State of Jaguar Emulation in 2021?

[Jagosaurus]

Hey guys, been some time since I dove into Jag emu. I made a Virtual Jaguar compatibility chart several years ago here... but seems like things have progressed quite a bit in emu scene in. A few questions:

 

- How is the VJ core in Retro Arch? I'm on PC.

 

- Is Phoenix the best option & is it available in English now?

 

- Do majority of the homebrew & ports (released for proper DL) work in VJ? Phoenix?

 

Thanks all.

[zzip]

6 minutes ago, Jagosaurus said:

- How is the VJ core in Retro Arch? I'm on PC.

It's easier to get the VJ Retroarch core working than Virtual Jaguar standalone, at least in my experience.   As for compatibility, I don't think it's changed in years.   It can run some games very well,  it will struggle with others.

 

8 minutes ago, Jagosaurus said:

- Is Phoenix the best option & is it available in English now?

It seems to have the best compatibility.   There is a patch that will change all the menus to English.  

 

Another option that tends to get ignored is Mame/Mess.   It's also far from perfect,  probably in a worse state than VJ overall.   However I've found that it will run certain games better than VJ can so I keep it as a backup.

[sirlynxalot]

I've tested Phoenix with a bunch of games and I was pleasantly surprised with the compatibility.  I had better results with it than VJ for playing the old commercial games.  I was surprised Battlesphere could be run with it, it seemed to play fine, though I was getting an issue where the text was unreadable (it was all scrunched up and corrupted looking).  I can't get HoverStrike and Fight For Life to work with Phoenix though. They load but freeze on my machine before you get to any gameplay.

 

I was also surprised to learn recently that the old emu Project Tempest can actually run a few jag CD games - I think this makes it the only emulator that can emulate commercial Jag CD games. Reports from others are that it will play Primal Rage and World Tour Racing and there seemed to be some good youtube videos to showcase that.  I tried it with Battlemorph and Blue Lightning, it loaded a glitchy version of the options menu in Blue Lightning but didn't seem to progress beyond that.

 

Edited March 10, 2021 by sirlynxalot

[sirlynxalot]

3 hours ago, zzip said:

Another option that tends to get ignored is Mame/Mess.   It's also far from perfect,  probably in a worse state than VJ overall.   However I've found that it will run certain games better than VJ can so I keep it as a backup.

I haven't tried Mame for console Jaguar emulation, but I tried it with some cojag arcade games that used variations of the Jag's hardware such as Area 51 and Vicious Circle and found the emulation to be pretty good!  Well worth checking out if you want to try some other atari games that use a variation of the Jag hardware.

[Jagosaurus]

All really helpful. I will dig into VJ on RA core this weekend for the first time in a few years. 

 

Does VJ run the ST ports available for DL? I know I've seen testing/build scree shots of some homebrew running within it. 

 

I honestly had forgot about Project Tempest. I didn't have good luck with it previously. Assuming it runs Tempest ? so ok in my book.

[zzip]

39 minutes ago, Jagosaurus said:

Does VJ run the ST ports available for DL? I know I've seen testing/build scree shots of some homebrew running within it. 

It's run the few I tested.  Ports from the ST are probably not going to hit the custom Jag hardware very hard, so I would expect most of them to work.

[youxia]

 

[Jagosaurus]

Thanks on ST. 

 

Miss that emu thread bc it wasn't in Jag sub-forum ?. Will check out.

[+CyranoJ]

4 hours ago, zzip said:

Ports from the ST are probably not going to hit the custom Jag hardware very hard, so I would expect most of them to work.

LMFAO.

 

You try getting them to run at full speed or greater with enhancements without using that.

[Jagosaurus]

@CyranoJ, assuming you test on Skunk/Alpine vs emu? You test at all in VJ? 

 

I work in technology sector, but not a coder or software engineer by any means. Some of the ST ports have headers to prevent from working on anything outside of cart, right? I'd be DLing above board, off your pinned threads. 

 

Feedback on other homebrew available for legit DL & emu?

[+CyranoJ]

1 minute ago, Jagosaurus said:

@CyranoJ, assuming you test on Skunk/Alpine vs emu? You test at all in VJ? 

I develop mostly in VJ, testing on a Jaguar GD after major changes or before a release to the test group (Was a skunkboard... but that is utterly redundant now!)

[zzip]

16 hours ago, CyranoJ said:

LMFAO.

 

You try getting them to run at full speed or greater with enhancements without using that.

Ok well I never coded for the Jaguar,  but seeing how it's got a 68000 that runs almost twice as fast as the ST, and most ST games don't even use blitter,  what causes the slowdown?    Remapping the graphics/sound into the right formats?

 

I could see how custom Jaguar hardware could be handy for that kind of stuff.  I probably should rephrase what I wrote,  the Jaguar still has many features an ST game wouldn't need, like the 3D features

[Cyprian]

13 hours ago, CyranoJ said:

I develop mostly in VJ, testing on a Jaguar GD after major changes or before a release to the test group (Was a skunkboard... but that is utterly redundant now!)

Interesting, can you describe benefits GD over Skunk from developer point of view?

I have no GD yet and I wonder whether it's worth to sell Sunk and buy GD.

[doctorclu]

Don't know why IrataJaguar for the Android is never mentioned.  It was the only emulator that could run Virtual VCS that I've tried so far.

[sirlynxalot]

I read on another forum that the Jaguar emulator within Phoenix is IrataJaguar.

