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FPGA Based Videogame System


kevtris

Interest in an FPGA Videogame System  

682 members have voted

  1. 1. I would pay....

  2. 2. I Would Like Support for...

  3. 3. Games Should Run From...

    • SD Card / USB Memory Sticks
    • Original Cartridges
    • Hopes and Dreams
  4. 4. The Video Inteface Should be...


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Some versions of Bubble Bobble have these stalls/pauses. Its not a matter of cartidge vs SD ROM loading (SD ROM loading is what JB does, its NOT magic and NOT so different from real carts: the electronics running the program are THE SAME).

In fact, as I said, JB ROM testing is far better as a diagnosis method because aging carts tend to fail.

If a ROM fails to run currectly on JB, it has to be looked at for incompatibilities. And with good reason. Stop the JB nonsense. We are not talking about an VDP game here.

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Some versions of Bubble Bobble have these stalls/pauses. Its not a matter of cartidge vs SD ROM loading (SD ROM loading is what JB does, its NOT magic and NOT so different from real carts: the electronics running the program are THE SAME).
In fact, as I said, JB ROM testing is far better as a diagnosis method because aging carts tend to fail.
If a ROM fails to run currectly on JB, it has to be looked at for incompatibilities. And with good reason. Stop the JB nonsense. We are not talking about an VDP game here.

There's reason to believe that it will work with the carts and the problem is limited to the JB (reports). If someone reports otherwise and then it gets ignored... maybe then complain?
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55 minutes ago, vanfanel said:

Some versions of Bubble Bobble have these stalls/pauses. Its not a matter of cartidge vs SD ROM loading (SD ROM loading is what JB does, its NOT magic and NOT so different from real carts: the electronics running the program are THE SAME).

In fact, as I said, JB ROM testing is far better as a diagnosis method because aging carts tend to fail.

If a ROM fails to run currectly on JB, it has to be looked at for incompatibilities. And with good reason. Stop the JB nonsense. We are not talking about an VDP game here.

There has been plenty of examples of where the real cart works no problem and JB rom loading has bugs.  Just go through the bug fixes and you'll see people saying how certain games will run fine off cartridge but not via rom.  This is because someone could be using a bad dump of a game or said game has some special mapping that hasn't been implemented correctly in the FPGA.

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@segasnatcher: Games with special mappers (like MSX to Master System korean conversions) are known not to work. VDP Game(s) dont work either. There may be other corner cases of carts with special components in them. These will not work from the SD using the JB.

Other than that, good dumps (thats accounted for in the github reports: people report the file name, checksum, etc) HAVE to work same as real carts do. There is no logical reason its not like that. Or well, explain me the reason.

 

Anyway, Bubble Bobble and Rastan are good dumps. And you will see they are fixed in the end, according to latest Kevtris comments.

Edited by vanfanel
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35 minutes ago, vanfanel said:

@segasnatcher: Games with special mappers (like MSX to Master System korean conversions) are known not to work. VDP Game(s) dont work either. There may be other corner cases of carts with special components in them. These will not work from the SD using the JB.

Other than that, good dumps (thats accounted for in the github reports: people report the file name, checksum, etc) HAVE to work same as real carts do. There is no logical reason its not like that. Or well, explain me the reason.

 

Anyway, Bubble Bobble and Rastan are good dumps. And you will see they are fixed in the end, according to latest Kevtris comments.

I don't know why odd behavior sometimes still happens with some roms of good dumps when cart works fine.  It could be simply be how the cart is being read from the cart port vs SD Card.  

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1 hour ago, SegaSnatcher said:

I don't know why odd behavior sometimes still happens with some roms of good dumps when cart works fine.  It could be simply be how the cart is being read from the cart port vs SD Card.  

That makes no sense at all. There is no logical reason for it to happen. And thats about it.

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9 minutes ago, vanfanel said:

That makes no sense at all. There is no logical reason for it to happen. And thats about it.

