Sony PlayStation

[scenic ledge]

I thought it came with one of the latest core updates?

[manic citrus]

the end result of this was main now allows you to set a vertical filter that applies to just interlaced content

do that

[scenic ledge]

But where is "that"?

[manic citrus]

video processing menu

where all the other filters are

[scenic ledge]

"intl filter"?

[manic citrus]

yeah

[scenic ledge]

I disable "same as horz"?

And load a manual one?

Or is nothing to be done?

[manic citrus]

disable same as horz, load one you want

[scenic ledge]

And it doesn't matter which one?

[manic citrus]

for high motion stuff some sort of interpolation typically gets rid of combing artifacts

it's like any other filter, find one you like

[scenic ledge]

Any suggestion to start? What do you set?

Interpolation (Medium)?

[manic citrus]

yeah, medium or soft interpolation. some people may have better suggestions based on games etc

[scenic ledge]

Thank you!

[void scroll]

Interpolation medium or soft will result in visible combing artifacts. I use gs_sharpness 005 or 010 to get rid of that completely.

[manic citrus]

oh right, forgot. it also depends on the content too sometimes

my kingdom for enough resources to do even rudimentary motion detection

[hushed sentinel]

motion detection!

this ain't a Smart TV

[scenic ledge]

Thus gs_sharpness 005 as the intl filter?

Instead of "interpolation (medium)"?

[void scroll]

You can start at 005, and keep increasing till you see artifacts.

[scenic ledge]

I will try it with Tekken 3 in the next days. Too sleepy 🥱 now.

If Tekken 3 works well the rest of the interlaced games will have to comply

[lusty coral]

There's such a charm to the quality of the FMV's in Resident Evil 2.

[desert otter]

Did you know they are in color on the original Japanese version

At least the opening scene

[lusty coral]

Yeah, i think for the original one. I use some romhack which has all that stuff in. (Writing on the wall and sorts out that fart ost in that room)

[waxen elk]

There's still nupa to translate. It's a weird picross game made by Jupiter for PlayStation between console genrations

[sick shadow]

no one plays picross translations, trust me.

[broken timber]

The JP intro is uncensored, but still in B&W. It does however show a corpse instead of the newspaper clipping, Joseph being mauled by the dogs, and Chris smoking in the "cast" sequence. The original (non-director's cut version) has a different pieces of music playing during the cast section, one for each character

[serene nebula]

I DO I DO

I love Logic Puzzle Rainbow Town!

[sick shadow]

you can thank me by fixing Suikoden

[serene nebula]

Both you and I know I’m useless

[chilly kraken]

Has anyone looked at suikoden in duck station?

[sand minnow]

Another Non-Nintendo Picross by Jupiter? I didn't realize there were others besides Logiart Grimore (though that one is also on Switch).

[waxen elk]

Wishlisted

[forest trench]

Yes, it's the French and German Director’s Cut releases that have the intro in colour

[broken timber]

Oh, I had no idea! Interesting that parts of Europe got the uncensored intro. Is Kenneth's head falling to the floor in the first zombie encounter FMV also uncensored, or is it just the intro?

[forest trench]

According to the RE wiki:

The North American and European releases were marketed as featuring the original, uncensored footage as seen in the Japanese releases. However, the FMV sequences were unchanged from the previous western releases in some areas and were still censored. Capcom claimed the omission was the result of a localization mistake made by the developers and offered the uncensored intro as a free download from their website as appeasement. Despite this, Capcom made no attempt to "correct the mistake" when the DualShock version of the game was produced, which featured a new soundtrack in addition to the DualShock support. French and German PAL versions of the Director's Cut feature the uncensored FMVs, in colored versions.

[broken timber]

ah, well there we go

[forest trench]

The "True Director's Cut" patch adds the coloured intro and uncensored FMVs to the US release

[somber steppe]

True directors cut is my favorite way to play the game.

[scenic ledge]

gs_shaepness 005 did the trick. No combing artefacts on Tekken 3. It is now nearly as good as the 480p hack.

On an unrelated note since I played a bit of Raiden DX yesterday: @tropic stratus , would you mind rewording "Rotate" to "Flip Screen"

I guess that would conform more to other (arcade) cores that offer both. And "Rotate" is there the other on (90° tilt instead of 180°).

[desert otter]

If the image is being rotated then rotate is the correct word

Flip would imply it mirrors and looks backwards

[scenic ledge]

So you tell me all arcade cores are worded wrongly?

[desert otter]

Probably

If whoever makes those arcade cores doesn't speak English natively then it can explain why they use the word

[scenic ledge]

Thus 100% of arcade core writers are foreign and just Robert is a true American?

[desert otter]

Lol. I think Robert is German no?

🤔

[scenic ledge]

That's arguably strange

He is german

The core option is flipping the image. The rotation is done by the game itself

Did you play Raiden??

[desert otter]

Back in the day in arcades yeah

[scenic ledge]

That knowledge will not help you with the PSX game. Because that is a verizontal by default

[desert otter]

I'm not the biggest shmup fan. I like platformers, puzzles, and RPGs

Or the occasional pacman

And some (but not all) fighters

[scenic ledge]

You can put it into Arcade mode which means that the ship is flying from left to right.

Using "Rotate" makes it fly from the right edge to the left

(both is wrong, since you have to tilt your TV into vertical resolution, but that is "TATE", more or less a shmup thing)

But "rotate" just flips the image. What was left is right now and vice versa

[scenic ledge]

That explains why you didn't come in contact with "TATE" yet

[tropic stratus]

When I take a screenshot of the psx core and rotate it twice, I get the same image as the core produces.
The same is possible with H Flip + V Flip.
If at all, both are correct. The name could be "Rotate 180" instead.
"Double Flip" is probably even more confusing 🙃 (I will not reveal how many times this smiley was H flipped, it will be my secret forever!)

[foggy quiver]

The Japanese version has a proper tate mode.

[sick shadow]

I can move my memory card and load up the ISO, but I can only say if it does the same thing or not. I know a lot more about Saturn than PSX :/

[chilly kraken]

It would help to know if it does the same thing on duck station. It’s not original hardware, but it is another datapoint

[scenic ledge]

Yes, the TATE mode is called "Arcade" there, the modes are Normal1 , Normal2, Arcade and Side. I need screen flipping for because my monitor cam just be rotated clockwise.

[spring elk]

There is a distinct difference between 'rotate' and 'flip'.

'Rotate' simply changes the orientation of the original image, sideways or upside down (90°, 180°, 270°, etc.).

'Flip' makes everything opposite of how it was in the original image, horizontally and/or vertically.

Screen flipping was necessary in arcade cabinets where the CRT image was directed upwards and reflected by a mirror that was mounted at an angle of approximately 45°. Players viewed the screen via that mirror, so everything would have appeared exactly opposite of how it was intended if not for screen flipping (mirroring). So, 'flipping' is not misnamed in a lot of those older classic arcade cores... it's just largely unnecessary for a lot of people who don't use their MiSTer in a cabinet with a mirror.

[lost coyote]

I miss the pre-Cero era.

[sick shadow]

cant seem to win on duckstation either. what a scam

[timber flint]

Did you level up Pahn at all? In order to even have a shot at that fight he's got a be leveled up pretty well

[sick shadow]

hes 33 or 34

he starst off doing like 90 damage to Teo, by the end Im doing 3 or 4

all the youtube videos I watch show the fight lasting 4 or 5 rounds. Ive gotten to round 15 and still not won

[sinful bloom]

would it be worth it if I fired up my XStation with memcardpro for this?

[sick shadow]

if you want I tried the redump of 1.0 and 1.1 ISOs

the SAV is up there ^

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/198843-suikoden/72611946

"If I Attack, I only do 1 damage.
If he Defends and I Attack, I do 0 damage.
The only damage I can do is landing counters when he Desperate attacks (and I am Defending), and that is what this topic is about.

I have seen (my damage received) get reduced slightly as I pushed Pahn's level up, but my own damage output always patterns in the same way:
1st hit does approx 92 damage
2nd hit does approx 79 damage
3rd hit does approx 56 damage
Etc, etc, scaling downwards, until my counters are literally only doing 5, 4 & 3 damage."

difference is I have his weapons sharpened to 12

[sinful bloom]

okay, testing now

bear with me, I never played the game

[sick shadow]

load save, go to 4th floor, go to the room to the right, talk to person in red

[timber flint]

Yeah level wise he should be more than good enough to win. His gear is fine as well

I don't get it. I beat Suikoden with 108 stars on my MiSTer with zero issues.

[sinful bloom]

I got to the fight but my console froze

one moment.. in 15-20 minutes...

[sinful bloom]

'k, doing this again

defending from desperate attacks was 58-92 dmg

he killed me with 82 on third defend

ouch

[serene adder]

I'm sure this has been talked about before but is there any fix for this checker textures? only happens on FMVs

[mild forge]

What is it supposed to look like?

[serene adder]

you right. didnt realize it looked like this on real hardware too. or I guess its just barely noticeable on a crt

[serene nebula]

MiSTer wins again!!

[somber steppe]

I love my MiSTer. So much that it hurts sometimes.

[digital zinc]

Be sure to wear protection when loving your MiSTer!

[somber steppe]

I put the green silicon rubber on my mister for that.

[abstract drift]

double check you're on the latest version because we did have some minor issues with fmv until recently, but probably yeah thats just what fmv is like on psx

use a video filter and some scanlines on it, helps a lot

[tropic stratus]

There is a github issue for spyro 3 pal. Did anyone played this game? I only ran it for a while, so I cannot say if the issue is real or just the .sbi file missing (they loaded it manually instead of the sbi.zip so I have kind of low trust)

[rancid anchor]

I just took a look at the sav, and I'm just wondering: how did you get 999999 gold?

I'm not sure if you already mentioned whether you used cheats or modified the save using a tool at all

was also curious if this is some sort of obscure overflow bug, something in your save (and the one in that gamefaqs link) is affecting the calculations here

[rancid anchor]

also Pahn's stats seem super low for level 33, here's a shot of Pahn from my save at level 49, and yours at 33

[sick shadow]

maxing gold is super easy, no cheat involved

I just save at the "inn" then gamble with dice cup guy

[rancid anchor]

ah yeah, guess that would do it

cleo at 31 has 81 def, Malenko has 80

[sick shadow]

I didnt do anything special to level pahn beside use the mage girl (Cleo) with fire rune and torch the baddies in the rose mansion

kill for a bit, magic mirror back to the castle, rest/save, teleport back for 4 hours

The game has been an absolute cake walk other than this fight and the first dragon, no need to cheat

[rancid anchor]

yeah, it's not overly difficult

I'll see if I have a save closer to your level

my level 26 pahn could easily beat up your level 33 pahn 😐

maybe there's some sort of bug in the leveling progression

[sick shadow]

my dad can beat your dad?

