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Zhoul

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Posts posted by Zhoul

  1. Exactly bud, and that's going to be my excuse when the Fedaralies come knocking at my door. That jury is getting one HUGE Robin Hood card thrown at them. :)

     

    I've never been happy with the prospect of all of my roms or possibly other things being renamed and engulfed by the Umbrella Corporation known as BP Enterprises, but I also know there is nothing I can do to stop it once they're out there. I can't tell you how many countless sources I've "stolen" from to get this all put together (although I will try very hard to in the "Thanks" doc, that I have yet to make and put on the releases). I'm just hoping that the fact that I did all of this with my free time for ZERO dollars is enough to exonerate me if push ever comes to shove....

     

    Just letting it be known that I won't be sore about it as long as credit is given where it's due.

     

    BP's team and mine are truly making video game history here. I just want the history books to read right. :)

     

     

    Later,

    ~Rx

    I must confess that I haven't been keeping up with all the recent developments around here. Do the newer do-it-all versions of CoinOPS rename roms from the console folders or something? I'm not entirely sure I'm going to use CoinOPS as a front end for everything, but I like that Brit gave us that option. Either way I don't think I'd want it renaming stuff behind my back.

  2. Even when a game is playable with overscan, sometimes that game would look better if moved up or down a few pixels. I'm not sure if there's a single emulator from Xport that I didn't have to fine tune at least one game for. What happens when you have friends or family over and the game they're playing doesn't fit the screen properly? They need *you* to fix it for them. Great. Why not just set it one time and never think about it again?

     

     

    Yes, I understand your point, but in my opinion,

    my personal way of thinking, CoinOPS is fine

    the way it is now. 100 times better than it

    was in the past, and 10000 times better than

    any other MAME emu.

     

    My collection of arcade games is around 700 titles,

    and the overscan under 2X really does not bother

    me at all.

     

    An yes, I would like to be able to slide the screen anytime,

    for some game or another, but since this will not be possible,

    I did take it out from my mind for quite some time.

     

    Peace, man!

    Regards,

    Cospefogo.

    Ok. Well if all you're saying is that it's better than it was before, then sure, I agree with that. We couldn't even use point filtering at all before and now we finally can. It's been a long time coming.

     

    I'd also like to point out to Brit that I appreciate your attempt to solve the problem. This is meant as constructive criticism and not an attempt to attack you personally. I say this knowing how sensitive you can be about this stuff.

     

    I'm just trying to point out that it's not a complete solution to the problem. It's great for games that can fit nicely within the 2-3x multiple, but it's not useful at all for games that do not. Even games with a little over scan sometimes need a little adjustment. Wouldn't it be more useful if the user could center the screen properly on a per game basis rather than by some predetermined math formula?

     

    Games that don't fit means we have to disable the pixel perfect modes and re-enable the bilinear filtering and then back to pixel perfect mode and point filtering when finished. What if you have company over? They shouldn't have to know all of that stuff just to play some games properly. That's why I never understood why emulation ports have strayed so far from Xport's gui. He got it right years ago. Why re-invent the wheel?

     

    That said, if Brit could combine his Pixel Perfect system with some per-game settings he'd have the best screensizing system around, bar-none.

  3. For maximum customization, per game settings are necessary. The only question is whether or not Brit is willing to add this feature. Brit's on the cusp of becoming the *first* on the scene to reach Xport quality imo, so I can't see him ignoring this feature for too much longer. You guys just need to let him know.

     

     

    Well,

     

    I used to think exactly the same. I used to pester BP to have custom settings per game.

    I used to lose nights of sleep hacking CoinOPS in several different installations just to

    have the games running under pixel perfect settings.

     

    I am the most lunatic pixel perfect and correct aspect ratio lover on face of the earth,

    and I assure you, my friend. CoinOPS is right on the spot now. I tested arcade game

    by arcade game, title by title, and all the time when the overscan happens, it is fully

    acceptable. Nothing really critical is lost on the image cropping...

     

    ...OF COURSE, TALKING ABOUT ARCADE GAMES.

     

    I see you point when you mention that Dragon Quest games have been badly affected

    by the overscan, and I understand this is a really awful situation, since Dragon Quest

    series is one of my favorite of all time... but then I suggest - keep playing classic

    console games on the Xport emulators. I do that myself, I don't like to mix things

    much. For me CoinOPS will ever be a ARCADE EMULATOR... My mind can't deal

    with the idea of opening a MAME emu to play Yo Noid!

    =D

     

    Hope you get my point, its just how I feel about it.

    CoinOPS became a piece of art, a superb marvelous jewel.

    The best of all time!

     

    Cheers, brother!

    Let's play DQ3 translated to English on Xport's.

    Ha ha!

     

    Regards,

    Cospefogo.

    What about arcade games with oddball resolutions? Unlike console systems, arcade games don't follow a single standard. On an SDTV with 480i, there isn't much real estate to work with. If there's too much overscan at 2x -- you're screwed. What do you do when that happens? Play with a chunk of screen missing or play with the screen so small that you need a magnifying glass?

