Best Atari Lynx emulator: Mednafen 0.8.B or Handy 0.90 / 0.95. U decide!

[JCGhitman11]

I have heard by some Atari Lynx fans that Mednafen 0.8B is the best Atari Lynx emulator due to its accuracy. Is this True?? How does it match up against the handy version 0.90 and or 0.95. For those of you Lynx Gurus that use windows weigh in and be the judge -->

[carmel_andrews]

mednafen is CLI only (unless you find a front end that works and also it only supports keyboard input only (unless you have something like xpadder)

[+karri]

mednafen is CLI only (unless you find a front end that works and also it only supports keyboard input only (unless you have something like xpadder)

 

Mednafen is just a port of Handy. It is really the same thing.

 

But what I would like to do is to let Handy develop to a new direction. Today we limit the screen to Lynx resolution 160 x 102 pixels. It would be possible to use higher res screens and let the sprite engine draw the bitmaps with the maximum details available. In this way you could easily run old games with much better details on the screen. I would love to try this on the PSP screen 480 x 272 pixels. Especially for card games like Freecell or Klondike this would show the cards with the same resolution as any PSP game. And the same cart image would work on the Lynx.

 

This approach would also allow better Lynx-TV experience than the original Atari hardware. The only big problem is still the stuttering sound of the Lynx emulation. This needs to be solved in Handy somehow. The current streaming technology is too slow. We need a new kind of chip-sound driver for the operating system that would work exactly as the Lynx hardware with no buffering problems.

--

Karri

[carmel_andrews]

I think you mean that it 'borrows' some of the 'handy' code in the same way that mednafen borrows some code from other popular emulators the program is compatible with (i.e gba, nes, pc engine etc)

Edited June 12, 2009 by carmel_andrews

[108 Stars]

But what I would like to do is to let Handy develop to a new direction. Today we limit the screen to Lynx resolution 160 x 102 pixels. It would be possible to use higher res screens and let the sprite engine draw the bitmaps with the maximum details available. In this way you could easily run old games with much better details on the screen. I would love to try this on the PSP screen 480 x 272 pixels. Especially for card games like Freecell or Klondike this would show the cards with the same resolution as any PSP game. And the same cart image would work on the Lynx.

 

This approach would also allow better Lynx-TV experience than the original Atari hardware. The only big problem is still the stuttering sound of the Lynx emulation. This needs to be solved in Handy somehow. The current streaming technology is too slow. We need a new kind of chip-sound driver for the operating system that would work exactly as the Lynx hardware with no buffering problems.

 

I do not fully understand that...

The Lynx has the resolution of 160 x 102, and handy allows to adjust the display to 4x the size.

But what good would a higher resolution probably be? No old games would win any detail from this; the graphics were drawn for the 160 x 102 resolution, so either you would get a small window displaying the same160 x 102 pixels in the bigger resolution window, or it would be stretched to fit the new res; but that would add no details at all, it would just lead to one pixel using several now.

The only games that could profit from this would be new games especially made with these specs in mind...and those would not work on real hardware anymore. And going through that fuss for some simple card games I can easily play on PC anyway, or just develop them for PSP to begin with using the better specs seems odd to me.

 

So, I do not understand the point...

I´d prefer to see handy improved to be more accurate and play games perfectly, and to try and get more really big games done that will work on a real Lynx.

Edited June 12, 2009 by 108 Stars

[carmel_andrews]

108 stars, i think Karri means that the way the emulator outputs the display...i am guessing you are familiar with emulation to know that some emulators simply display the game images in a resolution and quality suitable for todays pc monitors and FPD's (flat panel displays)

 

And asd you know the display image output of these displays mentioned above are not the same as the display output used on televisions/portable screens etc that the hardware being emulated was originally displayed on

 

Perhaps a version of mednafen/handy that displayed the game exactly as the portable display the lynx used for display output would be nice (it would make the emulation a lot better and more accurate and not the bland display output that emulators presently suffer from)

 

Mind you, it looks like the various snes/genesis and recent vcs emulations are starting to support 'tv mode' for display output, which means the games on these emulators will display graphics/game images exactly as if you were playing the real hardware on an old school telly or portable telly

Edited June 12, 2009 by carmel_andrews

[108 Stars]

Ah, thx, I misunderstood what he meant; indeed, that would be nice.

[JCGhitman11]

mednafen is CLI only (unless you find a front end that works and also it only supports keyboard input only (unless you have something like xpadder)

 

Mednafen is just a port of Handy. It is really the same thing.

 

But what I would like to do is to let Handy develop to a new direction. Today we limit the screen to Lynx resolution 160 x 102 pixels. It would be possible to use higher res screens and let the sprite engine draw the bitmaps with the maximum details available. In this way you could easily run old games with much better details on the screen. I would love to try this on the PSP screen 480 x 272 pixels. Especially for card games like Freecell or Klondike this would show the cards with the same resolution as any PSP game. And the same cart image would work on the Lynx.

