Sega Genesis Mini Announced!

[Zoyous]

Weird... yeah, I was just wondering if you'd created new save states while PL was installed and it left them behind after uninstalling it. It would be good if you can send 'em a bug report!

[+-^CrossBow^-]

That is a good theory as I did indeed have save states from the games I added through PL. But I assumed those would get wiped out when I uninstalled PL? I know that when I reinstalled PL I didn't have any save states for any of the games present so if they were left behind, then they weren't being seen as valid files.

 

The only issue I found with the save states was the one that was known about when you add games after the fact and all the save states for the new games get jumbled around. The save states for the original 42 games were not effected though. 

 

[Shannon]

I'm not sure if this is related.. but here is part of the FAQ for PL.

 

Q. I just hit SYNC without any custom games and I just lost 15mb available space on my NAND!

A. As of 1.0, this is an unfortunate requirement. We have to effectively re-upload 120 of the stock artwork resources to rootfs_data along with the extra custom game artwork. This is because the Stock UI (M2engage) is hard coded to only accept one resource stream. However this won’t be the case in future revisions as we plan to remove the need to re-upload the stock 120 artwork images by rewriting more of the stock UI code to allow for multiple resource streams. When we add this feature you should find yourself with ~15mb freed up when you SYNC.

Please note this ~15mb requirement is a one off. So technically it’s (163mb – ~15mb) = available space on NAND. Each game will take up to 2mb on average. The 15mb requirement will disappear in future builds.

[Tanooki]

So has anyone attempted using Hakchi2SE's 3.7.0 release which seemingly is made for the Sega Mini itself?

[+-^CrossBow^-]

18 hours ago, Tanooki said:

So has anyone attempted using Hakchi2SE's 3.7.0 release which seemingly is made for the Sega Mini itself?

Yes...Yes I Have..hehe. I like it a lot so far. Altough it took me the last two nights to get everything setup the way I wanted. Mostly me redoing artwork for the added games.

[Tanooki]

6 hours ago, -^CrossBow^- said:

Yes...Yes I Have..hehe. I like it a lot so far. Altough it took me the last two nights to get everything setup the way I wanted. Mostly me redoing artwork for the added games.

So is it kind of just hidden there unless you want to go beyond the capabilities of the system menu like the 2 Nintendo ones they did, or how's it all working out basically?

[+-^CrossBow^-]

Not sure I understand what you mean? It works the same as it did with the NES/SNES but in some ways it is even easier. For once the installation of the extra cores is easy with built in links for getting them etc. And it is much easier to assign the core you want on a rom by rom basis as you just right click on the rom and select the option to change the emulation core. All of it seamlessly works through the default UI for browsing and starting a game. But, once the game starts using a different emulation core, then it is a bit different as you aren't using the build in emulator at that point. So save states etc are handled differently for those games. 

 

What I've noticed is that I have just Pico and Gens Plus cores installed as I'm only wanting to play Sega Genesis games. Pico is used for my 32x games and Gens plus for the other Genesis games that don't work under the default M2 emulation. Gens plus has the most accurate sound I've found, but it seems to suffer from along of pixel shimmering due to never scaling properly or at least I've not found a way to correct this. Pico works great for the 32x games and I think produces a better overall quality picture graphically, but the sound is not right. Honestly in most aspects the M2 emulator is really good and I use it for all games that support it as it is easier to drop out of games and get back to the main menu using it. With the other two, you have to drop out into the retroarch menu and then exit from that to get back to the main UI to choose another game.

 

As I said, I spent the most time redoing artwork and this is where PL excels. Even if you don't like the spine art available with the PL spine creator, you can still make your own spine art and upload it. But that isn't an option with the spine art creator on Hakchi. So most of my spine art uses either the US Genesis black grid or red stripe spines. But many games don't have very usable spine art title graphics. So I recreated a bunch of transparent PNG replacements to use instead. 

 

So yeah it takes longer to get everything setup with the artwork and your folders..etc. But once you have it, then it isn't a big deal at all to use. I also purchased a low profile USB drive 32Gb to just keep plugged into port 2 on the front. I don't even have to connect the Mini to update the games and art as I just need to plug in the usb drive and export to it each time.

 

[Tanooki]

Ok I'll make it basic and maybe I missed something with the NES/SNES stuff.  That ran on Canoe, unless you wanted to run something Nintendo's emulator was worse for, or couldn't run at all, or was another system entirely.  Correct?

