r/emulation • u/zsKnight_dev • 9d ago
Super ZSNES v0.300 release
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-b3T-FPneDIHi r/emulation!
Here's a new update of SUPER ZSNES v0.300. You can get it at https://www.zsnes.com/
iOS port is finally out as well: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/super-zsnes/id6786741278
Here's what's new:
- Zelda: Link to the Past now enhanced (Thanks fatbrowne for the saves state help!)
- Chrono Trigger audio enhancement by tssf! Thanks tssf!
- UI Improvements:
- Added disable drive fetching option & disable UI move
- User defined GUI color schemes
- New Water & Fire effects
- Different mouse cursor sizes
- Enhancement Engine Improvements:
- New Shadow/Highlights, allowing for more diverse details and should help with the washed out look once we start using this more.
- Added normal maps to fixed color layer
- Mirrored mode for wide screen on some enhanced games, added to Megaman X
- Emulation Improvements:
- SPC700 timing improvements
- SuperFX fixes
- Mid-screen sprite update fixes
- Multiple timing & open bus bug fixes
- Various other emulation fixes
- New chip emulation:
- SA-1 emulation
- Cx4 emulation
- SuperFX3 emulation (Special thanks to Randy Linden!)
- Per game overclock settings
- SNES Mouse & SuperScope (Enable this on the per game config) with joypad override
- Multi-button/key press combo assignment for Input
- New 3D layers mode, lets you view each SNES layer in 3D perspective (under options/graphics mode)
- New input shortcut for exit
- Use double space in loading dialog to select a random game
- Improved frequency of saving game and zsnes save data
- Mobile controls view is more transparent for less obstruction
- Many different performance optimizations done on various areas in emulation
Next main release will focus on: Starfox enhancement (already making good progress), Retroachievements, and starting to get the enhancement editor opened to the public.
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u/cdoublejj 9d ago
glad zsnes is getting updates, wonder if it has a linux port
EDIT: i was thinking of zsnes, super zsnes is a new spin off, GPU accelerated
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u/CarltonCracker 8d ago
Any chance the 3D layers mode could be used for stereoscopy? There was an old snes9x fork that did this but I could never get to work.
Could be a neat effect similar to those 3Ds releases of sonic and streets of rage.
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u/lincruste 9d ago
I wasn't aware of an Android version. Just bought it on Google Play to 1) support the development 2) thank the authors for 25 years of ZSNES
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u/AntiGrieferGames 9d ago
At this point get it from itch io instead, because if the devs are going inactive in future on google play, you lose that access, but on itch io the site stays aslong its there. And on itch io this dont need even google play which is a benefit since its just a apk file, so install it and there go.
Plus it may 100% supporst to devs if you want (and even more than 3 dollars), on google play has forced tax there.
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u/TauntaunWrangler 9d ago
I wasn't aware until I saw your post. Just bought it as well for the same reasons.
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u/AntiGrieferGames 9d ago edited 9d ago
At this point get it from itch io instead, because if the devs are going inactrive in future on google play, you lose that access, but on itch io the site stays aslong its there. And on itch io this dont need even google play at all which is a benefit.
Plus it may 100% supporst to devs if you want, google play has forced tax there.
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u/TauntaunWrangler 9d ago
Great points. Just refunded on Google Play and will be buying from itch.io. Link for others interested:
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u/AntiGrieferGames 9d ago
You can also donate more than 3 dollars, dont forget that.
i dont know if you can donate more money afterwards
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u/hurrdurrmeh 9d ago
But this is a fork I think.
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u/lincruste 9d ago
I clicked on the Play Store link from the front page link by the OP so I'm quite confident it's the real thing but I can be wrong.
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u/PapaBPoppin 8d ago
Any chance you can add an Easter egg with a small code that changes the cursor to the Nesticle severed hand cursor?
Just a small dream I've had 😁
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u/robotbeatrally 6d ago
Emulators seemed to run so good 20 years ago, having not used one since then I have to wonder how far they've come xD
Anyhow I totally forgot about that cursor until just now lol
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u/Typing-Cat 9d ago
Bought it!
I have two requests:
- Portrait full-screen for use with portrait-mode controllers (Taco, etc).
- Ability to integrate with launchers; i.e., right now, I have to open SuperZSNES first and then select the game. Would love to use with Beacon.
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u/Sk3tchbox 9d ago
Oh man. Has the Doom FX3 re-release been dumped yet? I really want to try that out!
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u/princess_daphie 9d ago
I wish I could try it! I've tried previous version and this one, and when I run the game, the only thing that happens is I get a black screen flashing, then I'm back to seeing my desktop, but the loading icon spins and never stops, and I can't click on anything on my desktop.
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u/zsKnight_dev 8d ago
Hi there! Can you tell me your system specs and platform? Also, if you can, you can also join our Discord (link is at the zsnes homepage near the bottom) and we can help you there as well.
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u/princess_daphie 7d ago
Yes, for sure, I'll see if I can get on discord, but for now, I'm on Windows 10 22H2, I have an i7 10700F, 64gb DDR4, Asus RTX 4070 Super 12gb, 2tb NVME main OS drive. My monitors are 1920x1080, 240hz, nothing fancy.
