Improving Visualboy Advance

[ZappaZ]

Was just wondering:

Is there anything left to do?
I mean except for the usual bug-squashing..
Is there anything mayor in the emulation that is missing
and if there isn't, what could be added to this wonderfully
complete emulator?

[Chrono Archangel]

well theres almost nothing left IMO like you said, except for eventual bugs. but there could new modes of filtering added (theres already alot but still lol) thats about all i could think of

[jegHegy]

there'll always be games with added hardware and stuff ^_^ like Hideo Kojima's rumoured light-sensitive MGS game. and whatever.

nyaa

[Chrono Archangel]

Originally posted by jegHegy
there'll always be games with added hardware and stuff ^_^ like Hideo Kojima's rumoured light-sensitive MGS game. and whatever.

nyaa

its not a rumor, but how would vboy be able to simulate that?

[Generic Ninja]

Originally posted by jegHegy
there'll always be games with added hardware and stuff ^_^ like Hideo Kojima's rumoured light-sensitive MGS game. and whatever.

nyaa

The game is not a rumor, it even has screenshot of it running. And it isn't MGS, it is a Demon Slayer game that uses light sensivity.

The requested aditions are here: https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?atid=505532&group_id=63889&func=browse

Request posted by ME:

[ 716984 ] AVI recording with sound
You may monitor this Tracker item after you login (register an account, if you do not already have one).
Submitted By:
Rui Nelson (genericninja)
Date Submitted:
2003-04-07 13:33
Last Updated By:
forgotten - Comment added
Date Last Updated:
2003-04-07 17:16
Category:
User Interface Improvements
Group:
Next Release
Assigned To:
Forgotten (forgotten)
Priority:
5
Status:
Open
_
Summary:
AVI recording with sound
You emulator is almost perfect, I would like that VBA
would have:
- Skin support
It would make VBA more "user friendly"
-AVI recording with sound
The actual avi recording is nice, but being able to record
with sound would be amazing!
-Screenshot tool
VBA could have a nice image capture like some other cool
emus like WinKawaks or Nebula, the main porpose is to
make animated gifs :D. And also the ability to make
movies with some layers disabled would also help!

Followups:
Message


Date: 2003-04-07 17:16
Sender: forgotten
Logged In: YES
user_id=335241
VBA 1.5 has skin support.
Also, screenshots are also supported and they are taken
with the layers settings, so you can enable/disable any GBA
layer you want.
I am renaming this request as AVI with sound only.




Attached Files:
Name
Description
Download
No Files Currently Attached


Changes:
Field
Old Value
Date
By
summary
Skins, AVI recording with sound and screenshots factory
2003-04-07 17:16
forgotten

[Forgotten]

VBA is still has timing issues which causes problems in some cases. Also, sound emulation is not perfect or synchronized, but I don't have time or patience to investigate.

I am always trying to add more stuff, but people keep pestering me about link, etc.... that I feel like stopping it.

I slowed down version 1.5 because of it and maybe I will try to fix some problems now, but I am focusing more on develpers than regular users.

[psicomaniaco]

Originally posted by Forgotten
VBA is still has timing issues which causes problems in some cases. Also, sound emulation is not perfect or synchronized, but I don't have time or patience to investigate.

I am always trying to add more stuff, but people keep pestering me about link, etc.... that I feel like stopping it.

I slowed down version 1.5 because of it and maybe I will try to fix some problems now, but I am focusing more on develpers than regular users.

Er... u're one of the authors ot VBA??? Good to know! Hehehe...
ANYWAY, I never found any problem with VBA. The sound is perfect in all the games I tested! BTW, I never noticed any problem with the timing...

[ZappaZ]

Same here, never a single problem =)

Hope that you didn't feel pestered or someting, it was not my
meaning... love your work =)

So, Chrono, what kind of filtering modes are you talking about that
would benefit the GBA?

[felinusz]

Well, for example, my onboard sound doesn't seem to cooperate with VBA at all. The sound is very choppy and low quality. BUT, that isn't Fgotten's fault or really even a fault of the program as this onboard sound is really crappy and doesn't work perfectly with a lot of things...