[rancid anchor]

well, I didn't say that

[sick shadow]

:p

so never used pahn, got to this fight and got REKT

then just took the same and grinding him levels at the rose castle. guide said 30 was enough, still couldnt win so I took him to 33

got pissed off and was hoping it was a bug in MiSTER that could get fixed

is there as save editor or something I can use to just fix Pahn's stats?

[rancid anchor]

I'm not sure, it's likely though

[sick shadow]

honestly just a cheat to get past the teo fight would be enough, then Pahn can sit his ass back on the side lines where he belongs

[rancid anchor]

hah, that would work

there's a stat growth chart here: https://www.suikosource.com/games/gs1/guides/statgrowth.php

shows how much each character gets after a level up, could you try one more level up and see if the change matches this chart?

or maybe you have a backup save, could try levelling up from there and see if the stats change?

[sick shadow]

no back ups, didnt know there was an issue till now

found his stats in the memory card

3E is 62 (PWR) 2C is 44 (SKL) 31 is 49 (DEF)

[rancid anchor]

make sure to backup (your current save, before you change anything)

[sick shadow]

I have a back up saved right here on discord

[rancid anchor]

you could use that stat growth chart to generate some reasonable stats for the level he's on

if you care to keep it semi accurate

[sick shadow]

yeah , more math

Im using your 26 as a base

[sinful bloom]

by the way, for future reference

no, no, no, Elly's magic didn't get suddenly useless on MiSTer

Xenogears has this weird bug where Elly's magic stops working and the only way to resolve it is to look at her Gear stats

probably one of the most crackest bugs I've seen in a jrpg

[sick shadow]

hexing the values didnt do anything

[rancid anchor]

for the fight? or for changing the stats?

[sick shadow]

stats

I grindied to 34; power+3 , Skill +2 , Defense+2 , Speed +1 , Magic +1 , Luck + 2

[rancid anchor]

that looks correct

I could be wrong, but Pahn is gone from your army for a big part of the game right? and then comes back at a higher level?

[sick shadow]

first time ever playing it

maybe I should just DL this:

[rancid anchor]

that could work, if you just want to finish it

though you can import your save into Suikoden 2, and the main character's name is carried over in some way

[sick shadow]

after all this.... I dont see myself playing the rest

this was me seeing if I liked the game enough to work on Translating the Saturn version.

I do not.

[rancid anchor]

ah, that's too bad, though you're not the first person I've talked to who was turned off by the first game

second is so much better

I'd say less bugs, but it has it's fair share of them

[sick shadow]

does it have a bug where a character you never use gets under leveled so you cant win a fight, and if you don't win that fight you cant recruit everyone and get the best ending?

[rancid anchor]

haha... I'm unsure

though I do remember it has some pretty tricky missable recruits

so one last idea, what about loading your save in an emulator, modify the stats in memory, and then level up, then save?

in pcsx-redux, those stats are editable at 0x801b8344

[rancid anchor]

oh wait, just edit them, and then save your game? might persist them

I'll try it (worked)

[sick shadow]

can you edit my sav and post it here?

[rancid anchor]

sure, just gonna try the battle

I didn't win, but it was close!

[sick shadow]

I bet it was closer than when I tried

[sick shadow]

thanks, those stats look way better

beat him like a rented mule

[tulip moat]

So what, is this a bug with damage calculation then?

[sick shadow]

bug with stat progression

my level 33 Pahn had worse stats than a level 22 Pahn

[rancid anchor]

I'm really curious how this bug manifests, must be just super rare since the only other mention of it seems to be that gamefaqs thread from 9 years ago

[rancid anchor]

then again, that was someone doing a "no sharpen" run, so maybe it was something totally unrelated...

[sick shadow]

well I didnt sharpen his weapon till after a quite a few levels, he just cowered in the back row defending

[empty yacht]

just remember it is a game where specific characters can suddenly power level to 99 (or was that joining?)

[feral swift]

I can check on it next time I boot up my Mister.

[feral swift]

I couldn't replicate any of the issues, even after fully clearing the home world level, saving, resetting the Mister and re-loading the save.

I'm using the .sbi files provided by Update All.

[tropic stratus]

ok, so they probably have the wrong file, thank you for testing. Unfortunatly I cannot point them to the correct one, so they have to find themselves

[manic citrus]

@tropic stratus regarding this: https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/PSX_MiSTer/issues/315 is there any way for a game to not set the gpu interlaced mode, but still produce interlaced output? maybe by manually controlling sync timing?

because that's what it looks like is happening?

[serene nebula]

Ok, I've added text commands to give you a list of shortcuts to all the pinned posts in a channel. Type "#channel name pins" and you'll get it. I covered the most popular channels.

For Example: #1046940919607345272 pins

[hidden mist]

Sony PlayStation:

• Core Developer
• Download Core
• Important Info
• Reminder on Bugs

[chilly kraken]

Finally.

[tropic stratus]

Not sure where they got the 240i from. The output is 240p:

[manic citrus]

yeah, typo or not understanding exactly what I said

it shows as 240p, but the analog is detected as interlaced. I haven't put a scope on it to see if it really is or not though.

[chilly kraken]

Morph is reporting 240i

[manic citrus]

that's not a thing

[chilly kraken]

I know, but thats where it comes from

I wasn’t sure if the morph interpreting it as 240i was relevant so I included it just in case

[tropic stratus]

i would have to check with signaltap what the interlaced pin really does, but in any case, the game is producing 240p

[manic citrus]

even the tink 5x direct analog detects it as 525i

[chilly kraken]

Sorry i see the typo. Corrected it

[manic citrus]

I can try an ossc too, but I suspect it will show the same, but let me try anyways

ossc also 525i

[tropic stratus]

we should look at the pins of the core and compare against other 240p and 480i games. I can do that relativly easy in simulation as well, but not now, have to go to work soon

[abstract drift]

there are a couple of 240i psx games iirc

the other is an f1 game

[desert otter]

240i doesn't make any sense

There's not a single consumer CRT that I know of that will only draw 120 lines every refresh leaving double the gap space of 240p

Like... It's just not a thing

[chilly kraken]

It’s not a thing. Thats why we knew it was a bug somewhere

[abstract drift]

#psx-chat message

it is a thing, we found it before

there's a couple of n64 games that do it too

[chilly kraken]

Now I don’t know who to believe #1046940919607345272 message

[abstract drift]

its incredibly rare i think there's maybe like 6 games ever that do it, and 99% of the results you find searching for it are people basically just being wrong, but its a thing

[desert otter]

That's... So confusing to me how that even bothers to work like, you're telling the TV to only scan 120 lines then scan another 120 lines and do it in an interlaced fashion.

[abstract drift]

yeah it sounds like it would be below 15khz right?

[chilly kraken]

Now I want to go see what the tink says…

[abstract drift]

some magic somewhere

[chilly kraken]

Because that’s weeeeird

[desert otter]

Not necessarily, but it would require being able to tell the TV to still scan the photon emitter like it's going to draw something but then telling it not to pulse any light when it does it, which I guess works, but I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around how fat the gaps need to be between scan lines or just how much padding there needs to be on the top and bottom

[manic citrus]

it's not 240i, nothing that detects analog resolution detects anything but 525i

[desert otter]

But I guess technically it works because the GB cores output 240p but with padding

[abstract drift]

i guess its vertically scandoubled somewhere along the way?

[manic citrus]

even duckstation detects the title screen as 488

[desert otter]

Also it's a PS1 game. I don't see any reason for any dev to require their game to output an interlaced 240 resolution when the system can easily handle a progressive 224p just fine

[abstract drift]

it was for performance

its all racing games that do it

[desert otter]

Pretty sure need for speed is progressive bro

[abstract drift]

no i mean, all the games that do 240i are racers, not all racing games are 240i

[manic citrus]

also the morph just takes whatever the dv spd packet claims the resolution is and displays it

[desert otter]

I'm literally about to put this shit up on my CRT and get my face right up into the display to see if there's any interlacing going on. Might even try to capture it flickering with 240 FPS recording on my phone

[manic citrus]

so '240i' is basically the morph lying

or I guess more, trusting the mister, but only for half of the info that label represents

unless every analog scaler has flawed interlaced detection, the signal is interlaced

[desert otter]

Anyone care to tell me the name of the games we're referring to? Cuz I think I'm just going to do it

[manic citrus]

Geki-Oh on psx

[desert otter]

I might not physically do it tonight though but I'll download the games and get them transferred to my mister and then do it tomorrow. Tonight I am watching a new anime called The Super Cube

[manic citrus]

I'm not sure we need someone staring at an analog display to tell us if a game is interlaced. we have Tools[tm]

[desert otter]

Lol. At this point I need it for my own sanity check though about whether or not an interlaced 240 image is even a thing cuz I've never seen it before

[abstract drift]

its the F1 game just called Formula 1 (in the US):
#psx-chat message

thats the one we confirmed before

[desert otter]

I'm seeing a rev1 for it. I wonder what they changed. Probably fixed typos for something that's usually what happens with most PS1 game revisions

Or localization stuff

[chilly kraken]

I assume it's this?

[desert otter]

No. He said it's formula 1

[chilly kraken]

oh nevermind, yeah, I see it

I have both normal and rev 1

[desert otter]

Formula 1 is in fact 240p

What I'm seeing with geki on the other hand is super weird.
It's like it's constantly resolution switching from 240p to 480i every second where sometimes I see the scan line gaps and other times I don't.

[rare gyro]

so... how's everyone liking jingle cats?

[serene nebula]

I got the cats to sing Smoke on the Water for me, it was kind of amusing

Once the shock value of its wackiness dissipates, it’s pretty awful

[rare gyro]

That was my impression, but I gotta hear the rest of the songs 🤣

[fierce shale]

wat is Jingle Cats

this is madness

[serene nebula]

I think the idea of it is more entertaining than the game itself once you get into its brass tacks but I’m glad it was translated. It’s such a surreal idea lol.

