Sega Saturn

[high bramble]

Who's spreading STVs here? 👀

[tender axle]

You found solution @green jacinth ?

My MRAs are from april, are they the latest ?

[burnt matrix]

Nope

[tender axle]

Where to get them please ?

[burnt matrix]

If your MRAs are in their own folder, delete that folder.

MRAs are now officially distributed in the general arcade folder

Use those

[tender axle]

Ok

Thanks

[burnt matrix]

I was just doing my duty, which does not need gratitude. So I do not accept your thanks for I am a….

尺乇ㄒ尺ㄖ 尺ㄖ几丨几（ザの縁）

[green jacinth]

i did not find a solution

all my mras are in /media/fat/_Arcade/_ST-V/

also some others in here

should i just delete _ST-V?

seems like im on the right track

i put my dualsd saturn unstable, renamed, in cores

and launched batman forever from under the general arcade games selection

rather than where i used to, under stv

and its running

[tender axle]

Yes and find games directly in Arcade list

[green jacinth]

will they have a group in arcade organizer?

[tender axle]

Nope

[tender axle]

Not here 🤔

[celest lake]

arcade organizer is disabled by default in updated versions of update_all

make sure it's enabled

[green jacinth]

Solving lots of mysteries for a lazy sunday

[green jacinth]

And everything is right in the world

[muted cradle]

God is in heaven, all's right with the world

[glossy steppe]

That reminds me, is there a reason that the default versions of many arcade games seem to be the Euro release instead of the US or Japanese one? If it's just a preference thing of whoever set that up, is there a way to make it prefer US versions for games that had one over the EU versions?

[celest lake]

It’s all based on mame. Main arcade MRAs are based on Mame “parent” roms, and Mame often ends up choosing the European version as the parent. I didn’t get the reasoning either until I asked a couple of weeks ago.

Mame tries to choose the version that
A) is more likely to be in a recognized language (usually English)
B) avoids unnecessary screens in the attract mode (winners don’t do drugs, fbi warnings, regional warnings, etc)

So that ends up being the European version a lot of the time

[glossy steppe]

Ah, but aren't the European versions usually modified?

[celest lake]

Good question. I would assume not but @wet hull is the person to ask about that stuff

[glossy steppe]

Fair enough

So I am guessing this means there is no option somewhere where I can choose that it gives me the US versions instead

I know there is the organizer for alternate versions, but I would have to know that's a EU version and that a US version exists first

[celest lake]

Not that I know of but I’m hardly an expert.

[glossy steppe]

Thanks

[warped saddle]

honestly most of the time the EU and US versions are identical except for splash screens asking you to not get high and/or narc on your friends

typically the modification was JP -> (not JP)

[glossy steppe]

Yeah, I know the Japanese versions are least likely to have changes

Well, not every change was unwelcome though, sometimes they added features or fixed bugs, but yeah, most of the time it was content removed/altered

Heh, I remember some of the arcade games I booted up on my Mister had the splash screen say "Not for sale or use in the US, Japan, Europe, Mexico" ... and I forgot what other countries... what exactly is left?

[drowsy hull]

when in doubt use jp or eu, else you might encounter a shitty ost

[glossy steppe]

Genreally I go US if avaliable, otherwise EU then JP

Though there has been the rare game that had a JP and EU release, but not US, such as Vib Ribbon or that megaman racing game

[high bramble]

There is a short list of criteria that dictates which arcade game is chosen to be the preferred choice for the parent in MAME:

• Most recent revision from the manufacturer
• English language
• No country-specific warnings, such as the FBI warnings for many US games

There have been occasions when a game of a certain region was the parent but then changed to clone whenever another region/revision was dumped and added that better fit that criteria.

It can also be traced back to MAME's roots, with some of the early development efforts being traced back to the European region, as well as many of the early arcade dumps coming from that region as well. It just became common practice and expected.

[glossy steppe]

The no FBI/Drug warning feels like an odd one

[high bramble]

We (the US) didn't even want to see that crap. I can't imagine why anyone else would want to. 😉

[river river]

Am I weirdo in that I enjoy the nostalgia of those FBI Don't Use Drugs warnings 😄

[warped saddle]

sounds like something a narc would say

[celest lake]

dave is a cop https://tenor.com/ZYji.gif

[river river]

My favourite game of all time

[wet hull]

As Zakk mentioned, the difference is usually the splash screen.

[burnt matrix]

Imagine playing an arcade game without an FBI warning, couldn’t be me!

[glossy steppe]

And then there is the "FBI" """warning""" when you boot up Scott Pilgrim

[polar mountain]

Back when the FBI used to mean somethin' man.

[gleaming cove]

Whats.going wrong when trying to boot saturn here? Getting this in alot of saturn games

[pearl harbor]

You need to use the latest unstable version of the core.

You can find it in the pinned messages as always.

[tawny forge]

Unstable core + unstable main?

Release wen

[celest lake]

#help message

[gleaming cove]

jesusfish you just referred me from help to this subforum lol

So i got the unstable saturn file ill just replace my core with this file then thanks

[ancient surge]

For context, those screens warn you about not having enough space to save data. There are actually a lot of unique screens per game, similar to how games will have unique messages if you try to read the disc from a music player.

[sudden tusk]

https://tenor.com/view/no-fuck-that-mad-ice-cube-gif-14555626

[wide glacier]

i'd like to have a talk with william s. broccoli

[wide glacier]

wow no one talked in the saturn thread at all yesterday... is that a sign that the core is finally finished

[tawny forge]

Release wen

[ripe valley]

srg320 is working on his own at the moment, especially some parts of VDP2 if I understand correctly the VDP2 testrom he left on the issue log.

[marble laurel]

https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/Main_MiSTer/pull/1044

[wise brook]

SRG’s Saturn must be being logic probed to death to discover obscure system functionality like this

[celest lake]

he is just prepping for the innevitable accuracy coin rom for saturn

[thorn pagoda]

he posted a pic of it once iirc

you can barely see the actual pcb for the thousands of wires coming off it

[silk mauve]

If you're running with an analog IO board, did you try the little switch on the side?

[muted cradle]

What does it do?

[silk mauve]

That was a response to a message from longer ago than I thought. Damn Discord on web.

Or whoever posted it deleted the message. Either way.

[livid grotto]

Sorry, I had the wrong .ini settings. Thanks.

[silk mauve]

To answer the question in a mostly non-technical way, it's a sync on green switch via the VGA/DB15 output connector on the IO Board. Toggling it usually helps with wavy or flashy video issues on a CRT, especially when using a component cable.

[green pebble]

Euro is selected by default b/c most of the time it's in English and won't be censored for sex/religion like the US version and won't be censored for violence like the Japanese version. That is why the UNIBIOS on NeoGeo also defaults to Euro.

I think many games fall into this catagory outside of NG, so the MAME team defaulted that way like 30 years ago and it's stuck. Not sure if it really holds outside NG myslef, but it's easy enough to change.

[pine bobcat]

Isn't it actually the American versions of NEO GEO games that tend to be censored for violence?
e.g. US Metal Slug defaults to white 'sweat' vs red blood in Japan, US Samurai Shodown has censored fatalities vs full gore in Japanese version, etc.

[next bronze]

IIRC, The Metal Slugs are still censored by default when set to EU, as well. Magical Drop 2 and 3 are censored and missing modes for the EU version, IIRC.

and voices in Spanish for some reason.

though a few like the Metal Slugs have a toggle via dipswitch settings

[pine bobcat]

Yeah, I prefer to just set the region to Japan for every NEO-GEO game

[wide glacier]

that's what i do. the english translations are completely nonsensical anyway lol

[muted cradle]

Magical Drop... is censored?

The violence, the sex, the nudity?

[wide glacier]

it's mostly missing the various voice clips from the JP version

[muted cradle]

Japanese voice clips?

[wide glacier]

seems so

[ripe valley]

New version of the Saturn tests suite appeared.
srg320 is informed now.

[marble laurel]

What are the changes ?

[ripe valley]

I will see in the next hour, I'm not with my Dual RAM system at the moment.

[marble laurel]

thanks 🙂

[ripe valley]

Some tests have a new entry : Reset (Clock change).

And many refined tests, new discoveries and such.

The SMPC test is completely changed.

We have a basic VDP1 test.

[tawny forge]

Release now. Tests later. Wen

[ripe valley]

Whenever a stable core is requested to be released, its release will be delayed by one week. 😏

[hallow fossil]

Is there anything holding up a 32x stable?

[ripe valley]

The SH2 new test exposes something not right on an instruction timings, if I read well the results of the test.

And only srg320 knows when he wants to release a new stable version.

[strong zephyr]

I remember needing to flick ‘a’ switch to get output on my crt tv (iirc sync on green function, but it’s been a few years) with a custom scart cable. In the end i just used an old crt vga moni. And now just hdmi…

[marble laurel]

i will delayed also 3DO 😅

[burnt matrix]

We really need a new stable build to fix the save issue people are running into.

[ancient surge]

Oops, another week pushed back. Dang it Robby!

[celest lake]

saves have been broken for a month. what’s another few weeks at this point

[fallow oracle]

in my day we learned to 1CC games

[sudden tusk]

Yeah almost had a heart attack when I tried to load my NBA jam profile .. I was like 8 teams away from defeating every team in the NBA with the Utah Jazz ..

https://tenor.com/view/crying-the-office-sad-steve-carrel-gif-6504535541019570333

This was literally me …

[vernal sun]

https://youtu.be/rUk7XXAFFpw

[celest lake]

yeah, unfortunately, I think this is going to be an issue/question for a couple of months just due to the staggered nature that folks update

[sudden tusk]

https://tenor.com/view/jon-stockton-assist-utah-jazz-gif-4691543

[vernal sun]

My room growing up was Jazz penants, jerseys, pictures, etc. and then all of the posters that came from early Genesis games. Good times! Mid to late 90's Jazz were fire

[sudden tusk]

I was a bulls fan , I purely play as the jazz because the Carl Malone/stockton duo really fit my playstyle .

Hornacek is aight I suppose

[sudden tusk]

Anybody testing the new Main unstable ?

[glossy steppe]

I don't recall, but I think you could change the blood color in the dip switch settings?

[glossy steppe]

The Genesis part of the 32x core is still based on the old genesis core I take it?

[celest lake]

yes

same with megacd iirc

[glossy steppe]

I remember finding a test rom, and the nuked core passed nearly every test, I renamed the rom to 32x to try it on the genesis core and it failed al ot of them, same ones as when I tried it on the old genesis core

Actually, I don't recall if the nuked core passed every test or only failed one, but regardless, it passed a lot more than the old core/32x

[hallow fossil]

There probably isn't the headroom to try swap in parts of the Nuked core

[glossy steppe]

I have no idea how much space the 32x core takes up, I assumed it was likely just too much work for parts that maybe no 32x game uses. Though if it is possible I think it would be good to work on that someday to make it more accurate, same with segacd core

The 32x did leverage the genesis hardware when running the games after all

[celest lake]

There is a lot of room for work on all three of those cores, but not a lot of room in the actual FPGA for more work to be done. I believe SRG has to disable features just to get signal tap to work.

Maybe once we decide on the next board, and work slows elsewhere, someone can tackle a rewrite for all three cores. Would be nice to have a combo core like TG16

[glossy steppe]

I meant room on the FPGA when I said that

And yeah, would be nice to have a single core that does Genesis, 32X, and CD, and even 32XCD games

[celest lake]

yeah exactly

[glossy steppe]

With nuked core level accuracy

[celest lake]

and there just isn't room for that right now, even without the nuked core (which is a large type pokemon)

[glossy steppe]

Though, that would just bring us accuracy on the genesis side, would have to rewotk the 32x and cd cores

rework*

[ancient surge]

The children yearn for Corpse Killer

[celest lake]

isn't there a saturn version?

