FPGA Based Videogame System

[Andromeda Stardust]

How Analogue remade the Super Nintendo: Go behind the scenes with the team behind the Super Nt

 

https://www.polygon.com/2018/2/5/16965328/analogue-super-nintendo-super-nt-making-of

 

very enlightening read. say what you will but the guy behind amalogue hinted strong5y a sega console is coming!

[D3ltax55]

I am wondering. THe Retrousb AVS. WHat flaws does it have. I have one and liking it. Just like to know.

[SnoopKatt]

I am wondering. THe Retrousb AVS. WHat flaws does it have. I have one and liking it. Just like to know.

It's not compatible with some Pirate carts, and being 720p limits nice scaling options. Besides that it's fine. I have one and I'm very happy with my purchase.

[Wolf_]

This is an interesting read..

 

https://byuu.org/articles/fpgas-arent-magic/

1) fpgas emulate hardware, emulating hardware is completely different than software because software runs over incompatible hardware which means it has to account for that difference at the end point. This is what causes software emulation to have lag and require systems many magnitudes of power greater than the originals to have accurate/close to accurate performance meanwhile hardware emulation can run with no performance differences on hardware that is significantly less powerful than what software emulation would require. For example even on a 1080ti with an i7 7700k his emulator doesn't run at the exact timings of a snes and a $180 fpga console does.

 

2) The fact that you can emulate hardware for better performance and using less resources drastically reducing the cost of emulating any system supported via fpga does not make it more accurate, but it does make it better than software emulation because software emulation still hasn't accomplished perfect reproduction of even 8bit systems.

 

3) Regardless of what causes it, software emulation still has added latency and hardware emulation does not.

 

4) Analogue is selling a product, but if they just gave out their code that only ran on specific hardware and told everyone they could have the code for free but needed to buy all the individual parts and assemble their own consoles how many people do you think would actually prefer that?

 

5) Emulation - Using fpga technology to emulate hardware is still more accurate than the emulators he listed (higan, BlastEm, gambatte, and mGBA) because all software emulation doesn't have the processing power to exactly replicate a system yet and when it does the hardware needed to accomplish it will be incredibly more powerful and more expensive than what it would take to accomplish the same feat (which for most of those systems is possible today) by fpga hardware emulation.

 

6) Fpgas - Here he literally says that software emulation can be as good as fpgas but they just need a crap ton more resources and that fpgas are inherently better and use less resources. He also says that "just because the Super Nt is more accurate doesn't mean it is more important than all the effort I put into my emulator". Sorry but just because you are sentimental about your own project doesn't mean people should prefer it over a better alternative.

 

7) Latency - Here he concedes that fpgas are faster but his counter point is that software emulation could be just as fast if you installed a custom operating system designed to emulate each individual console (which doesn't exist). So basically he is simply saying fpgas are better but emulators could be just as good if they had things that don't exist.

 

Preservation - Here he gets upset and says that Analogue isn't in it for preservation but to make money because they are selling the consoles. My response would be: So what? Do you think everyone can be like you and literally spend their retirement funds and throw away their future for the sake of preservation? In the real world people need to make money to survive and if making a superior product means they need to turn a profit shut up and take my money. As for it being closed source and thus dooming all their work to fade into obscurity just because it is closed source today, doesn't mean they won't release it later. There is nothing wrong with putting food on your table so you can work at the things you love and offering everyone a better experience with things they love as a result.

 

9) Game Preservation - Here he basically says it is meaningless to preserve the hardware games run on because they will eventually fail. Evidently no one has told him that the sd2snes is still in production, or what the odds are that the Super Nt will be able to play backups just like the Nt Mini.

 

10) Closing - After he in this same post claims that fpgas have better response times using less resources and complains that just because the Super Nt has less bugs doesn't mean people should ignore the effort he put into his emulator finishes by saying that the Super Nt isn't more accurate. This completely goes against the things he literally just said.

Edited February 6, 2018 by Wolf_

[GallopGhost]

This is an interesting read..

