How to play saturn in a decent way?

Tackskull · 4 Jul 2018, 21:34

Hi everyone,

My pc is a laptop lenovo ideapad 320 running linux ubuntu:

processor: AMD A10-9620P
Ram: 8Gb
video card: AMD Radeon R7
Hard disk: 1Tb

I am trying use saturn beetle emulator but the emulation is unplayable, game so slow and the audio is scratching. I tryed to see the emulator options but there isn't so much to do with graphic. Do you know how to improove the performance of the games?

Another option to me was to trying use yabause emulator, but the problem is that it just doesn't start. I have downloaded the bios a roms. When I launch a game with yabause just nothing happen, getting back on the game list screen. Can you tell how can I get yabause working?

Thanks everyone

zerojay · 4 Jul 2018, 23:08

Better PC.

ultrakev9 · 5 Jul 2018, 02:38

@tackskull I was looking forward to Saturn emulation but it's only recently, surprisingly enough, been almost fully tackled. Sega really made a seriously hard-to-emulate system with the Saturn and it may be many more years before a nearly-fully working emulator is available.

Right now I know you need a powerhouse of a computer to run any Saturn emulator and those still have issues. It absolutely won't run right on Pi 3 B+. Hell, some of my PSP games run slow on it if that's any consolation.

Seems like right now if you want to play Saturn games and not run in to problems you might as well just get a Saturn.

madmodder123 · 5 Jul 2018, 03:05

The Sega Saturn had, if I remember correctly 6 processor chips, so you have to emulate this hardware which can be very resource intensive. The N64 is similar.

zerojay · 5 Jul 2018, 03:07

There's been

@ultrakev9 said in How to play saturn in a decent way?:

@tackskull I was looking forward to Saturn emulation but it's only recently, surprisingly enough, been almost fully tackled. Sega really made a seriously hard-to-emulate system with the Saturn and it may be many more years before a nearly-fully working emulator is available.

Right now I know you need a powerhouse of a computer to run any Saturn emulator and those still have issues.

There's been a near perfect Saturn emulator for years already called SSF. Doesn't require a powerhouse to emulate.

ultrakev9 · 9 Jul 2018, 06:32

@zerojay - I'm listening.

What is the approximate number of roms it can emulate as a whole and is it worth attempting to install on Pi 3 B+? For inatance, the better SNES ones are pretty much 99% compatible. I know that Saturn emulation is out there but I also know it's been pretty iffy or it works great for about a half dozen roms and none of the others work.

I had one a long time ago and the damn thing got stolen along with my Turbo Duo. It was easily my favorite system and the Duo a very close second. My friends and I wasted many hours playing Shining the Holy Ark and Dragon Force. Sadly, all but one of my games got stolen at the same time. It's a small consolation that Dragon Force is the only remaining CD I have from my Saturn.

dankcushions · 9 Jul 2018, 07:07

@ultrakev9 said in How to play saturn in a decent way?:

@zerojay - I'm listening.

What is the approximate number of roms it can emulate as a whole and is it worth attempting to install on Pi 3 B+?

really not hard to find this information ;) http://ssftribute.emuunlim.org/faq.php
http://www.segasaturn.org

(ie, almost all, and impossible)

ultrakev9 · 10 Jul 2018, 06:08

@dankcushions
Thanks. Sounds like I just need to get a Saturn. =(

NastyButtler322 · 10 Jul 2018, 06:47

Buy a Saturn. The Saturn had two processing units, and has been one of the toughest 90's consoles to emulate. Programmers have to write code to behave like the hardware, for it to emulate a system. I could see how two processing units would make the logic much more complicated, and a lot harder to figure out.

I doubt a good Saturn emulator, that works nearly as well as a Saturn, will be available for a long time. You probably have enough time to get a bachelors in Software Engineering, and would be able to work on improving that emulator, because it probably won't be as good as everyone wants by then either.

barbudreadmon · 10 Jul 2018, 09:16

@nastybuttler322 said in How to play saturn in a decent way?:

I doubt a good Saturn emulator, that works nearly as well as a Saturn, will be available for a long time.

If you are not expecting the impossible (running saturn on a raspberry), there are 3 of them, you just need to set them up properly. The OP could probably run lr-yabause fullspeed on his laptop, he just needs to look at his logs to see what's causing the issue...

NastyButtler322 · 10 Jul 2018, 09:20

@barbudreadmon I guess it depends on your hardware then. I couldn't get the games to play well at all on my desktop, I wasn't even going to bother with trying it on my laptop. Speed wasn't the problem, the graphics were screwed up.

barbudreadmon · 10 Jul 2018, 10:11

@nastybuttler322 said in How to play saturn in a decent way?:

the graphics were screwed up

That's kinda weird, i'm mainly using yabause and i didn't have any graphical issue in the games i play (with both nvidia and intel GPU).

NastyButtler322 · 10 Jul 2018, 12:24

@barbudreadmon Unless you mean the Intel GPU that's built into the CPU, then I didn't know Intel made video cards. I'm not joking, I don't keep up with what hardware is selling, since I don't spend much money on that stuff.

I have an Intel i5, the Kaby Lake version, on the desktop I tried it on. Honestly, the more I think about it, the less sure I am about graphical issues. It MAY have been the speed. I could have confused the issue with what I see in Reicast.

Either way, it was not playable. I tried "Sonic R." Something was bad enough, that made me not want to play with it any more.

I just remembered; there was a newer version out then too. But, I was too busy with my studies to figure out how to compile the newest version.

I was running Windows 10, alongside Debian. I tried it on both OS's, and I couldn't get it to work on one of those operating systems. I only have Windows on a backup drive for it now, and I'm in the middle of configuring the Linux kernel for my Gentoo set up. I compiled everything from source for this build, even the compilers. So hopefully I have the dependencies that Yabause would need to be compiled.

Do you use it on Windows, or Linux? Also, which intel processor do you use?

dankcushions · 7 Oct 2018, 13:28

@nastybuttler322 if you have windows, just use ssf. this is a very mature emulator that has been running majority/all of the saturn's back catalogue for around a decade. lr-yabause is also good but SSF, and maybe even mednafen-saturn are more mature.

barbudreadmon · 10 Jul 2018, 18:13

@nastybuttler322 said in How to play saturn in a decent way?:

Do you use it on Windows, or Linux? Also, which intel processor do you use?

Gentoo Linux with an intel i7 (sandy bridge) and a nvidia GTX960. For speed issues, lr-yabause has a "number of thread" setting in core options, increasing it helps a lot.
I also have a pentium N3710 with an Intel built-in GPU, where i'm able to run this fork of standalone yabause at full speed for a few games.

ultrakev9 · 10 Jul 2018, 21:46

Seems it's really easy to find Saturns for sale on Amazon for quite cheap!

Problem is the games. The are going to cost you a mortgage. Average of $100 per used game.

Jeez. For nearly that I could get a PILE of Saturns and disassemble them and figure them out from scratch.