Well it happens, regardless of it making sense to you or not.  I don't know why you find it so odd that SD Card rom loading might have some issues that a real cartridge wouldn't.

I mean there are even examples of some SNES games without enhancement chips working just fine on the SD2SNES, but glitching via JB rom loading.

Edited by SegaSnatcher
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That makes no sense at all. There is no logical reason for it to happen. And thats about it.

ROM access speed can definitely break things for many other simulated cartridges/platforms. It's why they usually try to replicate the original ROM speed too.
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On 7/26/2019 at 12:35 AM, Jagasian said:

Mister has higher input lag than the Super NT and Mega Sg.  That makes the Mister worse in my opinion.  (...)

In other words, every anti-Analogue and pro-Mister claim is not true.

The lag problems of MiSTer from a while back have been resolved now.

 

MiSTer and Analogue really are for different audiences. There is overlap if somebody wants to use the JB firmware instead of an Everdrive/SD2SNES, but the game coverage of the JB falls short of both flash carts and the MiSTer cores. It never was intended as a full solution anyway.

 

That being said, both the Super NT and Mega SG remain fantastic products. I want to see them on shelves instead of the crappy emulation boxes that are everywhere in retail these days. 

 

Edited by Newsdee
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1 hour ago, Newsdee said:

The lag problems of MiSTer from a while back have been resolved now.

 

MiSTer and Analogue really are for different audiences. There is overlap if somebody wants to use the JB firmware instead of an Everdrive/SD2SNES, but the game coverage of the JB falls short of both flash carts and the MiSTer cores. It never was intended as a full solution anyway.

 

That being said, both the Super NT and Mega SG remain fantastic products. I want to see them on shelves instead of the crappy emulation boxes that are everywhere in retail these days. 

 

The problem with the low lag mode is it uses original timings, so the compatibility with displays is hit or miss.  This is why Kevtris does the 60hz adjust, to maximize compatibility. 

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33 minutes ago, SegaSnatcher said:

The problem with the low lag mode is it uses original timings, so the compatibility with displays is hit or miss.  This is why Kevtris does the 60hz adjust, to maximize compatibility. 

MiSTer is more faithful to the original machines and can work directly with CRTs. That is a good thing in my book.

 

And I had no problems with various displays I've used so far, I just notice a difference due to a slightly longer sync time when resolution changes.

 

At the end its about tradeoffs. If one wants to just play ROMs, it would be hard for me to recommend an Analogue over MiSTer. But for using carts, the Super NT and Mega SG are the best option out there.

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7 hours ago, Newsdee said:

At the end its about tradeoffs. If one wants to just play ROMs, it would be hard for me to recommend an Analogue over MiSTer. But for using carts, the Super NT and Mega SG are the best option out there.

 

That is sort of ironic. It is all about trade-offs as you said. The trade-off for the Mister is the time, cost and effort to put one of them together.  Because of that, I would recommend playing ROMs on Analogue systems with JB firmware due to their simple plug and play nature.  You can play both carts and ROMs. I am definitely interested in a Mister, but there are too many hoops to jump through. I just don't have the time or patience at this point. I'd rather spend money systems that just work while saving me a lot of time and aggravation. This hobby is already a niche. Mister is a niche of the niche and works better for others. There is plenty room for both and its good to have options. We as consumers benefit with this type of competition. 'Merica and Capitalism! 'Eff Yeah!!

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On 7/28/2019 at 5:24 AM, Newsdee said:

The lag problems of MiSTer from a while back have been resolved now.

 

MiSTer and Analogue really are for different audiences. There is overlap if somebody wants to use the JB firmware instead of an Everdrive/SD2SNES, but the game coverage of the JB falls short of both flash carts and the MiSTer cores. It never was intended as a full solution anyway.

 

That being said, both the Super NT and Mega SG remain fantastic products. I want to see them on shelves instead of the crappy emulation boxes that are everywhere in retail these days. 

