Upcoming Virtual Jaguar 2.0.0 release

[Shamus]

If by 'old style' you mean the broken 1x1 rendering code that put out wrong aspect ratios depending on whatever the pixel width was set at, we're never going back to that.

 

At this point, I have good reason to believe that the bottlenecks in the code are unrelated to any screen rendering code.

[carmel_andrews]

soz to keep going on, I guess you have a preference for OpenGL rather then DirX/Dir3d/DirDraw

 

Is there any advantages that OpenGL has to thh M$ thing so far as this and other emulators are concerned

[Shamus]

Yes, there are advantages. One very large advantage that OpenGL has is that it's cross-platform while DirectFoo (where Foo is anything created by a Microsoft Marketroid^tm) is not.

[GeneralMurdock]

This may sound reeeeallllyyy stupid and I'm feeling really noob but I've looked over the readme.

 

The documentation seems to not follow the new releases very well so I'm lost here.

 

I've used the vj.cfg from version 1.07. Since the new one don't have it.

 

I've changed the file format path for windows:

 

#
# Virtual Jaguar configuration file
#

# Jaguar BIOS options: 1 - use, 0 - don't use

useJaguarBIOS = 0

# Jaguar ROM paths

JagBootROM = D:\Games\Jaguar CD\vj2_r346\bios\jagboot.rom
#CDBootROM = ./bios/jagcd.rom
CDBootROM = ./bios/jagcddev.bin
EEPROMs = D:\Games\Jaguar CD\vj2_r346\eeproms\
ROMs = D:\Games\Jaguar CD\vj2_r346\ROMs\

 

Here is the start.

 

But when I go CTRL+I or insert cartridge on the gui it don't show my roms there.

I have several roms in j64 and jag format. The no-intro set is there, and yes I know the jag vs j64 file format differences.

 

One other things that I've tried was cmd: virtualjaguar "rom file name.j64" but still it won't go. It will start the emulator without anything and all I can get is the red screen of death.

 

So, Shamus, the basic question, how can I load up roms here because I'm out of ideas.

 

*by the way, update the docs. It seems there is no need anymore for the bios files/folder.

 

Oh, and I'm not using the r346. I'm with the newest build on reboot website, it's just the folder name.

Edited September 1, 2011 by GeneralMurdock

[Shamus]

Sorry about that, rewritten documentation is coming soon.

 

vj.cfg isn't used anymore.

 

For now, you need to go into the Configuration dialog (Jaguar|Configure) and set the location of your software in the "Software" edit box on the "General" tab. Don't forget to put in a trailing slash on the path, as VJ doesn't do that automagically for you yet.

[GeneralMurdock]

Thanks it worked )

 

I have a question, how does the virtual jaguar knows a rom name?

Some roms it reads as normal file like game.j64 but others it read like Game XYZ.

 

Do you have a rom crc database?

Is it on the rom header?

[Shamus]

We use all kinds of sooper sekrit algee-rythms and sophisticated ar-tee-fish-ul intellugense and UBER ELITE ULTRA TRICKY TRICKSINESS that is nigh on unpossible to be understood or b0rken.

 

The reality is that we CRC the file and check it against an internal database. Mostly to be able to present to the user known problems, flag bad dumps, and all sorts of quasi-useful stuff like that. If it isn't in the database, it uses a few heuristics (that can be easily cheated) to determine what the file is.

 

I have personally given up on the extension war (since it seems at least some people, bless 'em, are naming their stuff correctly) but I absolutely refuse to give an inch on the headerless file (i.e. non-ROM, non-Alpine) front. There's absolutely no excuse for that kind of laziness in my opinion.

[LinkoVitch]

I have personally given up on the extension war (since it seems at least some people, bless 'em, are naming their stuff correctly) but I absolutely refuse to give an inch on the headerless file (i.e. non-ROM, non-Alpine) front. There's absolutely no excuse for that kind of laziness in my opinion.

 

 

He gave me a right telling off he did! made me cry and then wouldn't give me a hug afterwards!

 

I learned my lesson though, now my binaries have headers...