     

    Even when a game is playable with overscan, sometimes that game would look better if moved up or down a few pixels. I'm not sure if there's a single emulator from Xport that I didn't have to fine tune at least one game for. What happens when you have friends or family over and the game they're playing doesn't fit the screen properly? They need *you* to fix it for them. Great. Why not just set it one time and never think about it again?

  4. non global settings will never happen for me as my stuff is dymatic eg you can move it from sd to hd and do nothing at all it all corrects its self

     

    theres no way I want to setup 1000s of games and keep swapping between sd and hd ready tvs

    It makes more sense to set a game once and be done with it than to have to disable pixel perfect *every* time a game doesn't fit the screen properly. If you don't like per game settings yourself then why not add a global override? Then everyone can be happy. Personally, I find automated systems inferior just like the example I gave in my previous post.

  5. Hello,

     

    No, they are global. It works great. We are still ironing out all the details and whatnot. People are going to love this. :)

     

    Are these screen settings saved per game?

    Global settings are no match for per game settings. For example, let's say you have a game that has part of it's score cut off at the top with 2x overscan enabled. In Xport's emulators this issue happens often, but his GUI allows you to center the screen so you can see the full score.

     

    In the SNES Dragon Quest games, pixel perfect 2x will cutoff the top part of the the pop up menu. With Xport's per game settings, this problem is solved without affecting other games. In Zsnexbox, you only have global settings, so when you adjust the screen for Dragon Quest you just adjusted the screen for EVERY other game. So to play another game, you need to re-center the screen. To play Dragon Quest after that you need to repeat the process all over again.

     

    For maximum customization, per game settings are necessary. The only question is whether or not Brit is willing to add this feature. Brit's on the cusp of becoming the *first* on the scene to reach Xport quality imo, so I can't see him ignoring this feature for too much longer. You guys just need to let him know.

  6. Well....1st post here guys...so be gentle!

     

    Been a very, very long time lurker here....and I have to say....what a fantastic package - it's the ONLY thing I use my Xbox for, so a big THANKS!

     

    I have one or two questions that I hope someone might be able to help with regarding the visual options. I know sometime ago, somone asked about a scanline option, so I won't go there!..lol, but...

     

    I'm trying to get a balance between a sharp image as possible, whilst trying to stay faithful to how the original game looked. Enhancements aren't to my taste, and effect the frame rate. Antialaising gets the closet to the orginal look, but it's way tp blurry for my taste, so I thought I'd try the soften display and flicker filter, but these don't seem to have any effect...or is it just me? It's like, 50% antalising would be perfect...is that possible?

     

    Once again.....awesome work guys!

     

    K

    Currently, there's no way around the blurriness issue in CoinOPS unless you modify an xbe for each unique game resolution and then filter out the non-matching roms. It's either that or play your games with smudged graphics.

     

    On a positive note, Brit may look into the problem when driver development slows down a bit.

  7. I have some unfinished CoinOPS beta code that I will return to sometime but for the moment I grow tired after listening to many complaints about me. Ive decided its best I bow out to the new and more vocal blood and hope they move forward with new and inviative stuff and I will work in the background

    Since when does a feature request qualify as "complaining about you?" There was absolutely no ill intention in any of my posts.

     

    The suggestion I made was merely an attempt to discuss the possibility of removing some of the blurriness in CoinOPS. Some users maintain 10 or more hacked copies of the CoinOPS executable in order to get around CoinOPS' lack of a custom screen sizing option:

     

    http://fancyxbox.info/?doc=1&secao=coinops

     

    Good luck with your future projects, and if you do decide to continue CoinOPS development, hopefully you'll give this feature another look.

  8. Zhoul you know your right im wrong........ its good to see your on top of it submit a patch you obviously know what your talking about

    Actually, I'd appreciate a response to the points I made if you don't mind doing so.

  9. its easy to code, just mame has alot of stuff to take into consideration also the screensizing code is completely different than exports as there is many screensizes(lots and lots and lots of different ones) and there is only one in xport emus

    How does multiple screensizes make any difference? The games themselves don't actually run at their native resolutions. All games run at the same resolution that the emulator is set to run at: 480i, 720p, etc.

     

    If a game doesn't fit within the chosen Xbox resolution, then squishing the game to fit via bilinear filtering is always an option. If the emulator saves per game settings, then setting one game to use bilinear filtering should have no effect on other games. The key here is that the user has the choice to use point filtering to sharpen the games that do fit. This is far more preferable over the current method which looks like the games are being played behind a layer of Vaseline.

  10. no xy position as it to isnt as easy as one would think....... ill discuss the issues that you havent addressed as well with your saves and ill think about it later the issue is 720p and also NTSC and PAL have diff amounts of pixels

    Perhaps XPort could give you a hand with that if a request was made. Does anyone here have his email?

  11. How about finally adding per game settings so we don't have to run multiple versions of CoinOPS to do what a single copy should be doing?

