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[VampX]

QUOTE(XaRaNn @ Sep 16 2006, 10:45 PM)

Similar thing is hapening over at the xport forums.

Some guys were making a "petition" for xport to code a way to change the path of the settings file from E:\
Like they got some kind of (right??) to xport's and yours and other dev's work...

I had made this gigantic reply about my opinion on MekaX saving screenshots and saves in the same dir,
but i feared it might have been misinterpreted as an attack on our beloved coders.

so instead i will just show this arrogant smilie i dug up to give my original post that classic VampX humor.

so here we go..

[guybird]

Well I think its obvious that everyone loves your emulator; you've made more requests standard features than anyone else (obviously XPort has a TON of requests, so perhaps its really balanced in the end).  Anyhow I'm a media centric type person and love the MAME type experience, and have always wanted that on an xbox (for all consoles of course).  Your emulator and your clever ways to implement features ALMOST have me convinced your port is #1 (add in your rumble support and it'll be there   ).  I'm hoping maybe I can convince XPort to use your artpack setup in his emu's, as it is the most ingenious way to do it.  Keep up the good work!

[MF29]

Here's a suggestion.

How about in the menu when you are choosing what rom to play.

If you press the Left or Right D-Pad directional button, It will skip roms according to letter.

Basically meaning that it makes scrolling faster, If you want to play Super Mario Brothers and you all the way at the top at 7th Saga, Just press the right directional button to skip A,B,C,D etc.

If this feature is already added then correct me if Im wrong.

[nes6502]

QUOTE(MF29 @ Sep 17 2006, 03:02 AM)

Here's a suggestion.

How about in the menu when you are choosing what rom to play.

If you press the Left or Right D-Pad directional button, It will skip roms according to letter.

Basically meaning that it makes scrolling faster, If you want to play Super Mario Brothers and you all the way at the top at 7th Saga, Just press the right directional button to skip A,B,C,D etc.

If this feature is already added then correct me if Im wrong.

It's allready there

[Iriez]

QUOTE(nes6502 @ Sep 16 2006, 01:05 PM)

Yeah, very good point. No, I don't hold users request against them. My respnse above did/does not apply to the majority of users. I was speaking about a select few who never seem to be satisfied. It's allways been my goal to add the features that the majority of people really wanted like the cheat search for example, favorites, etc. I welcome requests, and in fact that's why I started this thread.
And that's the real problem. Most devs continue out of the support they get and no other reason. In other words, to make the users happy. I mean it's very cool when you are working on a feature you know everybody wants and they are all going to be excited to get it. It's very statisfying regardless of whether you personally wanted it or not.

When the support dries up, and all that's left are complaints/requests, it's hard for any dev to stay motivated. The difficult part really is that most people just don't post that much. For example, I posted a download link for the graphics pack in the last release. There have been over 600 people to download it. Obviously there havn't been 600 unique people posting in these ZsnexBox threads. So the point is, there probablly are hundreds of people who love ZsnexBox just the way it is. Sometimes I just have to remind myself that.

I've seen this in a lot of Xport's threads. People tend to just post the problems they find or ask for new things. After page after page of complaints and requests, it can be difficult for any developer to remind himself that most people are happy with it just the way it is. Unfortunatly, a lot of people when they see a port become what they wanted, just disappear. I'm guilty of this myself. I was huge fan of Xport and Lantus's work for 2 years and I don't think I ever posted a single "good job" post in their threads.

So I do keep things in perspective, but sometimes my patience wears thin with some posters. But you brought up the actual key point in all of this. We all should continue to support guys like A600, Xport, Lantus, etc.. even when we personally have everything we want. And even when they are working on projects we may or may not be interested in.

You ever wonder why I dont visit here anymore? Yep, thats right. Because the developers....develope. They do it to the music of their own choice. They will code, and they will release, and they will do that of their own accord and will.

The end users opinion's 99% of the time are trash, and are meaningless. There are a small select handful that offer meaningful advice, and the developers listen, and adjust accordingly.

Listening to the complaining 99% of the users on the board that dont know left from right is a waste of time. Helping is one thing, but giving hand me out's to worthless children is not on my list of things to do.

I talk to the dev's that Im befriended with, and they give me updates, and i cheer them on and tell them how happy i am about whats coming up. If they release, whippie, if they dont, then ohwell, sucks for the scene to never have something they didnt know about. The end.

