FPGA Based Videogame System

[Drunk_Caterpillar]

So I got tired of waiting for more info and reached out to Analogue to see if their team would tell me anything about the internals of the V2. I got a fairly cryptic answer, but something tells me that there’s more going on here than it seems:

 

Thanks for reaching out. We will release more details and information regarding the Nt Mini. Please follow us on social media or newsletter for updates.

 

So there’s more information to know, eh? Maybe I’m just being strung along...

[CZroe]

Interesting. I thought Kevtris had to ignore all involvement with jailbreaking FW.
They gave it away (I assume) to get an edge over the AVS. It gave many people the extra value to justify the steep price. They haven't released any of the 8-bit cores for the Super Nt despite a lot of begging for them on here, Facebook, and Twitter, especially the NES core.
The 8-bit Sega cores, and ColecoVision were released for the Mega Sg of course, but still none of the others. Only those which made sense (and ColecoVision.. I'm not complaining of course.. It's what I play the most of!), but again none of the other 8-bit cores were ever made available. I think they're going to do the same with the new Nt Mini Ver. 2. It would make more business sense to withhold all of the 8-bit cores for the "Analogue 8", which I still think will be many of those cores + cart adapters. 
 
 

Yeah. Kevtris was public about the jailbreak on Nt Mini but went silent regarding Super Nt and Mega Sg where the jailbreak can't be directly tied to him or Analogue. My guess is that they can't have it seen as an official selling point so they won't draw the ire of certain big companies. Either way, Analogue themselves had nothing to do with it and doesn't discuss it.

[atmn]

My guess that Kevtris does not want the added pressure to release the jailbroken fw on the v2.

Just if it comes, its a bonus.

 

Since its totally silence in this matter I would assume that the firmwares arent compatibles between. If they where, I dont understand why not it souldnt be mentioned at all.

 

In Analogues official point of view it is the same Nt Mini we all love since its never been any official jailbreak. The addition is updated UI.

[spoonman]

7 minutes ago, CZroe said:

20 minutes ago, spoonman said:

Interesting. I thought Kevtris had to ignore all involvement with jailbreaking FW.
They gave it away (I assume) to get an edge over the AVS. It gave many people the extra value to justify the steep price. They haven't released any of the 8-bit cores for the Super Nt despite a lot of begging for them on here, Facebook, and Twitter, especially the NES core.
The 8-bit Sega cores, and ColecoVision were released for the Mega Sg of course, but still none of the others. Only those which made sense (and ColecoVision.. I'm not complaining of course.. It's what I play the most of!), but again none of the other 8-bit cores were ever made available. I think they're going to do the same with the new Nt Mini Ver. 2. It would make more business sense to withhold all of the 8-bit cores for the "Analogue 8", which I still think will be many of those cores + cart adapters. 
 
 

Yeah. Kevtris was public about the jailbreak on Nt Mini but went silent regarding Super Nt and Mega Sg where the jailbreak can't be directly tied to him or Analogue. My guess is that they can't have it seen as an official selling point so they won't draw the ire of certain big companies. Either way, Analogue themselves had nothing to do with it and doesn't discuss it.

I'd still like to get CopyGEN cart dumping added to the Sg. I have a few rare Asian bootleg carts which are too large for my Super Magic Drive to handle. I believe a few rare, undumped roms were located and dumped using the Super Nt, so the same might happen with this as well. I also don't think you can copy Genesis/Mega Drive SRAM saves from the Sg to the cart, or vice versa – could be handy for some.

 

So, CopyGEN, a ColecoVision cart adapter, and Atari 2600 core (since they can be played on a CV Expansion Module #1), would round out my 3 wishes for the Mega Sg.

 

[NE146]

40 minutes ago, spoonman said:

Interesting. I thought Kevtris had to ignore all involvement with jailbreaking FW.

Hrm? Kevtris is the one who released his jailbroken cores for the NT Mini right in this very thread. Matter of fact I think you can still download it from his site.

 

It's all the other products that he has nothing to do with jailbreaking..*ahem*.

[jamon1567]

Unrelated to all the jailbreak stuff, but can you believe the balls on these people selling Nt Mini pre-orders, that are still up on Analogues site, for $1000? Imagine being that much of a jackass. SMDH....

Edited March 3, 2020 by jamon1567

[Steven Pendleton]

2 minutes ago, jamon1567 said:

Unrelated to all the jailbreak stuff, but can you believe the balls on these people selling Nt Mini pre-orders, that are still up on Analogues site, for $1000? Imagine being that much of a jackass. SMDH....

Too bad there is nothing that Analogue can do about it legally that I know of. People were doing the same for the Limited Run Games releases of Rebel Assault and Secret of Monkey Island before the actual preorders were live. I wonder if any of those fools who scalped on ebay sold and had to cancel because they were not able to get them from LRG before they sold out. I hope so.

