NES/FC/FDS/Dendy

[cursive sable]

There was actual hardware on some french NES models to output RGB natively? Why do all those mods basically replace the PPU with an emulated version then?

[ember pier]

it was not native RGB, quality was shitty

[jade zenith]

it's not native RGB. the only consumer-level famicom variant to output anything better than composite was the titler iirc

[cursive sable]

Ah

[hasty river]

https://tenor.com/view/predator-handshake-muscle-strong-man-gif-5783927

[granite pivot]

What does the sharp NES TV output?

[topaz siren]

Raise you one: a Titler

[jade zenith]

NES TV still uses composite video. the titler outputs both composite and s-video, though RGB is possible with an easy mod

[main narwhal]

didnt the Peritel allow for a composite signal though?

[ember pier]

yes
but if you put pal composite in a peritel, a secam TV still won't understand it (you would have a black and white image at best)
so RGB peritel was the only solution at the time

[main narwhal]

true

[fierce estuary]

even the rgb nes in the wild had to put a tinted glass in front of the screens to fix the colors

[ember pier]

But at least, everyone had the same colors, no argument if the sky in Mario is blue or purple 😀

[echo tree]

ha what a wacky concept, blue or purple skies in mario

its periwinkle

[ember pier]

Periwinkle is not even listed !

[tepid umbra]

Kit made it all up!

[fierce estuary]

im sorry but that color is NOT strawberry

those color labels offend me

[fierce estuary]

if you want to see the real color the signal is saying to draw you need HDR

in an HDR color space you can actual represent what the signal is suggesting it should be versus truncating it or shifting it in some ways as crt's or standard color space do

it's like a hyper saturated blue

it's kind of painful to look at

[echo tree]

i must admit, the concept of a HDR NES is very funny

[tepid umbra]

Wait, so it isn't periwinkle at all but a hyper saturated blue the human eye can't even perceive??

The color out of space!

[cursive sable]

https://tenor.com/view/rvb-lightish-red-pink-donut-gif-14687754

Hate being scrolled up and not realizing it

[echo night]

I thought Miyamoto officially stated that he chose a purplish color for the sky? /shrug

[echo tree]

miyamoto did not have his famicom hooked up to a HDR capable display sadly

[dry lynx]

He probably didn’t even have an OLED display. What a peasant

[solemn sedge]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3T5AIUybDFc

[steep yew]

i saw that just got dumped - was wondering what it was

[fierce estuary]

What's the mapper

[grand jewel]

Let's see...

[glacial turtle]

What mapper is that for people who can't read hex?

[steep yew]

it works in the core

[graceful field]

Is there any prior art for converting everdrive savestates to mister savestates? If not, I'm considering trying to do some research to maybe make a helper script for people moving to mister.

[graceful field]

hmm... definitely looks non-trivial. n8 pro seems to capture a lot less data so I'm sure doable but could be a pretty meaty project....

[cursive sable]

I think savestates for the most part are generally not cross-compatible across even software emulators, much less between entirely different devices like the way official saves can be. IIRC some emulators even break savestates across versions

[graceful field]

Definitely messy. I've been playing around recently on genesis converting genesis savestates into something that mister can run and it was really tough. Bizhawk in particular made it almost impossible. Did get it working with some of them though. I think it is doable on the nes side, but leaning towards not picking this project up right now since it looks like a pretty big project, but may put it on the backburner to lower the bar for more people move over. This is targetted to speedrunners since they could have spent many hours building up a big savestate collection.

[elfin flume]

Keep in mind savestates on MiSTer are limited to 4

[cursive sable]

Bizhawk is a mess even with normal saves, instead of just writing the standard save files every other emulator and even flashcarts do it creates a weird container for them and put the data in that

[graceful field]

Controversial topic .

For speedrunning, you can get around it by copying and renaming the rom. I personally like that since it effectively gives you named savestates (not all runners do though unfortunately). Also have a helper app for doing renames and cloning if anyone here would find it helpful.

[elfin flume]

I don't see what's controversial about it. A given core is limited to 4 savestates, the most recent person to look into raising that nope'd out really quick after diving in, because realising that it's not trivial to increase and is a deliberate design decision with deep roots into main and the cores themselves. This is fact.

Any workarounds for that limitation are just that, workarounds, and they have to be dealt with in unusual ways on MiSTer as you've pointed out.

[vivid roost]

didn't someone make a script you can use to get like "pages" of savestates

or was that the person who noped out

[elfin flume]

I think that was the person who noped out, and I don't know if they ever released anything for that.

[graceful field]

That is not my understanding. My understanding is that the primary issue is that the current design was intended as a user friendly interface where it is intuitive for users and it is hard to mess up and accidentally save/restore. The core devs haven't seen there being strong value in redesigning the savestate system for more savestates and speedrunner workflows because one hasn't been demonstrated to be simpler for most users vs just having more complexity.

I held that this was the primary blocker, not extremely complex technical challenges. Not trying to trivialize the technical change, and I wouldn't be surprised if this was a hard task for a new mister developer, but wasn't holding that this would be a significant challenge for a primary core developer if they were passionate about the feature.

If this is not the case and there is buyin for the change if it could be done, that would change things a lot for me.

[elfin flume]

I'm not an FPGA developer, nor can I find this conversation (thanks discord search).

From my understanding it's not a super complex technical challenge, but it's also non trivial, and raising the number of saves states to 8 would double the required memory for some aspect of that, and going to 16 would quadruple that, whether that's in the core or in the DDR RAM I'm not sure however, which is where the design decision comes in. It would also require alterations for cores that support save states and for menu considerations as well.

So it's probably a mix of column A, and Column B - UI considerations, and deliberate design decisions. The person who noped out did so because of Column B without even getting to Column A.

[violet yoke]

Casual gamer here and I’ve never once gone above 1 save state per game. I just save and re-load the same save states

I think the vast majority of users think 4 save states per game is plenty

[elfin flume]

This is for speedrunners, who may need dozens

The part about casual users not needing more than 4 has been discussed to death

[violet yoke]

Yes but catering to speed runners while ruining the user experience for the average user is silly imo

[elfin flume]

why does it have to ruin it?

[violet yoke]

More logic for more save states. Correct?

[elfin flume]

I'm not an FPGA developer, nor have I looked into what the cores themselves require, but the notion that more than 4 will ruin things for the average user doesn't make sense as an argument.

[graceful field]

I refer back to my "that's controversial" statement above . There is probably a better answer for both worlds (I even find 4 states annoying casually, would just want a buffer to roll back etc).

My intent was not to start a big argument. It would be great if a solution could be found that makes casual savestates better and enables more speedrunner adoption as well as an experienced core developer who wanted to make that happen.

I'm not trying to force things if any of the three are missing, which unfortunately it feels like it is, though I'm hopeful it won't be one day.

I'm sorry, I didn't intend to cause an argument.

[violet yoke]

The question was does it add more logic. Does it? If the answer is yes, then that’s a big no from me sorry. These cores are pushing the limit on logic.

[vivid roost]

you could always just hide all the slots above 4 behind some ini setting

[violet yoke]

Like imagine adding more save states to PSX. More logic required then right? The PSX can barely fit in terms of logic as is

[vivid roost]

thats true about the logic though, a few of the cores with savestate support also are already hard to compile

[graceful field]

I don't think you should assume it adds more logic. You should assume it could be a lot of work and it needs a passionate developer and buyin to do it.

[graceful field]

Oh, adding savestate support to a core that doesn't have it could be massive. I am not referring to that.

[elfin flume]

It's all good, I still don't see the controversy, just a bunch of what if's before truly looking into it.

[vivid roost]

no i mean stuff like psx that supports savestates already, even a tiny increase in logic could make it impossible to compile

[violet yoke]

Yes Robert optimized the PSX core as well as he could. You don’t want to risk adding additional logic there

It’s also a potential trade off. If we got 8 save states or more to the NES core, then that’s less logic to add some additional mappers or other features down the line. This is what I mean by ruining the user experience. Sacrifing features to cater to a small group of people

Sorry if I’m coming across as rude, but logic can’t be wasted imo

[cursive sable]

What about the page idea though? IIRC I was the one suggesting it ot that guy

Is there a technical reason that would not work ot require more resources?

[elfin flume]

If you can dig up that conversation in discord and figure out what happened, be my guest 🤣

[violet yoke]

I’m all for including more save states if it doesn’t add any more logic or the logic it adds is negligible

[cursive sable]

dig up that conversation in discord
I would rather try to make my search results in YouTube be relevant to my search terms than attempt that

😛

[elfin flume]

As trisk said, it would take a passionate developer who isn't afraid of putting in the work and proving that the cores could support it just fine... or proving that it's just too much and putting this to bed once and for all.

[cursive sable]

But basically, I was asking if it would possible to basically bank-switch sets of 4 savestates, simlar to nes mappers I guess. in the UI it's saying save state 5 or 6, but it chooses the first bank of 1-4 savestates if you have any state from 1 to 4 selected, and a second bank of 1-4 if you have 5 though 8 selected

Don't need to add extra logic to handle more than 4 at once then... I would assume

[dry lynx]

Relevant discussion: #dev-talk message

[elfin flume]

Discord Search Wizard over here

[dry lynx]

Thank you 🙂

[cursive sable]

So why wasn't bank switching done? Because it would be confsing to the UI?

[dry lynx]

Looks like it’s a lot of added UI complexity and sorg wasn’t a fan of the idea

Remember that the developers are the ones who have to maintain this stuff, so they’re often trying to weigh up whether a feature is worth the increase in complexity, maintenance burden etc

and save states are a bit of a “bonus” for the MiSTer anyway, and 4 is probably sufficient for 99% of users

[elfin flume]

MiSTer is a complex spider web of code, with almost no comments or documentation about it's architecture, that only Sorg truly understands.

[heavy dust]

If save states are a snapshot in time don’t we have to take relative motion of the players into account so we don’t run the risk of nondeterministic play when close to speed of light and oops time travel in Battletoads?

[cursive sable]

https://tenor.com/view/bill-and-ted-excellent-adventure-telephone-booth-phone-time-travel-gif-382811234879830736

[frank hinge]

Not spamming but I guess il pop it here too

https://youtu.be/bu016g_HQ3A?si=KKS5oqDmk5dJqh5I

[half pasture]

Looking forward to the feedback from Kit on the forks linked in the video description

[steep yew]

#1091056042667937944 message

[fierce estuary]

what's it doing, shadowing to ddr3?

there's no way the sdram is fast enough to be polled

that's a reasonable thing to do since ddr3 writes are instant and not especially costly in logic

if it's more than that it's too much

[half pasture]

Merge wen

[frank hinge]

Havent got a clue, just saw it posted on reddit

Saw no one posted it here and thought i should. As i know its been a topic thats discussed every now and then.