[tropic stratus]

No, it's like a widescreen mode where you have 120 lines per image and large black borders above and below

but this F1 game "hi speed" mode is not what happens in gekioh

[rare gyro]

I still find it odd that it is interlaced

but it makes sense that there would be such a mode for a racing game

[desert otter]

ok I see what it is now. didn't know about the widescreen and hires modes.
at the end of the day though, I would say that it's only technically 240i because it's including the padding with it's output while on an internal level it's only needing to render a lower resolution image that gets contained within the padding so the whole output is still 480i from the looks of it with the game itself contained within a smaller resolution space of 240i with padding.

Also kind of dumb they call it high res mode, but it ends up in fact being rendered at a lower resolution with a smaller image on screen but interlaces it lolol.

like with your GB and GBA cores, how technically the output isn't 160p or whatever, but 160p with padding making it 240p

[ruby ermine]

Anybody else in here fans of pepsiman?

[serene nebula]

hell yes, I have a copy too

[ruby ermine]

https://tenor.com/view/pepsi-man-give-gif-18743920

[timber flint]

As an employee of Pepsi I fully endorse this game

Even though I'd rather drink coca cola 😂

[ruby ermine]

Hahhaa same. Coke Zero is the best! Lol

[timber flint]

Wanna know what the majority of power and gatorade are made of? lol

[ruby ermine]

https://tenor.com/view/the-waterboy-adam-sandler-robert-boucher-jr-high-quality-h2o-water-gif-4721433

[timber flint]

haha you wish it just that

90% of gatorade is made from "defective" soda products

[ruby ermine]

City tap water

[timber flint]

they filter it and pull out all the soda ingredients

[ruby ermine]

Wowwww

[timber flint]

i saw the process, it's wild

[ruby ermine]

https://tenor.com/view/stonks-up-stongs-meme-stocks-gif-15715298

That is wild....

[timber flint]

then add the gatorade additives and out the door it goes

[sinful bloom]

Pepsiman was a staple in our "arcades" and is still a fondly remembered meme of a game

the artst who drew various stuff and people in the backgrounds later produced Zero Escape and Ai games, and now recently co-created Hundred Line

that is a weird factoid I always keep fresh in my mind

[mortal oracle]

PepsiMan is amazing!

Also Pepsi > coke

[chilly kraken]

Some men just want to watch the world burn

[hushed sentinel]

water>cola

[sinful bloom]

is crystal pepsi just 7up?

[dense wharf]

god i wish i had pepsi man for ps1, great gaming

[serene nebula]

It’s actually fun lol

[dense wharf]

i know! i've played it!

physical copies are real expensive though as everyone craves pepsiman on ps1

there is such great demand for one of the games ever made

[empty yacht]

People like robby crave the meme stuff they once saw in their YouTubes

[dense wharf]

what are you talking about

do you not seek out the Good video games? like pepsiman?

[empty yacht]

The only pepsiman fir me exists in fighters megamix

[dense wharf]

thats a good pepsiman yeah

[tulip moat]

Back in my day, YouTube videos were just King Harkinian from the Zelda CD-i games saying "Dinner" in a crusty 120p, and we would piss and shit from laughter for nine hours straight

[dense wharf]

true

[sinful bloom]

I still remember being amazed that gameplay reveal for Fallout 3 was a widescreen 1080p video

[desert otter]

Back in my day YouTube videos were things like "Imma firing mah Lazer/doctor octogonapuss blaahhh" and Harry Potter puppet pals

[visual depot]

Spaghetti

https://youtu.be/b3WhxV-9mxw

This is still a gem

[sinful bloom]

fascinating peek into late PS1 development

https://www.unseen64.net/2023/09/23/titan-ae-psx-pc-cancelled/

[hushed sentinel]

looks pretty good

[timber flint]

A shame this never got finished. It looks really promising. Also a shame that movie was a commercial failure. I recall enjoying it a lot when I saw it

[lusty coral]

Monthly reminder that the PSX is the best console, and I'm so glad it has a core!

[dense wharf]

i'm more of a ps2 head but psx is the best console on the mister sure

[lusty coral]

Glorious

(npc from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets)

[hushed sentinel]

blimey

wot a smokin 'ot bird innit

[turbid oak]

What could cause one to all of a sudden start getting ED errors when trying to launch the core?

[keen fog]

Age?

[chilly kraken]

goddamnit

[tropic stratus]

"ED - CPU Data/Bus request timeout -> will also appear if the BIOS is not found or corrupt or no SDRAM module is installed"

If other cores work fine -> not sdram -> check boot.rom files

[turbid oak]

Thanks. Other cores are working fine. I’ll replace the bios files and give it a shot.

[turbid oak]

Odd. I ran the memory test for a while with no issues then tried launching the core one more time before replacing bios files. It’s now back to working correctly.

[still lichen]

Turn on vblank + hblank to have your video output similarly to a CRT.; also prevents issues with screen shake, sync loss, or flickering pixels on the screen’s edge.
dumb question: i assume this note is meant for HDMI output and not outputting to an actual CRT?

[chilly kraken]

Someone in the fpga discord reported the goofy issue again (hanging on the load screen) and I remember that we discovered that last year. I don’t think we ever filed it. Is it worth filing?

#1046940919607345272 message is the bug for those of you playing at home

[lusty coral]

I can give it a whirl later or something.

[chilly kraken]

it’s definitely broke

it’s just a matter if we should file it

[tropic stratus]

You can add a github issue with the workaround if you want

[marsh star]

Hey does the four player snac adapter not work with ps1 guncon?

I seem to remember something about that

it's the snax 64

[still palm]

if you have io board 6.1 there's a jumper that needs set near user port, and you have to plug the yellow plug into something either snax or your video chain.

[marsh star]

i figured it out. I was trying to play elemental gearbolt and that game is not compatible with guncon

[serene nebula]

Pretty sure it is. They even released a set including the game and a GunCon as a promotional gift for media and contest winners - https://game-rave.com/?p=1494

[marsh star]

I was talking to the fellow from mister addons and he said only justifier is compatible with that game through snac

I think it does work on an actual ps1 tho

[serene nebula]

Huh, weird

Yeah it works with a PS1, I have it hooked up to my PVM and played it with a GunCon

[still palm]

bad pic, but it does have the guncon logo

[serene nebula]

Yeah it definitely works on PS1 with a GunCon and on MiSTer through USB GunCon 3

[shut escarp]

Works on my machine

mistercade with retrocastle SNAC

the only justifier-only game is Area 51 (without a patch at least)

just tested on my SNAX as well, works fine

[still palm]

there's others but they have patches to work with GC, Area 51 is the only one without a patch.

is what he meant

[shut escarp]

yes, good clarification

it still makes me a little giddy how well guncon 1 works on mister lol

especially on the 'cade

[scenic rain]

I played through all of Elemental Gearbolt with PSX SNAC and GunCon, it definitely works

[marsh star]

how weird. I have tried three different guncons through the snax 64 and none have worked

could it just be that model?

[desert otter]

I think the thing people here are most likely blatantly glazing over when they say it works for them is that they probably aren't using a 4port adapter which you so clearly mentioned and could be the thing that makes the difference but nobody is specifying in words whether or not they are using a four-port adapter so the likelihood that they are is pretty minimal since the majority of people don't have that many people to play with as friends and so either have a single or two port adapter but not a four port.

[scenic rain]

I did say “PSX SNAC”

As in a SNAC adapter specifically and only for PSX

The kind with two PSX controller ports and two memory card ports (mine are unpopulated because I used a multi-tap for that but don’t need to with virtual card support when using SNAC in the core)

And an RCA female port for GunCon sync

[desert otter]

I personally only have N64 snac cuz it's the only first party controller I use. Don't have any guns yet but I've been thinking about GC2 cuz USB and I can then use it with other cores.

When I eventually get my SSone I'll have PSX ports that I intend to then use PS2 controllers with for the novelty, but also cuz it's the transparent blue version and I have two ocean blue PS2 controllers to go with it lol

[shut escarp]

for clarity, my SNAX adapter is the original 2p version and guncon works for elemental gearbolt with it

[sick pasture]

Has anyone tried the MadCatz Wrist Rumbler over SNAC? There's one available locally for $8 and I thought it would pair nicely with my NegCon

This thing

[still palm]

I think <@&1374161661333864478> is a wrist rumbler ???

[still palm]

Did you say if other GC games worked? without setting the jumper on io board(or if you have an io board before 6.1) the yellow plug won't work on snax. but you could plug it in somewhere else. And you're using a crt right?

The 2 port and 4 port snax should both function the same. does regular controllers work?

[serene nebula]

Hell yeah I do

[serene nebula]

Hell yeah it works GREAT

You can daisy chain them too

[dense wharf]

does the wrist rumbler work on MiSTer!?!

[serene nebula]

My only regret is not buying FORTY OF THEM to strap them to my body while I play Gran Turismo

[serene nebula]

Through SNAC

[dense wharf]

MiSTer FPGA: Now Wrist Rumbler Compatible!

[still palm]

thanks for confirming sir 🫡

I thought you tried all the wacky stuff

[dense wharf]

how much does a power glove go for these days

i might have to find out myself how the best way to play video games work on MiSTer

[sick pasture]

Now we're talking lol

I'll pick it up then, that's great. The NegCon was a lot of fun but something was missing without the rumble. It's a gimmick that's easy to take for granted

[still lichen]

Do those work with the memcardpro?

I do a multitap into snax64 but it doesn't work w/memcardpro cus it doesnt get enough power

[waxen elk]

Wear the wrist rumbler during the opening of Rayman 2 when you get your powers for the first time.

[manic dirge]

Is there a way to use the GameShark discs without the MiSTer rebooting the system when you swap to a game disc? I just wanna cheat in Resident Evil 2 for PSX.

[timber flint]

Why not use the built in cheats in the core?

[marsh star]

I haven’t tried different gc games yet. That’s next. Ps1 games work fine on it, as do racing wheels I’ve tried. I think that’s why I was surprised I was having such trouble with the gc, cuz everything else has just worked

And ya, it’s on a crt

[sand minnow]

I tried the guncon with SNAX 64 with Elemental Gearbolt and it worked. It also has the fix for Saturn and works with the Stunner/Virtua Gun

[waxen elk]

I just spent an embarrassing amount of time trying to get the crash bandicoot quality of life patch applied. Forgot that cue files need to be updated with the new bin file name

[manic dirge]

I dunno, nostalgia I guess. And I've never loaded up cheats any other way.

[timber flint]

I believe they're the same cheats, and it's super convenient too

[manic dirge]

Do I need to pull cheat files off a GitHub somewhere?