 

https://byuu.org/articles/fpgas-arent-magic/

 

"FPGAs Aren't Magic"

 

I agree that FPGAs aren't magic, but I do believe Kevtris is magic.

 

"the Analogue Nt CEO is selling you a product; it isn't charity"

 

It's not a charity? I was going to deduct my Super NT on my taxes, bummer.

[Andromeda Stardust]

I am wondering. THe Retrousb AVS. WHat flaws does it have. I have one and liking it. Just like to know.

 

all new products experience growing pains.flaws? like the easily broken power connector, which got fixed, or the "green stripe" games not working, which he sent out free diy install cart connectors to fix the issue, and honor warranty issues even after unsuccessful repair attempts by the customer? yep retrousb delivered a solid product at 40% the retail price of the competition, and with online leaderboards! ha i loled. ntmini was great product, but did it really need a $200 aircraft grade aluminum case? why i'm so happy to get a no-frills fpga snes, and if it gets jb cores, well that is a bonus!

[cacophony]

The AVS is great console for the price point. The advantages of the Nt Mini are primarily the extra features: Analog output (rgb, component, s-video, composite), 1080p output with 5x by 6x scaling, in game menu, lots of customization ability (eg. palettes, scaling, sound, etc), the ability to play roms off sd card, the of course the simulation of 17 other 8 -bit consoles, etc

 

The Nt Mini was expensive, but look what it's fetching now : https://www.ebay.com/itm/Gently-used-Analogue-Nt-mini-system-Nintendo-NES-video-game-Console-/142672436743?hash=item2137f09e07%3Ag%3A6NoAAOSwXf1ab0E5&nma=true&si=E%252Bvclq8C9HhGJMWg8Tpx2zIfjKo%253D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557

[cfillak]

1) fpgas emulate hardware, emulating hardware is completely different than software because software runs over incompatible hardware which means it has to account for that difference at the end point. This is what causes software emulation to have lag and require systems many magnitudes of power greater than the originals to have accurate/close to accurate performance meanwhile hardware emulation can run with no performance differences on hardware that is significantly less powerful than what software emulation would require. For example even on a 1080ti with an i7 7700k his emulator doesn't run at the exact timings of a snes and a $180 fpga console does.

 

2) The fact that you can emulate hardware for better performance and using less resources drastically reducing the cost of emulating any system supported via fpga does not make it more accurate, but it does make it better than software emulation because software emulation still hasn't accomplished perfect reproduction of even 8bit systems.

 

3) Regardless of what causes it, software emulation still has added latency and hardware emulation does not.

 

4) Analogue is selling a product, but if they just gave out their code that only ran on specific hardware and told everyone they could have the code for free but needed to buy all the individual parts and assemble their own consoles how many people do you think would actually prefer that?

 

5) Emulation - Using fpga technology to emulate hardware is still more accurate than the emulators he listed (higan, BlastEm, gambatte, and mGBA) because all software emulation doesn't have the processing power to exactly replicate a system yet and when it does the hardware needed to accomplish it will be incredibly more powerful and more expensive than what it would take to accomplish the same feat (which for most of those systems is possible today) by fpga hardware emulation.

 

6) Fpgas - Here he literally says that software emulation can be as good as fpgas but they just need a crap ton more resources and that fpgas are inherently better and use less resources. He also says that "just because the Super Nt is more accurate doesn't mean it is more important than all the effort I put into my emulator". Sorry but just because you are sentimental about your own project doesn't mean people should prefer it over a better alternative.

 

7) Latency - Here he concedes that fpgas are faster but his counter point is that software emulation could be just as fast if you installed a custom operating system designed to emulate each individual console (which doesn't exist). So basically he is simply saying fpgas are better but emulators could be just as good if they had things that don't exist.

