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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

#101

Post by knorker »

Error in the article: 32x32bit multiply (i.e. 2^64 bits) is not a "heat death of the universe" thing.

It's a lot, yes. Not practical for these purposes. But there's a reason we don't use 64bit encryption.

64bit encryption is easily brute forced.

If you want to keep it in a table, sure that's 18 exabytes (multiplied by element size in bytes), but that's before compression. I imagine multiply output compresses very well. And that's a lot of RAM. But not anywhere near "heat death of the universe" amounts.

I bet FAANG easily have that much RAM. Each of them.

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

#102

Post by turbohz »

xwdv wrote: post #30

Can original SNES hardware play ROMs somehow?

Yes. Nowadays, you'd use an Everdrive.

https://gamesconnection.co.uk/blogs/games-connection/what-is...

In the past, even when the console was still on sale, there were game backup devices.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_backup_device

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

#103

Post by nullc »

knorker wrote: post #101

Error in the article: 32x32bit multiply (i.e. 2^64 bits) is not a "heat death of the universe" thing. It's a lot, yes. Not practical for these purposes. But there's a reason we don't use 64bit encryption. 64bit encryption is easily brute forced. If you want to keep it in a table, sure that's 18 exabytes (multiplied by element size in bytes), but that's before compression. I imagine multiply output compresses very wel…

Performing those 2^64 operations on the original SNES hardware as would be required to profile its unknown behavior, on the other hand...

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

#104

Post by Retric »

shatnersbassoon wrote: post #97
tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would assume that from a practical standpoint, the SNES emulation 'war' is lost for all practical definitions of it - pirates can run everything they want in more than sufficient quality using any of multiple options. So Nintendo doesn't have much to lose by letting the few geeks that want perfection for perfection's sake have it.

IANAL but my understanding is that while practically speaking the war is lost for SNES, corporations have to be seen to be defending their IP (particularly game characters in Nintendo's case) otherwise they run the risk of it becoming public domain in the long term. An example of this is brand names becoming generic names (e.g. dumpster, chapstick, escalator...). The corporations that owned these terms lost control o…

That’s specific to trademarks which don’t automatically expire. Copyright and patents are mostly enforced via lawsuits, but in theory are in full effect until the clock runs out.

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

#105

Post by cesarb »

kzrdude wrote: post #88
matheusmoreira wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wonder what the security solution was, assuming this didn't use SSL/TLS

The security solution was probably that the user had to type the account's PIN, and that it uses the phone line instead of the Internet. It's from 1995 (check the date of the Folha de São Paulo article above), not using encryption at all was very common back then; and even today, phone lines are still considered reliable enough that one can type the account PIN on it without any encryption (for instance: if I want to solve any issue with my credit card through the phone, I must type the full number on the card and the credit card PIN before the URA will connect me to an operator).

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

#106

Post by RichiH »

TAForObvReasons wrote: post #5

Nintendo Switch Online subscription includes an "official" SNES emulator. How does it compare to BSNES, and would a decompilation of the emulator help with resolving the PPU issues?

It's complete and utter rubbish. The random and not-so-random slowdowns along with a general sluggishness of your inputs make for a really bad overall experience.

Given the speed of Nvidia Tegra which underlies the Switch and the amount of polish which their first-party titles receive, there's little to no excuse for releasing such a shoddy emulator.

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

#107

Post by RichiH »

tomc1985 wrote: post #84
aidenn0 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Did the same, with ZSNES running on Win95. Sound was disabled and I'd toggle layers on and off since transparency killed the framerate. Sometimes, when my parents weren't home, I'd copy my saves onto a floppy and boot the game up on the family Pentium 166 for sound and full FX. But I beat most of the game on my 486!

The savegame support of ZSNES and the easy way to hex edit memory are still fond memories of mine.

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

#108

Post by alzoid »

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…

They also had a Satellite service (Satellaview) where they delivered a 4 episode Zelda Game that could only be playing during certain hours.

https://zelda.gamepedia.com/BS_The_Legend_of_Zelda:_Ancient_...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellaview_games_from_The_Leg...

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

#109

Post by flatiron »

cesarb wrote: post #105
kzrdude wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder what the security solution was, assuming this didn't use SSL/TLS

The security solution was probably that the user had to type the account's PIN, and that it uses the phone line instead of the Internet. It's from 1995 (check the date of the Folha de São Paulo article above), not using encryption at all was very common back then; and even today, phone lines are still considered reliable enough that one can type the account PIN on it without any encryption (for instance: if I want to…

Faxes are unencrypted and send medical crap all the time today.

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

#110

Post by danhor »

rossy wrote: post #18
0x00000000 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> using existing open source ones as Sony did for the PS Classic That’s interesting, I wonder if that is the case the for the PS1 emulator on the PS3/Vita used for the PlayStation Classics titles

I think that's a proprietary in-house emulator known as POPS. The fact that Sony already had an in-house PlayStation emulator for the ARM-based Vita makes their decision to use something else for the PS Classic a bit strange.

Whilst the vita was an arm based system, it also included almost all of the psp hardware for backwards compatability.

They simply reused pops from the psp, with no major changes, so it still ran on a mips system.

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