Newsdee
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Posts posted by Newsdee
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To be fair, before DLC there were expansion packs and shareware titles as examples of (often paid) extra content. It was much more inconvenient than modern DLC, which is usually tied to a marketplace (Steam, PSN, Xbox live, etc.)
User-created levels predated Doom, there was (is) user content for ZZT / Zeux for example. They were distributed via BBS or floppies and needed user intervention to install (as opposed to the 1-click downloads of most DLC).
MMORPGs are also mostly DLC content (that you pay monthly). Ultima Online from 1997 popularized the genre, but there were earlier examples.
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By definition, DLC would require an internet or at least modem connection. From that point of view, Atari's GameLine (1983?), the Sega Channel (late 1994) and the Super Famicom BS-X (1995) would count.
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I'm surprised nobody brought up the GBS8200 and the newer variant that outputs HDMI.
They are nowhere as good as the Framemeister or OSSC, and needs some minor tweaks to work great. But it is dirt cheap, and I wonder how it compares to Retrotink.
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On 6/29/2020 at 10:42 AM, blzmarcel said:
What discord server and room is this? It might be nice to start hanging around there and and getting fresher information.
It's the Classic Gaming Discord server, check the Analogue channels from here:
Read the welcome text and choose server roles to gain access to the areas you are interested in.
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6 hours ago, CZroe said:
People can already use MiSTer cores to make those clones.
Yes, but that is considerable more work than taking code already adapted for it. The people who pull these shenanigans usually want the least effort possible.
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9 hours ago, blzmarcel said:
Analog really should just open up on the software side. I suspect this would help lower their overall development times and costs.
If they do, it will expose them to people creating clones and destroy their niche (i.e. FPGA consoles that take original carts).
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I was lucky, my parents got a //e when I was a small kid and it ended up being "my" computer once they upgraded to a Mac SE.
I used it for about 10 years before I had another PC of my own (a 486 sx 25) and it is still functional except the FDDs (I have a CFFA instead).
This bring me to my earliest coding anecdote...
When I was very young I was trying to do some BASIC and I kept getting Syntax Error.
I asked my dad what it meant, and he told me I had to enter the command "properly".
I came back a bit later saying it didn't work, so he went over to check the computer.
I had basically entered the same command, followed by "PLEASE"
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Sometimes there are FAQs online that translate the dialogue.
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18 hours ago, Steven Pendleton said:
Worst place: ebay
I'd only ever use ebay prices as a maximum. If I see local stores charging as much as ebay, I know I should pass.
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I see these as just toys... same as the Mini MyArcade units. I would pick one up if I find one in the wild (assuming it has no insame markup), but wouldn't bother to order online for it.
Perhaps Sega is thinking that whoever cares about seriously playing the games is already doing so. After all, it's not hard to find a GG emulator with all the portable emulator boxes going around. So they came up with a cute mini toy instead, which happens to be functional.
From that perspective it's pretty neat, makes for a nice gift to non-gamers who are aware of the GG but wouldnt invest in one nowadays.
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SuperGrafx is supported by the TG16 MiSTer core.
X68K is on the way, the one on github is quite old but a Japanese dev has started to update it.
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MiSTer devs have (finally) rolled out their own forums: https://misterfpga.org/
(nobody knows what's going on with the old Atari-Forums, but they've been down for a while)
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A Japanese developer ported his X68000 and PC-88 cores: http://fpga8801.seesaa.net/
I've tried a test build of the first, it still needs a lot of polishing (sound is very off and many games crash) but it's very exciting to finally get more Japanese computers on MiSTer!
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Counting only original releases (i.e. no everdrives / flashcarts)...
SuperGrafx: 1 game (Granzort)
Sony PSP: 2 games (GT and Castlevania)
Wonderswan: 3 games
NeoGeo Pocket Color: 3 games
32X: 3 games (Zaxxon, Star wars, Madden)
PS2: 3 games (SMT Nocture and 2 others)
XBox One: 4 games (got it on a sale but barely used it)
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We will get X68000 way before 32X... an updated prototype core is going around which can run several games from .HDF files; but it still needs a lot of work (especially the audio).
