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  • Joined: 12 Jul 1999
  • Posts: 891
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What's going on?
Post Posted: Sun Aug 08, 1999 4:26 pm
What's going on?
Where is everybody?
Don't tell me that people have decided to boycott this site 'coz of what Zoop said on smspower :(
That had nothing to do with this developors' site, it's for everyone interested in Sega 8-bit development.
I actually quite enjoy reading all the posts to see what's 'new' in the field of SMS programming.
I may not understand everything said, and I may ask some pretty dumb questions (I can just hear Zoop agreeing with me there :) but I come here to learn. All I ever wanted to do when I was like, 12 or so was learn how to program a game for a sega machine.
I soon realized that this was never going to happen, but now I have a chance.
:>
~unfnknblvbl
PS how's SSF going? (that always starts something)
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Chris
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Post Posted: Sun Aug 08, 1999 5:03 pm
Quote
> What's going on?

I'm not going to be on the internet as much as before because I've gotta buckle down and tend to my
other studies. I'm heading back to school this Thursday. Everyone is here checking for new messages
but no one needs to add one because nobody is having any problems right now. The reason why
I'm not having problems is because I'm not coding anything. I was going to work on a Galaga
clone called Galagan but I would need to study and write my own Mouse, Sound, and Graphics
drivers in ASM. Not to mention Asm itself. That sort of stuff takes mad amounts of time, especially
if you're new to assembler. So I'm putting that on hold for a while until I get some freetime on
the weekends or something.

Quote
> Don't tell me that people have decided to boycott this site 'coz of what Zoop said on smspower :(

Even though I'm american I'm not some racist bastard. Everyone is entitled to their own opinions in
their own site so anybody who dosen't like what Zoop says can goto Hell for all I care. I already have
enough problems and I don't have time to hate Zoop in his own site.

Quote
> That had nothing to do with this developors' site, it's for everyone interested in Sega 8-bit development.
> I actually quite enjoy reading all the posts to see what's 'new' in the field of SMS programming.
> I may not understand everything said, and I may ask some pretty dumb questions (I can just hear Zoop agreeing with me there :) but I come here to learn. All I ever wanted to do when I was like, 12 or so was learn how to program a game for a sega machine.
> I soon realized that this was never going to happen, but now I have a chance.

I have a change too. When I was about 11 or 12 I read video game magazines and discovered that
a team of humans wrote computer code and designed the game with a computer, not just by magic.
Everything starts somewhere. Ever since then I've been totally interested in comptuters and computer
programming. I hope that someday I can get a change to work with one of the big boys as a
assistant coder or something. But as for this place, I'm in heaven. A site about one of my favorite
systems and lots of emulator programmers and contributers frequently visit this site and post
interesting messages that I understand. So, we both have a chance for something. Mabye one
day I'll learn enough to finally sit down and write my dream emulator Great SMS Emulator (GSMSE).
It's not going to be all fancy like Meka but a simple C++ based GUI and the most accurate PSG
noise effects ever. But I don't like to propose program promisses because if they don't come true
I'm fucked. I already had my fare share back in '97. I'll just try my best and keep checking back
on my real sms to see if things are correct.

Chris :o)
 
Nyef
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Post Posted: Sun Aug 08, 1999 5:06 pm
Quote
> What's going on?
> Where is everybody?

I don't know about everyone else but as for me, I'm off working on a 68k core.

Quote
> Don't tell me that people have decided to boycott this site 'coz of what Zoop said on smspower :(
> That had nothing to do with this developors' site, it's for everyone interested in Sega 8-bit development.

Not me. I just happen to have a policy of not starting new threads when I have nothing to say. :-)

Quote
> I actually quite enjoy reading all the posts to see what's 'new' in the field of SMS programming.

So do I.

Quote
> I may not understand everything said, and I may ask some pretty dumb questions (I can just hear Zoop agreeing with me there :) but I come here to learn. All I ever wanted to do when I was like, 12 or so was learn how to program a game for a sega machine.

Sounds familiar. I remember calling Ni****do once to try to get a NES devkit. :-)

Quote
> I soon realized that this was never going to happen, but now I have a chance.
> :>

Now I have a chance, but I have enough other things to do that I'm not likely to take it.

Quote
> ~unfnknblvbl
> PS how's SSF going? (that always starts something)

Not this time, not with me. :-)

--Nyef
 
Chris
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68000 Core
Post Posted: Mon Aug 09, 1999 2:08 am
I'm curious, what language(s) are you writing your 68k core under?