[Kanyero]

For me Zsnexbox is now the best snes emulator for this console, and maybe the best emulator of all systems

I´m very happy with the emu but i´m allways waiting for the next version wondering what good updates will have

I think there is one thing that every user should take in consideration, and it´s that every user can make suggestions but demand something is another history.

Users should think that the programer has some ideas about how the program should work and this may or may no be the same ideas that different users have. If there should be a "perfect" version, then each user should have his own version.

For those of you that are not happy with the emu, you should try zsnexbox 1.0 to see how have it evolutioned, and then you will realize that there is an abbys between the 2 versions, and it´s still being developed !!!!  

So nes please ignore every post complaining about minor things and do what you think you must do  

 

[VampX]

Not having requested much since Zsnexbox was created
I now find it time to place a small but in my opion valid request.

is there a way to make ehm.. copier bios files runnable in Zsnexbox?
having had 3 copiers myself back in the snes/genesis days i sometimes
get the urge to run copier biosses and stare at them and play around
with the little options they have.

it just gives me a happy feeling okay? ;_;

I tried Xsnes9X but most biosses pretty much crash the emu, same with Zsnexbox.
(most not all, so it is possible to just run them as roms)

oh and if you dont have the bios roms just say so, i can easily upload them on my webspace.
(they are not copyrighted so its legal to upload wherever i choose)

ehm so.. is this possible?

[XaRaNn]

VampX well this goes in the multi-core thing. If you can find a zsnes version that can run them, then nes6502 could port it along with his multicore release.


Now for what i know on the subject and why you probably wont find a core that does work (at least for all) : Snes copiers did a lot of screwy stuff like changing memory adresses.
Each bios often will depend on specific hardware architechture of the copier few people could be bothered to emulate.

It's also for a similar reason why many of the Public Domain roms you'll find in goodsnes will not run in any emulator, as they were written to run on specific copier hardware.

To be honest i don't really know much of the technical details, but i do remember the bsnes dev byuu talking about this. He was saying how if he wanted to it wouldnt be all that hard to emulate a copier, (iirc he said "or at least the startup WRAM adresses they'd set") and then be able to run it's bios and incidentally 99% of PD roms.

[MF29]

QUOTE(Timerever @ Sep 16 2006, 03:45 PM)

Well I know enough of coding to know that it should take only take 3 minutes to do it, is it doesn't... well I'm sorry but your code must way too messed up.

Iv'e also noticed that you haven't been showing your face around this thread anymore, due to the fact that your childish comment caused you to get embarresed and hopefully ashamed of yourself.

[nes6502]

QUOTE(Thraxen @ Sep 17 2006, 07:55 AM)

 The only featured I ever wanted was that it supported the BS ROMS, which it does.  

I have not however added support for the BS Bios. I intentionally skipped this when I added the other Bios/Base cart support because it would have been aggravating to add and I couldn't find any games that worked/worked better with the BSX Bios specified? Are there any? If there are I can add the Bios support as well. It seemed to me that ZSNES has the same emulation with or without the Bios path specified.

QUOTE

is there a way to make ehm.. copier bios files runnable in Zsnexbox?

Yeah, this is under the multicore thing. However, I'm the same way. I only ever had the UFO 7, but I've found myself loading up the BIOS and playing around with the menus. I guess I'm lucky in that the only copier I had has a BIOS that allready emulated perfectly in ZSNES.

QUOTE

I think it was more to do with the fact that nes6502 said that he can't add this feature at the moment (or at all).

The "save anywhere" feature can be added, but more falls into the "it's a pain to implement" category (like multi-core). It will probablly show up in one of the betas that are going to be released before 3.0, but it's not terribly high on my "to-do" list.

[Timerever]

QUOTE(nes6502 @ Sep 17 2006, 02:47 PM)

The "save anywhere" feature can be added, but more falls into the "it's a pain to implement" category (like multi-core). It will probablly show up in one of the betas that are going to be released before 3.0, but it's not terribly high on my "to-do" list.

I didn't told you to do it right away, nor demanded or ordered you to, I've just suggested it to you, you do it if you want, no one is or can force you into anything.
And if you took offense when I said that it shouln't take more than 3 minutes to add or your sode is messed I'm sorry. Of course you know what are you doing and you know best of your code but I trust that you've understood what I meant, if you didn't just PM and we'll just clear this misunderstanding, ok?

