Just a hypothetical question: As the emulators we are using are essentially virtual machines, wouldn't it be relatively easily (not to imply it would be trivial at all) be possible to make them stronger/faster regarding CPU, GPU etc, allowing game hackers to update a game's visuals, soundtracks etc?
Imagine a pimped up SNES running a visually upgraded Mario World, stuff like this.
Does anybody know if maybe such a project is already in existence somewhere?
NES emulators often have the option of removing sprites per line limitations, and there is also a video plugin for N64 emulators that allow you to patch in higher-resolution textures.
AFAIK all console games assume the speed of the console is fixed. Thus speeding up the CPU or other hardware is only going to make the game unplayable because it's too fast, so for existing games it's rather moot.
The only situation where there's a theoretical advantage in doing so is if someone creates a console game from scratch for an emulator which has been sped up. But why would anyone want to do that? If someone really wants to make eg. a NES game, he probably will want for it to work with *any* NES system (including the real McCoy). If someone just wants to make a game for a faster hardware, why would he want to limit to what a NES emulator has to offer (even if it's sped up)?
Not that it would be an impossibility. I'm just conjecturing that nobody would go through the trouble to actually making anything worthwhile.
Quite many console games are actually speed-synchronized to the vertical refresh, which gives the FPS.
In fact, if you increase the NES CPU clock (i.e. give more ticks per frame), the game will just be less prone to lag but will run at normal speed. (And, the audio&music pitch will be off because the synthesizer gets clock from the CPU clock.)
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I was thinking about this especifically for those super fx games on SNES. Star fox, stunt race fx and vortex. I was wondering if we could get them in high-res and 30 fps, because I played such a thing on Wii's wario ware and I was not happy that it only had 2 levels.
I've offen wondered myself why no one has done this(especially with the older systems where lag is a real problem). I was able to speed up FCEU, but the frequency of the sound gets doubled(like Bisqwit said), even while the games played at the proper speed. The cause of this is actually a problem with FCEU(audio processing speed is tied to CPU speed; it shouldn't be).
I don't care much for the idea of upgrading the graphics or sound of old games, but I'm all for removing limitations and making things run more smoothly.
The cause of this is actually a problem with FCEU(audio processing speed is tied to CPU speed; it shouldn't be).
Actually, yes it should be.
This is not a problem with FCEU, but is an inherent property of the NES itself: the audio hardware is located on the same die as the CPU and thus is always clocked at the exact same rate. Overclock the CPU (by inserting a faster oscillator, leaving the original one on the PPU) and the audio pitch will go up.
There's another issue with increasing the clock speed on the NES: certain games (mostly stuff by Rare - Battletoads is the first that comes to mind) rely on exact CPU timing in order to accomplish certain visual effects (e.g. parallax scrolling). In such games, increasing the CPU speed would result in graphical glitches and could potentially cause the game to crash.
* Quietust, QMT Productions
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This is not a problem with FCEU, but is an inherent property of the NES itself: the audio hardware is located on the same die as the CPU and thus is always clocked at the exact same rate. Overclock the CPU (by inserting a faster oscillator, leaving the original one on the PPU) and the audio pitch will go up.
Really? I was under the impression that the APU used a different multiplier than the CPU.
There's another issue with increasing the clock speed on the NES: certain games (mostly stuff by Rare - Battletoads is the first that comes to mind) rely on exact CPU timing in order to accomplish certain visual effects (e.g. parallax scrolling). In such games, increasing the CPU speed would result in graphical glitches and could potentially cause the game to crash.
Still, an option to overclock the system would be an awesome feature...
I was thinking about this especifically for those super fx games on SNES. Star fox, stunt race fx and vortex. I was wondering if we could get them in high-res and 30 fps, because I played such a thing on Wii's wario ware and I was not happy that it only had 2 levels.
snes9x likes to play StarFox at double speed, which makes the video quite smooth, but also has a SFII Turbo effect where the gameplay is laughably fast. Unfortunately, there's no way to draw the polygons at a higher resolution without re-engineering the game to run on a different platform.
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If you're interested, this guy overclocked a Genesis to 20MHz, and a SNES to 6.6MHz. The results are.... interesting. This site is pretty old though, I remember checking it out ages ago.
Linky linky
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No one has mentioned it, and I can't find even a trace of it on Google, so maybe I just dreamt it but... wasn't there an N64 emulator that ran at 60 FPS?
I remember the associated page listing requirements in the ballpark of a P4, 3 Ghz machine, which is a detail specific enough to make me think this did, in fact, exist. :P
Some N64 games DO run at 60 fps natively. I'm not aware of any way to boost the frame rate of <60 fps titles, other than simply disabling the throttling option. With that method, I can easily see 120+ on even an ancient P3.