Chris :o)
 
  • Joined: 12 Jul 1999
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What happened in '97? *nt*
Post Posted: Mon Aug 09, 1999 5:06 am
As you can see, there is no text included within this post.
None at all.
Not even a single letter.
Not a dot.
Nothing.
At all.
Ever.
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Chris
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What happend in '97
Post Posted: Mon Aug 09, 1999 8:30 am
Before I got seriously into computer programming, I used to use this game development program called
Klik & Play. Even then at my early age I wrote pretty solid games. I wrote many clones:

Kidd Icarus
Mertrid
Boxkian

And many others. Reason why? I used the engine just about everyday, so I knew all the tricks and the
catches except for one mighty detail, "How could I write games that scrolled?". All of my games and
even the games that were publised in the little Klik & Play forum were staic or "fixed" games.
So I tried to fuck with every little detail to Klik & Play and see if I could find some undocumented
scrolling feature but all my attempts were dead. The only way I could get scrolling is if I were
to do it myself and that's exactly what I did. I added a bunch of extra objects beyond the players
view and merely subtracted the object position when the player 1 object went past 240 which is
the middle-right portion of the screen. The effect was a success! But even with my great and
inventive idea you only had a limited amount of objects that you could put beyond the player
screen and into windows because the program was 16 bit and was limited to 256 game objects.
But, even though the scrolling was limited, it was a great start and I sort of "revolutionized"
things. So I announced to the whole world, "Scrolling is possible with KNP." But, no matter
how much you speak on shit people would rather see for themselves then to read about it.

So, I came up with the idea of writing a Castlevania 2 clone called Transylvania. Castlevania 2
was perfect because the game uses many game screens, not just one continuous level like
Castlevania 3 or Mario Bros. Everything was put together like magic. I even came up with
a better way of checking collision between sprites because I made both a whip sprite and
a player sprite. So the user could whip through blocks and stuff (before if the user whipped
at a block the user would jump back like 30 pixels!). I even took ripped the real Castlevania
graphics via nesticle pcx dumping but I improve them. I made Kain (Simon) look more
smooth by using 256 colors instead of the NES' 8 color pal. The idea and the story was
set. I worked on it for a week and released a demo to show my scrolling technique and
show off the game.

People actually digged the idea! They though it was great! They even liked the little graphics
enhancement I did as well. Many people thought I worked for Konami or some shit. I'm like,
"Hey. I'm just a 13 year old kid." So I got in over my head and started giving promises. I was
like "There's going to be 13 towns. Over 100 puzzles. 7 Mansions." All this bullshit just
to get everyone excited. As time went by I got lazy with the project and the mail started
hitting me. "Hey man? How much are you done? When do you think you'll be done?"
So me being the young, innocent dumb ass, I promised to have the game done by
August 14, 1997. At the time I think it was mabye July 12 so I though I had plenty
of time. Well, time is something that creeps up on you when you're not watching it, ya know?
So a week turned to 2 weeks and during this time I lost passion for the project. I didn't like being
fixed to Klik & Play's environment. I wanted to be my own. I wanted to be able to scroll
wherever I wanted. So then I got into Qbasic and VB. I spent the rest of the time reading
VB books instead of working on the game. Then the day comes, August 14, 1997 and I haven't done
shit since the demo. I'm getting mabye 5 E-mails every hour requesting for the release.
Then I started stalling and stuff. I said, "I'll release it sometime next week." I said that for
mabye another 3 weeks and people started to get nasty and very pissed at me. It's ironic because
I'm the one making the damn game in the first place. I can do what the fuck I want.
I got sick of it. So I posted a little html message on my AOL ftp (I had AOL back then)
saying that I was quiting the project and that I wasn't working on it anymore. Can you believe
people got even more pissed at me? Over a fucking game? I actually got hate mail from
that shit.

In all I learned a lesson in life as well as the net. Don't make promises and claims that you cannot
live up to. That is why I say in short, Great SMS Emulator may turn out good or bad, but either way
there's going to be either accurate PSG and Noise Effects emulation or no sound at all. I can't stand
using emulators that improperly emulate sound!!! Ahhh!!!! Here's a list of emulators with bad or
inaccurate sound:

Brsms (it skips, the noise effects are too long and bland and the voice is too fast)
Msx (Forget about it)
Massage (Same as Brsms except it dosen't skip)
Zsnes (Overall it's pretty good but needs some tweaking here and there)
Nesticle (Bad volume effects and terrible PCM effects.)
Kgen (I'm sorry but it's bad)
Retrocade (Sure, the GUI sound is great but the emulation isn't that hot)

And there's many others out there that should be stoned! I can't believe authors release that crap! If
you play them long enough your mind becomes adjusted to those bad sounds and you forget the
original. You get distorted, ya know? Anyway, here's the ones with good sound:

Loopynes (The king!!)
Nosefart Player for DOS/Winamp (Almost as good as Loopy! If not better under Windows 95 and Win
amp!)

