Mednafen Saturn coming ?

[Lordmonkus]

Yeah it's so hard to say this early in what is causing some games to not work. Could just be the rip or just as easily just the emulation itself since it is just the first "experimental unstable" release. The fact that so much works so well already though is amazing. I did a redownload of Radient Silvergun and that fixed that game for me, Princess Crown is in the process of redownloading.

[Zombeaver]

Albert Odyssey, Assault Suit Leynos 2, Burning Rangers, Crime Wave, and The Legend of Oasis all weren't working for me but alternate rips are working just fine so I'm willing to bet the same will hold true of most if not all of the others that aren't working.

[Lordmonkus]

Something just posted over on /r/emulation. "it currently doesn't support pal games, but that'll get added in other releases" Well that explains some of the limitations for now, can't have everything in the initial release now can we.

[orac31]

lordmonkus said Something just posted over on /r/emulation. "it currently doesn't support pal games, but that'll get added in other releases" Well that explains some of the limitations for now, can't have everything in the initial release now can we.

Sorry to ask is there a command line to streach the screen? I am very impressed with this and only the first build?

[Lordmonkus]

Try the command switch: -ss.stretch full If you look in the documentation folder that comes with the Mednafen download there is a bunch of html files, look for the one called ss.html. That one has all the documentation and commands for the Saturn emulation. Yeah this is the first release to the public and I agree it's already in a phenomenal state.

[Lordmonkus]

I want to update the command line switches I am using after spending the night playing around with this awesome emulator. These switches will make some pretty decent tweaks.

-ss.scanlines 30 -ss.special nn2x -video.driver opengl -video.glvsync 0 -video.blit_timesync 0 -ss.input.port1 3dpad -cd.image_memcache 1

The first 2 switches are personal preference for looks so if you don't care about the scanlines and scaling then ignore them. The next 3 switches will reduce input lag according to the documentation. The ss.input.port1 3dpad sets the controller to use the analog controller. You will need to redo your controller settings if you had them done for a non analog controller before. This is better to use as the default since you will be binding your dpad and analog stick along with other buttons anyways and you can toggle between the 2 using the mode button which you will set in the binding process. The last switch, cd.image_memcache is a setting I found late and it made a nice little performance boost. It preloads the game into memory and got rid of the small micro stutters I noticed on occasion in some games.

Edited August 11, 2016 by lordmonkus
The forum transfer mangled my command switch settings.

[Zombeaver]

Ehh...I'm still getting a good amount of input lag on Hyper Duel and Metal Black. Those settings don't feel much different, if at all to me. I wasn't getting any microstutter in the first place but I went ahead and added in the cache switch as well.

orac31 said

lordmonkus said Something just posted over on /r/emulation. "it currently doesn't support pal games, but that'll get added in other releases" Well that explains some of the limitations for now, can't have everything in the initial release now can we.

Sorry to ask is there a command line to streach the screen? I am very impressed with this and only the first build?

-ss.stretch full will stretch it to full screen, ignoring aspect ratio. -ss.stretch aspect will stretch it to full screen, keeping the aspect ratio intact. This didn't actually stretch it completely to the top and bottom for me though, so instead I use -ss.stretch 0 -ss.xscalefs 5 -ss.yscalefs 5 which fully stretches it to the top and bottom of the screen (with proper aspect ratio).

One other thing of note from testing is that it appears that Mednafen's multi-disc m3u function works, sortof... the game launched normally via m3u file and I was able to "open the tray" via F8, switch to disc 2 via F6, and close the tray with F8. The game (Enemy Zero) continued, but the graphics seemed to be all screwed up afterwards... I'm not sure if that's something still being worked on or if it's a problem with my files. I'm inclined to think the former because when I just start the emulator with Disc 2 in the first place, it looks fine. Seems like the functionality is there, it just doesn't quite work just yet.