[timber flint]

Nope. They come down with update all. So if you've ever ran that you probably already have them

Then just load your game, once it loads, it matches the cheats on its database to the game you've got loaded.

It's so easy.

[manic dirge]

Does it matter what my filename is, or does it detect the game I'm running some other way?

[timber flint]

It detects the game base on the md5 or something like that upon loading automatically

Someone who is way smarter than me can answer that 😂 I just know it figures it out somehow

I also know every game should be in it's own folder. And multi disc games to in the same folder of that game. That's the only way you can play multi disc games and be able to switch discs.

[manic dirge]

Yeah, that part I did figure out.

[lilac scaffold]

the cheats match on either filename or titleID of the disc (loads the matching zip file in /cheats/PSX/)

[desert otter]

to use a game shark style cheat disc loader though, you just have to put both image files in the same folder right next to each other so you can then choose the option to open lid and swap disc in the OSD.

at least, that's how I think it works (you just treat it like you do multi disc games)

but the cheats file with the whole list of cheats in the OSD menu is definitely a simpler and more convenient method for sure.

if it's a cheat disc that works by manipulating the memory card saves, then you definitely have to put them in the same folder so that it's using the same virtual memory card

and always be sure when doing anything with a VMC that you open and close the OSD once to save the VMC to the SD card out of RAM

[waxen elk]

Ah cool explains why cheats for crash bandicoot ended up loading despite being a romhack

[chilly kraken]

Folks who have had static audio issues (or folks who remember reports of those issues): aside from the parasite eve intro, are there other games I need to test?

[chilly kraken]

sorry to do a bit of thread necromancy but do you recall what games were you were seeing this in?

[knotty quail]

Hey there, no worries! I didn’t test too many, but I remember some were the opening FMVs of FF9, FFtactics, and Ridge Racer 4.
I recall the audio issue being less pronounced but still soemtimes present when outside of FMVs

I switched to the mini-toslink - DAC output solution and have had no issues with that

[chilly kraken]

Thanks! I’ll add em to the list

[knotty quail]

Nice! If I can help with anything else just lmk, I can switch back to the analogue audio pretty easily

[chilly kraken]

NTSC versions of those?

[knotty quail]

yup!

[bright girder]

I’ll take the opportunity to plug my elemental gearbolt mod. “Un-worked”

Japanese difficulty, English story. Guncon compatible of course.

[marsh star]

Oh wow, where do I find it?

[wise yarrow]

I just had this problem with the latest updates so it is still an issue 😦

[bright girder]

Archive.org

Elemental gearbolt unworked

[sinful bloom]

@timber flint they made the keypads beeg

Crusader on consoles is kinda paired down visually and downgraded from SVGA 480p into 240p, making it look similar to Ultima VIII now

But it has okay gamepad controls and smooth panning camera

[timber flint]

Still cool it made it to consoles for console gamers to experience

Project Overkill on PS1 was similar in gameplay

[sinful bloom]

more info here

https://youtu.be/8o79KmttkWk?t=706

(timestamp)

[timber flint]

Great video

Shame the 3rd one never happened

[sinful bloom]

That psp prototype is slick and pretty much modernized the game in right ways

[marsh star]

Sick! I'll check it out. Thanks for bringing it to my attention

[chilly kraken]

Folks with 9.2 sound board issues, can you give this a try and see if it improves things? (trusty seed 10)

[spark ermine]

I'm not hearing any choppiness on the metal gear main menu with it

[night forge]

Agree with @spark ermine, this fixes the issue.

[chilly kraken]

check parasite eve and other bad ones

i didn't hear anything in there

but I want to be sure

[night forge]

I've tried MGS, Crash Bandicoot, FF7, and Parasite Eve. I'm getting no crackling/pops/distortion.

I'd be curious to know more about the fix

[chilly kraken]

It's not a fix, it's a workaround. I built the core using a different seed. Depending on how familiar you are with FPGA magicks that may make sense

Im basically just stealing Robert's valor

I have stolen valor from both Robert and SRG today - pretty good day

[spark ermine]

Compile master

[chilly kraken]

if you can dream it you can be it

[night forge]

Ah, I feared as much

[serene nebula]

Wow, who needs Robert when we have Jesus fish

[chilly kraken]

robert is going to kill me

[somber steppe]

DS core next pls.

And Gamecom for @lusty coral , but DS first.

[spring elk]

JesusFish told me in confidence that he's fallen down the gaping hole of N-Gage development... but I probably shouldn't have said that. Now he'll probably ream me a new one.

[somber steppe]

He'll eat your ass for sure.

[spring elk]

Open wide! 😏

[tropic stratus]

Build lottery is getting out of hand. Half of the PSX/n64 builds have scaler issues that came in early last year, probably in the framework, and have never been understood.

There must be some kind of timing check not working, because that also happens when all timings are pass in the PSX core

[chilly kraken]

Yeah, I’m not sure what to do from here. We could just pin that build and be done. Sorg doesn’t seem to have an appetite for looking into it on the framework side right now. The problem is that I don’t know what to check to see if the build is “good”. It met timing, “fixes” the audio issue, but I dunno if there are other things that should be tested

[rose ermine]

Are there records/messages of what has been broken in the past from particular seeds? Like the scaler issues that Robert has mentioned above. Maybe it's a matter of collecting those issues in a spreadsheet, testing those things, assuming it's good and then if other issues arise, add them to the list. That way you have a checklist for what to look out for that can to be related to the seed that has been used to compile any particular build?

PS I know I'm just creating work with these suggestions here, but I'm also happy to help in any way, just not exactly sure what would be helpful.

[chilly kraken]

oh i’m with you, I’m happy to do the testing, I too lack the historical knowledge. I also know robert likes rolling his own releases, and I wouldn’t want to step on toes

[tropic stratus]

It is only my experience that it started around March last year, because through the whole n64 development, i haven't seen an issue with the scaler, but every release since then I had trouble with.
The issue is that every 4th or 5th pixel(probably the scaling factor 320>1080) will have the wrong color. Sometimes only some bits, sometimes it's fully red, ...
Since then I also have seen it on PSX build, but I think not on GBA builds, so it might be more likely to happen if timing is on the edge.
However: all builds where it happened, quartus said the timing was pass, so i suspect some clock domain crossing or other wierd issue.

How to find out:

• build n64 core until you see the issue when using HDMI out
• if it happens -> go back to older version of the sys folder (copy from template core) where there have been any changes to the video part
• build again until you hit a version where no build ever shows this, this can easily be 10-20 builds

As you see it's super tedious and not deterministic, that's why I didn't try until now.
Also it's not even a fix, just points to the commit where the issue was introduced.

[manic citrus]

'early last year' is suspicioiusly around the time stuff was changed for the new i/o boards

that was around March 2024

[tropic stratus]

Not sure how that would influence HDMI, but I guess we will not know until we find out what it was.
I looked through the template commits a while ago to find something obvious, but didn't, so maybe it's really something like this

[manic citrus]

I guess the only thing that is directly hdmi related was your pll change, but that was very early in 2024

oh and hdmi blackout stuff in july

[tropic stratus]

the blackout as already in the psx core for much longer.
Hopefully it was not PLL related, but it's unlikely, was already in january and I made plenty of n64 testbuilds back then. Can only remember the issue to pop up when trying to build releases

[spring elk]

Is this possibly something that could be mitigated/resolved by moving to a far more recent version of Quartus Prime (20.1.1) rather than continuing to rely on a version from mid-2017 (17.0.2)?
Surely some fitter improvements/optimizations have been implemented over the last 8 years.

[tropic stratus]

Maybe, but likely you only get a whole bunch of new issues.
One example: I developed the first GBA core using quartus 18. When porting it back to Quartus 17, Sorgelig noticed some differences that needed to be fixed and it took me some days.
That was only 1 core and a version change by 1 major version...

[tiny tiger]

I got a copy of the Gex Trilogy on Steam recently, and it looks like the whole product is a pretty barebones PS1 emulator, complete with .CAR files that appear to be identical to the retail versions' BIN files. I just slapped said files onto my MiSTER and found that they play identically. the one trick that the Gex Trilogy adds to its PS1 emulator is that it wrests control of the right analog stick and converts it to digital taps of L1/R1 for turning the camera left and right, respectively

but due to how poorly the Gex Trilogy version handles right-stick translation, I'll stick with the PS1 original on MiSTER

anyway, I didn't see anyone mention it here so I figured I'd let folks know in case they too were curious

[spark ermine]

Jeez what a disappointment

I'd been holding on playing some gex until this released, guess wasn't worth waiting for

[mystic flare]

does it run on the Carbon Engine?

[serene nebula]

yes, lol

I don’t even know what it does, just some wrapper for open source emulators

[digital zinc]

Limited Run Games, really putting the Limited, Run! In their games

[waxen elk]

Shame, croc was so well done

[spark ermine]

This release is more lazy than thanksgiving at robby's house

[serene nebula]

I mean I could be wrong!

[chilly kraken]

me rn

https://tenor.com/bsVTR.gif

[waxen elk]

I haven't seen such confusion since that all-nighter at Richard Simmons' house.

[tulip moat]

Admittedly the one joke in Gex Enter The Gecko where Gex is in the junkyard level and comments "So this is New Jersey." got a laugh out of me.

[cosmic tulip]

Croc came out on the windows so its most likely based on that

[mortal oracle]

Lazy devs!

[spring elk]

At that point, 'dev' is used very loosely. 😉

[chilly kraken]

Remind me: did the new bob come to main? and it just needs to be implemented in cores?

[manic citrus]

it's in the framework, yeah

I'm not sure what got implemented where

[chilly kraken]

well safe to say nothing here because there hasn't been a core release since?

[manic citrus]

correct. I'm not sure it's even been integrated into the core yet. I should probably talk to Sorg about his original idea of making it a global thing

[void scroll]

If new bob just outright replaced old bob, there would be no need to modify cores am I right?

[manic citrus]

they still need to be modified

'old bob' wasn't part of the scaler, it was basically lying to the scaler about the interlaced state

so you have to stop doing that and instead send the deinterlace flag to the scaler

[deft sphinx]

Ah, are we possibly going to need another round of FW updates it? What cores would all benefit from it?

[manic citrus]

it's only for interlaced video, so not that many cores

and really only for fast motion+interlaced

and all cores can use the interlaced vertical filters now anyways

[tawny palm]

It's mostly for PS1, Saturn, and N64. Saturn probably benefits the most.

