SpritesMind.Net

I have just flashed it to my Tototek cartridge as soon as I arrived home.

First I tried running it at 60 Hz (NTSC) mode, but I noticed some scanline effects did not work, so I tried again at 50 Hz. Now effects were working, but when the demo got to the 512 colour screen, the screen showed the "your emulator sucks" text and everything got frozen (excepting music).

Powered the console off, then on again, and now the 512 colour screen worked perfect! But then it fade out, the music continued and nothing else happened... black screen. Tried again and got the same results. Maybe the demo doesn't like my Tototek cartridge or my modified PAL Megadrive...

Oerg866 wrote:And the award for "best emulator for people who don't have an i7 at 9.999GHz" goes to.... Eke! --- provided he can be arsed to compile a win32 binary ever again [ ... ]

RetroArch has an up-to-date Genesis Plus GX core which works great (I helped test it back when the RA team first ported G+GX to libretro), and it's multi-platform!

doragasu wrote:I have just flashed it to my Tototek cartridge as soon as I arrived home.

First I tried running it at 60 Hz (NTSC) mode, but I noticed some scanline effects did not work, so I tried again at 50 Hz. Now effects were working, but when the demo got to the 512 colour screen, the screen showed the "your emulator sucks" text and everything got frozen (excepting music).

Powered the console off, then on again, and now the 512 colour screen worked perfect! But then it fade out, the music continued and nothing else happened... black screen. Tried again and got the same results. Maybe the demo doesn't like my Tototek cartridge or my modified PAL Megadrive...

Are you sure you have a real Mega Drive? I have seen this behavior on a chinese clone machine.

Oerg866 wrote:

doragasu wrote:I have just flashed it to my Tototek cartridge as soon as I arrived home.

First I tried running it at 60 Hz (NTSC) mode, but I noticed some scanline effects did not work, so I tried again at 50 Hz. Now effects were working, but when the demo got to the 512 colour screen, the screen showed the "your emulator sucks" text and everything got frozen (excepting music).

Powered the console off, then on again, and now the 512 colour screen worked perfect! But then it fade out, the music continued and nothing else happened... black screen. Tried again and got the same results. Maybe the demo doesn't like my Tototek cartridge or my modified PAL Megadrive...

Are you sure you have a real Mega Drive? I have seen this behavior on a chinese clone machine.

Video that I've posted in previous post was captured from chinese PAL MD1 clone, based on VA4 version of PCB. No emulator detected. :3

HardWareMan wrote:

Oerg866 wrote:

doragasu wrote:I have just flashed it to my Tototek cartridge as soon as I arrived home.

First I tried running it at 60 Hz (NTSC) mode, but I noticed some scanline effects did not work, so I tried again at 50 Hz. Now effects were working, but when the demo got to the 512 colour screen, the screen showed the "your emulator sucks" text and everything got frozen (excepting music).

Powered the console off, then on again, and now the 512 colour screen worked perfect! But then it fade out, the music continued and nothing else happened... black screen. Tried again and got the same results. Maybe the demo doesn't like my Tototek cartridge or my modified PAL Megadrive...

Are you sure you have a real Mega Drive? I have seen this behavior on a chinese clone machine.

Video that I've posted in previous post was captured from chinese PAL MD1 clone, based on VA4 version of PCB. No emulator detected. :3

Those are superclones. They are fully compatible (ASICs made by schematic-stealers) and have way better sound than official sega machines.

In fact, we captured the RGB video from my MD which is also a superclone! Probably same as yours, also based on VA4.

Really impressive stuff, congrats with a great release!

Emulating this on 200MHz ARM will be a challenge, but I take it. I'll be back to you when I'm done, if you care (and still alive).

Oerg866 wrote:And the award for "best emulator for people who don't have an i7 at 9.999GHz" goes to.... Eke! --- provided he can be arsed to compile a win32 binary ever again (can't get it to work here, so the screenshot is off the wii version).

From looking at how other emu handle it, I would guess this one is using CRAM + VSRAM (or Name Table registers ?) updates during HBLANK, I think Fusion/Regen handle CRAM but not the others (it's not very complicated to support it but afaik only needed for one commercial game, i.e Batman & Robin)

It still detects it is running from an emulator though (and that it sucks ), which is kinda challenging, I now wonder what unemulated feature Tiido used this time

Congrats for the demo, I won't be very original and say it's simply awesome and very exciting to watch, some of the effects you coded are really impressive

(I did not code anything in there, only gave some pointers on some aspects )

Oerg866 wrote:Are you sure you have a real Mega Drive? I have seen this behavior on a chinese clone machine.

Yes, it's a real PAL (Europe) MD1. I opened it to add the 50/60 Hz and ENG/JAP switches, so I'm sure it's not an emulation based clone. It has the 68000, the Z80 and the VDP chips. Today I tried again and it got frozen just after the 512 color screen

Should the demo work at 60 Hz?

The demo only works in 50Hz. It will have problems in 60Hz and freezes at some point.

Eke wrote:From looking at how other emu handle it, I would guess this one is using CRAM + VSRAM (or Name Table registers ?) updates during HBLANK, I think Fusion/Regen handle CRAM but not the others (it's not very complicated to support it but afaik only needed for one commercial game, i.e Batman & Robin)

It still detects it is running from an emulator though (and that it sucks ), which is kinda challenging, I now wonder what unemulated feature Tiido used this time

Congrats for the demo, I won't be very original and say it's simply awesome and very exciting to watch, some of the effects you coded are really impressive

Hi,

thanks for the comments

The emulator sucks is not a detection. We disable display during HBI in that scene, and that causes some problems with sprites on real hardware, like reducing the sprite limit. In this scene, ~30 sprites work somewhat reliably, 31 and 32 occasionally appear and disappear, so anything above that spells out "your emulator suxx"

Just out of interest, as it's says it's RGB capture, how was it made? Is that using some hardware that TmEE is credited with?

notaz wrote:Just out of interest, as it's says it's RGB capture, how was it made? Is that using some hardware that TmEE is credited with?

No, we used one of these:

http://www.startech.com/AV/Converters/V ... t~PEXHDCAP

Affordable and just a great piece of hardware. Takes 15khz RGB signals without any problems, even weird arcade formats

Nice card, no Linux drivers though

Oerg866 wrote:The emulator sucks is not a detection. We disable display during HBI in that scene, and that causes some problems with sprites on real hardware, like reducing the sprite limit. In this scene, ~30 sprites work somewhat reliably, 31 and 32 occasionally appear and disappear, so anything above that spells out "your emulator suxx"

ah, thank for the tips
this limitation was somehow "emulated" for Mickey Mania 3D Moose Chase level but in a very limited (and not really correct) way, i now have a good reason to improve it