This is my updated testing list:

Spoiler

 

Working:

Albert Odyssey

Assault Suit Leynos 2

Blast Wind

Bulk Slash

Burning Rangers

Clockwork Knight 2

Corpse Killer: Graveyard Edition

Crime Wave

Dark Savior

Deep Fear (prototype North American version)

Digital Pinball: Last Gladiators

Digital Pinball: Necronomicon

Daytona USA - Championship Edition

Dragon Force

Enemy Zero

Fighters Megamix

Fighting Vipers

Final Fight Revenge

Funky Head Boxers

Funky Head Boxers Plus

Gale Racer

Ghen War

Golden Axe: The Duel

Guardian Heroes

Gungriffon

Gungriffon II

Herc's Adventures

Hyper Duel

Konami Antiques: MSX Collection

Last Bronx

The Legend of Oasis

Magic Knight Rayearth

Metal Black

Mobile Suit Gundam: The Blue Destiny

Mr. Bones

Night Striker S

Nights Into Dreams

Panzer Dragoon

Panzer Dragoon II: Zwei

Panzer Dragoon Saga

Radiant Silvergun

Robotica

Scorcher

Scud: The Disposable Assassin

Sengoku Blade

Shining Force 3: Scenario 1

Shining Force 3: Scenario 2

Shining Force 3: Scenario 3

Shining The Holy Ark

Shining Wisdom

Spiritual Assassin Taroumaru

Steam-Heart's

Tempest 2000

Three Dirty Dwarves

Thunder Force V

Won't Launch/no error message:

Elan Doree

Other issues:

Astal - has stuttering music; seems to play okay though

Virtua Fighter - launches and runs but once a match starts the characters and stage disappear about 1 second later

 

 

Edited August 11, 2016 by Zombeaver
Formatting

[Lordmonkus]

Here's a tip I just picked up on thanks to a person over on the reddit thread. Could save you some redownloading. Do a google search for "cdmage 1.2.1 B5", I downloaded the version from emuparadise. Run it and drag the cue sheet for the game that isn't working for you, let it do its thing for a second. Then select File > Save as and generate a new cue / bin. This new version of the game should work most of the time. It repaired all my non working games except for Cotton 2 and Cotton Boomerang. Boomerang will let me get to the Sega logo and freeze but Cotton 2 still doesn't load. Not sure if there is something else I can do yet. I know Panzer Dragoon Saga and Radiant Silvergun work, don't have any of the other games you listed as not working for you.

[orac31]

Zombeaver said One other thing of note from testing is that it appears that Mednafen's multi-disc m3u function works, sortof... the game launched normally via m3u file and I was able to "open the tray" via F8, switch to disc 2 via F6, and close the tray with F8. The game (Enemy Zero) continued, but the graphics seemed to be all screwed up afterwards... I'm not sure if that's something still being worked on or if it's a problem with my files. I'm inclined to think the former because when I just start the emulator with Disc 2 in the first place, it looks fine. Seems like the functionality is there, it just doesn't quite work just yet. This is my updated testing list. Working: Albert Odyssey Assault Suit Leynos 2 Blast Wind Bulk Slash Burning Rangers Corpse Killer: Graveyard Edition Crime Wave Dark Savior Digital Pinball: Necronomicon Daytona USA - Championship Edition Dragon Force Enemy Zero Fighters Megamix Final Fight Revenge Funky Head Boxers Funky Head Boxers Plus Gale Racer Ghen War Golden Axe: The Duel Guardian Heroes Gungriffon Herc's Adventures Hyper Duel Konami Antiques: MSX Collection Last Bronx The Legend of Oasis Metal Black Mobile Suit Gundam: The Blue Destiny Mr. Bones Night Striker S Nights Into Dreams Panzer Dragoon Panzer Dragoon II: Zwei Panzer Dragoon Saga Radiant Silvergun Robotica Scorcher Scud: The Disposable Assassin Shining Force 3: Scenario 1 Shining Force 3: Scenario 2 Shining Force 3: Scenario 3 Shining The Holy Ark Shining Wisdom Spiritual Assassin Taroumaru Steam-Heart's Three Dirty Dwarves Won't Launch/no error message (pretty sure all of these just need new rips): Elan Doree Gungriffon II Sengoku Blade Tempest 2000 Thunder Force V Crashing: Astal - launches and runs but after a bit audio hangs and the game locks up Clockwork Knight 2 - runtime error (PAL region; need a NA rip) Digital Pinball: Last Gladiators - runtime error (PAL region; need a NA rip) Virtua Fighter - launches and runs but once a match starts the characters and stage disappear about 1 second later

