FPGA Based Videogame System

[genfuyung]

Cant really tell if I should have limit rgb range checked on the new firmware or not. When I have it checked, the symbols in the background get one more row of grey pixels around them and when I have it unchecked that greyish border is smaller. No idea how this affects game graphics and have no way to compare. Any suggestions?

[Kismet]

So in picking random things to see if it works, I found one that doesn't make sense.

 

In the smokemonster list, there is a title called "Brandish 2 - The Planet Buster" under JP , it does not get past the KOEI screen on the SD2SNES on the Super NT 4.3 firmware. When I put it in my SNES, it ALSO didn't get past the KOEI screen, the first time. But I hit reset and it went right to menu screen in the game. "Brandish 2 Expert mode" also does the same thing just a black screen after the KOEI logo. Same with the fan-translation. I was only able to get the game past this screen once, on the real SNES.

 

This appears to be a SD2SNES compatibility issue. Looks like the SD2SNES hooks got turned back on and that's what breaks the game.

 

(I should have clued into that when the clock was reset)

Edited February 26, 2018 by Kismet

[SegaSnatcher]

 

After testing both last night, I've resorted to sticking to 1080p. My TV does an okay job of not making them seem as jarring, but the 720p blended the lines too close to even notice them much, even with the depth set to max. The default 4:3 for 16:9 for 1080p also filled the screen beautifully. Plus, that lag was just unforgivable.

So I'm sticking to 1080p and just take my glasses off to get that blurred look!

 

For reference, I have the Samsung 55" Series 6 MU6300.

Thats interesting that you are getting noticeable more lag using 720p given you have 4K Display.

[Kismet]

Thats interesting that you are getting noticeable more lag using 720p given you have 4K Display.

 

It's probably the scaler in the monitor/tv. 1080p to 2160p is a 2X simple scale, but 720p to 2160 is a 3X simple scale. If it's slightly blurry at 720p, then it's also adding a linear filter to the scaler, and that would basically be a second step.

Edited February 26, 2018 by Kismet

[Kismet]

Cant really tell if I should have limit rgb range checked on the new firmware or not. When I have it checked, the symbols in the background get one more row of grey pixels around them and when I have it unchecked that greyish border is smaller. No idea how this affects game graphics and have no way to compare. Any suggestions?

 

Load the 240p suite if you have a SD2SNES or Everdrive and use the color bars ore the Gray ramp to find out. If it's set wrong, you'll not see the bars on the end correctly (eg you'll see two whites and two blacks) or if it's set the wrong way in the other direction, what is supposed to be black will be grey,

[romevi]

Thats interesting that you are getting noticeable more lag using 720p given you have 4K Display.

 

I thought that too. I thought 4k displays should have no noticeable lag with 720p, but it was more than evident on my play. I had to switch back to 1080p halfway through a level in SMW.

[SegaSnatcher]

Yeah, I can also confirm Samurai Showdown seems to always load just fine in 720p, but sometimes freezes at the leaf intro if you are using 1080p. That is a weird glitch/bug.

[CZroe]

 

A few sets will stop doing overscan simulation as a result of recent changes. Wish this were a standard feature on all TVs, but it ain’t. [emoji20]

I've said it like four times in this thread - no overscan, my TV has a 1:1 mode that I use...

You said:

...Perhaps some TVs also disable some post-processing with it that can't otherwise be disabled.

Overscan is post processing, so I answered:

A few sets will stop doing overscan simulation as a result of recent changes. Wish this were a standard feature on all TVs, but it ain’t. [emoji20]

It’s not like I keep some chart of who in the thread has insisted that they don’t have any overscanning going on or not. Sheesh.

 

...I think the sharpness may come from indicating IT content, which on some TVs changes how it displays content in other ways than just removing overscan.

Overscan simulation fills the screen with a softened image (interpolated). Some TVs will get sharper from that 4.3 change alone (IT flag). Yes, there can be other filters that it bypasses too, but the only one needed to explain what you described was already confirmed (disabling overscan simulation). For anyone witnessing the same thing who can attribute it to overscan then: mystery solved. I brought it up for you as well as any onlookers wondering the same thing. Not sorry!

 

I think it still varies based on the upscaler in the TV.

