First ZSNES Release In ~2.5 Years

Anonymous Coward writes "The best SNES emulator, and the only GPL one -- ZSNES -- has had the first release in almost two and a half years! Looks like those smart coders reverse engineered quite a few new special co-processors for this release as well."

Comments

Excellent!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yesterday I tested zsnes first time on my linux laptop and was blown away - excellent emulator!

And now I read about a new release - even better!

Re:Excellent!

[Elektroschock]

I really wonder why emulators such as dosbox and Zdnes are not better integrated in your desktop environment. I mean KcontrolCenter configuration modules, I mean a "just run" environment, where the whole emulator is nidden as a background process. The main advantage of gaming consoles is that you just insert the disk7cardrige and start to play.

Re:Excellent!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a fluxbox user and don't care about such bloat - when I want an emulator, I want an emulator, not zillions of intergrations which try to make your life "easier".

I just write "zsnes" on the prompt and press enter/return and that's it. Easy!

(I'm the guy who posted the grandparent)

Re:Excellent!

[stratjakt]

Oh yeah, well I'm not a fluxbox user, I want to double click a ROM file and execute it.

Not based on extension, I want a real filesystem with attributes, and it executes based on the "SNES" attribute.

There's no integration needed, just a good filesystem and good desktop environment.

Replace "ROM" with "digital photo" and "emulator" with "GIMP" if you want.

Re:Excellent!

[Creepy Crawler]

And if I recall correctly, Linux kernel does support MISC binaries.. Though Ive not looked far into it.

It does seem to allow execution of a binary through an emulation layer, as you suggested.

Re:Excellent!

[TravisWatkins]

If you mean binfmt then yes, it does support it. I use it to run Mono for .NET apps and WINE for Windows apps. Ubuntu set it up for me, I dunno if it would be hard to do elsewhere.

Re:Excellent!

[dubiousmike]

where is one supposed to find the roms? I can find 4 of them, all of which I have never heard of. Also, can I play without a gamepad, instead with the keyboard?

Re:Excellent!

[BlueCup]

yes, you can play without a gamepad... there are several sites that have SNES roms... torrent sites (that are still alive) for one, or Cherry roms. (I think its www.cherryroms.com... but not sure, just type in cherry roms in google) I think you have to sign up there, but unless things have changed, it's an easy sign up... I've run across others as well, if you go to www.zophar.net and check out their links, they typically link to a few different rom sites.

Re:Excellent!

[enrico_suave]

" I really wonder why emulators such as dosbox and Zdnes are not better integrated in your desktop environment. "

Well, as long as you can disable that integration... =P I like to use a front end to encompass all my emulators on my MAME arcade cabinet, and the emu's with their own gui's can tke away from the cohesive feel of the system i'm going for...

*Shrug*

rampy

Re:Excellent!

[HiGHTeK]

Because you can do that now as well. Just edit in you DE that SNES ROM files should be opened with Zsnes, et voila :)

Re:Excellent!

[Anonymous Coward]

I have been running Snes roms on my Xbox for a while (along with NES, Playstation, Sega, Nintendo 64, coleco, intellivision, appleII...

Game consoles do run them better, I have over 10,000 games on mine.

Re:Excellent!

[Anonymous Coward]

you can use a keyboard, also get the whole GoodSNES set at www.grh.se

Re:Excellent!

[superpulpsicle]

Try this link out. This is one of the FEW weblinks that still offer really good roms. And I do mean good... from SegaCD to SNes etc, all working. Someone from slashdot recommended this to me way back.

http://www.emuparadise.org/roms/

Re:Excellent!

[Anonymous Coward]

I want a real filesystem with attributes, and it executes based on the "SNES" attribute.

And I want a harley and a hot babe to ride it with, but I didn't find that under the tree this weekend either.

Attributes are hot shit, everyone wants them, but nobody wants to face up to the facts:

1) nobody wants to type in the attributes for all the damn files on their drive. This can be partly fixed by scripts that read ID3 tags and process them into file attributes or by programs properly tagging files it creates.
2) There are TRILLIONS of files that are already made. See #1.

So yeah, by the time you've been through your entire rom collection to flag them with the appropriate attributes, you could have just renamed them to an appropriate extension (or identified enough magic bytes for the binfmt_misc kernel module to identify it) and been on your merry way.

zSnes Dev team 3

[Tasy]

Actually, there have been work in progress releases all along. This is the first non-"beta" release in two years.

See you in WoW, pagefault. :D!

Re:zSnes Dev team 3

[DrStrangeLoop]

This is the first non-"beta" release in two years.

See you in WoW, pagefault. :D!

could it be that the duration of the work being in progress is caused by pagefault's interest in on-line role playing? sure enough sounds that way :)
makes you wonder how many great programs are still unwritten due to MMORPGS. or how many quests still need to be completed because of OSS.

anyway, is there a mac port? or any non-i386 port, for that matter?

Re:zSnes Dev team 3

[Anonymous Coward]

An emulator that has an x86 assembly GUI will not have a Mac port in the forseeable future.

2.5 years.. gad

[cente]

Gee, I thought snes emulation was perfect already! What a long time to put something out though... Everyone get out your "archived" snes games again!

Re:2.5 years.. gad

[Anonymous Coward]

Gee, I thought snes emulation was perfect already!

Not even close. Try playing something like Moryou Senki Madara 2, Super James Pond 2, Uniracers, most BS-X games, or the SNES Test Program in ZSNES.
Most games work because emulation doesn't have to be perfect for them to look good.

Re:2.5 years.. gad

[Norgus]

Thats unfair, it most certainly is close. Just because some perfectionists are unpleased...

Re:2.5 years.. gad

[BradleyUffner]

It hasn't really been 2.5 years. There have been unofficial builds released every few months, they refer to them as "WIPs" or Work In Progres. The WIPs are awesome, each one fixed a bunch of bugs, and was rock stable.

Re:2.5 years.. gad

[Anonymous Coward]

It's close enough to make certain (most) games usable to a good approximation of their actual function, yes. But close to a real SNES? Only superficially, and not very much so.

Re:2.5 years.. gad

[Canar]

As someone else noted, SNES emulation is far from perfect. Perfection doesn't seem to be the goal of the ZSNES/SNES9x devs. Want perfection? Check out Meka or Kega Fusion, which emulate the Sega Master System/Game Gear and Sega Genesis, respectively. These two emus are coded expressly with the purpose of providing perfect emulation. The number of carts that don't work perfectly with Meka can be counted on one hand.

Re:2.5 years.. gad

[Eric S Raymond]

Which begs the question, why not make an emulator that emulates the entire machine, like Mame?

Okay I know that arcade machines are rarer and are dying out, but still, every few months an entire new complete machine is emulated perfectly on Mame.

There is MESS, www.mess.org, which is for computers mostly, and the new XE emulator inspired by Mame, linux-only.
http://www.xe-emulator.com/

I guess I answered my own question.

Re:2.5 years.. gad

[Anomie-ous Cow-ard]

Perfection doesn't seem to be the goal of the ZSNES/SNES9x devs.

Wrong. For example, I happen to know that a near-future version of snes9x (1.44 probably) will have an almost-completely rewritten renderer to finally do many things correctly. I don't know about those Sega systems, but correct SNES emulation is very complex...

And yes, the info is being shared with the zsnes devs too. And any other emu devs who want it and ask in the right places.

Re:2.5 years.. gad

[SphericalCrusher]

ZSnes was nowhere near perfect. I remember playing with it awhile ago, and getting angry while it crashed -- it made me use SNES9X (which was also a great emulator). ZSNES was just more compatible with all of the ROMS I had though, so I loved it more. I can't wait to check out this version. Harvest Moon time!

Best?

[SilentChris]

"The best SNES emulator"

Ho boy, flamewar. Personally I think SNES9x has been the best/most reliable, and has been updated far more frequently. And before people say "it's Windows only", it's not. I have a port sitting on my Mac OS X dock right now. Don't know if there's a Linux port.

Re:Best?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a linux port, but it's not very nice to actually use. Its full-screen support isn't very good and I've never been able to figure out how to redefine the keys for it.

Re:Best?

[theefer]

snes9x has a GNU/Linux port indeed. Not Free Software though, but (beer-)free and works fine.

Haven't managed to get the previous version of zsnes to work on my PPC GNU/Linux box, I should try this one when the ebuild is available.

Re:Best?

[Horse Rotorvator JAD]

I'll throw in a second vote for snes9x. As can be seen on their download page http://www.snes9x.com/downloads.asp they have ported snes9x to; Solaris, OpenBSD, Irix, N64, FreeBSD, AmigaOS, BeOS, RiscOS, SunOS, MS-DOS, HP-UX, MacOS, Linux and Windows.

It has a very easy to use and intuitive interface with all the options that one would expect from an emulator. It is stable and has played every single ROM I've thrown at it without a single problem. Whenever I set up a new USB thumbdrive with all my essential software, snes9x always goes on there.

Re:Best?

