What Should I do With Saturn on Pie?
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UPDATE
For anyone that might read this in the future, get Yabasanshiro now! It's not perfect, but man does it blow me away. By far the best Saturn emulator I've seen, and it will only get better in the future. Thanks to those above that recomemnded it.
One quick question. I see that more people say that having "frame skip" turned on is the only way to get smooth results. In the Quick Menu > Options screen I see a field that says "Auto-frameskip = On" by default. Is that the option people are talking about? Looks like it's already on, but just wanna make sure
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@alphabetapie Without frameskip everything will be unplayable.
Also you could get better performance using the standalone version of yabasanshiro. -
@zering said in What Should I do With Saturn on Pie?:
@alphabetapie Without frameskip everything will be unplayable.
Also you could get better performance using the standalone version of yabasanshiro.Yes, I agree that makes sense. My question was, is the Auto-frameskip = On I'm seeing in the Quick Menu > Options screen the setting everyone is talking about?
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@g30ff How do you copy and paste the long command line to install Yabasanshiro on a retropie?
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I find it strange that the Saturn platform doesn't have a goto emulator for the pi.
Dreamcast is fantastic with Redream. Dreamcast came out 3 years after Saturn. Saturn should be less strain on a pi's resources. I guess the lack of popularity of the Saturn is the reason.
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@dsquared Nope, it has to do with the Saturn's architecture which is notoriously complex, difficult to write for and emulate. Saturn emulators are a strain even on desktop PCs.
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@drdave79 If you have an SSH client like PuTTY, you can SSH into the Raspberry Pi and do it that way. If not, you'll have to manually type it in to the Pi's command line.
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@dsquared Yabasanshiro will likely become the go-to emulator for Pi 4, eventually. They're technically still in development, which is why you have to manually add them to RetroPie-Setup. And as said before, the problem isn't with the Saturn's popularity, it's the technical complexities of the hardware. It's similar to why the N64 is so hard to get perfectly, because the hardware is fairly complex to emulate.
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@alphabetapie said in What Should I do With Saturn on Pie?:
@zering said in What Should I do With Saturn on Pie?:
@alphabetapie Without frameskip everything will be unplayable.
Also you could get better performance using the standalone version of yabasanshiro.Yes, I agree that makes sense. My question was, is the Auto-frameskip = On I'm seeing in the Quick Menu > Options screen the setting everyone is talking about?
Can someone confirm this above?
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@alphabetapie Yes, that is the auto frameskip setting.
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@g30ff said in What Should I do With Saturn on Pie?:
@alphabetapie Yes, that is the auto frameskip setting.
Much appreciated! Will test some things and be back if I have trouble.
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Actually, I'm trying to get the standalone version installed but I'm hitting a wall. Anyone who knows anything about it, would appreciate an assist here.
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UPDATE:
After experimenting with the standalone version, I had to circle back to the Retroarch core. I have to keep it core-based, because I need access to many of the customization options that are very specific to Retroarch and make my theme work.
So at this point, I'm looking to optimize the core the absolute best I can, without leaving Retroarch. I have frame skip on, so can anyone recommend anything else? I know there is a glass ceiling on performance now, due to limitations of the core. But I'd like to tweak it as much as possible.
Or is overclocking the only thing that'll give me a bump beyond what I already have?
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@alphabetapie Overclocking might give you a slight boost but don't expect much. It might make a few frames of difference but not much beyond that I don't think.
The only way you'll get significantly better performance with Saturn on the Pi is with the standalone core. -
@zering said in What Should I do With Saturn on Pie?:
@alphabetapie Overclocking might give you a slight boost but don't expect much. It might make a few frames of difference but not much beyond that I don't think.
The only way you'll get significantly better performance with Saturn on the Pi is with the standalone core.I figured as much. Thanks. Is overclocking a pain? Also, I already have a small case fan, and heat sinks on both my CPU and GPU. Would I need more than that?
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@alphabetapie It's really easy to overclock, it's just editing a text file - /boot/config.txt
If you Google, you'll find how to do it easily. You shouldn't need more than the cooling solutions you already have.
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@adambegood Thanks, I'll take a look and see what I can come up with.
I also have one Pie 4 version I could go higher. I have the middle one, which I believe is the 4GB. But far as I know, going higher (and more expensive with the 8GB version), won't help with emulation, just multi-tasking for things like themes? Or do I not have that correct?
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@alphabetapie said in What Should I do With Saturn on Pie?:
@adambegood Thanks, I'll take a look and see what I can come up with.
I also have one Pie 4 version I could go higher. I have the middle one, which I believe is the 4GB. But far as I know, going higher (and more expensive with the 8GB version), won't help with emulation, just multi-tasking for things like themes? Or do I not have that correct?
Yep, 100%. Overclocking will give you a little bit of gain, the extra GB RAM will not do anything.
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@adambegood said in What Should I do With Saturn on Pie?:
@alphabetapie said in What Should I do With Saturn on Pie?:
@adambegood Thanks, I'll take a look and see what I can come up with.
I also have one Pie 4 version I could go higher. I have the middle one, which I believe is the 4GB. But far as I know, going higher (and more expensive with the 8GB version), won't help with emulation, just multi-tasking for things like themes? Or do I not have that correct?
Yep, 100%. Overclocking will give you a little bit of gain, the extra GB RAM will not do anything.
Thanks for the info. One more quick question I just thought of. Is overclocking a permanent hardware change? Or is it inherit in the image of the sd card? I'm about to redo mine, and if I overclock before I reimage, will the settings persist? Or do I need to do that each time? I know there are many tweaks I can do on my motherboard of my desktop that are unaffected by changing the OS.
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@alphabetapie any time you reimage you'll need to redo anything you customized including overclock settings. The pi has no internal memory or bios.
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