 

I currently play at 720p on my Sony OLED using hybrid scanlines. Will need to play a bit with the 4.3 firmware, but 720p hasn't had any real problems upscaling 720p in terms of softness or the like. It's a bit weird that a 4K set would make hash out of 720p though. You'd think being an integer scale would make things easier.

Yeah, you’d think so but most 4K TVs will scale 720p a bit beyond 4K by default (overscan simulation). If you don’t explicitly find a way to disable overscan, most will do that. When that is the cause, the linear filter may even disappear when this is sorted (no need to interpolate with an integer scale). Edited February 27, 2018 by CZroe

[bozo55]

Were you using the default 4.5x scaling? If so that's why. You need to integer scale the scanlines which is why most people choose the 1200 (5x) or 960 (4x) options with 1080p. With 720p your set basically upscales it for you but it's a softer bilinear algorythm which looks much nicer than 1080p 4.5x.

 

I tried 1200 height at the different width presets and the thin scanlines didn't look good to me... also the razer sharp graphics didn't look as pleasing on such a large display. Just me I guess.

[Andromeda Stardust]

Cant really tell if I should have limit rgb range checked on the new firmware or not. When I have it checked, the symbols in the background get one more row of grey pixels around them and when I have it unchecked that greyish border is smaller. No idea how this affects game graphics and have no way to compare. Any suggestions?

"Limited" color palette is immediately noticeable on my ASUS gaming monitor. Black level is nowhere near true black and makes the image look washed out. Not sure why anyone would want this option turned on IMHO.

[cacophony]

"Limited" color palette is immediately noticeable on my ASUS gaming monitor. Black level is nowhere near black and makes the image look washed out. Not sure why anyone would want this option turned on IMHO.

That just means that your monitor is in full RGB mode. If it were in a limited mode then black would look correct.

 

Some monitors/TVs only support limited and in that case youd want to set the SNT to limited or else youll get crushed blacks and blown whites.

[romevi]

When I turn on Limited RGB it's like a gray filter goes over the entire screen. A very noticeable difference.

[Jagasian]

 

 

I have noticed some bugs/glitches that only seem to appear with the original cart, and not SD2SNES. Which suggests there's some potential issues with specific carts that need cleaning. In my case, I hit some nasty sprite glitches with the candles (and eventually more things) in Castlevania IV, but my SNES Classic ROM via SD2SNES worked fine.

Monopoly bug reproduces on my sd2snes, which is in new condition.

[+remowilliams]

My Super Everdrive V2 has stopped working with the 4.3 firmware with default settings. It worked fine on the original shipped firmware and the unofficial firmware, and now throws different errors on boot about SD/IO errors.

 

After enabling Launch System Timing the Super Everdrive works correctly again. Not sure if this was expected or not, but just reporting it

[Andromeda Stardust]

My Super Everdrive V2 has stopped working with the 4.3 firmware with default settings. It worked fine on the original shipped firmware and the unofficial firmware, and now throws different errors on boot about SD/IO errors.

 

After enabling Launch System Timing the Super Everdrive works correctly again. Not sure if this was expected or not, but just reporting it

Thanks for the tip. I already have "launch timing" turned on. Any benefit to leaving it off?

 

I'll probably be using my Everdrive a lot more now that I've upgraded from JB to vanilla 4.3.

 

Three cheers to Kevtris! :grin:

[retrair]

 

I have a similar situation (Super NT -> HDMI -> TV -> optical SPDIF -> Soundbar) and while sound from the TV is fine, from the soundbar it has issues (random bits of silence). Everything else on it (Xbox one, a couple different PCs, the TV's own sound output) has been no problem going through the TV to the soundbar, but the NT Mini and Super NT have interruptions of silence, so something unique to the Analogue devices seems to not work well with this sort of setup, for me.

 

I have the same set-up and enabling cartridge audio cleared it up. On some games (ex. Yoshi island) sound played through the soundbar would cut in/out but when played only through the tv it was fine. After turning on cartridge audio in the settings it plays perfectly through the soundbar.

[kevtris]

Some debuggin' updates:

 

I figured out what causes the monopoly bug today. It's really wacky. The game is absolutely 100% fine. The problem is the game is manually reading the controllers (vs. using the autoread like most other games) and it only reads them every 8 frames, in time with the chance/community chest animation. This causes my controller reading state machine to fail, thinking the game crashed, so it starts reading the controller itself (so the menu still works).

