BGB is now the Gatsu emulation suite

BGB is now Gatsu, a multi emulator suite with support for GB, GBA, NES, SMS, SMD and Atari Lynx.

http://bgb.bircd.org/

Inspired by Higan I see...

*facepalm*

So you didn't make a GUI for Mednafen?

Still not as bad as Retrocopy which wants its own format just so it can store the freaking boxart.

April 1st is a wonderful day.

Heh, that's pretty funny :D
(too bad he didn't actually ship something ala bZSNES though :P)

I had almost fallen for that. Was disappointed to see my favourite emulator undergo such a thing. XD

I was actually worried this would become a trend.

If you're talking about all the stuff about multi-console emulation, IMO it's nothing special. Why have an average emulator for five consoles when you could have an amazing emulator for one?

That's just one way to look at it, though. Not sure what others may think.

I do see some merit in the idea of reusing the interface, input and output, but I guess it would make more sense to create a library for that instead of packing emulators of different levels of accuracy in one program.

My biggest concern is emulators forcing a specific ROM format, actually. Its like Photoshop telling me that it will convert all my images into TIFFs and force me to store my files in their folder structure because the developers happen to think that is the superior format for images. Programs are supposed to support multiple input formats, because people have different preferences when it comes to storing their stuff. The conversions that will happen internally so the data can be used are not my concern, and I shouldn't be forced to store the modified data anywhere.

Because the SNES supports the Super Gameboy, in order to have 100% complete SNES emulation, you have to incorporate accurate Gameboy emulation as well. Then, since you have written a Gameboy core, a Gameboy Color core then is not that much effort. In the same vein, having a solid 65816 core and having accurate Nintendo-style sound, a NES emulator does not seem to be that much of an effort (at first). Going further, since the SNES emulation already supports ARM emulation for that one Shogi game that uses it, a Gameboy Advance emulator becomes doable especially since you already have half the sound emulation and some similarities with SNES graphics. It may not be nearly as much of a snowball effect as Sega emulation, but it goes to show how emulators can grow well beyond their original intended limits.

And that's considering that snowballing isn't even complete! =P (Tera Drive and Picture Magic still haven't been emulated despite being part of the SG-1000 family in some way)

I would disagree on GBA emulation though, just emulating the CPU is far from close to emulating the whole thing (video hardware in particular is a huge thing and needs to be emulated from scratch, and no you can't really reuse the SNES code unless you want a huge unmaintainable mess that's likely to have tons of inaccuracy bugs).

EDIT: I wrote a lengthy reply to this which some people saw, but decided to remove it. I'm tired of having these discussions, sorry.

I was replying before you deleted the post, but now that you did it seems silly to post my response.

I too have no intention to fight, but from your original post I could see that you didn't understand the motivation behind my post in this thread, so I will explain at least this part.

I respect the decisions you made regarding your own software and have long stopped complaining about them, as far as higan is concerned, and have simply stopped using it. It's a great SNES emulator, but there are other SNES emulators around, and having to keep duplicate game libraries just to cater to one emulator's needs is not something I can condone.

What I expressed here is my concern about the use of custom file formats becoming a fad among emulators, like this thread initially suggested. Can you imagine if every NES emulator decided to maintain ROMs in their own preferred format? I'd have to keep a library in iNES format, one in UNIF format, another in chips + XML format... Might not necessarily be a lot of hard disk space nowadays, but it's still a mess of redundancy that's hard to maintain as I discover new games I want to keep around. I hope you can understand my concern.

I think it's wrong for an emulator to act all sovereign like it's the only one in that PC. I use different emulators for different purposes... One is better for playing, other for debugging and another for recording videos, and I don't think I'm asking much when I want them to play nice with each other and use the same unified game library.

I'm not against having more options for file formats, only against the ignoring of well established standards (even if they're not perfect - nothing is perfect) in favor of a new one, in hopes of forcing people to use that. I don't like being forced to do things, but if a format is optional and is indeed interesting enough to start being used elsewhere, I might consider adopting it once support is satisfactory.