 

Last year the Mister had more than 2 frames of lag.  Improvements over the past year have reduced the input lag to half a frame, which is still far worse lag than the Super NT.  Mister still uses a USB port for controllers, which adds considerable input lag.  The original SNES controllers uses a simple shift register to communicate across a wire, which is inherently lower lag than USB.  The Super NT supports the same low latency SNES controller bus wires protocol.

 

I am glad the Mister project exists, but just like the Raspberry Pi emulator kiddies, the “why not Mister?” kiddies are getting annoying.  The Analogue systems exist for a reason.  Go hype Mister elsewhere.

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34 minutes ago, Jagasian said:

Last year the Mister had more than 2 frames of lag.  Improvements over the past year have reduced the input lag to half a frame, which is still far worse lag than the Super NT.  Mister still uses a USB port for controllers, which adds considerable input lag.  The original SNES controllers uses a simple shift register to communicate across a wire, which is inherently lower lag than USB.  The Super NT supports the same low latency SNES controller bus wires protocol.

 

I am glad the Mister project exists, but just like the Raspberry Pi emulator kiddies, the “why not Mister?” kiddies are getting annoying.  The Analogue systems exist for a reason.  Go hype Mister elsewhere.

Video lag in low latency mode is 2 scanlines which is the same as the Super NT. At the original refresh rate of the consoles, I might add.

 

USB is the default yes, which can be adjusted down to poll at 1000hz depending on device. Though in practice, the controllers I have poll every 4ms. There is also the ability to directly interface with the FPGA by building an open source SNAC board, which dodges the USB latency issue, and is effectively the same as what analogue is doing.

 

But yeah keep spreading FUD and comparing us to "raspberry pi kiddies". We'll just keep enjoying all the cores

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3 hours ago, rezb1t said:

Video lag in low latency mode is 2 scanlines which is the same as the Super NT. At the original refresh rate of the consoles, I might add.

 

USB is the default yes, which can be adjusted down to poll at 1000hz depending on device. Though in practice, the controllers I have poll every 4ms. There is also the ability to directly interface with the FPGA by building an open source SNAC board, which dodges the USB latency issue, and is effectively the same as what analogue is doing.

 

But yeah keep spreading FUD and comparing us to "raspberry pi kiddies". We'll just keep enjoying all the cores

 

Did you really just reference non-existent Mister add-on hardware that circumvents the notoriously bloated and laggy USB tech stack that Mister uses for its controllers?

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1 hour ago, Jagasian said:

Did you really just reference non-existent Mister add-on hardware that circumvents the notoriously bloated and laggy USB tech stack that Mister uses for its controllers?

The feature is two weeks old already:

https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/NES_MiSTer/pull/117

 

You can even use an original Zapper with a CRT.

It's not yet widely documented as it is only available for specific cores (NES and SNES).

 

There is also a broader solution in the works,  LLCoolJoy:

https://www.retrorgb.com/mister-ll-cool-joy-ultra-low-latency-controller-board-update.html

 

And special support for the BlissBox:

https://bliss-box.net/support/

 

That's three different alternatives to the USB stack if it is not to your liking. They are upcoming, but definitely exist.

 

Meanwhile, the Neogeo core is making huge progress, MSU-1 support is being added to the SNES core, and VDP code for Genesis Virtua Racing was licensed by Terraonion for the MegaSD (and earlier, they also licensed code for a cycle accurate 68k CPU used in MiSTer cores).

 

Say what you will, but work that several people put on MiSTer is benefiting the whole retro community (even if they don't own one), and I think that deserves mention.

Edited by Newsdee
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1 hour ago, Great Hierophant said:

 

I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for that board to be released, that guy rarely finishes anything.

Granted, some of this is still WIP with the risk that entails. The first one (SNAC) is already being built and used by a few different people, at least.

