FPGA Based Videogame System

[FPGA Based Videogame System]

FPGA retro consoles are where I see the biggest benefit on my OLED, they benefit more from the perfect black handling (just think of all those shoot'em up, they tend to look a bit weird on other screens), the very quick switching of the pixels (LCDs are more smeary with fast motion) and the low input lag with very little image degredation than movies and modern games do.

[FPGA Based Videogame System]

Also of note - OLEDs tend to degrade the image much less in game mode than other panel types tend to do. Dynamic backlight/local dimming in particular requires some processing and ideally a few frames to look at so low lag mode is problematic for that.

[FPGA Based Videogame System]

I tried an Amiga 1200 like setup with whdload on the MiSter and ran into graphics or audio glitches with about every fourth game I tried which doesn't happen on my real A1200 (which runs on an 68030 which the MiSter can not do but that should in theory make my A1200 less compatible to old games, not more). Going down to an Amiga 500 also isn't very fun without ipf support (which is not directly the fault of the MiSter devs but that doesn't make it less of a problem). Other systems I tried worked fine but I miss the 60Hz adjustments Analogue's systems do - can only use some of the MiSter cores in zero-lag mode. MiSter is great but it's not perfect and when the things don't work that are important to you, you can have a shitty time with it - as it happened to me. But nothing is perfect they say and that's usually true.

[FPGA Based Videogame System]

Nobody can predict what the big companies decide to go after. If Nintendo's upper management would have decided that the Super Nt looks like a competitor to the SNES Mini the situation would suddenly have been very similar. And yes, they don't market their products as things that can be used for illegal operation - that's exactly the point.

[FPGA Based Videogame System]

Remember Bleem and Virtual Game Station? Those were legal as well and yet Sony managed to shut them down. The more popular Analogue becomes the higher the risk to anger some big company like Nintendo and if one of those then find something that looks even slightly suspicious from a legal standpoint (for example their case designs, which are very close to the originals, especially for the Duo) they will drag them to court and keep them busy for years. The "jailbreaks" of all of Analogue's devices were done by Kevtris. Everbody uses them but they are not officially endorsed by Analogue. It is kinda weird but I'm pretty certain it's solely done that way to try and reduce the risk of something like Bleem happening - can't think of any other reason at least.

[FPGA Based Videogame System]

3 hours ago, vanfanel said:

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.

And I guess here's the GitHub issue you metioned: https://github.com/SmokeMonsterPacks/Mega-Sg-Jailbreak/issues/64

Going from one other person being able to reproduce it to "The issue exists for many of us" just like in this thread. Fabulous.

[FPGA Based Videogame System]

3 hours ago, vanfanel said:

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.

I'm from Europe and I played Master System back in the day. A lot. Stop speculating about people to produce fake arguments, please.

[FPGA Based Videogame System]

Master System tearing - I'm not sure about that, so far only two people talked about it (one of them being you), haven't noticed it myself. Would be interested in knowing more, maybe related to scaling settings or whatever.

OPL music broken in one game - yes, that's minor.

Pixel blending - definitely minor, from what I can see it's literally only one person who cares about it.

 

So, yes, you made a strong point that we're only talking about minor issues here. Thanks for making that clear.

[FPGA Based Videogame System]

Taking things slower would be nice but I assume nobody here knows under how much financial pressure they are. Also nobody knows how much maybe Kevtris himself wants to push things forward. He is a very ambitious guy and I'm sure he tends to put too many things on his todo list like ambitious people tend to do - and that can be the reason some things get put on the backburner. Years are flying by like nothing for busy engineers. But I'm totally cool with that because it's also the reason such super ambitious projects are pulled into existance at all.

Nontheless new Nt Minis are coming, it's not like nothing's happening with the established Analogue products. So I actually think we should take things slower and don't start whining so quickly. The MegaSg is my favourite Mega Drive and the SuperNt is my favourite Super Nintendo, I think they are both spectacular as they are right now. Happy about updates whenever they appear but meanwhile I'm already having lots and lots of fun with them.