[manic citrus]

there's some computer cores that might too

although for a lot of them 'fast motion' is perhaps relative

[digital zinc]

There was a post here many many months ago about a transparency issue in Parasite Eve, specifically regarding the Pterodactyl enemy in the museums breath attacks. They were running a spanish patched USA version, and while I tried to recreate their issue, I was unable to from their savegame or savestate.

Well I started playing through the game myself, using an unmodded USA redump version of the game all the way through, on the latest stable with default options (no unsafe), and I'm now encountering the same (but different attack) issue. The blue breath impact does not have transparency and is just leaving large black boxes.

I've attached a save state if anyone wants to see if they can reproduce, or if this is some kind of other issue. You just have to walk down a little ways and a battle will trigger, if you don't get a pterodactyl, reload the save state and try again. Just run around at a distance until he uses the blue breath attack.

[chilly kraken]

hrm, what am I doing wrong? the save state just reboots the core

file names match...

aha, fun fact - if you rename the save state, you have to reload the core because it doesn't have the new name

yep, I see it too

[digital zinc]

Well that's goodbad, or is it badgood? Glad it seems to be reproducible this time

[chilly kraken]

Well, you should definitely file it

Depends on if Robert has an appetite to look at it

[digital zinc]

Did indeed just file an issue

[somber steppe]

I love parasite eve. This needs to be rectified immediately.

[vestal thicket]

Literally unplayable. Good find!

[somber steppe]

Yeah, the mitochondria is screaming out at this.

[chilly kraken]

that’s the power plant of the cell™

[somber steppe]

https://tenor.com/view/cell-smile-dragon-ball-perfect-cell-dragonball-gif-11176307556808179565

[tropic stratus]

not wanting to complain, because i most likely don't have time to work on this anyway right now, but why not make the savestate the very moment the effect appears?
The core pauses in OSD anyway, so it shouldn't be that hard?

[chilly kraken]

I’ll do that in the morning and add it to the ticket

[wild sinew]

The mitochondria ARE...

(No, I don't seriously think that matters.)

[digital zinc]

I can do it in the morning and edit the issue

[somber steppe]

Thanks to you I learned that the singular of mitochondria is mitochondrion. English is a second language so I'm always happy to learn. 🙏

[buoyant plinth]

Tbf the construction of that is a hybrid Ancient Greek/Latin nonsense, like most “English” science terms. Don’t extrapolate from it 😉

[chilly kraken]

English is my first language and I'm not sure I knew that

[serene nebula]

How bout you mitochondrion deez cores

[empty yacht]

Behave yourself

[serene nebula]

Fine….

[delicate spire]

i have an psx core on my Sd card named PSX_20250102 but cant find it online? i found this that is from PSX_20250101. anyone know what the 2 jan version are from?

[chilly kraken]

It doesn't come up in search so it likely was a test build someone published and then deleted when there was found to be an issue

[ivory verge]

#unstable-nightlies message

[delicate spire]

oh nice one, so its your upload but on the "official" nightlies?

[ivory verge]

Yes fpgazumspass made these changes to core and appeared in nightlies

[delicate spire]

cool cool, thanks 🙂

[chilly kraken]

In my heart, I knew it was a kuba core

[mortal oracle]

Kuba cores are very polished. Zero typos

[spring elk]

Aww... someone figured it out already. I love a good MiSTery.

I was too late.

[opal carbon]

Bummer that the Memory Card Pro 2 does not seem to work via the OEM multitap over SNAC. Tried a SNAX adapter, the Mister Multisystem PSX expansion cart and the Retrocastle SNAC board. The MCP2 works directly on the Retrocastle which is cool but it’s effectively a bare PCB dangling off my MiSTer so it’s my least favorite adapter to use. I want the MCP2 partially so I don’t have to open the menu to commit the save and partially for easy save portability / the cloud backup feature it has, although I could probably just do that bit on the MiSTer itself.

This is not a fault of the core I’m sure

[serene nebula]

I’m the pizza man!

https://youtu.be/MqasqGuJRVs

[opal carbon]

Have folks figured out the optimum set of CHD compression algos or is just using the defaults the move?

[lilac scaffold]

#1046940919607345272 message

you need a recent chdman, the zstd support was added last year sometime

[opal carbon]

cdlz,cdzl,cdfl are the defaults for createcd, you’re saying I should use: cdzs only? Even for the audio tracks?

So —c zstd vs —c cdlz,cdzl,cdfl ?

[manic citrus]

-c cdzs,cdfl -hs 9792 basically

[lilac scaffold]

defaults work, but that should let you use the higher speed CD options

[opal carbon]

Awesome! Thank you.

Hoping that converting my very large library to CHD will help with the issue I’m having where it takes MiSTer a long time to load my PSX ROM list at first. Like a minute or two for around 14k files on an external spinning disk.

[chilly kraken]

Split up your directories. File size likely isn’t the issue

[opal carbon]

Yeah I assume it’s file count but was hoping that reducing the file count by half would help

BIN/CUE vs CHD

[lilac scaffold]

And make sure each game is within its own folder, so that it gets its own virtual mem card

[opal carbon]

Ohhhh that’s a good tip, I didn’t realize each game needed its own folder. Will have to write a script.

[lilac scaffold]

https://github.com/Natrox/MiSTer_Utils_Natrox natrox has you covered 🙂

[opal carbon]

Ah perfect!

[lilac scaffold]

the virtual memory card is created based on the name of the folder the game is within, and the core doesnt reset when swapping discs if they're in the same folder

[opal carbon]

OHHHH that explains the behavior I’ve been seeing

[lilac scaffold]

so if they're all in /games/PSX they'll all use PSX.sav and that gets full

[opal carbon]

Wow, should have read the manual it seems

Will I have to enter the folder and then select the CHD or is the file browser smart enough to just launch the game when I select the folder with a single CHD in it?

[chilly kraken]

It should launch when you select the folder (at least it does with bin/cue)

[lilac scaffold]

if the folder only contains one CHD, it loads the game when you choose the folder

if theres more than one then it browses into it

[opal carbon]

Cool, that’s ideal. I avoided subfolders because I assumed that I’d need extra button presses to launch a game

[lilac scaffold]

you want all discs for a game in same folder, so they share the memcard

[opal carbon]

cool, yeah, that behavior makes sense. Wouldn’t want it to assume which disc I want in a multi-disc game

Now if I could get my MCP2 to work with my multitap this setup would be perfect

[serene nebula]

THATS WHAT THE MAGIC FORMULA WAS

[dusky ore]

I was actually just looking for this too

I started a "one game one image" project to reduce a Redump set down, and I want to include CHD generation as part of it

[serene nebula]

there’s a few games on Saturn you shouldn’t CHD

[dusky ore]

With the index thing right

[serene nebula]

Yeah

[dusky ore]

Already accounting for it

[serene nebula]

Although that didn’t stop me and I haven’t noticed any issues lol

[dusky ore]

This has been fun project, in the sense that I really appreciate what Redump is doing but do not share their opinions on naming here

[serene nebula]

what do you mean

[dusky ore]

I could've probably worked with DAT files but really didn't want to get that deep into this

[serene nebula]

What’s the point of DAT files? Genuine question I’m not being an ass lol

[dusky ore]

So I'm using the filename with some...work, to split out the region and a game's tags from the name of the game itself

[dusky ore]

Basically, you have the disc, and you have Redump's metadata. DAT files are a way to get access to the metadata for organization purposes basically

Lets say you have a title, a specific disc. That game had a re-release and like 5 pressings on the Saturn

The original, re-release, and the various pressings (e.g. 2M or whatever on the Saturn), are all different dumped discs

How do you organize these by title? You could go by filename, but where do you split that info at?

[serene nebula]

Oh ok, that makes a ton of sense, thank you

[dusky ore]

If I link a title to a DAT entry and, say, update the metadata, the filename should ideally change to also accomodate; DAT files can help with that too, provided the correct tools

Like renaming NiGHTS into Nights, thanks for that one redump/the source of my set

[mystic loom]

How come I’ve never heard anyone talk about the game Omega Boost on the PS1 before? I just tried it, and it feels like a game a whole console generation ahead of its time.

[empty yacht]

that's what 60fps does for a game

[mystic loom]

It’s not just the high framerate, though - the light flares, textures, and all the graphical details here make it almost look like a PS2 game.

And the controls are super polished & intuitive in a way that few games of this era are - kind of feels like if you mixed a 360 space shooter with something like Fantavision or Rez; it really feels awesome to play.

[empty yacht]

in that case....
just like for demo-1 t-rex, the black void helps

[abstract drift]

DF retro did a thing about it a while back, it is super impressive

[opal carbon]

If you get anywhere with this project and want to post the DAT files me and a bunch of other folks would be eternally grateful. I was starting to vibe code a tool that would help do this but ended up needing a ROMset for an event and ended up just going with hearto's set from 2024. EDIT: Oh if I had read more I would see that you skipped DAT files. Curious about your methods! It's such a deep problem.

[opal carbon]

Polyphony knows what they're doing for sure, I was just playing Omega Boost this weekend. I also started Vagrant Story which is in my opinion the best looking game on Playstation and I can't believe I hadn't tried to play it in earnest before.

[dusky ore]

So, annoyingly, I need one piece of "known" information from Redump, and that is a list of regions.

"Custom Web Browser (Version 3.0)" is an annoying game name since anything in parentheses is "a tag" to my logic unless otherwise noted. Basically, we have a regex check that separates out the first portion (the name), the region, and everything after the region in parentheses, which are "tags"

[opal carbon]

Did retool not have a list of regions?

[dusky ore]

It might, but I don't have a Windows machine to run Retool on

[opal carbon]

Ah, yeah I had to spin up a VM for this purpose

Mac or Linux?

[chilly kraken]

there is a good redump 1g1r set on archive

[dusky ore]

Tags go through a few processes: if I see Disc in the name, then a game must have multiple discs, so let's organize based on this. I don't care which disc, but I just care that I separate out "Disc A" from "Disc 2" as an example.

[chilly kraken]

I grabbed it a couple of months back

[opal carbon]

If Mac I think that UTM has a pretty solid Windows VM template

[dusky ore]

Mac, but this is intended to be ran on any machine as a CLI

There's some additional processing to detect game revisions (prefer the latest revision, personally), re-releases (prefer an "original" release), demos, prototypes, betas etc.