There is also an Intellivision core beta that seems pretty complete (as far as I can tell), but for some reason is still not in the official repo.
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11 hours ago, seastalker said:
Do you feel the core is already on par with the real hardware like the MegaSD is for Sega CD?
Not yet but it's likely it will get there soon. People have been using MDFourier (http://junkerhq.net/MDFourier/mdfourier.html) to analyze and improve the sound on Genesis and SNES cores, and now they are starting to look at the latest PC Engine core. It just had a massive rewrite of the CPU and VDC code which makes it much more accurate, so now it just needs to iron out the last pieces.
As for my own use, I run my modded PC Engines with an XRGB-Mini to upscale to HDMI and a Turbo Everdrive.
I don't have the Terraonion expansion so I can't say how the menu navigation compares to MiSTer, but other than that using a MiSTer is definitely more convenient than my original setup.
(e.g. I can take screenshots with a keyboard press, backup my saves to google drive, use any of my controllers with it, and all that without having accuracy or lag penalties).
I do like having some physical media (for games I like) so what I do when I have guests is use the carts/CDs to select what they want to play, but then load it from SD card
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17 hours ago, Steven Pendleton said:
It is very much self-inflicted, as I'd much rather use the proper controllers with the appropriate games/systems and I also have USB versions of many of them as it is.
You can try using a regular USB hub (i.e. not the hub board, but the same hub you'd use with a PC/Pi/etc.) and connect many of those controllers.
I'm frequently changing controllers between USB and native depending on the particular game I'm using. Remapping controls is also great (e.g. for Amiga/ST games, mapping Up to a button for jump, etc).
4 hours ago, Steven Pendleton said:Are there any plans for 32X? I don't know if the MiSTer would be capable of that (which is partially why I'm asking), but I'm interested in seeing it if possible.
Take this with a big grain of salt; but somebody is doing an experiment to attach a dual SH-2 to MiSTer as custom add-on, which would help for 32X and possibly a Saturn core.
We can't know at this stage if that idea will bear fruit, though.
Ultimately it depends on having a good developer motivated to do it. Currently the focus has been in other areas (e.g. X68000, PC Engine CD).
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3 hours ago, derFunkenstein said:
PC Engine CD support is here today. Everyone who wants to play Rondo of Blood needs to get on that, pronto.
I'm playing that now! Looks my PCE Duo can finally just be a display piece now.
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6 hours ago, konradklaus said:
Is there a cable or adapter to use the serial interface for the low latency input without an IO board?
No. The adapter is the IO Board
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19 hours ago, Steven Pendleton said:
Yeah, I just want 1 controller so I got a little converter. It's quite frustrating to not be able to use anything other than the PS4 controller and also have audio issues, though. I haven't decided what I want to do with it. I'm very tempted to give up on it and just use real hardware, especially since I don't have converters to use real controllers on the MiSTer.
Those limitations seem self-inflicted to me. You have an extremely wide array of USB controllers available, and if you want real original controllers, plenty of good USB adapters.
Audio works fine for me and most people. Are you using an SDRAM card? If not I suggest trying that first. You can get a 32MB card cheaply if cost is a concern.
Anyway if you are not happy, I'm sure somebody will want your DE10 if you offer it up for sale.
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4 hours ago, Steven Pendleton said:
I have a micro USB to USB A converter. That's it.
It's all about how many USB devices you want to use. I always have at least 3 to 4 devices connected (keyboard, mouse, WiFi, BT, 8bitdo dongles, etc).
You can use a single port too if you don't care about any of that. Any old USB hub will work too, but you should always use a powered done. The USB Board is only if you want it all in a nice little case.
