Emulators

2011-06-30 11:20:23 am

What'd you say?

Well, I noticed there isn't a designated thread for emulators so, we now have one.

Here is my issue though, I have Snes9X V1.52 and I absolutely am sick of it. I am having issues such as the background and certain tiles getting messed up upon exiting the map screen, unexplainable lag, and a delayed reaction of button presses for about 2 seconds - which lasts for minutes then dissipates.

I am running Windows 7 on a laptop, not sure if that has anything to do with any of these issues.

Long story short, Snes9X is annoying the hell out of me and I want a new emulator, does anyone have any suggestions?

Thread title:

arkarian

2011-06-30 11:28:53 am

red chamber dream

i've always used zsnes and like it fine. haven't tried any others though.

Idkbutlike2

2011-06-30 11:38:33 am

Get version 1.53, buddy, they fixed some of the issues. Oh, and if there's lag, you just have to click out of the emulator window once and then click on it again to stop it. That or get BSNES if you're computer's good enough for it.

Prime Hunter

2011-06-30 11:53:21 am

Quote from arkarian:

i've always used zsnes and like it fine. haven't tried any others though.

Same here. Granted, I only play Super Metroid and Super Mario World hacks with it so I don't have a lot of experience either way. It does everything I need it to do though.

BioSpark

2011-06-30 03:54:19 pm

just download one from here

http://code.google.com/p/snes9x-rr/

Behemoth

2011-06-30 09:20:21 pm

I've considered now for a long time that Snes9x emulators are more suited for making TAS's. My PC doesn't play games that well either with the same problems Tytjet listed. Zsnes is the emulator of choice as far as just playing a damn game is concerned.

tomatobob

2011-06-30 09:26:10 pm

One shall stand, one shall ball.

ZSNES has issues with Kirby's Dreamland 3 apparently, and it seems get weird graphical bugs if I play any game with a translation patch. Snes9x doesn't seem to have those issues for me, it's just a pain in the ass to remap the controls for whatever reason.

Quietus

2011-07-02 06:00:59 pm

Super Secret Area - Dead Ahead!

For problems with controls in snes9x, have you made sure you put the diagonals in? That threw me for a while, because I'm used to ZSNES, which doesn't use them.

As for the emulator itself, I only ever play using ZSNES. I only use snes9x for creating movies.

tomatobob

2011-07-02 06:09:47 pm

One shall stand, one shall ball.

No the controls worked fine once set, it's just when trying to set them I managed to end up with Up becoming A, Left becoming down, Down becoming Y, and Right becoming R. It was the worst kind of adventure.

Quietus

2011-07-02 06:11:50 pm

Super Secret Area - Dead Ahead!

Reminds me of those damned 'shrooms in Earthbound. Sad

Idkbutlike2

2011-07-02 06:19:42 pm

I don't even attempt to play SM on an emulator. There's no way you could make a comfortable keyboard setup for that game.

Turtle

Edit history:

Turtle: 2011-07-02 06:22:47 pm

2011-07-02 06:22:37 pm

I like turtles.

Luckily I have a DualShock 3 and the appropriate drivers to hook it up to my laptop. It works for pretty much any commonly-emulated system except the N64, which has too many buttons that just can't be conveniently mapped to it.

tomatobob

2011-07-02 06:36:23 pm

One shall stand, one shall ball.

Quote from Idkbutlike2:

I don't even attempt to play SM on an emulator. There's no way you could make a comfortable keyboard setup for that game.

To be fair there's no way to make a comfortable SNES controller set up for that either.

Idkbutlike2

Edit history:

Idkbutlike2: 2011-07-02 06:47:46 pm

2011-07-02 06:45:22 pm

Yeah there is. Just switch the cancel and select weapon buttons with each other :P

And if you're one of those people who started off with Prime and the GBA titles and bitch about constantly having to hold down the run button and having to use both shoulder buttons to shoot diagonally, well, up yours.

Turtle

2011-07-02 06:52:27 pm

I like turtles.

Or, just play the "Control Freak" hack.

Idkbutlike2

Edit history:

Idkbutlike2: 2011-07-02 06:53:32 pm

2011-07-02 06:53:25 pm

Well, there is that of course.

tomatobob

2011-07-02 06:58:11 pm

One shall stand, one shall ball.

I have a blood feud with all run buttons, they are my sworn enemy. Even games I like are made slightly worse by the existence of a run button.

No, my problem with the Super Metroid control scheme is that you have to eliminate one of you're diagonal aiming buttons and put Run on L to avoid having to do crazy finger gymnastics to shoot run and jump in quick succession. That and the issue every Metroid up to that point had where you had to toggle missiles on and off, I never liked that. The GBA scheme streamlined things and it really did work out for the best, except for the inferior form of diagonal shooting, but that's made more tolerable by being part of vastly superior games.

Of course Prime is the God King of video games so really you can't blame anyone for being annoyed by controls and indeed games that could not achieve such perfection.

Idkbutlike2

2011-07-02 07:04:56 pm

Hey, a run button sure beats having to press a side key on the D-pad twice just to run. And despite Fusion and ZM being my first Metroid games and two of my all time favorites, I would never call them "vastly superior" to Super Metroid. They simplified and removed a lot more than they improved. Can't say anything bad about Prime, though. It's my second favorite in the series :P

tomatobob

2011-07-02 07:13:38 pm

One shall stand, one shall ball.

