Jim and Ristar just look bad on the MegaSG, and look perfect on the MiSTer. Again, calling it minor is a demonstration of a huge ignorance about the real system. Worst thing is, it's very easy to implement, because the solution is a simplification of the currently available and broken solution. So, yeah, you made a strong point that you don't really know the machines implemented in the MegaSG. Emulation was great, but created a generation of players that have a distorted vision of the past, with horribly-looking pixel-perfect gaming in mind as a reference, when games were not supposed nor designed to look like that in the first place.

Minor???? Like ALL scrolling Master System games showing tearing? Like OPL music on Master System being broken in Rastan? Like EVERY MegaDrive game using pixel blending (which is most of the console's library) looking bad because of the "selective" blending that creates ugly-looking frames with destroyed fonts and missing blending areas? No, we are not talking about minor here: and this is also far from the gold standard you mention. Also, we are not asking for unrealistic features like MegaCD support on the small FPGA of the MegaSG, NO. We are talking about reasonable fixes that would improve things A LOT, because believing that the MegaSG is a perfect way to play MegaDrive and Master System games and finding out those bugs I mentioned really screams for fixes. I *want to love* these machines. I have the SuperNT and MegaSG from day 1. I imported them to europe, which was EXPENSIVE as hell. And all I am asking is BASIC fixes for some big problems that they have. It's legit, not some laughable rant asking for the impossible. In fact, I could fix some of these things myself if these products were open, but they are not, which frustrates me even more. Asking these fixes, just in case, doesn't make me an adult living in my parent's house, like some insinuated to other use some pages ago. Not AT ALL. Grown, economically independent adults also want their computers and consoles to work as expected, not worse, and fix them (if they are open) or ask for fixes to major issues (if they are closed). That's perfectly sane. What's childish is being left with bugs and not saying anything because "it's normal that business moves on". Oh, and the comparision with TV sets is just plain stupid. It looks to me that some people in certain parts of the world have the corporate mentality so deeply installed in their minds that they have some strange "Stockholm syndrome", protecting inteterests that are against themselves. Good I don't get to live there, that mentality makes me want to puke. Really awful way of thinking that I hope NEVER gets here (to be honest, seeing how things are going in these parts, I am almost sure it will never get here).

This is what worries me. I am also on the fence with the Pocket: I am NOT being left with bugs again. I have learned the lesson. I hope I am wrong on this, but....

Don't you guys think a small firmware update to the Super NT is long due? I mean, latest update doesn't even load settings on boot... And MegaSG has some bugs, too, like people getting tearing on Master System games, broken OPL sound in Master System games too, broken voices in Colecovision games, horrid composite pixel blending simulation... For unselective composite pixel blending simulation alone, an update would be greatly needed, now that the MegaSG isn't the only FPGA MegaDrive hardware. For Analog, it's not good press to leave us with partially broken solutions when they advertise perfection. And I am sure Kevtris loves his creations. Why not perfect them and leave a good taste so we aquire new machines from them in the future?

I have always seen it on the MegaSG, I cant remember when I first noticed it on a game. At first I didnt care much, because initial firmwares can have small bugs, omissions, etc... but I am worried it will be left like that forever, after a year of the reports in github. Thing is, we are not talking about poor hardware here like an ATGames, the MegaSG is supposed to be a premium product, yet it has tearing on Master System games and broken pixel blending after all this time. Oh God...

Yes, I have very evident tearing in SMS games, too. My guess is that everybody has it, its just that most people dont care/notice, but well, after a year I really doubt we ever get to see a fix.

About the MegaSG, I was also hoping for non-selective composite blending, too, since the "intelligent" one just destroys text in games. And non-selective is trivial to do. So I really hope Kevtris can do these small fixes someday for the MegaSG firmware.

Have you guys in Discord heard any rumors of the new MegaSG firmware? I am eagerly waiting the scaler fixes, non-selective pixel blending in particular.

Could you *please* include the option for un-selective pixel blending in this update? Pretty please! I wont ask for anything more. Just that small option (it could work by moving the depth slide all the way up, for example).

This is precisely why we need the blending on the MegaSG to be fixed. As things are, the games relying on patterns for new colors and transparencies over RCA look horrible on the MegaSG vs what they look like on other FPGA Megadrive implementations or the orginal hardware, where pixel blending is correctly implemented with optional non-selective blending.