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Do you mean the flat connector on the right of this picture? That's a USB 3.0 Micro-B plug; in the case of Blisster it's used for LLAPI with MiSTer, as zetastrike rightly pointed out.
It can also be used with a PC to update firmware, but there is an update script you can run from MiSTer that is much easier to use.
You can find the script in the LLAPI core fork repository:
https://github.com/MiSTer-LLAPI
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12 hours ago, hyrulebr said:
Thanks for the explanation! And about Blisster vs SNAC? Are both the same? (excepting that SNAC is officially supported in some cores).
No, it's a different thing completely. I need to get a bit technical to explain it, hope this is clear enough:
You will notice that official IO boards have a 9-pin connector (actually a USB 3.0 plug, labeled "not USB" on the PCB
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That connector is for direct communication to the FPGA, and has 7 data pins, one ground, and voltage pins available.
The (official) purpose of this port is non-standard controllers, such as using original lightguns with a CRT.
"SNAC" is nothing more than a voltage level shifter, in other words a cheap PCB with resistors to convert 5V (of the controller) into 3.3V (used by the FPGA).
SNAC was first used for the NES and SNES cores, but requires you to match the core with controllers and is single player only (in other words, Player 2 has to use USB)
I think now somebody has added it to the MD core as well, but that's about it in terms of official support for cores. Still, for lightguns, that's pretty good.
Some people took that idea further in different ways, none of them official:
- Encode the controller with a special protocol, so you can use a SNES controller with MD cores, etc (requires modified cores to support the "common language")
- Modify the main MiSTer binary so you can control the OSD with these controllers (requires fork of main binary)
- Take an extra pin of the FPGA to create "SNAC" for two players (which could break compatibility down the line)
In Blisster (and LLAMA) only the 1st item applies and is optional, i.e. you can use them in USB mode entirely with the official cores.
Blisster also has a clever approach for the OSD menu, it detects when it opens and switches to USB mode to control it (thereby not needing any special MiSTer firmware changes).
The last two items are sometimes called SNAC+ or two-player SNAC in social media.
I haven't used it myself (it probably works fine) but it has the caveat that future official hardware may repurpose that 8th pin.
I could go into comparisons of the three approaches, but it would require going further into more hairy details (e.g. lag vs. jitter and original polling intervals of consoles).
Personally I got SNAC and a Blisster, I may get one of the SNAC+ just to try it, but I didn't feel compelled to use it yet.
But here's a good summary of the latency situation with MiSTer:If there was not so much drama around these topics, we probably would have one approach by now.
But these things are inevitable in open source, just look at all those MAME forks...-
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I have more than one MiSTer. One has a Blisster and another a USB hub. Long story short, Blisster is a USB hub with 4 regular USB ports and 2 "bliss-box" connectors. Those function as built-in adapters to legacy controllers, and can translate to both USB and a special mode that is closer to the metal, but not official in MiSTer cores.
The thing to bear in mind is that there have been extensive tests of the USB stack (by different people) and it was found that some (wired) gamepads ran at 1ms polling intervals, and most slower gamepads can be made to go as fast (with a bit of setting tinkering).
One surprising result, by the way, is that 8BitDo controllers that are wired or use 2.4ghz RF are faster in wired mode than the bluetooth controllers of the same company in wired mode. Blisster runs at 2ms if I'm not mistaken, and cheap DYI Arduino adapters have no problem with 1ms polling.
Using the Blisster as USB hub is basically the same as using a USB hub plus a Bliss Gamer Pro adapter, the 4-play, or an Arduino adapter. If you have some bliss-box products already or like their approach then a Blisster makes sense. You can really ignore all that "low latency" stuff unless you use a CRT and want to tinker.
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MiSTer FPGA
in Classic Console Discussion
Posted · Edited by Newsdee
For bigger ROMs, you can also use external USB storage or a shared network drive.
File transfer can be done via SFTP or Samba share so it's easy to manage your library from your PC. I personally use Filezilla (note: use binary transfer mode).