|
|
Post by Fryguy64 on Mar 9, 2009 9:41:03 GMT -5
As a non-professional website with a limited library of games due to the misfortune of being born in England, you are probably aware that I express some interest in the field of emulation. It's how I played Super Mario RPG 10 years before an official PAL release (sigh) and Earthbound, which has yet to reach PAL shores at all. Emulators are also ideal for getting screenshots for the website. Even though I intentionally bastardise the screenshots to 267x200 resolution to dissuade them being stolen, you get much cleaner colours and less interference than using my other method, which is using my not-ideal-quality TV card. Of course, the whole issue of emulation is a bit of a taboo subject. I'm going to open it up a bit. Lately, I have been looking at two specific forms of emulation: Nintendo 64 emulation, and music emulation. The N64 was being emulated when it was still a current-gen system (leading to widespread legal battles). I've been looking into it, and "Project 64" is being touted as the best emulator. Does anyone know of any other good ones? Project 64 runs quite a few games well, but it seems to have a significant number of sprite mapping issues that make certain games unplayable (such as Dr. Mario 64, another title that was never released here). It's also got polygon issues with a small number of games, including Jet Force Gemini and Mickey's Speedway USA. On the subject of music emulation, I have long been a fan of the NSF (NES Sound Format), and have been finding out that it is possible to emulate the sound of many other formats as well, and burn the majority of them to MP3 for iPod listening. I have recently delved into the DS library with some rather fantastic results. I can listen to the Tetris DS soundtrack all day!! Does anyone have any resources on how to handle GCN or Wii soundtracks? Or places to download the raw files? This is really the next thing I want to tackle - and get myself a complete Nintendo music library  Also, going right back in the other direction, it is apparently possible for some programs to run the music from MAME roms for old arcade games. Sadly, the programs I have checked out do not support any of Nintendo's games. I know there's not a whole lot in there, and it doesn't even sound all that good half the time, but I'm being completist about this. Does anyone know if this is even possible? |
|
|
|
Post by nocturnal YL on Mar 9, 2009 11:05:26 GMT -5
Wow. Let's see...
You live in England
It IS some misfortune, yeah. Us over here in Hong Kong get to have access to both Japanese and US games, and in rare cases like Nintendogs and most Ubisoft games on DS, we get access to the European version as well. The drawback would be limited access to Club Nintendo items and certain obscure games. I still have problem locating Path of Radiance now (back when they sell this game the price was too high, and I was not much of an FE addict back then).
Nintendo 64 emulation
If PJ64 fails, try 1964. If both fails, chances are other non-mainstream emulators cannot get them right as well.
Music emulation
The only format I've get to play is SPC (for SNES), and that's only because I cannot get Sutte Hakkun music elsewhere. I do hope these music do loop themselves though. I have yet to find any Wii or GC music than in MP3 or M4A (Wii-playable) format.
|
|
|
|
Post by Koopaul on Mar 9, 2009 11:10:27 GMT -5
There are people out there who do it for the sake of obtaining sprites.
|
|
|
|
Post by TV Eye on Mar 9, 2009 13:07:40 GMT -5
Project 64 is the best. Any problems you have with sprites or graphics (like in Pokemon Snap) can easily be fixed with a third party graphics plugin.
|
|
BeamClaws
Balloon Fighter
Beam claws closes the gap with his excellent foot speed!
Posts: 934
|
Post by BeamClaws on Mar 9, 2009 14:55:41 GMT -5
Sadly, tthe latest PJ64, or atleast the newest one I have, cnnot take snapshots. Oh well.
Completist? Are you going to collect the licensed CD-i games next? cd-i Zelda had pretty good boss music.
