What Is The Best Nes Emulator Around?

[SeaWolf]

I like NESten pretty well. Is there anything FCEUltra can do that NESten can't? Also, does it come in a window?

[Shibathedog]

Ill defend FCEUltra to the death for NES emulation, Its brilliant.

[SeaWolf]

Does it come in a window though?

 

Does it use the same save files as NESten?

 

What makes it better than NESten?

Edited September 7, 2005 by SeaWolf

[Shibathedog]

well first of all, any game that ive had trouble with on any other emulator has always worked fine on FCEUltra, Secondly, Even really screwed up homebrew games and weird hacks of games run smoothly on FCE Ultra. Not only that but its fully compatible with all my joystiqs and controll doodads. It also has excellent sound emulation and excellent speed. Also, Its never currupted a savestate on me. (I admit this really doesn't happen too much, ive only had it happen 2 or 3 times on another emu, forget which one, but still, it would suck quite a lot to lose a savestate on the last level)

 

As for the savestate compatibility, no idea, every savestate ive downloaded worked fine with it. But i rarely download them.

 

Does it come in a window? If im understanding you correctly, Yes.

[SeaWolf]

I'm not worried about dl'ing savestates, just transfering my own.

 

Thanks for the info though, I'll check it out.

[Dynamo]

Yes, after 1+ year my search has STILL been going on, though I've barely payed attention to NES throughout all this time. This weekend I decided to start up the search again and go with the oft mentioned emu here, FCE Ultra. Upon trying out my ROMS it played everything perfectly (even Konami's Langrange Point, whose sound Nestopia doesn't emulate. NNNester J does emulate it though.) though I think I saw a graphical error in one of the levels of Street Fighter 2010.

 

The big problem that I was having (and that I ALWAYS recall having with FCE Ultra, which is why I've given up on it many times before) is the sound. Now I think I have a very competent PC for 8/16-Bit emulation (Windows XP, 1.6Ghz Pentium 4, ATi Rage 128 Ultra 16 MB, Integrated Sound) even though my video and sound equipment sucks. Still enough to get the job done for older systems. The issue that I've been having is that most of the time the sound crackles & pops and then turns to ****, as if my PC couldn't handle the emu. I think it has to do with sound to buffer gauge, which I left at the default of 50 ms (I NEVER understood those gauges, which is one of the main reasons I dislike SNES9X). I dunno how to work that so I just left it alone (its between 15ms and 300ms IIRC). Anyone got any tips on how to keep the sound clean? Other than that I've had no other problems with the emulation. If all goes well then this might just be the keeper.

 

Has NES emulation as a whole stopped dead in its tracks? Has it really been conquered once and for all? Previously I thought that getting NES emulation down pat was a frickin' walk in the park. Until I found out that that pokey 8-Bit system is more complicated than it looks, with all the precision and accuracy needed to achieve faithful emulation (think Mike Tyson's Punch-Out). Same goes for SNES.

[Agozer]

I sound buffer is a part of memory where the sound samples are stored before they get to your speakers. Having a large buffer can cause sound delay, and too small of a buffer can cause noise in the sound.

[Weirdy]

yeah, I usualy set the sound buffer to about 7 and resample to 44.1khz

[Dynamo]

(Keep in mind I have 640 MB DDR SDRAM) So is the default of 50ms good enough (because the sound still cracks with that) Where should I set it at (also remember the scale goes from 15ms to 300ms)?

 

Aside from that my sound settings are:

 

-Force 8-Bit sound

-Highest Quality

-48000 khz

-Secondary sound buffer.........

-.........with global focus

[Agozer]

Why are you forcing 8-bit sound? Don't do that.

[Dynamo]

Well, I'm kinda lost with FCEUltra considering it doesn't come with an FAQ to my knowledge, and no homepage exists for it seeing it ceased progress over a year ago.

 

How can I set up FCE Ultra to be as accurate as possible to a real NES? Is it possible to achieve a decent-looking full-screen mode with this emulator (or one at all?).

