Post subject: Turbo-Grafx 16 / PC Engine?
Joined: 8/1/2004
Posts: 143
Location: Colorado
There have been a few threads in the "Other Games" forum regarding the state of TG16/PCE emulation, and whether this platform could be brought into the TAS arena. On a whim the other night, I started looking into it again to see if it would be feasible to hack an emulator to add re-recording support. I started playing around with Hu-Go!, which is an open source GPL emulator that is cross-platform compatible. Since the source is available, it means we would be able to freely modify the emulator to serve our purposes. I downloaded the code and took a look at it, and it seems like a doable project. My question to the group is whether there is any interest in this? I know it wasn't nearly as popular a console as the others that were out at that time (SNES and Genesis), but I owned one as a kid and loved many of the games available for it. My C programming skills are bound to be a bit rusty, but I do believe this is possible. I'd at least be willing to take a whack at it, if not assist our veteran coders here that have done great work modifying emulators for other platforms. Thoughts?
Joined: 4/21/2006
Posts: 97
I am interested in Turbo-Grafx games. I used to have the console. I would love to see the games be TASed. I hope I'm not the only person that cares.
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Player (71)
Joined: 8/24/2004
Posts: 2562
Location: Sweden
I say go for it! :D
Editor, Reviewer, Experienced player (978)
Joined: 4/17/2004
Posts: 3109
Location: Sweden
I have no interested in a TurboGrafx emulator, but if you go ahead with it, I'd suggest checking how it's implemented in the emulators everybody seems to like best here (being VBA and to some extent Snes9x), to get it right from the start with out-of-order savestate loading, frame advance, movie file format, etc.
SXL
Joined: 2/7/2005
Posts: 571
most pce games are shoot em up. aaah parodius :D other games are usually platforms games. I'd like to see the good old Ninja Spirit game : lots of potential, since you can manipulate the shadow clones to do very fancy stuff. I've heard of another version (nes ?) but it did not look as nice. oh and btw, please, rather sms/gg emulation pretty please :)
I never sleep, 'cause sleep is the cousin of death - NAS
Joined: 8/1/2004
Posts: 143
Location: Colorado
Truncated wrote:
I have no interested in a TurboGrafx emulator, but if you go ahead with it, I'd suggest checking how it's implemented in the emulators everybody seems to like best here (being VBA and to some extent Snes9x), to get it right from the start with out-of-order savestate loading, frame advance, movie file format, etc.
Yeah, I had this thought as well...there's been a lot of great work done on other emulators with regards to the movie file formats and in-emu functionality. I don't expect this to happen too quickly (mostly due to a lack of freetime on my part), but I at least wanted to see what the interest level to see if I would be wasting my time or not :)
Player (71)
Joined: 8/24/2004
Posts: 2562
Location: Sweden
It might not be the most popular emu out there. But I still think it would be awesome if you provided us with the tools. There are always some good bits and pieces in games. :)
SXL
Joined: 2/7/2005
Posts: 571
how about, you (or some other coders) start to write a full guide for "how to add the TAS functionalities to an emulator", if you're saying it seems doable to you ? then, it might encourage more and more coders to provide us updated emulators (did I mention SMS already ? ;) ). some kind of library/guide, I don't know. a tutorial perhaps ? the basics ? to a certain, more advanced, point ?
I never sleep, 'cause sleep is the cousin of death - NAS
Post subject: Re: Turbo-Grafx 16 / PC Engine?
Player (102)
Joined: 3/25/2004
Posts: 189
Location: Austin
yarbles wrote:
Thoughts?
I've been wanting to see PC Engine rerecording for a long time! We need TASes of Bonk's Adventure. And Pac-Land. The PC Engine is the only console with a good version of Pac-Land. If you attempt to play the NES version, your head will melt. Begs the question, though... Would it also be feasable to include CD games in this? With Gens, savestates sort of work with Sega CDs, sometimes. I don't think anyone's attempted a TAS with any of them. There aren't really any Sega CDs worthy of one anyway, but the PC Engine has stuff like Ys and, of course, Dracula X.
http://girlyyy.com/ The El Viento TAS is the only decent thing I submitted here.
Post subject: Re: Turbo-Grafx 16 / PC Engine?
upthorn
He/Him
Emulator Coder, Active player (391)
Joined: 3/24/2006
Posts: 1802
yarbles wrote:
Thoughts?
Go for it. I'd love to see games like Bonk TASed.
josh l. wrote:
Begs the question, though... Would it also be feasable to include CD games in this? With Gens, savestates sort of work with Sega CDs, sometimes. I don't think anyone's attempted a TAS with any of them. There aren't really any Sega CDs worthy of one anyway, but the PC Engine has stuff like Ys and, of course, Dracula X.
Actually, I'm working on fixing the SegaCD (and maybe SMS) savestate issue in Gens. The real problem with SegaCD TASing, though, (and I suspect this would be an issue with most CD based emulators) is that it generates frames while reading. Combine this with the fact that read-times can vary by a frame or two, or more, even on the same system, and you get movies randomly desyncing every time there's a data-read. There's a simple way to fix this, which I'm also working on, but implementing it is less simple.
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Post subject: No one ever reads these.
Banned User
Joined: 12/23/2004
Posts: 1850
Wouldn't it be a better idea to have posted this in Other Emulation? (and I have never been fortunate (or unfortunate, your choice) enough to have played these games... I don't even know what the "PC Engine" is -- I assumed it was a ... uh, PC, but I guess it's some sort of pure-gaming console.)