|
|
|
|
Post by Manspeed on Mar 9, 2009 16:15:46 GMT -5
Project 64 is the best. Any problems you have with sprites or graphics (like in Pokemon Snap) can easily be fixed with a third party graphics plugin. Do you know of any plugins that can get the graphics in Bomberman 64 to display properly? It's been eating away at me ever since I set out to collect every Bomberman ROM. |
|
|
|
Post by Fryguy64 on Mar 9, 2009 18:34:02 GMT -5
Sadly, tthe latest PJ64, or atleast the newest one I have, cnnot take snapshots. Oh well. I downloaded the latest one yesterday and it takes screenshots OK. Not always with success (sometimes it takes blank screens, and on one occasion it did crash Project64) but it worked most of the time. |
|
|
|
Post by nocturnal YL on Mar 10, 2009 2:14:46 GMT -5
On this subject, anyone has interests in Gamecube emulation? I can't get past the title screen for Luigi's Mansion (European), and for Melee (US), the glithes described among most users applies to me as well. It's not my PC's power though; mine the most powerful consumer PC I've seen so far. EDIT: I have one Luigi's Mansion screenshot in perfect PNG, in 640*480, the resolution for GC and Wii. Perhaps I'll post that later. Do you know of any plugins that can get the graphics in Bomberman 64 to display properly? It's been eating away at me ever since I set out to collect every Bomberman ROM. I recall the default plugin handles this game fairly well. Sadly, tthe latest PJ64, or atleast the newest one I have, cnnot take snapshots. Oh well. I recall both Jabo 1.6 and 1.52 can take screenshots - the former takes JPEG (which is sub-optimal with its somewhere-around-70 compression rate) and the latter takes PNG. In order to take accurate screens with the new plugin, I use the ultimate weapon above all: Print Screen. Windows copies your screen to the clipboard, KDE and Gnome asks you where to store the pic as a PNG and Mac automatically stores such pic on desktop with Cmd-Shift-3. |
|
|
|
Post by Fryguy64 on Mar 10, 2009 4:00:41 GMT -5
I've just tried out 1964 to see how that compares with Project64, and I must say I am much more impressed with how it handles sprites, but it's not quite as capable of running as many games. Although I hear there are patches for these two emulators that will improve the number of games that you can run with them... but I had trouble finding out anything about them (let alone downloading them). On top of that, Dr. Mario 64 and Yoshi's Story are horribly glitchy in both. I hear this is a common problem. From what I can gather, I need to play around with settings for some games to see if that fixes them. I haven't tried it yet, to be honest. I think when it comes to GCN and Wii, I might just try and gather the raw music files. Quick question on that: Do you have to download the full ISO and then extract the sound files yourself? Or is there somewhere you can download the sound files on their own? Because I can't find anywhere  |
|
|
|
Post by Koopaul on Mar 10, 2009 10:29:59 GMT -5
I've never emulated before. But if it weren't for it, there wouldn't be the totally awesome site: www.spriters-resource.com Yep, where would we be without our flash movies, fan comics, and silly animated gifs... By the way I gots a few custom sprites up there myself.  Oh! Sorry to go off topic, I just love sprites, and we couldn't have 'em without emulation, despite forbidding myself from using them. Kinda complex eh? I thank emulation yet I refuse to even consider it. My morals are so conflicting! |
|
|
|
Post by Sqrt2 on Mar 11, 2009 4:27:08 GMT -5
I thank emulation yet I refuse to even consider it. My morals are so conflicting! Same here, although given that both Earthbound and Mother 3 are unlikely to be re-released (either on the DS or Virtual Console), I might have to consider doing it.... |
|
|
|
Post by nocturnal YL on Mar 11, 2009 5:56:18 GMT -5
|
|
|
|
Post by Fryguy64 on Mar 11, 2009 10:39:19 GMT -5
Still, it's cool you managed to get it working even that far!
I haven't touched DS emulation yet, although I am tempted for some games, as I want to get some decent cameo screenshots. I suspect the emulation quality is still pretty poor on that though, right?
|
|
|
|
Post by nocturnal YL on Mar 11, 2009 13:10:43 GMT -5
DS emulation is not quite stable as of now. A lot of games run, but a lot other cannot run properly as well. I'm surprised to see people managing to take the videos of Kirby Super Star Ultra though.
Still, from what is playable (quite a lot, actually) now people already snatch tons of sprites. And I think series-dedicated sites do a better job than general sprite sites, unless you mean to look for sprites for very obscure games like Sutte Hakkun. As far as I know, YL is one of the very few Sutte Hakkun sprite ripper on this planet, and that was years ago. =P
In my tries, Luigi's Mansion gets messed up once you enter the file select screen. And trying to view the special Pikmin video will give a green screen - video playablack is barely available for Melee, but at least you get to see some animated images.
|
|
|
|
Post by Manspeed on Mar 11, 2009 14:09:02 GMT -5
A completely broken intro and no transparency or background effects is "fairly well"? |
|