I am new to this can I ask do a make a text doc say Panzer Dragoon Saga.m3u put each disk name in the doc put the file in the same dir as the disk imgs then add the m3u file to launchbox?

[Zombeaver]

lordmonkus said Here's a tip I just picked up on thanks to a person over on the reddit thread. Could save you some redownloading. Do a google search for "cdmage 1.2.1 B5", I downloaded the version from emuparadise. Run it and drag the cue sheet for the game that isn't working for you, let it do its thing for a second. Then select File > Save as and generate a new cue / bin. This new version of the game should work most of the time. It repaired all my non working games except for Cotton 2 and Cotton Boomerang. Boomerang will let me get to the Sega logo and freeze but Cotton 2 still doesn't load. Not sure if there is something else I can do yet. I know Panzer Dragoon Saga and Radiant Silvergun work, don't have any of the other games you listed as not working for you.

Thanks for the tip, that actually worked on Gungriffon II, Tempest 2000, and Thunderforce V. It didn't on Elan Doree for some reason. Sengoku Blade is in kindof a weird format (.cue + .iso + a bunch of mp3s) so I'm probably just going to get a different rip. The Clockwork Knight 2 and Digital Pinball rips are PAL region so those'll need to be replaced anyway. I actually already got new versions of Panzer Dragoon Saga and Radiant Silvergun before I saw your post and those are working fine now.

orac31 said I am new to this can I ask do a make a text doc say Panzer Dragoon Saga.m3u put each disk name in the doc put the file in the same dir as the disk imgs then add the m3u file to launchbox?

Yep, that's it! You create a text file and in it you place your .cue file names - one per line. So for example: Then save the file and right-click on it and rename it to change the file extension from .txt to .m3u. Then you choose that file in Launchbox as your "rom". In Mednafen, you "open/close the disc tray" with F8 and change to the next disc with F6. So you'd hit F8 (open) -> F6 (switch to disc 2) -> F8 (close). I'll warn you though that, at least with the one game I tried (Enemy Zero), the graphics seemed to be screwed up after switching the discs. It's probably still being worked on. It works great in Mednafen PSX - that's how I handle all my multi-disc PSX games.

[Lordmonkus]

Glad it worked for you, though I still cannot get a working version of Cotton 2 or Cotton Boomerang. Using cdmage gets Boomerang to the Sega logo but freezes there. Not sure how much more effort I care to put into it since I have the Mame versions anyways. Cdmage worked on my copy of Clockwork Knight 2 which was an NA region.

[Zombeaver]

Yeah, that's what I'd do. Sengoku Blade has an arcade version (it's called Tengai) so I'm just going to scrap the Saturn one and go that route. Elan Doree has an arcade version too, but the MAME emulation of that game is completely screwed so I'll just have to keep looking for a replacement for that one I guess.

[Lordmonkus]

How to make a downloaded dump of game with mp3 (and possibly wav files) work in Mednafen. I downloaded a dump of a game and it came with a whole bunch of mp3 audio tracks along with the cue & iso. Naturally Mednafen did not like this setup but SSF did so I set out to see if I could fix this because I could not find a proper dump. The first thing I did was convert the mp3s into wav using the Foobar audio player (then deleted the mp3s). Second I mounted the cue sheet with Daemon Tools Lite. Third I opened ImgBurn and selected "Create Image From Disk" and pointed it at the mounted game. I told it to out put to a bin file and it created the cue + bin. This was now in a usable form for Mednafen. There may be a shorter easier way to do this but this is the way that worked for me :)