[glossy steppe]

..... a what?

[celest lake]

Large type pokemon

[glossy steppe]

What does that mean?

[ancient surge]

What?

[celest lake]

https://tenor.com/s3Mmc6FYRyt.gif

[glossy steppe]

I am still confused

hurt himself in his confusion

[celest lake]

(the nuked core is large - takes up most of the FPGA)

that's why it's not the basis of the megacd core or the 32x core

it's too big to fit anything else

[glossy steppe]

I know little about coding for FPGAs, but I am confused how a core for the genesis alone can take up nearly as much space as say, a saturn or n64 core

[celest lake]

Now I'm getting out of my depth, so forgive me...but I believe the way the nuked core is written (or...ported...i guess) is that it's a literal wire for wire recreation of the genesis. It isn't really optimized for an FPGA. So it takes up most of the cyclone V

[glossy steppe]

I see, so it's basically the actual transistor geometry on a fpga chip?

Didn't the sound chip have analog parts though?

[celest lake]

Someone smarter than me would have to answer that

I don't know the ins and outs

only that it's super accurate and large

[glossy steppe]

So if that is true, it would be possible to optimize it so it's better suited for a FPGA while retaining all of it's accuracty but take less spacE?

though that sounds like a massive undertaking

If it's even possible without starting from scratrch

[celest lake]

yeah exactly. it sounded to me like it was possible, but, again, better to wait until we have the next thing so that it can be optimized for that

[glossy steppe]

I mean, we might not have a next thing for a long time

DE-25 might end up to be nothing

It's ohly a slight upgrade to the DE-10

[hallow fossil]

Nuked is really inefficient with space, as it is tracing out every line, when it could be done more efficiently. Apparently rather horrible to work with as a result.

[glossy steppe]

We might end up sticking with the DE-10 because it's not worth it

[sudden tusk]

Might have to just add another de 10 to the stack lol

[celest lake]

DE10 SLI baybe

let's go

[glossy steppe]

Is that the reason the software version of nuked is so abrusdly slow? I mean, a transistor level accurate emulator would be slow anyway, but it's insanely slow

I think the FPGA on the 25 is like, 135K LEs over the 10's 100K or something like that?

Dosen't sound like enough space to put nuked +32x or cd, much less all three

[marble laurel]

for information the core Genesis tooks 51% LE , S32X it is 82% , 94% LE for Megadrive Core and MegaCD 71% of LE in de10nano

[glossy steppe]

I assube by genesis and megadrive you mean old and new core?

[marble laurel]

yes

[glossy steppe]

Then yeah, the DE25 would not be enough to add 32x or cd, much less both, to nuked

[marble laurel]

we will see

[celest lake]

ehh, I wouldn't be so sure

remember the s32x and megacd core both come with that 51% of the genesis core as a starting point

[glossy steppe]

So the old core is in the 32x and cd cores right?

So that means th emajority of those cores is the old genesis core?

[celest lake]

(it's not that straightforward but a good guestimation)

[glossy steppe]

Sounds like a 32xcd core with the old genesis core would be possible on de25 at least, but nuked in it's current form would be a tight squeeze to add anything to it

Defnitely would need optimization at some point

[celest lake]

it would need to be optimized

[glossy steppe]

Yeah, with optimization a nuked32x or nukedcd might be possible on the de10 even

[marble laurel]

maybe just merge core MegaCD and 32x without genesis part (cart and vdp of virtua racing)

[glossy steppe]

How? Both need the genesis to function

I know a few SegaCD games ran entirely on the SegaCD unit, but that dosen't mean most did

Hmm, how much space does VDP take? Yeah, it's for one game, we could axe that for a combined core or better 32x core since there is a better version of that game on 32x anyway

And that game does not work if you havea 32x plugged in anyway on real hardware

Shame the cores from what I understand have to be loaded as one piece, you can't load a genesis core and then only add in VDP to it if you play the Genesis version of Virtua racer

[celest lake]

I don't mean to be dismissive because I have the exact same questions and wonder the same stuff. But speculating without more familiarity is probably not a good idea. My hope is that SRG (or someone) has time to look at mega drive at some point and maybe comes up with a way to better optimize it and roll that stuff up into Mega Drive and 32x

Because Fahrenheit isn't going to play itself

[glossy steppe]

Yeah, at the very least I would love to see a more accurate genesis side to the 32x and cd, even if we can't get a 32xcd

[celest lake]

and the people need saving

[glossy steppe]

Especially if it can be done on a de10

Also funny that the 3DO keeps being brought up here, I was testing a FMV game that would not boot at all on the CD-I core, and that game was ported to the PSX and Saturn and DOS and many other systems.... but apparently, the best version... is on 3DO

XD

Though I hear the game itself sadly isn't that good, Brain Dead 13

Saturn and 3DO versions are the only two-CD versions IIRC, rest are 1 CD

Though the CD-I version requires the DVC card

Saturn version does not need the MPEG card

[safe trail]

Hey, here's an idea - if the 4K scaler can go onto a daughterbaord, we can potentially get rid of the ASCAL scaler in the cores and free up some space

[wide glacier]

genesis+scd+32x combo core would be a dream come true

[safe trail]

I think it's taking up something like 10-15% of the LEs

[leaden dagger]

I mean the easiest solution is to... well build an addon based on the ossc pro. It has analog out addons and all that So it can pass signal to Analog monitors AND digital monitors from the same signal It has adequate HDR and can go up to 1440p

and it can take Direct Video if I recall

[next bronze]

More like missing content and dialog scenes. Maybe censored was the wrong word since stuff like The World is still intact.

[leaden dagger]

and anyone else who wants a more powerful system can upgrade to the rt4kpro

[warped saddle]

we could but that's probably not going to happen. I can't see Sorg being down with removing the scaler and telling people 'go buy this pixelfx specific board'

'that probably costs nearly as much as the de10/de25'

mayyyybe he could be convinced to produce a mister i/o board with a smaller fpga on it and just use the mister scaler code in it, but even that feels like a lot of effort

[safe trail]

hahaha. I'm not saying to do that with all the cores. I'm saying that some cores might be possible that way, which otherwise wouldnt' be

Kind of like the dual-RAM situation

...At least if people are thinking that "25% more LEs is not a meaningful difference"

[warped saddle]

I don't think creating yet another alternative config for cores is a good idea either

[wide glacier]

just wait for the de-25 and move the scaler stuff to a digital i/o board

[safe trail]

Well, insofar as many developers say "disable the scaler and test on analog" for faster compiles, this external board would be nice.

Even if just as a development tool

I would buy one (I don't have RGB monitor)

but also, I think it could help diagnose if video signals weren't correct

[green pebble]

I think in those examples you are correct, but I believe in the Eurovision, you can undo the violence censoring if it’s not off by default

[leaden dagger]

This is why I suggested basing a scaler daughter board based off Open Source Scan Converter Pro, ridiculous as the suggestion still is. The design is open source as is the firm ware. So its not like one would have to make any deals, just appropriate attribution, right?

[warped saddle]

you might as well just use ascal.vhd at that point

also if you want to fully move the scaler off the main board mister, you are going to lose some features unless you come up with some way to share memory across the gpio

(morph 4k hat will have this issue too)

also the ossc pro uses a cyclone V, sooooo

[glossy steppe]

SLI DE10s it is then

[slate bluff]

Has there been any mention of using the Replay2 FPGA for Mi2Ter?

[celest lake]

No, that's the Replay2

[glossy steppe]

If it ever exists. I am really hoping it does, but am also very skeptical at this point.

Remember the whole mess with Mars?

[warped saddle]

I don't think it is really fair to put them in together. MikeJ wasn't on youtube making dreamcast videos

[glossy steppe]

Yeah, the Mars was... a whole can of worms, Replay2 is nothing like it in terms of that, just that it feels like it's been in the works for nearly a decade and still not even a picture of prototype hardware

If you type Replay2 in google the first result is a dev blog post from 2017...

There has been many updates since that, but I meant that it's been in development for a very long time with so far nothing to be seen of it

[wide glacier]

replay2 sounded really cool but the more i looked into it the less faith i have

i pop in their discord every now and then and every time it's just "almost done routing the board. oh wait i have to reroute this section"

on repeat for who knows how long

[glossy steppe]

Well, I see posts from 2024 saying how to board's design is almost done, and the latest update on the website is from June of this year saying how the board's design is almost done...

Which is a shame, because that thing looks amazing if it can become real

[hallow fossil]

The chances of it coming out and having things that can't be done on DE-25 Nano MiSTer 2 seems incredibly low at this point

[glossy steppe]

It supposedly would be capable of Dreamcast, I highly doubt the de-25 can do that considering just Saturn is maxing out the DE10's FPGA and the N64 had to cut sime parts out, and the 25 is just a little bigger

[wide glacier]

dreamcast isn't happening anytime soon no matter how big the next board is

[hallow fossil]

Yeah, anyone promising FPGA Dreamcast should be considered a magic bean salesman.

[glossy steppe]

I mean, I heard those same things about PSX or N64 on Mister a few years ago

[hallow fossil]

The DE-10 was the main issue there and it took an incredible Dev to pull it off on the board. The complexity of the Dreamcast is a bigger blocker.

[warped saddle]

imagine if it did happen how many times a week someone would show up and ask about the VMU

[glossy steppe]

What do you mean?

[warped saddle]

"will this core support the VMU games?" for eternity

[hallow fossil]

Imagine if someone does do it, and it isn't as good as playing on original hardware... Which can still be got and modded to play images and connect to a modern display easily and fairly cheaply...

[ancient surge]

It was a valid concern, since the hardware limitations of the DE-10 meant the more complex systems were going to be compromised in some way.

The goal of MiSTer is to replicate the original hardware as much as possible, so when you have to make sacrifices to make putting stuff like the Nintendo 64 and SEGA Saturn on MiSTer possible, it does feel counterproductive in a sense.

[hallow fossil]

I do hope someone does make a VMU core though, that is very doable on the DE-10 Nano.

Would be hard to take anyone serious who was taking about doing a Dreamcast core if they hadn't already done the VMU that could have been done years ago

[ancient surge]

Not expecting anything from the Dreamcast for at least another decade.

[warped saddle]

I don't think doing a VMU core is like some prerequisite for someone that wants to do a DC core

[ionic gate]

It doesn't really matter how "accurate" a core is from the get go, if someone is willing to put up the work, then the community could fine tune things to make it accurate.

[thorn pagoda]

is dreamcast really more complicated than saturn? it definitely has less chips

[wide glacier]

of course

the leap from saturn to dreamcast is astronomical

even if we got the replay2 or an equivalent board today, you wouldn't be playing dreamcast/naomi games on it for years

[thorn pagoda]

in performance yeah, but that comes mostly from higher clockspeeds, not complexity

[wide glacier]

are you at all aware of the difference between the sh2 and sh4 lol

[warped saddle]

and powervr

[thorn pagoda]

gpus tend to just be made of the same elements repeated a lot though

[wide glacier]

sh4 is not a gpu

[thorn pagoda]

i agree its very difficult, i just dont think its because of complexity

[radiant karma]

De25 nano could run Dreamcast, maybe using a hybrid emulation approach? CPU on arm cores, GPU on FPGA. Long shot perhaps, but not really impossible until someone tries and fails. Not really sure if that approach is actually worth it vs pure software emulation though.