[fierce estuary]

from the look of it they are shadowing sdram to ddr3 and polling the shared ram on the HPS, and just adding some clutter to main to send menu messages

[half pasture]

So it can be added to all cores?

[frank hinge]

On the youtube video, in the description. There are links to github

#general-banter message

#general-banter message

[fierce estuary]

wow, a living, breathing game.com enthusiast!

[violet yoke]

Game.com active!

[fierce estuary]

it's such a silly system

[frank hinge]

I just find it bizarre it had a Resident Evil 2 port.

Unsure if i can call it a port

[frank hinge]

Active!

[fierce estuary]

it was like a PDA too

[frank hinge]

Im pretty sure it had 2 cartridge slots too

[fierce estuary]

it does

well on the original

on the pocket pro only 1

[violet yoke]

One was dedicated for the internet browser I believe

[frank hinge]

There was more than 1 hardware model?

[fierce estuary]

the whole .com was because it could use a 9600 baud modem that you plugged into it

so you could sit there with your handheld strapped to a modem which was plugged into a phone line

and browse the web on your 1.7" lcd screen

not even back lit

[frank hinge]

I think thats pretty nifty

[violet yoke]

It sold ~300K units according to Wikipedia so not surprised it had a revision

That's better than the Jaguar (150K)

[fierce estuary]

ouch

[frank hinge]

I just wanted something to stand out in my video game collection. Saw the Gamecom had a RE2 port, i really like Resident Evil.

I do not remember seeing one at all.

[violet yoke]

Yeah it's funny when everyone talks about what systems are and aren't failures. I'm pretty sure Tiger considers the Game.com somewhat of a success. They probably made a profit on the hardware and never were serious about competing with the Game Boy

[frank hinge]

It had quite a few cancelled games too

Which i was suprised

A bugs life

[clever scarab]

i wish we had a game.com core

right @frank hinge ?

[elfin flume]

Someone mentioned Game.com, I'm here.

[quasi axle]

any core that is already using ddr3 may have issues with this, but it depends on how they are using it and how tight timings are already. and if the system can tolerate the extra sdram use every vblank

something like N64 should already be doable since almost everything is in ddr3 anyways

[fierce estuary]

maayyybe

remember ddr3 goes slower if you are using it more

[fierce estuary]

two game.com enthusiasts

[quasi axle]

the n64 cheats already do ddr3 polling every frame, so why not another thing

[fierce estuary]

do they do it from hps?

[quasi axle]

yes

n64 cheats are implemented almost entirely in main

[fierce estuary]

weird

[frank hinge]

I know i joke about it quite a bit, especially with my name. I just think its a bit of an interesting handheld. I really like the idea of Mister as being some sort of hardware preservation to a degree.

[cursive sable]

Agreed on the preservation bit, I see it just as important for perservation as it is for playing games on. Especially for the more obscure or barely emulated hardware

[solemn sedge]

currently on a flight over the Gulf of Mexico….did someone say Game.com???

[fierce estuary]

no

[solemn sedge]

This looks so much better than the original screen already.

[fierce estuary]

that could really be said about virtually anything

[solemn sedge]

Vectrex would like a word

[violet yoke]

It's amazing how shitty the handheld screens were in the 90s all the way through the GBA and we put up with it lol

I don't know how we managed, but we did

[fierce estuary]

we had the eyes of a child

that could actually still see that garbage

[sand leaf]

i’m told the last version of the Wonderswan has an excellent unlit screen

[fierce estuary]

you were fed lies

[sand leaf]

*marketing

[keen pasture]

I had the eyes of a child and still couldn't see shit on a GBA screen

[frank hinge]

https://tenor.com/view/no-noo-no-way-robot-gif-18171581

[fierce estuary]

it's probably really hard to emulate the broken lcd screen accurately

[steep yew]

looks right to me

[frank hinge]

https://tenor.com/view/wait-what-meme-wait-a-minute-gif-14484132

[clever scarab]

Its preservation not emulation

[fierce estuary]

pickles are preservation

[clever scarab]

Pickles are MiSTer????

https://tenor.com/view/wwe-world-wrestling-entertainment-wrestling-wrestler-john-cena-gif-4632059

PiCKles???

[clever scarab]

PiCKle FPGA

Fully
Brined
Gherkin
Amplifier

[hasty river]

Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat

I need this!

[hasty river]

As a child I hated the screen of the GB and GBA

I wanted a Gameboy until I played one

[hasty river]

Look man I'm not writing another song okay

[fierce estuary]

there was all the lights and stuff to make screen useable if it wasn't high noon

[half pasture]

Who doesn’t?

[hasty river]

I'm sure there are lots of people against it being on MiSTer

[fierce estuary]

why?

[half pasture]

I only care about what Kit and sorg says 😌

[clever scarab]

I don’t want achievements on MiSTer.

I make achievements for video games already lol. No more!

[violet yoke]

I’m with Robby. Achievements are for them new fangled 360 kids

[fierce estuary]

I think nes games are their own achievement

tbh

as long as achievements works with cheats im good

dont want to miss out

[clever scarab]

Honestly, achievements only work if there’s a consistency in implementation, scoring values, and value cap.

[hasty river]

https://tenor.com/view/huzzah-frazzled-gif-5544331

[fierce estuary]

one of the problems before was the actual RA gang only made like a dll that was weirdly closed source

or something like that

[hasty river]

https://retroachievements.org/

[fierce estuary]

it was years ago that i looked at it though

[clever scarab]

Do they do that

[hasty river]

https://retroachievements.org/user/Dinierto

[violet yoke]

Using cheats and save states to scum achievements is my kind of cheating

[hasty river]

Do they do what

they don't work with cheats at least not in Retroarch

[fierce estuary]

is it really cheating if you made the cheats, and the thing that plays the game, if you created the very context in which the achievements exist?

[clever scarab]

Have a consistent implementation, scoring values, and max cap

[fierce estuary]

it's like being the goddess of a video game world

buahahaha

[hasty river]

I don't exactly know what that means but that site has the achievements info

[clever scarab]

It’s no problem, thanks anyways

[hasty river]

https://github.com/RetroAchievements/guides/wiki/Adventures-of-Dino-Riki,-The-(NES)

They do seem to have robust documentation

[hasty river]

Once I got past the turbo tunnel the next level was so awful I just turned that one off lol

[heavy dust]

Enlightenment and frustration are realizing Turbo Tunnel isn’t even the hard level.

[hasty river]

Exactly

[digital rampart]

Honestly if you look at the context where the Gameboy printer was used, it was basically achievements on the gameboy

[clever scarab]

omg you’re right LOL

[tepid umbra]

I never had a GB printer but then again I never had a Pokemon diploma for completing the Pokedex to print as a kid as well.

[digital rampart]

I kinda wish there was some kinda MiSTer solution for the GB Printer that actually printed. Idk how that'd work without fancy drivers tho

[tepid umbra]

Like, make a screenshot, send it to your PC and just print it.

We live in the future after all, where nobody can afford to live and the high tech is worse than the garbage from the 90s, but at least we got that going for us.

[digital rampart]

I feel like I want something a bit closer to the original experience. Maybe an app that could plug into a real receipt printer?

[tepid umbra]

You can probably connect your phone to a receipt printer and the remote app for mister lets you make and download the screenshots directly to your phone as well.

[cursive sable]

You can't use the GB link cable SNAC adapter to connect to a printer?

[hasty river]

Wait that's a good question

[digital rampart]

You can, but I'd say that's non-preferrable just because the Gameboy printer is probably the most quickly degrading piece of original hardware (in the sense that it prints on specific paper, and it's not like we're getting more of that)

[candid rapids]

I successfully used the GBP and MobileAdapter emulators with the SNAC port.

[fierce estuary]

what do you exactly want it to print on?

why not just dump it to an image file

then you can print it on anything

[cursive sable]

I was confused just what people were trying to do. If they wanted to print from a mister to a real printer, if they wanted to use the mister itself as a printer somehow, or what.

If the data is already on the mister then you can just read the save directly

How would you have even captured photos on the first place with a mister though?

[lapis umbra]

Just saw the NES achievement stuff. That's pretty cool! Looks like its also working with SNES and PSX.

[frank hinge]

Any thermal like receipt paper works though right?

I remember using one of my shopping receipts to test my printer

[digital rampart]

You don't need photos to use the Gameboy printer. A lot of games will use these to represent milestones

[cursive sable]

IIRC I remember seeing years ago some device based either on a Raspberry Pi or Arduino, forgot which, that would plug into the gameboy's link port and pretend to be a printer but just save the image data

[keen pasture]

I would love something like this to save my childhood pictures on my GBCamera

[cursive sable]

Honestly, I would just get a device that could dump your save file. It'll be much faster and more reliable

Sannis Cart Reader can do it, among others

[glacial turtle]

Does the Analogue Pocket have a dumper?

[hasty river]

The screenshot function

[glacial turtle]

Maybe instead of sending image to a printer you could export it as a png to the SD, I have no idea what you would all need to do something like that, maybe have to implement the printer hardware. Likewise for doing something similar with computer printers.

I can't imagine it is simple to implement though or someone would have done it by now for something

But yeah, guess if you can get your save/ROM off the original cart you could load it and take screenshots of the photos on there. You could likely do that in a software emulator as well

[cursive sable]

I meant used it to take actual photos on the gameboy camera rom

[cursive sable]

I'm pretty sure there is software to just read your save file and extract the images from it directly, just need a way to extract your save file. Which I think is a much better thing to attempt than trying to print images to an image file or something. And you could always use that print server thing I mentioned for doing something like printing your certificate from Pokemon

[clever scarab]

Be aware that’s not officially part of MiSTer

[half pasture]

Yet…

[hasty river]

I'm stoked!

[clever scarab]

I would protest it, I don’t want that emulator stuff seeping into MiSTer

Cheats already half work, why are we introducing another external vector we have no control over and would have to continually maintain to ensure functionality?

[dry lynx]

I’m more concerned about adding more load to the HPS which compromises the existing experience

But also yeah, cheats are very hit and miss

[lapis umbra]

I am. Even if you aren't in support of it becoming officially part of MiSTer, its at least interesting to see how he even got it working.