Genecyst (Way better than Kgen but not as great as Dgen)
MAME (You gotta admit, pretty good sound.)
Meka (Damn good PSG, Zoop.) Forgive me, but the voice is too fast :o|
Snes9x (The Loopynes of SNES emulation)
Z26 (It's Atari at it's finest! Great Job!)
Hive (With some help from me Larry is in fine tune now :o)

Oppps. I guess this wasn't short after all.

Chris :o)
 
  • Joined: 12 Jul 1999
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What?
Post Posted: Mon Aug 09, 1999 10:38 am
Whaddaya mean: Kgen has crap sound?! I don't get it!
Kgen has *heaps* better sound than Genecyst. I have to listen to Genecyst using 11025KHz sound for it to be bearable!
The sound in Genecyst is hell tinny & scratchy.
The only reason that I use Genecyst is 'coz it emulates the 6-button controller better than KGen does.

And yes, I do agree, Meka has kick-arse sound, and yes, The speech is too fast/high pitched.
Can you please fix this, Zoop? Thanx in advance, man.

Sorry, I just had to rant a little bit :>
That Klick n Play stuff sounds cool.
~unfnknblvbl
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Nyef
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Re: 68000 Core
Post Posted: Mon Aug 09, 1999 12:52 pm
Quote
> I'm curious, what language(s) are you writing your 68k core under?

C. It's similar to Starscream and the core used in Generator in that it's a program that
writes the source code to the real core when it's run. Unfortunately, It's generating 600k
object files (300k stripped) when compiled, and I'm only about 1/3 done. I have a couple
ideas on how to reduce the size, though. It will require some changes to the rest of my
emulator before it will work properly, and it may never be fast (the next one should be fast,
but I don't know when I'll start writing it).

Quote
> Chris :o)

--Nyef
 
Chris
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Re: What?
Post Posted: Mon Aug 09, 1999 4:27 pm
Quote
> Whaddaya mean: Kgen has crap sound?! I don't get it!

It has bad sound. No ifs, ands, or butts.

Quote
> Kgen has *heaps* better sound than Genecyst. I have to listen to Genecyst using 11025KHz sound for it to be bearable!
> The sound in Genecyst is hell tinny & scratchy.

It's you're sound card that's fucking up the quality of the sound. You're right, 11025 does suck but
44100 under genecyst almost sounds like the real thing.

Quote
> The only reason that I use Genecyst is 'coz it emulates the 6-button controller better than KGen does.

Another tally for Genecyst

Quote
> And yes, I do agree, Meka has kick-arse sound, and yes, The speech is too fast/high pitched.
> Can you please fix this, Zoop? Thanx in advance, man.

> Sorry, I just had to rant a little bit :>
> That Klick n Play stuff sounds cool.
> ~unfnknblvbl
 
Chris
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Re: 68000 Core
Post Posted: Mon Aug 09, 1999 4:31 pm
Quote
> C. It's similar to Starscream and the core used in Generator in that it's a program that
> writes the source code to the real core when it's run. Unfortunately, It's generating 600k
> object files (300k stripped) when compiled, and I'm only about 1/3 done. I have a couple
> ideas on how to reduce the size, though. It will require some changes to the rest of my
> emulator before it will work properly, and it may never be fast (the next one should be fast,
> but I don't know when I'll start writing it).

So it's a re-compiling emulator and not an interpreted one? How do you know that all the
instructions will be compadable? Also, is the 68k difficult to emulate? Are there a lot
of instructions? What's a good estimate of the amount of instructions?

Chris :o)
 
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Re: 68000 Core
Post Posted: Mon Aug 09, 1999 5:17 pm
Quote
> So it's a re-compiling emulator and not an interpreted one? How do you know that all the
> instructions will be compadable? Also, is the 68k difficult to emulate? Are there a lot
> of instructions? What's a good estimate of the amount of instructions?

No, it's an interpretive emulator. You can't really do dynarec without using some ASM.