[glossy steppe]

I am honestly hoping for a PocketStation core too, though I am guessing that is not possible to also have it run with the PSX core. Problem is that some games require the Pocketstation to run to perform whatever features they have on it

FF8 sadly is one of those

[glossy steppe]

Number of chips dosen't mean much, the CPU and GPU in the Dreamcast are considerably more complicated than anything gen 5, regardless of number of chips. Though the PS2 and later are also that much more considerably more complicated than the Dreamcast. There was very exponential progress in CPU and especially GPU development in that era. Though I still think Dreamcast on a more poweful FPGA is just barely within reason, beyond that though is pipe dream territory if you don't want to pay more for FPGA than you would a car.

[glossy steppe]

Stuff like that would defeat the purpose of using a FPGA, since you are still partionally emulating in software then. I recall this was preposed years ago for N64.

[wise brook]

the hi-spec dream list is DS,PSP, PS2 & DC. anything beyond that… just get a wii to run your GC games they cost a nickel

xbox original are common enough

as is 360/ps3 slim

and that’s the end of the analog era at that point

[radiant karma]

It could be worthwhile if you can get more accuracy out of it. As I recall it's the GPU part that's more difficult to get right using software emulation.

[glossy steppe]

I recall Robert talking about the possibility of DS on the Mars of all things, and that the FPGA's LEs would be too slow for the memory speeds or something like that, so I guess the DS isn't that crazy? Lack of a touchscreen could be a problem though

But even DC would be a N64/Saturn on DE10 level stretch, I highly doubt PS2 will happen

[warped saddle]

it was the bram, he needs a lot of bram for the DS

[wide glacier]

i don't think DS is too out-of-reach. iirc his proof-of-concept core was already performing quite well, and this was years ago

[glossy steppe]

Though the DS sold nearly as many units as the PS2 so it was't exactly hard to get, or hack, either

[wide glacier]

yeah but playing them with a better controller on a larger display is very welcome

i personally don't like gaming on handhelds, so it would be a big win for me

[glossy steppe]

I only use handhelds for their exclusives too, but the DS had two screens with one of them being a touchscreen, that's going to be a big issue even if a core gets made

[wide glacier]

i'll have to disagree. it might be cumbersome, but you could definitely map it to a mouse or a touchpad

[warped saddle]

your dualsense even has a built in touchpad!

[glossy steppe]

Imagine switching between a mouse and controller though

Especially with games that expect you to use the touchscreen while using the other controls

A touchpad doesn't let you see where specifically you are touching, it's also a different shape than the DS screen

[wide glacier]

could have some kind of on-screen cursor, like the nes/snes cores have for lightguns

there's plenty of ds games that make little to no use of the touchscreen as well fwiw

[hallow fossil]

I can't see DS looking great, as having both screens on a monitor, one above the other, means the top screen you primarily use for playing will be tiny. It will be 1/4 the size of your monitor/TV size.

[glossy steppe]

I mean, people have been able to stream DS and 3DS games, but yeah, it's not ideal

WiiU was ideal for it really

[hallow fossil]

Apparently DS works well via WiiU as you can have the top screen on your TV and the bottom screen on your Wii U pad, that sounds a really nice solution

[glossy steppe]

Though a bigger problem with DS not looking great is that IIRC it was lower res than the N64

Imagine that blown up on a modern TV without uprendering

Not like DS games used CRT effects

[wide glacier]

i've emulated ds games before, and you can set it up so that the screens are side-by-side rather than top-bottom. for games where it's imperative that both screens be on top of one another, you can use a monitor in tate/portrait orientation

[wide glacier]

the resolution of ds games is pretty close to older 240p titles; just have some black bars or borders and it looks fine. the gba is even lower res, but it looks fine when blown up

[glossy steppe]

Another slight problem with that is space between the screens. Some games that trreated the screens as one big one took into consideration that there was a gap between them, so if you put the screens directly on top of each other stuff in the middle will look off, others did NOT do this and having a gap would look off

[wide glacier]

most ds emulators give you the option to have a screen gap of varying size, so it's not an issue. ideally, a core would have the same option

[glossy steppe]

Just saying it's something you need to account for on a per-game basis

IIRC the DS Sonic games did that

[wide glacier]

so you would just enable or disable the gap as needed; no biggie

could have a database of what games work best with the gap

[glossy steppe]

Wonder if there would be a way to auto-do it from some sort of database

[wide glacier]

there must be if the n64 core is anything to go by

[glossy steppe]

Oh right, also there was the games where you held the DS like a book

I recall playing, thouhgh I never finished, some noir-like game where everything looked like pencil sketches

That made you hold the DS like that

[wide glacier]

hotel dusk?

[glossy steppe]

Sounds super familiar, likely that's it

I recall it had hotel in the name

[wide glacier]

looks like what you described

i forget if there was a sequel or not

[wise brook]

and a precursor on Saturn

[glossy steppe]

Yeah, this was it

It had a precursor on Saturn?

[wise brook]

also the art style of this DS game is what inspired the new Game Sack intro

[wise brook]

Blue Chicago Blues

it even has a fan translation

[glossy steppe]

Feels like a lot of DS games expiremented with artstyles, I loved that

Never heard of that, will definitely need to look into it, especially if it's about my hometown

Oh, it was released on several systems. Also apparently part of a series?

In fact, the first one in the series apparently also came out on DS

And the last one was DS exclusive XD

[small ore]

It does work really well for the games it supports, but the Wii U DS compatibility isn't great beyond them, and for games that used the dual screens as a combined large screen it's not a great mehanism. Using the gamepad on it's own for that kind of game also sucks since holding it horizontally means the screens are squished too small and holding it vertically is mostly unusable.

[wide glacier]

i think the only ds games that work reliably on a wii u are the ones released officially on the virtual console. everything else has to be injected, and compatibility is spotty

last i checked, super princess peach doesn't even boot

[small ore]

I believe the emulators are directly included in every individual virtual console release, and fine tuned specifically for the game they're bundled with, hence why compatibility is especially spotty for custom Wii U DS injections, which may have different compatibilities depending on which base game you injected into.

[elfin apex]

It's been a while since I've played any of them, but IIRC Last Window: The Secret of Cape West is a quasi-sequel (same protagonist but otherwise minimal plot connections), and the Trace Memory / Another Code games are technically in the same universe although it basically never matters.

[hearty marten]

Absolutely fantastic games. I hope they get a switch remake like the another code games did

I’m crossing my fingers and toes for that one

[bitter vector]

Talking DS/Wii U emulation - while I've not been able to try myself - I'm hearing Steam Deck can now be used as a replacement Wii U Gamepad. Knowing that I'm wondering if it could replace the Wii U entirely.

[marble laurel]

https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/Saturn_MiSTer/commit/db56bcec6dd4d1dd84b5d3c74c183faf4e71bed0

[warped saddle]

hold up let me go make an incompatible main change real quick

Saturn MiSTer core gets a HUGE update

[split heart]

So I don’t have to use the unstable test core anymore? (for right now)

Nice

[green swift]

I think Freddo’s comment on complexity is more about the fact that Saturn has like 8 chips all working together in a coordinated dance where timings are key in order to get a picture on the screen.

The Dreamcast has 2.

Complexity is more than the size and speed of the chips. Sometimes it’s the dance they do.

[wide glacier]

that's true but it doesn't change the fact that the sh4 is an order of magnitude more powerful and feature-rich than sh2

[green swift]

No doubting that.

[radiant karma]

DS is out of reach because of RAM/VRAM bandwidth, It uses like 8-9 independent rams. People are still complaining about dual ram on de10, wait until you need triple sdram on the de25. Just bring it.

[wise brook]

https://bsky.app/profile/zetsuboushita.bsky.social/post/3m2eecvx74k2t

絶望 -- わっしょい！// Questing against dragons in 2D (@zetsuboushita.bsky.social)

Le core Saturn est sorti en version stable il y a 2h.

Après des mois de travail pour srg320 & de tests en coulisses pour moi, qui nous ont épuisés mentalement.

Il reste des points à améliorer, ainsi que celeriyacon ayant sorti en privé une nouvelle suite de testroms.

Bluesky · Oct 4, 2025, 10:20 AM

The Saturn core was released in a stable version 2 hours ago.

After months of work for srg320 & behind-the-scenes tests for me, which exhausted us mentally.

There are still points to be improved, as well as celeriyacon having released a new sequel of testroms in private.

[ripe valley]

That's just some news for my friends, but thanks for the mention.

[upper dust]

After fixing my Saturn and testing it with a Fenrir for the past week, the Saturn core is practically indiscernible from real hardware.

Amazing work taking one of the sketchiest of consoles to emulate and making one of the best ways to experience the system.

[visual grove]

Saturn du fromage

[tawny forge]

MiSTer wins again!

[green swift]

Are both dual and single going to pushed as stable?

I haven’t keep up on the differences, does single still need a ram OC on some games?

[ancient surge]

Only the single RAM build gets pushed out.

[tawny forge]

I think Grandia still needs OC, but still doesn’t fix the flickering completely

[green swift]

Is there a list of games that benefit or need the OC? I might try to set a folder up or something for those games.

[celest lake]

Grandia, and anything based on the vf2 engine is how I catalog it in my head

it’s grandia, like 4 fighting games, and a rhythm game

[tawny forge]

I think the pinned tests spreadsheet have comments on the games that need OC

[visual grove]

I haven’t bothered to try with one or my dual ram mistercades since I haven’t put console stuff on them, but does vf2 play correct speed with dual? With single it’s a little slow without OC and a little fast with OC last I tried it when compared with Saturn.

[celest lake]

I can’t remember if VF2 is right with dual. I know that Doa and Fighting Vipers still have issues with dual (they are just fewer)

[tawny forge]

Will make my arriving 6th MiSTer Pi my first dual-RAM MiSTer

Gotta grab a second one soon 😌

[hearty marten]

It has arrived!

[wide glacier]

de-25 nano (or equivalent) will be very nice for us crt users, since we'll be able to have dual ram without sacrificing analog output

[hearty marten]

Triple RAM

[wise brook]

does that mean you noticed anything? even really insignificant details?

[upper dust]

Not really anything glitchwise or graphically. I don't have the most thorough of Saturn knowledge since I have only delved into the Saturn truly within the last 4 years.

BUT from a pure usability standpoint the MiSTer elevates the Saturn with it's save management, game format compatibility, and all of the MiSTer perks (HDMI, FTP, USB controllers, and you know all of the other consoles it plays, etc.)

Fenrir is nice, but I have one of those Action Replay with RAM carts, so it boots into that first, so you have to button past it (or flash it which I don't really want to do). I put Psuedo Saturn Kai for Fenrir on it as well for better save management, but you still have to make space quite often by dumping saves to the sd card. Finally, I had some issues getting some games to work since the Fenrir really wants separate bin cues, where the MiSTer works fine with almost all CHDs I've made

[ancient surge]

You can use direct video to get an analog signal.

[wide glacier]

yeah but compatibility is very hit-and-miss

having to mess with all manner of converters/adapters is no fun either

when it works, it's good. but again, it's spotty, at least in my experience

[green swift]

Careful. You’re going to really upset that guy that gets mad at people who own more than one MiSTer! 😮

[river wing]

Is there a dual RAM build of the release version?

[small ore]

Not if srg built the release himself for optimal timings, the closest would be in #unstable-nightlies or from the pins here

[river wing]

Hm, looking at the commit list on github, latest unstable should be the same as the latest release, right?

[small ore]

in terms of commits, yes, there were no changes since the last unstable

[river wing]

Ok, thanks 🙂

[glossy steppe]

Don't joke, at this rate I would not be surprised if it happened

[glossy steppe]

There are modern workstations with octo-RAM configuations, I say just og full octo-ram as a requirement for the next mister!