[tormedhammaren]

A Linux port exists. Heck, there is even an Amiga port.

Re:Best?

[Anonymous Coward]

Snes9x only has an intuitive interface under Windows and Mac OS, as only those ports have GUIs.

Re:Best?

[Anonymous Coward]

Snes9x is Free Software as long as you believe in Open Source by other definitions than the OSI's definition.

ZSNES won't work on not x86 platforms as >90% of the source code is in x86 assembly.

Re:Best?

[stratjakt]

No need for a flamewar, the two teams put aside the moronic infighting years ago and have largely collaborated.

Back when, ZSNES was fast, because it was written in ASM. SNES9x was more compatable, because it was easier to tweak. And there was much boasting and bickering and it was basically an e-Penis contest between the two emus.

Eventually they came together.

Now, SNES9x got all its ASM code straight from ZSNES, ZSNES got its compatability and other features from SNES9x.

Both projects would suck without getting together. SNES9x would still be slow and chunky, ZSNES would be missing a lot of compatability and features.

Both are pretty good examples of what OSS projects can achieve when the authors put egos aside and focus on the end result.

Re:Best?

[phoxix]

I'll throw in a second vote for snes9x. As can be seen on their download page http://www.snes9x.com/downloads.asp they have ported snes9x to; Solaris, OpenBSD, Irix, N64, FreeBSD, AmigaOS, BeOS, RiscOS, SunOS, MS-DOS, HP-UX, MacOS, Linux and Windows.

Who cares ?

What you slashdot folks don't realize is that the maintainers of the various emulators are all sleeping in bed with each other. Maria Kendora* (snes9x), Nach, kode54, pagefault, _Demo_(zsnes) all work together to understand more about the snes because often the documentation and knowledge they have is so little about whatever odd chips were used in that one obscure game. They'll even resort to reading half-assed patent applications in hopes of sheding some light.

You can even join #zsnes on Freenode, and watch the developement of zsnes right in front of your own eyes. The developement of one OSS emulator is the developement of another. Especially with the tight knit community of coders/hackers.

~sd

* Yes, that isn't his name. Maria Kendora is just a joke about his real name.

Re:Best?

[NotAPirate]

I've got a snes9x port working on my 'kube via GC-linux, runs fullspeed :)

Re:Best?

[PhotoBoy]

Very true, if my memory serves the snes9x team donated a lot of their SuperFX code to the ZSNES team to get help it working. Between them they've created two excellent emulators.

I still remember the good old days when SNES sound emulation was just a dream! :)

Re:Best?

[incom]

i admit that I've never given snes9x much of a shot, mostly because I started with zsnes years ago, and it was fastest on my meager hardware, and so even though I don't need the most speed I can eek out to play snes games anymore(athlon64 these days) I'm still used to zsnes, and comfortable with it.

Re:Best?

[Bulln-Bulln]

I think ZSNES and SNES9x are on the same level in terms of functionality and compatibility - no suprise, because both teams worked together on important tasks. I use SNES9x, because it runs on my Mac. On Windows I prefered ZSNES, because I liked the GUI better, but that's just personal preference.

Don't know if there's a Linux port.
IIRC SNES9x had a Linux port when ZSNES was still DOS-only. :)

Re:Best?

[TerraFrost]

i don't know if Snes9x is truely better than ZSNES, but it's certainly better than most people give it credit for. Things that Snes9x has that ZSNES doesn't have include the ability to make tool assisted speedruns, output to AVI, and better memory mapping for BS-X roms. Also, Snes9x featured SDD-1 emulation (used in, among other games, Star Ocean) about a year before ZSNES did.

Re:Best?

[Doomstalk]

they have ported snes9x to; Solaris, OpenBSD, Irix, N64, FreeBSD, AmigaOS, BeOS, RiscOS, SunOS, MS-DOS, HP-UX, MacOS, Linux and Windows.

You'll never see zsnes ports for most of those systems because large chunks of zsnes are written in x86 assembly. To me that's a plus, because its hard for a higher-level language to beat assembly in terms of speed. zsnes is much faster than Snes9x, and therefore I can run it on older systems. Its true that it does suck if you don't run an x86-based box, but that doesn't make it inferior, just different.

Re:Best?

[Anonymous Coward]

Snes9x was originally developed for Linux. Then some people came along and added MS-DOS support and the project snowballed.

Re:Best?

[stigmato]

The first release of Snes9x Linux was for Kernel 4.00.950

Re:Best?

[Anonymous Coward]

I am proud to inform you that you have won the Slashdot Beanie Award for Excellence in the Field of Posting. Congratulations and good luck on your future endeavors!

Re:Best?

[Doomstalk]

Snes9x was originally developed for Linux. Then some people came along and added MS-DOS support and the project snowballed.

My memory's a bit rusty, but I'm absolutely sure that's not true. Snes9x started as two projects, Snes96 and Snes97. Eventually they merged their code bases, hence the "9x" in the name. Both emulators were for DOS, so the concept of Snes9x starting as a Linux project is pretty much preposterous.

Re:Best?

[paladin217]

The issues about porting ZSNES are slowly being resolved. A lot of the work done for this release involved replacing a lot of assembly with C.
Since computers are so fast now, there is no need to try to squeeze every last bit of performance out of the processor by using assembly for SNES emulation. It may take a while, but I think the ZSNES may reach a point where it is written entirely in C.

Re:Best?

[Doomstalk]

Back when, ZSNES was fast, because it was written in ASM. SNES9x was more compatable, because it was easier to tweak. And there was much boasting and bickering and it was basically an e-Penis contest between the two emus.

Eh, that was mostly Jeremy Koot of Snes9x (example: Jeremy made the totally unfounded accusation that zsnes used source stolen from Snes9x). I know zsKnight (creator/former lead coder of zsnes) personally, and he's nice to a fault. He doesn't have it in him to get into a contest of egos.

Re:Best?

[Bulln-Bulln]

As you may know SNES9x is based on SNES96 (with Code from a different emulator called SNES97).
Here's a quote from the change log:

Initial release 0.1
- Ported Windows 95 version of Snes96 to Linux on a PC and Solaris on a
SparcStation.

Re:Best?

[Idealius]

SNES9x was originally developed using Allegro (a cross-platform Game Programming library).

That's why SNES9X has all of the ports it does.

ZSNES handles all of its sound, video, and input without a third-party cross-platform library.

ZSNES used to be much more popular in the old days (~1997) because it was faster than SNES9X.

Also ty for the update! The 100% CPU utilization feature/bug being gone is a huge plus, alone!

Re:Best?

[Mr Z]

This doesn't surprise me at all. As an emulator author myself (jzIntv), I've worked closely with other emulator authors to reverse engineer and understand all the corners of my chosen system of interest.

I've worked with the authors of Bliss, IntvWin/IntvDos, Nostalgia, IntvPC, Kinty and the MESS Intellivision driver to work out emulation bugs and understand the various odd machine details. The authors of those emulators also have worked with each other--it's not like I'm some central focus here. It's a friendly community.

It'd surprise me more if the emu authors couldn't get past their egos to such an extent that they simply didn't talk to each other except to flame.

Re:Best?

[Joe Tie.]

It depends on what computer one's talking about. On your computer, or mine, or that of most geeks, the speed isn't going to make much difference. There's still a massive amount of older systems out there though, which haven't been upgraded simply because the owners don't feel there's enough incentive to do so. I'm heading out on a post-christmas vacation in a couple days, and am defenitly going to be taking advantage of zsnes's extra speed on the older comuter in the mornings while I wait for every one else to wake up.

Re:Best?

[Joe Tie.]

Heck, there's even multiple dreamcast ports, and I've got it installed on my pda as well.

Re:Best?

[aichpvee]

My left nut has an intuitive interface. Can we all please find real reasons to support the software that we like and stop hiding behind buzzwords that distort the true meaning of the words?

And how much more intuitive do you need than "load rom"? Seems to me that damn near every emulator over 1.0 has an "intuitive" interfae.

BTW, ZSNES is better because it has snow effects.

Re:Best?

[Zorilla]

Isn't there a non-asm version? I don't remember hacving nasm required to compile it. At least there used to be pre-compiled versions without it when I used the MS-DOS version back in my Pentium 133 days (DOS versions of emulators were always faster for some reason).

Re:Best?

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that SNES9x is portable, and ZSNES just kind of sucks, code-wise. I tried to create an SPC player based on the ZSNES code back when the ZSNES SPC emulation was superior to SNES9x's. Apparently zsKnight and _demo_ have never heard of "commenting."

From their changelog: "ZSNES can now play games without hacking the binary to make code segments writable."

This is because half their variables were defined in .code segments and not .data segments. So the first binaries I made would routinely crash, because half the data segment was marked read-only. Thanks ZSNES!

Since all of ZSNES is in assembly, it's completely unportable to other platforms (like MacOS and the Alpha, don't think "DOS, Windows, and Linux x86" counts).

Now that everyone has 1GHz processors, ZSNES is a dead end. It should be abandoned and let good code, like SNES9x, take over.