[echo tree]

achivements+!? the evils of modern gamering is trying to invade my precious ninetndo dendy!

[clever scarab]

Oh yeah absolutely, I think the nature of it being open source means awesome stuff like this can be made

[covert crypt]

My achievement is having more than 30 mins of energy and concentration at the end of the day to actually play my mister

[vivid roost]

i like when you get a good set of achievements in a game that actually makes you explore its world or systems in ways you might not of considered before

[keen pasture]

I hate achievements but I don't mind having them if some people get a kick out of it, it's not like the mister is this kind of disconnected device aimed at digital detox or something

[covert crypt]

I hate online and multiplayer achievements

Especially for something like the 360 where you needed to pay to get online

[lyric sage]

Achievement hunting can be fun

retro achievements are fpga friendly too tbh

[hasty river]

I just like seeing a "physical" manifestation record of something I've done

[echo tree]

this is why the gameboy camera system where you print our your achievements is the only good achievement system

[clever scarab]

I make and have made achievements for AAA games

[frank zinc]

if retroachievements support would require continual maintenance/is a regularly changed standard then obv merging it into main cores would be bad and a waste of time, but if it were just a one-and-done I would support it.

Whether someone wants to use it is up to them, but personally I like them. I enjoy playing around with them for ideas of things to try in old games I don't know much about that I might otherwise miss interesting qualities of, plus as a sort of continual catalog of games I've played and how far into them I got.

If the person who implemented it plans to keep up to date with the main cores then I will probably transition over to using the achievement cores - if not, then not:)

[clever scarab]

Fine ok, if it were one and done I guess I wouldn’t dislike it

[frank zinc]

I do think that caution and a sure answer on that, proven over time, is needed with anything like this tho, bc ur right about there being no need for adding extra maintenance bullshit for people who are here to focus on accuracy and core features

[clever scarab]

oh lol I get your name now

Das a lotta fog emojis

[digital rampart]

Or when it points the player in the direction of something cool they can do. One of my favorite achievements is one in Victoria 3 you get for playing as the US and having 100 states (the maximum number of states you can have before the flag stops getting new stars)

[hasty river]

https://tenor.com/view/weird-flex-selena-gomez-gif-4439926626150950750

[cursive sable]

So that's who made all those achievements that you get for starting the game for the first time

[verbal holly]

Is this neat? I’m not enough of an audio enthusiast to know…

https://misterfpga.org/viewtopic.php?t=10325

[clever scarab]

I guess it’s cool but NES games aren’t in stereo.

[steep yew]

are they not

then why?

[quasi axle]

lol that UI

[fierce estuary]

I added that years ago then removed it because it uses too much logic and is too hokey

it only works with a lot of fiddling and messes up sound effects and most games sound wonky

the system isnt made with any clean divide for stereo or understanding of seperating channels in that way

[rancid bay]

On hardware synths, a common trick for stereo is to feed mono audio to a stereo chorus effect. Basically, chorus (and reverb) are relatively simple filters. So you just use two chorus effects with different parameters for the Left/Right channels and get a relatively nice effect. I don't know/think it is a good idea for the NES core necessarily though, because it would be better done at audio rates like 48khz or 96khz and that only exists in the framework side, not the core.

[fierce estuary]

NES does it by splitting channels, square1, square2 triangle, noise, dmc

on some games it kinda works because some channels are only used for music, but on most games they are used for both music and sound effects, like slashing a wip or picking up health or whatever

so you end up with off-center game effects or just wonky lopsided music if a song uses only one square channel or is triangle heavy or whatever

it really works poorly

it's not 100% panned, but it still sounds funky, and it is very logic demanding to do all that sound math for basicallly no reason

we already are adding a ton of complexity with all the sound mixing to get the exernal channels right

[rancid bay]

Yeah that's kinda what I mean. Like there is an okay way to go mono -> stereo that doesn't just pan specific channels. But it's also probably not a great fit for the core.

[fierce estuary]

there's a few games people ALWAYS show off with it, like castlevania 3

[clever scarab]

Not that I think having stereo support is a bad idea but the system was never stereo to begin with and it sounds like a rather involved hack just to get it working effectively.

[fierce estuary]

those games work okay, but it's not justified for the cost and complexity

[rancid bay]

But I guess people in the reddit thread about it will start making requests anyway. When I saw it the other day, I was like "but we tried that at some point. I remember it..."

[fierce estuary]

it's one of those fiddle-with-it-every-game kind of options that I absolutely abhore

[rancid bay]

Somebody in the thread wrote Kitrinx will absolutely hate it, so I automatically love it.

Has 11 upvotes 😄

[fierce estuary]

assholes

[clever scarab]

LMAO

[fierce estuary]

FINE. I'm withdrawling all my code from the core.

[clever scarab]

keep the VB tho 🥺

[fierce estuary]

Im taking my toys and going home

[rancid bay]

I think the thread isn't getting any traction anyway. They'll forget ina few days.

[fierce estuary]

I don't understand why people work so hard to make their lives harder

alright well I have bigger fried fish to fish and then fry

[clever scarab]

Because they somehow convinced themselves that it’s “better”

[elfin flume]

This is a big reason why I even got a MiSTer, So I could just plug and play, and not have to fiddle with shit to fix emulator issues with a specific game at the detriment to others. I just want what the hardware would provide and that's generally what mister gives me.

[rancid bay]

I can only imagine what state the project would be in if sorgelig took everyone's ideas. Probably it would just be a glorified pi. It's important to stop bad features from getting in.

[quasi axle]

like look at those options. I'd be shocked if more than 2% of core users can even understand those

[fierce estuary]

I have over the years vehemently tried to defend this paradigm

[rancid bay]

For sure. I'm glad that you do.

[elfin flume]

Me too, please continue to

[steep yew]

You can take my VRC6 Pulse 2 Pan when you pry it from my cold dead hands

[dry lynx]

Keep fighting the good fight

Don’t let those pesky tinkerers turn MiSTer into retro arch 🤢

[cursive sable]

I remember years ago (I'm talking around 20-15 years ago) reading about several different hardware mods one could do on a NES, one of which was a stereo mod... the creator admitted that it was flaky and only sounded right on some games.

Could have sworn it was a site called afrotech or afrotechmods or something like that, found the site but it appears to have long deleted all those old nes mods and silly mods that were on the site.... and for some reason it's excluded from being on archive

Oh God, found an old forum post where I was asking about that mod while trying to find the original page XD

[verbal holly]

Well I think that answers my question, it’s situationally neat, but also kind of silly and cumbersome in its UI

[dreamy marten]

11 upvotes? Is that Reddit or something? I think we all agreed Reddit doesn't count.

[quasi axle]

spoken like someone with a bunch of downvotes

[dreamy marten]

I do enjoy hearing about the downvotes

I've never posted on Reddit though

[heavy dust]

I once got a submission to the front page of slashdot

It's all been downhill since then

[cursive sable]

https://tenor.com/view/star-wars-obi-wan-now-name-i-have-not-gif-20393020

[granite pivot]

New hack for Pac-Mania. Changes mapper to VRC6, updates graphics, adds the arcade options from the dipswitch settings, and adds a mode with the Japanese level order. https://romhack.ing/database/content/entry/OtJ3R4BdTEa4ngOKBdB57A/pac-mania-arcade

I had to manually change it to 2.0 and set save ram to 8k.

[granite pivot]

It even has the JP arcade warning screen when booting up when starting with the JP version

[west kettle]

Hello! I recently just joined this server.

I am trying to make a port of the MiSTer FPGA NES cores (just CPU and PPU right now) to a Xilinx Spartan-7 FPGA but I have a questions.

I know that the original PPU ran at 21.477/4 MHz but since I am trying to display to HDMI 640 x 480 @ 60Hz so my pixel clock is 25MHz.

Is it possible to run the PPU at 25MHz?

[main narwhal]

why don't you port the MiSTer upscaler? it will handle having a fixed 60hz output

[fierce estuary]

you can but it wont be accurate at all, the audio will be off pitch, etc

[zenith mirage]

I agree and objectively it’s poor. However, it’s nostalgic and in my honest opinion, helps break up the blockiness nicely. It’s got character and I know people have been looking to clean it up for decades but some of us just like it as is

[fierce estuary]

I have short of a plan in my head, but I'm gonna stew on it a while longer

[clever scarab]

Did you see this suggestion from earlier?

💬 NES/FC/FDS/Dendy

[river mesa]

Is it just me or is the NES core’s video output kinda a bit dark compared to other cores? I just came back from playing the Neo Geo core and it was kind of hit me in the face how less bright everything is.

[half pasture]

Lacks ASIC’s brightness approximation

[sullen fable]

https://x.com/pgate1/status/2049412958040772996

https://x.com/pgate1/status/2049414353347334391

かんな丸⁧！！⁨ (@pgate1)

NES on FPGA：描画中にCPUからVRAMアクセス要求があった場合の挙動を再現して、マリオ３で地面のラインが出ていたものを消せた。PPUとMMC3はこれで一段落かな

X · Apr 29, 2026, 8:58 AM

かんな丸⁧！！⁨ (@pgate1)

VRAMアクセスレジスタはまだ可読性を理由に統合してなくて、スクロールレジスタとアドレスレジスタで分けてる。そのうち統合の予定

X · Apr 29, 2026, 9:03 AM

The VRAM access register hasn't been integrated yet for readability reasons, and it's separated into a scroll register and an address register. Planning to integrate it eventually.```

[dreamy marten]

I haven't noticed dimness

Any games where it's most noticeable?

[clever scarab]

I think that’s just how the NES was. I don’t remember it being especially bright when I played it as a kid.

[livid leaf]

You sure it's not just the color palette?

[river mesa]

All of them really

[river mesa]

Same with any color palette

[fierce estuary]

nes is dark on american tvs

also that composite stuff better not even show up as a pr

it almost makes me angry

It also conflicts horribly with the multi-phase stuff I have

and isnt accurate

[dreamy marten]

What does the multi-phase stuff do?

[tepid umbra]

Did you see the new test build with composite? 🤯 it's beautiful! 🫣

[blissful prairie]

Wasn't that mostly TAS related?

[dreamy marten]

I'm genuinely interested but trying not upset the consigliere. I know she works hard on bringing us the best nes emulator.

