Sonic and Sega Retro Message Board: GerbilSoft - Viewing Profile - Sonic and Sega Retro Message Board

I'm going to make a trip to Micro Center sometime in the next month in order to build a new PC for my sister. I need some suggestions for parts to get.

Basic specifications:

• Intel Core i5-4xxx (Haswell)
  
• 2x 4GB DDR3 SDRAM
  
• 120 / 128 GB SSD (boot drive)
  
• 1 TB HDD (5400 or 7200 rpm; not sure)
  
• DVD±RW
  
• Maybe a BD-ROM or BD-RE, dunno.
  
• 802.11n+ WLAN (either onboard or as a PCIe card)

Motherboard requirements:

• At least 4x RAM slots.
  
• At least 1x PCIe x16 and 2x PCIe x1 slots.
  
• At least 4x SATA ports.
  
• Must have VGA and DisplayPort; HDMI is optional.
  
• Gigabit Ethernet
  
• M.2 slot would be nice for the SSD. Otherwise, I'll get a 2.5" SSD instead.

Broadwell might work too, but I'm not sure of cost/availability.

Regarding the GPU: We're probably going to go with the on-chip GPU at first, with a video card upgrade later if necessary.

Any recommendations for other parts and/or adjustments for this list?

So there's a guy going around on IRC claiming that Chillius03 on YouTube has a VHS containing "prototype" footage of Sonic 1.

Green Hill Zone: https://www.youtube....h?v=KUKrBN6t83s
Labyrinth Zone: https://www.youtube....h?v=QisPpBq2boQ

Needless to say, these are both fake. I called him out, but he deleted my comments because he's a typical poser. I'm posting this here so no one else gets duped by this guy into paying for this "tape". (He hasn't asked for money yet, but one of his videos claims that it's worth over $10,000, so I wouldn't put it past him to try it.)

EDIT: Surprise - The GHZ video was taken down. I suspect LZ will be next. I already saved them using youtube-dl, so I'll post them again on my webspace later today.

EDIT 2: Reuploads by Egor305

Green Hill Zone: https://youtu.be/aHqt2P8GYzM
Labyrinth Zone: https://youtu.be/Vpaxnx12_tc

I'm getting close to a technical preview release of Gens/GS II, and one of the things I'd like to identify are ROMs that have issues with Gens and Gens/GS r7 to see if Gens/GS II fixes them, and if not, to indicate what needs to be improved.

I created a page on Sega Retro: Gens/GS II Compatibility List - this list details a few games and their compatibility on Gens and Gens/GS r7. There's also a column for Gens/GS II, but since there's no precompiled build yet, I'm pretty much the only one who can test it. Anyways, I need help testing various games on these emulators, so if anyone would like to contribute, please test various games and add them to the table.

Download links:

• Gens 2.14 (Windows) (Requires 16-bit color)
  
• Gens/GS r7 (Windows, Packaging Update 1)

For a while now, I've been stuck on AV sync issues with Gens/GS II. The current Qt UI is a terrible offender, mostly caused by PortAudio being awful: once it starts stuttering, it gets progressively worse.

Yesterday, I wrote a simple SDL frontend to see if I could clear it up. The massive stuttering went away, but in its place is audio lag. The audio's at least 4 frames behind video. Reducing the audio buffer causes dropped frames. Also, I need a good way to implement frameskipping.

I'm looking to see if anyone here has written emulator frontends before and can help me out with the sync issues. The simple SDL frontend is available in my git repository, and it requires cmake, SDL 1.2, and a recent gcc or MSVC (2010+). If using MSVC, make sure you specify: -G "NMake Makefiles" when running CMake, since I'm not sure if the Visual Studio project generator will work correctly.

Git URLs:
- git URL for cloning: git://dusers.drexel.edu/srv/git/~korth/gens-gs-ii.git
- gitweb for gens-sdl-basic-frontend branch: http://www.dusers.dr...-basic-frontend

EDIT: The SDL frontend doesn't have controller input functionality right now, but that isn't needed to tell that there's audio lag. Sonic 1's intro demo should be enough.

EDIT 2: Added a mapping for one controller. 6BTN on port 1:

Key mapping:
- MD:  | Up | Down | Left | Right | Start | A | B | C |  Mode  | X | Y | Z |
- Kbd: | Up | Down | Left | Right | Enter | A | S | D | RShift | Q | W | E |

I will likely hold the drawing for the Sonic Boom giveaway tonight in #retro at around 9 PM EST (2 AM UTC), but for now, here's the results. (No graphs this time due to laziness. )

Total number of entries received: 60

Question #1: When Sonic Adventure 2 was ported to GameCube, one of the options on the main menu was removed. Which option was this?