Re:Best?

[Doomstalk]

ZSNES handles all of its sound, video, and input without a third-party cross-platform library.

Actually, that's not totally correct. The Linux port uses SDL, and the Windows port uses DirectX (not cross-platform, but its a 3rd party library nonetheless). I do believe that you're correct in that the DOS version handles/handled things on its own, though.

Re:Best?

[byolinux]

I remember the days when a SNES-CD drive was the dream. Oh wait, still is.

Curse you Sony! http://www.gamersgraveyard.com/repository/snes/his tory/snescdrom.html

Re:Best?

[Palshife]

Their download page also seems to feature dead links and pop up ads. Nice job, SNES9X team!

Re:Best?

[Anonymous Coward]

The linux versions are dated 2001... sure... really heavily developed.

Re:Best?

[kbranch]

Uh... I don't think you quite understand what he's saying. There is NO GUI at all for anything other than Windows and Mac. Hardly what I'd call intuitive if you have to look up all the different switches to do anything other than play with the default config. I'd like to see you try to get it to run fullscreen with different key mappings without wasting 10 or more minutes on google.

Re:Best?

[X86Daddy]

Yes; there is a Linux port. It even runs nicely on the Sharp Zaurus!

http://www.killefiz.de/zaurus/showdetail.php?app=1 214

Re:Best?

[DataPath]

slowly, portions of the ZSNES code are making their way into C.

In the end, the difference between ZSNES and Snes9x will be whether you want an x86 asm core, or a C core.

Re:Best?

[Anonymous Coward]

It'd surprise me more if the emu authors couldn't get past their egos to such an extent that they simply didn't talk to each other except to flame.

then you haven't heard of mamedev. nobody and i mean nobody has a bigger ego (and tinier penis) then the mamdev's who stay in the public spotlight.

Re:Best?

[Eric S Raymond]

The Emulator created by an ex-nintendo employee while working at Nintendo for development on PPC is called Silhouette:
http://www.google.com/search?num=20&h l=en&lr=&safe =off&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aof ficial&q=Silhouette+nintendo&btnG=Search

Re:Best?

[Anonymous Coward]

Blow me. bitch

Re:Best?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's funny, when I first ran SNES9x for Windows, it was my first time using an snes emulator. It was awful slow on my p200. When I found out there was an snes9x for DOS I had to laugh.

Re:Best?

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting? Sigh.

No, there is no non-ASM version. You may have been able to use something other than NASM to compile it, since NASM's assembly is fairly standard and I think other assemblers can handle it. (And before someone says "isn't all assembly the same", no, it isn't - ZSNES makes heavy use of NASM's preprocessor.)

In the Pentium 133 days, ZSNES was 100% assembly. It has since gained a couple of portions that are written in C, but those are basically interfaces with C libraries. For example, the network code and the interface with SDL for the Linux port are both in C. That's about it, although there are some other really small sections. It's like 99% x86 assembly. (First program I've ever seen to access DirectDraw and DirectSound completely from assembly.)

Re:Best?

[dyefade]

I think the parent, like me, had a knee jerk reaction to ZSNES being called "the best". To be honest, they all do the same job, I just prefer Snes9X.

ZSNES has a better name though...

Re:Best?

[fredrikj]

Wouldn't that mean zsnes is fast enough to be run on an x86 emulator?

Re:Best?

[Anonymous Coward]

Kendora is 100% dissociated from the scene. That is months old "news", if a coder quitting a niche project deserves that label.

Re:Best?

[ultranova]

Isn't there a non-asm version? I don't remember hacving nasm required to compile it.

So go get NASM from http://nasm.sourceforge.net/ - go on, it's free :).

Of course, if you have Linux and gcc, it is likely to be installed already...

At least there used to be pre-compiled versions without it when I used the MS-DOS version back in my Pentium 133 days (DOS versions of emulators were always faster for some reason).

Under DOS, the emulator can draw to screen just by writing to a specific memory area. Under Linux (or Windows), the emulator has to ask the operating system to draw to the screen, which causes overhead. And, of course, under DOS there's no other programs competing for the CPU.

If the programmer is good and knows the hardware well, a DOS version will always beat Windows and Linux versions in performance. The only exception is disk I/O with 32-bit programs, since a 32-bit program running under DOS needs to switch to real mode to call DOS disk handling functions, and back to 32-bit mode afterwards. 32-bit operating systems don't require this. However, an emulator is usually CPU, not IO, bound.

Anyway, this new version seems to finally perform well under Linux. There goes my productivity ;)...

Re:Best?

[EvilJoker]

In the Pentium 133 days, ZSNES wasn't open source. It was strictly for DOS, no Windows, and certainly no Linux or Mac. When it was open sourced, the authors (zsKnight, _Demo_, and contributions by Pharos; pagefault came post-GPL) said they really didn't expect much to change, since it was all ASM and not a high-level language like most OSS.

And on a P133 w/ 32MB RAM & Win95 original, it ran around 20-30fps even without sound. (ZSNES 0.400)

Re:Best?

[CarrionBird]

Just because something is not portable does not mean it is bad code and should be abandoned.

Not everyone considers portability a "must have" in thier projects. (though comments should be regardless)

Re:Best?

[Anonymous Coward]

you lose.

Snes9x has an x86 CPU core.

ZSNES has not seen significant C portaqge in over a year.

There are significant code differences, particularly with regards to, say, how CPU cycles are counted, particularly with the different access speeds documented on the SNES.

Re:Best?

[aichpvee]

The point I was making actually has nothing to do with snes9x which as far as I'm concerned isn't even worth the beating that a redheaded step child like it deserves. The point was about intuitive. And how all of you morons seem to think that "intuitive" in the context of software a) means anything at all and b) that GUI == intuitive.

Having a GUI hardly makes anything "intuitive", easy to use, or anything at all for that matter. Given the logic that is almost exclusively used alongside the word "intuitive" on /. my left nut would have an "intuitive" interface since it's graphical (20$ for wallpaper-sized photographic evidence) and you can interface with it.

Though yeah, I just tried snes9x for the first time in years and it really does blow the monkey's balls on Linux. It's almost as lame to use as gnome...

Re:Best?

[DataPath]

You lose.

Check the changelog - lots of C porting. Ask Nach. Check out the zsnes board, you might learn something.

From the website:
"Snes9x is coded in C++, with three assembler CPU emulation cores on the i386 Linux and Windows ports."

The three assembler CPU emulation cores are alternatives to the C++ cores. You can have an ~100% C++ snes9x, no assembly, or you can have one with some hand-tuned assembly for better performance.

Oh yeah, and the assembly cores were borrowed from ZSNES. Look at the source code.

Nice and all...

[Leffe]

... but we already got CVS builds once in a while from here:

http://www.ipherswipsite.com/

Re:Slashdot pranked

[Anonymous Coward]

What the fuck are you talking about!? This is the first release in about two and a half years! That means there was a release two and a half years ago and this is the first release since then not the first release ever.

Re:Slashdot pranked

[Anonymous Coward]

So it is not the first release then? Looks like someone is grammatically challenged here.

SNES9X

[acidblood]

I was always partial to SNES9X for some reason (perhaps it's the fact that they don't waste their time coding everything in assembly, as nobody should), and it's also open source. Whether it is GPL'd or not is just flamewar fodder -- most certainly the submitter's intention.

Re:SNES9X

[the_2nd_coming]

where do you get your ROMs from?

Re:SNES9X

[Andy Dodd]

I haven't had too much as far as good experiences with snes9x - zsnes is a lot easier to configure and has a lot of neat features.

But I agree that they really should have maintained C versions of all code for their emulator, especially in modern times when CPUs are more than fast enough to emulate an SNES without any assembly. As a result of the horrible dependence on assembly, ZSNES under Linux is missing a lot of features the Windows version has (such as HQ4X scaling, Linux only had HQ2X as of the last WIP I tried, which was only 1-2 months ago.)

Re:SNES9X

[Anonymous Coward]

ed2k://|file|Complete.Snes.Romset.3792.Roms.And.2. Emulators.5-03-2003.rar|3214943164|684ab64952025bc 1bd60d09f7baf97af|

remove spaces and trash the included emulators for safety

Re:SNES9X

[Anonymous Coward]

I salute you, good work. I suspected nothing.

Re:SNES9X

[Anonymous Coward]

ZSNES under Linux is missing HQ4X scaling because the SDL video code (in C) isn't as good as the Windows video code. Nothing to do with assembly there.

Re:SNES9X

[Yosho]

You have to keep in mind that back when ZSNES was first being developed, computers weren't fast enough to emulate a SNES properly. I recall first using ZSNES on a Pentium 2, 300 MHz; not top-of-the-line, but a pretty good computer for the time. As far as I can recall, there weren't any SNES emulators that would run games at full speed, but ZSNES came pretty close; SNES 9x was more accurate, but also considerably slower unless most of the features were disabled.