[glossy steppe]

Are you running dual or single ram?

[celest lake]

Honestly the biggest revelation here is that Zet is french

gonna take me a while to come to terms with my new reality

[green swift]

He could be one of those (🙄) Canadians.

😉

[rotund steeple]

Or Swiss!

[green swift]

Or Louisiana and just really loves the lineage.

[celest lake]

I can’t believe you would accuse Zet of larping. Have you no shame?

[glossy steppe]

I have a feeling many here would answer no

[ripe valley]

I only speak French fluently because I studied it at university and was able to work with video game researchers who spoke it as their language.

And I can speak other languages ​​more or less fluently. Like today, when I had to switch between Italian, German, Spanish and Japanese.

[wise brook]

my life is so boring and meaningless by comparison

[upper dust]

I have both. Single RAM is what I use mostly so I can do multi displays. I have a Dual RAM for taking to friends places for the 3D fighters that need it. There is no difference except just for those few games that run slow. Even Grandia on my single RAM is fine since I guess I have good DDR3

[glossy steppe]

NiGHTS has a lot of slowdown on single ram without turbo, burning rangers too

[wide glacier]

burning rangers is like "what if we crammed a dreamcast game onto the saturn"

[hearty marten]

Is this a recent change? Seemed to be fine the last time I tried (months ago)

[glossy steppe]

No idea, I tried a few weeks ago and it was like that

[polar mountain]

Saturnday!!!!

[naive whale]

Update all again?

Seems like its in devel

https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/Saturn_MiSTer/tree/main/releases

[safe trail]

Yeah, posts on the forum (which might not have been seen because of its recent AI attacks), and on Patreon. Looks like he finalized a release.

Not sure what is left to be solved though, but at least the current stable will be excellent

[ancient surge]

New tests were privately released, so he's likely going to be focusing on cleaning up edge cases again.

[safe trail]

Sounds good to me. Even PC Engine needs a release from time to time as minor things get fixed/added

[cursive tree]

Hope Sorgelig looks for the open issues for Sega CD next

[celest lake]

Three Dee Oooooh

[ripe valley]

You mean, srg320.

[celest lake]

I hope sorg looks at it too because the megacd unstable fixes the audio issues :p

[naive whale]

We can only hope

Looks like I’ve gotta do a Saturn video for 4 tomorrow now

[safe trail]

sorgelig and srg320 are not the same person.

[naive whale]

I mean have we ever seen them in the same room though? Could be the biggest ruse ever. Like Batman and Bruce Wayne

[safe trail]

I'm not buying it

[naive whale]

KunMan. MiSTer Kun the crime fighter lol

[cursive tree]

Yes, my bad

[cursive tree]

😞 my bad

[pearl harbor]

You needed a Saturnday to lift your spirits after that Saturday Cubs loss am I right? 😏

[hallow fossil]

It may make sense for srg320 to hold off on refactoring Mega CD until DE-25 Nano MiSTer is up and running, as my understanding is there is no room in the core to enable signal tap, which makes working on it much more arduous. Maybe he can refactor it for the DE-25 Nano and then port this back to the DE-10 Nano

[cursive tree]

Will De-25 nano replace the the De-10 for the Mister project? Is that a fact?

[hallow fossil]

It won't replace it, certainly not for many years until the DE-10 Nano is no longer made which won't be for a long time, and even then there are hundreds of thousands of them out there. The DE-25 Nano MiSTer will live along side DE-10 Nano MiSTer.

[naive whale]

yeahhhh not the best game one

you gonna get some tix @pearl harbor ? I am gonna grab one for game 3 unless its 0-2 and the Cubs could be done. Not dropping that kinda cash for a 50/50 chance of it sucking

[glossy steppe]

A third pillar, if you will.

[tawny forge]

It’s probably just the same as in real hardware. I tried to play Radiant Silvergun on my single ram MiSTer just recently and I felt it very laggy. Compared to an YouTube video and it was just the same

People are just getting used to turbo modes and forgetting how things were sluggish back then

[hearty marten]

We need @naive whale to do some comparisons on the laggy games

[cursive tree]

Hope that don’t become a Mega Drive - S32X - Saturn situation

[muted cradle]

Radiant Silvergun needs Fast Timings on Single RAM setups

[tawny forge]

Whoa! That's news to me! 😮

[inner kayak]

agreed. I suspect that initial DE-25 builds will just include all the debugging necessary to get diagnostics for, and potentially solve, some of the last 1% bugs

[pearl harbor]

Nah, I'd love to go, but I have a fear of crowded places these days because of my condition.

[safe trail]

The last 1% of bugs are often things we don't know about the original console. DE25 will not change that.

And initial DE25 builds are going to try to get the existing functionality to work

The tools are a bit different, the chips are a bit different... there are bound to be lots of issue to solve, just surrounding the existing designs

[hearty marten]

Do we even know that sorg is planning to adopt the DE25?

[thin snow]

One thing I noticed today on the new core is the intro to Sonic 3D Blast stutters in the beginning at spots on a single RAM build

[safe trail]

He's looking at it, but it will be months before a decision is made.
If you could, please respond to this question with that answer if/when you see it. I've repeated this nearly daily for a month now.

[hearty marten]

Of course. Thank you

And sorry that I haven’t already seen that. You’d think with the amount of time I spend on here, I might have 😅

[safe trail]

hahaha

It's always different channesl

I'm sure I'm not the only one saying this either

[celest lake]

Mr Fusion isn't working on my de25 nano. anyone else?

[tawny forge]

Core only works on dual-RAM setups now!

[glossy steppe]

I was making a cheeky sarcastic jab at how Nintendo claimed that the DS was a "third pillar" of product lines and not meant to replace the GBA, even though it did become a direct replacement for the GBA.

[muted cradle]

I guess that we might be better off without a MiSTer 2

Soo much manpower wasted to port stuff just to make it work again

[wide glacier]

i'll have to disagree. even though the de-25 nano isn't a super massive upgrade over the de-10 nano, i think it would be a welcome upgrade for both developers and gamers. the additional fpga space and extra ram would be great for the 5th-gen console cores (psx, saturn, n64), and might afford us some more arcade cores as well

[glossy steppe]

I mean..., this is Terasic's page about people reviewing the DE-25... https://www.terasic.com.tw/cgi-bin/page/archive.pl?Language=English&Cateogry=11&No=1365

[celest lake]

We don't know what the next gen mister is yet

[mighty zephyr]

Can confirm i get the same results but i am using chd for the rom tested with stable and unstable main, there is some slight stutters on the fmv intro. It seems like the fast timings option fixes the stutters.

[tawny forge]

Fast Timing default on wen

[mighty zephyr]

3DO core with fps boost wen

[hearty marten]

Well yes, but evaluating a board doesn’t necessarily mean adopting it

But dshadoff already clarified the situation

[inner kayak]

agreed, and for several of the N64 and other console bugs that are hard to catch in the act, we can't instrument the core at the same time as having something accurate that gets the game in the state where the bug (sometimes) happens. porting is non-zero work as well, but there are a few cores that will no longer have to choose between traceability/debuggability and base functionality. understanding what those games do timing-wise, then sometimes attempting to reduce those to a test suite case(s), get the test suite to pass on real hardware, etc. right now we're stuck earlier in that pipeline a lot of the time, as I'm sure you know 🙂

[safe trail]

Sure, every little bit counts

[split heart]

Is the current test core the latest or the update-all stable one the latest?

[hearty marten]

update_all stable is the latest

For maybe 24 hours 😅

[burnt matrix]

lol I thought the top left guy was Tommy Lee Jones

[naive whale]

That’s Tommy Lee Bones. He fux

[clear condor]

Alexey looks kind of like a young Bruce Wayne

[celest lake]

Lord, give me the strength to sort this fresh redump set into managable folders

[left chasm]

not sure what you're trying to do precisely, but could be the kind of thing you can use a bash script for? chatgpt etc seem decent at writing small bash scripts

[celest lake]

yeah that's not a bad idea. My brain worms decided it was time to maintain redump sets (rather than downloading them and assuming that was it). So I had to redownload the set, and now I need to put it in USA/Japan/etc folders

been doing it by hand for the other CD cores

but saturn is 2400 titles (which is only an appetizer for PSX's 10k)

I was futzing with mister organize but it is based on 1g1r, which is fine, but takes fiddling - may give that another try tho

[left chasm]

the approach of a folder that we just dump ROMs to, and some code figures out properties and organises data (via symlinks), is pretty nice. I used that sort of approach professionally for data engineering pipelines 😅 it allows you to not care about the data results, you can delete it and recreate it v quickly. As opposed to maintain the organised folders/symlinks directly.

So you just worry about 1) the source roms folder 2) the code working well.

One day you improve the code, you delete folders+symlinks and boom all gets created perfectly from scratch to that new/improved logic

curious if Taki's UI will make its own gamelist (recursively from a rom folder) and do this parsing, as opposed to exposing the filesystem again

[celest lake]

it will be interesting to see how he is doing a bunch of that stuff

Hopefully he does PRs so sorg can consider it for main (I have no idea if it makes sense for main or not - but it would be nice to have the conversation)

[warped saddle]

there's nothing to PR, his thing is a completely separate program

[celest lake]

ahh ok. I thought he was positioning it as something to replace the menu

[warped saddle]

I mean yes, but he's running a framebuffer based executable to do it

main is still sitting there running as far as I know

regardless, mister main using the filesystem was a purposeful decision so that is unlikely to change

[celest lake]

ahh yeah, I guess I was more thinking the UI portion - I didn't expect any of the filesystem stuff would be looked at

[warped saddle]

that UI won't work over VGA

soooo

like however Taki has that setup to run on boot, you'll just do that on your mister if you want it

[celest lake]

oh I thought he had it working on CRT

I really should watch videos

too busy sorting roms

[warped saddle]

I dunno does he? the framebuffer doesnt' work on CRT unless you use vga_scaler

[left chasm]

there is a crt in that video

[warped saddle]

and he was talking about how the rendering at 1080p@60 was gllitchy, and that's not a CRT resolution

[left chasm]

https://youtu.be/a7ER1rDxXTA?t=1126

sorry going off topic btw, I mentioned this wrt to worrying about parsing and organising these saturn rom files, or whether the UI backend would handle metadata from filenames (so not needing to organise dirs)

[warped saddle]

yeah, the only way to do that is probably vga_scaler for menu core, or the direct_video trick

vga_scaler probably fine as long as the user knows wtf they are doing. lots of 'oops, sent 1080p to my crt' potential there

[craggy horizon]

I see update_all pulled down Saturn_20251003.rbf but not Saturn_DualSDRAM_20251003.rbf. From where can I download the corresponding stable dual SDRAM core?

[mortal mist]

#unstable-nightlies message

[craggy horizon]

The latest unstable is dated 20250927, not 20251003.

[mortal mist]

and there is no stable dualsdram distro

[mortal mist]

but have same content

[craggy horizon]

Okay, thanks. I wish this versioning convention were clearer or more consistent.

[craggy horizon]

Why not?

[mortal mist]

Every project aims to work with single SDRAM.

The rest is up to the boss 🙂

[hallow fossil]

Is the stable release the same as that last unstable with the .sys update?

[small ore]

There were no new commits between last unstable and stable release

[celest lake]

yes, should be

[craggy horizon]

The md5sums are different though. Different builds?

