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[Zero]

Good luck with any emu other than Xports.

[XDelusion]

Hmm Lantus, is that Avatar supposed to suggest something?

[Corspegrinder99]

QUOTE (XDelusion @ Feb 12 2004, 02:10 AM)

Hmm Lantus, is that Avatar supposed to suggest something?

lol

[Zero]

QUOTE (XDelusion @ Feb 12 2004, 01:10 AM)

Hmm Lantus, is that Avatar supposed to suggest something?

He's had that since Surreal was released.

[Retroplay]

I just completed 'Metroid Zero Mission' using Xboy Advance v9 and I didn't have the problems you describe.
If you have a PAL Xbox try and set display to PAL60.

[alexh]

QUOTE (lantus @ Feb 12 2004, 12:34 AM)

The main reason for this is because the ARM processor has a ton of opcodes that need to be emulated.

I'm just curious, but how is the number of opcodes for the emulated CPU related to how fast it runs?

I guess if you can get the emulation code for all opcodes in the Host CPU cache?

Nope, still dont understand what you mean.

Alex

[Benji99]

QUOTE

I'm just curious, but how is the number of opcodes for the emulated CPU related to how fast it runs?

Let me give you a very scientific programmer's answer...

The more crap that needs to be emulated.
The more you need to emulate them.

[Fredas]

QUOTE (Retroplay @ Feb 12 2004, 02:54 AM)

I just completed 'Metroid Zero Mission' using Xboy Advance v9 and I didn't have the problems you describe.

I'm using NTSC.  Perhaps you played it with the frameskipping set at its default
(two) rather than zero.  I'd rather wait for better emulation than play a rare
gem with that sort of experience truncation.  Anyway, while I normally might
have suggested checking your frameskipping, unfortunately, for whatever
reason, the only time one ever sees that setting is when they load a new game
for the first time.  Afterwards, it's unavailable.  Not in the video settings, not
in the configuration, not anywhere.  One has to be able to tell that they're
not seeing 60fps, and I've come to realize that many people cannot.

[lantus]

taken from the VBA FAQ:

Why does the speed varies so much from game to game?
Unfortunately, emulating every possible instruction for every frame is a very expensive operation and requires a fast machine.
These are the different kind of game loops that may be used:

CPU Loop: usually keeps checking on a flag in a loop until it changes (usually changes in an interrupt) - this makes emulation slow and it could have been acomplished with the Halt/IntrWait/VBlankWait BIOS calls before checking the flag each time
Halt/IntrWait/VBlankWait BIOS calls - these BIOS calls put the CPU in a HALT state where the emulator will speed up as there are no instructions to emulate. Usually a flag will be checked once the call returns from the BIOS in order to continue the game loop
The difference between the fist and second approach are enourmous when emulating. Unless a program needs all the cycles on a frame, it should always try to use the BIOS calls which put the CPU in the HALT state

[Likklebaer]

According to the FAQ on Xport's website, a Frame Skip setting of 0 is the Auto setting, meaning the emu will only drop frames when it needs to.

I haven't tried this on the latest versions of XboyAdvance, but it used to work great. Hopefully this is still the case.

[Glicer]

Fredas - I just fired up zero mission and I've as well discovered tears in the BGM after setting the frame skip to 0.  The video is just as smooth as you would expect however the audio tears are horrible.  I'm back on v7 so I was certainly disappointed to hear you had the same trouble with v9.  You mentioned you were using a different emulator for fusion with no problems at all - you can't remember which one?  Even playing fusion with setting the frame skip to 0, I experience some tears in the music though not nearly as bad as zero mission.  

[Likklebaer]

[Dante_Ali]

QUOTE (floyd @ Feb 26 2004, 08:54 AM)

Well I can't play either Fusion or Zero Mission without some serious choppiness with the latest Xboyadvance.   Are all the other gba emus even slower?  And is there no hope whatsoever to optimizing them at all? (ie gba will never run full framerate)

One of my spare PCs has an Athlon 700MHz processor with specs roughly comparable to those of the Xbox (except for the RAM and videocard). The framerate  is about the same as Xboy Advance on the Xbox.

I'm guessing without core speed improvements to Visual Boy Advance, you'll never see the Xbox running GBA games at fullspeed.

[floyd]

QUOTE (Dante_Ali @ Feb 26 2004, 09:22 AM)

QUOTE (floyd @ Feb 26 2004, 08:54 AM) Well I can't play either Fusion or Zero Mission without some serious choppiness with the latest Xboyadvance.  Are all the other gba emus even slower?  And is there no hope whatsoever to optimizing them at all? (ie gba will never run full framerate) One of my spare PCs has an Athlon 700MHz processor with specs roughly comparable to those of the Xbox (except for the RAM and videocard). The framerate  is about the same as Xboy Advance on the Xbox. I'm guessing without core speed improvements to Visual Boy Advance, you'll never see the Xbox running GBA games at fullspeed.

Thats what I was afraid of.  And there isn't much reason for the VBA dev to optimize the core, seeing as 90% of people on PC run a faster cpu than 733mhz.

Unbelievable that we can see near-perfect n64 emulation and yet GBA is so choppy.  Maybe we'll see some miracle from a smart dev, though (fingers crossed)

[lantus]

its not really fair to compare the two. Most n64 emulators use a dynarec, HLE and use hardware rendering.

imagine how slow a n64 emulator with software rendering, no dynarec and no HLE would be.