Re:SNES9X

[Schnapple]

IIRC, ZSNES did release the source years ago - but all being x86 ASM (some portions in C) didn't do tons of people a ton of good.

Re:SNES9X

[Anonymous Coward]

As I recall, I was able to run snes emulators full speed on a Pentium 233.

Re:SNES9X

[DarkHelmet]

One of the features in 1.40 is listed as:

• - Cleaned up, overhauled, removed, and ported a lot of code (asm to C). [pagefault, MKendora, Nach]

I think they're addressing that shortcoming.

Re:SNES9X

[Karma Sucks]

I get all my ROMs here.

Re:SNES9X

[mboverload]

IRC. Don't EVER bother with the ROM sites. I have spent hours and hours looks through them, non of them work, are full of porn ads, and require you to vote for their shitty site to do anything. With firefox the voting systems dont even work, anyway.

Re:SNES9X

[Bulln-Bulln]

It's been years ago when ZNES was 100% asm. IIRC in ZSNES was the emulator for Super Mario Kart's DSP chip (co-developed with the SNES9x team). that must have been in 1998 or something...

Re:SNES9X

[moosesocks]

ZSNES ran at about 90% frame rate on my Pentium-100. I never even noticed the missing 10% until I actually checked the frame-counter -- it was still better than playing a 'real' SNES.

It's a real testament to their coding skills.

Re:SNES9X

[mushroom blue]

untrue. Snes95/96 (which later became Snes9x) was able to run most games at full speed on a pentium 133. if you disabled transparency (or just didn't have a good DOS VESA driver), you could get it running full speed on a pentium 75Mhz.

not only that, but other SNES emulators like NLKSNES or ESNES were both able to run most games at full-speed on this hardware as well.

Re:SNES9X

[acidblood]

Regardless, I can assure you that it'd be just as fast if about 20% not 100% of the code were written in C. I'm not familiar with emulators, so maybe those 20% are actually 30 or 40%, but never 100%. I assert this as a speed freak and optimized assembly coder (did a couple of cores for distributed.net). It's just a complete waste of time to write, say, GUI code and file handling in assembly.

Actually, I'd go so far as to hypothesize that ZSNES would be faster if it were written in C/C++ with careful assembly optimization only where needed: the higher productivity associated with a high-level language would mean more time to optimize the parts of the code where speed really matters.

Re:SNES9X

[Andy Dodd]

Except that the C is so closely tied into the assembly code that it's impossible to tweak the C code without totally reworking the ASM.

I've tried... The C code depends too much on large chunks of ASM.

Re:SNES9X

[Anonymous Coward]

what a crock shit. dozens of banners and you have to use login/pass which you get by becoming a member at their (probably suckass) forum and post 10 posts.

use edonkey and let those fucking morons dry out.

Re:SNES9X

[DataPath]

ZSNES isn't all in assembly, and there are (slow, painful) efforts to port all the GUI code to C.

Re:SNES9X

[Mock]

This is usually how emulation projects work. The biggest bottlenecks are: CPU emulation, gfx engine, and sound engine (which can get pretty complex when it comes to DSP support).

The rest of it (loaders, input, user-interface, and glue logic) can be done in C/C++ with no discernable slowdown.

The problem with using a higher level language for CPU emulation especially is the creation/destruction of stack frames when making function/method calls. GCC is pretty nice in that you can tell it to forego some of the standard parts, but it still can run pretty high, and all that setup/teardown for a simple call to increment a virtual register really adds up.

With assembly, you can just "reserve" some registers for work, others for the virtual registers, and then make use of your native call functionality. The G65816 core of the SNES is not that complex (I've written one myself), so it's definitely possible to keep most of the state information in registers for most modern CPUs.
You can also cheat in assembly by using your host CPU's status register to calculate some parts of the "virtual" status register of your emulated CPU.

I think the hardest part is trying to write code that is friendly to the host CPU's branch predictor. You can write code that is technically clean and tight, but if it keeps triggering an instruction pipeline flush, it's worthless.

Re:SNES9X

[Anonymous Coward]

romnation.net

Re:SNES9X

[Anonymous Coward]

www.planetemu.net
http://www.playagain.net/
http ://www.romshare.net/
You don't really have to click their banners!!!!!!
http://www.romnation.net/
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http://gbatemp.m4d.sm/
MameZip 'ped Roms sets on Gnutella2
http://www.mamereactor.com/
magnet shareaza gnutella2 links
http://thongsai-roms.shorturl.com/
IRC Search Engine (search for any game)
http://isohunt.com/
HQ manual Scans (bittorrent)
http://www.hqscansorg.org/
HQ Scans (Individual)
http://www.mightymo.net/manuals.html
http://www.emuconnect.com/roms/
http://www.rom- world.com/
http://www.thenationnet.com/
http://w ww.emuhome.com/
All the latest GBA, (Downloads on website!!!!!!!)
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Also on:
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NES, GENESIS, SNES, GB GOODSETS!
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snes and nes scanned manuals
http://vimm.net/
NES and SNES manual packs (Bittorrent)
http://www.manuals.here.ws/
NES Manuals (typed)
http://www.nesworld.com/manuals.htm
NES Manuals (typed)
http://smackdown.myrmid.com/smackdown/inf o/manuals /
irc (internet relay chat) is better:
You can find the complete set of roms for any console!
If you've never heard of irc go to www.irchelp.org and Read!
To find a channel with roms go to http://isohunt.com and type in any game name.
Places to get ROMs other than websites
EFNet #gbanow
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Newnet #roms4free
NewsGroup carrying ROMs & ISOS alt.binaries.emulators alt.binaries.emulators.arcade alt.binaries.emulators.gameboy alt.binaries.emulators.gameboy.advance alt.binaries.emulators.gameboy.color alt.binaries.emulators.mame alt.binaries.emulators.misc alt.binaries.emulators.neogeo alt.binaries.emulators.nintendo alt.binaries.emulators.nintendo-64 alt.binaries.emulators.sega alt.binaries.emulators.tg16 alt.binaries.emulators.tosec alt.binaries.warez.amiga
32X roms http://emusega-forever.com/

Re:SNES9X

[rreyelts]

I think the hardest part is trying to write code that is friendly to the host CPU's branch predictor.

This is where dynamic recompilation comes in. When you dynamically recompile the target binary, instead of interpreting it, you can remove all of the unpredictable branches you get when you interpret. Dynamic recompilation allows your code to be clean and fast.

I wrote a basic dynamic recompilation core for a Z80 emulator on the JVM.

Re:SNES9X

[Anonymous Coward]

No, checking the anon CVS, the last significant C portage done was 13 months ago. I think one can safely assume they are NOT currently working on that shortcoming.

Re:Slashdot pranked

[PornMaster]

Well, if data size is in Libraries of Congress, I think we should measure time in RTFAs.

Geez

[AvantLegion]

I just finished installing the old version!

Re:Geez

[Anonymous Coward]

on Gentoo?

Re:Geez

[Anonymous Coward]

Then you can just download and install the patch

Re:Geez

[bert.cl]

Me too, I guess using Gentoo wasn't such a good idea afterall (Yeah, it's meant to be a joke, if you don't like it, don't laugh en just ignore it. And no, I'm not a gentoo user)

Reccomendation

[labratuk]

For anyone wanting to play SNES games I highly reccomend looking in your kernel documentation about how to hook up your SNES controller to work with the gamecon driver. Only takes about 10 minutes.

Re:Reccomendation

[Anonymous Coward]

Or if you have the cash to burn, buy:

1. A SNES to USB adapter.

2. A premodded USB SNES controller (basically a SNES controller that's been gutted and replaced with new hardware to make it a USB controller).

Re:Reccomendation

[kesuki]

why do either of those if you're spending cash, you may as well get the Gravis GamePro USB (around $15 USD) It's shaped like a PSX controller, which makes it somewhat similar to the SNES controller, but allows you to map a few extra buttons... I've noticed the D-pad is a bit more sensative than a standard console d-pad, but it's never been something I couldn't play around. (especially since most emulators will let you use both the keyboard and the joystick inputs) Looks like SNES emulation doesn't have much of anything left to be emulated. I strongly reccomend the super famicom wars game if you can find it. It has a number of gameplay abilities (super tanks, Railroad Guns, fighter-bombers, short range SAMs, and Battleships can both hit AIR and ground units.) none of those features are in any of the GBA releases, Although Neo tanks are kinda like Super tanks (except you can have more than 1, you don't need a special property to convert an infantry into a neo, unlike the 'super tank'...
SFC wars only has 3 or 4 railroad missions, but they're still pretty sweet, a lander that can only move via rail and rail connected cities, has 1+/+1 range over a rockets, has a longer move range than a jet fighter. It's pretty damn sweet ^^

Re:Reccomendation

[Roofus]

It's right below the ShutThe FuckUp option in the config. What are you, blind?

Re:Reccomendation

[Anonymous Coward]

I have two of these gamepads actually (and they're kickass), although some people prefer gamepads that have the exact same feel as the original console's gamepads.

