NeoRAGEx... what about it?

[Death Metal]

Hello there!!

Until now we have seem many excellent emulators. Each system has THE emulator for it, right? For example, zSNES can be mensioned. Although Snes9X is also a perfect one (I mean, in terms of every aspect, let's not centralize [sp??] the point...), zSNES has become history in emulating our good and old beloved SNES. OK, Street Fighter Alpha 2 is not yet emulated... but who cares? You can pick up the original arcade ROM and play it on MAME or Kawaks .

The point is... there is a system I think people do not give that attention, which is the Neo-Geo. Janne Korpela and Anders Nilsson made a wonderful work with their contribution for this system - the NeoRAGEx. For me, ONE of the best emulators (over all systems) ever made. I don't know, but something about this emu simply amazes me, and I just can't point what it is!!

It all started with that tiny DOS command-line-based program. Still, it used to run Samurai Shodown at 60 f/s in my old Pentium 133!! :eek: Ok, Neo-Geo's CPU core do not require THAT machine, but, of course, this features was produced by Korpela & Nilsson's true masterwork.

Soon it had its Windows version created, with a cool and new GUI, and lots of features, as that kick ass Shots Factory, which almost every just-born emulator has and will adopt. This was a great help for sprite rippers such as MUGEN developers (although I don't think it was created with the intention to actually help them!).

In just a few releases, they reached a state of excelency where no other emu has arrived. It is just a matter of time until it comes, but i don't think it will be any easy. "New" Neo-Geo emus, like Nebula and Kawaks, and also the old MAME use a scheme which looks like a driver system, where you can only play the dumps which are already embedded into the emu by the emu creator. NeoRAGEx, on the other hand, is able to run near to every dump, not only the ones already implemented.

It can seem to be simple, but Neo-Geo ROMs are not like SNES ones, which are only 1 file with an apropriate extension, so that you could just go and load it as if you were in Photopaint opening a JPEG. Neo-Geo ROMs are composed by a set of many dumps, just like CPS-1, CPS-2... then I guess it must have been hell to make an emulator capable of acting *exactly* like the console (or even the arcade machine) does. It just doesn't matter the dump.

Note that I'm not saying that other emus are easier or anything... I'm just reffering to NeoRAGEx!!

OK... NRx still shows some glitches and other minor bugs. But all I can say is that it really is a shame to have a wonderful emu like that being discontinued.

Hmm... sorry if any of this is against anyone's thoughts, but it just seems that it doesn't receive the attention it deserved... still, who am I to tell, right?

[CD]

'A state of excellency where no other emu has arrived'

MAME has surpassed NRx in accuracy, by far. Many things have. NRx mainly has speed, and was nowhere near 'perfection'.

Also, NeoRAGEx is pretty much dead. Until the authors release the version they're currently working on, it will be useless for all the new neogeo dumps with new banking systems.

Not to mention, the UI sucked

[Death Metal]

Guess it's just a matter of preference, then. I'll stick with my opinion.

[CD]

Of course, use what you want to use.

I just didn't want you to go around thinking NRx was still the greatest, because it's been surpassed ;p

Originally posted by CD
'A state of excellency where no other emu has arrived'

MAME has surpassed NRx in accuracy, by far. Many things have. NRx mainly has speed, and was nowhere near 'perfection'.

Also, NeoRAGEx is pretty much dead. Until the authors release the version they're currently working on, it will be useless for all the new neogeo dumps with new banking systems.

Not to mention, the UI sucked

nah, it was cool

but uhm...mame gets stuff broken every now and then....
I heard of another (cps2?) emu that does neogeo...forgot which one.....

[sights]

Originally posted by Samor


I heard of another (cps2?) emu that does neogeo...forgot which one.....

...WinKawaks & Nebula (CPS2 emus), also support neo-geo games...

...I also belive that the user-friendliness of NeorageX was unmatched (maybe that's why the authors of nebula used the same GUI layout... ).

Originally posted by sights


...WinKawaks & Nebula (CPS2 emus), also support neo-geo games...

but...are they good at it?

[fivefeet8]

Originally posted by Samor


but...are they good at it?

Extremely good.. Faster than mame on lower end comps.. Better video blitters than Neoragex.. Cps2, cps1, neogeo.. 3 for the price of one.. winkawaks doesn't use a full screen gui.. Its perfect for windowed mode.. Nebula has some cool features(cheats, games that aren't decrypted yet).. And Finally, both have Kaillera support for online brawls..

Winkawaks also has a cool winamp jukebox option where you can play the games with your own background music.. Cool..

[CD]

How are they that much faster than MAME?

They're using MAME's A68K CPU core, and a lot more borrowed code..

[fivefeet8]

Originally posted by CD
How are they that much faster than MAME?

They're using MAME's A68K CPU core, and a lot more borrowed code..

Well, I have played people online many times with kaillera, and people using low end comps say it runs faster playing cps2 games and such with winkawaks and nebula than mame.. Doing some testing myself, I have found that on my amd k6-2 533 mhz comp, winkawaks and nebula runs neogeo, cps2, and cps1 faster than mame..

it might be a bit optimised code (speed hacks)? ..just guessing here....

[Bubsy]

Originally posted by Death Metal
Janne Korpela and Anders Nilsson made a wonderful work with their contribution for this system - the NeoRAGEx.[/b]

indeed they did. In my opinion it was one of the best emu's out there.

yup, but the old DOS genesis emus were also considered very good a few years ago....but now they're surpassed by more than one emu.

[Nightmare]

Originally posted by Bubsy



indeed they did. In my opinion it was one of the best emu's out there.

Agree. This emu is written in assembly language, so, i guess it is the fastest emu ever.

nope, when compared, callus (cps1 emu) was even faster

[Nightmare]

Originally posted by Samor
nope, when compared, callus (cps1 emu) was even faster

I meant it is the fastest emu for neogeo console.

Btw, how do u compare the speed of a neogeo emu with a cps1 emu???

well, uhm...I dont think neogeo was THAT much more powerful than cps1.

[Nightmare]

hmmm... i dont know for sure, but i think neogeo is much more powerful than cps1.........well, may be i am wrong...

And, whats that to do with the emus' speed??? sorry, i dont get what u tried to mean..... :stupid:

well,
let's just say that cps1 was kinda playable on my old p75, with sound....and neogeo wasn't....not even close either.

that's all...
...but I could be completely wrong

[fivefeet8]

Well, lets check the specs shall we.. here is cps2 specs..

Main Processor: Custom 68000 at 12 Mhz
Address Bus: 24 bit
Data Bus: 16 bit
Sound Processor: Zilog Z80 at 8 Mhz
Sound Channels: 16 Stereo Channels
Sound Format: ADPCM QSound
Color Palette: 32 bit
Total On Screen Colors: 4096
Colors per tile: 16 (4 bits per pixel)
Object Number: 900 (16 x 16 pixels)
Scroll Faces: 3
Resolution: 384 x 224
Maximum Capacity: 322 Megabits