Mini Snes: first impressions

[PetroRie]

@stuart2773 said in Mini Snes: first impressions:

@used2berx

the Starfox 2 rom has already been dumped from the SNES Mini, i was playing the new version last night on RPi and theres a slight bit of slowdown on the intro cut scene that was not present in the hacked versions, other than that it plays really well,

Overclock the SuperFX chip via the SNES emulator and it will run much better.

[sergioad]

@sergioad said in Mini Snes: first impressions:

@used2berx Man, Star fox 2 is awesome, I finished it but sadly with not all the planets completed

@petrorie is not necesary

[ruckage]

@petrorie said in Mini Snes: first impressions:

Overclock the SuperFX chip via the SNES emulator and it will run much better.

That wouldn't helps as I'm assuming the slowdown and sound distortion is because the pi isn't fast enough to emulate the SFX chip so overclocking the SFX would need even more processing power.
However if you use snes9x2005 instead of 2010 you'l find it runs much much better.

[ruckage]

@sergioad said in Mini Snes: first impressions:

@used2berx Man, Star fox 2 is awesome, I finished it but sadly with not all the planets completed

A big part of Star Fox 2 from what I can tell (haven't played it properly yet) is re-playability, a lot is random so it will be different everytime.
The gameplay structure from what I've seen reminds me of Star Raiders on the Atari 8 bit, same basic idea, you have a galaxy map and defend space stations from the enemy - I wonder if that's where the inspiration came from.

[sergioad]

@ruckage Indeed, I will play it again soon

[PetroRie]

@ruckage I had slow downs with Starfox 1, after I overclocked the FX chip via the emulator the game ran fine. Same story with Yoshi's Island. It did work.

"the pi isn't fast enough to emulate the SFX chip so overclocking the SFX would need even more processing power."

That is not true, look at the specs of the Pi and compare them to the SNES. An another example, look at the specs of N64 and look at the specs of the Pi3. The pi 3 is in both cases much faster. The problem with lagging emulators isn't the hardware but the software. It will get sorted out eventually.

When I used the a newer version of the SNES emulator it I didn't even need to overclock the FX chip at all. The games who used the FX chip ran perfectly.

[ruckage]

@petrorie said in Mini Snes: first impressions:

@ruckage I had slow downs with Starfox 1, after I overclocked the FX chip via the emulator the game ran fine.

The slowdown in Starfox 1 (super FX 1 chip) you are correcting is what was present on the original SNES, you can check the FPS in retroarch - regardless of the SFX overclock on a pi 3 the emulation runs at a fairly consistent 60fps. Overclocking the SFX makes the game smoother but it also physically speeds up the game.

Star fox 2 uses The Super FX 2. Due to this being a more advanced chip (and I'm assuming being more accurately emulated) in snes9x2010 the RPI can't keep up, you can test this also. Regardless of the SFX overclock the framerate drops to 47fps in the intro - this is emulation slowdown and not slowdown present on the original hardware.

However if you play Star Fox 2 on the Snes9x2005 core it runs at 60fps (1 slight dip to 59fps). This is most likely because the emulations isn't quite as accurate so needs less processing power to run at full speed.

That is not true, look at the specs of the Pi and compare them to the SNES. An another example, look at the specs of N64 and look at the specs of the Pi3. The pi 3 is in both cases much faster. The problem with lagging emulators isn't the hardware but the software. It will get sorted out eventually.

Emulation doesn't work like that, going by that assumption since the SNES processor only runs at 3.8mhz you could easily emulate it on Amiga 1200 for example as that runs at 14mhz which is over 3 times faster than a SNES (you can't).

As emulators progress and become more accurate you need more speed, that's why devices like raspberry pi use older versions of the emulators - they're less accurate but have lower spec requirements.

This is a good article on the subject: why-perfect-hardware-snes-emulation-requires-a-3ghz-cpu

[UDb23]

@lilbud Took pictures of all Borders ("frames").

You can find them here.
The "Grid" one is dynamic, meaning line color and glow is not fixed but instead changing over time (suppose it's a random color cycling).

[lilbud]

@udb23 Thanks, the close up of the grid is really helpful. I'm trying to recreate them as best I can. (Though I did hear of the mini's kernel being extracted, so maybe one day we will have the raw images.)

Do any of the others change colors or flash or do something animated?

[UDb23]

@lilbud said in Mini Snes: first impressions:

Do any of the others change colors or flash or do something animated?

The other seem static.

[ruckage]

@UDb23
Thanks for posting those pics, nice to see them all. Seems a bit of a lost opportunity that they didn't do game specific borders though like they did on the supergameboy (they only had 21 games to make borders for after all).

@lilbud
I'm willing to bet that the borders will be dumped pretty soon.

[UDb23]

@ruckage said in Mini Snes: first impressions:

Seems a bit of a lost opportunity that they didn't do game specific borders though like they did on the supergameboy (they only had 21 games to make borders for after all).

Fully agree! Maybe it's part of keeping the cost low.

If/when the mini snes will become moddable, I'll create my own overlays for it (ops: "frames")
;-)

Mini snes runs at 720p, so I suppose internal Frames are at this resolution too.

[UDb23]

@lilbud said in Mini Snes: first impressions:

maybe one day we will have the raw images.)

One has already been dumped !