Re:Reccomendation

[Anonymous Coward]

He is a bitter BSD user. Their little rants are so precious.

Re:Reccomendation

[Anonymous Coward]

Awww, did you forget to take your meds again?

Re:Reccomendation

[Anonymous Coward]

.... dude, PSX controllers are fucking nothing like SNES ones.

Re:Reccomendation

[Anonymous Coward]

PS2 controllers are nothing like SNES ones, PSX on the other hand was (supposedly) originally designed as the SNES CD-ROM when nintendo canceled plans for it, Sony (supposedly) then decided to take thier CD-rom add-on drive and build a video game console.
Much of this has been debunked, as pure myth, however, the fact remains that the original PSX controller has only 2 buttons more than the SNES.

Re:Reccomendation

[Anonymous Coward]

That doesn't change the fact that the standard SNES controller is more comfortable than the standard PSX and PS2 controllers.

Re:Reccomendation

[Rhone]

Ugh, I despise the Gravis Gamepads. I bought a pair of old Gravis Gamepad Pros off of eBay a while ago, thinking they would be perfect for playing emulated SNES games.

For some games they were bearable, but for most of the games I was playing the pad was horrible because it is unreasonably difficult to press STRAIGHT in one direction without accidentally going diagonal. This made games like Street Fighter 2 unplayable.

I'm much happier with a standard PS2 controller + PS2->USB adapter.

Re:Reccomendation

[Anomie-ous Cow-ard]

Looks like SNES emulation doesn't have much of anything left to be emulated.

There's plenty, it's just that most of the 'big' stuff is mostly done. But there are still a few big things and many many small details.

Re:Slashdot pranked

[Anonymous Coward]

Starting from a point 2 and a half years ago, this is the first release. Therefore, "this is the first release in two and a half years".

A little OT, but...

[NickisGod.com]

When can we expect a new version of Aerobiz?

(and I mean after Supersonic, which is IMO, one of the best SuperNES games)

Re:A little OT, but...

[Kyouryuu]

The game's manufacturer, Koei, still makes regular releases of their Romance of Three Kingdoms and Dynasty Warriors series. They are still known for their tactical strategy games. Aerobiz was a very unique game since it dealt with corporate strategy in a way very different from more comtemporary games of that ilk (SimCity, etc) but I haven't heard about any plans to bring it back.

For the uninitiated, Aerobiz and its sequel Aerobiz Supersonic were two games released on the SNES and Genesis. The aim of each was to become the most profitable airline in the industry. You could play the game at different points in time - the dawn of airplanes for business commutes all the way to Concorde-like supersonics. To win, you would have to oversee buying various real-life planes (Boeing, Lockheed, Airbus, etc), slots at worldly airports, and compete directly with three other companies who were also vying for the same assets. You would try to have a hub in each continent and grow the airline from there with large transoceanic flights. If a particular route was not profitable, you could alter its ticket prices, switch to a smaller plane, or other various options. The game actually had a board of directors you could meet with for advice (similar to SimCity's "Advisors"). Additionally, you could diversify your business by purchasing hotels or golf courses in respective cities. Various events, like the Summer Olympics and disasters, like fuel crises, war or worker strikes, would also influence your growing business. One of the features that made Aerobiz unique was that it was multiplayer. Although you had the option of making any number of them AI, the three other corporations could be other players. Granted, it's rather slow-paced and geeky, but it's arguably the closest thing there ever was to a competitive simulation game.

Re:A little OT, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

There was a third sequel to Aerobiz, the Japan-only Air Management '96 for Saturn and PSX. Judging from GameFAQs, not a lot of people are aware of it.

Re:A little OT, but...

[Professor Oompa]

I agree.. my friend's and I would sit around and play Aerobiz and supersonic through the night years before we ever heard of a LAN party. We've tried to buy a few games that sounded similar, but nothing has ever been even close to as fun.

Re:A little OT, but...

[rinkjustice]

Aerobiz was the best. I remember playing that game with my buddies long into the night. The thing was it was hard to beat someone who had their headquarters in New York, LA, Tokyo or London. I always picked an underdog like Mexico City or Vancouver :)

Thanks for reminding me of that awesome game!

Re:A little OT, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

I dedicated a good proportion of my life playing the original aerobiz; it would be up there with sleeping/masturbation.

Played on a *real* console.

Well, ok I had one of those floppy disk based rippers*; in those days I actually had to rent each the 250 odd games I had in the collection ;o)

*Were these the first console hacks?

Re:Slashdot pranked

[Anonymous Coward]

So which one is it? IT either is the first ZSNES release or it isnt? Quit going back and forth.

eh, Super Mario Kart still doesn't work

[Anonymous Coward]

eh, Super Mario Kart still doesn't work right so it looks like I have to hold onto my SNES & games another year...

Re:eh, Super Mario Kart still doesn't work

[Anonymous Coward]

Super Mario Kart has worked fine for years, your copy of SMK is probably no good.

The utility here http://nsrt.edgeemu.com/ is closed sourced but exists for a lot of platforms and can tell you if your copy of the game is good or not.

Re:eh, Super Mario Kart still doesn't work

[Anonymous Coward]

HOLY CRAP. I found another ROM of Super Mario Kart and my jaw dropped to the floor when I picked those coins up and the question mark squares worked and the cloud fellow didn't pick me up when I went off the track on the inside. I can't believe I've wasted all these years thinking they couldn't emulate this properly when I could have been wasting my time playing this game. Now there's no reason for me to hang on to my SNES anymore.

Thanks a bunch!

Re:eh, Super Mario Kart still doesn't work

[Chemical]

Plus now you can play over the internet! Check out zbattle.

Re:eh, Super Mario Kart still doesn't work

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're not going to hang on to your SNES + carts, consider donating them to the SNES emulation scene...

Ahh I remember the days.

[krudler]

I remember when zsnes .400 came out. That version was a huge update! It allowed me to play ff3 and a whole bunch of other games.

I must admit, lately I've been using snes9x, but I will have to try this out to see how they've been doing.

Re:Ahh I remember the days.

[Zorilla]

Man, remember how the wind in the intro in FF3 sounded before noise wave emulation was introduced? BWWUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUWWWEEEEEEEIIIIIIIWWWWWUUUUUUU!!

Re:Ahh I remember the days.

[Too many errors, bai]

Damn, I remember the wind blowing on top of the castle in Chrono Trigger. It sounded like a fog horn.

i download mine from the internet

[Trepidity]

you could also try building a cartridge reader, i suppose

Re:Slashdot pranked

[Anonymous Coward]

Look at this and all your confusion about which release this is will disappear: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group _id=19677&package_id=14321

Re:Slashdot pranked

[Anonymous Coward]

pointless fucking argument. It's not the first release, it's the first version to be released since a point in time two and a half years ago. noone's going back and forth, you're just too fucking stupid.

Re:Slashdot pranked

[Anonymous Coward]

YHBT, stupid.

Sheeshhh

[MemoryDragon]

Now after 1 1/2 years the compliation of the old version on my Amiga is done, now they have released a new one, time to start compiling again...

Re:Sheeshhh

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, can't you just cross-compile for the Amiga from another computer?

Re:Sheeshhh

[Anonymous Coward]

He's not being serious. Amigas are quite capable of compiling some small emulator; especially these days. And, if he happens to have one that isn't, running a SNES emulator on it won't be worth much anyway.

Re:Slashdot pranked

[Anonymous Coward]

English is obviously not your first language. Are you an American?

old Interface :(

[Anonymous Coward]

bah, they still have that old "demo coder" interface. keyboard is qwerty even though i have configured otherwise in windows. no window borders, mouse speed is hardcoded. what a bullshit.

while it's nice and all that they further developed an app from the days where speed was crucial, they should at least adapt to some basic guidelines regarding gui design.

they may be talented in hacking year-old chips and code handoptimized assembly but they sure as hell have no clue about clean software design.

Re:old Interface :(

[Anonymous Coward]

at least they seem to have fixed the fuckup with directories containing more than ~3000 roms. still their homegrown file requester is limited to the display area of the whole program, making it a pita to reasonably select a rom if your collection is very big and you dont want to resort to making subdirectories.

get rid of that "demo coder" bullshit please, gaah

Re:old Interface :(

[Tasy]

Oh trust me, they know. The team doesn't want to update the GUI though. Word is, there might be an update soon though, due to pressure.

Re:old Interface :(

[Anonymous Coward]

i always liked the znes gui...

i always like the znes!

time to rtfcl (read the freakin changelog)

Re:old Interface :(

[spectre_240sx]

I must admit that I was hoping for a new GUI when I first saw this article. Honestly though, I'd never complain because they've done a lot for everyone already.

Re:old Interface :(

[Anonymous Coward]

The ZSNES GUI is one of the main reasons I use it over Snes9X :< Nicelooking and easy & quick to navigate, not a bland stock Windows-type GUI. And does Snes9X still use that huge controller picture with the textboxes near the buttons instead of in a column for their key redefinition dialog? You can't tell me that that's standard (or good) GUI-ness.