I have found this video that explains how important blending is on the Sega Megadrive games, and why having a coherent, complete, un-selective blending option like the MiSTer core has is an almost basic thing with the Megadrive in particular: Dithering on the Sega Genesis You will understand why I am asking so much to get it done right on the MegaSG even if I am already enjoying this on the MiSTer

@kevtris I did not know that the MiSTer community was SO hostile towards you or your work. Sorry to hear that. I enjoy both the MiSTer opensource cores and your cores on both the MegaSG and SuperNT, and I can say each alternative has its pros and cons, so no need to bash other peoples work. In the future, I hope to see some MiSTer cores on the Analogue-8/Pocket, etc., too, since they have been announced as "open", so both worlds will start to merge. About this part: "As for that blending, I already have something similar, and the idea was to only make it blend when it needed to, instead of all the time. This way the whole screen doesn't look like someone slathered Vaseline on it. I can make it blend all the time instead of selectively maybe by setting a slider to min or max and might add that when I do some other changes/fixes." Yes, please do so! As far as I can understand, selective blending is what causes all those problems with ugly fonts, etc. Having optional non-selective blending by moving the slider will be "perfect" in the sense that actual composite blending is not selective at all, so we will get to see the games as they looked on composite CRT TVs. So, my theory seems to be confirmed: before being selective, your blending was simple/non-selective, like the one that has been later implemented in the opensource Genesis core. Then you made it selective as a mean for "improvement" (but it does not look that good actually, at least for my taste: that is not how Genesis games looked like).

Now this is a great answer, and one that has taught me some things. Thanks a lot for this, really. I had not noticed the "derivative works" implications, so you are, of course, totally right. My guess, however, is that currently available blending option in the MegaSG (yes! We already have blending! But its selective and that selectivity is, I believe, the source or all "ugliness" in fonts and characters) could be, in fact, tuned to behave like a simple, un-selective blending routine by letting the "blending depth" slider movement to go even higher or lower, I dont know. What do you think about that possibility? In other words, I believe that the problem with currently available blending option was, at some point in Kevtris development, a simple, yet uniform and perfect, blending option. So no need to look at GPL code at all.

Of course I respect Kevtris and his work. In fact, even if I already enjoy the corrected blending on the MiSTer, I want to see it on the MegaSG because I like and enjoy the MegaSG that much. About GPL: one can not directly use GPL code (that would imply releasing the code of the MegaSG core), but you can take a look at the code and implement a similar solution: thats why GPL != open source. This core is particularly simple, too. And in this case, the original author (Katrinx) has already been contacted and she is ok with people taking a look at her code and implement a similar solution.

Thats the thing, look: Kevtris does NOT have to invest work time on the MegaSG to improve dithering, because perfect and uniform dithering (as shown by the images on my previous posts) comes from a public code that he can just adapt to the MegaSG in a matter of minutes. It is here: https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/Genesis_MiSTer/blob/master/cofi.sv It is very very simple code to look at and implement. And whats more: I have already talked to Kitrinx, the code author, and she said that Kevtris can look at her simple code and implement it very easily because he is a very experienced developer. I am already enjoying this on the MiSTer Genesis core, but I really like the MegaSG and it bugs me that dithering so broken on the MegaSG when it could be on par with the MiSTer very easily. So its not really about me, but about the MegaSG "completeness" so everyone who understands how Genesis graphic arts where often designed to take advantage of composite artifacting could benefit.

I thought I had been very clear: the blending option is already on the MegaSG menu over HDMI, but its broken. Its an option, no one is forcing to use it. I am just asking it to be fixed. Blending is a very important part of MegaDrive/Genesis graphics because a lot of games (and I mean a REAL LOT) count on blending for looking right. Without blending, many many games look wrong, because they were designed for blending. Now, if you are not interested, there is no need to say that you are not interested, so I dont understand your post. Also, I dont understand why would someone not be interested about blending when its an integral part of MegaDrive/Genesis games. They looked blended back in the day in the vast majority of setups, so blending is the natural way of these games to look. Even so, its an option, no one is forcing you to use it. This is The Terminator without blending: This is The Terminator with blending (different sky color is due to the thunder/war effect in that scene), look at transparent smoke. It was designed to be transparent exactly like this. Non-transparent smoke? You are seeing it wrong, a Genesis back in the day showed it transparent in most setups, as you are seeing here: I am starting to believe that most people only knew the emulated Genesis (no blending artifacts) and they never really knew the system back in the day.

