Tried it just now, the games I played ran at around 45fps and up, usually averaging in the mid 50's for the fps. I tried Puyo Puyo 2, Sonic 3 and Knuckles, RedHotSonic's Sonic 2 Time Attack Rom, and Gunstar Heroes (all of which booted fine and were certainly playable, but the music being jittery from the frame rate fluctuations certainly didn't set well with me entirely. The only rom that I tried that didn't boot was that Amy in Sonic 3 hack, but I didn't expect it to work. I think if I had a desktop i5 instead of my i3, or maybe an ivy bridge i3, it'd probably run at 60 FPS without needing to overclock.
This reply is overdue but to end a derail: it looks like the MESS "n64" set includes the PIF ROM as pifdata.bin. I've confirmed this is a R4300 boot ROM via disassembly of the ROM and the code seems to make sense (it jumps to the ROM entry point at the end, so...). It looks like cen64 does not yet actually draw anything on screen, though...
So as a follow up to my previous speed report, I recently rebuilt my computer (RIP CPU, GPU; died in a fire) and decided to see how these new-fangled parts handle Exodus. 3rd-Gen Core i7 3.40GHz, with TurboBoost OCing it to 3.80GHz... 75FPS with Sonic 1. Is there an FPS limiter in Exodus? Because I actually need one. It has gone from unplayably slow to unplayably fast. Meanwhile, Sonic 2 is never at a constant FPS. As high as 80FPS one moment, as low as 49FPS another. Special Stages seem to stabilize around 65-70FPS, normal stages go from 55-65FPS, or higher if there aren't many sprites on screen.
I wonder what a proper HFR version of Sonic would be like. I know 60's pretty smooth, but 120 is MUCH smoother, noticeably so to me.
What brand/model 120 Hz monitor are you using? There's plenty of "120 Hz" TVs that don't actually take 120 Hz signals and merely smear the image to make it "look" smoother.
My main display is an NEC MultiSync FE2111sb, and as a secondary display I use a ViewSonic G220fb. As far as I can tell, I really am getting 120hz, as I notice it looks slightly less flickery than 60hz, and actual motion in Quake and stuff is far smoother.
The motion is smoother cause the frame rate is probally higher. A game can a have frame rate potiential of 500 frames, but say a monitor can only refresh 60 times a second, getting a monitor that refreshes up to 120 times a second will make it appear smooth. Usually a refresh rate of 72 Hz is pretty good for most people and 60 Hz is pretty comfortable. As with the Genesis you can never get more than 60 frames a second out of it. Why? The TV standards don't allow anything higher (that's the limiting factor). So this hardware was built around NTSC standard and PAL standard. However this is a hack of the standard because with NTSC you could only get 30 frames, so by drawing only even lines you can double the rate. A cycle accurite Genesis emulator will only draw 60 frames, regardless of the computer, anything else would result in simply blurring or smearing the frames.
In order to be sure you have 120Hz first the video card needs to output at such refresh rate (NVIDIA Control Panel -> Change Resolution) .Then you need to make sure your display is not a frame-skipper, I.e. discarding frames even though it accepts the input frequency. Probably the easiest way to tell is by moving the mouse around in windows. Btw there is no console out there that can output higher than 60Hz, regardless of PAL/NTSC/Full HD/3D.
Thanks, but I wasn't asking for help or explanations, I'm 100% positive I have 120hz capable displays and video cards. I was just commenting on the game running too fast for Techokami, making an aside about a hypothetical HFR version of the classic Sonic games for a sped up Megadrive. I thought it was implicitly implied in my original post, but I suppose I didn't elaborate enough.
Those are CRTs, so yeah, you can definitely get 120 Hz at lower resolutions. I will note that CRT phosphors are usually optimized for 60 - 75 Hz, so higher refresh rates may have some minor smearing.
Any plans of releasing the source code under a free software license? I think it would be a service to the community to have a cycle accurate emulator be Free Software akin to bsnes/higan. This not simply about being able to play some games but about preserving the Mega Drive for future generations. Never mind, I re-read the thread and it seems is being planned. Also hope you were able to fix the kinks of mercurial. Maybe it could be time for give git a try?
I too prefer Mercurial. /> hg-git is available for interfacing Mercurial repositories with Github, and it gives you a much wider userbase than Bitbucket (as much as I want to respect Atlassian for trying, Github has eaten their lunch in a big way).
I don't know. I just like git better, maybe it personal opinion or its just that I have grown accustomed developing using git.