[dire lodge]

This new test build has it all - the Gradius star flickering, Wood Man tree jitter, Super Mario Bros's sky is such ugly periwinkle violet - chroma crosstalk very much in action~ this really is native composite!

My old wish came true...

https://tenor.com/view/muppetwiki-muppet-wiki-muppet-muppets-kermit-the-frog-gif-11316137098988581004

(I have to adjust the hue on my PAL Trinitron with support for NTSC-output a bit tho)

Astounding work @heady crow !!!!!

https://tenor.com/view/leonardo-glass-leonardo-leonardo-raise-glass-gif-25093377

(BTW this also works on the Y/C adapter, remember to flip the region switch)

[pseudo burrow]

Hi there! Is this adapter I own compatible with the new core? https://misteraddons.com/products/yc-active-encoder-board?_pos=13&_sid=4b268299a&_ss=r

[steep yew]

Seems so (according to @dire lodge) #1091056042667937944 message

[dire lodge]

I'm assuming this is newer edition of what I own

https://ultimatemister.com/product/mikes11-active-composite-svideo/

[heady crow]

Just use VGA to component for the test core, the active adapters use a Luma trap that would filter out the color.

[dire lodge]

Is this build gonna be supported by active adapters in that regard or was it built for vga to component only?

[velvet glen]

as someone who is only on composite mikeS' test core was the last thing to make my setup indistinguishable from my real hardware

ty

[zenith mirage]

I’m sure it won’t. It’s outside the framework so couldn’t really. It does look pretty damned authentic though to be fair.

[steep yew]

I am so happy this exists. Mike is a goddamned wizard.

But, man, I wouldn't want to argue CRT stuff with kit. She...uh...hates them

[half pasture]

Wait, shitty and authentic composite video using only the VGA to component cable??? Merge to framework 🇼 🇪 🇳

[fierce estuary]

There's no way to make native composite outside the ppu

It's literally impossible to do

[quiet parrot]

i guess this "native" composite is more accurate to an actual nes's composite output compared to what the mister currently does?

[blissful prairie]

@Mike to try it I would need a d-sub15-to-component component cable and stick the green component rca into the TV composite video-in?

[steep yew]

yes

[blissful prairie]

And it would need to be a YPbPr signal

[pastel maple]

Has anyone ever had issues with auto save not working properly on Legend of Zelda for nes? Autosave is on but bringing up the OSD menu doesn't give me the "saving..." Notification. I have to manually save sram.

[clever scarab]

How do you guys pronounce this without sounding like you’re spitting everywhere.

Yep bep urr?

My CuRT has Yep peppers

[umbral moon]

I'll continue to just call it component

[jade zenith]

why pee pee

[pastel maple]

I fixed the autosave issue with Zelda. It was the rom I was using. I found one from a decent romset and autosave works fine now.

[clever scarab]

Before MiSTer I didn’t know there could be bad rom dumps. I mean it’s digital data, it either works or it doesn’t. But nope, turns out fucking idiots dump roms too.

And then they get shared in perpetuity and software emulators bend over backwards to cobble hacks to support them.

And the shit show continues!

So as much as it’s a pain in the ass for the MiSTer not allowing for bullshit roms to work. It’s ultimately for the greater good.

[umbral moon]

It's alot better these days getting good dumps, it used to be that the only dumps you could find were bad

[mellow dawn]

To be fair, NES 2.0 is relatively recent and has been made fully capable only recently. The data in NES headers depends on having the information format defined and standardized. That is typically the part that is going to be wrong in "bad" Roms.

[pastel maple]

Yeah I think it was purely a header thing. I'd used this rom for ages with no issue. It was only when autosave didn't work that I had a problem.

[cursive sable]

Oh, I definitely realized there were bad dumps when I first got into emulation in the late 90s. Back when you had to Yahoo or Metacrawl to search for people's random pages on Geocities, Angelfile, Homestead or other generally cheap free homepage services that each contained a handful of random roms. People generally just downloaded the roms frrom each other and shared them, so a bad rom ended up being on nearly every site you visited. I will never forget that Breath of Fire 2 ROM tht had that stupid trainer hacked into it. Not only did none of it's functions work, but it broke being able to save, pretty sure it broke gamegenie codes too if I recall. It was near impossible to find someone with a clean copy of BOF2 and not one with that trainer.

That was just one of many I ran into, Megaman X2 was another, it was a half-dump as they called it, the rom was half the size it should have been, but no emulator supported the Cx4 chip back then so when it woulden't run people assumed it's because of that, in reality a proper dump would run, just all the graphics would be corrupted.

[steel flume]

It used to annoy me when I found a room that had (bad dump) in the file name. What was the point of those? lol

I flush all my bad dumps 😁

[tepid umbra]

Do you keep the good dumps?

[cursive sable]

Preservation of... bad dumps for some reason? But yeah, that's why I stopped bothering with goodsets, that and how they tried to include every romhack as well. Nothing like trying to extract Super Mario Bros.zip and it explodes into hundreds of files full of really crappy romhacks that people spent 10 minutes in Nesticle's tile editor to just make things look like pot, or swisticas, or a penis, or switicpotenises.

[steel flume]

Those kinda hacks make me laugh..like making samus nude with big boobs. Nobody cares about 8 bit titties..lol

[heavy dust]

@heady crow isn't this impossible? are you treading on god's domain again? did the tragedy of doctor frankenstein teach us nothing? #test-builds message

but i'm looking forward to playing with it nonetheless just hope nothing ends up stranded on an iceberg

[cursive sable]

A wise man once said: YOLO

[heavy dust]

a different wise man said WOLOLO and now i'm willing to die for him

[cursive sable]

CRAB BATTLE! 🦀

Oh wait, wrong reference

[heady crow]

I was always curious to see what the MiSTer could generate with its limited DAC, and was pretty impressed for whats it worth, but you have to bend the framework a bit so thats why you're not going to see this in the main repo.

[heavy dust]

I'll toy with it and see how it look on my oddly finicky trinitron. I assume the composite output from a twin famicom is basically the same as an NES and thus a good thing to compare it to?

[heady crow]

I'll play around with some ideas of making an active adapter for CVBS, its justs so limited for only one core. Especially if you're not adding luma trap.

[steel flume]

Don't know many people with a twin famicom..that's cool. I use the twin famicom bios for fds in mister coz the loading screen is slightly different.

[heavy dust]

It's a neat if not altogether practical thing to have. Looks and feels like an upscale Famicom from an alternate universe. And an officially licensed and supported Nintendo console that doesn't actually seem to say "Nintendo" anywhere on it is just neat.

I've been collecting Famicom games because they're neat, most of them are still kinda cheap (all the good and therefore expensive ones, I played as a kid and generally don't care about which helps) and the twin famicom itself was a good deal vs an av famicom.

[steel flume]

I've learned using a different bios is a neat way to customize mister cores. As long as it dont affect performance or compatibility

I haven't found any negative effects from this so far

[tardy dagger]

Yup. Left side is from the Sharp Twin-Famicom and right is from a Nintendo FDS System. (Have a Sharp Twin-Fami myself and love it).

[hasty river]

I don't remembre you being especially bright when playing as a kid

[hasty river]

Screenshots? Just saw the one in the test builds lol

[clever scarab]

lmao goddamnit

[hasty river]

https://tenor.com/view/gotem-gif-18695498

[cursive sable]

I guess Robby was...... kept in the dark

https://tenor.com/view/csi-yeah-david-caruso-csi-miami-gif-21597107

[dry lynx]

Leave Robby alone 😭

[versed ridge]

Does anyone know if Nintendo versus System cores are in update all already ? I can't find them

[fluid saddle]

Hello, I just set myself up with a superstation 1… when i do "Define NES buttons" one of the buttons it prompts me to define is "Savestate"… what does this button actually do? When I press it nothing happens.

[clever scarab]

It is not.

[clever scarab]

You can press the main menu button to skip it if you want

[fluid saddle]

thanks. if it gives me a way though to save or load savestates from the controller that would be pretty cool…

[steel flume]

I wasn't sure until you replied saying it's not in update all but if it not there then the insert coin script does grab the vs system. Which you can get through update all.

[shy plinth]

Man, people really are nostalgic for Circus Charlie

brought my Mister to a party.
People wanted to play Circus Charlie. Iconic game

[steel flume]

It can really be surprising what people want to play when you get in party situation. "1000s of games and that's what they wanna play?!"

[sweet sparrow]

https://mister-devel.github.io/MkDocs_MiSTer/basics/hotkey/?#cores-that-support-savestates

[shy plinth]

I'm not surprised. I'm a 2000s kids and thats one of the Famicom games that me and people my age played

[steel flume]

I guess it's where you from and what you are exposed to I never heard of the game til I got into emulation later on.

[tropic belfry]

Do we prevent "0-framing" with MiSTer? Are button presses buffered in any way so they won't fall between polls? (Watch from 12:55).

https://youtu.be/LBNbj0kj80w?t=776

[steel flume]

In all my years of playing on the nes, various emulators and mister I have never had a missed input..didn't even know that was a thing. I've had laggy inputs on emulators but they always register.

[tropic belfry]

Well, it's quite tricky to press and release a button in less than 0.01667 seconds. 😅

[dry lynx]

Speak for yourself

[tropic belfry]

Watch it.

[fierce estuary]

they aren't buffered at all, they get there asap

they aren't buffered on the real system either, but they are frozen once latched

just like the real chip

[tropic belfry]

Ok. Thanks for the answer. 😊

[tropic belfry]

Yes, but those pesky speedrunners want their 1-frame button presses guaranteed so when playing on emulators they adjust the keyboard debounce to ensure a keypress is never shorter than a frame in duration.

Kinda cheating, but hey.

[fierce estuary]

that is not my problem

I just make it work like the real system

[tropic belfry]

Exactly

[fierce estuary]

just like disallowing left+right

the real system allows it

it's not my problem

I could add a useless extra clutter option to stop it, but it's meaningless. if someone wants to cheat they can just disable the option in a new build

[tropic belfry]

I wasn't asking this as a request for you @fierce estuary

[fierce estuary]

I know

[tropic belfry]

Ok

[fierce estuary]

it just gets tiresome

[tropic belfry]

Sorry for asking!

[fierce estuary]

people want weird niche stuff the real system doesn't even do

im not blaming you

just people put out these videos and things

[tropic belfry]

The video isn't about MiSTer really. Just real hardware vs emulator + keyboard.