[celest lake]

yes

[small ore]

Probably compiled by srg to ensure it met timings for a stable release

[celest lake]

SRG likely built a bunch and grabbed the best fit

[hallow fossil]

I was wondering if thepsylon changed how unstable works, so it doesn't run off unstable if stable is released

[craggy horizon]

To what are you referring?

Does update_all now have the ability to fetch the latest unstable cores so I can stop having to do it by hand?

[hallow fossil]

There was discussion a couple of weeks ago about unstable nightlies potentially changing to not run off a build if identical to stable, but I don't think anything has changed there (yet)

[hallow fossil]

You can add a line to your download ini to grab all the unstable builds

[craggy horizon]

oh you mean on the github CI side?

[craggy horizon]

Say what now? A hidden setting not exposed by the update_all configuration menu?

[craggy horizon]

I'm not seeing how/where to do this in downloader.ini. Can you point me to whatever magic entry I need to add or change?

[hallow fossil]

I don't have the line handy, I am sure someone will though, but you just paste it into the bottom of your .ini, same with adding other DBs not in update all

[celest lake]

[unstable_nightlies_folder] db_url = https://raw.githubusercontent.com/MiSTer-unstable-nightlies/Unstable_Folder_MiSTer/main/db_unstable_nightlies_folder.json

[craggy horizon]

OMG, that is going to save me SO much hassle and time. Thank you!

I wish this were documented somewhere obvious.

[hallow fossil]

It is a power user feature, there is a barrier to entry as there is a risk if it were easy then you would wind up with more special MiSTer users complaining about and logging bugs against unstable builds, not realising... they are unstable builds

[craggy horizon]

But even power users need documentation.

[serene epoch]

Agree, I could’ve used this too.

I ended up grabbing a script that installs the unstables, which works, but this is probably easier.

[craggy horizon]

What would be really nice is if update_all would also automatically symlink all the unstable cores into their respective top-level folders (_Console, _Computer, etc.) so I wouldn't need to keep doing that manually. I don't want to have to go look in some other folder to see if there's a newer unstable version of a stable core I'm about to launch; I always want to use the latest.

[celest lake]

that script basically just runs downloader with that line (I got it from the script).

I feel like it is documented somewhere, but i cannot remember where

[serene epoch]

Ah, gotcha

[craggy horizon]

Thus why I said "somewhere obvious" 🙂

I think it's already abundantly clear to any user (other than those who wouldn't be deterred anyway due to sheer stupidity) that these cores are unstable, given that they all get pulled into a folder named _Unstable and all have unstable in their name. I think the chance of any confusion there is about 0.00000%

[celest lake]

well I think it assumes some level of github savviness because that folder is kind of a mess and most folks probably shouldn't be using it. The repo is here https://github.com/MiSTer-unstable-nightlies

[celest lake]

Someone's never worked in support :p

but no, that folder is a mess. there are builds in there that are older than their stable counterpart

it really is only for people who don't want to download the cores from the unstable-nightlies channel and don't mind having to dig through a folder 70% full of outdated stuff

(I am one of those people)

[craggy horizon]

Note: that db/folder is missing the ST-V cores

[celest lake]

it shouldn't be

let me run it again

[craggy horizon]

OH, I see what happened

/media/fat/cores is a folder symlink

[celest lake]

no wait, you may be right...

[craggy horizon]

so ../_Unstable/ is not a valid relative path from inside the "cores" folder

So relative symlink to ../_Unstable/ST-V_whatever doesn't work from inside /media/fat/cores

[celest lake]

no wait, they do come down (I was on the wrong mister that doesn't have the unstable nightlies repo)

[craggy horizon]

Yeah, sorry for that false alarm.

[pale estuary]

Boy I wish the ps1 and Saturn cores didn’t enable their deinterlacing in direct video mode.

[warped saddle]

they don't?

make sure you don't have the playstation 'sync 480i for hdmi' option turned on

[safe trail]

I'm translating the PC-FX video display compositor/palette controller document now, and yes, it also has interesting sections on various types of interlace/non-interlace modes

[pale estuary]

I haven’t checked the ps1 code but the Saturn core seems to have weave permanently on regardless of output

[warped saddle]

I have it connected to a morph via dv and it detects the incoming signal as 480i

[pearl harbor]

The only options are weave and bob. But you can use the video processing options to create a pretty solid deinterlacing effect. I just set the "Intl filter" option to GS_Sharpness_005" from the "Upscaling - Recommended" set.

[pale estuary]

I just want an off option

[pearl harbor]

Well I don't think that can exist? The original hardware played those games interlaced. The MiSTer isn't a retrotink 4K.

[pale estuary]

yes, but the mister shouldn’t be deinterlacing the output in direct video though. I want the external scaler to

[pearl harbor]

Isn't it the external scaler's job to do that? And not the MiSTer's job?

[pale estuary]

that’s what I’m saying

[pearl harbor]

Weave is just basically interlacing.

I guess I'm confused what it is you're trying to do.

[pale estuary]

but the mister is sending weaved output to the scaler. Which can’t be properly deinterlaced

[pearl harbor]

Isn't that the scaler's job though?

What kind of scaler are you using?

[pale estuary]

the scaler cannot properly deintelrace an input that already has weave on it

retrotink 4k and Morph

Saturn core built in deinterlacing is processed to these scalers.

[pearl harbor]

It was always my understanding that retrotink 4K did exactly that?

[pale estuary]

It can deinterlace a raw signal. It can’t deinterlace an already deinterlaced input

[pearl harbor]

I must misunderstand what it does then. But I've seen people use it as a deinterlacer.

[pale estuary]

the mister core is sending it as weave or bob. Not raw

[warped saddle]

I literally just tested it, it is not

[pearl harbor]

I guess I always thought that weave basically was raw.

[warped saddle]

the deinterlacing only applies to the scaler

[pale estuary]

Then turning it to Bob or weave should have no effect on output, but it does

[pearl harbor]

Am I tripping here? Is weave not just the raw interlacing?

[pale estuary]

weave is a form of deinterlacing.

[pearl harbor]

It looks interlaced as heck to me!

[warped saddle]

bob and weave do not change anything for me over DV

make sure you dont' have vga_scaler on

[wise brook]

https://tenor.com/view/dexter-james-doakes-erik-king-stare-staring-gif-1343162792415382650

[pale estuary]

it’s not on.

[wise brook]

when bro is trolling but you can’t prove it

[warped saddle]

post your ini

[upper dust]

just tried here and same as zakk - toggling does not affect the crt but does affect the hdmi output (using analog io board)

[wise brook]

i have a crt that can de-interlace

it’s an option on some B&O

[upper dust]

for psx if you turn on sync 480i for HDMI is does affect a CRT, but that should be used for hdmi only setups

[glossy steppe]

Does this just keep adding to the unstable folder or does it delete the previous unsable if there is a new one?

[wise brook]

nah, clears out the old

[glossy steppe]

How do you even Symlink something on the mister SD card? I thought Symlinks are not a feature in FAT32/exFat?

[warped saddle]

mister has mister-specific exfat driver that supports symlinks

[glossy steppe]

Would that cause problems if I plugged that card into a windows machine after creating symlinks?

[warped saddle]

no

the symlink files are just normal files with the system and hidden flags set

[glossy steppe]

I see, so it's like the equivaklent of a LNK file for windows?

[warped saddle]

you can't create or see them on a windows machine, but it won't cause problems

[glossy steppe]

Can't see them? Even if I have hidden and system files set to be visible?

I know they won't work as symlinks on windows

[warped saddle]

I mean, you can see them if you do that, sure

[celest lake]

FWIW, I also am not seeing any de-interlacing with DV and the Mister > Morph

[glossy steppe]

Where can I find out about how to use these symlinks?

[warped saddle]

ln -s

it's just a normal unix symlink

[glossy steppe]

Time to read up on creating symlinks in linux then XD

[left chasm]

Users shouldn’t have to know about them. But I’ve created problems for myself with for instance sync tools with them (eg FreeFileSync doesn’t copy symlinks properly by default iirc)

(Taking a while to diagnose issues back to it)

[warped cliff]

Whew, now I don't feel so bad in the moments when I misunderstand a broadly understood concept. In theory, a raw interlaced signal does weave one frame after another, but the deinterlace setting does it in a way that a progressive signal is output. So it'll look interlaced as heck despite being a progressive signal

[warped saddle]

it looks interlaced in motion

[glossy steppe]

I'm probably doing things that are probably going come back to bite me one day because I don't fully understand them, like sshing into my mister to run update_all when I don't feel like turning on my tv

[warped saddle]

you won't really be able to tell on static scenes. bob will not look interlaced in motion but it jitters on static

[glossy steppe]

I always forget if it's ./ /. .\ or \. to run a script

... stupid discord control codes

[warped cliff]

I typically like to use blend on rt4k. It makes it a little blurry, but it pairs nicely with scanlines

[visual grove]

Analog output and dv with 480i content displays as 480i on CRTs from Saturn core unless something changed. (Haven’t updated in a while) Looks awesome, Saturn in 480i is

[pale estuary]

I just checked saturn on the new core and it seems to not be sending the deinterlacing over...it did on my old core. When i set it to bob in dv1 mode, the health bars in vf2 would would start shaking badly.

[celest lake]

yeah, sorry, the old stable did have that (it's been out of the unstable for a couple of months now)

Old bob was system wide iirc (Zakk knows better) and couldn't be disabled. New bob is not and can

[slow osprey]

For those with dual ram, is it best to still use the latest unstable? I assume the stable is single ram.

[celest lake]

yes and yes

[pale estuary]

the new stable just came out though

prior stable was from june I think? and that had bob sending over when enabled.

[obsidian herald]

Oh interesting. Does that project publish the methodology for divining 1g1r at all? I don't see it in the GH repo.

[celest lake]

I don't think so. I read somewhere it was based on the hearto 1g1r set

[obsidian herald]

I dream of someone maintaining a really good 1g1r ROM dat so I don't have to figure out how to

Ah that's what I'm using

Which is great but many of the sets are out of date.

[celest lake]

Yeah, I don't know if they are maintaining the set or not

[obsidian herald]

They just seem to be point-in-time one shots, which I totally understand and am very thankful for. I was just spoiled by Retool

[celest lake]

yes, they are definitely snapshots

[craggy horizon]

For the folks discussing the PITA that is manually curating a full ROM set: I've been working on a Python-based command line tool for auto-bulk-curating ROMs based on well-known worldly data (lang/local/region/power standard, and how they all interrelate), ROM naming/tagging codes/conventions/syntax, and user preferences. The idea is to enable it to make intelligent choices such as "only include ROMs release in the USA, or in English, or in countries likely to use English, or that have been fan-translated into English, and only include the latest version of any given ROM or fan translation, and prefer USA over World over Europe over other regions, and prefer NTSC over PAL, otherwise no hacks allowed", etc. The idea is that you can run it against a giant folder tree of ROMs and get a "keepers" folder curated per your preferences. It's not done and not published anywhere, but I'm maybe about 70% done with it. There's definitely a need for a cross-platform tool like this that's FAST and accurate, and I wasn't able to find anything that did everything I wanted, so this will.

[obsidian herald]

Super interested in it. Retool was great for this, and AFAIK at this point it's just the romlists that aren't being updated for all the weird corner cases (Which version of Sega Rally should you include, etc).

Or my favorite: which version of Auto Modellista for Gamecube should be the right one for English speakers? The one that was released in the US with the terrible driving model or the PAL one with the Japanese driving model and English support?

If you ask me, it's the PAL one, but there is no right answer.

Maybe you like the US handling model.

