Emulation was already found legal, back when Readysoft was selling AMax on the Amiga. Apple sued and lost, IIRC, which set precedent. IANAL, but emulation in and of itself IS legal.
No, Nintendo's always been like this when it comes to the rights of the legitimate cart owner. Remember that shit in the back of manuals basically saying that the mere act of copying the game is illegal, no matter WHAT you did with it, oh but 'this may not apply where you live' or some shit along those lines.
Nintendo KNOWS that emulation, in and of itself, is 100% LEGAL. They also know that in and of itself, dumping ROMs is also 100% LEGAL. The only thing that is illegal, is unauthorized distribution of copyrighted material that one does not have license to distribute. If the copyright owner says yes, Nintendo has no say (of course, this only applies to third party games). If you code the ROM yourself, Nintendo has ABSOLUTELY no say.
They know how far they're overreaching. They just want to scare as many people as they can into thinking that they're right.
Nintendo makes great fucking games, but their lawyers are some of the worst bottomfeeders I've ever seen (outside of SCO, anyway).
It was gathering dust until this recent retro craze. As soon as retro is not cool again, it'll all go back on the shelf.
I'm torn on the topic of copyright. On the one hand, I do believe people should have the right to attempt to make money from their hard work for at least a short period of time like 10-15 years. However, I also feel that allowing unauthorized distribution of software that can no longer be bought new in its original form helps the preservation of that software. Case in point:
I just recently found a download for the old Amiga UNIX. The one that Commodore sold with the Amiga 3000UX. This was almost lost (it's believed the source code was accidentally erased quite a while ago anyway). So I promptly downloaded up to 3 copies of it, from different sources (I have a habit of doing this, to ensure that I get at least one copy of what I'm looking for).
Unauthorized distribution of copyrighted material also furthers a goal that benefits the public domain more than anything - I fully believe, had there been the Internet and P2P filesharing back a few years ago, the old shows that are currently lost forever would not be, because SOMEONE would have traded it on P2P, thus when the original masters got destroyed it wouldn't all be gone.
That's why I feel otherwise-illegal P2P should at least be tolerated to some extent, lest any of these companies get into a situation where an important piece of their history is lost forever, because they were too greedy to let people ensure that copies existed.
For the record, I do think anyone who sells ROM CDs and/or emulators they did not develop, is nothing but scum. It's one thing to copy something for free, it's entirely different to profit from that copying. The only way I could even see any for-profit copying as being ethical, would be if it was a ROM dumping service that you paid a small fee for, gave them your legally purchased cartridge, and received your cartridge back with a copy of the ROM on a CD-R (probably one of the small ones). That, in my opinion, would be the only ethical way to profit from the actual dumping process (rather than the manufacture of the dumper itself).
I bet Tecmo didn't pay a DIME to emulate the NES. Emulation is legal, regardless of what Nintendo's cronies tell you. And since they owned the rights to the games in question, they would be in the clear to emulate the NES (the only thing they'd have to license would be the emulator itself, unless they decided to reinvent the wheel and write their own).
I suspect that the real reason emulation was used, was simply because they'd probably lost the original source code and thus only had a binary to work from. That's why Sonic Jam on Saturn is a port, but Sonic Mega Collection on NGC is emulation.
Enhancements should always be options. There should ALWAYS be an 'original' setting that emulates the original system as closely as possible, bugs and all.
If people tried to 'enhance' the C64 and get rid of the badlines (since they can be a pain in the ass sometimes), then ALL demos would break, since they rely heavily on the way badlines work. So yeah, enhancement is good to a point, but it should always be optional.
What, do people not know what a noninterlaced NTSC signal is?
The Genesis has three graphics modes.
Mode 1 is noninterlaced 60fps 320x224 (can also be x240 on PAL only). This is a true 60fps progressive signal, there are 60 discreet frames per second. There might still technically be odd and even fields but there's no half-line vertical displacement so they're effectively frames.