 

Preservation - Here he gets upset and says that Analogue isn't in it for preservation but to make money because they are selling the consoles. My response would be: So what? Do you think everyone can be like you and literally spend their retirement funds and throw away their future for the sake of preservation? In the real world people need to make money to survive and if making a superior product means they need to turn a profit shut up and take my money. As for it being closed source and thus dooming all their work to fade into obscurity just because it is closed source today, doesn't mean they won't release it later. There is nothing wrong with putting food on your table so you can work at the things you love and offering everyone a better experience with things they love as a result.

 

9) Game Preservation - Here he basically says it is meaningless to preserve the hardware games run on because they will eventually fail. Evidently no one has told him that the sd2snes is still in production, or what the odds are that the Super Nt will be able to play backups just like the Nt Mini.

 

10) Closing - After he in this same post claims that fpgas have better response times using less resources and complains that just because the Super Nt has less bugs doesn't mean people should ignore the effort he put into his emulator finishes by saying that the Super Nt isn't more accurate. This completely goes against the things he literally just said.

For me, the issue is my bad attention span and stupid psychological reasons. If there's a general purpose operating system running beneath my games I get very distracted. I associate my PC and laptop with work and I can't really just switch my brain into game mode and play on these same devices (this has made me realize I can't really play PC games). I'd much rather have a purpose built device for playing retro games, so I'm sticking to original hardware, upscalers, and FPGA clones. I just don't feel like fiddling with settings to get better performance, if I go down this road my attention dissipates and I never finish a game.

 

Also, I'm not sure what his life situation is, but byuu must be either very rich, very short-sighted, or on a suicide mission to preserve the SNES to be able to work "full-time" as he says without compensation for his work. It's unreasonable to expect others to turn their lives into what he's chosen for his. That being said, I greatly appreciate his work on cycle accurate emulation for the many consoles covered by higan, publishing it under GPL. Hopefully Kevtris' work will inspire others to write open source/free software FPGA cores.

[cfillak]

The AVS is great console for the price point. The advantages of the Nt Mini are primarily the extra features: Analog output (rgb, component, s-video, composite), 1080p output with 5x by 6x scaling, in game menu, lots of customization ability (eg. palettes, scaling, sound, etc), the ability to play roms off sd card, the of course the simulation of 17 other 8 -bit consoles, etc

 

The Nt Mini was expensive, but look what it's fetching now : https://www.ebay.com/itm/Gently-used-Analogue-Nt-mini-system-Nintendo-NES-video-game-Console-/142672436743?hash=item2137f09e07%3Ag%3A6NoAAOSwXf1ab0E5&nma=true&si=E%252Bvclq8C9HhGJMWg8Tpx2zIfjKo%253D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557

its already gone lol

 

edit: nvm holy shit 1,225.00

Edited February 6, 2018 by cfillak

[DadsGlasses]

This is an interesting read..

 

https://byuu.org/articles/fpgas-arent-magic/

 

He is upset that Analogue is a for profit company. He wants to preserve video games. Games that were produced and sold by Nintendo...... a for profit company.

[Kismet]

9) Game Preservation - Here he basically says it is meaningless to preserve the hardware games run on because they will eventually fail. Evidently no one has told him that the sd2snes is still in production, or what the odds are that the Super Nt will be able to play backups just like the Nt Mini.

 

10) Closing - After he in this same post claims that fpgas have better response times using less resources and complains that just because the Super Nt has less bugs doesn't mean people should ignore the effort he put into his emulator finishes by saying that the Super Nt isn't more accurate. This completely goes against the things he literally just said.

 

Let's not hate on byuu. He probably feels this is a failure of open-source/gpl (which yes, it is) if a closed black-box product offers a superior solution that so far OSS has not been able to offer. This is the same reason why Linux is still not the desktop OS of choice. This is the same reason why Apple's iOS makes more money than all Android devices combined. Whatever the superior solution is, needs to simply be better than all other alternatives for people to justify the cost. That's why people spent $450 on the NT Mini and not $185 on the RetroUSB AVS. So Analogue here decides to purposely come in at the $190 level for the SuperNT and thus even eat the lunch of the rubbish clones (Retron 5 is $160, the Retrofreak is $210.) And we still don't know the extent of the Super NT's future capabilities. R5 and RF are basically software emulators with a cartridge interface. They can't play chip carts.