[craggy horizon]

At the end of the day, a set of general rules and user preferences/priorities won't handle every weird case you can dream up, so later on I plan to add support for a user-supplied whitelist, and also some kind of data input file that contains the mappings between the different literal titles in different regions or languages that are actually the same game.

That way each user of the tool can have their own special cases list that it will always honor.

But the Commodore 64 ROMs have been a fun testing case. When the same game was released on cartridge, cassette, and floppy, you likely want it on cartridge to avoid loading times.

[obsidian herald]

Have you looked at Retool? AFAIK it does a lot of what you describe

[craggy horizon]

When a game spans multiple floppies, it might use double-sided floppies or not. Some naming conventions use "Disk 2 Side A/Disk 2 Side B", some use "Disk 2 Side 1/Disk 2 Side 2", some just use "Side 1/Side 2/Side 3/Side 4", and some just use "Disk 1/Disk 2/Disk 3/Disk 4"... so my code needs to parse and handle all of those different naming conventions in a consistent way.

[obsidian herald]

(Not trying to discourage you from writing your tool, just might save you some energy if some of the basic stuff was done already)

[craggy horizon]

Pretty sure I did, though I can't remember it off the top of my head. I obviously went looking pretty hard for something that did everything I wanted and did it correctly, and runs on both Windows and Linux, but wasn't able to find anything that didn't suffer from glaring shortcomings.

As a software engineer, I'm keenly aware of the fact that the best code is the code you never have to write at all 🙂

Another thing that would be super useful is a database of all known "adult content" / "kid inappropriate" titles, so my code could identify those for exclusion as well. It's embarrassing af when you build a RetroPie or multicade for someone to enjoy with their kids and suddenly they run across yet another strip mahjong game you didn't catch.

There's no reliable ROM filenaming notation/code for it afaict, nor have I found a database that clearly indicates such titles.

[obsidian herald]

Yeah sorry I hope that didn't come across critical, I'm super excited that someone is working on a tool like this!

[wide glacier]

saturn library isn't super huge, or it's at least smaller than the playstation's. i just watched a video cataloguing every game and curated the ones that looked fun to me

[obsidian herald]

Yeah tools like this are for the weirdos like me who want to be able to dig through the whole library

[craggy horizon]

No, it didn't come across that way at all.

[obsidian herald]

Does GameID help with tools like this? It seems like for some systems it might help deduplicate games, but I don't know enough about how it's implemented (and if it's only relegated to CD based games or what)

I've always wondered about that but haven't come across the answer myself.

[left chasm]

Maybe we need a new thread, but also very interested in this. I was at the stage of testing different datasets of games for the types of filters/searches I’d like to do (to then manage ROM sets and discover new games), and prepared a db schema for an app on this. Of the sources I found and tested, only MobyGames covered the majority of the queries.

I looked at a bunch of ROM managers to avoid doing it, but none covered what I wanted too

[obsidian herald]

Seems like there would be a non-zero amount of crossover in the MiSTer community and the 1G1R enjoyers community.

[celest lake]

that's kinda what the htgdb packs are

Kinda

[obsidian herald]

I've just convinced myself that hearto's packs are perfect. Sometimes if I lie to myself enough the bad voices go away.

hearto also publishes the methodology used to create those packs which is very nice of them.

[glossy steppe]

I just hand-pick download the games I want, my SDcard is too small for any type of fullset of a disk-based console

.... except Jaguar CD

[glossy steppe]

The problem with a concept like 1G1R, what if games significantly differed betwen regions?

[obsidian herald]

Yeah that what I was saying re: Auto Modellista

There isn't really a way to be "right" about a 1G1R list, but software that could get someone in the ballpark would be nice.

I started to write a python script that would just iterate through a ROM directory and try to group ROMs together and ask the user which one they want to keep and have quick links to stuff like the Cutting Room Floor and Sega Retro to be able to start researching.

[glossy steppe]

Not sure what changed in that game, never played it

But there were games that were completely changed in appearance, such as Pandemonium the Japanese version had completely edited graphics and FMVs

US vs Japanese version

And then there are games like Ace Combat 3 which is technically the game game,but had a ton of content stripped out, so much so that the Japanese version is 2 disks and the US version 1

[small ore]

Can't sleep, clown'll eat me

[glossy steppe]

Wasn't just the FMVs, was visuals in-game were changed though evne though the level layouts and gameplay is 100% the same

[hearty marten]

That’s a huge difference!

[glossy steppe]

Technically, that's a court jester. 🤓

[hearty marten]

That’s USA vs Japan?

[glossy steppe]

Yup, name was changed too

US was called Pandemonium, Japanese version is called Magical Hoppers

[hearty marten]

I knew about the name and cutscenes, but not the levels

[glossy steppe]

Yeah the levels are the same, to the point where I assume you can probably record inputs on one and play them back on the other, but the visuals were changed

[hearty marten]

It was pandemonium in Europe too

[glossy steppe]

no comment

😉

This also happaned in reverse with Prism Land

Name and visuals changed in the US ... IIRC twice

Called Sorcerer's Maze

[river river]

This can make a 1g1r set for you
https://github.com/emmercm/igir

[glossy steppe]

1G1R can also be an issue if you need to patch a game and the patch only works on a specific revision

like Princess Crown

.... or games that even had some content changed between revisions like Ocarina of Time

At the same time though, it is annoying to scroll throuhg like 10 entries of essentially the same game

[celest lake]

i need a script that sorts by regions, puts demo disks in a demo folder, protos in a proto folder, hacks, in a hacks folder, and whatever is not the latest (rev) in a revisions folder

IS THAT SO HARD

probably not

[glossy steppe]

Heh, I just settled for getting no-intro sets and tossing betas/protos into a "beta" folder

[celest lake]

i just need to talk to claude about it

[glossy steppe]

Or at least tried

But seems my scripts missed some

Also there really should be sets (at least for disk games) with a "No yearly sports games" option, because who is seriusly going to play somethig like Madden 95 or NFL 96 on a PSX in 2025?

Those can take a lot of space though in some sets

[celest lake]

https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/N64_MiSTer/issues/28 (not a CD system but why it can be important to have all the sports)

[glossy steppe]

Oh, I meant for people who just want a set to play games, not for testing of course

Also for disk games, since gen5 and earlier cart roms aren't really going to take that much more space by having those in there

Then again, my "hand picked" set of games have 25 duplicates due to fan translations alone, so I guess I am not one to talk

[obsidian herald]

Yeah it's partially a space saving thing but more of a "I want to go through a list of every game on this system, how do I make the list as small as possible" for me.

I don't really go through every game but my friends and I go through a LOT of them as a group, mostly we pick by people shouting names they see on the screen that sound interesting.

Like Air Management 96

[river river]

igir actually has options for filtering demos, prototypes and such

Looks like it even has a --prefer-revision switch
Edit: although that's the inverse of what you're after

[celest lake]

I'm going to see if my good friend Claude can cook something up

to my very refined specifications 💅

[river river]

fwiw the maintainer of igir is very open to feature requests

[celest lake]

hmmmm

[craggy horizon]

IGIR is one of those tools that tries to be and do too much. I just need something that takes a folder full of ROM files and curates them based on my preferences. I don't need it to try to be a complete scanner, archive manager, set builder, or renamer. There are already other fine tools for those things. I just need something that can keep only the stuff I care to keep and move everything else into a "not curated" folder. That's what I've been working on.

[burnt matrix]

Ok I posted the news blurb

[craggy horizon]

It's just an inordinately complex problem space due to so many inconsistencies in ROM filenaming tags/codes/conventions.

And due to there being so many prioritized layers to my preferences.

Example: MegaMan Wily Wars for MegaDrive was released in English, but only in Europe, so only as PAL. In that case, I prefer to take either a Japanese version that's been fan translated to English, or the hacked version of the European version that runs at 60Hz.

[river river]

Its seems like perhaps its working the oppositie of how you think? It does have a move option, but its moving the things you care about into another folder, then leaving behind the stuff you don't

[winter phoenix]

Here’s a new thing to play on the core: https://www.segasaturnshiro.com/2025/10/06/vbt-releases-beta-port-of-mac-cd-flashback-for-sega-saturn/

[formal barn]

If you're on Windows, you can try my organization PowerShell script. I may have missed some regions, they may not be 100% correct but it works good enough for me. It will sort into folders - NTSC-U, NTSC-J, PAL, Demo, Prototype, etc. It looks for specific words inside the parenthesis of the filename for the specific tag - (USA), (Japan), (Demo), etc, and ignores the different revision tags - (Rev 1), (1S), etc. It's not perfect but give it a try if you want. https://github.com/kevh182/Rom_Organization_Scripts

[static jetty]

Question, with the Saturn / stv cores single vs dual ram, how does update all know which to pull? I have a dual ram setup and wanted to pull the dual version every time there is a new one? Is there somewhere this can be set? Thanks 👍

[warped saddle]

update_all/downloader only grabs single ram versions

[craggy horizon]

For ST-V, you have to rename or symlink the DualSDRAM core file to the form ST-V_YYYYMMDD.rbf in order for MiSTer's MRA launching logic to actually find and use it when launching any ST-V arcade game. Same goes for unstable ST-V builds.

[wise brook]

huh, ive never done that, but have deleted the single-sd version. it still worked

[warped saddle]

symlinking it means the updater wont' decide to redownload it

[nova pasture]

Also got a quick question 😬 i know the stable version that just came out fixes the whole saving issue but does it support SNAC or is that still only the unstable core?

[burnt matrix]

Latest stable is latest everything

It only supports SNAC if the core senses your true devotion to the Saturn

https://tenor.com/view/segata-sanshiro-nod-yes-gif-5612081

[tawny pendant]

I never even knew a Mac version existed! While the game plays, unfortunately the music is all messed up in the cutscenes.

[obsidian herald]

Oh cool does the script ignore symlinked items? I run patched BIOS for the PSX core and was having trouble with update all swapping them out for me.

[warped saddle]

update all shouldn't overwrite bios files now, I don't think

but it doesn't ignore symlinks, but the way it works is it won't overwrite existing files even if they are different than the distributed one

so if you don't want Saturn_234234234.rbf and want to replace it with something else, just symlink/copy it to that filename

wont' get overwritten until the next time there's a release for that file

[burnt matrix]

You can symlink or you can just rename that file to whatever is the one from update_all and replace it.

Like for latest unstable rbf files, I just rename them to the latest stable core and problem solved

[obsidian herald]

Strange I wonder why mine overwrote the BIOS files a while back.

I assumed it was looking at the MD5 hash or something.

File names are the same. I literally patched the BIOS files that came from update_all

Mysteries!

[celest lake]

I just rename the file because linux is witchcraft and my religion forbids it

[small ore]

update_all specifically makes mention that it didn't update BIOS files, and lists the ones it didn't because they're custom, at the end of running it

[glossy steppe]

Patched for Memcard Pro?

[obsidian herald]

Yes

[obsidian herald]

It's entirely possible that I misread the text then, my reading comprehension is like that of a 3rd grader.

[rotund steeple]

The new Flashback port is nice, but it looks like this reminisence version uses a horrible software filter.

[mortal mist]

please try if Astal works ok , I may need to make a few additional tweaks

https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/Saturn_MiSTer/issues/475

[wise brook]

was it confirmed what the normal behavior of the music - when played from a disk - was?

[mortal mist]

"On the original disc, you have a quick silence & just a "dun" sound, no repetition of the first music sample."

[wise brook]

interesting

another example of the MiSTer core now being more accurate than a original Saturn with an optical drive emulator @winter phoenix

[winter phoenix]

oh?