 

This approach would also allow better Lynx-TV experience than the original Atari hardware. The only big problem is still the stuttering sound of the Lynx emulation. This needs to be solved in Handy somehow. The current streaming technology is too slow. We need a new kind of chip-sound driver for the operating system that would work exactly as the Lynx hardware with no buffering problems.

--

Karri

Do you think Handy will ever be improved regarding to your discussion??? This is a classic handheld that will no doubt be extinct (good quality units) within the next 5-10 yrs. The unique graphics, music, and games is what makes the Lynx come alive. Someone out there who is knowledgeable enough and or a group of knowledgeable gurus will hopefully oneday perfect the handy emulator. Maybe even make a higher caliber emulator..... LYNX fans can only hope.....

[108 Stars]

Could be...personally I would love to see a Lynx emulator for my Nintendo DS most, since this would make my DS actually worth owning. Sadly the aspect ratio would be problematic.

Edited June 12, 2009 by 108 Stars

[+LS650]

I have Mednafen as it is a good emulator of other systems. When I run Linux I run Mednafen because it's much easier to setup than Handy, but on my Windows Vista machine I run Handy.

 

I haven't seen Mednafen do anything Handy can't do, and Handy is a lot, well, handier... so Handy for the win!

[108 Stars]

@JCGhitman11

 

You know, you have said you were getting a PC and wanted to run a Lynx-emulator, and so far you started two threads about it....but why don´t you just go the simple road instead of listening to endless tech-babbling you won´t understand anyway and just try the emulators out? It´s much easier and quicker.

 

I am guessing you don´t have a big clue about computers and that´s why you ask; but if you can go online, register on a forum and post here that is already more complex than running handy.

 

You download it, download a file called lynxboot.img and put the in the same place; then double click on the handy icon and choose your game. It´s really easy, and just trying it out will help you much more than anything we can say here.

 

Handy is a very, very simple emulator to use, and you do not need a high end PC either. Just try it and tell us how it went, dude!

[+karri]

I do not fully understand that...

The Lynx has the resolution of 160 x 102, and handy allows to adjust the display to 4x the size.

But what good would a higher resolution probably be?

 

All Lynx games use sprites. Lets say you have a sprite of a plane that is drawn at 32 by 32 pixels. When it is far away the Lynx scales it to smaller and displays it perhaps as 5 by 5 pixels. If you have a high res screen of 480 by 272 pixels then you could display it as 15 by 15 pixels instead. The graphics would contain much more details and pixels than the Lynx 160 by 102 screen can hold.

 

The cool thing is that the sprite engine does not have to know about the Lynx screen. Handy could easily run the original Lynx code in high-res.

 

Of course the cursor will still move at a 160 by 102 grid and collision detection will work on a 160 by 102 grid. But the picture will be more detailed.

--

Karri

[Trebor]

I use to be a Handy user, but switched to Mednafen since its arrival on the scene. The best feature over Handy (IMHO) is launching from a command line to full screen. Using this line example:

 

mednafen.exe -fs 1 -lynx.special hq2x -lynx.videoip 1 -lynx.stretch 1 "Gauntlet - The Third Encounter - (US).lnx"

 

Will launch mednafen full screen in Hq2x video mode, stretched to full screen.

 

You are not limited to using the keyboard only. Once any ROM has been loaded simply press ALT-SHIFT-1 and you will then have the choice to map all Lynx movement to whatever gamepad functions you desire. Your input mappings are saved and only need to be mapped once.

 

F8 easily rotates the screen (Above Gauntlet game looks great), and Esc exits the emulator.

 

Granted it is not as easy to use as Handy, but the features, functionality and compatability make it my number one choice.

 

-Trebor

[+bhall408]

All Lynx games use sprites. Lets say you have a sprite of a plane that is drawn at 32 by 32 pixels. When it is far away the Lynx scales it to smaller and displays it perhaps as 5 by 5 pixels. If you have a high res screen of 480 by 272 pixels then you could display it as 15 by 15 pixels instead. The graphics would contain much more details and pixels than the Lynx 160 by 102 screen can hold.

 

The cool thing is that the sprite engine does not have to know about the Lynx screen. Handy could easily run the original Lynx code in high-res.

 

Of course the cursor will still move at a 160 by 102 grid and collision detection will work on a 160 by 102 grid. But the picture will be more detailed.

--

Karri

 

 

Did anyone end up trying to implement this thought?

 

I'd recently been wondering similar when I saw this for SNES emulation...

 

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/04/hd-emulation-mod-makes-mode-7-snes-games-look-like-new/

While using these HLE techniques would be superb, in the meantime I've been working on adding Super-XBR as an interpolation filter, and after that may give Kopf-Lischinksi a try. I'm not yet convinced that KL could run in native code on Android at 60FPS, but worth giving it a try.

[Cyprian]

I'd recently been wondering similar when I saw this for SNES emulation...

 

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/04/hd-emulation-mod-makes-mode-7-snes-games-look-like-new/

looks so impressive, would be cool to have that filter in Handy