[opal carbon]

These might be the regions: https://github.com/unexpectedpanda/retool/blob/main/tests/configs/user-config-regions-1.yaml

[dusky ore]

Any remaining "tag" goes into a count, and from there I pick games prioritizing a region order, the latest revision, non-demo, non-proto, non-beta, and with "the least number of extraneous tags"

Oh yeah, the regions I'm using were just on uhhhh some wiki page lmao

That region list is probably better

[opal carbon]

My issue is there's the whole rabbit re: games that are just named different things in different regions

[dusky ore]

They are, like when you look at something like Clockwork Knight

[opal carbon]

Which is why retool isn't really being maintained, it ended up getting most of the duplicate logic based on naming convention right and the rest is all people just saying "oh, this game is actually this other game and is not fundamentally different"

[dusky ore]

It's not 100%, but I really just wanted a way to prune the list down "a decent amount", and to give me a good way to sort regions

Yeah, I think the issue is that Redump also doesn't really give you enough info there either IIRC

[opal carbon]

Yeah I really wish Redump had parent-child relationships

[dusky ore]

I just wanted something to prune stuff down "enough" so I could organize into various folders

[opal carbon]

Makes sense

I am unfortunately hoping to end up with a "complete" 1G1R list

Where I feel confident that I have every game represented.

[dusky ore]

Right, and that to me is really a case of just building a database of relations

Which also means maintaining that relation to fill in the gaps

[opal carbon]

Yeah exactly

Which some ROM managers do

[dusky ore]

And that is, unfortunately, a thankless process

Which is why I understand why Retool just isn't maintained anymore

[opal carbon]

Totally

[dusky ore]

Personally, DAT needs a successor format that has the concept of a "game" and a "release" IMO

[opal carbon]

I may just get myself in a position where I could help maintain a fork of retool for consoles I'm interested in

[dusky ore]

It gets a touch sketchy when you look at, again, let's talk Clockwork Knight

You have 1, and 2, and then you have the JP-only 1+2 combo release

So, how do you categorize that? It's technically both 1 and 2, just collected together. It's JP only, so if you prefer English releases then you pluck 1 and 2 separate

[opal carbon]

I like Auto Modellista as an example as well

The USA and PAL/JAPAN versions of the game have completeley different handling physics

[dusky ore]

Auto Modellista is maybe the biggest edge case because of that

[opal carbon]

Yeah but there are others I'm sure

[dusky ore]

It's the same game, but they are different, definitively.

[opal carbon]

So exceptions lists will always be a thing

[dusky ore]

Super Metroid on the SNES is that way to a lesser extent, but yeah

[opal carbon]

I am kind of surprised this isn't a solved problem

[dusky ore]

I know why it's not a solved problem

[opal carbon]

But most people are not hoarders

[dusky ore]

What we start getting into here now, is a matter of opinion

[opal carbon]

Yeah you have a great point there

[dusky ore]

"How different are these releases?"

Each Saturn game with a different pressing code that's...the same exact game otherwise, well, you just pick one.

[opal carbon]

Yeah you're totally right

That should be top of mind for me, I literally spent time this weekend looking up the various revisions of Gran Turismo 2

Which NASCAR livery for the Taurus SHO do I feel is "correct"? lol

[dusky ore]

Yeah, it really just becomes a matter of saying "how different is 'too different'"

[opal carbon]

This is why I like the idea of DATs, I can archive a full REDUMP set but then slice it up into subsets based on how OCD I want to be.

But they have lots of limitations as you've pointed out

[dusky ore]

Yeah, I do feel like maybe there's a way to take a DAT and potentially "convert" it to a newer format

But then the question becomes "how do you track changes between updated DATs"? I forget if each disc has a unique ID or if it's just all based on name

If it's just based on name, well, now we have the NiGHTS naming conundrum.

[opal carbon]

Yeah I wanted to look into gameID and see if that was the case

I don't know how it works

[dusky ore]

If there's an ID, then you could probably have some kind of migration format: parse DAT to a new format, then patch your own data on top

I know Redump's site has specific disc IDs

[opal carbon]

Yeah but what I don't know is if, say the Memcard Pro 2 will give you the same virtual memcard for Gran Turismo 2 Simulation Disc Rev 1 and Rev 2

[dusky ore]

Oh yeah, game ID itself is its own subject

[opal carbon]

I know it uses "gameID" but I don't know what that means on a technical level

I assume it's unique to disc but am not sure

But also then that would be tricky for multi-disk games sooo

[dusky ore]

I know for GT2 the arcade and sim discs are different

[opal carbon]

I mean they are effectively different games

[dusky ore]

Right

[opal carbon]

But IDK how you would determine that programatically but then also know that all FF7 discs are the same game

[dusky ore]

Alright, so just looking at my list: Tomb Raider The Last Revelation, that has a revision

The only ID I see on it is SLUS-00885

It wouldn't surprise me if an ID was assigned per title specifically,

[opal carbon]

Yeah that makes sense

I was hoping that would be the case

[dark mountain]

The Redump database was not, and is never, intended for games, but only for cataloging disc versions and variants.
Its use for managing complete fullsets of games downloaded by people was not originally intended.

[opal carbon]

Yeah totally

I also respect and understand their stance on preservation

[dusky ore]

Right, which I don't fault them for that

[dark mountain]

That is not the original vision we had back then when we created Redump.

[opal carbon]

I just have two problems: part of me wants a complete archival set so I can explore the different revisions of a game, and the other part of me goes through complete game libraries with groups of friends all huddled around a TV and I'd like to show up with a semi-managable list to scroll through.

[dusky ore]

And this is why I'm doing what I'm doing lol

[serene nebula]

I bet you’re gonna love Eidos with their 50 versions of every game

[dusky ore]

I bring the MiSTer to cons and it's fun to do romdiving with people, usually with something like SAM. I like the idea of balancing the list of what I have so that way it doesn't keep picking "this one Saturn title with 20 different pressing codes"

That and I have a 4TB USB SSD strapped to this thing and I do want to reduce space usage where I can (it used to be 2TB)

[opal carbon]

Yeah we go through the list as a group and people shout out what they want the group to play. We call it "Cursed Game Club" because we're looking for strange stuff.

[dusky ore]

Romdiving is how we found the weird FOX Kids-branded Micro Machines game that was a lot of fun

[dark mountain]

ReTool was a great application.
Parent-child integration wasn't possible, unlike NI, because we had lost access and the people capable of completely rebuilding the database.
Part of the original team and myself expressed to redo the catalog, but Redump is too big now and a lost cause.

[opal carbon]

Honestly I think that the way it works today is great for what it intends to do, my dream would be there would be a tool that would let people share and build their own 1G1R lists more easily.

[dark mountain]

For professional archiving, other solutions are tried, but I didn't feel like working on them and I would be better off using my time here at MiSTer.
I'm more useful on the project now.

[opal carbon]

I started working on a commandline tool that would try to group duplicates together and just give the user the option to keep one or more duplicates

[dusky ore]

Honestly, what I'd be tempted to do is to take what the logic I have as a base and come up with a local interim DB

[opal carbon]

More and more metadata / data enrichment could be used to help make that decision easier to make

[dusky ore]

Basically a way to say "look, I tried to organize these automatically to a certain point", then take that and use a GUI to better organize things by hand

[opal carbon]

Yeah that's what I'd love to see

[dusky ore]

Automatically group known discs, then manually clean things up

Then you can apply selection logic

[opal carbon]

Yup exactly

And ideally make the end product easy to share

[dusky ore]

This would also be a case where I don't ship a DB though

[opal carbon]

As a DAT file or whatever

[dusky ore]

Other people could though, the tool would let you produce it

[opal carbon]

I was hoping gameID would let me do lookups for games and pull metadata, so that from the GUI or CLI you could present the user with resources to do their own research

Cutting Room Floor links, etc

It would kind of be like romdiving

I might get back to it. I'm just not really a programmer by trade.

But at work I am used to having a bunch of purpose built tools for data enrichment that allow me to hunt through big piles of data and make decisions quickly

[dusky ore]

I'm a software dev by trade, but it being my job leaves me with not a ton of energy to want to write software myself

At least not large projects

[opal carbon]

Totally understandable.

Working in tech got me back into retrogames / MiSTer partially because I find those platforms less fiddly and computer-y than traditional emulation and maintaining modern game platforms.

I just didn't want to come home from work after managing a fleet of machines to manage another fleet of machines

[dusky ore]

Yeah, I already had one software project under my belt, and then I fell into a career in software which took that motivation

The drive right now is to just get the MiSTer up to date "enough" to make it easier to bring to a friend's place, now that I actually live somewhere with friends around!

[opal carbon]

I love the simplicity of the MiSTer so much

I lack the willpower to not fiddle with the platform if there are things to fiddle with (Retroarch) so having an "it just works" retrogames platform has really helped me just play more games

Just like my ODEs have

[serene nebula]

I got tired of tinkering with software emulators. I just want to play the damn games haha.

[dusky ore]

I think my issue with software emulation is that with every great frontend there's a promise that it runs perfectly on a Raspberry Pi, when it...doesn't.

For the people that can enjoy it I'm happy for you, but I like my games to run "at the right framerate" with low latencies, so that leaves hardware emulation and hardware itself

I have my consoles with everything, but they're also all put away right now because of a move, and I don't exactly want to bring consoles with me on trips

[opal carbon]

I just found there was always some weird variable I needed to account for. As long as the display is low latency and I'm using a decent USB controller or SNA[C/X] on MiSTer I just get to enjoy.

I am not actually a good enough gamer to be affected by latency but my brain won't shut up about it if I think it's "not right" which is totally subjective and a moving target but trusting the MiSTer core devs fixes the whole problem for me, lol

[dusky ore]

"For the most part" I've been happy enough to throw everything enough into a video scaler and adjust it there, following someone else's set of numbers

The main exception being arcade boards, which I have a few of: getting those nice and sharp is a pain sometimes.

[opal carbon]

I upgraded from a GBS-C I built to a Retrotink 4K recently so am just getting into "adult scaler" world myself

[dusky ore]

Gotta look super-crisp so I can throw the latest and greatest in CRT emulation so I can make it look "like shit"

I just got a 4K a bit ago, which on that note I need to grab my Cameltry board, fix the black level on it and then see if I can get a sharp image out of it somehow

[opal carbon]

Was recently at a local arcade that had converted tons of cabinets to 4:3 LCDs and I was shocked at how unplayable games I had a lot of experience on were

X-Men vs Street Fighter being the one I am probably most familiar with. I had a Big Blue with that game for a long time, and then got back into it on MiSTer. Felt awful on whatever LCD was in that cab.