[wise brook]

cause i always thought it was just a bug(!) with the game

[wise brook]

https://tenor.com/view/oh-yeah-oh-yeah-gif-oh-yeah-meme-kool-aid-kool-aid-man-gif-18211119326397565445

you love to see it

[winter phoenix]

good stuff!

[ripe valley]

These are the kinds of details we are now looking for in the core.

[upper dust]

Wow awesome! I did get the sound skipping with a Fenrir too

[thorn pagoda]

Someone should let the fenrir dev know maybe they can learn from the fix

[glossy steppe]

ODEs generally make use of a CPU or FPGA to emulate at least part if not the entirety of the CD system, so yeah, it's not that all surprising to hear that they can introduce bugs that are not there if you're playing the same game off disc on an unmodified system. We really should be confirming hardware behavior off disk rather than ODEs, especially ones like Saroo which employs many hacks to get the games to run

[wide glacier]

saroo is good for observing general game behavior but when it comes to the nitty-gritty stuff like smaller audio and graphical glitches, testing on original drives and discs is definitely the best

[ripe valley]

That's why I discard the SAROO at least on my tests.

[wise brook]

i too won’t Saroo.

but i draw the line at burning 2000 cd-r

[ripe valley]

I know indirectly the creator of the Fenrir, if we need to talk a little bit later.

[ripe valley]

Way worse, with heavy stuttering after added too.

[wide glacier]

in it's defense, i do think the saroo is very good, especially for the cost. compatibility can be greatly improved by editing the config file, the faster load times are a godsend in many games, and it makes saving game data easier than ever

[ripe valley]

kuba-j left me some instructions for retesting Astal. I'm in a unplanned rush right now and will get back later today.
I apologize for the delay.

[tawny forge]

Any drawbacks about using fast timings all the time on single?

[muted cradle]

Probably. Some things are overclocked to compensate for RAM timing delays.

[ripe valley]

Glitches and some games refused to work correctly.

But I didn't kept a specific list.

[burnt matrix]

If you use MGLs to launch games, you could do a “setname same dir” option to launch the game with a unique core config that turns on fast timings for the handful of games that need it

[green swift]

^ That is a great idea

That wouldn't mess with the bog standard config if one were to save settings in the Saturn Menu while playing one of those boosted games?

[visual grove]

Robby hearts MGL

MGL stands for Mr Garcia-Lago afterall

[wide glacier]

i need to start booting all of my games via mgl. thank you for showing me the light robby

[burnt matrix]

That’s how I do it because I am a crazy man lol

Also because I didn’t want to fiddle with settings to play games lol. So I’ve got my light-gun games with that controller option on, WonderSwan set to be vertical, etc,

[hearty marten]

Databases!

[glossy steppe]

Wish there was a way to set per-game settings other than having to create an MGL for each game

But that would require heavy rewrites of the main

[burnt matrix]

Yah, that’s what the CD32 stuff ended up having to do

A unique core config/gamma/filter/shaman file per game lol

[cosmic heath]

Anybody else still having slowdown issues with Thunder Force 5 on the Saturn?

I just wanted to see if srg320 was aware

It’s been reported on before by me I just wanted to check back

[ripe valley]

Single or dual RAM ?
We tested it ourselves (at least I did – 3 levels) and didn't notice any slowdowns, other than those already present in the original game.

[burnt matrix]

I was going to ask if we were able to cross check those slowdowns against real hardware first,

[ripe valley]

I'm always open if I forgot to check or didn't see something different from original game behavior.

[floral saddle]

We checked that a few months back, slowdowns were accurate to real hardware, at least on dual ram they were.

[burnt matrix]

@cosmic heath ^

[floral saddle]

And by we I mean I was sceptical of a couple of points of slowdown being accurate too and Zet and srg320 showed they were. Didn't mean to take credit for others hard work....

[cosmic heath]

Hmm okay . It’s strange though because I use a model 2 Saturn with a terraonion mode installed and it ran flawlessly

With mister the slowdowns are everywhere mainly when big things happen on screen and yes I use the Dual Ram build as well

[floral saddle]

In that case the best thing you can do is raise the issue on github detailing the differences and when they occur so srg320 can look into it.

[cosmic heath]

I’ll take note of that for sure thanks again everyone

[celest lake]

yeah, if you have video you can share, that would be super helpful. This is the the type of stuff Zet and SRG live for 🙂

[burnt matrix]

Ok I’m not going to get over my ignorant biases here so help me but doesn’t using an ODE have an impact in how games are loaded and could have unintended side effects?

[ripe valley]

That's possible and we saw some differences in a recent past.

[thick oriole]

Yes, it can. There are a few games using a Fenrir that can act a little weird if you don't hard reset, and I believe MODE for Saturn use has even more quirks than that.

[burnt matrix]

Oh ok thanks for answering that both of you

[thick oriole]

It's not totally feasible, but the only way to be absolutely sure is to use a disc, whether real or CD-R.

[burnt matrix]

Yeah that’s the reality, but it’s good to know that people are aware of potential differences if they exist

[cosmic heath]

I wasn’t aware of that I apologize

[burnt matrix]

Don’t apologize! Using an ODE may not have any side effect with this game.

And it’s awesome you mentioned it

Like @thick oriole said, it’s just going to be reality for like 99% of the people testing, but knowing there is a potential in a side effect is all that matters

I mean you could have 100% original hardware with a bad disc drive and that could have side effects too

[cosmic heath]

That is true

Well there’s always the PSX version I can play on the mister so it’s not a biggie. Just thought I’d help out with the core.

[burnt matrix]

Yeah and that’s awesome you’re doing it. If there’s a ticket out there and you’ve got availability it would be awesome to get to it feedback on it. Everything helps!

To be blunt you’re helping more than me, I just shit post here lol.

[thick oriole]

Yeah, it's just a bunch of edge cases. Most stuff runs just fine and accurately with an ODE.

Nothing to apologize for, for sure!

Please, test, just note what you're using, most folks will know if an ODE has a quirk with certain games at this point.

(I should also be testing more, but I just usually lurk and read updates here, haha.)

[ripe valley]

Yes, please test, always better to have multiple people verifying.

[glossy steppe]

Yes

[cosmic heath]

Absolutely man anytime

[winter phoenix]

Saves are working again for MiSTer users who use the main branch of the Saturn core after it was updated over the weekend — here's what happened and what else is fixed:

https://www.segasaturnshiro.com/2025/10/08/saturn-core-update-on-main-mister-branch-fixes-saves/

[thick oriole]

It still blows my mind how good this core is now.

srg320 is a dang wizard.

Not to mention all the folks here that help him out. Thank you for all that y'all do.

[obsidian herald]

It's even more impressive when you consider how far behind pure-software emulation for Saturn has been compared against other 5th gen consoles.

[glossy steppe]

Yeah, software saturn emulation has been poor for a while

Though ymir is going great

The saturn core still has issues with single-ram though in some of my favorite games 🙁

[obsidian herald]

Yeah it's finally getting to the point where the software emulation is getting decent as well, which is great. More options means more people get to enjoy the library.

But this core is truly a work of art.

For testing games on CDs, I’ll admit I haven’t burned a CD in like 10 years. Are there settings / gotchas I should be aware of when burning to ensure the test CD burns properly and doesn’t exhibit any weirdness? I assume it either works or it doesn’t but figured I would ask the experts.

[thorn pagoda]

usual advice is burn slow

in my experience its more like, burn at whatever speed your burner is best at, which seems slightly random

[sinful reef]

Use CD-Rs only, no RWs, use a decent disc drive, and a program such as Alcohol 120% which uses DAO writing method. Also enable the options to finalize the disc and buffer underrun protection. Try to figure out what the best speed is to use with your drive, generally lower is better.

[glossy steppe]

Both CDs and drives have a minimum speed, so you will need to pick one that both support

I've had some image burners when I tried to burn at a speed slower than my drive supports go "Oh, I can't use that speed, oh well, max speed it is!"

And burning too fast WILL cause problems, especially on cheaper media

[obsidian herald]

Unfortunately my burner is some Dell external thing, but I'll play with it. Nice to see Alcohol 120% and DAO + finalize are still the way to go, that brings me back.

[floral saddle]

Nah, Mednafen's been excellent for nearly a decade now.

[obsidian herald]

Really? I'd tried it several times over the years and it had compatibility issues with the games I was trying (mostly Virtua Fighter 2 engine games)

But I didn't go deep with it

I am running it on an iPad now and it seems much better

[glossy steppe]

Mednafen is a bit of a hassle to use since it has no gui

[floral saddle]

Really. I have no doubt the core we are now enjoying would not be as good as it is without everything Mednafen has documented and worked out. Only the other day I saw srg320 mention how they looked at Mednafen to work out an issue which went into the last unstable build.

And before that even SSF was solid, really only let down by high input latency.

[floral saddle]

Use mednaffe or medgui reborn if you want a gui.

[glossy steppe]

I tried those, they are better than no gui but I had a lot of issues with them mis-recognizing game disks, especially if it's a fan translation

I had just resorted to using Bizhawk, but there is Ymir now

[obsidian herald]

I hope it doesn't sound like I think Mednafen or any of the other Saturn emulators or trash or not valuable, I was just remarking that compared to other 5th gen consoles Saturn software emulation seemed less mature. I probably shouldn't have said 'behind' since that would imply there is some schedule I expect developers who are dedicating their free time doing difficult thankless work should be on, which is not how I feel at all. It's a gift that we have any of this!

But it sounds like the experiences I had weren't representative of the true state of the art

[floral saddle]

I think Saturn's quality of emulation has been unfairly put down over the years. When SSF was offering highly compatible Saturn emulation most people were still using per game setting setups for epsxe or god knows what plugins for N64, imho they were in a far worse state. I often thought the biggest problem wasn't that good emulation didn't exist, it was that no one was using it, being pointed towards poor options like Yabause instead and then being disappointed.

[glossy steppe]

I mean, I feel N64 has been and somewhat still is pretty lacking too, though not as much as Saturn was

Sadly it's based on popularity, there is still not much to offer in terms of 3DO or CD-I emulation compared to something like NES or SNES

And the Switch is better emulated than the Xbox or Xbox360

The only gamecom emulator is the ancient official one from the dev kit, and I don't think anything emulates the hyperscan

.... yes I know nobody would want to, but I am talking about why nobody cares to

[small ore]

The Zaparoo would be the perfect MiSTer accessory for the Hyperscan... one can dream

[glossy steppe]

Wasn't there a ton of cards?

[small ore]

That was the whole schtick of the console, reading RFID off cards

[glossy steppe]

I am pretty sure the hyperscan is too advanced for the DE-10, but even if it wasn't, I can't imagine people wanting to scan real cards in

That reminds me, does the GBA core have e-reader support?

Virtual ones obviously

[thorn pagoda]

ares n64 emulator is really good at this point

[glossy steppe]

Yeah, ares has gotten real good

But for a long time N64 was in a pretty poor state

[safe trail]

Mednafen did a good job of understanding the major hardware items, how they worked, and major scenarios of operation. Whihtout knowing these things, basically no games would run at all. HOWEVER - and I know this because I've been updating a fork of it - it does not do things like track wait states, clock domain boundary crossings, and other precision timing things.

There's effectively too much complexity for Saturn to run with that level of granularity on a procedural model, and still run at near-normal speeds.