ZSNES is more compatible, and is more stable.

[Anonymous Coward]

Period.

SNES9x is definitely good though, but that's mostly because the ZSNES team has contributed a lot of code to them (like most of the code for the special processors certain SNES games use).

It's not a philosophy thing to me, they're both good, but ZSNES is just better. In terms of features, compatibility, and stability, it's fact.

Re:Slashdot pranked

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like this is your first day on Slashdot. You are trolled!

Re:Slashdot pranked

[Rod Beauvex]

I actually found that funny. I can't laugh too much though, as I am an American.

Anything to warrant another glance?

[WWWWolf]

I see a lot of fixes in the list, but since it's getting late, I can't read well... =/

Is there anything at all to warrant another glance at it? I used to think ZSNES was pretty damn cool, until I noted that SNES9X has actually working hardware screen scaling (through OpenGL - hardware scaling was pretty damn relevant on a P3-600 which I used until this month...) ...and another thing I had going for SNES9X was that there was an OS X port of it, too, so I could use the very same NVRAM files on all computers I could theoretically use. For me, it seemed like the best of the open-source SNES emulators, everyone said ZSNES was good on MS-DOS and not really anything else.

So I suppose they're getting really great emulation quality now, though... is there hardware scaling now? Since it now seems to use SDL, will there be a Mac port?

Just curious...

Re:Anything to warrant another glance?

[Anonymous Coward]

ZSNES now has new filters known as HQ2X, HQ3X, HQ4X. They were originally developed for ZSNES and now merged into a lot of other projects.

Those filters provide more visual appeal than all the other hardware and software filters out there.

They are a bit slow though, and even though they are in 100% assembly and MMX optimized they still need over >1.0 GHz of CPU power to function at full speed.

The RAM files (*.srm) created by Snes9x or any other SNES emulator for that matter are all compatible with each other.

ZSNES still is also the most feature rich emulator. Such as support for key combos, and the brilliant novel idea to add a rewind key to the emulator. Many games that don't work in Snes9x only work in ZSNES. And ZSNES has support for special hardware such as the Nintendo Super System, Sufami Turbo, and Same Game which Snes9x doesn't. Yes I'd say there is still a reason to use ZSNES over Snes9x, or at least use ZSNES when your on your PC.

There will not be a Mac port because ZSNES has way to much x86 assembly to be ported at this time.

Re:Anything to warrant another glance?

[Andy Dodd]

ZSNES has had hardware scaling via OpenGL for quite a while. Although my favorite so far has been 4x software scaling with HQ4X (which is a scaling algorithm that is designed specifically for video games, which typically have lots of line art. HQnX attempt to perform pattern detection on the input graphics in order to guess what it's supposed to look like, and for most video games, the HQnX algorithms and their predecessor 2xSAI work quite well.) Of course, nowadays I follow HQ4X with further hardware scaling on my laptop's 1600x1200 screen. :)

Not sure how hard it would be to get the SDL Linux code to work under OSX... Might not be hard at all.

Re:Anything to warrant another glance?

[mdamaged]

The most notable imo, is the S-DD1 emulation which is brand new, because previously I had been using zsnes 1.36 and it did not have it, so one can play games like Star Ocean without the graphics packs.

Re:Anything to warrant another glance?

[Anonymous Coward]

Strictly speaking, if there's guesswork involved wouldn't it be a heuristic rather than an algorithm? That is, assuming that we agree to define a heuristic as a sequence of steps intended that achieve some imprecise goal or that cannot be proven to always achieve the goal.

In contrast, JPEG compression is an algorithm because we can quantify the fidelity of the lossy compression and we can prove that this fidelity will be within certain bounds subject to the parameters given to the algorithm.

Babbling on and on about semantics can be entertaining from time to time.

Re:Anything to warrant another glance?

[Anonymous Coward]

Algorithm is a very broad concept. It's not as limited as you imagine.

Re:Anything to warrant another glance?

[entrigant]

I've been using opengl in zsnes for over a year, maybe two... where'd you get the idea that it didn't do it?

Re:Slashdot pranked

[Anonymous Coward]

What a pathetic insult. I bet you get your ass kicked, *alot*.

Serious Post, OS X in future?

[Anonymous Coward]

In the release comments they say they have ported much code from asm to C, does this mean we might someday see an OS X port?

Re:Recommendation

[Anonymous Coward]

I would actually not recommend the Gravis Gamepad Pro USB. I have one, and I also have an original SNES controller hooked up to the parallel port. There really is no comparison between the two in terms of D-pad accuracy and general button feel.

Haven't tried the other two options mentioned above though.

Re:Slashdot pranked

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet your stepdad misses his butt boys from the pen and touches you, *alot*.

Re:First post

[Anonymous Coward]

This is hardly redundant. I'll WOO with you brotha!

Where are the ROMs?

[kaedemichi255]

It's good to see a solid GPL'ed emulator, but where does one get ROMs without running into legal issues? What are the legal details about attaining ROMs?

Re:Where are the ROMs?

[Anonymous Coward]

some sites that offer MAME roms through burn to media and mail option also offer SNES/NES roms by the same method. The only legal issues I know of is having them are illegal unless you own the originals, but seeing as none of the gaming companies have gone **AA on people for having roms (besides Nintento and Microsoft for the morons selling those controllers/systems with games on them) I dunno what loopholes there are.

Re:Where are the ROMs?

[Anonymous Coward]

The legal details are not different from those of downloading movies or MP3s. Yes, it is illegal, but currently safer to download (from websites, or from a gnutella server - just do a search for: snes roms) as companies are currently not as adamant about protecting their old games.

Re:Where are the ROMs?

[Joe Tie.]

I have a wildcard unit which can transfer roms from a cartrige. Even then there's a question of legality. Common sense says that there's nothing wrong with making copy of something I've purchased as long as there's no intent to distribute it, nintendo says there is.

Re:Where are the ROMs?

[Morlark]

From http://www.safetyed.org/help/alert/copying.html :

"You make backup copies of all your computer software programs, in case any of the original disks get damaged.
- That's fine! And very wise too!"

I'd not heard about these Nintendo claims, but they are total rubbish. I have never been told by any source that I trust that copying stuff like this is illegal. (Except in special cases, like where there is encryption being used, e.g. in DVDs.) I'm sure there are more authoritative sources out there than the link I posted, but that was merely the product of 2 minutes searching. And I can guarantee that they will all agree that copying is ok, as long as you're not distributing.

Disclaimer: The above statement is not a guarantee. :P

Re:Where are the ROMs?

[Anonymous Coward]

alt.binaries.warez.snes

Re:Where are the ROMs?

[dyefade]

I think you can use a romfile IF it came from a romdump of the cart you own. Even if you download a rom you own the cart of, that would still be illegal.

Cubic Spline Interpolation?

[kkith]

from the changelog:
" * - Fixed cublic spline interpolation. It should actually save the option now! [pagefault] "

Why would curve interpolation be needed in an emulator?

Re:Cubic Spline Interpolation?

[Anonymous Coward]

For sound, duh.

Re:Cubic Spline Interpolation?

[Andy Dodd]

As one other poster said, samplerate conversion for sound is one reason. The other reason would be for graphics scaling.

Legality

[Anonymous Coward]

In my honest opinion, there is nothing (morally) wrong with using ROMS as long as one, you own the system, and two, own the specific game. Also, I completely understand those people who test games out before buying them, to see if they falsely advertised them.

I hated the Gravis GamePad Pro USB's D-pad

[tepples]

I've noticed the D-pad is a bit more sensative than a standard console d-pad, but it's never been something I couldn't play around.

I have never been able to consistently press straight down on the Gravis GamePad Pro USB. It almost always goes down and to the right. Currently, I use an official Sony PlayStation controller through an EMS USB2 adapter, which also lets me play StepMania on my dance pad.

License is not as clear as the GPL.

[jbn-o]

Whether it is GPL'd or not is just flamewar fodder -- most certainly the submitter's intention.

Do you have any evidence to support the assertion that making mention of the license was "flamewar fodder" and that it was indeed the intention of the poster?

The Snes9x license I found has a curious passage:

"Snes9x is freeware for PERSONAL USE only. Commercial users should seek permission of the copyright holders first. Commercial use includes charging money for Snes9x or software derived from Snes9x."

I don't know what "freeware" means and the license doesn't define the term (as is common for licenses to do). The term is not a legalistic one. In the end, I don't know what rights that confers upon me for "PERSONAL USE" (capitalization is theirs) which are denied to "commercial" users. The use of such language suggests to me that this license is somewhat homegrown which is very unwise. I'm also curious how the copyright holders would enforce usage (that is, merely running the program) as opposed to copying, preparing a derivative work, or distributing copies (the copyright powers that come up most commonly for computer programs). By contrast, the GPL is well-understood and written by lawyers. It appears to grant the rights this license attempts to and implements the copyleft provision.

"The copyright holders request that bug fixes and improvements to the code should be forwarded to them so everyone can benefit from the modifications in future versions."

