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What would you like to see in Gens/GS?

Discussion in 'Engineering & Reverse Engineering' started by GerbilSoft, Nov 9, 2009.

  1. GerbilSoft

    GerbilSoft

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    I have plenty of things planned for future releases of Gens/GS, but I'd like feedback as to what I should implement in future versions.

    Already planned:
    - BIN/CUE support. (Was going to use libcdio, but it's too much of a pain to deal with.)
    - C ports of Z80 and 68K emulation cores.
    - VDP debugger. (Linux/GTK+ only for r7.1; Win32 support later.)
    - MDP Audio handlers for MDP 1.1.

    Is there anything specific that anyone would like to see in an upcoming release?
     
  2. Spanner

    Spanner

    The Tool Member
    I wouldn't mind the ability to dump VGMs and AVIs, something which I'm having to use Kega for.
     
  3. HighFrictionZone

    HighFrictionZone

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    Re-recoding support? Or at least the ability to playback a previously recorded GMV file. Sometimes I'd like to watch a previously recorded TAS, like from TASvideos.org, but can't really do that on Linux without loading up a Windows VM or rebooting into windows. The ability to watch such movies from Linux would be nice.
     
  4. Josh

    Josh

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    The big things for me are ability to map turbo / quick save / quick load to controller buttons. That's pretty much all that's keeping me from using your emulator as my full-time Genesis player.
     
  5. Overlord

    Overlord

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    Dynamic Lock-On.


    IE I point the emulator at a ROM of a game to lock-on, and a copy of S&K too. The emulator Locks-On the 2 in real time, and then I can play the resulting No Way? bonus stage that would result from the header. I don't see this being a particularly difficult or time consuming addon, but to my knowledge no other MD emulator does it...
     
  6. Phos

    Phos

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    If you were to do that, how about cart swapping tricks? I know of one in particular where you start up with Altered Beast in the Genesis, and then replace it with Strider, and it gives you infinite lives, if you're lucky.
     
  7. GerbilSoft

    GerbilSoft

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    VGM and AVI dumping is on the TODO list, but it won't be for a while.

    Re-recording requires invasive modifications of the entire emulator, which usually doesn't end up well. GMV/GIZ playback, however, is planned for a future MDP plugin (once I add input remapping to MDP).

    Planned for a future version. (Hotkey remapping; will allow multiple keys to be assigned to the same action, including controller buttons.)

    I don't really know if lock-on is needed within the emulator, but this wouldn't necessarily be too hard. I'd have to update the ROM History format to store both ROMs and indicate a "Lock-On" flag, plus a few other things.

    Not too difficult, but this is only really needed for edge cases. A method you could use right now is loading an Altered Beast savestate in Strider.
     
  8. Seconded. Or rather, firsted in IRC. Got a pretty solid 'its not hard to do it yourself', but I seriously have been trying, even with copypasta Gerbil gave me, and I just for the life of me cannot do it :/ It would certainly benifit us less educated users.
     
  9. GerbilSoft

    GerbilSoft

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    On Windows:
    Code (Text):
    1. copy /b SANDK.bin + S3.bin S3K.bin
    On other platforms:
    Code (Text):
    1. cat SANDK.bin S3.bin >S3K.bin
    I suppose it could be a potentially useful feature for some people, but I don't know. Maybe if I add "ROM loading filters" to the MDP spec later on.
     
  10. Overlord

    Overlord

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    It'd be nice to have for the simple reason that you don't need to have an extra 2MB + ROM for every single game you want to lock on to S&K to play the bonus stage of. =P I'd not be opposed to it being a plugin, just as long as I can do it =P
     
  11. MarzSyndrome

    MarzSyndrome

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    A working F1 button. ;)
     
  12. HighFrictionZone

    HighFrictionZone

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    Fair enough. Since I already use gens re-recording for recording shit anyway, I don't really need two things - but being able to play back GMV files on my linux install would be a nice thing to have.
     
  13. Mercury

    Mercury

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    Seconded.

    Also, a useful frame advance that doesn't have any danger of dropping frames and doesn't invoke the pause effect.

    Sega 8-bit systems support, but I think you said you're planning on that already.

    Finally, rewind, like Nestopia. This is probably either impossible or super-difficult, but I thought I'd throw it out there.
     
  14. Revival

    Revival

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    I would like the 68k & z80 emulation cores to be split from the main project, and become libraries. Also, a PowerPC port would be wonderful (not necessarily a mac port; that involves hassle with objective C. Besides, it could easily be re-compiled on a Mac and there's a Mac port of GTK and X11).
     
  15. MainMemory

    MainMemory

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    Sonic 2 MP3 ADX Tool
     
  16. Vangar

    Vangar

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    Is there a possibility of adding a reverse-play button? Similar to the NES Emulator on DS where holding down a key will reverse the emulation, sands-of-time-style.
     
  17. Josh

    Josh

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    Regarding rewind... I know it's at least possible on Genesis emulators. The PSP emulator I use has it.
     
  18. sasuke

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    I don't know if you have this yet but maybe add a real time RAM editor like in the Master System emulator MEKA. I know its not a Genesis emulator but it is useful for Sonic hacking and I didn't get why it wasn't featured in Gens KMod.

    Also, I would like something that views the state of the PCM Chip on the Sega CD, too, so I could understand the way programs load the data.
     
  19. GerbilSoft

    GerbilSoft

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    mdZ80 and Starscream are already split out into separate directories, but they have many Gens-specific dependencies. mdZ80 is going to be rewritten in C for r7.1, and will have the Gens dependencies removed. Starscream will be replaced with C68k in r8. I don't think I'm going to separate them into separate DLLs though, since that would require managing the different library versions.

    PowerPC support will be added in r8, but it won't support 32X at first, since the SH2 code is written in x86 assembler. That'll be ported to C later. I do plan on adding a Mac OS X port, but that will be after I get it working on PowerPC Linux.

    I'm not sure if I'm ever going to add ADX support myself, since it's a proprietary format that isn't well documented. If I do write an S2MP3-like plugin, it'll be a generic plugin that can support any game through the use of data files containing game information, and it will support at least MP3 and OGG Vorbis. (Maybe WAV and/or FLAC, too.)

    Possibly sometime in the future. This requires the same sort of hacks that rerecording emulators have, so I'm not sure.

    I'm planning on adding debugging functionality via MDP plugins in future versions of Gens/GS. MDP v1.0 only supports the main MD, so I could implement RAM editing, but not PCM Chip state editing.
     
  20. Black Squirrel

    Black Squirrel

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    Feel free to shoot me down since I've not been paying a huge amount of attention of Gens/GS since about the second or third windows build, but did that overclocking feature ever get added? (there was talk about a lagless Sonic 2 2 player mode a few months back but I haven't heard much of it since).