[shodanx]

just thought I'd add my vote to lightgun supports, but I'm not holding my breath

one other thing , not sure if anyone suggested anything like it

lazy preview name matching

that would be when zsnexbox is looking for the art work for , example "Addams Family_ The (U).smc"
it looks in "/E/ZsnexBox/artwork/Shots */"  for "Addams Family,_ The (U).png" if that file doesn't exist then you get no preview, this would be strict matching

but the following files could exist

Addams Family The (U).png
Addams Family, The (U).png   <== well not sure about that one "," ?
Addams Family_ The.png
AddamsFamilyTheU.png
AddamsFamilyThe.png
AddamsFamilyThe(U).png

and so on

what I suggest by lazy matching would be that for the file "Addams Family_ The (U).smc" zsnexbox could try the following algorythms on the file name

for every combinations of characters in the strippable characters list try to match
the strippable character list would probably be something user defined with a preset looking like " ",",","_","-","&","'","(",")","[","]","~" , this could be very long, just this list will yield 2048 , but it's ok because the alternative is no preview at all
also if you do find a match you should cache it on disk that way you only have to do this once per file ever

here's another way to do it (could be complementary)
you could also strip all strippable characters + extension from the filename except spaces

"Addams Family_ The (U).smc" => "Addams Family The U"

you can try to match each full word to all the files in the "shots *" folder and files with the most matches over a certain minimum number of matches is the right one to display

you can also take each word and further chop it in 3 or 4 characters groups , then match each group to every files in the "shots *" folders

example
"Addams Family The U"
becomes

add
dda
dam
ams
fam
ami
mil
ily
the
(drop any word less than 3 characters)

now match every group to every file

(you could also strip anything inside "()" and "[]" )

3 Ninjas Kick Back (U).png   nin inj nja jas kic ick bac ack   ==> 0 match, 0% matching
Addams Family, The (U).png add dda dam ams fam ami mil ily the ==> 9 match, 100% matching
AddamsFamilyThe(U).png add dda dam ams msf sfa fam ami mil ily lyt yth the heu ==> 9 match, 64% matching
AddamsFamilyThe-Pugsley'sScavengerH(E).png add dda dam ams msf sfa fam ami mil ily lyt yth the hep epu pug ugs gsl sle ley eys yss ssc sca cav ave ven eng nge ger erh rhe ==> 9 matchm 27% matching
AlfredChicken(E)(4285).png alf lfr red edc dch chi hic ick cke ken ==> 0 match
SuperFamilyCircuit(J).png sup upe per erf fam mil ily ==> 3 match, 42% matching


you could drop any file that matches 3 or less or 2 or less  (could be user configurable)
the only important thing is that this matching process can be interrupted by press up/down on the controller , that way you can still scroll and not have to wait for the full algorythm to finish before it actually scrolls

I just thought of that algo on the spot , I'm sure it could improved greatly with some more thinking about it
I just wanted to put the idea out of lazy matching because there are so many box art sets and even ways to name the roms

for example you recommend the packs from xbox.nugnugnug.com but they name their files like this ActRaiser(U).png (spaces and underscores stripped probably other characters) the only way to get zsnexbox to match those is to strip the spaces from the rom files but that makes them less readable also the high res pack from the same site (although incomplete) uses full names so you end up having to choose which set you want to use because you can't name your files both with and without spaces (too bad microsoft didn't use linux for the xbox , we could just make space stripped links to the files and be done with it ! oh well)

well anyway , that's just a suggestion do with it what you want !

[nes6502]

QUOTE(shodanx @ Sep 17 2006, 06:47 PM)

just thought I'd add my vote to lightgun supports, but I'm not holding my breath

one other thing , not sure if anyone suggested anything like it

lazy preview name matching

that would be when zsnexbox is looking for the art work for , example "Addams Family_ The (U).smc"
it looks in "/E/ZsnexBox/artwork/Shots */"  for "Addams Family,_ The (U).png" if that file doesn't exist then you get no preview, this would be strict matching

but the following files could exist

Addams Family The (U).png
Addams Family, The (U).png   <== well not sure about that one "," ?
Addams Family_ The.png
AddamsFamilyTheU.png
AddamsFamilyThe.png
AddamsFamilyThe(U).png

and so on

what I suggest by lazy matching would be that for the file "Addams Family_ The (U).smc" zsnexbox could try the following algorythms on the file name

for every combinations of characters in the strippable characters list try to match
the strippable character list would probably be something user defined with a preset looking like " ",",","_","-","&","'","(",")","[","]","~" , this could be very long, just this list will yield 2048 , but it's ok because the alternative is no preview at all
also if you do find a match you should cache it on disk that way you only have to do this once per file ever

here's another way to do it (could be complementary)
you could also strip all strippable characters + extension from the filename except spaces