[fierce estuary]

yeah

mister of course has an edge and works for the most part exactly like hardware

moreso than the hardware does sometimes

[tropic belfry]

16 sprites per scan line and such is nice.

Anyway, I just threw the question out there to see if there was any interest in such a feature. But it's so niche, and the clutter you talk about... I'm not going to bother. 😅

[heavy dust]

speaking of niche shit does the NES core have an option to do the "wrong" music that dendy or whatever that clone was had?

[fierce estuary]

dendy didn't have wrong music

some later walgreens-type NOAC clones had a backwards square channel that sounded strictly worse, but no, it doesn't have that

[heavy dust]

that's the one i was thinking of

adrian black reviewed some cheapo nes off aliexpress recently that apparently used those chips and it sounded ... interesting.

[fierce estuary]

nintendulator does some of those drugstore console type things if you really need to hear it

[cursive sable]

Shame WideNES never got far

Also if you really want to go nuts with playing the games as more ridicously different from the original as possible, there is 3DSEN

[tropic belfry]

Some say it's subtle. I say no. 😅 https://youtu.be/8cFGLlDUg0k

[fierce estuary]

sounds like... failure

[heavy dust]

Adrian mixed wrong speed CPU with PPU while testing it and I didn't realize NES games would have more slowdown but work with a too slow CPU. I always assumed they were too tied to CPU speed to avoid crashing but I guess not.

[tropic belfry]

The Hi-Def NES HDMI mod by Kevtris added overclocking to the NES. Normally you couldn't do something like that without also raising the pitch for all sound and music. The sound generation happens right inside the NES CPU.

[fierce estuary]

you have to emulate the apu

or something like that

it's part of the cpu

anyway it just wrecks the accuracy

and is very unstable

[tropic belfry]

It breaks a good amount of games yeah. Fun to play around with, though.

[cursive sable]

That was something I always used to wonder, if it's just simply replacing the NES's CPU and/or PPU depending which mod you do with their own, and turns out it was. Not like most other console's RGB or HDMI mods that just take the video signal that has been processed by all the original hardware

[tropic belfry]

It implements the APU in the FPGA. He did this to get a "pure digital" signal from the NES. He also implemented most of the Famicom expansion audio chips in FPGA (VRC6, MMC5, 5B etc). This explains why overclocking doesn't affect the pitch. You can also do dun stuff like panning the individual channels.

Its not fully replacing any of those two chips afaik. They are still needed.

[fierce estuary]

you might as well just use a full fpga console at that point

on mister if you did it that way you'd probably break the sdram timing

[tropic belfry]

Too late 😅

[heavy dust]

Now Adrian is playing with overclocking the NES CPU and I'm sure folks here already know how it'll turn out but his childlike joy playing with this stuff is infectious.

[steel flume]

Great I'm gonna go overclock my toaster while we at it 🤣🤣

[fierce estuary]

the only NES overclock that really works in a way that doesn't make games horribly unstable is extending the vblank, but that doesn't really work on an fpga

everything else will be a steaming pile of poo

I played with this 6 or 7 years ago

[rancid bay]

I never really cared about making systems run faster. If I wanted a better framerate than an NES then I'd play a different system.

But if you wanted to overclock the NES and could only use the vblank time, could you use clock enables to keep the cpu the correct speed outside of vblank and some higher multiple of that during vblank, and thus keep the vblank time the same while getting you some extra clock cycles?

[cursive sable]

What about removing other limits? Such as the sprite limit to reduce flickering?

The core does support that IIRC

[fierce estuary]

that one is done really carefully and within normally wasted cycles of the ppu

[tropic belfry]

There aren't that many games that I find lag is intrusive in, anyways.

[fierce estuary]

and it arguably has a great UX, it basically never breaks anything for a pretty un-intrusive benefit

the kind of options I hate are the ones that put the burden of choice on the user with low to minimal benefits

stereo sound and overclocking both only work in niche situationsa nd require constant choice, which distracts you from actually playing the games

[tropic belfry]

Stereo sound always work, but it achieves nothing. 😅

[fierce estuary]

ill add niche options if they are required to play the game as intended, like composite blending

[fierce estuary]

it's always on, but sometimes it sounds terrible, it only does okay for some games

[tropic belfry]

That's what I meant. It works, but it doesn't enhance anything.

[fierce estuary]

or it can detract by having off center sound effects or music

which is common

enough that you feel you have to tweak it

so it ends up being one of those tweak on every game things

[tropic belfry]

Exactly. I have swapped filter caps, inverters and resistors to modify the sound path inside my Twin Famicom, because I found it too muffled. It also felt that the expansion audio was to hot compared to the original Famicom. But that was to fix something I found a flaw. I also found the composite videos kinda flawed so I gave it RGB. But I never felt stereo was something I could "add" to the games because the data isn't there to begin with. That's my reasoning, anyway.

[fierce estuary]

twin famis have notoriously bad audio

the canonical audio mixing is usually considered mid-aged famicoms

ie, not av famicoms

[tropic belfry]

The AV Famicom is also flawed. Expansion audio is too hot.

I haven't copied any specific audio circuit. I just tinkered around until the FDS, Akumajou Densetsu, Mr. Gimmick and Lagrange Point sounded correct.

I have an AV, a GPM-02 (1989) and a CPU-07 (1984) Famicom. Perhaps I should compare the output between the machines sometime. For science.

[fallen brook]

discord down?

[steep yew]

it's not doing well

https://discordstatus.com

[fallen brook]

seems partially ok now at least

[tropic belfry]

Ah. That's why channels come and go for me.

[shy plinth]

Ahhh, when the Famicom was in its prime in the 80s. Tbh, impressive that some of its games became iconic even for 2000s kids

[heavy dust]

I have a vintage Hudson gamepad for Famicom that outputs “stereo” sound by temporarily moving the audio to the left or right side of the headphones based on what direction you’re pressing.

[heavy dust]

I wish I had a good enough ear to be able to tell. Or maybe I should be glad I can’t.

[heavy dust]

This stuff posted anywhere? I have the twin Famicom turbo, aka the second version.

[fierce estuary]

that's kind of amusing

im sure someone has documented the twin fami fixes, it's both the system and the expansion audio that have problems in those

av fami just have expansion balance issues but the system audio is ok

[heavy dust]

It’s actually a nice controller. It’s that Hudson “Famicom pad but bigger” but the extra pcb they added for all that sound stuff makes it even thicker and more comfortable for adult hands. And it has a long cable.

[fierce estuary]

I use ps5 controllers

they are wireless

[heavy dust]

Yeah well I ditched all my wireless controllers when I figured out I live in an area with atrocious RF interference only to find out it was actually just buggy 8bitdo firmware causing stuck buttons and now i use all these vintage controllers I impulse bought to justify spending the money.

[supple ermine]

You can ebay the controllers

[amber willow]

ps5 controllers don't pan the audio of your headphines when you press L,R now do they 🙂

the hudson joycard wasn't that great of a design, they used 2 pcbs samwhiched and pushing the buttons can break the solder joints.

I had a tiny speaker plugged into mine, so it gives you a little audio in the palm of your hand.

[heavy dust]

Thankfully it’s only the version with audio that has the dual pcb thing going on.

[amber willow]

i think it's a cool controller, except for the 2 pcb thing. has turbo and the audio feature is neat

[real matrix]

Anyone know how to get MikeS11's native CVBS core working? When I use ypbpr mode on my CRT, I get a normal YPbPr output, and when I set CVBS output, it also seems to work, but it doesn't quite look the same as my real NES. It is brighter than the default, but I'm not sure I'm configuring it correctly.

[real matrix]

NVM. I missed the setting to enable it.

[dreamy marten]

Also, the green cable goes into the composite port of your tv and your tv should be set to the composite video option

[real matrix]

Yeah, I figured that part out. Looks great

[umbral moon]

On my JVC D series I even had to turn off component in the settings

[real matrix]

I wish other cores can have composite that looks this good, but that would mean integrating a separate video processor for each system, since most other systems converted from RGB

[real matrix]

Mine just has a separate composite port for the same input. I just unplug the Y and plug it into the CVBS port

I need to make some kind of switch for myself to do that.

I already have DPDT switches for another project, so should be eaasy

[umbral moon]

I guess if it's on the shared input xD saves me from from swapping audio cables

[real matrix]

Yeah, I'm using the shared input on my Philips

I'd use a separate input, but I don't want to build a distribution amplifier just to do that :P

And I don't have the remote for this TV, so switching inputs is kind of a pain

[real matrix]

@heady crow Any chance there can be an option to "natively" generate a Y/C signal like what the new revision of the NESRGB and the NT Mini can do?

I'm assuming there's no chance at a "native" YPbPr due to the different color spaces.

[tropic belfry]

No. I improvised. I'm decent at electronics. It's quite invasive so I wouldn't recommend "my" method. 😅

This is a good fix for the low-pass filter, to make it sound more like a NES or Famicom and not so muffled. The difference is quite noticeable, to me at least.

~~https://vaot-mydns-jp.translate.goog/fc/tfaudio.htm?_x_tr_sch=http&_x_tr_sl=ja&_x_tr_tl=en~~

There is also this mod for balancing the FDS expansion audio, just swapping R103 and R104.
~~https://etim.net.au/nesrgb/installation-famicomtwin/~~

Sorry for being a bit offtopic.

EDIT: found a good summary — https://forums.nesdev.org/viewtopic.php?p=231999#p231999

[heady crow]

The NESRGB generates S-Video by just using a RGB to YC encoder, similar to the normal NES core from the NESRGB Spec: "Outputs RGB, S-video (encoded from RGB), composite video (encoded from RGB), and composite video (original from PPU)."

[real matrix]

The most recent revision changed that to generate Y/C as if it was natively generated by the PPU. It's a recent advancement.

https://etim.net.au/nesrgb/announcement/ChangesV5.txt

"S-video is generated the same way as the NES generates the composite video, the only difference is the luma and chroma signals are not combined at the end."

[heady crow]

I had it in a previous iteration but it completely wipes the composite artifacts that you get from a real NES. So while it seems like it's a good feature, there's really no value.

[real matrix]

The value would come from the "extra-hot" colors being able to be decoded by the TV, and from the TV decoder being able to render the same colors as it does with composite, thus eliminating the need to select a palette.

Would be nice if it was added back and the user can decide for themselves.

Speaking of which, you also mentioned an external amplifier would be needed for accurate levels, since the MiSTer is limited to 0.7vpp. Do you have any documentation available on how to build one?