I would have recommended this passage not appear in the license lest it be misinterpreted as a request (which would definately disqualify it for being free software, but not necessarily disqualify it for being open source). They could have moved it to a README file and worded it more clearly as something they would like people to do, but not something required of anyone preparing an improved version.

I don't know whether this license would qualify as open source, as you say. But I know for sure that the GPL, the preeminent free software license, does qualify as an open source license.

How long...

[Zorilla]

...until Debian users get to see this in the unstable branch? Still waiting for Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0 to get introduced - might be a while.

Re:How long...

[dtfinch]

I'm still waiting to see FireFox 1.0 in Ubuntu.

Re:How long...

[Zorilla]

Yeah, Ubuntu was the first thing I was looking at when I was getting rid of SuSE, but of course I had to have the huge user base of Debian, so I went with that instead. Quite nice for finding third party package trees for things the official ones wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole (think libdvdcss).

Re:How long...

[robotoverflow]

1.40 might hit ubuntu before debian, so you could probably pull it from their repositories without too much fuss. The xserver-xorg package reportedly works just fine with debian, so I'd assume that something like zsnes shouldn't cause any troubles either.

SNES9X is not FOSS.

[Anonymous Coward]

SNES9X is not FOSS. The sourcecode has merely been published; it does not have a Free license.

This is the problem with the term "open source". It's ambiguous: ambiguous in a way that's harder to explain than the ambiguity of "Free Software".

Re:Slashdot pranked

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like this is your first day on Slashdot. You've been trolled!

Wow linux requires kernel rebuild for a joystick?

[glrotate]

That kinda sucks.

Re:Wow linux requires kernel rebuild for a joystic

[Anonymous Coward]

He didn't say that. It probobly has more to do with wiring a SNES controller so it can hook up to a PC. I know you wouldn't know, but PCs tend to be lacking SNES controller ports. Of course, your a troll, and I shouldn't post this, but what the hell, I wrote it already, might as well post it.

Re:Wow linux requires kernel rebuild for a joystic

[labratuk]

No. These are just the instructions on which pins to solder to which pins of the parallel port. Most distros will probably have the gamecon module built and ready to use.

Troll.

only after he gets done with you

[Anonymous Coward]

btw, that really was a lame insult. i bet in school u get teased a lot and are a bit of a loner. ;x

Re:only after he gets done with you

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you ever tell your mom about the time the mean kids beat you up and then let a golden retriever have a go at your ass? Funny this is I did the exact same thing to her a couple weeks ago. You two should talk more, you actually have a lot in common.

so you got the inside scoop?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Word is, there might be an update soon though, due to pressure"

what is that, the word on the street? Did your EMU homies talk to you about the SNES underground or what?

Release notes

[Spy der Mann]

Taken from the official site:

ZSNES News
Dec 25th, 2004 - _Demo_
We are releasing the new ZSNES version 1.40 today. We hope you will enjoy it!

Merry Christmas

The ZSNES Team

------------

What's new:

DOS Only:

* - Fixed cublic spline interpolation. It should actually save the option now! [pagefault]
* - Fixed other various DOS sound bugs. [Nach, pagefault]
* - Fixed a frameskipping bug. [pagefault]

Linux/SDL/POSIX Only:

* - Updated icon. [cdbsi]
* - Updated Linux video code to Windows Version. [pagefault]
* - Fixed problems with nVidia cards. [Diablo-D3]
* - Fixed audio problems with broken drivers. [Diablo-D3]
* - Added 48khz sound support. [pagefault]
* - Updated joystick input support. [theoddone33, Sander]
* - Fixed Savestate incrementor, this caused some crashes. [pagefault]
* - Cleaned up the Linux Autoconfigure [Diablo-D3]
* - Added a couple of things for the start of BeOS compatibility. [theoddone33]
* - Fixed 16->32bpp LUT Related bug. [kode54]
* - Added hardcoded alt-enter fullscreen toggle. [theoddone33]
* - Added dialog for why the video mode couldn't be set. [theoddone33]
* - Added Circle buffer patch (savestate fix). [zinx]
* - Fixed problem with man page when installing (when man1 directory doesn't exist). [hpsolo]
* - Fixed cmd line sound quality. [pagefault]
* - Fixed zlib and libpng issues. [theoddone33, pagefault]
* - Updated libpng Version checking [theoddone33]
* - Added -lm to acinclude.m4 so AC_TRY_RUN doesn't return negative on some systems looking for libpng. [theoddone33]
* - Overhauled Makefile. [theoddone33]
* - Fixed install target, -D should not be used. [theoddone33]
* - Added the name of the start address to the error message, when mprotect fails. [theoddone33]
* - Update config.sub. This allows configuration on 64bit targets, and requires autogen.sh to be rerun. [theoddone33]
* - Added HQ2X filter! [MaxSt, pagefault, zinx]
* - Snapshots now use the full ROM file name. [Nach]
* - Prefixed Snapshots with leading zeroes. [Nach]
* - Renamed Linux Version to SDL. [pagefault]

Windows Only:

* - Updated icon with Windows XP compliancy. [cdbsi]
* - Added new disable screensaver code. [pagefault]
* - Added a CPU utilization fix. [kode54, pagefault]
* - Added 48khz sound support, updated sound code, and fixed sound bugs. [pagefault, Nach, ipher, StatMat]
* - Fixed a couple of input bugs, such as one concerning the 5th joystick and another that made the mouse get stuck in an endless loop. [pagefault]
* - Removed alternate timer. [pagefault]
* - Fixed Netplay freezing bug. [pagefault]
* - Many new video features, including (but not limited to): HQ2X, HQ3X and HQ4X graphic filters, support for hi-res and D modes in 32bpp windowed mode (now default), new aspect ratio code for scaling, and the KitchenSync (usable only via the commandline). [MaxSt, pagefault, Darkfalz]
* - Fixes for video code errors, such as those that occured when alt-tabbing in fullscreen, MMX interpolation fixes, and blitter fixes. [pagefault, zsKnight]
* - Snapshots are now numbered and use the full ROM file name. [Nach]
* - Renamed Windows version to Win32. [pagefault]
* - Win32 port can now also be compiled with MinGW (but we won't support it till the next release). [Nach]

All Ports:

* - Added multiple timing tweaks, fixed various emulation bugs, and many other technical updates, including (but not limited to): SPC core updates (with improved sound decoding), safer memory allocation in certain areas, HIRQ and VIRQ fixes, color add/sub and color bleeding fixes, HDMA improvements, sprite priority and flickering fixes. Many more games work :D. [pagefault, _Demo_, Nach, TRAC, Overload, theoddone33]
* - Overhauled a lot of code, such as checksum calculation and mirroring code. Overhauled and added much better EHi/Hi/Lo ROM code, improved reset vector, changed much hard coding to variables. Fi

I'm waiting on...

[Guppy06]

... an update to SNES-Station. Lord knows I can't get the current version to even boot at this point...

A PS2 port of It Might Be NES, one that would let me run it off the hard drive, would also be nice.

Legal Status and Availability of ROMs

[Anonymous Coward]

So what's the deal with ROMs anyway? Are they illegal? Are there any GPL'd? Can someone cough up a link without me googling and having to sift through bad links?

Re:Legal Status and Availability of ROMs

[Anonymous Coward]

I maintain this list on my harddrive just to help everybody out.
www.planetemu.net
http://www.playagain.net/
http ://www.romshare.net/
You don't really have to click their banners!!!!!!
http://www.romnation.net/
http://w ww.emucation.com/
http://gbatemp.m4d.sm/
MameZip 'ped Roms sets on Gnutella2
http://www.mamereactor.com/
magnet shareaza gnutella2 links
http://thongsai-roms.shorturl.com/
IRC Search Engine (search for any game)
http://isohunt.com/
HQ manual Scans (bittorrent)
http://www.hqscansorg.org/
HQ Scans (Individual)
http://www.mightymo.net/manuals.html
http://www.emuconnect.com/roms/
http://www.rom- world.com/
http://www.thenationnet.com/
http://w ww.emuhome.com/
All the latest GBA, (Downloads on website!!!!!!!)
http://www.dgemu.com/
Also on:
irc.newnet.com #dgemu
NES, GENESIS, SNES, GB GOODSETS!
http://www.planetemu.net/
snes and nes scanned manuals
http://vimm.net/
NES and SNES manual packs (Bittorrent)
http://www.manuals.here.ws/
NES Manuals (typed)
http://www.nesworld.com/manuals.htm
NES Manuals (typed)
http://smackdown.myrmid.com/smackdown/inf o/manuals /
irc (internet relay chat) is better:
You can find the complete set of roms for any console!
If you've never heard of irc go to www.irchelp.org and Read!
To find a channel with roms go to http://isohunt.com and type in any game name.
Places to get ROMs other than websites
EFNet #gbanow
EFNet #GBAtemp
EFNet #NioBiUm-RoMs
EFNet #gba^roms crew
EFNet #gbaetc
DALNet gba^roms
Newnet #OldEmuIsos
Newnet #emuchina
Newnet #r0mz2k
Newnet #roms4free
NewsGroup carrying ROMs & ISOS alt.binaries.emulators alt.binaries.emulators.arcade alt.binaries.emulators.gameboy alt.binaries.emulators.gameboy.advance alt.binaries.emulators.gameboy.color alt.binaries.emulators.mame alt.binaries.emulators.misc alt.binaries.emulators.neogeo alt.binaries.emulators.nintendo alt.binaries.emulators.nintendo-64 alt.binaries.emulators.sega alt.binaries.emulators.tg16 alt.binaries.emulators.tosec alt.binaries.warez.amiga
32X roms http://emusega-forever.com/