[blzmarcel]

On 2/26/2020 at 9:05 PM, Steven Pendleton said:

AVS has interpolation, though, and Nt Mini doesn't,

I' ve seen at least a couple people mention interpolation, but it's not clear what that actually means in regards to these consoles. Searching online only points to TV frame interpolation but I assume that it means something different here?

[Steven Pendleton]

3 minutes ago, blzmarcel said:

I' ve seen at least a couple people mention interpolation, but it's not clear what that actually means in regards to these consoles. Searching online only points to TV frame interpolation but I assume that it means something different here?

Interpolation blurs the edges of pixels slightly on the horizontal or vertical axis or both. What's important about this is that you can't get proper CRT aspect ratio on a modern display without interpolation that doesn't look like crap because of the shimmering caused by uneven pixel sizes without interpolation. Interpolation fixes this and still looks very good.

[blzmarcel]

Thanks

[Steven Pendleton]

5 minutes ago, blzmarcel said:

Thanks

Sure. If you want to see what it actually looks like, here you go:

 

Just know that you will never be able to unsee this, so don't say I didn't warn you.

 

...and now that I pay attention, it looks like John actually made a mistake. He has interpolation OFF on the left and ON on the right, but he labelled them backwards by mistake.

 

Edited March 3, 2020 by Steven Pendleton

[mario64]

3 hours ago, Drunk_Caterpillar said:

So I got tired of waiting for more info and reached out to Analogue to see if their team would tell me anything about the internals of the V2. I got a fairly cryptic answer, but something tells me that there’s more going on here than it seems:

 

 

 

So there’s more information to know, eh? Maybe I’m just being strung along...

I too asked them if v2 includes any bug fixes or new features vs v1. No response as yet. I hope they provide a direct answer

[XtraSmiley]

19 minutes ago, Steven Pendleton said:

Interpolation blurs the edges of pixels slightly on the horizontal or vertical axis or both. What's important about this is that you can't get proper CRT aspect ratio on a modern display without interpolation that doesn't look like crap because of the shimmering caused by uneven pixel sizes without interpolation. Interpolation fixes this and still looks very good.

Uh, this is 100% not true. In fact, the BEST way to view proper CRT aspect ratio on a modern display is without interpolation, with your image scaled at an integer level, so that you don't need interpolation.

 

Interpolation is a half-ass fix for a minor problem. You can integer scale your picture and leave a small amount of black at the top and bottom, but have a perfect image that also scrolls perfectly.

 

Needing interpolation on the NT mini seems really overblown.

[CZroe]

Uh, this is 100% not true. In fact, the BEST way to view proper CRT aspect ratio on a modern display is without interpolation, with your image scaled at an integer level, so that you don't need interpolation.  

Interpolation is a half-ass fix for a minor problem. You can integer scale your picture and leave a small amount of black at the top and bottom, but have a perfect image that also scrolls perfectly.

 

Needing interpolation on the NT mini seems really overblown.

 

Uhh, due to non-square pixels you typically can't integer-scale and get the correct aspect ratio. Granted, I am willing to tolerate a slightly-wider image in order to maintain a sharp integer scale but that isn't possible with, say, a Hi-Def NES at 1080p since it doesn't support 5x vertical (Nt Mini does).

 

I tolerate a wider than normal aspect with 960p windowed in 1080p for an integer scale on my UperGrafx UGX-02 but it really throws some people off. The 4.5x vertical scale gets me closer to the right aspect but there is no interpolation so it looks REALLY bad.

 

 

[Enragedwhale]

9 minutes ago, XtraSmiley said:

Uh, this is 100% not true. In fact, the BEST way to view proper CRT aspect ratio on a modern display is without interpolation, with your image scaled at an integer level, so that you don't need interpolation.

 

Interpolation is a half-ass fix for a minor problem. You can integer scale your picture and leave a small amount of black at the top and bottom, but have a perfect image that also scrolls perfectly.

 

Needing interpolation on the NT mini seems really overblown.

This isn’t correct, integer scaling will not get you a perfect 4:3. MLIG as per usual have an excellent video on the Mini and talk about it extensively so you can decide for yourself if it’s a issue for you 

 

https://youtu.be/uMwBxL5ZlGw
 

Edit: beaten to it

Edited March 3, 2020 by Enragedwhale

[XtraSmiley]

1 minute ago, CZroe said:

Uhh, due to non-square pixels you typically can't integer-scale and get the correct aspect ratio. Granted, I am willing to tolerate a slightly-wider image in order to maintain a sharp integer scale but that isn't possible with, say, a Hi-Def NES at 1080p since it doesn't support 5x vertical (Nt Mini does).