 

Oh, and seeing as I don't want to create another thread for this, and seeing as I recall you Agozer being quite proficient with SNES emulators (any of you guys can help as well) I have a couple of SNES-related emulator questions:

 

1) Why does the sound in ZSNES sound like it "skips" a beat every few seconds? To me its like the sound/music doesn't flow as smoothly as on a real SNES or even SPC's. When I mean skip I mean a barely-noticeable skip (which I notice). With the specs I have I can definitely run ZSNES at full speed (I use no filters, but I do use Double Buffering/VSync. Speaking of, what's the difference between the aforementioned two? Should I enable both?) with the highest sound quality/filters. Is it just me or is that damn pokey SNES sound hardware still a ***** to emulate accurately (Earthworm Jim 2......................)

 

2)How can I set up ZSNES to mimic a real SNES as close as possible?

 

 

Hope I'm not asking too much. Thanks.

[Agozer]

I think you mean Triple Buffering.

 

Originally, the SNES uses two buffers for displaying graphics; the front buffer and the back buffer. The front buffer has the graphics that you see on your screen. Why not use just one buffer then, since that's all you see? Using just one buffer that needs to be updated, cleared and redrawn every frame (60 or 50 times per second) would produce uneven animation and visible, serious flicker.

 

So, we take the back buffer as and aid. Now the hardware draws one frame to the front buffer and simultaneously draws the next frame on the back buffer, then the buffers switch places and they get redrawn. Rinse, lather, repeat. Smoother animation ahoy!

 

Triple buffering works exactly the same, but adds a third buffer into the mix, which smoothes out frame changes even more. Old graphics cards can only do single- or double-buffer rendering, hence why triple buffering doesn't work on them.

 

VSync (Wait for Vertical Sync) synchonizes the game (more specifically, front/back buffer drawing) with your monitor's refresh rate. This reduces "tearing" of the screen when the scene moves from top to bottom or left to right. Without VSync, your monitor updates the screen faster than the buffers can draw to the screen as they still update 60 or 50 times perr second.

 

Also, if you do not set your monitor's refresh rate to match the game's (60hz), VSync does not work right, since buffers update the screen at an interval that's not divisible by 60. Like, if your monitor does 75 or 85Hz natively.

 

I use both options, as they often back up one another.

 

Yes, the SPC700 is a biatch to emulate correctly, but I'm not sure what you mean by 'skipping'. btw, you might be able to fix EWJ2 a little by dropping the percent of execution is zsnesw.cfg to 70.

 

2) * 256x224, 320x224 or 512x224 resolution (a 4:3 resolution will do, resolution makes little difference anyway)

* Choose a DR mode, since it keeps the aspect ratio and doesn't stretch the image to fit the screen like the S modes.

* 32000Hz stereo sound with Gaussian interpolation

* No video filters of any kind

Edited November 3, 2005 by Agozer

[Dynamo]

Thanks for the help with ZSNES. Though I prefer stretching the image to full screen with every emulator so it could naturally fill up the whole screen and so I can play from slightly far away of the monitor (I've already been ******* my eyes for too long now, so why not try to curb any further damage?)

 

Back to FCEUltra, its driving me up a frickin' wall! The sound REFUSES to cooperate with me no matter what sound-to-buffer ratio I put it at (50ms, 40ms, 30ms, 70ms, 190ms, 200ms........nothing!). Could it really be that this emulator

is stressing my PC? Now that I go over my FCEU config, I think setting the "blit-skip" (thats another term for frame skip right?) at 0 might be making the sound choke. But my specs should be enough to handle the emu with no frame skip, right? And especially when it comes to precision based games (Punch-Out) frame skipping SUCKS. I hate it, which is why I only use emus up to Playstation 1 on my PC (which it can handle). I mean, the sound chokes while I'm playing Super Mario Bros.! I really don't want to give up on this emu, seeing its as good as it gets with NES emulation and is the "standard" format used for speed run movies. Can anyone help me?

[Agozer]

I use stretching in ZSNES as well.

 

I just tested FCEUltra, with Super Mario Bros., Very High quality sound, no other bell or whistles, windowed = no problems whatsoever.

[Dynamo]

Well, how did you set up your FCEUltra? You're killing me here!