Mode 2 is interlaced 30fps 320x224, where the original 60fps signal is interlaced into an effective 30fps 320x448, but using the original tile format and only having 224 addressable scanlines during any one field. Using this as a reference, it should be possible to hack a game to always use this mode instead of the one above, thus allowing one to use the Genesis with professional video equipment without having to run it through a TBC first. I plan on using this technique, along with some other devices, to make what might be the highest quality video captures possible from a Genesis.
Mode 3 is interlaced 30fps 328x448. This is a true interlace mode, the Genesis uses 8x16 tiles and outputs a true 320x448.
Theoretically, one could do some software interlacing and make mode 2 act like mode 3, for things like pictures and demos. Alternate between two screens every frame, and interlace mode 2 should give you a full resolution image, although I haven't tested it. And since you'd have to keep track of which field is which, I don't see that this would be that useful for games.
I define 'integral part' as something that was intentional, for the most part.
It's like saying, if a TV show aired a half-century ago, and it caused TVs of the time to lose their vertical hold, then if that show is aired today, the same thing should happen.
Of course, that would insinuate that things like the Minus World aren't an 'integral part' either. But really, they're not, since they weren't intended to do in the first place. Noone complains when you have to make all new patch codes for a new rereleased port of an older game, noone really complained when Nintendo removed -1 from SMAS and beyond (in SMAS, you could still go through the bricks but the pipes worked normally, in SMBDX, there's two empty bricks so you can't get in the wall).
And surely noone complained when SMAS didn't have horrible OAM cycling when Mario was on the same line as several Goombas, as opposed to the original.
To each their own, tho. You feel that way, that's entirely up to you. I'm just saying that *I* don't consider horrible OAM cycling to be a good thing.
Well, there's two schools of thought here.
There's the people who think that accuracy is the ultimate goal and that enhancement should be optional, if at all. I tend to feel this way, I want my emulator to behave as identical to the original as possible. And it's not that the emulators intentionally add the slowdown per se, but rather that the chips are emulated exactly enough that the behavior mimics what really happens - slowdown and OAM cycling.
Then there's other people who think emulators should go above and beyond what the original machine can do, in terms of performance. That's all fine an dandy as an option, but I always want my 100% (or 99%, or whatever) accurate emulator.
Hardcore homebrew development requires accuracy. C64 demos, at the scale they're at right now, could not be coded with the help of an emulator like C64, that isn't cycle-exact.
Right, I knew that. But, in the context of a Genesis, or other noninterlaced signal, both the odd and even fields are displayed on the same actual lines, and thus, it becomes essentially a 60fps progressive signal with half the vertical resolution of the interlaced equivalent.
My point is, the unit didn't die from overclocking unless it died from the actual overclocking. If he's got the thing out working on it, and all of a sudden someone throws a rock through the window and it lands right on the Genesis, then it didn't die from overclocking. But nevermind, I've made my point also, we might as well agree to disagree =P
Not me. I always hated it when Zelda slowed down for no good (to a kid, anyway) reason. And there's no way it's an 'integral part' of my gameplay experience, I just find it annoying.
Yeah, I did own an Amiga as well (still have a 3000, by the way), but that really doesn't have anything to do with the fact that I was nitpicking the original poster's assertion that most old games ran at 30fps/30Hz. =P
I want to do some raster-banging effects myself, but I don't have any data on the cycles per line, which is needed for the really hardcore effects. The Genesis should theoretically be able to do a 'copperscroller' (a text scroller made with only the background color register), and something like this would have the potential to extend that technique, depending on the overclocked CPU's behavior when the bus is not available, as it's likely to be much of the time, with the different clock. I know the SCPU-enhanced C64 will merely block the 65816 until the next 1MHz cycle if need be, but I dunno about this.
Yeah, but since 99% of pre-Dreamcast systems primarily used noninterlaced mode, it really is 60 frames per second. If you want to get technical, you can call them fields, but still there's 60 discreet frames per second in the context of the Genesis.
