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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

#131

Post by willis936 »

_v7gu wrote: post #129
willis936 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but if there was a second edition released by Tolkien, that would be canon. There could have been changes in page 527, such as Sam and Frodo run away to start a domestic life together, and it would be official. It would also cause quite a stirring and fracture the community. You see smaller scale scandals of the same variety everytime nintendo rereleases a poorly emulated title. Copyright needs to be fixed.

Canon is whatever your heart (or in the case of roms, the speedrunning community) declares it to be. I'd previously be arguing for authorial intent, but JK Rowling ruined it for everyone.

I agree that the community decides on what is canon. However, I don't think anything can become canon. Fanfiction will always be splintered from canon until it gets adopted and published by the IP owners. So, "Goat Simulator" speedruns will always be performed on a version released by Coffee Stain Studios, or whoever owns the game in the future. You could rip up the source code, mod the game, whatever, and do speedruns. If it's popular then it's a new category, but it won't be a "Goat Simulator" speedrun, it will be a "Goat Simulator++" speedrun. What official version of the game the community decides to use for the "Goat Simulator" category can be contentious, as the developer could have a range of releases that change things significantly. Just look at half life 2. The most popular category is the release version of the game because you can fly around at mach 1.

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

#132

Post by rcfox »

lostgame wrote: post #128
DCKing wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think "caught" really is the proper word to use, when they credited the PCSX-Rearmed project in the menu of the Playstation Classic. It might be considered somewhat embarrassing they didn't make their own better emulator (I guess?), but it's not as if they were actively hiding it either.

Yeah, I meant 'caught' as in they were caught in that they couldn't do better.

Shouldn't this fact be celebrated rather than shamed? PCSX-Rearmed gets immense validation, and Sony doesn't waste years of engineering time reinventing the wheel.

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

#133

Post by cdelsolar »

armitron wrote: post #130
byuu wrote: post #47

Hi all, thank you for sharing this article here! It is technically a "laymen's" version of https://byuu.org/articles/edge-of-emulation (submitted here earlier), meant for a wider audience, but it does elaborate on some new discoveries such as the digital video output testing mode. In the off chance anyone is able to help with this, I've set up a Discord channel (#ars) for coordination here: https://discord.gg/Fx7TfKh…

Please don't use discord if you can avoid it, it's spyware.

please elaborate.

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

#134

Post by ragona »

SSLy wrote: post #89
fiblye wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If ever there's a law passed that allows Nintendo to get non-licensed emulators banned entirely, I have no doubts they'd do everything in their power to have them wiped from existence by the next day. If they give up and give assistance to emulator devs, there's no going back on it.

Luckily laws are limited to countries.

Oh? See: lobbyists.

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

#135

Post by K0SM0S »

DCKing wrote: post #125
lostgame wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn't Sony caught using an open-source PS1 emulator for their recently-released(ish) Playstation Mini?

I don't think "caught" really is the proper word to use, when they credited the PCSX-Rearmed project in the menu of the Playstation Classic. It might be considered somewhat embarrassing they didn't make their own better emulator (I guess?), but it's not as if they were actively hiding it either.

It may be embarrassing from a PR / image standpoint, as seen by the mainstream who doesn't know better and will read some headline followed by sensational lines like «Sony sued emulator projects to death (and lost) and now uses them for profit in products!»

The truth is that the amount of work and dedication that goes into a great emulator, with all the quirks and ad hoc settings for the whole library... no corporation on Earth can get that within months, it's actually a textbook example of the Mythical Man-Month (you need a few "hotshots" that will give their life for years to reach that level of refinement, you just can't hack it with a team of 10x averages without the heart that goes into it).

And even if you could, it's ridiculous cost versus 'free'.

Sony did the right thing by crediting them explicitely in-GUI. It's a classy move. There's a certain school within Sony that's extremely friendly to open-source, I surmise it's the historical engineering ethos of that company that hasn't entirely left their premises— in some buildings, some labs, the Sony-spirit of old is alive and kicking, e.g. their Sailfish-OS friendly phones (i.e. open-sourced drivers for these models, fully rootable etc).

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

#136

Post by K0SM0S »

lostgame wrote: post #128
DCKing wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think "caught" really is the proper word to use, when they credited the PCSX-Rearmed project in the menu of the Playstation Classic. It might be considered somewhat embarrassing they didn't make their own better emulator (I guess?), but it's not as if they were actively hiding it either.

Yeah, I meant 'caught' as in they were caught in that they couldn't do better.

As I said right above, (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22759876)

I think it's not that easy. Not that corporations like Sony are necessarily lacking, but the greatest emulators are works of art, some masterpieces of reverse-engineering.

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

#137

Post by K0SM0S »

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

So awesome... I guess someone at that bank tried to pull of a fantastic side-move. It was just 20 years too early, but that guy saw "apps" before Jobs had even returned at Apple!

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

#139

Post by Razengan »

scandinavegan wrote: post #94
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…

SNES graphics has aged really well! I introduced my kids to NES and SNES through emulators, and while they played Super Mario Bros on NES, they really liked Super Mario World, Super Tennis, and Clay Fighter on SNES. I'd like to get them to play A Link to the Past and Chrono Trigger, but I don't think that they're patient enough. Still, beautiful games with great soundtracks.

> SNES graphics has aged really well!

Exactly! and even more so with the filters in modern emulators. Along with the funky cool music, many SNES games are easily on par in the looks department with most mobile games, so kids won't be turned off by the first impression or anything.

If you have kids sitting bored at home, consider repurpos an extra/older PC or Mac [0] as a pseudo-console + emulator for the SNES (and other platforms).

[0] http://openemu.org

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

#140

Post by LeonidasXIV »

danhor wrote: post #110
rossy wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is also how the PSP runs PS1 games - by essentially being a PS1 and loading the game data from UMD or Memorystick.
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