[PetroRie]

@ruckage said in Mini Snes: first impressions:

Emulation doesn't work like that, going by that assumption since the SNES processor only runs at 3.8mhz you could easily emulate it on Amiga 1200 for example as that runs at 14mhz which is over 3 times faster than a SNES (you can't).

As emulators progress and become more accurate you need more speed, that's why devices like raspberry pi use older versions of the emulators - they're less accurate but have lower spec requirements.

This is a good article on the subject: why-perfect-hardware-snes-emulation-requires-a-3ghz-cpu

In fact it does, there is in fact a SNES emulator for the AMIGA 1200: Amiga SNES9X :P (lol there is an emulator for anything on anything)

All my SNES games ran perfectly fine without any problem. They even ran fine on my modded Wii. It's about code optimization.

I never knew about the SFX2 but I'll guess the developers of those emu's we're using will work it out as they always did. I don't know if the specs of the emulators change, I don't think so because the original specs never change as the original hardware of the console doesn't change.

I believe the reason why they use older emulators on the Pi is because they get ported, that has nothing to do with spec requirements.

[ruckage]

@petrorie
You're blatantly wrong, but think what you like.

It's not about code optimisation (well it is to an extent but that will only get you so far) it's a case of accuracy vs speed - the more accurate the emulator the more processor intensive it becomes (read the article I linked to). Emulators become more accurate as they improve at the cost of requiring higher specs to run them.

And does that 1200 emulator run at fullspeed which was what I implied - (I looked it up and even on a Amiga 1200 power pc - which is faster than a standard 1200 - its slooooow). And I can guarantee it won't be very accurate. edit: 1200 PPC could be upto 240MHz which is 63x faster than a snes and still can't run full speed

[PetroRie]

@ruckage said in Mini Snes: first impressions:

@petrorie
You're blatantly wrong, but think what you like.

It's not about code optimisation (well it is to an extent but that will only get you so far) it's a case of accuracy vs speed - the more accurate the emulator the more processor intensive it becomes (read the article I linked to). Emulators become more accurate as they improve at the cost of requiring higher specs to run them.

And does that 1200 emulator run at fullspeed which was what I implied - (I looked it up and even on a Amiga 1200 power pc - which is faster than a standard 1200 - its slooooow). And I can guarantee it won't be very accurate. edit: 1200 PPC could be upto 240MHz which is 63x faster than a snes and still can't run full speed

Read what he said:

"going by that assumption since the SNES processor only runs at 3.8mhz you could easily emulate it on Amiga 1200 for example as that runs at 14mhz which is over 3 times faster than a SNES (you can't)."

It does run, you claim it doesn't.

I ran Project 64 on a AMD Athlon XP 3200 2.2Ghz, 256MB RAM, GeForce2 GFX card and the games ran fine on 60FPS. Not to mention this was all the way back in 2002. The version of the emulator was v1.2, now they're on v2.3.2 and even that version runs fine on that old machine of mine without any problems.

[ruckage]

@petrorie said in Mini Snes: first impressions:

Read what he said:

"going by that assumption since the SNES processor only runs at 3.8mhz you could easily emulate it on Amiga 1200 for example as that runs at 14mhz which is over 3 times faster than a SNES (you can't)."

It does run, you claim it doesn't.

And you can't easily emulate it on an Amiga 1200 so what exactly was wrong with that statement? (unless you count a slideshow as easily emulating the snes - if in fact it ran at all - I certainly found no evidence of it running on a normal Amiga 1200) As I said even on an 'Amiga 1200 power PC' which is considerably faster than a stock 1200 it's not even close to full speed.

I'm ending this discussion with you now as this is completely off topic, is derailing the thread and is going nowhere. I've given you facts and links to an article on the subject I don't know how else I can explain it to you. Believe what you want to believe.

[PetroRie]

@ruckage said in Mini Snes: first impressions:

@petrorie said in Mini Snes: first impressions:

Read what he said:

"going by that assumption since the SNES processor only runs at 3.8mhz you could easily emulate it on Amiga 1200 for example as that runs at 14mhz which is over 3 times faster than a SNES (you can't)."

It does run, you claim it doesn't.

And you can't easily emulate it on an Amiga 1200 so what exactly was wrong with that statement? (unless you count a slideshow as easily emulating the snes - if in fact it ran at all - I certainly found no evidence of it running on a normal Amiga 1200) As I said even on an 'Amiga 1200 power PC' which is considerably faster than a stock 1200 it's not even close to full speed.

I'm ending this discussion with you now as this is completely off topic, is derailing the thread and is going nowhere. I've given you facts and links to an article on the subject I don't know how else I can explain it to you. Believe what you want to believe.

Thats not what you said bro. You said you can't run it. lol it's not a slide show, I've seen it on YouTube and the quality of the videos is extremely poor.

I've read that article, and it's BS. lol Running a SNES emu which eats nearly 80% of his workload? I didn't even get that with the PS2 emulator. He has a bottle neck. Look at the second last comment, and that's what I mean.

If thats true what you've said we would need a monster PC for N64 emulation. Look at the max specs for Project 64, they've never changed. Indeed, this discussion is pretty pointless lol.

Getting back on topic: It would be cool if someone created the SNES Mini theme for RetroPie.

[mitu]

@petrorie @ruckage already created one - https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/12583/snes-mini-theme

[lilbud]

@udb23 All of the borders have been extracted: https://imgur.com/a/YgT24