I still think MegaSG composite blending is REALLY poor compared to what we also have on the open source MegaDrive & MegaCD cores. As I said, I have both the MiSTer and the MegaSG, and I have got to a point where MegaSG looks very ugly to me compared to the MiSTer cores because of the poor composite blending effect option that the MegaSG has. This is how the incredible open-source composite blending looks on the MiSTer. This is a totally constructive post, specially because the MegaSG can incorporate this feature very easily: I have talked with Kitrinx, the author of the PERFECT composite blending implementation, and she has no problem with Kevtris looking at her core and do a similar implementation into the MegaSG. She told me that "it will be very easy for someone as experienced as Kevtris, since the code is very simple in nature". This is how Elemental Master intro text looks with the open-source composite blending. As you will see, text looks fine, its perfectly readable and everything is coherent (where the broken MegaSG composite blending is ugly as sin in the same scene): This is how Sonic 1 blending-based water transparency looks with the open-source composite blending. No ugly score, fonts or lives counter: just PERFECTLY looking as a composite hooked MegaDrive console! This is how Streets of Rage 2 transparent bar lights look. Again, no ugly fonts or horrid bar pics, just PERFECT transparency, very clean. This is just imposible with current MegaSG blending solution: Again, Elemental Master shows a very nice tittle screen, with coherent blending in fonts and background image: This is how Comix Zone looks like with the open-source composite blending. This game looks horrid on the MegaSG in comparision! Again, look at the far backgrounds: great colors as in a real composite TV, and NO ugly fonts or faces, just perfection. More about Comix Zone. This game is perfect to show how superior the open-source blending is: The Terminator for Mega CD looks HORRIBLE on the MegaSG. This is how it looks with the open-source composite blending. As you can see, pattern-based transparency effects are just gorgeous: Let me repeat: The code for this coherent and beautiful composite blending is free for anyone to look at and reimplement (NOT directly use as-is because its GPLv3, but it can be looked at and a similar implementation can be done very easily, and its author has said that Kevtris will have no problem at all with doing so). Its available here: https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/Genesis_MiSTer/blob/master/cofi.sv For Kevtris, it would be a matter of minutes. For the rest of us, it would be PERFECT composite blending over HDMI. So, please guys, ask Kevtris for this little detail, too! Also, I know the MegaSG already has an optional blending option. But its broken as its done "selectively", which creates a lot of unwanted artifacts like broken fonts or distorted low-res portraits, incoherent areas in the image, etc. This solution fixes all those problems and can be easily incorporated to the MegaSG (maybe it could be named "simple blending" or "non-selective blending").

After hours of playing and testing, I can not insist enough on how far better the Kintrix open horizontal blending is when compared against the current blending in the MegaSG is. Its simply perfect, please test. Games look just like they do on RCA minus image noise, just wonderful really.

@Kevtris There is something that seems very wrong with pixel blending in the MegaSG when the blending option is active, since as you know it makes most text uneasy to read and UNGLY in general. Well, it does NOT have to be like that: I have the MegaSG and I also have other FPGA-based, scene-driven boards, and recently we got composite-like un-dithering for the open Genesis implementation. This open composite-like blending does a WAY BETTER job than the MegaSG one! It seems to be less selective so the results are coherent all over the screen, and text does NOT look ugly like it does on the MegaSG. So: 1) Can the MegaSG be configured with current options to have something like that? 2) If 1=no, can you *please* add this simple, not-so-selective un-ditheing method to the MegaSG? Open method is very simple from the looks of it, but as I said, it works WAY better than what we currently have: // Composite-like horizontal blending by Kitrinx module cofi ( input clk, input pix_ce, input enable, input hblank, input vblank, input hs, input vs, input [7:0] red, input [7:0] green, input [7:0] blue, output reg hblank_out, output reg vblank_out, output reg hs_out, output reg vs_out, output reg [7:0] red_out, output reg [7:0] green_out, output reg [7:0] blue_out ); function bit [7:0] color_blend ( input [7:0] color_prev, input [7:0] color_curr, input blank_last ); begin color_blend = blank_last ? color_curr : (color_prev >> 1) + (color_curr >> 1); end endfunction reg [7:0] red_last; reg [7:0] green_last; reg [7:0] blue_last; always @(posedge clk) if (pix_ce) begin hblank_out <= hblank; vblank_out <= vblank; vs_out <= vs; hs_out <= hs; red_last <= red; blue_last <= blue; green_last <= green; red_out <= enable ? color_blend(red_last, red, hblank_out) : red; blue_out <= enable ? color_blend(blue_last, blue, hblank_out) : blue; green_out <= enable ? color_blend(green_last, green, hblank_out) : green; end endmodule

FM music is still failing in Rastan Saga for Master System... Come on, there are public FM implementations that work this perfectly right, just take a look at them, thats why open source exists, so you we have to work twice