 

(For the record, I don't think the Retrofreak is as rubbish, as it appears to actually have been designed with the intent of being a legal alternative to the Nintendo Virtual Console. The Retron however is so poorly engineered that it's price is not justified, despite accomplishing the same thing the Retrofreak does.)

Edited February 6, 2018 by Kismet

[SubElement]

@Kevtris

A question form your interview on RetroRGB

You mentioned you’ve learned some secrets about Hybrid Scanlines. Is this something that can be implemented in the Nt mini? Also gamma correction?

[leonquest]

Regarding Byuu's "bitter" post, I have something to say.

 

First, looking at things from his perspective, to be thrown under the bus must feel real shitty, specially when you've spent the last 13 years of your life making something as demanding and time consuming as higan, or let alone anything emulation in general. He probably represents the lonely cry of hundreds of developers who started all of this in the late 90s with the nesticle, snes9x and zsnes.

 

That being said however, he IS taking things way too personal. Byuu, if you ever read this, you made something great, be proud of it. Who gives a shit what anyone else says? just keep doing your thing, someday you will get the recognition you deserve.

 

Secondly, from the Analogue team's perspective - and take this from someone who majored in marketing - there was no other way to do this than with a bloodbath.

 

The Analogue team is basically selling a fancy emulator box. How else do you explain to a non technical audience with $200 to spend, what the difference is between a retron5 and the SuperNT? How else do you justify to them that paying 200 over the Snes mini's 80 bucks will be a better investment in the long run?

 

No other way to do it, you have to throw them all under the bus. You have to do the "genesis does" campaign, and explain to everyone in the simplest terms possible why the snes9x port used in the retron5 is crap compared to their product, and why the hardware clones being sold recently are a far cry from what they have to offer.

 

For the record, I would have done everything exactly the same way as they did, right up to their fancy, hilarious terminology of "hardware simulation".

 

At the end of the day, if they can't sell this thing to as many people as possible, all the money they spent on kevtris, on manufacturing, and on advertising, amongst many other things, will be wasted. Thousands of dollars gone.

 

Should byuu then need their approval or validation? nope. Then move on, your time and energy is better spent elsewhere.

[Nomenclature]

That article isn't even worth responding to it's just dripping in jealousy. I like this one line though...

 

"Chris is a business man. He doesn't engineer products out of a labor of love and release them openly to the world for free. He hires other people, such as Kevin Horton, pays them money, and then exploits their work to earn even more money."

 

Exploited? How do you know?...Aren't you just describing what is commonly referred to as a 'business'? LOL

[RadikusRLZ]

The AVS is great console for the price point. The advantages of the Nt Mini are primarily the extra features: Analog output (rgb, component, s-video, composite), 1080p output with 5x by 6x scaling, in game menu, lots of customization ability (eg. palettes, scaling, sound, etc), the ability to play roms off sd card, the of course the simulation of 17 other 8 -bit consoles, etc

 

The Nt Mini was expensive, but look what it's fetching now : https://www.ebay.com/itm/Gently-used-Analogue-Nt-mini-system-Nintendo-NES-video-game-Console-/142672436743?hash=item2137f09e07%3Ag%3A6NoAAOSwXf1ab0E5&nma=true&si=E%252Bvclq8C9HhGJMWg8Tpx2zIfjKo%253D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557

NT Minis composite/s-video and component is producing very low quality picture. I Think AVS is much better choise, than my two NT Minis.

[kevtris]

NT Minis composite/s-video and component is producing very low quality picture. I Think AVS is much better choise, than my two NT Minis.

 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but you have yet to post pictures/video of what it is doing, and pictures of the cable (showing soldering work). It's impossible to diagnose the problem. Also, the AVS doesn't even output analog signals and is HDMI only. Still not sure why you are trying to run composite into a scaler to get HDMI, vs. using the HDMI the nt mini outputs directly. I mean, you're free to do so but it doesn't make much sense to me vs. using native output directly. Be that as it may, it should work OK no matter what. There's plenty of video/images of the analog output quality from the nt mini on the internet so I find it hard to believe it's an nt mini issue.