[Chrono Archangel]

>-Screenshot tool
VBA could have a nice image capture like some other cool
emus like WinKawaks or Nebula, the main porpose is to
make animated gifs

doesnt it have a screenshot button? iirc it doe

>So, Chrono, what kind of filtering modes are you talking about that would benefit the GBA?

well nothing in particular, but i was wondering if NickK's 3D Texture Embossing could be done on a GBA emulator and if it would look nice..

ohh and I love your emulator Forgotten! you did an awesome job on it

[psicomaniaco]

Originally posted by felinusz
Well, for example, my onboard sound doesn't seem to cooperate with VBA at all. The sound is very choppy and low quality. BUT, that isn't Fgotten's fault or really even a fault of the program as this onboard sound is really crappy and doesn't work perfectly with a lot of things...

Maybe its your sound driver? I have an onboard sound card too (ve-ry old, BTW!) but never had sound probs w/ VBA.

[Generic Ninja]

Originally posted by Chrono Archange
doesnt it have a screenshot button? iirc it doe


I was thinking of this, but it isn't needed in VBA

[Generic Ninja]

Anyway, look at the sonic animated gif that i crated!

Using:
* Visual Boy Advance (AVI Recording)
* Adobe Premiere
* Adobe Image Ready (Photoshop)
* Macromedia Fireworks

[Generic Ninja]

oops...

[zelnaga]

as for the recording avi with sound...

you can always just mux the audio into the video with virtual dub, or some tool like that... however, if there are timing issues, like forgotten said, it might be slightly out of sync, but... the timing issues may be such that you won't notice it early on...

[Lunar_itS]

Well, for me the sound's really choppy too...
Maybe forgotten could just make a menu where to set the buffer length as they did in SNES9x or ePSXe. I'm not sure if this would help, but it's worth a try.

Apart from this there are only smaller things, that need fixing.
For example the shadows of the characters in Lunar. They are flickering all the time. Not a big thing, but after a while it gets annoying.

Hope i could help.

[Forgotten]

See fhe FAQ about flickering. It is not probably the emulator fault but a trick of the game which is not apparent on the real GBA because of the slow rate of the GBA LCD.

[Lunar_itS]

Oops, sorry, you're right.
I just noticed, that the higher the framskip is, the less visible the flickering becomes.
Well, stays the first one.

[Mad]

hum..
I always wanted to ask for this:
That u could change the auto-fire buttons, like now they´re alt+1, its just hard to do that in game. U could assign any button, just like the others L and R.
i think its very easy to implement....

[dreamwaker]

it whould be nice if you can add it to visualboy advance! optimize for lower end pcs.

[ackmondual]

yeah few other improvements i could think of, majority for users NOT developers, the latter is what the author is moreso focusing on:

-remapping auto-fire to separate keys rahter than toggling it, (This is also "Mad"s idea)
-a slow motion feature
-being able to pause the game with just one button, as opposed to using ctrl-P (P is already mapped to a gameplay button)

-some optimization for lower-end machines (from "dreamwaker" as well)
-and finally, the multiplayer that's already VERY heavily discussed in some other thread (with a vengeance)


don't kno much about VBA from a techinical standpoint, but im sure there's plenty of minor bugs that could be worked out

[Cypherswipe]

VBA is very good right now, there are only 3 improvements I can think and they're all speed related.
1) Make it so that the "speedup toggle" option will stay on when you close the emulator, it's quite annoying having to turn that back on every single time I open VBA.
2) Improve loading speed. I've noticed that boycott advance (and most of the other emulators) can load games in less than half the time it takes VBA (which is always a full 2 minutes or more).
3) Improve overall speed. There's no such thing as too fast when it comes to RPGs with insanely long dialog sequences.

Obviously the link function would be nice, but it's equally obvious that it's not going to happen in the near future, if at all, so there's no point in continuing to ask for it. If we get it, great. If not, oh well.

[Hexlord]

What's the minimum CPU for VBA anyway? I get huge slowdowns on my 700mhz system for GBA games when I run it at 0 frameskips...