I tolerate a wider than normal aspect with 960p windowed in 1080p for an integer scale on my UperGrafx UGX-02 but it really throws some people off.

HD-NES does support 4x (you don't need 5x) which is sharp without needing interpolation. As you state, the NT mini does support 5x, again, not needing interpolation.

 

You'll have minor black borders, but again, a tiny price to pay for perfect, sharp pixels that scroll with no shimmering.

[XtraSmiley]

Just now, Enragedwhale said:

This isn’t correct, integer scaling will get you a perfect 4:3. MLIG as per usual have an excellent video on the Mini and talk about it extensively so you can decide for yourself if it’s a issue for you 

 

https://youtu.be/uMwBxL5ZlGw

I'm not sure why you quoted me, I KNOW I'm right!  

[Enragedwhale]

2 minutes ago, XtraSmiley said:

I'm not sure why you quoted me, I KNOW I'm right!  

But you aren’t. See what CZroe said. NES games shouldn’t have square pixels.

Edited March 3, 2020 by Enragedwhale

[Steven Pendleton]

9 minutes ago, XtraSmiley said:

Uh, this is 100% not true. In fact, the BEST way to view proper CRT aspect ratio on a modern display is without interpolation, with your image scaled at an integer level, so that you don't need interpolation.

 

Interpolation is a half-ass fix for a minor problem. You can integer scale your picture and leave a small amount of black at the top and bottom, but have a perfect image that also scrolls perfectly.

 

Needing interpolation on the NT mini seems really overblown.

Proper CRT aspect ratio, given that we are talking about NES or SNES games, = (8/7)256 x (whatever integer scale you want).

 

Assuming you are using a screen with a resolution of 1920x1080 and want all game information visible, this gives (8/7)256 x 4 = 1170, which shimmers without interpolation. I know, because I just tested it on my Super Nt. Go talk to FirebrandX if you want to know more about this since he's the one I got this from.

[XtraSmiley]

6 minutes ago, Enragedwhale said:

But you aren’t. See what CZroe said. NES games shouldn’t have square pixels.

Uh, in that video you yourself linked. 

 

Set your NT mini to 4x by 6x and your TV to 4:3 (12:39 in the video). Boom. Perfect integer scale pixels, proper aspect ratio (not square) and NO interpolation needed for no shimmers.

Edited March 3, 2020 by XtraSmiley

[Razzie.P]

7 hours ago, Enragedwhale said:

I know Analogue are pretty bad at customer relations at times but they can’t be that stupid. 
 

 

I sure hope they don't read that and think "Challenge Accepted!"  ?

 

[Enragedwhale]

8 minutes ago, XtraSmiley said:

Uh, in that video you yourself linked. 

 

Set your NT mini to 4x by 6x and your TV to 4:3 (12:39 in the video). Boom. Perfect integer scale pixels, proper aspect ratio (not square) and NO interpolation needed for no shimmers.

Indeed that is a solution but it doesn’t work on all TV sets, my LG OLED will let me do it but the Samsung in my games room won’t.
 

I don’t think anyone is arguing that without interpolation the mini is trash, but it would be a nice option to have given the $500 price tag. It is a consideration for some people like myself.

 

Edit to add: the Samsung will let me do it but it’s way too skinny.

Edited March 3, 2020 by Enragedwhale
Clarification

[Steven Pendleton]

8 minutes ago, XtraSmiley said:

TV to 4:3 (12:39 in the video)

There is the difference. Not all of us can do this. I do not own a modern TV and my monitor will not allow me to do this, so I have to use interpolation

[Steven Pendleton]

23 minutes ago, CZroe said:

Uhh, due to non-square pixels you typically can't integer-scale and get the correct aspect ratio.

And yet people still run 320 x 240 (or 224, if you prefer) Genesis/MD games with square pixels for some odd reason, and unfortunately the OSSC doesn't let you do otherwise with that resolution, which is one big advantage the Mega Sg has over real hardware + OSSC if you don't have aspect ratio correction on your display like me.

[XtraSmiley]

4 minutes ago, Enragedwhale said:

Indeed that is a solution but it doesn’t work on all TV sets, my LG OLED will let me do it but the Samsung in my games room won’t.
 

I don’t think anyone is arguing that without interpolation the mini is trash, but it would be a nice option to have given the $500 price tag. It is a consideration for some people like myself.

 

Edit to add: the Samsung will let me do it but it’s way too skinny.

Fair enough, if your TV doesn't do this and the NTM is $500, I can see wanting the option (more choices is better!).

 

I'll say this though, I'd still rather do 5x and 6x and lose a little bit of data at the top (or bottom or both) than to use interpolation and get a blurry image. 

 

Again, your system, your choice, but crisper is nicer to me.

 

Sorry if I came off as a bull in a china shop guys! Thanks for the discussion.