I switched to direct video for PSX y/c composite but it‘s pretty bad experienceI gotta say… I tried a bunch of adapters and they all feel jank one way or the other. Combination of bad resolution switching, or video noise, or off color. Recently I got Benfei adapter with 3 stars from that chart and I was happy with it at first since it switches resolution decently but now it has a lot of horizontal video striping noise and off color red from time to time. Blips from resolution switching just feel bad to me not matter how minute it is. Antonio Villena’s analog IO looks interesting since it got good score from the chart and 24bit vga (needs alt mister builds) but I can't dump anymore money into mister…
@KennyL Yeah I have not entirely been impressed with Direct video. I have tried 3 different adapters and they are all kind jank in different way. I kinda feel like I will eventually end up with enough spare parts to just need another DE10 to build a second MiSTer and like, maybe that is not the worst thing in the world.
Saturn core is pretty great when working. Y/C composite looks great with nice dither transparency smoothing. But it's too rough to be release on main I think…. A lot of sound and music cutoffs, crashes, graphic glitches, compatibility, etc. Apparently you gotta have the right ram, right bios, right chd/iso to run things better at this point. Caveat emptor.
@KennyL Seen some stuff in the discord about it, but it’s been OK for me so far as a beta is concerned. Still some graphical and sound glitches, but no big crashes. I’m using the region free Hi-Saturn v1.03 BIOS and CHDMAN to convert any bin/cues. The CHD Arquivista collection on archive.org has been fine too. I am using a single 128 mb RAM stick from Mister Addons. Also, several games won’t work if there is a controller active in Port 2 (an actual Saturn bug), which needs to be turned off in the MiSTer main menu.
For those that don’t know how to use CHDMAN for Windows, just extract this zip and place any bin/cues in folders (or not if you don’t mind a file mess) and double click the .bat file. It will automatically convert anything it finds the directory to a CHD while keeping the original bin/cue files.
@copySave I… did not know you could put multiple bin/cue folders in there and convert them all at once lol
@copySave I’m keeping everything in cue/bin for now… I’ll try that bios thanks.
I’m probably not remembering correctly but I thought PSX core was in much better shape when released on main? This release has way too rough for me. Even big Sega arcade games have audio drops and glitches. I’m gonna just let it cook some more…
I do remember there were some games that still wouldn't work at all when PSX hit main, but yeah. I wonder if this might partly be about casting a wider net with regards to bug reporting?
@MegaSigil Yeah - they haven’t even announced it in the MiSTer discord news channel, but the Saturn core channel has seen a big uptick in activity.
I haven’t been seriously playing anything, just poking around to see what works when I have the time (only seen a few graphical and sound glitches). Mostly some shmups, arcade ports, racing and fighting games. I have put some time into the Dracula X - Nocture of the Moonlight Extended (v1.5) hack which has been working great so far.
I guess one other bit of advice I can give is to unmount/eject the games by holding X (bottom face) then pressing O (right face) on the controller in the with the game highlighted in the select menu. This will also reset the core and clear any temp info, if it makes you feel more comfortable to do a clean exit (like me). I do this with all of the disc based cores, and some require a manual reset afterwards, like the PSX core.
Yeah the Saturn core basically just happens to be on main now, still very much a work in progress. The N64 core is probably further along than it at this point
lol I never knew where “Game Over, Yeaahhh!!!” came from and I just accidentally encountered it while messing around in a particular Saturn game
@TracyDMcGrath Once he gets that TLB stuff implemented, the N64 core will be close to full library booting. As someone who has seen the struggle of N64 emulation on PCs since the beginning, I still have a hard time believing that the MiSTer core is real sometimes - lol.
Also amazed at the Saturn core considering the dev is in Ukraine. Hopefully the public release will help development, but the Saturn is infamous to emulate in general due to the complex hardware inside. From what I’ve seen it’s mostly down to timing issues at this point.
Got Mister Laggy and now I have answer for latency of my plasma tv.
Mister vsync_adjust option makes big difference.