[Yeloazndevil]

Min. System:
PII-400
128 MB RAM
DirectX 7

Rec. System:
PII 600
256 MB RAM
DirectX 8

[ackmondual]

Originally posted by yeloazndevil
Rec. System:
PII 600
256 MB RAM
DirectX 8

I read somewhere that this is the " minimum recommended system requirements", think it's in the VGA readme file

*and i think it's supposed to be a P3, not p2

i guess this is as opposed to
-min sys req. - to just run the thing at all
-rec. sys req. - to run the thing at a "moderately comfortable" level
and
-rec. sys req. - to run the thing at "optimum" performance

It may depend on what apps u got running, but i hear ppl say the at least a lowest end P4 (1.2 GHz) and at least 256 RAM can handle optimum performance.

[Mad]

Originally posted by Cypherswipe
2) Improve loading speed. I've noticed that boycott advance (and most of the other emulators) can load games in less than half the time it takes VBA (which is always a full 2 minutes or more).


What loading time ur referring to? the time it takes to load a rom on the emu for playing??
It only takes 1~2 seconds here....

[Cypherswipe]

1) Those sys req are a bit off. I have a 500mhz celeron, and only 64mb, and can run nearly all games at 90%+ without the speedup toggle and up to 150% with the speedup toggel turned on.

2) Yes, the time it takes to load a rom. The difference between VBA and other emulators is negligable on a high end comp, but there's a vast difference on lower end ones. If all GBA emulators took a long time to load a rom, then I'd just chalk it up to a slow comp, but since other emulators can load them in about half the time.....

[Samor]

actually you need about a ghz to run most games on frameskip 0.

I cant recall that loading a rom took that long on my p3 800...



[...]Also, sound emulation is not perfect or synchronized, but I don't have time or patience to investigate.

actually recent versions sound a whole lot better than some of the old ones, which sounded like the volume was turned up too high...

[Chrono Archangel]

im on a p3 800 and they all load up in 1 sec

[ackmondual]

Originally posted by Cypherswipe
1) Those sys req are a bit off. I have a 500mhz celeron, and only 64mb, and can run nearly all games at 90%+ without the speedup toggle and up to 150% with the speedup toggel turned on.

Another thing i forgot to ask

hey Cypherswipe, are you using Anything other than winXP? If so that would explain alot.

LIkwise for Hexlord, if you're using winXP, then the same applies.

as using win2k or better yet, win98 (in terms of sys req. ONLY) is MUCH less of a system hog thant winXP. Sure, winXP surpasses even win2k and several key areas, but it comes a price.

I've noticed general navigation is slower around winXP compared to win98, and w VBA, i am now getting performances of 65% - 90% instead of 80% - 100% performance.

this seems to be a reasonable explaination of Y Hexlord is getting poorer performance than Cyber, despite having better system than him. It's truely ideal to have at least a low end P4, as those systems are typically "specially made for winXP", otherwise you got 2 things that's bogging your PC down, VBA and winXP.

P3 550
640 MB RAM
16MB Voodoo3 3000 (the original):fingers:

[Cypherswipe]

Win98. Putting XP on a comp with less than 1ghz and at least 256ram is just stupid, XP is too much of a hog.

I do have a new comp running XP with 1.8ghz and 256ram, but the thing's a piece of sh~ and I've barely used it after getting it back from the shop (spent 3 friggin months in the shop!)

[ackmondual]

:dots: :dots:

Yeah, yah, no need to rub it in.

I'm annoyed at winXP, it IS a system hog. + the drivers it's provided by default are a piece of s@#$! when you want to do anything audio and graphic intensive (like the newest workign emus or even PC games that used to work before on 98.) I got sucked into all the fancy crap that XP offers. I can't stand rebooting x3-5 day with win98 so i really should'v compromised functionality, reliability, and performance with win2k. Too lazy to switch to win2k, since i don't think there's a direct way top do that w/out 1st wiping yur hd first.

[Cypherswipe]

I can't stand rebooting x3-5 day with win98
Let me guess, resource problems? I used to have to reboot at least once per day until I switched from IE to Mozilla. Now I can go for at least 3 days without rebooting.

[L3x0r]

Min. System:
PII-400
128 MB RAM
DirectX 7

Rec. System:
PII 600
256 MB RAM
DirectX 8

I have a Intel Celeron II 333mhz
64mb RAM
4mb Video Chip
DirectX 9.0b ( Of course Direct3d 7 is as far as it goes )
and a ****ty sound card and it runs like a dream for me. :heh:

Load times are like 3 secs lol.