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How SNES emulators got a few pixels from complete perfection

arstechnica.com

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Re: How SNES emulators got a few pixels from complete perfection

#61

Post by GuiA »

FillardMillmore wrote: post #8

Interesting tangent from the article: >Today, SNES emulation is in a very good place. Barring unusual peripherals that are resistant to emulation (such as a light-sensor based golf club, an exercise bike, or a dial-up modem used to place real-money bets on live horse races in Japan), every officially licensed SNES title is fully playable I had to look up the 'dial-up modem' reference - apparently it's a Japan-only pe…

I imagine that these could still be emulatable in software, right? I.e. you could simulate whatever data the golf club was generating and pipe it into the emulator, such that you could play that golf game with a Wiimote or some other peripheral.

Similarly you could have some shim code for the online games like the horse race one that talks to some community run server, re-enabling a new kind of net experience.

Re: How SNES emulators got a few pixels from complete perfection

#62

Post by matheusmoreira »

overcast wrote: post #19
nullc wrote: post #12

It's sad that Nintendo doesn't seem to see this as an opportunity to earn free press and goodwill by simply releasing all the design documents, mask images, etc. The community is going to get there eventually without their help, but they could probably make it much faster and cheaper to get there. Doubly so because they sell products which almost certainly benefit from these open source emulation efforts.

What's sad is they don't just release the entire SNES/NES library for people who buy into their Nintendo online service. It's shameful how they've treated people who have bought and rebought into previous iterations only to have their libraries wiped out with new hardware generations. I'm looking at you virtual console.

What's truly shameful is the fact these 30+ year old games are still protected by copyright. Nintendo and all the third party developers have already made their money many times over. It's time for these works to enter the public domain.

Re: How SNES emulators got a few pixels from complete perfection

#63

Post by [deleted] »

Cyberdog wrote: post #57
userbinator wrote: post #10

And so the final, most extreme approach, would be to expand upon our decapping efforts. We have 20x die scans, but the resolution is not enough to make out and reconstruct individual logic circuits from them, such as was done with the Visual 6502 project. That was done with the NES too: https://github.com/SourMesen/VisualNes

> It combines both simulators into a single simulation and allows the simulation to run NES roms (albeit at roughly 1/1000th of the speed of a real NES) What is this emulator doing that causes it to emulate so slowly? Even if it's doing perfect emulation, are modern processors still so slow that they can't emulate a couple 35-year-old processors at something closer to real time?

[deleted]

Re: How SNES emulators got a few pixels from complete perfection

#64

Post by zeta0134 »

Cyberdog wrote: post #57
userbinator wrote: post #10

And so the final, most extreme approach, would be to expand upon our decapping efforts. We have 20x die scans, but the resolution is not enough to make out and reconstruct individual logic circuits from them, such as was done with the Visual 6502 project. That was done with the NES too: https://github.com/SourMesen/VisualNes

> It combines both simulators into a single simulation and allows the simulation to run NES roms (albeit at roughly 1/1000th of the speed of a real NES) What is this emulator doing that causes it to emulate so slowly? Even if it's doing perfect emulation, are modern processors still so slow that they can't emulate a couple 35-year-old processors at something closer to real time?

Visual 6502 emulates the CPU not just at a logical level (performing equivalent instructions) but at a silicon level, simulating each transistor in the original chip at an electrical level as closely and as accurately as possible. This is far more intensive, as there's a whole bunch of state to maintain and thousands upon thousands of tiny components that need to remain in perfect sync. Of course the goal here is not to run the processor at anything resembling real-time speeds. Quite the opposite; the developers have created a marvelous way to slow down the components so that humans can observe each tiny step, which normally takes a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a second on the physical chip.

Re: How SNES emulators got a few pixels from complete perfection

#65

Post by aidenn0 »

lidHanteyk wrote: post #3

It is interesting to me how some systems are easier to emulate than others, and the ease of emulation seems to correlate somewhat with ease of programming model. The infamous example which comes to mind even far beyond the SNES is of course the Sega Saturn, while on the other end of the spectrum, Dolphin has support for multiple consoles at once.

I played SNES games emulated on a 66MHz 486/DX2 using an emulator named "esnes". No sound[1] and translucency was more miss than hit, but good enough to play through the entirety of ChronoTrigger. It was pretty cool to play a current (if aging) system emulated on a PC.

1: Sound was eventually implemented, I don't remember if it was before or after I upgraded to a Pentium though.

Re: How SNES emulators got a few pixels from complete perfection

#66

Post by zerocrates »

fox8091 wrote: post #60
Polylactic_acid wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thats 16 bytes of data, not nearly enough to be covered by copyright. Its not about how important it is. Like how a single line slogan isn't copyrightable even if its unique and clever, they can be covered by trademarks however. I doubt a 16 byte header could be covered by trademarks either.

"16 bytes of data" is also the size of an AES-256 key, which is apparently able to be copyrighted.

What's your source on that? Doesn't seem likely to me.

Re: How SNES emulators got a few pixels from complete perfection

#67

Post by crehn »

FillardMillmore wrote: post #8

Interesting tangent from the article: >Today, SNES emulation is in a very good place. Barring unusual peripherals that are resistant to emulation (such as a light-sensor based golf club, an exercise bike, or a dial-up modem used to place real-money bets on live horse races in Japan), every officially licensed SNES title is fully playable I had to look up the 'dial-up modem' reference - apparently it's a Japan-only pe…

For those curious, here it is in action: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wtMlEcf8x6Q

Re: How SNES emulators got a few pixels from complete perfection

#68

Post by smabie »

Razengan wrote: post #25

I just want to say that some of the most fun I’ve ever had on the PC has been in a SNES emulator. The sheer variety, depth, hours of content, ease of accessibility, and great music has been nearly unmatched on most other platforms. I highly recommend anyone with an interest in games to grab a bunch of ROM packs (including Japanese exclusive games and fan translation hacks) and spend some of your quarantine on the SNE…

Especially Chrono Trigger! That game is amazing!

Re: How SNES emulators got a few pixels from complete perfection

#69

Post by [deleted] »

Cyberdog wrote: post #57
userbinator wrote: post #10

And so the final, most extreme approach, would be to expand upon our decapping efforts. We have 20x die scans, but the resolution is not enough to make out and reconstruct individual logic circuits from them, such as was done with the Visual 6502 project. That was done with the NES too: https://github.com/SourMesen/VisualNes

> It combines both simulators into a single simulation and allows the simulation to run NES roms (albeit at roughly 1/1000th of the speed of a real NES) What is this emulator doing that causes it to emulate so slowly? Even if it's doing perfect emulation, are modern processors still so slow that they can't emulate a couple 35-year-old processors at something closer to real time?

[deleted]

Re: How SNES emulators got a few pixels from complete perfection

#70

Post by jacobush »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #58
FillardMillmore wrote: post #8

Interesting tangent from the article: >Today, SNES emulation is in a very good place. Barring unusual peripherals that are resistant to emulation (such as a light-sensor based golf club, an exercise bike, or a dial-up modem used to place real-money bets on live horse races in Japan), every officially licensed SNES title is fully playable I had to look up the 'dial-up modem' reference - apparently it's a Japan-only pe…

A brazilian bank released software for the Mega Drive. Looks like it could display the accounts as well as manage investments and credit cards. Wonder how many people actually used this... https://segaretro.org/Telebradesco_Residência https://www.sega-brasil.com.br/Tectoy/Telebradesco_Residenci... https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/fsp/1995/3/22/dinheiro/26.html

I guess many - Sega was uuuuuuge in Brazil. It was almost like a PC.
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