 

For me wanting to hack this thing to do mildly a bit more I'd like to:

- Use the Sega UI as if nothing was on there that isn't stock by appearances

- PRefer to only use their emulator, but if impossible (TMNT) make it look like I still am (don't care about save states)

- Anything I add to the UI looks like it was there in the first place if someone didn't know better (TMNT, Star Control, Dune, Ristar, perhaps Virtua Racing, etc)

- If I did use a specific new core, say for 32X stuff, it would still look like I'm using the normal setup.

 

That's really about it, don't care to load it down with a hell of a lot of stuff, as I said maybe 10 games or so at most, easily less if I didn't add 32x, but I'm kind of wanting to try out Star Wars, their version of Star Trek(I've always owned the SNES one and still do), Doom, MK2, Knuckles Chaotix, probably nothing beside that have to check.

 

I have a low end free USB stick I was given years ago, overkill by a mile for this unless I wanted some SegaCD stuff if that's possible because it's like an 8GB stick, and another 5 years back came with my PC as a freebie that's 32.  Doubtful I am though it would take long to setup with the art if I'd only add like 10 things, if it net searches and uses the pics much like the NES/SNES hakchi did.

[+-^CrossBow^-]

I understand now thanks.

 

- The main Sega UI is still used to show and initially select the games regardless of which emulator core you assign to that game

- I also prefer to use the M2 emulator whenever possible as it is easier to switch back to the main menu when you are done playing a game. For games that do NOT work correctly with the default M2 emulator, then you can select a different emulator core to use with them. For something like TMNT I use the Gens Plus GX core. This is done in the Hakchi software itself where you specify which core you want a game to use. When you select the game from the default Sega UI, the game will actually start up using the other emulator core and look pretty seamless in the process doing so. 

- Anything added by default will show up on the main home screen along with the original games. But there is a limit of no more than 100 total games on any one screen as it can cause crashing with the Gen Mini. If you plan to have more than 100 games then you need to break them into separate folders. The way it would look on the UI is when it starts you could have some games on the main home page that you want at the quick ready. But other games, you could create folders with artwork on them and when selecting those folders they open up another page with the games you have selected. In my case I have three icons on my homepage now when I turn it on: Genesis, 32x, and SegaCD. When you open up the 32x or SegaCD folder you see all the games as there aren't that many. When you open my Genesis folder, you see more folders such as A, B, C, D...etc. opening those will give you the list of games beginning with that letter. You don't have to do it this way just how I chose to customize my menu layout. If you won't have more than about 20 or 30 more games you plan to add, then it could all go on the main home screen without issue.

- When a game loads up using a different emulator core, it will start up without that being obvious. Where it becomes obvious is when you want to exit out of the game. Since retroarch takes over when using other emulator cores, you get the retroarch menu instead of the default Sega one. That requires you do to back out to another menu screen to then finally exit retroarch to get back to the Sega UI you started with. Really it is very minor once you know exact what the click on and and is really only like 1 extra button press compared to normal.

 

I'd make a quick video on how mine looks but there are a ton of videos on YT already about how to set this all up and how it looks once done.

 

And yes the artwork is done exactly how it was with the NES/SNES classic. Only difference is the spine art generator portion. But I've found that I rarely use the spine art view anyway and if you don't configure spine art for a game, it still comes up but will have a generic Hakchi label on the spine. You still see what the game is called in the bottom of the screen with the game title etc..just like normal. I'm just OCD about this kind of stuff so I wanted it to all look as stock as possible.

 

 

 

[Tanooki]

Well now that's a great list of answers.

 

Genesis GX Plus is amusingly what ATGames licensed to use int heir doomed 2018 quietly pushed out last Genesis they sold, oddly enough, the only one that ever worked right and ran stuff correctly.  Kind of a cute irony that the same emulator fixes the M2 problems.  You'd think with M2 doing it, they'd have done it all correctly.  As to the game totals, I could not foresee coming anything near 100 games.  Most of what I thought was good about the system is already there now, you'd get a few more from as eries like Streets of Rage, TMNT, those 2 PC games ported I like, perhaps a core could handle 32X and I'd add a few of those, and if the SVP is covered Virtua Racing was my racing jam on Genesis.

 

I'm with you on a vanilla as possible, and I didn't even think about the spine view after seeing it listed, I liked the default box view so I left it.