overdrive

Announce (tech) demos or games releases

Moderator: Mask of Destiny

doragasu
Very interested
Posts: 125
Joined: Tue Oct 09, 2012 8:15 am

Post by doragasu » Mon Aug 19, 2013 8:20 pm

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...

neologix
Very interested
Posts: 122
Joined: Mon May 07, 2007 5:19 pm
Location: New York, NY, USA
Contact:

Post by neologix » Mon Aug 19, 2013 8:42 pm

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!

Oerg866
Very interested
Posts: 211
Joined: Sat Apr 19, 2008 10:58 am
Location: Frankfurt, Germany
Contact:

Post by Oerg866 » Mon Aug 19, 2013 8:52 pm

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.

HardWareMan
Very interested
Posts: 745
Joined: Sat Dec 15, 2007 7:49 am
Location: Kazakhstan, Pavlodar

Post by HardWareMan » Mon Aug 19, 2013 9:41 pm

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

Oerg866
Very interested
Posts: 211
Joined: Sat Apr 19, 2008 10:58 am
Location: Frankfurt, Germany
Contact:

Post by Oerg866 » Mon Aug 19, 2013 10:12 pm

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. :D

notaz
Very interested
Posts: 193
Joined: Mon Feb 04, 2008 11:58 pm
Location: Lithuania

Post by notaz » Mon Aug 19, 2013 10:36 pm

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).

Eke
Very interested
Posts: 884
Joined: Wed Feb 28, 2007 2:57 pm
Contact:

Post by Eke » Tue Aug 20, 2013 6:33 pm

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).

Image
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 :D ), which is kinda challenging, I now wonder what unemulated feature Tiido used this time :twisted:

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

TmEE co.(TM)
Very interested
Posts: 2440
Joined: Tue Dec 05, 2006 1:37 pm
Location: Estonia, Rapla City
Contact:

Post by TmEE co.(TM) » Tue Aug 20, 2013 6:46 pm

(I did not code anything in there, only gave some pointers on some aspects :P)
Mida sa loed ? Nagunii aru ei saa ;)
http://www.tmeeco.eu
Files of all broken links and images of mine are found here : http://www.tmeeco.eu/FileDen

doragasu
Very interested
Posts: 125
Joined: Tue Oct 09, 2012 8:15 am

Post by doragasu » Tue Aug 20, 2013 9:10 pm

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?

TmEE co.(TM)
Very interested
Posts: 2440
Joined: Tue Dec 05, 2006 1:37 pm
Location: Estonia, Rapla City
Contact:

Post by TmEE co.(TM) » Tue Aug 20, 2013 9:24 pm

The demo only works in 50Hz. It will have problems in 60Hz and freezes at some point.
Mida sa loed ? Nagunii aru ei saa ;)
http://www.tmeeco.eu
Files of all broken links and images of mine are found here : http://www.tmeeco.eu/FileDen

Oerg866
Very interested
Posts: 211
Joined: Sat Apr 19, 2008 10:58 am
Location: Frankfurt, Germany
Contact:

Post by Oerg866 » Wed Aug 21, 2013 1:20 am

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 :D ), which is kinda challenging, I now wonder what unemulated feature Tiido used this time :twisted:

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" :)

notaz
Very interested
Posts: 193
Joined: Mon Feb 04, 2008 11:58 pm
Location: Lithuania

Post by notaz » Wed Aug 21, 2013 11:04 am

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?

Oerg866
Very interested
Posts: 211
Joined: Sat Apr 19, 2008 10:58 am
Location: Frankfurt, Germany
Contact:

Post by Oerg866 » Wed Aug 21, 2013 11:37 am

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 :P

notaz
Very interested
Posts: 193
Joined: Mon Feb 04, 2008 11:58 pm
Location: Lithuania

Post by notaz » Wed Aug 21, 2013 3:40 pm

Nice card, no Linux drivers though :(

Eke
Very interested
Posts: 884
Joined: Wed Feb 28, 2007 2:57 pm
Contact:

Post by Eke » Wed Aug 21, 2013 8:12 pm

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 :D

Post Reply