Made me so thankful for my MiSTer

Not sure what the problem was, it's not like I don't have tons of sub 16ms LCDs kicking around my house. Maybe 4:3 is the issue? Lack of overdrive? IDK

[dusky ore]

Depending on how it was hooked up, a lot of LCDs have garbage scalers

[opal carbon]

Yeah I guess I just assume whatever company makes those LCDs optimize the scalers for native res but I guess now that I say that native res for arcade cabs is not a standard thing.

I also need to remind myself that just because a company makes arcade LCDs doesn't mean they know or care about display response time lol

[dusky ore]

I think really the only "good" ones have been the Unico ones, which are...actually 5:4

[opal carbon]

Yeah I realize I keep saying 4:3 but I don't actually remember what the aspect ratio for most arcade CRTs even was anymore. All that knowledge has been lost.

[dusky ore]

4:3 "for the most part"

240p, 480i/p

[opal carbon]

Yeah but IIRC lots of games ran at weird refresh rates, slightly weird resolutions, etc.

[dusky ore]

Some games run with non-square pixels (CPS2 notably)

[opal carbon]

Yeah CPS2 is what I was thinking of

Lots of little things to take into account

[dusky ore]

And yeah, arcade stuff is a total cluster of refresh rates and horizontal widths

Ideally you need a good image processor, but nobody's going to attach an OSSC or RT5x to all of their 4:3 LCDs

(if they do, well, more power to them)

[opal carbon]

Yeah exactly

I bet something like a GBS-C would go a long way, but it's still cost most operators don't want to incur and that project still has some rough edges

Still the best value in town for scalers tho

My home built one did eventualy die (probably my fault) but my aliexpress one is going strong still after thousands of hours

[empty yacht]

they are 4:3 plus a wide margin of 'operator couldn't care less about h/v size potis'

[opal carbon]

I'd like to think if I was an operator I would care, but I would probably get overwhelmed very quickly and do what they all seem to do

And this arcade's pinball collection was immaculate so clearly they are putting their energy there.

[dusky ore]

So, there are some operators that are passionate

The ones that care about playing these games

Then you have operators that solely care about making money

[opal carbon]

I think these folks care about the games, there's probably just only so much you can do with a collection this big: https://www.nextlevelpinballmuseum.com/

[dusky ore]

Sometimes you simply can't put in the resources though, some games require more energy and you only have so many operators

Consider Galloping Ghost in the US, as much as I love them their cabs are...suffering.

[opal carbon]

Ah that's too bad to hear, they're on my list of places to check out

[dusky ore]

But when you have that many games on the floor and only so much maintenance time

I highly suggest checking them out still, I love them

But A) the cabs are all very much "US" cabs, so expect bat tops and concave buttons that don't exactly feel fantastic

[opal carbon]

Yeah, I mean I grew up on that so par for the course

[dusky ore]

And B) there's a lot of CRTs that are worse for wear, simply because that's all they can be

Too many tubes to maintain or rejuvenate

[opal carbon]

Yeah makes sense

[dusky ore]

Too many burnt in

[empty yacht]

the many crts burdened by that ghastly 3s attract logo

[opal carbon]

Maybe someday in the future there will be a good high-refresh OLED drop in solution with a scaler that can do good BFI / phosphor simulation

I mean, I doubt it, but that would be really cool

I need to play with the fancy BFI in my RTK4K on this 1440P high refresh OLED I made work buy me

Or electron gun simulation, whatever it's called

[empty yacht]

always wondered how feasible an oled would be which was just taking scanline by scanline (with a bit of margin and repetition) instead of sample and hold.

[dusky ore]

The RT4k has me desiring an irresponsible purchase (a new OLED TV for the living room), though I just moved and we don't have a couch yet

[rare gyro]

https://www.amazon.com/Intehill-Portable-Monitor-Anti-Glare-Screen/dp/B0D6YPHS97/

Personally I've been using this for MiSTer and rt4k more than my C3. It looks too good to be true, but the 338 ppi gives you such detailed scanlines/phosphor effects

The only drawback I can think of other than it not being oled is that you're limited to 60hz, so no BFI

[dusky ore]

Oh yeah! I have a portable 3:2 LCD that has worked really well with the MiSTer

I have an alt INI setup to do...1920x1440@60?

It's 2160x1440 otherwise

[rare gyro]

Also the RT4K works with 3840x2400, so you can get an extra 240 vertical lines compared to regular 4k

[dusky ore]

I wouldn't mind getting something higher res to use with the RT4K though

[rare gyro]

I highly recommend this one, I've been playing on it so much.

[dusky ore]

The big thing for me, when I'm at home I typically just want to play games on the couch, but the LCD has been incredibly useful for conventions

[rare gyro]

Ah yeah.. that would depend on how your living room is set up. For me this about the size of the CRT I grew up with

I also use it for DOS gaming because the common resolution of 320x200 can upscale 11x. I rarely really game from my couch these days. But yeah do be financially responsible, I still have my C3 but I don't use it all that often and I could have waited.

It looks amazing no doubt

But at the same time I know that burn in starts becoming visible at 2000-5000 hours on an OLED. And with a MiSTer you'll likely be playing in 4:3

So that middle 4:3 will get dimmer compared to the rest of the screen

[dusky ore]

Yeah, now to be fair gaming is only a small part of my life, I don't play the MiSTer nearly as much as some of y'all do I'm sure

I'd like an OLED for watching stuff, gaming is just secondary

It'd be nice to have some proper HDR support and honestly I do kinda wish the other tech on the market could really do HDR at an acceptable level, OLED and microLED's just hard to beat there

microLED's new and shiny but that means it's too expensive

Traditional LCD tech has dimming zone issues depending on the display

[rare gyro]

The one I linked has pretty good HDR, there are several screens similar to this by no name brands, but this one actually had some YouTube reviews over a year old, so I took the plunge on that one

[dusky ore]

I'll certainly consider it, but I'd really like something large since I do spend more time in the living room watching movies and TV with my partner compared to gaming

[rare gyro]

Apparently IGZO IPS doesn't have any problems with burn in, so I often use integer scale to get even upscaling

[rare gyro]

Yeah fair enough, perhaps your partner will agree to such an investment 🤞

[dusky ore]

Well, right now we both agree we need a couch before a TV rofl

[rare gyro]

You could also get a 27" or 32" gaming monitor as a stopgap. If you'll have a use for it after you get the TV

[dusky ore]

We have our old TV still, but it's in the bedroom since we just have nowhere else to watch right now

Once we get a couch it'll move back to the living room

Then once that's paid off I can think about getting a better TV for the living room rofl

The major goal we have right now is to get a house, we moved to Michigan so we could be near friends and the plan is to ideally find a place to "permanently" settle

So, have to control how much debt we're taking on to achieve that

[rare gyro]

Personally I'm thinking I should have gotten a 32" gaming monitor instead of a TV because I don't really need a huge TV, and plus it's designed for gaming, so I could get a much higher refresh rate, and 3840x2400 resolution would make even better use of the RT4K

Yeah definitely gotta balance the budget, it'll save you so many headaches in the long run.

I can't count how many times I had to learn that the hard way 😅

[dusky ore]

Worst case I just hope I'll get a bonus this year, economy withstandnig

[mystic loom]

I actually had a question, as I was looking at this for my Sorted Sets (sets which target titles for multimedia systems and sort them into categories like Games, Children’s Edutainment & Storybooks, Reference Educational & Multimedia, Industrial Discs, etc.).

What’s the best way to create a file to organize an existing set into a new folder configuration?

[woeful parcel]

Anyone know what was in the PSX core update from yesterday? Will there be a dual ram or 2XCPU build also?

[chilly kraken]

It's just a rebuild using a different seed to fix audio issues in certain games when using vga_mode=ypbpr. Nothing has changed in the build - it's all metastability madness

[woeful parcel]

Oh okay. Thanks for the quick response.

[jolly heart]

I was wondering the same. I'm trying to understand if the features of the 2XCPU or dual ram cores are now features in the regular psx core from update_all or if they're still separate, manually-installed cores. That includes weave, although I think that's part of the regular core now... maybe? You step away from things for a bit and next thing you know you have no idea what's changed.

[chilly kraken]

neither of those things are (or likely ever will be) in the stable core.

Turbo cores never make it into update all, and a core cannot be both dual ram and single ram - it's one or the other. There is also no clean benefit to the dual ram PSX core. Sound plays more accurately (but not perceivable to the human ear) at the cost of the core running slightly faster (again, imperceivably)

The latest core is simply a recompile using a different seed which clears up sound issues folks were having with the 9.2 audio boards and analog out.

[jolly heart]

Got it, thanks for the info

[desert otter]

@rare gyro can you tell me how bright you think it is? I'm not looking for HDR cause HDR on any product like that is what we call HDArent. But 8bit sRGB 500nit sounds too good to be true and it supposedly being 4K.

I don't expect it to be getting 500, but if you are familiar with how not that bright cheap laptops get anywhere from 200 to 250 then you'll have a frame of reference if it's considerably brighter than that

[rare gyro]

Personally I'm quite impressed by how bright it is. Especially when brightening it via the OSD menu. Definitely much brighter than my cheap laptops

[desert otter]

[rare gyro]

I've been using this monitor everyday since I got it. My only gripe is the max refresh rate

[chilly kraken]

If you want to spend a little more, Pengwen, I'm using this and it is very bright, low lag, and all around pretty great https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F99S27MZ

VRR is 6-100fps

[rare gyro]

Oh damn that's even better

I wish I knew about it

[chilly kraken]

how long ago did you buy yours?

you can probably still return it

[rare gyro]

Almost exactly a week ago

[chilly kraken]

oh yeah, you have 30 days

[rare gyro]

How are the speakers?

[chilly kraken]

I have tested a lot of portable monitors :p

they are good. they are no better or worse than the other portable monitors I have tested. I also have them hooked into a little anker speaker most of the time

[desert otter]

I am interested in a larger display as it would ultimately be an alternative to the one built into my 14" laptop

$240 is definitely a "bit more money" for sure

[chilly kraken]

ahh, yeah that makes sense. this is only 16

I think there is technically a 30 dollar off coupon

[desert otter]

what I mean by "larger" is larger than my laptop

lol

compared to the 13.4" stuff that is typically sold

oh, there is a $30 coupon

[chilly kraken]

mister laggy is 5-18 (top to bottom

[desert otter]

after tax it's $220

I wouldn't bother to use a portable display for MiSTer lol. I only use the MiSTer on the go if I travel far, and at that point I hook it up to a hotel TV or a TV at my friends house

lololol

ok so....

that 16" you linked

says "1200nits"

[chilly kraken]

I don't think it's 1200 nits, but it is easily the brightest portable screen I have ever used

[rare gyro]

I'm kind of torn. The brightness sounds really good, but I like the 338ppi of the 13.4"

It makes the phosphors on the rt4k look even more detailed

[rare gyro]

I'm assuming you maxed out the brightness on the OSD menu?