 

To be fair I don't expect people who do not follow MiSTer to be aware of them. I suppose the message should be that these negative comments that pop up are being felt by others and the platform is being expanded.

 

I wouldn't be surprised if one day somebody tries to port one or more of the MISTer cores to a Analogue system as custom JB firmware. A full port of all functionality is not possible (different FPGA sizes and surrounding hardware), but the same Quartus compiler can target both chips.

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I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for that board to be released, that guy rarely finishes anything.
More like, he has to pivot when unexpected things happen. Ash is a trooper!

For example, he was working on an FPGA ODE for PC Engine/TG16 when BOTH UperGrafx UGX-02 and Super SD System 3 landed at about the same time last year. We had also recently seen activity from HuDebug. There obviously wasn't room for another player in that space, so he pivoted to make an optical drive core for MiSTer. Earlier this year he got it running Super CD-ROM² titles and now it will be the base for future optical drive cores. Yes, an FPGA Sega CD core will need a lot of chips and such added, but the base ODE functions with audio will come from the work ElectronAsh has already done.

Dude has my respect for sure.
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I recently tested the MiSTer over a weekend and was surprised at the  state of some of its cores. The SNES core specifically is a very faithful recreation of original hardware. The scaler is excellent and I detected no lag despite using a bluetooth controller. There’s a menu with pre-loaded cheats and even an option to overclock. It looks to be a great hobby project for those interested in FPGA gaming or coding, while the Super NT is great for the prosumer wanting to use carts in a plug n’ play way on a modern television. 

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19 hours ago, Jagasian said:

Last year the Mister had more than 2 frames of lag.  Improvements over the past year have reduced the input lag to half a frame, which is still far worse lag than the Super NT.  Mister still uses a USB port for controllers, which adds considerable input lag.  The original SNES controllers uses a simple shift register to communicate across a wire, which is inherently lower lag than USB.  The Super NT supports the same low latency SNES controller bus wires protocol.

 

I am glad the Mister project exists, but just like the Raspberry Pi emulator kiddies, the “why not Mister?” kiddies are getting annoying.  The Analogue systems exist for a reason.  Go hype Mister elsewhere.

I agree, I don't understand why the MisTer crew always have to bring up MiSTer in Kev's thread.  Maybe start your own dedicated MiSTer thread?

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1 hour ago, retrair said:

I recently tested the MiSTer over a weekend and was surprised at the  state of some of its cores. The SNES core specifically is a very faithful recreation of original hardware. The scaler is excellent and I detected no lag despite using a bluetooth controller. There’s a menu with pre-loaded cheats and even an option to overclock. It looks to be a great hobby project for those interested in FPGA gaming or coding, while the Super NT is great for the prosumer wanting to use carts in a plug n’ play way on a modern television. 

From what I hear Amiga, SNES and MSX are in a really good state.   Everything else is either decent or still needs a good amount of work.

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1 hour ago, SegaSnatcher said:

From what I hear Amiga, SNES and MSX are in a really good state.   Everything else is either decent or still needs a good amount of work.

NES, C64, ZX Spectrum, Atari 5200/800XL and Gameboy/GBC are also really good. NES can use a wiimote as zapper. The TG16 core supports SuperGrafx (but no CD yet). 

 

There are also many arcade cores which work great such as Ghost and Goblins, 1942, 1943, Defender, Robotron, Pacman (and variants), etc.

 

On the prototype/experimental side, somebody got the GB core to run 2 instances side by side and run Tetris for two players (virtual link cable). It doesn't support larger games yet, so it has not been merged into the main code, but I find it a really neat idea.

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1 hour ago, SegaSnatcher said:

I agree, I don't understand why the MisTer crew always have to bring up MiSTer in Kev's thread.  Maybe start your own dedicated MiSTer thread?

Both things can be good (if different). I'm just getting sick of the BUT ACTUALLY stuff, especially in the last few pages. I've actually put two people on block, which I haven't done here in ages. 

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