As is the case for virtually any (procedural) emulator at any stage in emulation development up to now, there were scenarios where the author said "That situation is too hard to calculate deterministically; I'll either make a stochastic choice, or generalize the scenario for simplicity"

...which inevitably leads to finding edge case failures in published works

[safe trail]

OR... there was a scenario (such as memory wait states or clock domain-crossing) that a programmer simply didn't envision was taking place because they were dealing with the machine at too high a level. They may understand that "something is slowing down memory writes", but not understand how to model it.
-> this is a distinct situation from understanding the problem and deciding not to implement it for simplicity's sake

[river wing]

What fork are you updating? I am very curious 🙂

[safe trail]

https://github.com/pce-devel/mednafenPceDev

There is no Mednafen root on github; I took a published version and started making updates relevant for PC Engine and PC-FX devleopment and testing. Trying not to damage other cores, but also not testing anything other than those two

I have tried to look at more closely simulating memory access and CPU-Video controller access timing, but it's not written in a way that is conducive.

PC-FX runs about double actual speed because accesses to KRAM are assumed zero-wait and never-a-conflict

(not that the games suffer, but development definitely would)

[burnt matrix]

He is absolutely but if it weren’t for the community tirelessly testing, checking, and researching issues it wouldn’t have been anywhere near this good.

This is why I keep celebrating the community, it’s why MiSTer is great. Because everyone works hard to make it great!

[thick oriole]

<@&1374161661333864478> Oh, most definitely, that's why I thanked all of y'all! (I should also be helping more, at least with perhaps checking how things behave on real hardware when things are reported.)

[river wing]

Thanks!! 🙂

[swift yarrow]

sorry if I'm doing a poor job of using the search utility, but I'm not seeing a clear answer to this: is there a way for me to manually grab the update_all version of the dual ram saturn core at this time? the single-ram version of that is dated 3rd Oct, while the most recent nightly of dual ram is from September. I'm replying to this message because this is the closest to an answer I found in 10 mins of searching.

[small ore]

There is no update all version of dual ram cores, the last unstable from #unstable-nightlies or from the pins in this thread is where you can obtain the latest dual ram core. It is feature equivalent to the single ram stable core from update all.

[white tendon]

When playing the intro animation of Sonic 3D Blast with the latest stable from the 3rd of october (single core), the video hangs from time to time and the only way to get it smooth is to activate Fast Timings. That's weird cause with some of the previous unstable (i have one from the 28th of august) the video was perfectly smooth even with original timings 🤔 .

[safe trail]

What is your data source (SDCard, USB, network, etc.) ?

[tight mica]

Thanks for the update. I have a dual ram misterfpga myself

[tawny forge]

Radiant Silvergun worked fine without fast timings in single ram at some point, right?

Or was it always slow in single ram without it?

[white tendon]

sdcard

[safe trail]

Thanks. Yeah, that sounds like an issue. Hopefully it is reproducible by srg320 as well

[wise brook]

might be a case of “it will be this way going forward” as improving the accuracy of the core must necessarily come at the expense of users without enough ram

hopefully someone can make fast timings an automatic setting for the games that need it

[safe trail]

Obviously he's doing what he can, and I'll trust him until he says he can't go any further

[ripe valley]

I'll need a second test on "Samurai Spirits - Zankurou Musouken" from someone else here.
I noticed a glitched image on my systems at the start of a level (around 00:05 on the video), just after the characters' portraits (yours & CPU) are displayed.
There should be a zoom-in effect, but just before that, it seems I can perfectly reproduce a glitched image.

If we could reproduce it one more time, it might (just maybe) be related to the glitched image at the end in "Puyo Puyo Tsuu."

And yes, I tried with the fast timings too, and I'm using the 1MB DRAM too.

[celest lake]

Stable or can I use dual ram?

I can confirm on dual ram

Assuming this is the glitch you’re after

[floral saddle]

I see the same glitch with dual v250927.

[celest lake]

Yeah, that’s what I tested on as well

[thick oriole]

Can confirm not seeing it on hardware with Fenrir using Fenrir Loader Kai.

[visual grove]

Yeah same doesn’t do it on a Saturn with satiator

[stiff latch]

Fine on JP Saturn, Model 2, with a MODE and redump image

there appears to be a slight texture loading evident, but its not a glitched out image

also im using a 1MB ram cart

the game needs either a 1mb or 4mb cart, both work

[ripe valley]

Thanks everyone, I will report the issue later today.

And done.

[winter phoenix]

Wow, that’s a lot of fixes all at once

Looks like they’re referencing some new sstest from Celeriycon

And a VDP2 mid frame test

[ripe valley]

Yes, I left some new tests to srg320 from October, 1st.
celeriyacon worked super hard, especially on the SMPC part and began to share some VDP1 testrom.

[cursive tree]

New 32X on its away too?

[winter phoenix]

I guess they paid off!

[ripe valley]

I'm not at home immediately.

You're far ahead from me. 😂

[ancient surge]

Holy shit, an authentic Saturnday!!!

[pearl harbor]

Saturnday on Saturday is best day!

💪

[ancient surge]

I guess "re-fix DISP flags latching" is related to the glitched frame in games like Samurai Shodown and Puyo Puyo 2?

[ripe valley]

Samurai Shodown for sure.

You can retest Puyo Puyo Tsuu!.

[burnt matrix]

🎶 This is the core that never ends!
It just goes on and on, my friend
Some people started testing it
Not knowing all the bugs
And srg320 continues fixing it
Forever just because 🎶

[safe trail]

Wowzers - that's pretty invasive change

[drowsy hull]

more chances to "break" it and continue preventing 3d0

[burnt matrix]

pins updated!

[ripe valley]

@sudden tusk Could you retest Astal on stage 6, please ?

@floral saddle Could you retest Puyo Puyo Tsuu, please ?

[sudden tusk]

In the middle of weekend activities but I will as soon as I get home

[ripe valley]

Don't worry, it was just a reminder before I'm leaving too for my week end.

[floral saddle]

Will try but it was pure luck that I managed to complete it last time, the difficulty level is absurd.

[ripe valley]

We didn't succeed either with srg320.

Absurd levels.

[floral saddle]

I thought srg320 would struggle, I didn't say good luck in the github ticket for nothing!

[thorn pagoda]

the saturn core is such a stunning achievement

[stiff latch]

oh we got another unstable

tireless improvements

[floral saddle]

The graphic bug is still there. Again I didn't hear any audio issue or have any stutter in the end sequence, could be a single ram issue.

No improvements to Shining Force 3, Panzer Dragoon Saga or STV Groove on Fight's issues either, although the latter looks slightly different now.

[ripe valley]

I just saw it on Groove on Fight.

There are some parts undocumented or incomplete at the moment, like srg320 said one time on the Rotated Scroll Screen rendering calculations.

The new DCC, SCSP, SH-2, VDP1, and VDP2 tests (except for the "VCNT Change" check, which needs to be checked on multiple revisions of the original system), as of October 1st. 2025, pass with flying colors on the current unstable core.
Parts of the new CDBlock & SMPC tests + a new check on the SCU->SH2(M) interrupt timers currently fail (that isn't used in commercial games).

[drowsy hull]

they do pass on consoles of multiple revisions?

[ripe valley]

I have to check back later next week, I'm a little busy right now.

[white tendon]

The glitch on "Samurai Spirits - Zankurou Musouken" before starting a fight is gone with the last unstable 😉 👍

[ripe valley]

Astal is fixed with the blue flashing screen for some frames when entering 'The Forest Fiend'.
I checked a little earlier with the level select cheat code.

And I can't seem to reproduce the issue with Gokujou Parodius da! opened today.
I asked for a quick video with the current unstable core.

[floral saddle]

Github won't let me upload video for some reason so here it is. Previously I was able to get the frames to show on every boot, today I only saw it 1 out of 5 times the game was started, not captured is small audio pop after the Konami logo.

[ripe valley]

Okay, I reproduced it one time after 24 tries on my Single system, and one time after 17 tries on my Dual one.
It will be complex to find out why.

[tribal needle]

Heisenbugs are the worst ones to report and investigate.

[ripe valley]

Let me check it in 10 mins.

[mortal mist]

thanks

[mortal mist]

OK, it's not working properly yet. It worked on the first try, but now I can hear the stutter again.

[mortal mist]

Does the music in Astal ever work correctly in the place where it is currently stutter?

[ripe valley]

It never really worked on the core, neither on some ODEs.

The game does something strange.

If you try to correct, it stutters just after.

srg320 left it at the moment, as a single stutter is less worrying than a continuous one after.

[mortal mist]

thanks , I can live with that :)) but I'll try a few more things

[floral saddle]

Hopefully this is of interest to everyone, came across this video showing how to easily load games into Dezaemon 2 via a script which then launch using Zaparoo, works fantastically. There's a few games in the set that I have wanted to play for years so delighted that someone put this together. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBQLWTP7TBA&themeRefresh=1

[marble laurel]

Thank you 🙂

[wide glacier]

saw this recently, thanks for sharing. very nice to have an easy way to load the user games on the mister core

i recently began diving into the library of the dezaemon save game manager, and i've found some really incredible games

there's a few titles that are genuinely just as good, if not better, than other full-price releases of the time

i recommend checking out
-Aerial Tale
-Areichalken
-B.LOOD SOLDIER
-DAIOH The Hyper Storm
-Destroyer
-Devil Blade 2
-DEZA no KAKERA
-GrandCross
-Jackal
-Kururin World
-Lemureal Nova Revival
-Letzten Mittel
-Lost Vision
-Motor Device
-Reconquista Plus
-Red Crusaders
-Retro Engine
-Shin-JashinTensei
-Tarai Project
-Tekkihei Jokyoku: The Day of The Riots
-Urban Assault
among lots of others

there's so many hidden gems in the save game manager, it's really worth spending some time trying out whatever looks interesting

[floral saddle]

Also of note is Mecha, an early version of Mecha Ritz which is now a full game on Steam and is very, very good. He also made Supplant the Gods which is in this set and I can't wait to try out later.

[wide glacier]

yes, mecha is really good! there's a few other games made by devs who would go on to release full games as well

devil blade 2 and psyche metal come to mind in that regard

[floral saddle]

I knew of Devil Bade 2 and Shigatake, will have to look up Psyche Metal.

[wide glacier]

psyche metal is crazy. the whole game is red; just blood and guts galore lol

someday i'd really love to see a dezaemon 2 hack that just puts all the user games onto the disc already, so there'd be no need to fuss around with the save game manager. kind of like dezaemon plus select 100 on playstation

probably a massive undertaking but i feel that more people might talk about it if the barrier to entry was a bit lower

[floral saddle]

Haha, psyche metal looks absolutely nuts, you weren't kidding!

Yeah an all in one hack would be cool but still really happy this option now exists.

[marble laurel]

Is there also a known pack for NES ?

[floral saddle]

Saturn is the only version I know of where the community kept and preserved everything in this manner.

[marble laurel]

ok thanks !

[ripe valley]

I need a retest on Die Hard Trilogy (USA).

Maybe that game regressed too with the recent changes.

I tried with a USA BIOS, region forced to USA, only 1 controller, no DRAM cart inserted.

The game loads sometimes, sometimes not (only 1 time on 15 attempts) depending on the reset state.

[floral saddle]

I've just had Fighters Megamix lock up twice in a row when running the attract sequence, lots of old bugs popping up again!

If you press start whilst the attract FMV is running it black screens too.

[umbral radish]

I'm glad that somebody has found this Dezaemon 2 usergame save pack .... it was me who put that pack together, and @sand shoal who created the script that was used prior to the changes in the Saturn core that implemented "on-the-fly" save cart loading. I want to thank @ripe valley for his involvement in this little project of mine as well.

[floral saddle]

Thank you so much, I'm genuinely grateful to you and everyone else who put this together.

[umbral radish]

Maybe one of the mods could pin this direct link to the Dezaemon 2 Saves PAck so that everyone has easy access to it and doesn't get lost!