The goal was to overclock...if they fall off the bench and break in the process, they failed due to overclocking.
So what, if your goal is to overclock, and they get destroyed due to a flash flood or other natural disaster, they still failed due to overclocking?
That just makes no sense.
But technically, yeah, the parachutist didn't die just because of the simple fact that he jumped out of an airplane, in and of itself. I know that's not your point, but whatever.
The center of your mindset should rest on the vertical blank - that's your 'unit of time', unless you're doing some splitscreen stuff (like the water effect in Sonic), then you utilize the horizontal IRQ (I also call it a line IRQ) to get there. No busywaiting necessary.
Frame rate is mostly constant on the classic consoles, in the sense that it's mostly synched with the refresh rate.
No, even before that, coders were syncing to the VBI at the very least. I would guess that even the original SMB would run quite nice at 2, 3, 4, or more MHz.
If the game just updates the screen whenever the hell it feels like it, busywaiting until it's time, then yeah, it'll fuck up. But any properly coded game will utilize the VINT to synch to the refresh rate. Sonic 2 does this for sure, you can even see the garbage in the bottom border where the game is initializing the VDP for the next frame.
NTSC does 60Hz, PAL does 50Hz. Most games update the screen every frame, a few will do it on two's. This actually has a use with all games that are programmed correctly, especially those which rely on raw CPU time.
It'd also be nice to play around with in a C64-styled demo, banging on the VDP with the increased cycles available at the higher clock speed. I wonder what happens when you try to hit the VDP too fast. To compare, with a SCPU-equipped C64, the 65816 simply blocks until the 1MHz bus frees up, if it needs to.
Slashdot Mirror
Emulation was already found legal, back when Readysoft was selling AMax on the Amiga. Apple sued and lost, IIRC, which set precedent. IANAL, but emulation in and of itself IS legal.
No, Nintendo's always been like this when it comes to the rights of the legitimate cart owner. Remember that shit in the back of manuals basically saying that the mere act of copying the game is illegal, no matter WHAT you did with it, oh but 'this may not apply where you live' or some shit along those lines.
Nintendo KNOWS that emulation, in and of itself, is 100% LEGAL. They also know that in and of itself, dumping ROMs is also 100% LEGAL. The only thing that is illegal, is unauthorized distribution of copyrighted material that one does not have license to distribute. If the copyright owner says yes, Nintendo has no say (of course, this only applies to third party games). If you code the ROM yourself, Nintendo has ABSOLUTELY no say.
They know how far they're overreaching. They just want to scare as many people as they can into thinking that they're right.
Nintendo makes great fucking games, but their lawyers are some of the worst bottomfeeders I've ever seen (outside of SCO, anyway).
It was gathering dust until this recent retro craze. As soon as retro is not cool again, it'll all go back on the shelf.
I'm torn on the topic of copyright. On the one hand, I do believe people should have the right to attempt to make money from their hard work for at least a short period of time like 10-15 years. However, I also feel that allowing unauthorized distribution of software that can no longer be bought new in its original form helps the preservation of that software. Case in point:
I just recently found a download for the old Amiga UNIX. The one that Commodore sold with the Amiga 3000UX. This was almost lost (it's believed the source code was accidentally erased quite a while ago anyway). So I promptly downloaded up to 3 copies of it, from different sources (I have a habit of doing this, to ensure that I get at least one copy of what I'm looking for).
Unauthorized distribution of copyrighted material also furthers a goal that benefits the public domain more than anything - I fully believe, had there been the Internet and P2P filesharing back a few years ago, the old shows that are currently lost forever would not be, because SOMEONE would have traded it on P2P, thus when the original masters got destroyed it wouldn't all be gone.
That's why I feel otherwise-illegal P2P should at least be tolerated to some extent, lest any of these companies get into a situation where an important piece of their history is lost forever, because they were too greedy to let people ensure that copies existed.