And what do you mean about compatability?

The 68k, like the 6502, lends itself well to automatic code generation thanks to the regular
structure of it's instruction set. The problems are mainly in the different addressing modes
and the instruction decoding (256k decode table, here we come). And I just figured out
where most of the space in my new core is going. :-)

If you don't know what you're doing when you try to write a 68k core you will end up
rewriting the addressing mode handlers at least three times.

As to the amount of instructions, it has less than 65536 instructions. If you don't count
addressing modes, you have a more reasonable selection of less than 100 if memory
serves (there are at least 3 sets of instructions that store 8-bit data in the low half of the
instruction word, and the a-line and f-line traps cover 4096 opdodes each. The 11
addressing modes and the fact that some instructions have a source and destination
addressing mode doesn't hurt, either). There are also far fewer special cases in the
instruction encoding than on Z80 or x86 systems.

Quote
> Chris :o)

--Nyef
 
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Re: 68000 Core
Post Posted: Mon Aug 09, 1999 5:34 pm
Quote
> > So it's a re-compiling emulator and not an interpreted one? How do you know that all the
> > instructions will be compadable? Also, is the 68k difficult to emulate? Are there a lot
> > of instructions? What's a good estimate of the amount of instructions?

> No, it's an interpretive emulator. You can't really do dynarec without using some ASM.

(For Chris, mostly:)

Let me put things more simply: Nyef wrote a program that writes a 68K emulator.

The generated 68K emulator itself is interpretive, it's just that the source code was created by another computer program, not by hand. This is what he's referring to when he says "automatic code genertaion."

The benefits of such a scheme is that the emulator itself can be easily modified by providing different command-line switches to the code generator program.

Eric
 
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Re: 68000 Core
Post Posted: Mon Aug 09, 1999 5:35 pm
Quote
> > So it's a re-compiling emulator and not an interpreted one? How do you know that all the
> > instructions will be compadable? Also, is the 68k difficult to emulate? Are there a lot
> > of instructions? What's a good estimate of the amount of instructions?

> No, it's an interpretive emulator. You can't really do dynarec without using some ASM.

(For Chris, mostly:)

Let me put things more simply: Nyef wrote a program that writes a 68K emulator.

The generated 68K emulator itself is interpretive, it's just that the source code was created by another computer program, not by hand. This is what he's referring to when he says "automatic code genertaion."

The benefits of such a scheme is that the emulator itself can be easily modified by providing different command-line switches to the code generator program.

Eric
 
Eric
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Double-post, Sorry. (NT)
Post Posted: Mon Aug 09, 1999 5:44 pm
I tried to submit this message with absolutely no text, but it wouldn't let me. So, here's some text.
 
Nyef
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Re: 68000 Core
Post Posted: Mon Aug 09, 1999 5:53 pm
Quote
> Let me put things more simply: Nyef wrote a program that writes a 68K emulator.

That's a bit too succinct. I don't need the entire world figuring it out. :-)

Quote
> The generated 68K emulator itself is interpretive, it's just that the source code was created by another computer program, not by hand. This is what he's referring to when he says "automatic code genertaion."

Again, too easy to understand. If you keep this up we'll have random people off the street trying to write emulators. :-)

Quote
> The benefits of such a scheme is that the emulator itself can be easily modified by providing different command-line switches to the code generator program.

Grammar point: You used the plural form of 'benefit', but only enumerated one benefit. This would have been fine if you had said 'include' instead of 'is'. :-P

Other benefits include:
a program can perform space-for-time tradeoffs that a human would find too tedious and error prone.
you can selectively disable parts of the core to speed compilation while testing it.
fixing bugs that appear in all instructions of a certain type can be easier.
it is easier to make major architectural changes.
writing programs that write programs is metaprogramming, and metaprogramming is cool.

Quote
> Eric

--Nyef
 
  • Joined: 24 Jun 1999
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Sound
Post Posted: Mon Aug 09, 1999 6:11 pm
Quote
> Before I got seriously into computer programming, I used to use this game development program called
> Klik & Play. Even then at my early age I wrote pretty solid games. I wrote many clones:
[blabla]

Quote
> Ahhh!!!! Here's a list of emulators with bad or inaccurate sound:

> Brsms (it skips, the noise effects are too long and bland and the voice is too fast)

BrSMS sound is perfect, at least on my machine.

Quote
> Kgen (I'm sorry but it's bad)

It's better than any other Genesis emulators.