They removed shitty things like the run button and having to press scroll through all of your weapons with only one button. I mean you had to push that fucker like five times to get to Power Bombs, god knows why. And god help you if you push the button one too many times cause now you're fucked.

Seriously, fuck run buttons. If I push left there is a very good chance I want to go as fast as possible to the left, give me a walk button if you think I need to move like a big slow idiot. If you need a run button you didn't make the character fast enough in the first place.

Quietus

2011-07-02 07:18:54 pm

Super Secret Area - Dead Ahead!

Quote from Idkbutlike2:

I don't even attempt to play SM on an emulator. There's no way you could make a comfortable keyboard setup for that game.

I have no idea why anybody would TRY and play emulators with the keyboard in the first place. I've always used a controller for them, and there are adapters available that'll enable you to use almost any controller you like. I've always used a USB adapter and a PSX controller.

DeltaForce502nd

Edit history:

DeltaForce502nd: 2011-07-02 07:28:20 pm

2011-07-02 07:20:15 pm

I would prefer that I didn't need a run button for Super Metroid, but that's just me. Games like Fusion and Zero Mission didn't include a run button due to the control sceme of the GBA. I never really had much of a problem with controls in Super Metroid using an emulator except for if I wanted to press many key strokes simultaneously, which my keyboard won't allow me to do Crystal Flashes or running Charged Beam spin attacks unless I change the imput keys for my ZSNES emulator.

Idkbutlike2

2011-07-02 07:20:53 pm

Quote from Quietus:

Quote from Idkbutlike2:

I don't even attempt to play SM on an emulator. There's no way you could make a comfortable keyboard setup for that game.

I have no idea why anybody would TRY and play emulators with the keyboard in the first place. I've always used a controller for them, and there are adapters available that'll enable you to use almost any controller you like. I've always used a USB adapter and a PSX controller.

Well, for RPGs and simplistic platformers, I can handle using a keyboad setup, because they don't require more than, say, three non-D-pad buttons to be pressed at a time.

Idkbutlike2

2011-07-02 07:25:53 pm

Quote from tomatobob:

They removed shitty things like the run button and having to press scroll through all of your weapons with only one button. I mean you had to push that fucker like five times to get to Power Bombs, god knows why. And god help you if you push the button one too many times cause now you're fucked.

OMG! I have to press select five more times! What am I to do? This is SUCH a dreadful inconvenience!

Turtle

2011-07-02 08:53:31 pm

I like turtles.

How convenient or inconvenient it is isn't relevant. It's a design choice that is vastly inferior to how weapon selection was handled in the GBA games.

I think if more bosses from Super were in Zero Mission, they could make a ROM hack of that to have Super's level design and I could just play that and not bother with the original or Control Freak.

tomatobob

2011-07-02 09:33:17 pm

One shall stand, one shall ball.

Quote from Idkbutlike2:

OMG! I have to press select five more times! What am I to do? This is SUCH a dreadful inconvenience!

It is inconvenient. Immensely so. Also entirely unnecessary. You have to push a button five times so you can push another button once and then push the previous button one or two more time to get back to something actually useful, we're talking at least six button presses to use an item that you're only going to use once or twice in any given situation. If you had a different button to scroll in the opposite direction you'd mitigate the issue somewhat, but it's still clunky and stupid no matter how you look at it. There's literally no reason to have power bombs selected when you're not in morph ball mode, the beam combo things exist but those are stupid and only of any apparent use against one miniboss who is easy and not worth the trouble and yet there they are taking up space and just adding button presses that shouldn't be.

Sure it's possible that it was just a limitation the developers were stuck with but that doesn't mean it's not dumb and hasn't been very much improved by later games, thus making it's clunky nature stand out. There's something to be said about avoiding oversimplification but only one or two things from the SNES>GBA transition could even begin to be considered for that. L and R taking a separate diagonal was nice and being able to switch equipment on and off was ok too, though it's unlikely most people would turn off anything but a beam so its actual use is questionable. That's pretty much all that was 'lost' in the transition.

[quote="Idkbutlike2"]OMG! I have to press select five more times! What am I to do? This is SUCH a dreadful inconvenience![/quote]
It [i]is[/i] inconvenient. Immensely so. Also entirely unnecessary. You have to push a button five times so you can push another button once and then push the previous button one or two more time to get back to something actually useful, we're talking at least six button presses to use an item that you're only going to use once or twice in any given situation. If you had a different button to scroll in the opposite direction you'd mitigate the issue somewhat, but it's still clunky and stupid no matter how you look at it. There's literally no reason to have power bombs selected when you're not in morph ball mode, the beam combo things exist but those are stupid and only of any apparent use against one miniboss who is easy and not worth the trouble and yet there they are taking up space and just adding button presses that shouldn't be.

Sure it's possible that it was just a limitation the developers were stuck with but that doesn't mean it's not dumb and hasn't been very much improved by later games, thus making it's clunky nature stand out. There's something to be said about avoiding oversimplification but only one or two things from the SNES>GBA transition could even begin to be considered for that. L and R taking a separate diagonal was nice and being able to switch equipment on and off was ok too, though it's unlikely most people would turn off anything but a beam so its actual use is questionable. That's pretty much all that was 'lost' in the transition.