I want to make it clear that this is not an attack on higan or byuu, and I have absolutely no intentions of changing higan. I'm simply making it clear why I think one of the choices made for that program is undesirable in hopes that others realize that and don't follow the same path.

The photoshop analogy is a bad one. There are lots of image formats because most have unique size, quality, or layer advantages. We're really only dealing with legacy popularity here.

We need to support recently dumped coprocessor roms (and multi-rom games in general) in a way that makes sense. And for NES, it shouldn't require file loading to see a game's mapper, rom sizes, chr presence, etc. We hide all that shit in a blob for... why exactly? Folders/archives make more sense and always have.

Furthermore, there are plenty of other emulators to use with old formats. So the discussion we really should be having is why THEY are so averse to supporting a newer format if it improves compatibility and makes basic rom information easier to see.

In your defense, I don't completely agree with what byuu has done either. I think using an internal database, even if it means having an unlicensed database, is a much better path to acceptance due to the natural volatility of trying to account for every mapping quirk in thousands of games. The NES bmls are already toast and getting changed to a scripting format. And I've also heard him say that he's not 100% happy with the SNES bmls either, so that's subject to change as well. I spent like... 100 hours preparing that NES library by hand because converters are GIGO with iNES files. And now I'll have to do it again mucking about in thousands of folders.

But I'm still happy with the structure and overall direction of the format. I think it's absurd that byuu takes any heat for doing this when we had games bugging out for like 15 years suddenly getting their coprocessor roms dumped. This should have been exciting stuff. Instead people were pissed that it made their old rom format obsolete when we were forced to account for multi-rom situations.

Hey, I hate copier headers, trainers and the like as much as the next guy, but unfortunately, ROMs off the internet come that way. The only thing I don't want is to have to convert every file I download to one emulator's specific format, while keeping the original blob for the rest. Redundancy sucks, it's messy and just plain confusing.

As I see it, forcing users to accept a new format that only your software uses is intrusive and arrogant. I'm not against putting a new format out there, but instead of forcing people to use it, the format's superiority should be enough to convince people to use it. Forcing people to change their ways out of the blue only drives them away.


My gripe with databses is homebrew. There must be an easy way for homebrewers to describe their own games.


Can you imagine how much more work that would be if you used multiple emulators for the same console, each with its own custom format?

I think we solved in FitzRoy's old fc.zip/ZapFC. A homebrew game's folder or zipfile would contain a database entry representing just that one game.

Deficiencies in old formats aren't large enough to affect popular games, ergo popular opinion. So what you're suggesting is impossible at this point. People looking for a quick fix have always downloaded ZSNES anyway, and that's fine.

You're basically contradicting yourself on the prior page, accepting that different emulators are good for different things, but only if the rom format stays universal. Sorry, but that's ridiculous. If a rom format's inability to accommodate multi-rom results in a broken game, then being the most compatible emulator necessitates changing the rom format. Is being the most compatible emulator a valid goal? Of course it is.



Personally, I think trying to use an arsenal of emulators to dodge bugs is confusing. Speaking of confusing, it must have been awfully confusing for ips patches to have the success rate of a coinflip thanks to ZSNES "supporting" vitally important copier headers. Oops!



I would rather maintain an unlicensed internal db than dick with thousands of external files every time we realize we underestimated something. But that's just me.



No one is saying we shouldn't strive for standards, but higan is essentially the only active SNES emulator anymore. Pardon the lonely attempt at initiative.



Yes, and we essentially did this for higan 0.94 (as folders) with each rom and board as its own file. But the board file was just referencing designations like iNES. So unlicensed boards would still have to be supported within the emulator. Naturally, we ran into the same problem as iNES. Pinout variations, oem discretes, and unlicensed discretes were too numerous to be given their own designations. So now there's talk of a scripting format.

I'm surprised nobody has brought up MAME yet.


To be fair, IPS in itself should have never been used for the SNES in the first place since it was made with the assumption that ROM sizes would not be larger than 4MB (not that stupid of a decision: that's the limit on the Mega Drive without mappers, and only one licensed game ever was larger than that).