For the record, I do think anyone who sells ROM CDs and/or emulators they did not develop, is nothing but scum. It's one thing to copy something for free, it's entirely different to profit from that copying. The only way I could even see any for-profit copying as being ethical, would be if it was a ROM dumping service that you paid a small fee for, gave them your legally purchased cartridge, and received your cartridge back with a copy of the ROM on a CD-R (probably one of the small ones). That, in my opinion, would be the only ethical way to profit from the actual dumping process (rather than the manufacture of the dumper itself).
I bet Tecmo didn't pay a DIME to emulate the NES. Emulation is legal, regardless of what Nintendo's cronies tell you. And since they owned the rights to the games in question, they would be in the clear to emulate the NES (the only thing they'd have to license would be the emulator itself, unless they decided to reinvent the wheel and write their own).
I suspect that the real reason emulation was used, was simply because they'd probably lost the original source code and thus only had a binary to work from. That's why Sonic Jam on Saturn is a port, but Sonic Mega Collection on NGC is emulation.
Why the hell would you feed samples to the PSG, when the 2612 has a perfectly decent DAC built in?
Enhancements should always be options. There should ALWAYS be an 'original' setting that emulates the original system as closely as possible, bugs and all.
If people tried to 'enhance' the C64 and get rid of the badlines (since they can be a pain in the ass sometimes), then ALL demos would break, since they rely heavily on the way badlines work. So yeah, enhancement is good to a point, but it should always be optional.
What, do people not know what a noninterlaced NTSC signal is?
The Genesis has three graphics modes.
Mode 1 is noninterlaced 60fps 320x224 (can also be x240 on PAL only). This is a true 60fps progressive signal, there are 60 discreet frames per second. There might still technically be odd and even fields but there's no half-line vertical displacement so they're effectively frames.
Mode 2 is interlaced 30fps 320x224, where the original 60fps signal is interlaced into an effective 30fps 320x448, but using the original tile format and only having 224 addressable scanlines during any one field. Using this as a reference, it should be possible to hack a game to always use this mode instead of the one above, thus allowing one to use the Genesis with professional video equipment without having to run it through a TBC first. I plan on using this technique, along with some other devices, to make what might be the highest quality video captures possible from a Genesis.
Mode 3 is interlaced 30fps 328x448. This is a true interlace mode, the Genesis uses 8x16 tiles and outputs a true 320x448.
Theoretically, one could do some software interlacing and make mode 2 act like mode 3, for things like pictures and demos. Alternate between two screens every frame, and interlace mode 2 should give you a full resolution image, although I haven't tested it. And since you'd have to keep track of which field is which, I don't see that this would be that useful for games.
I define 'integral part' as something that was intentional, for the most part.
It's like saying, if a TV show aired a half-century ago, and it caused TVs of the time to lose their vertical hold, then if that show is aired today, the same thing should happen.
Of course, that would insinuate that things like the Minus World aren't an 'integral part' either. But really, they're not, since they weren't intended to do in the first place. Noone complains when you have to make all new patch codes for a new rereleased port of an older game, noone really complained when Nintendo removed -1 from SMAS and beyond (in SMAS, you could still go through the bricks but the pipes worked normally, in SMBDX, there's two empty bricks so you can't get in the wall).
And surely noone complained when SMAS didn't have horrible OAM cycling when Mario was on the same line as several Goombas, as opposed to the original.
To each their own, tho. You feel that way, that's entirely up to you. I'm just saying that *I* don't consider horrible OAM cycling to be a good thing.
Well, there's two schools of thought here. There's the people who think that accuracy is the ultimate goal and that enhancement should be optional, if at all. I tend to feel this way, I want my emulator to behave as identical to the original as possible. And it's not that the emulators intentionally add the slowdown per se, but rather that the chips are emulated exactly enough that the behavior mimics what really happens - slowdown and OAM cycling. Then there's other people who think emulators should go above and beyond what the original machine can do, in terms of performance. That's all fine an dandy as an option, but I always want my 100% (or 99%, or whatever) accurate emulator. Hardcore homebrew development requires accuracy. C64 demos, at the scale they're at right now, could not be coded with the help of an emulator like C64, that isn't cycle-exact.