[chilly kraken]

yeah

[rare gyro]

The fact that is a matte display also sounds good. But I don't like that it doesn't say anything about the refresh rate anywhere. Although it does say freesync

[desert otter]

that just means it's probably FreeSync 60hz

75hz at most

like my LG ultrawide. it's freesync 75hz

VRR is still useful for under 60hz for console gaming

@chilly kraken what exactly is the I/O solution on this thing? the pictures don't tell me shit

multi function USB-C for display? two of them? can I plug USB-C power into one C port, and pass it along to the laptop through the second port while getting video?

it might just be one of those ones where I'll still have to plug in separate power to it and feed it video via HDMI

[rare gyro]

https://www.acer.com/us-en/monitors/gaming/nitro-xv2/pdp/UM.HX2AA.201
This one right?

[desert otter]

this one what?

[chilly kraken]

Mini hdmi and 2 usb c

[desert otter]

my monitor?

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07MQBPMJ2

[desert otter]

ye I saw in the written specs it says two USB-C but it doesn't bother to explain much as to all that you can do with them other than power and video input but nothing about power passthrough to another device daisychain style.
it's all good though.

[rare gyro]

The one I'm using has a full sized hdmi port and two USB-C as well. The second is usually for additional power

[chilly kraken]

Sorry, I was recording science!

[desert otter]

in SDR it's holding up against the other two in brightness and I doubt those others are below 350

[chilly kraken]

iPad and other monitor had brightness maxed

Dunno where that puts it

[rare gyro]

Could it be the morph's HDR that messes with the colors?

[desert otter]

it's probably sitting around 400 to 500 and in HDR mode it's probably doing some weird ass shit to "boost" it a little more.

[desert otter]

the colors didn't look right simply cuz the MiSTer wasn't outputting HDR

[chilly kraken]

Does the mister need to for it work on the morph? Don’t have to on the tink

However I have a second mister here and I enable hdr on it. Sec

[desert otter]

your source content needs to be HDR if you want HDR tone mapping to work right on a scaler last I recall

[rare gyro]

I get pretty good hdr from the tink.

[desert otter]

I'll save this portable to my shopping cart's "save for later" and revisit it.

[rare gyro]

Never tried hdr from the MiSTer

[desert otter]

trying to HDR something that isn't HDR results usually in a washed out brighter silvery image

[rare gyro]

You might miss the refresh rate of your gaming monitor if you're playing something like forza horizon

[desert otter]

I play FH4 via remote connection to my desktop at work all the time with my laptop lol

it doesn't bother me

60hz is fine for a racing game

[glacial orbit]

dont expect accurate colors on the "HDR" mode on MiSTer

but it does look neat with scanlines and masks on

[rare gyro]

Yeah I just have the MiSTer feed the native signal via DV1 into the tink, and the tink handles the HDR between itself and the monitor

[chilly kraken]

I don't think DV1 passes the HDR flag anyway

[glacial orbit]

enable HDR on the scaler, avoid enabling it on MiSTer

[desert otter]

could be you need to calibrate HDR on the MORPH

[chilly kraken]

this is the likely answer

[glacial orbit]

https://youtu.be/JQ1kM48xHf4?si=qpDeygkPhf0jhQOo

This is a really neat video about HDR on the Morph

[chilly kraken]

nice

we are shitting up PSX chat real good, friends. Robert, if you're reading this, just mark as read

[rare gyro]

I will say, the GBA core looks amazing in 4k+, as 3:2 is almost exactly 16:10, just very slightly narrower.

[chilly kraken]

I would love to get HDR dialed in on this thing

[rare gyro]

I'd be curious to see the comparison then

[glacial orbit]

WipeOut looks pretty glorious in that video

[chilly kraken]

also, 2400 scales nice with 240p content

[desert otter]

I kind of hate that they can't just do 16:9 displays at 4K with that brightness and price point. it's always gotta be 16:10

if you get a 16:9 4K display they immediately charge another like $100

[chilly kraken]

why is that?

is there a good reason?

[desert otter]

idk. if I did I could maybe find a way around it lol

[rare gyro]

Why would you prefer 16:9?

[desert otter]

cuz that's the aspect of my PC at home and the games I play. and it's wider for movies and shows?

not sure if it was made clear yet, but I am 100% NOT using this for MiSTer

I'm looking at another one that is 4K 600nits for about $260. reading through reviews though in the lower stars to see what issues it might have

[glacial orbit]

If they made a 16:10 OLED monitor, I would jump on it

then cry infront of my 16:9 OLED Monitor

[desert otter]

I'd love something 1440p for less than $200 but those all seem to be 1600p instead lol

[rare gyro]

Fair enough. Though you still have a 4k resolution, so its moreso taller than it is wider. You're not losing anything. But yeah anything in 16:9 will result in black horizontal bars, but with modern IPS, apparently burn-in isn't a thing.

[desert otter]

they do

just in this portable monitor format

but most of them all have VESA 75mm support

[glacial orbit]

eeeh

Need it at 240HZ+

[desert otter]

lolol

good luck then bro. that's reserved for "gaming" displays which are all 16:9 lol. you can get them in like 120hz flavors though at 16:10

[glacial orbit]

not stressing, a 27 inch monitor completely fills my FOV

[chilly kraken]

Getting close to tuning it in

[spark ermine]

Soon you'll be able to actually play some games :p

[chilly kraken]

Let’s not get crazy

[mystic loom]

Looks like we’ve got a scaler bug in the latest PSX core. The 20250706 version has been giving me these severe line artifacts:

[chilly kraken]

shit, looking

yeah, something weird.. not all my misters but one of them is having issues. Hrm. Nothing was changed in the code, so you can go back to the previous build. This was a recompile to address an audio bug that some folks are having with 9.2 boards

sorg and ricardo are investigating on the hardware side, this was just a stop gap

Here is the previous core. Again, no code changed

[manic citrus]

it's the thing robert mentioned where at some point maybe early last year, he would get builds that met timing but sometimes had scaler output corruption. Sorg's kinda looking into it but I'm not sure how much effort he's putting in

[chilly kraken]

yeah, i just thought I had avoided it with that build. I should have tested on all my misters...foolish!

it's literally one of my misters that has trouble with it

[chilly kraken]

now I see why robert hates making a release

[tropic stratus]

yes, it used to be easy in the past, but now gets more and more complicated and risky.

[manic citrus]

it would be so much easier if this were even vaguely reproducable and we could just start bisecting the framework

[chilly kraken]

Are you going to attempt to do that fix for the obscure game that someone filed an issue for? Or should I set up the analog audio test again and start building psx cores?

[tropic stratus]

I will look at the code to add that condition, but probably cannot make it in the next 2-3 weeks

[chilly kraken]

Ok, I will see if I can get set up this weekend

[tropic stratus]

thank you

[tacit fox]

I was about to post the same issue here

C’mon sorg

Make MiSTer Great Again

[ivory verge]

I have encountered this many times

That's why I always do several compilations

[chilly kraken]

Yeah, I did a bunch, but it only shows up on one mister of mine (of course, one I didn’t test on)

[chilly kraken]

man, seeds 1-4 haven’t met timing. was planning on building all day and tomorrow for tests this weekend but, at this rate, I will have like 4 cores to test :p

[spring elk]

Do you change the initial seed in the Quartus GUI, or edit the .qsf?

[chilly kraken]

quartus gui

i have some good ones now

I've been cooking as often as possible

[tropic stratus]

the seed is just a random value, there is no magic around it. If you add a space in the conf_str the same happens

[manic citrus]

the secret is to translate the conf_str to another language

[chilly kraken]

no idea if it's bullshit but it feels like seed numbers are close to each other. Like if seed 3 is almost right, seed 2 or 4 may nail it. That is just a vibe tho

[manic citrus]

all I'm going to say is

maybe don't go to vegas

[chilly kraken]

99% of gamblers give up right before they make it big

[tropic stratus]

after around 500 builds for the n64 core and turbo releases I would say it's pure luck.
Well not exactly: the best timings always had the HDMI bug 🤣

[chilly kraken]

well i have....7 builds were the timing was met (out of 14 tries). So not running hot :p. How many do you think would be a good number to build?

[opal carbon]

Ah okay, I now understand the Negcon issues I was having with Gran Turismo 2: https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/PSX_MiSTer/issues/283

Disabling virtual memory cards solves the issue

Really wish I had a good way to use my MCP2 with SNAC. The only adapter I have that works is the Retrocastles one but I’m using a Multisystem. Might have to move off of SNAC for this core.

Sounds like folks are having issues with the dualshock as well: https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/PSX_MiSTer/issues/291

[opal carbon]

Good thing I have a Reflex Adapt. Plus I’ll get to use the menus via the controller so that’s a bit of a win. Truly incredible core!

[chilly kraken]

man, again, I know we were saying that the seed number is just RNG but I haven't had a single build past 20 meet timing (and I'm building 26 now)

[manic citrus]

considering there's like infinite numbers you can use for the seed

or maybe just 4 billion, not sure how they internally represent that

[chilly kraken]

so many builds

if I keep betting double zero it has to hit eventually. it's just maths

[abstract drift]

is there any use like, incrementing by more than 1?

like, are seeds 1 and 2 "closer together" than seed 200 ?

[chilly kraken]

not according to zakk and robert who are obviously gamblers who gave up right before they hit it big

slowly but surely. I should have 20 in time to test this weekend. I suppose I can just start testing these tho

[spring elk]

Planting seed all over the place...

[chilly kraken]

same tbh

@tropic stratus If i'm looking for visual corruption, is there any game or place that is more likely to show it? or can I just let all my misters sit at the psx bios menu overnight and check on them in the morning?

[hallow gorge]

Are there new version of PSX?

[tropic stratus]

best is to look at some different resolutions and colorful images. E.g. bios, castlevania SOTN ingame + menu and revolt ingame should cover pretty much all there is.

For the seeds: are you aware that there is a tool(design space explorer) in quartus that runs this seed tests on it's own? You can just let it run 40 builds and it will report which ones have timing closure.