[heady crow]

but how hard is it to select a palette 🙃 , Kitrinx palette is pretty close

[fierce estuary]

real composite in the core is a waste of effort

whatever you do, it will be worse than a palette

and waste a ton of logic if you're doing it properly

we only have aproximations of how the voltage acts in the ppu

they're measurements, but you still have to do some jank math

the whole thing with emphasis colors is annoying too

real nes also has an analog skew in G ppu's that makes higher luma output nonlinear to lower luma

[elfin hound]

Can't composite output be achieved using composite cables? What am I missing here?

[fierce estuary]

it encodes rgb into composite

nes generates video natively in composite

the idea is to do it natively from the core to the wire rather than generating back and forth, but it's naive

[elfin hound]

If I'm not mistaken via the outputs on the right of the console, right?

[fierce estuary]

famicom had only rf, nes had rf and composite on the side, yes

the composite is output directly by the ppu

[elfin hound]

Ok, so what does the core actually output?

[fierce estuary]

rgb

[elfin hound]

I mean, I'm on HDMI and using filters and masks to achieve a CRT look and I'm fine with that, but I understand there's purists.

[fierce estuary]

in the modern world, we use the color code (combo of luma/chroma) to index palettes, which output an rgb color that corresponds to what composite would have decoded to

[elfin hound]

I understand that on paper, RGB is better than composite, right? But it's not accurate?

[fierce estuary]

there is no such thing as accurate

every tv decodes composite from the NES differently, because it is out of spec

so there's no actually acurate values, which is why people argue endlessly about it

the mister actually can't even produce the out of spec voltage afaik

it's literally "undefined"

[elfin hound]

Hence, the need for palettes, right?

[real matrix]

No palette I've tried matches my CRTs, especially since every CRT will generate a different palette given the same input from a real NES. It is also impossible to have a palette with an extra hot color, since NES palettes don't support HDR values of above 255, and the MiSTer can't output an analog signal above 0.7Vpp.

These kinds of reasons are the exact reason why I never installed an NESRGB in my NES console, because I didn't want to have to use palettes.

[real matrix]

That is correct. Palettes are an objectively better way of representing NES colors, since they produce consistency that a real PPU cannot. But my point is that the original PPU produces inconsistent colors on different CRTs, and it would be nice to have an option to replicate that behavior on an FPGA.

[real matrix]

I wonder how consistent those measurements are from PPU to PPU, especially different revisions. Also MikeS11's existing implementation looks damn good IMO. IDK if you've tried it.

[real matrix]

Yeah, MikeS mentioned the need for an external amplifier in his announcenent in #test-builds

[real matrix]

I want to say MikeS's fork has the option to emulate this behavior, since I saw some kind of option for it, but I'm not 100% certain that's what the option does.

[fierce estuary]

not

early famicoms dont have the skew, various different models have variations in voltages

[real matrix]

So kind of like how the OG SID's filters are wildly inconsistent.

[fierce estuary]

you can try but its not really as perfect as the 5% some people say. it varies by angle

I remember this from some vectorscope imaging

[real matrix]

Usually emulators have an option to manually adjust filter curves, but the default is some kind of guess of an "average"

[fierce estuary]

and again, it's composite that is literally out of spec. It means the specification does not define how to interpret the electrically invalid signal. The definition of undefined behavior. Consequently different tvs show the chroma differently, hence the endless mario sky debates

it's all stupid guessing and no better than palettes

it's people just playing with dolls and saying it's more real than a palette

[real matrix]

Palettes don't support values above 255, though.

[fierce estuary]

neither does mister composite

[real matrix]

Unless you use an external amp

[fierce estuary]

at least, it doesn't go to the invalid volatage nes did

[verbal holly]

I love the amount of effort that has gone into stuff like NESRGB for real hardware, meanwhile here we are trying to go back to composite

[real matrix]

I prefer to use composite on a CRT with my OG hardware

[fierce estuary]

if you want garbage uninteded artifacts there's easier ways to do that than outputting composite

but because of how nes works, I promise there wasn't really any intention behind them, like there was in 7800 or genesis which had evenly divided clocks

remember, famicom, the thing for which all games were made, did not output composite

[real matrix]

I don't think there has to be intent behind it. It's more about the reality of the released hardware.

[fierce estuary]

it outputted rf

so use that if you think it somehow is better to be authentic

[real matrix]

RF is close enough. Modulated composite + mono audio

[fierce estuary]

and yet it has significant differences

[real matrix]

Yeah. Also the AV Famicom had composite, and so did the front loader

[fierce estuary]

the difference between rf and composite and a palette is probably nearly equidistant

but the toploader nes only had rf didn't it?

[real matrix]

Well with composite specifically, I was only able to replicate the artifacts I saw on an NES with MikeS's core. MiSTer's generated composite looks like ass

[fierce estuary]

iirc the av fami got composite and the nes lost it

[real matrix]

Kind of. You could send in a mail order to get a special model with composite

[fierce estuary]

composite in general looks like ass

[real matrix]

A special kind of ass

[dry lynx]

Why not use MikeS’s core if you’re happy with it?

[real matrix]

I am

[verbal holly]

I don't know about NES (before my time), but when I was finally able to go from RF to composite on my SNES it was a night and day difference, RF seemed to make everything bleed together even more, especially the reds

[dry lynx]

I just use what Kit tells me to

[fierce estuary]

yes of course, rf changes video properties (and audio properties) a lot

[heady crow]

If you're in a CRT the only reason for composite is to use it if the game developers designed art around it. E.g I'm not a fan of how Saturn looks on RGB or svideo over composite.

Composite does indeed look terrible though 🙂

[fierce estuary]

saturn is an rgb console designed using rgb

[real matrix]

There's also the famous debate of the Sonic waterfalls on the Genesis, or the dithering on Silent Hill on the PS1

[fierce estuary]

genesis they actually did leverage composite, because sega sucks

7800 did too

but those had evenly divisible clocks so they could game it

[real matrix]

Also SNES very specifically with Kirby Dream Land 3

[fierce estuary]

you're talking about high res

[real matrix]

Moreso the dither pattern, but ya

[fierce estuary]

it's not often used and I dont think it actually needed composite, it's just the way modern good tvs show it

svideo was around for snes

[real matrix]

More modern CRTs using high quality inputs also showed it

[real matrix]

And RGB in Europe and Japan

[fierce estuary]

right which is why nobody ever used jank like that

unlike sega who used it constantly

[verbal holly]

N64 is the console for composite - is what I tell myself because I have a late model PAL funtastic which doesn't even work with s-video

[fierce estuary]

I seiken densetsu 3 and kirby are the two I know of out of the whole library

[real matrix]

And Sony with the PS1

[fierce estuary]

you dont even need composite to make n64 look bad

it does that all by itself

[real matrix]

Yeah, the SNES mostly used color math for transparency

[real matrix]

VI filter FTW

[fierce estuary]

for those two it wasn't for transparency

it was for the higher res graphics

[real matrix]

For Kirby Dream Land 3 it was

[fierce estuary]

maybe they abused it for that

[real matrix]

The bushes in the first level are a good example

[heady crow]

Really? The shadows all have vertical bars on RGB/svideo. At least on the handful of games I play. Maybe not all I guess

[fierce estuary]

who knows with sega

[real matrix]

IMO 5th gen consoles that relied extremely heavilly on dithering look better on a CRT with composite

[fierce estuary]

but by then plenty of people were using better than composite, and the devs used rgb

[verbal holly]

composite on Saturn kind of helps with all of the dithering, but I don't know I still kind of prefer to be able to clearly see what I'm playing, same with Mega Drive

oh no, but the Sonic waterfall lol

[fierce estuary]

I actually have been working on a module

so, things like the waterfall are because of horizontal blending, not really any composite magic

composite is 4:1:1 video, in other words, it throws away most of the chroma data

horizontally

[real matrix]

I thought composite was 4:2:0

I'll take your word for it, though

[fierce estuary]

vertically composite is full rez

so mister uses 4x the video clock for it's video module

since composite smearing is horizontal only, you can just clock it 4x and blend horizontally at 4x the rez, crt's are fine with this

[real matrix]

I was actually considering designing a hardware module to convert RGB to composite for the consoles that did the same.

[fierce estuary]

we already have that

[real matrix]

We do?

[fierce estuary]

the problem you'll encounter is the lack of clocks

yes of course we do

[real matrix]

I know MiSTer can generate native S-Video, and it's extremely high quality, so composite can be combined from that

[fierce estuary]

this would be rgb, just with real horizontal 4x resolution composite blending

I can even add the artifacts if I want without losing fidelity

[real matrix]

Though I still need to figure out what a good way to do that is. I tried a notch filter to cancel out the chroma interference, but that ended up extremely blurry, and just using a series 0.1uF capacitor ended up producing way more artifacts than I'm used to

[fierce estuary]

because composite sucks

[cursive sable]

And the Saturn, the VDPs had a hardware function dedicated to it even. Sega loved using that trick it seems

[fierce estuary]

good filters are complex

[real matrix]

Yeah, but I want it to suck in a very specific way :P

[fierce estuary]

it's literally impossible to seperate them perfectly

the best is what, a 3d comb filter or something

[real matrix]

3D comb filter will separate composite to luma+chroma. I want to do the opposite

[fierce estuary]

anyway people make these that inherit a mister clock somehow I think

[real matrix]

Basically, I want the PS1 core's composite to look like composite from an actual PS1

[fierce estuary]

oh you're talking about how to encode it on the pixel edges

yeah that's what needs clocks to avoid dot crawl

[real matrix]

I want the dot crawl, though :P

[fierce estuary]

it's not supposed to have dot crawl

ps1 just used a standard composite encoder from rgb internally iirc

[real matrix]

I've never seen composite without dot crawl, except for with my weird notch filter converter

[fierce estuary]

nothing fancy

[real matrix]

Yeah. I was thinking of building that circuit, but externally

[fierce estuary]

I dont think it will be much different than the ones that exist

[real matrix]

I'm just not aware of the existing ones, ig

[fierce estuary]

didn't mike make them?

[cursive sable]

Those invalid voltages are what The Immortal used right? I think I recall reading that it used every emphasis bit or something?