[leods]

I am wondering. THe Retrousb AVS. WHat flaws does it have. I have one and liking it. Just like to know.

 

 

Kevtris tested the AVS with a Logic analyser and he said it was fine. It was outputting correctly.

 

The NT Mini has clearly better scaling options, analogue outputs and the Jailbreak. Otherwise the AVS should be great, and is basically right now the best option for HDMI NES since the NT Mini is sold out.

[leods]

Now let me say one thing. I don't know who this Byuu guy is, except he made Higan. He is criticysing an "article" by Polygon that is just an ad piece, and let out some truth about emulation, because some statements out there make people think emulation can't be accurate. Anyone who can't respect the guy who created the most actuare emulator for SNES in the world, should probably be questioning themselves. "jealousy"? Posting walls of text criticysing the accurate informatioin Byuu puts out in his article? The guy is responding to the following:

 

"But while software solutions like ZSNES or Project64 might deliver the platforming perils of Mario or the beast blasting of Metroid basically as well as you remember, no matter how hard the developers try, the games will never be exactly the same as the browning lump of plastic in your closet. [..] he’s upset that future generations will experience the story of video game history through an imperfect lens, a palimpsest of glitched textures."

Specially since this "no matter how hard the developers try, the games will never be exactly the same" Is not only wrong, but if there is any truth in that, the exact same will apply to FPGA emulation too. And that is Byuu's problem. In this ad piece for the SNT Taber and this Polygon "journalist" are actually spreading misinformation. And they didn't need to. To they deserve to be criticysed by that. And Byuu clearly says the SNT is good, and admits there is latency on his emulator.

 

So guys, seriously. Be careful before you bash important people in our community. A person who lets everyone not only use, but also learn from his work. That Polygon "article" was garbage, like most Polygon articles are. It's definitely worth calling out the complete lack of professionalism of gaming "journalism". It seriously hurts our hobby.

[atmn]

Seems to be quite old interview with Kevtris, maybe late december, otherwise I belive Bob would have asked something about the HDMI to analoge converter that is currently in development.

 

Is it a 720p -> 240p downscaler?

 

Also, is it possible to make a Hi-Def SNES kit with the knowledge from the Super NT?

 

A kit for something like 120USD + a cheap SFC would be a nice alternative.

[atmn]

Now let me say one thing. I don't know who this Byuu guy is, except he made Higan. He is criticysing an "article" by Polygon that is just an ad piece, and let out some truth about emulation, because some statements out there make people think emulation can't be accurate. Anyone who can't respect the guy who created the most actuare emulator for SNES in the world, should probably be questioning themselves. "jealousy"? Posting walls of text criticysing the accurate informatioin Byuu puts out in his article? The guy is responding to the following:

 

"But while software solutions like ZSNES or Project64 might deliver the platforming perils of Mario or the beast blasting of Metroid basically as well as you remember, no matter how hard the developers try, the games will never be exactly the same as the browning lump of plastic in your closet. [..] he’s upset that future generations will experience the story of video game history through an imperfect lens, a palimpsest of glitched textures."

Specially since this "no matter how hard the developers try, the games will never be exactly the same" Is not only wrong, but if there is any truth in that, the exact same will apply to FPGA emulation too. And that is Byuu's problem. In this ad piece for the SNT Taber and this Polygon "journalist" are actually spreading misinformation. And they didn't need to. To they deserve to be criticysed by that. And Byuu clearly says the SNT is good, and admits there is latency on his emulator.

 

So guys, seriously. Be careful before you bash important people in our community. A person who lets everyone not only use, but also learn from his work. That Polygon "article" was garbage, like most Polygon articles are. It's definitely worth calling out the complete lack of professionalism of gaming "journalism". It seriously hurts our hobby.

 

If there is any differ, a FPGA might output cleaner signals than the original hw, in that point of view he might be right.