 

please forgive me uncle Shamus

 

[GeneralMurdock]

Good idea

 

How many games/versions are in the database so far?

[Shamus]

Too many for me to be arsed to count them. But quite a few.

 

@LinkoVitch: All is forgiven.

Edited September 2, 2011 by Shamus

[carmel_andrews]

Just got a new gfx card (an nvidia 7300gs) in the same system (beats the cack onboard sis mirage video by a country mile) i have noticed a slight pincrease in the FPS and the movement is slightly less jerky in some games but there is still an issue with the sound/dsp, it kind of stutters or slows things down and in some games the music/sound is intermittent (like crescent galaxy)

[Shamus]

Yup, in its current form, Virtual Jaguar is a pig with the resources. Though I heard a rumour that someone with a high powered i7 system was able to beat VJ into submission.

[carmel_andrews]

Yup, in its current form, Virtual Jaguar is a pig with the resources. Though I heard a rumour that someone with a high powered i7 system was able to beat VJ into submission.

 

Yup, in its current form, Virtual Jaguar is a pig with the resources. Though I heard a rumour that someone with a high powered i7 system was able to beat VJ into submission.

 

 

 

 

 

Show off!!!

[Shamus]

No, it isn't me. I don't have that kind of money to throw around ATM. I'm still slogging away with an old P4.

[carmel_andrews]

Is that a P4 that's got support of EMT64 (which basically allows you to use 64bit o/s's like xp64, vista/win7 64 on your P4 system)

 

Just a though regarding something you mentioned about 'bottlenecks in the VJ code' which might be lending itself to slowdown when running games via the emulator

 

Perhaps for windblows users only, you should offer alternative display options other then just opengl, such as GDI and/or Direct foo (as you call it), i think offerring other display options might just speed up the games running on the emulator, since i would guess that windblows isn't too friendly to opengl protocols or certain gfx cards just run too slow with opengl

[Shamus]

No, it's a 32-bit version, running at 2.8 MHz.

 

The performance bottleneck is not the rendering code. And modern implementations of OpenGL are plenty fast, even on Windows.

 

VJ isn't doing anything fancy or taxing the system with OpenGL either; it's basically rendering everything to a texture in order to get 1), fast scaling, 2), correct aspect ratios, and 3), nice filtering. And while I could write a renderer that output straight to the window (which on Windows, would be GDI rendering) I guarantee you it wouldn't be any faster than the OpenGL renderer. And it would look ugly, and have wrong aspect ratios for games where the pixel width isn't square. There are better places for me to spend my time than writing and maintaining rendering code--especially when there are nice things like OpenGL out there that remove the need for me to worry about such things.

 

Now, that said, I just might add the option to use blargg's NTSC filter in future, because it's just that awesome. But anything native to Windows (such DirectX and the like) is a non-starter. Not going to happen.

 

So, to sum up, the rendering code (aka native screen display code) is *not* the bottleneck. You can prove this to yourself by comparing a game that doesn't make heavy use of the blitter, such as Rayman, with one that does, like Tempest 2000.

[carmel_andrews]

well i dunno why it seems to run slowly on my system (since you don't seem to be having trouble with the speed issue shamus)

 

Just as a challenge i ran a couple of games (AvP and cybermorph) on PT version.95, (okay so it was a bitch to get cybermorph actually running), anyway apart from the 'slight' graphic issues in both games on PT, both games do run at proper speed (and sometimes faster, if you untick/mark the 60fps limitation) with dsp/sound enabled (remembering that PT's screen is a bit larger then VJ's) yet, running the game(s) on VJ (OKay so you don't get the graphic issues as with PT version .95) with sound and DSP enabled and it runs so slowly (rather like the first time i ran fceux nes emulator), now if i disable sound, the fps improves slightly, but it is still painfully slow (compared to PT version .95)

 

Yet i never had the problem with the versions of VJ that still had the smaller screen mode (which i think was version 1.0 7 and earlier)

 

Perhaps if you look at the dsp/blitter code from the current svn's and compare that to what you had with VJ 1.07 and earlier i think you might see where i am getting at

[Shamus]

Alien vs Predator and Cybermorph both make heavy use of the blitter, so it's no surprise that they run slowly on Virtual Jaguar.