"Addams Family_ The (U).smc" => "Addams Family The U"

you can try to match each full word to all the files in the "shots *" folder and files with the most matches over a certain minimum number of matches is the right one to display

you can also take each word and further chop it in 3 or 4 characters groups , then match each group to every files in the "shots *" folders

example
"Addams Family The U"
becomes

add
dda
dam
ams
fam
ami
mil
ily
the
(drop any word less than 3 characters)

now match every group to every file

(you could also strip anything inside "()" and "[]" )

3 Ninjas Kick Back (U).png   nin inj nja jas kic ick bac ack   ==> 0 match, 0% matching
Addams Family, The (U).png add dda dam ams fam ami mil ily the ==> 9 match, 100% matching
AddamsFamilyThe(U).png add dda dam ams msf sfa fam ami mil ily lyt yth the heu ==> 9 match, 64% matching
AddamsFamilyThe-Pugsley'sScavengerH(E).png add dda dam ams msf sfa fam ami mil ily lyt yth the hep epu pug ugs gsl sle ley eys yss ssc sca cav ave ven eng nge ger erh rhe ==> 9 matchm 27% matching
AlfredChicken(E)(4285).png alf lfr red edc dch chi hic ick cke ken ==> 0 match
SuperFamilyCircuit(J).png sup upe per erf fam mil ily ==> 3 match, 42% matching
you could drop any file that matches 3 or less or 2 or less  (could be user configurable)
the only important thing is that this matching process can be interrupted by press up/down on the controller , that way you can still scroll and not have to wait for the full algorythm to finish before it actually scrolls

I just thought of that algo on the spot , I'm sure it could improved greatly with some more thinking about it
I just wanted to put the idea out of lazy matching because there are so many box art sets and even ways to name the roms

for example you recommend the packs from xbox.nugnugnug.com but they name their files like this ActRaiser(U).png (spaces and underscores stripped probably other characters) the only way to get zsnexbox to match those is to strip the spaces from the rom files but that makes them less readable also the high res pack from the same site (although incomplete) uses full names so you end up having to choose which set you want to use because you can't name your files both with and without spaces (too bad microsoft didn't use linux for the xbox , we could just make space stripped links to the files and be done with it ! oh well)

well anyway , that's just a suggestion do with it what you want !

Well, I think guybird is going to make new snes packs with the spaces intact (I hope), so hopefully users will have a full set with and without spaces to pick from. Some users prefer to have their roms named without spaces so they need the pack without them as well. But I myself like the spaces, so I'm not able to benefit from the excellent pack at xbox.nugnugnug.com.

As far as your suggestion, that's a very good idea. Unfortunatly, the "does this file exist" code in C can be rather slow. That's why I only show the screenshot in shots 1 folder when moving through the ROM browser. I initially had it to look in the Shots 1 folder, if not there, look in Shots 2, Shots 3, etc...However, if my screenshot was in the Shots 8 folder, it would really bog the emulator down wehn I scrolled through the rom browser because it had to do 7 file lookups everytime I canged names. There was a noticable delay.

And with this approach, there could be dozens of combinations to look for. So unless I can determine a really fast way to detect the precense of a file, I don't think this would work. But t's still an excellent idea that I had not thought of.

[nes6502]

QUOTE(shodanx @ Sep 17 2006, 09:20 PM)

maybe you could get a list of all the files with scandir() when then do all the matching with the resulting string instead of trying to stat() all the files to see if they exist ?

you could run scandir once when starting zsnexbox and after taking a screenshot to update it
after that you can always refer to the same string whenever you need to check if a preview file exist

Thats another good idea I hadn't thought of. It probablly wouldn't take too long to build a list of all the screenshots in those folders on startup and then just search this list when browsing. I may look into this.

[guybird]

I make my packs with the Good naming scheme (GoodSNES_204) and leave the original naming schemes intact.  That way, they should match anything you have, and if someone does decide to rename their roms without spaces, special characters, etc, you can do the same thing to the artpacks to get the same result.

If all of what shodanx said can be done EFFICIENTLY (that post totally boggled my mind   ) then I'm all for it.  Of course I think the easiest solution to all of this is a crc/dat based scheme like Surreal, MAME, & FBA use that way everything is guaranteed to match up correctly (full and correct rom titles in gui, artwork, rumbles, cheats etc) no matter what their rom is named.  I really really think this could be quickly and easily done, considering how fast you guys tore through the game genie and action replay codes.