Quote
> And there's many others out there that should be stoned! I can't believe authors release that crap! If
> you play them long enough your mind becomes adjusted to those bad sounds and you forget the
> original. You get distorted, ya know? Anyway, here's the ones with good sound:
> Meka (Damn good PSG, Zoop.) Forgive me, but the voice is too fast :o|

Voice is simply not correctly pitched. On some games it's too fast, on some it's too slow.
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  • Joined: 24 Jun 1999
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Klik'n Play
Post Posted: Mon Aug 09, 1999 6:12 pm
Quote
> Before I got seriously into computer programming, I used to use this game development program called
> Klik & Play. Even then at my early age I wrote pretty solid games. I wrote many clones:
(blabla)

I used to make some crap with Klik & Play.
I actually know the guy who made it (he's french).
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Eric
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Re: 68000 Core
Post Posted: Mon Aug 09, 1999 8:15 pm
Quote
> > Let me put things more simply: Nyef wrote a program that writes a 68K emulator.

> That's a bit too succinct. I don't need the entire world figuring it out. :-)

> > The generated 68K emulator itself is interpretive, it's just that the source code was created by another computer program, not by hand. This is what he's referring to when he says "automatic code genertaion."

> Again, too easy to understand. If you keep this up we'll have random people off the street trying to write emulators. :-)

Understood.

Quote
> > The benefits of such a scheme is that the emulator itself can be easily modified by providing different command-line switches to the code generator program.

> Grammar point: You used the plural form of 'benefit', but only enumerated one benefit. This would have been fine if you had said 'include' instead of 'is'. :-P

You're right. I'll try to salvage my self-respect by commenting that when I started the sentence I was going to list numerous benefits. I just got lazy. :-)

Quote
> Other benefits include:
> a program can perform space-for-time tradeoffs that a human would find too tedious and error prone.
> you can selectively disable parts of the core to speed compilation while testing it.
> fixing bugs that appear in all instructions of a certain type can be easier.
> it is easier to make major architectural changes.
> writing programs that write programs is metaprogramming, and metaprogramming is cool.

Eric
 
Chris
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No it's not!
Post Posted: Mon Aug 09, 1999 11:25 pm
I'm not talking about Genecyst .32 or below I'm talking about the most recent

X.XX

That's the one I'm talking about. Kgen is okay but it's not as hot as Genecyst X.XX. I don't care
what anyone says, Genecyst in my opinion is better in many ways. So what if the Raster Effects
don't support shadow, the 68k engine is faster and the 41100 sound is phonemonal (is that spelled
right?)!

Chris :o)
 
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Re: No it's not!
Post Posted: Tue Aug 10, 1999 1:34 am

Quote
> I'm not talking about Genecyst .32 or below I'm talking about the most recent

> X.XX

> That's the one I'm talking about. Kgen is okay but it's not as hot as Genecyst X.XX. I don't care
> what anyone says, Genecyst in my opinion is better in many ways. So what if the Raster Effects
> don't support shadow, the 68k engine is faster and the 41100 sound is phonemonal (is that spelled
> right?)!

> Chris :o)

44100KHz on my computer sounds utterly, utterly crap on Genecyst. I havent heard 44100KHz on Kgen yet (it won't work), but 22050KHz sounds just fine. Better, in fact than 44100 in Genecyst.
I have a SBPro-compatible ESS Audiodrive that sounds absolutely fine in eveything except Quake II. Even the MIDI sounds fine.
Genecyst does not sound good. It sounds allright, and on my computer the sound is only bearable on 11025KHz 44100KHz sounds way too scratchy.
Besides, KGen absolutley rips for racing games. A shame about the dodgy controller emulation though...
~unfnknblvbl
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Post Posted: Thu Aug 12, 1999 2:27 am
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> Sounds familiar. I remember calling Ni****do once to try to get a NES devkit. :-)

I did something like that with the Atari 2600. I called up and asked if commercial games could be developed with the Atari 2600 basic cartridge. It wasn't long until I read an article about how they used commodore computers (can't remember if it was the Vic-20 or C-64) to develop games.
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Post Posted: Thu Aug 12, 1999 2:38 am
Quote
> Sounds familiar. I remember calling Ni****do once to try to get a NES devkit. :-)

I did something like that with the Atari 2600. I called up and asked if commercial games could be developed with the Atari 2600 basic cartridge. It wasn't long until I read an article about how they used commodore computers (can't remember if it was the Vic-20 or C-64) to develop games.
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