[Wolf_]

Now let me say one thing. I don't know who this Byuu guy is, except he made Higan. He is criticysing an "article" by Polygon that is just an ad piece, and let out some truth about emulation, because some statements out there make people think emulation can't be accurate. Anyone who can't respect the guy who created the most actuare emulator for SNES in the world, should probably be questioning themselves. "jealousy"? Posting walls of text criticysing the accurate informatioin Byuu puts out in his article?

Except the information in Byuu's response isn't accurate, except the parts where he talks about how fpga hardware emulation is faster and more accurate with far less resource use. But then immediately after that he says people shouldn't act like fpgas are better than emulators because emulators have the potential to be just as good in the future with far more powerful hardware. The fact is the potential of emulation in the future (and a fairly distant future at that) does nothing to affect the best way to have that experience today.

[Sho]

So guys, seriously. Be careful before you bash important people in our community. A person who lets everyone not only use, but also learn from his work. That Polygon "article" was garbage, like most Polygon articles are. It's definitely worth calling out the complete lack of professionalism of gaming "journalism". It seriously hurts our hobby.

 

Pretty sure most people here aren't bashing his work and indeed have commended it. The problem lies in where takes his FPGA vs emulation argument and blows it up to epic proportions in a rant. He more or less used the argument of preservation to try to take issue with a company delivering a product. A product that is not only a cut above the rest in it's field, but also one that fits a very specific niche in this hobby -- that of high fidelity gaming without the need of expensive scalers and set ups. The company boasts very over-the-top claims in it's technology, but this is in turn backed by Kevtris' genius in understanding and successfully implementing the NES console into an FPGA solution.

 

It's two different lanes between preservation and selling a product. If Byuu was/is jealous that someone came to profit on the backs of his and other people's work, the fault lies with him for not making monetary gain from all of the knowledge that he and others had acquired over the years first. If it's purely because a company throwing an entire technical methodology under the bus to sell a product then it is all on him to realize that this is a business willing to forgo some morality in their marketing in order to sell their console.

 

There was no doubt a time where people were clamoring and talking about Byuu's work in leading the way with preserving the SNES and it's many games -- no one can take that away his achievements (and what looks to be his life's work) at all, forever. However with the Super NT (and NT Mini) another group of people have delivered on yet another advancement in the scene at large as well.

[SegaSnatcher]

After reading that Polygon artice I have high hopes for a FPGA Genesis system down the road. Plus, if Kevtris designs an FPGA core for Genesis I think that gives him somewhat of a headstart to work on the Neo-Geo since it uses a 68K CPU as well.

Also, Kevtris if you do end up developing a Genesis FPGA core it would be cool if you allowed different low pass filter settings for the audio. Some people like the filtered sound of early Model 1's while others like unfiltered audio you can get with the Mega Amp mods. I assume a low pass filter shouldn't be too hard to implement via FPGA. Anyways, can't wait for my Super NT arrives and looking forward to future consoles.

[Shin_K]

The new snes receivers only come paired with controllers. I'm betting you got one of the old ones. I have no clue what the difference is between them but I heard they were not compatible (unless you bought one loose from someone that bought the bundle and only wanted the bluetooth snes controller, or bought the snes classic version by mistake).

 

I got the old ones I guess. but they use the same fw from 8bitdo so they're prolly the same ? (snes classic version has wiimote plugs instead of snes one...come on, I'm not that dumb xD)

not compatible with what ?

[Wolf_]

I got the old ones I guess. but they use the same fw from 8bitdo so they're prolly the same ? (snes classic version has wiimote plugs instead of snes one...come on, I'm not that dumb xD)

not compatible with what ?

It is an easy mistake to make when they are not really clearly defined.

 

And not compatible with each other (the old version and the new version), I think... the product info page is super misleading.

http://www.8bitdo.com/retro-receiver-snes/

The massive bold title says it works with all 8bitdo controllers including the next gen, and then the note says it does not work with the next generation of the snes controller they made. Honestly I can't make heads or tails of it.