Problems With SSF

[wardy]

SSF is a very accurate and easy-to-use emulator, but when it runs polygon intensive games they run at snail's pace.

If I try to make a speed compensation, the emulator just cuts the frame rate which makes the games even less playable.

Any advice / remedies =/ ?

Oh, and I know that Sega gave a certain website a ROM dump of Return Fire (notrious for being 100% finished code and having PAL copies of the game ready for distribution), but they never made it to the shops, just like X-Men Versus Street Fighter) but can't work out how to get it running at all so if anybody knows how, let me know please.

=)

[mick_aka]

How old is your PC?

SSF really flies on newer dual/quad core setups, and also runs great on my dual opteron workstation, but on my old 3.4Ghz P4 with 2gig ram and ATI X1800XT 512MB graphics, stuff like Last Bronx or Burning Rangers runs like a bag of shit

[wardy]

Hm, but memory intensive sprite-based games move at full speed.

Strange though, my computer isn't brilliant but it can run Half Life 2 and Dark Messiah at about medium detail and full speed so I assumed it would be able to display Saturn games.

Especially since Saturn games are CD-ROM based and shoudln't have compatability problems.

Oh well, doesn't matter a huge amount =)

[mick_aka]

The issue here is the power behind your processor, the fact is that a single core chip (pentuim 4 etc) will more than likely struggle to emulate a multi-core or multi-processor system based on an entirely different architectire.

[wardy]

Makes sense to me.

I guess having a hard computer doesn't matter if it can't match the architecture of something it wasn't originally intended to emulate.

Which is exactly what my computer is.

[RealBlue]

very true. However I find it very annoying that somehow on my mid-range system Sega Rally runs at 5fps while Sega Touring Car (which pushes more quadrilaterals & arguably looks better) runs at about 20fps. Why couldn't it be the other way around?!

[mick_aka]

Hell, if you want to play the original Sega Rally on your PC you can pick up the PC version off eBay for 99p! lol

[wardy]

I can get the PC version of Sega Rally Championship from a local supermarket for 50p =D !

[RealBlue]

retsub101 said:

very true. However I find it very annoying that somehow on my mid-range system Sega Rally runs at 5fps while Sega Touring Car (which pushes more quadrilaterals & arguably looks better) runs at about 20fps. Why couldn't it be the other way around?!

All Fixed! ;D

It required a Quad Core & 4GB of ram but I finally got it running smoothly! yay

[RealBlue]

ok, I'm guessing most people have noticed this but what is up with SSF when I try to play VF2! the game plays but the graphics are all messed up; also the same thing happens in Fighting vipers & megamix but not nearly as bad. Basicly everything looks fine when it's standing still but when stuff starts moving it's like it's "out of phase" or something.

Here i took a screenshot for you

any ideas guys?

[chizzles]

It's interlacing.

Unlike other emulators, SSF renders images exactly as the saturn renders them, including interlace.

Unfortunatly, once you factor in the frame-skip used to keep the images in time, the fields get horribly out of sync with each other.

[Anthaemia.]

Virtua Fighter 2, Fighting Vipers, Fighters Megamix, Battle Arena Toshinden and Toshinden URA all suffer from this interlacing problem, but what really annoys me with SSF is the way certain PAL games are displayed in the wrong resolution. From my own collection, I've noticed that later Sega Flash demo discs and The House Of The Dead are missing quite a large portion at the bottom, though I'm sure there may be other examples. Does anyone know if there's a way of solving this, or will it require updating from the emulator's programmers? Also, let's hope they implement ISO support for those who don't have an endless supply of blank discs at their disposal...

Even with a mere 1.6GHz single core processor I don't have any complaints with the speed of SSF, although I do admit that a few games could run much better. I'd wanted to build my own "super" computer based on easy-to-buy components identical or as similar to Sega's arcade Lindbergh board as possible, but if a Pentium 4 chipset has problems then I might have to reconsider looking at a multi-core solution with a decent graphics card and plenty of memory. Any recommendations for creating the ultimate Virtual Saturn? Then again, is there a way of hooking my Saturn up to allow for direct feed media? A no frills capture card simply won't do for someone who demands the highest possible quality!

[mick_aka]

I've run a Saturn throught a £600 HD capture card onto a 32" presentation LCD where I used to work, it looked amazing but that's a damn expensive way of playing Saturn!

[chizzles]

You also have to worry about lag caused by image processing, most people amazingly don't seem to care about the fact that most PC capture cards cause about 0.5 second lag, which makes playing shooters in particular, very awkward.

Fighting Vipers seems fine in-game to me, only the menus are effected by the interlacing, since the game itself is low res.

[mick_aka]

the latency on the capture cards we used was a smidge under 1ms through RGB SCART.