The Dreamcast was one of the first consoles to include a way to connect to the Internet (via a dialup modem). Sega pushed this extensively, so many games included a way to get to the game's website. In SA2 (and SA1), this was through the "Home Page" option on the Main Menu. Since Nintendo didn't seem to know the Internet existed in 2001, this option was removed in the GameCube port.

Answers received:

• Home Page: 50
  
• Sound Test: 5
  
• Download Content: 1
  
• Language: 1
  
• Online Functionality: 1
  
• Online Play: 1
  
• VMU Select: 1

I accepted a few variants for "Home Page", including "SA2 website" and "Internet". "Download Content" was rejected because the Steam version has "Downloadable Content", which is probably what that was referring to. "VMU Select" isn't an option on the main menu; that's "File Select" in Options, which was reworked to use GameCube memory cards. "Online Functionality" and "Online Play" were also rejected because those both refer to online play, which no version of SA2 has (unless you count SonicFreak94's Sonic Adventure 2: Battle Network mod).

Question #2: What two Game Gear Sonic games were not released on cartridge outside of Japan?

Pretty much everyone got this one right. Sonic Drift and Tails' Skypatrol were not released on cartridge outside of Japan. They later made it out of the country in various re-releases, including Sonic Adventure DX: Director's Cut.

Answers received:

• Sonic Drift, Tails' Skypatrol: 59
  
• Sonic Drift, Sonic Drift 2: 1

Question #3: What assembly language do you need to know to hack the Sonic Advance series?

This one seemed to trip up a lot of people. The key thing is knowing that the assembly language used depends entirely on the CPU used on the given platform. The Game Boy Advance uses an ARM7TDMI CPU; hence, anything written for it is either assembled in or compiled to ARM assembly language. (I accepted ARM7 and ARM7TDMI, since those are merely more specific versions.)

Answers received:

• ARM(7TDMI): 39
  
• 68000: 3
  
• 6502: 2
  
• 65c816: 2
  
• ASM: 2
  
• C/C++: 2
  
• Z80: 2
  
• (no response): 2
  
• 08353CCC: 1
  
• GBA ASM: 1
  
• Hexadecimal: 1
  
• NO$GBA Debugger: 1
  
• Visual C++: 1
  
• .NET Framework: 1

I did not accept "GBA ASM" or "ASM" because those don't describe a specific assembly language. Similarly, C and C++ are both high-level languages, not assembly languages, and Visual C++ is an IDE. I was rather surprised by the amount of incorrect CPUs listed, since if you look up GBA on any reference site, you'll find that its primary CPU is a 16.78 MHz ARM7TDMI CPU, not a Z80 or 68000 or 65c816. (There is a GBZ80 CPU onboard for backwards-compatibility, but it's not usable in GBA mode.)

Question #4: Shadow the Hedgehog (the game) has branching story paths. What is the total number of possible paths throughout the storyline?

This question refers to the total number of possible *branches*, I.e. paths; not endings. If you check the List of Shadow the Hedgehog Library sequences, you'll see that there's a total of 326 possible paths throughout the storyline, with each path having 6 stages out of 22 total and one out of 10 possible endings, not including "The Last Way".

Answers received:

• 326: 53
  
• "Over 300": 2
  
• 51: 1
  
• "~45": 1
  
• 10: 2
  
• 3: 1

Since the answer was an exact number, I couldn't accept approximations, e.g. "Over 300".

Final Results:

• 4 Correct Answers: 35
  
• 3 Correct Answers: 14
  
• 2 Correct Answers: 7
  
• 1 Correct Answer: 4
  
• Epic Failure:

I will post a list of who got all four correct later today (semi-anonymized), along with ID numbers for the random drawing.



25-point Bonus Question: What C++ library used in recent Sonic games has the same name as one of Sonic's signature moves?

This question doesn't count for anything other than bragging rights. The answer is boost, a fairly popular C++ library used in lots of things, including Sonic Colors.

Only 21 out of the 60 entries included a submission for the bonus question.

Answers received:

• boost: 12
  
• Spindash: 7
  
• Peel Out: 1
  
• DASH: 1