50" Panasonic plasma
vsync_adjust=0 ~ 56ms-60ms, about 3.5-3.75 frames of lag at 60hz
vsync_adjust=1 ~ 60ms
vsync_adjust=2 ~ 27ms, about 1.7 frames
It’s both worse and better than expected. I think other consoles are probably on the higher range. I get the same number for top, middle, and bottom boxes.
13" consumer Sony Trinitron crt composite with vsync_adjust 2:
Top ~ 1ms
Middle ~ 7ms
Bottom ~ 14ms
42" LG C2 oled input boost on, vsync_adjust 2:
Top ~ 3.5ms-4ms
Middle ~ 10ms
Bottom ~ 17ms
Everyone doing latency measurement pretty much only report the top numbers but is it more useful to report middle numbers since more things are happening in the middle of the screen?
@copySave I’ve definitely seen issues with some sprites just not being drawn in games like Soukyuugurentai, some coloring problems, and some real harsh sound glitches. Most games seem to work pretty well now though, it’s more a game here or there where something is off.
Tengai runs like a dream and that’s already a better game than the best games on most other cores.
@KennyL Looks correct to me except for the OLED. Plasmas are known for their lag due to image processing (old CPUs in them) but high refresh rate for motion clarity.
The CRT physically draws the image from the upper left corner to the lower right, so the bottom is the end of the drawn 16ms frame. The OLED should draw the whole image at once (eg progressive like the plasma) so maybe the boost mode does something different to the rendering to make it more pulse style?
@MegaSigil Oh, Virtua Fighter 2
Can you map DS4 touchpad clicks? I want to map fast forward and savestates to them in psx core. Don‘t know if it’s possible. The touchpad works as mouse but don't know if the buttons can be mapped.
Been playing the N64 core a bunch and it’s been incredible! There is usually a new update every week and most of the games feel perfect already.
If anyone needs help setting it up here is all you need to do:
Put this line in your /media/fat/downloader.ini file and run the Update All script:
[n64_dev] db_url = https://raw.githubusercontent.com/RobertPeip/Mister64/db/db.json.zip
This will also pull in a database text file that automatically sets some hardware configs per game when you load them.
if you want the CRT TV Svideo/Composite builds add this one too:
[MikeS11/YC_Builds-MiSTer] db_url = https://raw.githubusercontent.com/MikeS11/YC_Builds-MiSTer/db/db.json.zip
The YC core will appear under “YCConsole” in the main menu
Mapping buttons:
DO NOT map the control stick in the core. It will automatically be set by the initial controller setup when you do the “Define joystick buttons”, so just map L,R,D,U to the d-pad when defining buttons in the core iteself.
Roms:
Use the Everdrive pack from htgdb-gamepacks on archive dot org. This is the set the core is being primarily tested on.
There are some TLB workaround patches to get games to run:
- Super Mario 64
- Perfect Dark
- Banjo Tooie
Get the patches here or in the pinned section of the N64 MiSTer Discord. You will need either Beat or Lunar IPS, or use an online rom patcher.
Here are the current stats as of 11/10/2023:
https://vampier.net/N64/Graph.png
The “No Boot” games are primarily the ones that use TLB. This feature will be implemented after general bugfixes and minor features are complete since TLB will make debugging harder. Only the 3 games I listed earlier have workaround patches at the moment.
These are the notable games that currently don’t work:
The complete stats are in this spreadsheet.
Here is Robert “FPGAzumSpass” Peip’s patreon if you want to support the developer:
https://www.patreon.com/FPGAzumSpass
Sooo I ran update_all and got everything together to try out some Saturn/N64 games but when I finally load it up, neither core shows up on the list… is there something simple I'm missing here?
@onefiftythree Saturn SHOULD be there as it is public. N64 will not as it is still in beta. You would need to go to the Mister Dischord and grab it from the nightlies.
it was something simple I missed — not enough space on the SD card. now it f'n WORKS and I am going to play SEGA RALLY