     

    This would allow us to permanently set graphic filters for older games since they can be used together with no slow down issues. It would also allow us to set games up to run at their proper resolutions, which would allow the user to eliminate much of the unnecessary blurring by running the emulator with point filtering instead of blur-linear filtering.

     

    The below links go into the subject with greater detail:

     

    http://fancyxbox.info/?doc=1&secao=coinops

    http://www.1emulation.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=30058

     

    Props to Cospefogo for his workaround hack.

  12. Gentlemen,

     

    New tutorial created. For those interested in CoinOPS running with no BLUR and no filters,

    visit the URL below, everything is very well detailed there.

     

    http://fancyxbox.info/?doc=1&secao=coinops

     

    Rejoice!

    Cospefogo.

    Excellent work Cos and thanks for sharing your research!

     

    Still, this is a lot of trouble for something that should be an option within the emulator itself. Can you imagine if everyone had to create multiple versions for EVERY one of Xport's emulators?

     

    Ugh.

     

    Thankfully, we don't have to do that since resolution customization is a standard feature in all of Xport's emulators. No blur-o-vision or the need to run hex edited copies. Someday, hopefully, there will also be a version of MAME that does the same thing since it's THE emulator that needs resolution customization the most.

  13. filters will be looked into soon... a better way to handle them as some game should use them and other shouldnt as it slows them down to much

    Unless you're planning on testing every single game just for the ability to use a filter, there really isn't a better solution than Xport's method.

     

    For example:

     

    The user sets the global filter setting to use "Simple2x." The first time you open a game it remembers that you used "Simple2x," so that the next time you open it it uses it again. However, if you open a game that already has "Simple2x" disabled, that becomes the new global default. If you change that game's setting to "Super Eagle Engine," that becomes the game's new default and the new global default. Thus, the next time you run a game for the first time it'll default to "Super Eagle Engine" because that was the setting last used by the game you just played.

     

    In other words, once a game has been played it defaults to it's own saved settings when loaded in the future. Since the global filter remembers the setting for the last game played, you can easily set up your favorites just by opening the games without having to bother changing the filter.

     

    So...

     

    - You set Pac-Man to use "Simple2x." Close the game.

    - You run Mr. Do! for the first time.

    - Mr. Do! automatically defaults to "Simple2x" and saves that setting as it's own.

    - Then you run all your favorite old games so they default to that filter, too.

     

    Once saved, the user doesn't have to change it again. Problem solved.

  14. A few Simple2x observations...

     

    I noticed that when using Simple2x, it seems that some games after 1982 begin to slow down, with the slowdown becoming more widespread in 1987.

     

    In order to get Simple2x to work with older games, while keeping it off for newer ones, we could use 1982 as a cutoff point. The downside to this would be that many newer games that can run Simple2x at full speed would be missed since slowdown doesn't become significant until 1987+.

     

    Sure, it would work, but it would be a hokey solution because some games would benefit from it, while others would not.

     

    Another option would be to test every game and just apply Simple2x to all those that can use it, but wouldn't it be much easier and faster just to program the GUI to remember the Simple2x setting for each game individually? Or would this require a whole rewrite?

  15. All the things listed on the refined thread: - Cut down the games list for stuff that wont be played eg crazy kong, 5 diff versions of space invaders

    - Size it to fit on one DVD

    - Add a few more games

    - Go though every game and check it not only runs but runs correctly and is controlled correctly and fix it if not both in source and keymapping.

    - Get Commandline launching working properly and docummented.

    - Get SMB working fully and documented.

    - Look at New games to add.

    - Change cheats menu around a bit.

    - Look at the best way to handle a new autofire option

    - Look at the best way to handle 2 player game switching

    - Add a few more shortcut to the sort methods to make things easier to find

    - Look at 720P support

    - Fix speed in double dragon 1 and 2

    - Add sound to Midway games

     

    seem like great goals to me. My personal holy grail is getting Midway games to run @ full speed with sound. NBA Jam is probably my all time favorite arcade memory, but it ain't the same without the annoying announcer.

     

    Are you still needing people to work on the spreadsheet testing games? I've been keeping it steadily going, working backwards from Z on up.

    Good ideas here, but if I were to pick one, I'd say that autofire is the big daddy of the bunch.

  16. Can do that.... do you have a general rule I could use

     

    eg before 1982 ? or would it have to be an xml?

    Well Brit, unless we tested every rom to find out which games can handle Simple2x without slowdown, the best solution would be to save the setting for each game individually per the user's preference.

  17. Yes command line stuff will produce some great mods id say it opens up a new world...... I will help with filters and screensetting stuff as a small patch for people that ask its really not for mainstream...

     

     

    Added a new Setting

     

    Lock Sort By to

     

    Pressing the Back button

    Name

    Times Played

    Type

    Year or Release

     

    the back button icon changes to a lock icon if its not sorted by pressing the back button as you cant change the sort mode with the back button unless its set to do so. It is set to do so by default.

    A patch would be so cool. You're awesome, Brit. :rolleyes:

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