 

The game reads once, and this breaks it out of me reading it, and the system gets sent "no buttons down" for the first read. Well, the game only reads it once so it gets 'no buttons down'. then it waits 8 frames, it times out, and the cycle repeats. This is why before the game would blow through that screen without stopping- it would return 'all buttons down' instead! That's what broke starfox 2 and a few other games that complained about incompatible controllers.

 

Certainly a very weird bug, and if the game was programmed different it would've never happened. I have a fix for it though.

 

The fix will be in the next update.

 

I also figured out why Twistit was crashing, and it's actually TWO DMA bugs. After I fixed one of them, the demo almost never crashes (took 4 loops through it). This also seems to have fixed Samurai Shodown/Spirits (I ran both of them 6 times, cannot reproduce the crash on boot any more). I am calling that provisionally fixed for now. Twistit was slightly naughty and does DMAs during rendering, and it was a HDMA during DMA that was causing the problem. If the two happened with juuust the right alignment it causes the failure. The second DMA bug it uncovered is similar but much harder to make happen. I don't think that bug is causing any issues anywhere else but I am going to fix it tonight.

[kevtris]

Thanks for the tip. I already have "launch timing" turned on. Any benefit to leaving it off?

 

I'll probably be using my Everdrive a lot more now that I've upgraded from JB to vanilla 4.3.

 

Three cheers to Kevtris! :grin:

The only thing I found that didn't like "launch system timing" was the game saver +, everything else I tried did run fine. I personally leave it off but if you're having no trouble, then you can leave it on or off.

[Andromeda Stardust]

I also figured out why Twistit was crashing, and it's actually TWO DMA bugs. After I fixed one of them, the demo almost never crashes (took 4 loops through it). This also seems to have fixed Samurai Shodown/Spirits (I ran both of them 6 times, cannot reproduce the crash on boot any more). I am calling that provisionally fixed for now. Twistit was slightly naughty and does DMAs during rendering, and it was a HDMA during DMA that was causing the problem. If the two happened with juuust the right alignment it causes the failure. The second DMA bug it uncovered is similar but much harder to make happen. I don't think that bug is causing any issues anywhere else but I am going to fix it tonight.

Is the Samurai Showdown error the same one affecting Cho Aniki? Weird that the symptoms were not reproduced when I had the output resolution set to 720p instead of 1080p. That's just bizarre.

[cacophony]

 

There you have it.

 

The Super Nt is apparently a nice interim option, while everyone eagerly awaits the ultimate clone console: Polymega !

 

(edit: original tweet: https://twitter.com/polymegaHQ/status/968326594430455809 )

Edited February 27, 2018 by cacophony

[kevtris]

Is the Samurai Showdown error the same one affecting Cho Aniki? Weird that the symptoms were not reproduced when I had the output resolution set to 720p instead of 1080p. That's just bizarre.

No it didn't seem to be affected. I am not sure yet what is causing this. I tried different resolutions here and didn't really see much rhyme or reason to it. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. When it boots it seems to work OK though; I did 4 rounds without a problem.

[romevi]

Thanks for all your hard work, kevtris.

I've encountered one major issue: my school studies have taken the back seat ever since I got this. Same issue I had with the Nt mini. D:

 

Also, will the menu bounce come back? I seem to be the only person who used it.

Edited February 27, 2018 by romevi

[kevtris]

Thanks for all your hard work, kevtris.

I've encountered one major issue: my school studies have taken the back seat ever since I got this. Same issue I had with the Nt mini. D:

 

Also, will the menu bounce come back? I seem to be the only person who used it.

it's still in there, just turn it on. it's under "menu options" and is "menu bounce"

[cacophony]

The only thing I found that didn't like "launch system timing" was the game saver +, everything else I tried did run fine. I personally leave it off but if you're having no trouble, then you can leave it on or off.

 

Can you provide more info on what gets changed with the timing when it's enabled?

[Andromeda Stardust]

Can you provide more info on what gets changed with the timing when it's enabled?

+1. Is it like the difference between 1chip and 2chip models?

 

Btw, my SNES is a 1chip, presumably a late release blocky console with mario allstars+world as the pack in.