[fierce estuary]

The Immortal used a weird quirk of breaking the voltages by changing emphasis bits

had to do with the jp differences in the ntsc black pedistal I think

[real matrix]

Speaking of JP differences, I need to figure out how to calibrate my US CRT to D9300

[fierce estuary]

I made a palette for it somewhere

the us nes didnt bother to make it compliant with ntsc here

so the black is off by 15

[real matrix]

The MiSTer has a filter that does this for me, but it'd be nice for other inputs

Are there D93-specific SMPTE color bars available?

[cursive sable]

Wasn't the immortal made by a us studio?

[fierce estuary]

maybe, but it wouldnt matter if it was

[cursive sable]

Oh, you mean they took advantage of the differences of using japanese ntsc in the us?

[fierce estuary]

the way emphasis bits work in a real nes is they lower the voltage of each color

tv's have some kind of auto-brightness thing

a combination of the black pedistal plus dimming all colors made some/most tv's misinterpret the signal and tricked them into brightening it in a weird way

it wouldn't have worked universally, but I guess it was good enough at the time

[cursive sable]

I see, so really going out of spec to try to have an additional grey on CRTs that it worked on

[fierce estuary]

yeah

nes has two colors of black

in-spec black and out-of-spec black

they turned in-spec black into grey by tricking tvs in a not very kosher way

[verbal holly]

truly the Ford Model T of game consoles

[heady crow]

This already exists, the only thing you can change is the strength of the Luma trap

Adjusting the cap will vary the strength

[cursive sable]

So was the out of spec black usrd the the actual black in that game then?

[fierce estuary]

yes

but it's not used in most games because it could break tv sync

[heady crow]

I build it to mimic the 32x composite which translates well to other cores

[cursive sable]

Why am I not surprised that a game by EA did something like that XD

[fierce estuary]

they were real cowboys back then

one of my new coworkers used to work at codemasters, and knew the nes guys

I wanted to send them like a letter about micro machines

but im not sure if it would be a letter of admiration or disgust

[cursive sable]

Another game that breaks a lot of things?

Codemasters were the ones who made that Aladdin "enhancer" right?

[mellow dawn]

The Aladdin enhancer would have been genius if it had come out 2 or 3 years earlier. Or even better a mmc3 equivalent version. It would have greatly reduced cart cost.

[cursive sable]

Didn't it just make it so the carts didn't need the NES10 chip on them?

Was the NES10 even cloned 2-3 years before that aladdin thing?

... Not counting Tengen

[mellow dawn]

In addition to nes10 defeat (uses bad voltage to temporarily knock it out), it also has mapper functionality and ram intended to replace chr rom (like some other carts that only use chr ram and copy chr data from the prg rom).

The mini game carts are just a single rom chip

[cursive sable]

Ugh, it used voltage spikes? I recall their standalone games doing that too

At least it looks better designed than those carts?

[cursive sable]

Got to love those capacitors just dangling off the top of the PCB

[clever scarab]

Wow, stop capacitor shaming

[cursive sable]

Couldn't resist could you?

[dreamy marten]

I wonder how many of the 50 ppl who bought svideo adapters for their snes still play snes.

[real matrix]

Aren't you the one who made that? I've been meaning to try building it. Gotta find the schematics for it.

[real matrix]

That poor inductor just being ignored

Also I love how the silkscreen indicates a positive leg for the inductor

[heady crow]

I did that's why I'm saying you don't haha, it's on my git I'll get the link later, just out

[tropic belfry]

Gotta keep the PCB small

Nice bodge too.

[tropic belfry]

Zener

[cursive sable]

Funny thing is there IS room to mount them flush with the PCB, but I guess they were too tall to fit in the cartridge shell that way so they went with that janky method

[tropic belfry]

Maybe they're too tall.

[fierce estuary]

there's a lot of room in those shells

[tropic belfry]

Maybe they've capsized.

[cursive sable]

That game had a weird shell too so no idea of component clearance size

[tropic belfry]

It looks fine, but it's not optimal when it comes to vibration resistance.

[faint osprey]

the dream I waited for for years finally came true, real PPU composite on the mister core!

quick question though: does it only work from the VGA port's green, or does it also work with active YC encoder boards? (or rather an analogue board with active composite output like castlemania's board)

[fierce estuary]

it's not real ppu composite

[digital rampart]

the dream I waited for for years finally came true, fake PPU composite on the mister core!

[steep yew]

*hardware approximation™

[digital rampart]

the hardware approximation™ I waited for for years finally came true, fake PPU composite on the mister core!

[steep yew]

https://tenor.com/bevdW.gif

[tepid umbra]

I don't even know what pee poo composite is but I'm happy y'all are happy.

[faint osprey]

well you know what I mean!

[fierce estuary]

yes, that's why I had to correct you

[faint osprey]

what would be the correct way to call this feature

[fierce estuary]

more regenerated composite in a less efficient way

[faint osprey]

lol not the most elegant term but I'll try to use it for correctness sake

in any case, this is what will get me to use the mister nes core again after not touching it for 4 years

[grizzled tusk]

pseudo composite, maybe.

[cursive sable]

Could be worse, I initially misread that as regurgitated composite XD

[latent breach]

dang just shove the dagger into Kit’s heart further why dontcha 😜

[faint osprey]

haha, don't mean to do so, the mister nes core being so excellent is what made me want this so much, I wanted all the awesome things it offers (especially accurate, loud and clear digital audio), but the "authentic" composite look is simply a non-negotiable for me -- now I can have finally the best of all worlds

I actually did not touch mister as a whole for years, it went into the drawer after I finally got a real neogeo AES (and a groovymame setup for more convenient/broader arcade stuff)

[verbal holly]

I don’t want to disparage anyone’s personal taste but I still find it really funny that we have beautiful, crystal clear RGB or component video that people go to great lengths to mod their original hardware to support, and meanwhile it’s like “nah, that looks too nice, give me those artifacts please”

[faint osprey]

lol yeah, all taste is arbitrary, also if you could gather all people alive who are currently into nes/famicom/famiclone consoles, I imagine those going out of their way to get rgb/component video are a small minority (some out of taste, some out of limitations)

I don't like composite for the artifacts though

it's simply what nes/famicom is "meant" to look like in my personal/arbitrary view

though I do like the idea of YC kinda combining good parts of both options

part of what made the nt mini interesting, and now the nesrgb 5.0 board too

[verbal holly]

Yeah I don’t really have a horse in the race I guess, NES was a little bit before my time so I never had original hardware, and just love the way it looks via RGB with Kitrinx’s awesome palette. That’s more than “authentic” enough for me 😄

[fierce estuary]

you can make any palette you want

the colors are semi random for composite anyway

the artifacts are unintentional

[faint osprey]

the "semi" part is probably key there

the issue is that no palette seems to completely match the output of given ntsc (or pal) decoder, the latter being actually quite consistent even across different decoders provided that the CRT's phase and chroma settings are similar

and for people using upscalers with modern tvs, we have really good consistent standards (the tink4k's excellent handling of composite/YC being the gold standard, but the OSSC Pro's AV board also quite good)

so the random part can actually be reduced into a trivial matter

[hasty river]

ah yes good old MRCINALEW

[hasty river]

Quasicomposite?

[shy plinth]

How does the composite from the AV famicom look compared to the composite from the US NES?

[faint osprey]

setting aside small obscure differences across chip/motherboard revisions, should be identical

[fierce estuary]

probably the same since it's almost the same revision of chip

just brighter because it would be on japanese tvs

and the american one didn't correctly shift the black level

[fierce estuary]

well, they are actually big difference, but there's only two, if you discount rgb models

pre-G and G-H

pre-G early famicoms dont have the weird skew to colors, they are more like straight spokes on a wheel, where g/h skew it by about 5% with luma

the greater difference will actually be from tv to tv

since out of spec composite has undefined behavior, it's fairly unpredictable how a given model of tv will show it

[keen pasture]

anybody had any luck connecting Famicom controllers via SNAC (using a db15>nes adapter)? tried two and they won't work

[amber willow]

should work if you used the famicom snac adapter, not sure about a db15-nes adapter.

I could be wrong but think the av fami and US nes have a slightly different video circuit.

Is the adapter something you bought or made?

[keen pasture]

I bought the NES snac adapter, made the db15>nes adapter

I'm pretty sure it's correctly wired, the ASCII Stick even lights up, but no input is registered

unfortunately I don't have a NES anymore so I can't test it on real hardware, I guess I'll make a daemonbite tomorrow and I'll see if it works there

[amber willow]

check how you have D0 and D1 wired, US nes games all use D0, but fami controllers connected to the expansion port use D1 iirc

[keen pasture]

I could test it using a famicom>nes>db15>nes adapter but I'm too tired and it sounds ridiculous

[keen pasture]

I think all pins are correctly wired, I even opened up one of the db15 controller plugs to check

(both Famicom db15 controller plugs can be disassembled)

[cursive sable]

I built the NES snac adapter but I haven't had a chance to try it yet, I did also build a SNES one however and it worked fine, even the extra buttons in 240p

[keen pasture]

I did have issues with a NES controller using SNAC before

and it worked fine on a Famicom

must be one of those weirdo PAL revisions

the SNAC adapter works fine with the Zapper, AV Fami controller and one PAL NES controller 🤷‍♂️

[amber willow]

maybe double check against this, feels like you don't have fami D1 connected to nes D0. or you have the clk or latch mixed up. 5v, and gnd are probably right since you saw a red light. disregard their data naming convention

[keen pasture]

I did, many times

I could be wrong though, I'll try with a daemonbite tomorrow

[amber willow]

ok sorry to hear that

oh one more question, is the adapter really long?

[keen pasture]

nope, really short

[keen pasture]

yup, the adapter was bad, didn't work on daemonbite but controller does work after I soldered a db15 to the arduino

thanks for your patience blue1 😄

[zenith mirage]

It looks very authentic to me. The core is amazing and even if it’s outside the framework it will reside on my SD card for the moments I need a fix of what looks right to me

I know efficiency is your goal but mine is enjoyment 🤷‍♂️

[pure palm]

I just tried the native CVBS core and I'm getting weird sync issues. On my Commodore 1702 it looks relatively normal except for the top of the screen. On my PVM 14M4U the colors are messed up as well as the sync. Both TVs accept composite from other consoles just fine. Anyone know what I'm doing wrong?

[zenith mirage]

Works best with yc enabled but also you only want to use the green RGB output. Had no issues like this on several monitors/ TVs this end

If you are using the usual y/c output don’t, this is a unique case

[pure palm]

Yeah I tried it with both the .ini file that I use for RGBS as well as my Y/C .ini and it didn't make a difference. I only have the green (luma) cable hooked up to the composite input. Maybe I should set the .ini for YPbPr?