[orac31]

Thank you both I have only tried ps1 games with mu3 so far but they are working fine with retroarch and mednafen only one I had a problem with and that's gta London wont work in retroarch but will in mednafan stand alone. don't think retroarch like the long file names in the bin/cue but I just use mednafan for that game thanks again for explaining it

[Zombeaver]

lordmonkus said How to make a downloaded dump of game with mp3 (and possibly wav files) work in Mednafen. I downloaded a dump of a game and it came with a whole bunch of mp3 audio tracks along with the cue & iso. Naturally Mednafen did not like this setup but SSF did so I set out to see if I could fix this because I could not find a proper dump. The first thing I did was convert the mp3s into wav using the Foobar audio player (then deleted the mp3s). Second I mounted the cue sheet with Daemon Tools Lite. Third I opened ImgBurn and selected "Create Image From Disk" and pointed it at the mounted game. I told it to out put to a bin file and it created the cue + bin. This was now in a usable form for Mednafen. There may be a shorter easier way to do this but this is the way that worked for me :)

I actually tried that with Sengoku Blade as that's how my rip of it is setup - .cue + .iso + mp3s. It said "unable to mount" when I tried mounting the .cue, however. I didn't try converting them to .wavs first though so I'll try that. I used ImgBurn to convert all my MDF+MDS rips to BIN+CUE no problem - just mount the MDS and then "Create Image From Disk" to convert them. Last night I was testing out various forms of deinterlacing because there are a couple of 60 fps games like Last Bronx, Fighting Vipers, and Fighters Megamix that are pretty eye-bleed inducing without it. Honestly, I haven't been able to come up with something satisfactory yet. SSF's deinterlace seems to do a better job based on what I've tested so far. The switch is -video.deinterlacer and your options are "weave", "bob" and "bob_offset". I would avoid "bob" at all costs - in Mednafen's own documentation the description for it is "Good for causing a headache. All glory to Bob.". Weave is better than nothing, but the interlacing artifacts are still noticeable. Bob_offset seems to remove the artifacts but it makes the rest of the image rather jittery - the description is "Good for high-motion video, but is a bit flickery; reduces the subjective vertical resolution." More experimenting to be done... For equivalent PSX games like Tobal no. 1 I just use the CRT-Geom shader in Retroarch because it has deinterlacing built-in. Mednafen Saturn will be ported to Retroarch for sure so worst case scenario I'll just wait for that.

[Lordmonkus]

Yeah for sure there are some minor problems here and there but after some more extensive testing I am even more amazed at the quality of this emulator for being just the first "experimental" release. 37 games now in my Saturn collection and they all work minus the 2 Cotton games which I know is just my rips being bad and Astal which crashes after about a minute. Almost every game works nearly flawless or with very minor graphical glitches. From my experience this is already better than Yabause by a huge margin and (again from my personal experience) is better than SSF. Hopefully we get a first Retroarch core for it soon but for now I am extremely happy with this and it's only going to get better.

[DOS76]

Yeah boy I can't wait for the RA core.

[Zombeaver]

Yeah, I'm gonna go ahead and say it's better than SSF even in its current state. I've tested 58 games, and of those only 3 are unplayable, 2 of which I believe are just my rips. Virtual Fighter does outright crash after starting a match. A handful of games have some minor graphics problems like some flickering textures/text in Burning Rangers and flickering subtitles in the Panzer Dragoon intro. By and large though, it's working beautifully.

[VACRMH]

Spent a bunch of time getting SSF to work via LB and RLauncher, but I will totally abandon it once a Retroarch core of this is out. Can't wait!

[Lordmonkus]

Yeah I can hardly wait for a Retroarch core for this to come out but and SSF is still very good once you put in the time setting it up with mounting disk images but this emulator is now my daily driver for Saturn emulation. It really is that good already and with some scaling and scanline effects it makes the games look better than SSF. Retroarch shaders will be awesome though. I can certainly understand not wanting to make the switch after putting in the work with SSF though.