[Hyper_Eye]

The English patch for Phoenix is here: https://www.ngemu.com/threads/phoenix-project-3do-emulator-translated-into-english.191753/

[+CyranoJ]

10 hours ago, zzip said:

but seeing how it's got a 68000 that runs almost twice as fast as the ST, and most ST games don't even use blitter,  what causes the slowdown?

 

OK, explaining once more and for the last time.

 

If you enjoy staring at a blank, silent screen, then nothing is causing slowdown.

 

There's no ACIA, MFP, Shifter, GLUE, YM/FDC, GEM, TOS, BIOS, XBIOS, AES, KEYBOARD(!), etc, etc in the Jaguar.  And the 68000 code isn't even a straight port as they'll be waiting on chipset flags, or writing to the SR register, or.. or.. or... or...

 

Now, I don't know if you have or not, but if, lets say "someone" said these are "cheap, lazy ports" and you believed it, then think again.  Sorry if this sounds harsh, tired of repeating it.

[+Gemintronic]

I just revisited the English patched Phoenix and it's faster and less crashy than in previous years.

 

That being said, Virtual Jaguar is the standard in Jag emulation. 

[+bhall408]

On 3/10/2021 at 2:10 PM, zzip said:

Another option that tends to get ignored is Mame/Mess.   It's also far from perfect,  probably in a worse state than VJ overall.   However I've found that it will run certain games better than VJ can so I keep it as a backup.

For license compatibility reasons, MAME is the likely place we'd start from if/when we add Jaguar to Argon... Bug fix/improve it, and see where it goes from there...

[zzip]

On 3/12/2021 at 8:22 PM, CyranoJ said:

Now, I don't know if you have or not, but if, lets say "someone" said these are "cheap, lazy ports" and you believed it, then think again.  Sorry if this sounds harsh, tired of repeating it.

I'm not saying they are cheap or lazy ports, only that the vanilla ST doesn't have anything close to the exotic hardware of the Jaguar.

 

It's the exotic and poorly documented nature of the Jaguar that has made good emulation elusive.  The games that don't run well under emulation are hitting the areas of the Jag that nobody's been able to emulate properly

 

The original question was whether ST ports will run under Jaguar emulation.   All the ones I tested do,  I speculated that they should because they don't use some of the more exotic features of the Jag.  You yourself said you use VJ for development, so your ports should run under emulation

On 3/12/2021 at 8:22 PM, CyranoJ said:

There's no ACIA, MFP, Shifter, GLUE, YM/FDC, GEM, TOS, BIOS, XBIOS, AES, KEYBOARD(!), etc, etc in the Jaguar.  And the 68000 code isn't even a straight port as they'll be waiting on chipset flags, or writing to the SR register, or.. or.. or... or...

Of course most of those components need to be emulated depending on the game,  you would need to write the equivalent of ST virtualization to make this possible.   I think you misunderstood my posts to say that porting ST games to the Jaguar is trivial.   No,  they are obviously a challenge for the programmer.   I don't think they are a challenge for a Jaguar emulator to run.

Edited March 15, 2021 by zzip

[+cubanismo]

1 hour ago, zzip said:

I think you misunderstood my posts to say that porting ST games to the Jaguar is trivial.

That's a pretty small misunderstanding compared to the ones you seem to have about how most of the things you're talking about actually work.

[zzip]

Just now, cubanismo said:

That's a pretty small misunderstanding compared to the ones you seem to have about how most of the things you're talking about actually work.

And yet nobody has given me a satisfactory explanation for how I got it wrong (I'm listening).   I just get attacked for trying to answer someone's question about how ST ports run under Jaguar emulators

[+cubanismo]

Perhaps you're honestly trying to help. If so, apologies for the tone. However, your question was answered to a large extent above, in more detail very recently on another thread, and it might not be obvious to you or others the extent to which your response to the very answer you requested boiled down to "Surely you're wrong about the extent of the work you've done."

 

I try not to let myself get drawn into these exchanges, but that last bit touched on a personal pet peeve of mine.

[zzip]

Just now, cubanismo said:

Perhaps you're honestly trying to help. If so, apologies for the tone. However, your question was answered to a large extent above, in more detail very recently on another thread, and it might not be obvious to you or others the extent to which your response to the very answer you requested boiled down to "Surely you're wrong about the extent of the work you've done."

 

I try not to let myself get drawn into these exchanges, but that last bit touched on a personal pet peeve of mine.

Well I don't read every thread on this board, so if there's an explanation in another thread, I missed it. 

 

But I used to program on the ST in assembly, had a book on the ST internals that I referred to quite a bit, so I know quite a bit about the ST.   

 

I never programmed for the Jaguar,  I only know it by its specs.  which go far beyond the ST's specs, at least on paper.

 

I've used Jaguar emulators since they became available, so I have an idea of what games run well and what doesn't.  The ST ports I've tested work fine on VJ.

 

So my thesis is that ST ports aren't too taxing for Jaguar emulators to handle, and as evidence I can point to several ST ports running on Jaguar emulators,  so I answered a question accordingly

 

For some reason people take exception to my answer.  I'm not challenging anyone who ports ST games to Jaguar.   They know better than I do what the implementation details look like,  I can only guess.   I'm not here to challenge anyone's knowledge or experience, I swear I was just trying to answer a question  ?

[jbrodack]

I don't think either are developed any more but Phoenix project and IrataJaguar which is the android port are the only emulators I've have good results with.  Best bet is to stick with those unless something else come along.  Much better performance and less glitches than anything else.