 

PT (and others like it, such as Jagulator, and DioJag for that matter) are more simulators than emulators, so again, it's not surprising that they run very fast. I think you'll find, though, that the compatibility of those aren't quite as good as they should be, and, due to their design, probably never can be.

 

The older code in VJ that you refer to is faster, yes, but much less compatible. The blitter (still not 100% as of this writing) has been rewritten to conform to the actual silicon (well, as close as you can get with crude gate simulation ) and as such, is poorly-to-non optimized and slow. But it has better compatibility and fixed a lot things that weren't working before the rewrite. Basically, it's a reference design that will be used for yet another rewrite once the compatibility is high enough.

 

Also, I don't have a fast enough machine to run VJ at 60/50 fps, so I understand the slowdown very well. And, as I've said many times before, there is still some relatively low-hanging fruit to be harvested as far as optimization goes, but this will take time since I'm the only one developing it at the moment.

 

If you like versions of VJ 1.0.7 and earlier, there's absolutely nothing preventing you from using them as VJ is an open source project and those sources (and binaries!) are still available to you. Use them in good health and Godspeed to you sir!

 

TL;DR: VJ is slow and unoptimized and doesn't run as fast as other emus. /THREAD

[sandroace]

2.0.0 Has been released! http://icculus.org/virtualjaguar/

[Griever]

NO FULLSCREEN, NO JOYPAD-SUPPORT ? ! ? - What's that? it's just R391. . . 4get this please. Better spend your time with something else. Just a good hint (All who knows about JAG.Emulation, know how hard it is to emulate the machine correctly, so no one can be disappointed from you), really, you just waste your time. But you know it by yourself, like you said, don't compare orange with apples, or better don't compare a bike with a Ferrari car (That's the case, if you compare VJ with real Programmer's work like QMod or Dio). Just really pitful, that Dio just made his T2k emu for himself, or i'm sure he would made the best one...

[GroovyBee]

@Griever: If you don't like the emulator don't use it. If you think that you can do better then download the source code, add the features that you want and give the changes back. Simple!

[Griever]

I can give my comment, right?! and sure i "do" not like it, so why i should use it?! I just gave a critical review about the VJ, what some people here was waiting for so long, and was promised a lot, but at least seems slower that the vj-Release 1.0.0 (potato) i love my JAG, so don't missunderstand and i wish to see a good emulator in future, and it seems, soon we will see. I never said im a programmer, so don't expect anything like a emulator from me. But i'm a experianced Jaguar-User AND WELL EXPERIENCED WIT ALL OTHER EMULATORS, so i can give good hints at least and healthy critical, what should help at least and not demotivate or insult someone. But it doesn't help to talk honey-like! I just want to get to the point. . . cheers

[GroovyBee]

Of course you can comment. However, why should you give negative comments when you can't do any better? It takes 2 minutes to complain but 100s of hours to do the work that you are complaining about.

[Griever]

Sure, you are right - it just take a few seconds to complain. But what do it helps him if i talk good about it? At least this here doesn't improve the JAG-Emulation, this is all what i say and it's better he make it for himself. Why promise something what can't keep or the emulation getting more worst than the previous one's what had at least Fullscreen-Support and was not slower at all... So what is wrong in your eyes - saying the words what should say or promising things what can't keep? I also agree with you that it take 100 of hours to make this kind of work, i read a lot about it. And i was following Dio's progress for his T2K-emu. But to release VJ now - like it looks like now (R391 was the same), will not make many think about it, that it took so many hours to finfish it.

[GroovyBee]

What any developer does and doesn't support is up to him and not you. Don't forget that the developer is spending 100s of hours on this for free, you download it for free, you download ROMs to play for free and you play games on it for free. If you want those features so badly I'm sure Shamus would charge the going rate (as a freelance commercial programmer) to add them for you.