[zenith mirage]

Green in this case isn’t luma, it’s composite video

[pure palm]

Nevermind, it's just the cables. I just set my .ini to YPbPr and plugged the cables into my PVM the "normal" way and even with "normal" cores the sync is still janky af. They were the cheapest VGA to YPbPr cables on Amazon, but someone in the reviews said it worked with their MiSTer setup. I guess their QC just sucks

[zenith mirage]

If your using the native core it’ll only work for that core in this config. Everything else will not work.

[pure palm]

Yeah I know. I just wanted to try the cable the way it was intended to test if it was a cable issue. It turns out that's exactly what it was

[faint osprey]

do you happen to have a real nes or av famicom to test? I'm just wondering if you could hook one up to your commodore monitor to see if you also get that skewing at the top of the screen with real hardware. I have noticed with other implementations that this can be a difference with real hardware, and if that's also the case it may be something that MikeS would want to know about

[pure palm]

Yeah I could try to dig up my old NES later. Most of the games are in storage at my brother's place but I think I have one or two around somewhere I could use for a test

[faint osprey]

some monitors have a "VCR mode" or other ways to fix this kind of problem, but others don't, so if this is a difference with the original cvbs it would be good to know

[pure palm]

I dug up enough NES stuff to do a quick test with real hardware. It looks normal on this monitor, but that doesn't necessarily mean that there's an issue with the way the native CVBS core is implemented at this point. The cable I bought couldn't even deliver proper sync when I configured everything for normal YPbPr on my PVM, so it's definitely faulty. I'm returning it and I bought a new cable from a different manufacturer that should be here in a day or two. I'll post the results when that gets here

[faint osprey]

Thanks for the update! If the same seemingly faulty cable was used with the real NES console then that would be enough to establish a difference with the CVBS core implementation, otherwise we can wait for an everything-else-being-equal test

[pure palm]

Yeah testing with the same cable would be difficult. It's definitely doable with alligator clips etc, but too much effort imo. I could take some A/B pics of Kirby's Adventure when the new cable gets here if people want, but some nuance will surely be lost with my basic phone camera setup. An easier way might be to compare a proper screenshot from a capture card, or even better, an oscilloscope. Unfortunately I own neither of those things haha

[clever scarab]

So did that coin guy finally throw in the towel and admit defeat over his test rom?

[cursive sable]

Dosen't seem like it

[steel flume]

I hate people like that..even if he is right which I doubt he is being annoying and I don't think he is doing to actually help.

[thin mirage]

maybe he's just doing it for fun and not because he's being malicious

[fathom ingot]

Even if he is, he's doing a good job at implementing a thing that helps preservation and therefore may be useful for everyone working on any existing and future emulators (in a large sense of word). So it makes sense to separate the art from the artist.
Creating proper automated tests that validate weird corner cases is extremely tedious, especially as a pet project.

[blissful prairie]

And it's probably great for fast regression testing

[grand jewel]

These kinds of tests, which may seem tedious to you, are actually useful in the long run.

Testing on several consoles is even more advanced today, with the possibility of knowing the original bugs and variants on each chip (or almost), and helps me in particular to know where we are in the replication of the console at a given moment.

[fierce estuary]

some of the tests are very pedantic. When I say that I mean that they dont impact behavior that a user would ever be influenced by, but do cost a software emulator a lot of extra effort to be able to pass, without any gain

if you dragged this level of pedanticism to an extreme, you could start saying "The capacitor emulation does not properly emulate capacitors aging over the course of decades"

[grand jewel]

The problem is knowing where to stop; we're currently facing this question with srg320 on the Saturn.
Some discoveries are still interesting because they help with the 32X and the CPS-III systems.

But frankly, for the Saturn, we've reached a point where no game shows any changes anymore, at least based on our testing of the SH-2.

So, on the NES once more.
The core is something I really like to use. The job on it is impressive.
And, yes I completely agree with you - the last tests are pedantic.

[clever scarab]

This guy is like Sony whenever someone posts console sales numbers. “Oh, we found an additional 20,000 PS2 consoles sold so we’re still number one!”

[cursive sable]

You talking about the AccuracyCoin guy or me? 🤣

[fierce estuary]

I think they're talking about 100th Coin

their intentions are good, they want to make a test for verifying accurate emulators, and I respect that

but I do feel there needs to be a more clear line between the tests that are important and hte ones that are pedantic footnotes

to a layperson, they see "fails 10 tests" and they dont know if it's failing some obscure nuance of misconfigured DMA, or if it's failing to have vblank flag at all

[zenith mirage]

It’s got to feel like a drag when you’ve put such a huge amount of effort in though. And you really have.

[fierce estuary]

me? No. It's just kind of annoying to have to fix stuff that's really really silly because 100 people are like "hey look mister is failing nes tests"

so im sitting there adjusting some thing that no games will ever do on nes instead of working on the virtualboy graphics chip

[glacial pecan]

what if someone develops a homebrew game and when you press a button it calls the AnnoyKitrinx function and executes the edge case?
And then it is made game of the month to have a >100 userbase

[fierce estuary]

you likely couldnt

these edge cases are like behavior if you have DMA smashing into audio registers

im not sure what kind of game you'd have if you tried doing that

[cursive sable]

Pretty sure 100th coin has said that same thing, that the number of tests that fail is not what matters, but which tests fail, I recall there was a video about that. Not sure if you can fit that many descriptions within a 40KB NROM though

[fierce estuary]

you can use more than one rom

or more than one set of tests

• essentials
• details
• trivia

[cursive sable]

Not sure how you would split those up, and it would be a mess, espcially if someone is testing on real hardware since the only way to get them to all pass is to use an actual rom on a cart and not an everdrive

[fierce estuary]

with a menu

[cursive sable]

Woulden't that require a mapper and introduce problems in some of the tests?

[fierce estuary]

no

the whole thing is already a menu

but when you test all at once it tests them all with no seperation, nor are the listings seperated

[cursive sable]

I see, so split the tests up into like, essentials and super-accuracy stuff?

[fierce estuary]

right, like the three I listed

they can just be added on for each tier

[cursive sable]

what would trivia even be?

[fierce estuary]

stuff that impacts nothing

like the orange dot in pacman

[cursive sable]

Probably a better name for it, but I get what you mean. Likely won't be enough space to write descriptions for each test though, at most you can just put them in categories like that

[fierce estuary]

there's also a single flickering pixel in stein's gate and a few white pixels that flicker in micro machines, the only known impact of two of the things tested for

purely visual

[cursive sable]

I thought steins gate didn't work because it had some custom mapper or something intended just for the emulator it comes with?

[fierce estuary]

stein's gate works fine

but there's a single flickering pixel on one of the dialog screens in the intro

it's very complex and i spent hours getting that pixel to flicker

you're welcome.

[cursive sable]

Believe me, it's appreciated. I used to think that these could have an impact on glitch-based speedruns but apparently it won't even effect those, so yeah, it's just really super-accuracy for the sake of accuracy

[blissful prairie]

Thanks for fixing it, Kitrinx. I want my pixels to flicker when they should 🙂

Warts and all. Those are the warts.

[cursive sable]

That's just the US version of Mario 2

[hasty river]

So this is like a war of attrition at this point?

[shy plinth]

https://x.com/yoshimiru_SS/status/2057448831017705913

What are the relevant different Famicom revisions and how does it manifest here in this game?

☆よしみる／『メタルスレイダーグローリー』コ...

There are different versions of the Famicom hardware.
The screen that prompts you to press the Select button before the opening sequence of *METALSLADERGLORY* is designed to optimize the game for hardware with different specifications, with the goal of reducing sprite flickering.

X · May 21, 2026, 1:10 PM

[cursive sable]

Wasn't that game released in like 2001 and was a port of a snes game?

[echo tree]

no, its a late nes game that was ported to the snes later on

[fierce estuary]

it's a legendarily complex ones to developer

mmc5 game

[cursive sable]

Oh, I might have been thinking of the snes version then that was released in early 00s

[elfin hound]

I don't know how to explain this, but in some games when I recover from a save state some sounds are missing. While I found this mainly playing homebrew games, it happens on some retail games too.

[amber willow]

probably have to give some examples of both type if you ever want anyone to reproduce it

[elfin hound]

Try Air Fortress (retail) and Wolfling (homebrew).

[fierce estuary]

not really surprising, probably some setup state is not saved

bound to happen with hacks like savestates

[tropic belfry]

It recovers after playing for a bit, doesn't it?

[elfin hound]

For Air Fortress it does, but for other games it doesn't. They recover back on reset.

[tropic belfry]

Makes sense.

Is it games that use expansion audio?

[amber willow]

could be mapper specific, Air Fortress used a mmc1 variant sjrom(chess master and miracle piano are the only other us sjrom game) i didn't check the mapper of the howmebrew

[tropic belfry]

Wolfling uses iNES mapper 2 (UxROM). I don't believe this is mapper related. Savestates are tricky. Feel free to fix it. 😝

[elfin hound]

I doubt it, games like Hebereke and the japanese version of Castlevania 3 are fine with savestates...

[fierce estuary]

not all state is saved

it's just using something that isn't saved

it's that simple

it's probably benign

[tropic belfry]

we know

[jaunty pier]

https://tenor.com/view/allstate-commercial-dennis-haysbert-green-fields-gif-4484146148047073094

[tropic belfry]

https://tenor.com/view/wink-wink-thor-chris-hemsworth-thor-love-and-thunder-flirty-gif-26087539

[hasty river]

You're*

[steel flume]

Is it just me or does the nes version of Darkwing Duck feel like a reskinned MegaMan game?

The Disney Afternoon Collection physical release came out today on switch and switch 2 is why I'm on that game if it seems random.

[jade zenith]

it pretty much is. it's capcom, after all

check out magical doropie for an even more blatant mega man clone

[steel flume]

Mega witch girl..lol

Even the menus

[jade zenith]

yep lol. even the player sprite looks similar

[steel flume]

The costume color change when you switch weapon types

[clever scarab]

I’m pretty sure Mega Man is a Darkwing Duck clone

[granite pivot]

I remember looking for a Mega Man like game that I saw in Nintendo Power. Turned out to be Power Blazer, the JP counterpart of Power Blade. That one was actually changed for the better when it came to the west.

[steel flume]

Technically not possible..lol

[clever scarab]