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MiSTer: the thread of cycle accuracy
- Thread starter Phantoon
- Start date
The first CPS2 beta just dropped for backers of Jotego's Patreon! The only officially supported game right now is Super Puzzle Fighter II, which isn't a title I'm super interested in, but given how quickly he works I expect we'll see a bunch more by this time next week. Pretty exciting! Aside from the PSX, I think CPS2 is the most exciting core left that can reasonably be made for the DE-10.
There are a bunch of arcade boards that can definitely be done. We still don't have Turtles or X-Men or Simpsons from Konami, the Taito F3 has a buttload of great games (Darius Gaiden, Elevator Action Returns, Puzzle Bobble 2-4, a handful of Toaplan shooters, etc), and there are several Sega boards that predate the Titan (Saturn-based arcade hardware) that are almost certainly feasible.
Sarge
hardcore retro gamin'
Yeah, most arcade boards up to a certain point are running on 68000-series CPUs, including a ton of the ones @ShakeWell mentioned. Given that CPS2 has been quite doable, many of those others should work out really well.
I didn’t say there was nothing left for the DE-10, just that PSX and CPS2 are by far the things that interest me the most. I’m still hopeful that we’ll eventually get cores for all the weird CD-based systems that predated the PSX and N64. Could you imagine having your very own CDi? The mind boggles.
Phantoon
I cuss you bad
I'd be fascinated to have a Jaguar and a 3DO. The 3DO was the unattainable future when I was a kid, which went from bleeding edge to a footnote in a frighteningly short period. Sega (maybe rightly) gets flak for the Saturn's release, but things were moving really fast back then. I'd live to see what a 3DO future entailed.
It's probably the only generation where the transition wasn't an obvious "the same as last time, but more so". You had 3D with the successful systems. Actual 3D with the Virtual Boy. 2D like you'd never seen with the Saturn. FMV with the PC-FX. A whole different console model with the 3DO. Console upgrades taken to their limit with the 32X. I'd love these failures to get cores
It's probably the only generation where the transition wasn't an obvious "the same as last time, but more so". You had 3D with the successful systems. Actual 3D with the Virtual Boy. 2D like you'd never seen with the Saturn. FMV with the PC-FX. A whole different console model with the 3DO. Console upgrades taken to their limit with the 32X. I'd love these failures to get cores
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I've heard that it would be impossible because of bandwidth issues, but I wonder if they could pull off a dumbed-down version that supported a partial list of games? The designers who make these cores are very talented, maybe they'll find a way.
If there's a SCD core already you're probably going to get a 32X one eventually, but I would imagine properly simulating the nutso parallel CPU setups the Genesis expansion units and Saturn use would be pretty difficult with a single FPGA array.
Is that something you actually heard, or are you joking? BECAUSE I'LL DO IT
I bought a USB board for the mister and it seems to be working just fine, but I’m noticing my fan seems to be fluctuating in speed. I’m using the same USB devices as before, so I assume the board itself it consuming some power and reducing what’s available to the fan? I’m not bothered by changing speeds, but I do worry that it indicates voltage drops that are presumably happening to the whole de10 nano board. Am I at risk of causing damage like this? I’m still using the power supply that came with the board, I guess getting a 3 or 4A supply might fix this?
John
(he/him)
I just saw that Jotego was tweeting about the DAC used in Mortal Kombat having great documentation. I know last year he said it was a 2021 possibility, so this is a great tease. I don't know if the MiSTer could handle the sequels, but even having the first one with accuracy would be exciting.
You know, with the mention of DACs, I wonder how accurate the various cores are at properly implementing the occasional variant DAC in Genesis/SNES games? Sword of Vermillion is the one example I know off the top of my head where the composer completely rewrote the Genesis' stock DAC to get the music he wanted out of the chip.
John
(he/him)
I haven't noticed an issue with mine, but I don't typically have a ton of stuff plugged into the USB board (usually just network and bluetooth adapters). I've got a Y-splitter and the 2A power supply that the DE10 came with. I was thinking of plugging it into my kill-a-watt meter, but I don't think its 0.4A max input would show much.
Sarge
hardcore retro gamin'
I haven't gotten the USB board yet, but yeah, if you're not running much off of it, the default supply is probably okay. I'm only using a cheap passive hub with just a controller and sometimes a wireless keyboard. But I'm still tempted to get one just to make things less messy (and a case, too).
Phantoon
I cuss you bad
Just to clarify things, a DAC is a digital / analogue convertor, it's a bit of circuitry which MiSTer will simulate. It can be used for numerous things, but digital music is one of them. Outside of FPGAs simulating them you can't rewrite them as they're physical silicon.
What the Sword of Vermilion composer rewrote was the sound drivers. SEGA made sound drivers to make it easier to program music. However, they weren't always good. The Genesis' infamous "robot farts" reputation was due to music composed on the rubbish GEMS driver. If you were talented enough you could write your own drivers and make different sounds. Yuzo Koshiro wrote his own drivers, for example.
However, the driver is just a tool to make the soundwaves. Here's where somebody who knows what they're talking about may have to correct me, but the output code will be played the same by the hardware no matter what it's originated from. It's like word processing software. It can differ wildly but when it's printed out for somebody to read it no longer really matters where it came from.
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John
(he/him)
I definitely don't know what I'm talking about, but I do know the Genesis had several revisions that changed the sound profile. In a perfect world someone could write cores that could pick which sound circuitry is being simulated.
GUIDE: Telling apart good Genesis 1s and Genesis 2s from bad ones.
Looking for a good Sega Genesis/MegaDrive or just want to know if you've got a good Genesis console? Here's a list of almost all Genesis models and their variants. As always, any extra information and information on hardware missing from the list is welcome. So, here's the rundown: NORTH...
www.sega-16.com
Phantoon
I cuss you bad
I tried looking into it to make sure that I was right and it's way more complicated than I'd thought. Most of the Japanese sound drivers never made it West (possibly because they ran on Japanese PCs), but the driver software also used the 6800 or the Z80 CPUs present in the Mega Drive to "drive" the YM2612 sound chip and the SN76496 PSG sound chip. The problem with Western sound drivers was that the sound chip wasn't very well documented so that the drivers written here couldn't access all of the tricks available with the chip. You can actually guess what driver was used by which game as they end up with sonic fingerprints.
@John the Genesis / Mega Drive did have 2 sound chips. If you go into the Audio / Video section of the MiSTer menu for the Genesis you can change the sound chip to the YM3438 if you want to experience aural disappointment!
@John the Genesis / Mega Drive did have 2 sound chips. If you go into the Audio / Video section of the MiSTer menu for the Genesis you can change the sound chip to the YM3438 if you want to experience aural disappointment!
Sarge
hardcore retro gamin'
Well, even GEMS itself wasn't bad, it's just that folks just used preset sample stuff and called it a day. Comix Zone used GEMS, and that soundtrack is great.
Anyway, that probably ties into what you're saying about the chips not being well documented, and GEMS basically giving composers an easy way out most of the time.
Anyway, that probably ties into what you're saying about the chips not being well documented, and GEMS basically giving composers an easy way out most of the time.
muteKi
Geno Cidecity
I mean I think 'it's tied partly to the computers they used at the time' so maybe it's not surprising that they used patches that sounded like they would be right at home on an OPL3 (and indeed depending on how the OPL3 is configured might actually be able to play them back quite accurately; there's a limited 4-op mode that the OPL3 has).