Re:Where are the ROMs? HERE are the roms! :D

[Anonymous Coward]

http://romcity.net/snes.html

there are some snes roms on that site

also, places you might wish to look are usually peer 2 peer ones

kazaalite K++ is a good one to search for (.smc or .fig files are the super nintendo roms)

newsgroups are good to search. torrent sites will usually have a rom/game section

to avoid the legal issues, avoid all legal people and don't make yourself known to be mr pirate.

gl on yer hunt! :)

(search google for roms and emulators and you might get something good)

romnation.net

[Eric S Raymond]

or planetemu.net

or
www.rom-world.com

a little off topic

[hairyfeet]

I know i'm a little off here,But does anyone know what's with the voting crap on the rom(and spreading to other)sites?I always figured it was a way to do some sort of activex spyware driveby crap.But with regards to the internet i've always been a little bit paranoid ;) As for emu's,i vote(pun alert)for snes9x and kega.Both alway run fast and bug free for me and in the end thats all that matters.

for roms,can't beat the mule with a stick

[hairyfeet]

you can get every sega master,genesis ,supernes,nes,gameboy,gamegear,atari,coleco all packed in these handy zip files.Just and the emu(although i've never heard of anyone having trouble with the ones that come with them)and you're good to go.Yes,they are illegal but so is everything in the u.s of corporate america.As long as the burning eye of the corporate tower doesn't see you it is all good.

Curiouser and Curiouser...

[Anonymous Coward]

We now know who the original Anonymous Coward was, so it's time to point out some irregularities. Note that the original post mentions "those smart coders" who "reverse engineered" so many chips. They're overly inclusive there. The DSP-2 was primarily cracked for Super Sleuth. The first public code was for Snes9x, and that was used as a reference for the asm code ZSNES uses. Credit Super Sleuth or Snes9x here. I can stomach the 9x/Sleuth team being listed as research only because someone did completely rewrite the code in asm. The ST010. Entirely reverse engineered for Snes9x, though with Overload working on it, it would be fair to say that Super Sleuth was "allied" with Snes9x. Even worse, Snes9x released an unstable version months ago with support for this chip, and the attribution of labor between ZSNES and Snes9x is entirely different. Let's compare:

Snes9x 1.43WIP
- Seta special chip emulation enhancements (Feather, The Dumper, Overload, MKendora)
- code tweaks to the ST010 (Nach, pagefault)
- Exhaust Heat 2 and regional ports are playable (Feather, The Dumper, Overload, MKendora)
Snes9x 1.42
- More work on Exhaust Heat 2 (MKendora, Overload, The Dumper)
Snes9x 1.40
- stubbed the ST010 chip in Exhaust Heat 2 (Overload, MKendora)

ZSNES: - ST010 Emulation: Data Retrieval: The Dumper, MKendora Main Code: The Dumper, Overload, Feather, Nach Processing Code: The Dumper Code Fixes: pagefault Doesn't look much alike. So, of course, the people who know know that the old Snes9x forum was the happening place for, well, most of the recent reverse engineering. http://www.snes9x.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=830 7 http://www.snes9x.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=923 6 http://www.snes9x.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=826 9 http://www.snes9x.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=823 3 http://www.snes9x.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=827 0 http://www.snes9x.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=725 4 hmmm... in all of the discussion, I'm left wondering what part of the main code Nach did, since it's rather clear he didn't develop any of the opcodes. I'm curious where MKendora was retrieving data from, since his only resource seemed to be emulator logs. It's established that The Dumper ported the code to ZSNES (in the above threads), so... what gives? The Snes9x changelog might seem unbalanced itself, but it could be that when writing perfect emulation code for 5 ops and correcting the H-DMA interface are lumped together, they just throw all the names on one line. I think the "smart coders" who broke all the chips... seem to be closer to Snes9x, and that the original Coward shifted credit to a team where he has a more central role.

Re:Curiouser and Curiouser...

[Anonymous Coward]

"hmmm... in all of the discussion, I'm left wondering what part of the main code Nach did, since it's rather clear he didn't develop any of the opcodes."

He had to modify a lot of the main code to get it working properly in ZSNES.

"I'm curious where MKendora was retrieving data from, since his only resource seemed to be emulator logs."

He wrote the code to retreive the data. The Dumper was the one who used his code to retreive it.

"It's established that The Dumper ported the code to ZSNES (in the above threads)"

He did the original port to ZSNES for Windows which wasn't portable to ZSNES for DOS and ZSNES for Linux, and had some problems which had to be fixed.

"I think the "smart coders" who broke all the chips... seem to be closer to Snes9x, and that the original Coward shifted credit to a team where he has a more central role."

Several of the people who broke all the chips work on ZSNES and Snes9x, such as The Dumper. A lot of the original work on the C4, S-DD1 was done in ZSNES by zsKnight, and only later did Snes9x catch up.
The support for the Sufami Turbo and Same Game hardware (Same Game is in the readme's what's new but mysteriosly missing from the what's new on the Source Forge announcement) was done in ZSNES by "the original Coward", and his work has not been replicated in Snes9x yet.

A lot of this work you can find on the Snes9x forum and not on the ZSNES forum is due to the ZSNES forum being wiped clean on a seemingly annual basis.

I have to give you credit, you did a lot of homework to dig up all that info, but a lot of the development takes place on IRC and in closed mailing lists also.

Re:Curiouser and Curiouser...

[Anonymous Coward]

> They're overly inclusive there. The DSP-2 was primarily cracked for Super Sleuth. The first public code was for Snes9x, and that was used as a reference for the asm code ZSNES uses. Credit Super Sleuth or Snes9x here.

The DSP-2 research was originally started on the ZSNES board 3 years ago. It moved to the Snes9x board after the ZSNES board was hacked.

Re:Curiouser and Curiouser...

[Anonymous Coward]

It was started by some guy in Australia for his own emulator, and first *shared* on the ZSNES message boards.

It was pretty obviously cracked mainly for Super Sleuth, because the guy who did the research was using that as the testbed.

That research was incomplete, and the missing operations were cracked for immediate inclusion in Snes9x. Where does ZSNES get to claim it was "their team", especially when Snes9x more or less gave them the code wholesale, and they never acted on it until someone handed them a complete port of the code months later?

Nope, Nach is exaggerating just who could really be counted as part of the ZSNES team, claiming research done for other emulators as a "ZSNES" accomplishment, and all that. Seriously, this is not the ZSNES DSP Team...

I think that's game, set, and match.

Re:Curiouser and Curiouser...

[Anonymous Coward]

Working on both projects does not entail the work necessarily being claimable by both teams as original. It's only original to both if it was simultaneous development using both platforms as a testbed.

The DSP-2 was Super Sleuth, and later, Snes9x.
The ST010 was entirely Snes9x, though I suspect Super Sleuth might meet the simultaneous development requirement.

The C4... might have been started as a ZSNES project, but it shouldn't even count for the "smart coders cracked me" list.

The S-DD1... the real progress was the decompression support, which occurred almost entirely outside an emulator. If you have to assign credit to a project, Snes9x is a safer choice, because it was the meeting ground for the involved developers, but the majority of the work occurred by e-mail, to my understanding.

Furthermore, it in fact seems Snes9x does have work done on the expandable carts, but it's disabled by the preprocessor. Given the people involved in the Snes9x code, it has to have been added "close to" the first ZSNES base cart support. ZSNES says "11 months, 3 weeks ago", and Snes9x was between Jan 2 and Jan 10. Of course, because of secret development, you'll maybe never know why the code is disabled, but the best guess from the old threads is "no one ever bothered to decide how to load the games so the Sufami Turbo could use both slots".

I think it comes down to whether you trust a coder heavily affiliated with a project, or the public record. Anyone can claim the secret development proves anything, and it would be hard to prove otherwise. The public record of what went on everyone can see, and verify for themselves.

The public records are very clear. ZSNES did not lead the way in any of the recently cracked chips, and the original Coward is abusing ambiguity in what constitutes membership in a team to hype the accomplishments of the team he's more central to.

It's all great but

[alexo]

when will we see viable (read: fully functional) emulators for more modern systems like the Sega DreamCast? (I am not even talking about the current crop of consoles: XBox, PlayStation-2 and GameCube).