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Post subject: Re: No one ever reads these.
Player (95)
Joined: 6/25/2005
Posts: 122
Xkeeper wrote:
Wouldn't it be a better idea to have posted this in Other Emulation? (and I have never been fortunate (or unfortunate, your choice) enough to have played these games... I don't even know what the "PC Engine" is -- I assumed it was a ... uh, PC, but I guess it's some sort of pure-gaming console.)
The PC Engine (Japan), the TurboGraphix 16 (North America) and the TurboGraphix (Europe) are the same machine (if you ignore PAL/NTSC issues and region lockout features, of course). All are consoles, not computers. (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC_Engine) There's at least one PC Engine game that should easily prove of interest to the TAS community: Demon Castle Dracula X: Rondo of Blood, the game that was featured in the introduction boss fight of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night and wasn't released outside of Japan.
Post subject: Re: No one ever reads these.
Joined: 8/1/2004
Posts: 143
Location: Colorado
Xkeeper wrote:
Wouldn't it be a better idea to have posted this in Other Emulation?
Yeah....I realized that after the fact. I would move the thread there if I could.
Joined: 5/3/2004
Posts: 1203
Make sure you check out http://tasvideos.org/DesiredEmulatorFeatures.html. It won't give you any help on the programming side of things, but it might be helpful to give you a better picture of what you are aiming for.
fruitbane
He/Him
Joined: 3/28/2005
Posts: 216
Goodness, please tackle this. While HuGo could stand to be a much better emulator in general, the TG-16/PC-Engine was one of my favorite consoles as a kid. I played SO much crap on that system. Might be what pushes me into TAS-ing.
Post subject: Re: No one ever reads these.
Former player
Joined: 3/13/2004
Posts: 1118
Location: Kansai, JAPAN
yarbles wrote:
Xkeeper wrote:
Wouldn't it be a better idea to have posted this in Other Emulation?
Yeah....I realized that after the fact. I would move the thread there if I could.
I could and did. There's no reason not to work towards opening up new emulators for TAS runs, especially with the variety of exciting TG/PCE games out there. Rondo of Blood is easily the highest profile game but there are lots of shooters, platformers and the like which would be delightful, especially the CD games like Rondo. Wikipedia has handy lists of both regular and CD games.
Do Not Talk About Feitclub http://www.feitclub.com
Joined: 8/1/2004
Posts: 143
Location: Colorado
Thanks for moving this Feitclub. I spent some time over the weekend trying to get my dev environment into a workable state so I could build HuGo from scratch, but got trapped in dependency hell (argh). I will take another crack at it when I have some more free time (probably in a week or so, I hope).
Joined: 5/22/2006
Posts: 58
Location: Denver, CO USA
yarbles wrote:
Thanks for moving this Feitclub. I spent some time over the weekend trying to get my dev environment into a workable state so I could build HuGo from scratch, but got trapped in dependency hell (argh). I will take another crack at it when I have some more free time (probably in a week or so, I hope).
ya i went through the same thing... let's get together soon and start hashing out a roadmap of sorts eh?
What would Mr Belvedere do? Probably eat some butter.
Player (102)
Joined: 3/25/2004
Posts: 189
Location: Austin
Hmm.. been a while. May as well ask, are people still workign on this? Is anyone still interested in this? Pity I can't get Hugo to work on my computer. =/
http://girlyyy.com/ The El Viento TAS is the only decent thing I submitted here.
Joined: 5/22/2006
Posts: 58
Location: Denver, CO USA
i got hugo to compile once, but that was a couple months ago and didn't havee time to continue with it, now when i try again i'm getting dependency problems again. arggggh, very annoying. i am going to try to have a dev roadmap up for this within the next couple weeks here once i get hugo compiling again.
What would Mr Belvedere do? Probably eat some butter.
Joined: 8/1/2004
Posts: 143
Location: Colorado
Hippo, maybe after the madness of halloween we could get together one evening and start working on this again?
Joined: 5/28/2004
Posts: 28
Location: St. Albans, WV
http://www.ouma.jp/ootake/ I'm still configuring it, but it does seem to support recording. Remember: If you're thinking of doing a Dracula-X run, you need to get the Super Arcade Card 3, otherwise it won't work. Happy hunting.
Player (71)
Joined: 8/24/2004
Posts: 2562
Location: Sweden
Have you made it work yet Reese? What about speed, sound and image? Is it good?
Joined: 5/28/2004
Posts: 28
Location: St. Albans, WV
Unless I'm missing something, in terms of CDs, it only seems to support actual discs (No ISOs). As for the HuCards, they run fine. I don't think it supports rerecording, though. I'll try a Splatterhouse run and find out.
Player (102)
Joined: 3/25/2004
Posts: 189
Location: Austin
Reese_Kaine wrote:
http://www.ouma.jp/ootake/ I'm still configuring it, but it does seem to support recording. Remember: If you're thinking of doing a Dracula-X run, you need to get the Super Arcade Card 3, otherwise it won't work. Happy hunting.
Alas, it does not. If you load a state while recording, the recording stops. Still, it seems like an ideal emulator to try to build off of, though. Unlike Magic Engine, it's free, and unlike HuGo, it runs on my computer. =P
http://girlyyy.com/ The El Viento TAS is the only decent thing I submitted here.