Right, I knew that. But, in the context of a Genesis, or other noninterlaced signal, both the odd and even fields are displayed on the same actual lines, and thus, it becomes essentially a 60fps progressive signal with half the vertical resolution of the interlaced equivalent.
My point is, the unit didn't die from overclocking unless it died from the actual overclocking. If he's got the thing out working on it, and all of a sudden someone throws a rock through the window and it lands right on the Genesis, then it didn't die from overclocking. But nevermind, I've made my point also, we might as well agree to disagree =P
Depends on if you have a hardware line IRQ or not. Hardware IRQs are always friendly to overclocking, while busywaiting never is.
Not me. I always hated it when Zelda slowed down for no good (to a kid, anyway) reason. And there's no way it's an 'integral part' of my gameplay experience, I just find it annoying.
Yeah, I did own an Amiga as well (still have a 3000, by the way), but that really doesn't have anything to do with the fact that I was nitpicking the original poster's assertion that most old games ran at 30fps/30Hz. =P
I want to do some raster-banging effects myself, but I don't have any data on the cycles per line, which is needed for the really hardcore effects. The Genesis should theoretically be able to do a 'copperscroller' (a text scroller made with only the background color register), and something like this would have the potential to extend that technique, depending on the overclocked CPU's behavior when the bus is not available, as it's likely to be much of the time, with the different clock. I know the SCPU-enhanced C64 will merely block the 65816 until the next 1MHz cycle if need be, but I dunno about this.
Yeah, but since 99% of pre-Dreamcast systems primarily used noninterlaced mode, it really is 60 frames per second. If you want to get technical, you can call them fields, but still there's 60 discreet frames per second in the context of the Genesis.
- The goal was to overclock...if they fall off the bench and break in the process, they failed due to overclocking.
So what, if your goal is to overclock, and they get destroyed due to a flash flood or other natural disaster, they still failed due to overclocking? That just makes no sense. But technically, yeah, the parachutist didn't die just because of the simple fact that he jumped out of an airplane, in and of itself. I know that's not your point, but whatever.www.tototek.com They sell a flash cart in 32Mbit and 64Mbit varieties. The 64Mbit one also supports 32x games.
The center of your mindset should rest on the vertical blank - that's your 'unit of time', unless you're doing some splitscreen stuff (like the water effect in Sonic), then you utilize the horizontal IRQ (I also call it a line IRQ) to get there. No busywaiting necessary. Frame rate is mostly constant on the classic consoles, in the sense that it's mostly synched with the refresh rate.
You made it to /., kickass.
No, even before that, coders were syncing to the VBI at the very least. I would guess that even the original SMB would run quite nice at 2, 3, 4, or more MHz.
My TV does 60fps quite nice with my Genesis, thank you.
And yes, standard NTSC.
WTF? You're trying to say that the NES' horrible OAM cycling is INTENTIONAL and is a valued part of the experience? You're on crack.
If the game just updates the screen whenever the hell it feels like it, busywaiting until it's time, then yeah, it'll fuck up. But any properly coded game will utilize the VINT to synch to the refresh rate. Sonic 2 does this for sure, you can even see the garbage in the bottom border where the game is initializing the VDP for the next frame.
NTSC does 60Hz, PAL does 50Hz. Most games update the screen every frame, a few will do it on two's. This actually has a use with all games that are programmed correctly, especially those which rely on raw CPU time.
It'd also be nice to play around with in a C64-styled demo, banging on the VDP with the increased cycles available at the higher clock speed. I wonder what happens when you try to hit the VDP too fast. To compare, with a SCPU-equipped C64, the 65816 simply blocks until the 1MHz bus frees up, if it needs to.