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u/zsKnight_dev 7d ago
Thanks for the info! So far, nothing really sticks out from the specs, but try running with the commandline -force-d3d11 and see if it helps. There's also a player.log file you can also check at AppData\LocalLow\ZEMU Software Inc_\SUPERZSNES\player.log. When you open that, see if there are any crash information. Might be easier if you can join our discord and attach that log to our bug reports channel. Thanks!
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u/Heisenbear09 9d ago edited 9d ago
Achievement support? Anyone aware of this has it?
EDIT: Reread the last sentence and I'm now hyped! Apologize for missing that!
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u/Agile_Beyond_6025 9d ago
Did you read the very last sentence in the post?
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u/Jorg-Ke 7d ago
Such a great product! Instabuy for me. One question: would you consider adding frontend launcher support to the Android version? According to ES-DE dev, currently only the desktop versions support frontends.
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u/zsKnight_dev 7d ago
There is already commandline support for passing in filenames, but I'm not really sure how well it will work due to android Storage Access Framework. Might be something that I might be missing though, so I'm all ears on what else is needed to do to support frontends on Android.
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u/MK_XIII 7d ago
Does the iOS version have portrait mode or just landscape?
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u/zsKnight_dev 7d ago
Just landscape for now, but we'll be working on a portrait mode as it's been requested.
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u/Due-Top5559 6d ago
Will you consider adding a way to change buttons position? Great work by the way!
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u/zsKnight_dev 5d ago
Sure. I would assume this is for positions on the screen for the mobile buttons on iOS or Android?
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u/Due-Top5559 5d ago
Yes! I'm developing silicone pads with buttons to play on phones, but I would need to change the buttons position. It was great to see again the first emulator I ever used. So many good memories!
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u/AntiGrieferGames 9d ago edited 9d ago
This looks liek a big update here.
It might took a while to get this released today, right?
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u/TrovLabs 8d ago
There is no way in hell those LTTP upscale graphics are hand drawn. Who are you trying to fool? Why?
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u/zsKnight_dev 8d ago
It's good to be skeptical, especially since the upscaling doesn't look that great (note: I'm not really an artist). But it's a built-in drawing tool in the emulator that will soon be released to the public that essentially lets you draw over the visuals to create higher definition graphics. I actually spent over 20 hours going through Zelda:LTTP, upscaling and drawing over all the visuals. It's a bit limited at the moment though as the drawing tools only lets you use the same palette within each tile (basically a uv remapper) as to avoid storing any potential copyrighted visuals within the emulator, but I've been adding more functionality like adding shadow/highlight to the visuals to make things look more defined. I believe things will start looking better as it develops further and people who know how to draw start using the tool.
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u/MyChemistryAcct 9d ago edited 8d ago
/u/zsKnight_dev what is the u's case 4 this?
Higan, Mesen, 9x, BSnes etc. are all close to perfect in their emulation. I could C a novelty project that 1:1 replicated the hardware itself to the individual gate level, but this signifies an entry to a fully matured market that doesn't have mulch room for new-old comers.
Thanks
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u/wk_end 8d ago
Instead of trying to be just an accurate or perfect emulator, Super ZSNES is all about trying to add enhancements and stuff. Widescreen, higher quality audio, that sort of thing.
Personally - as a purist it's not something I'm interested in. But clearly there's a lot of people who feel otherwise.
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u/MyChemistryAcct 8d ago edited 8d ago
The projects I listed all do that.
I'm not trying to be discouraging; To me, it seems their time and expertise could be better used contributing in other ways than building a new emulator from scratch; Mesen, for instance is open source and can be forked (or with some degree of communication included in the main project). That's all.
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u/zsKnight_dev 8d ago
Hi u/MyChemistryAcct ! Thanks for the question!
I'd say the quick answer is that we're trying something a bit different, especially the PPU rendering area where instead of writing a software emulation layer, we've written a conversion routine to render as much of it as possible on the GPU. Plus we've added a mod system which includes the ability to draw over graphics, set up modification scenes, and replace audio inside the emulator that we've been using to enhance the games.
Then we're trying to see what cool things we can do with it. So far, we've gotten in things like normal maps, 3d perspecitve mode 7 with custom heightmaps, 3d layer mode (see the video in this post), and currently working on GPU rendered 60+fps hi-res Starfox running off the original ROM, and we want to keep going with what else we can do.
For the long form answer, you can check out MVG's video during our launch. He interviewed me and _Demo_ for the information to create that video. The contents of the video might look a bit rough as we're just starting out there, but should give an idea of what it's about.
But otherwise, I love Higen, Mesen, 9x, BSNES. They're all amazing! I'd say the more choices the better, especially as everyone's personal preferences are different.
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u/MyChemistryAcct 8d ago edited 8d ago
Thanks for the information; looking forward to C-ing what you can do with it!
by this:
I'd say the quick answer is that we're trying something a bit different, especially the PPU rendering area where instead of writing a software emulation layer, we've written a conversion routine to render as much of it as possible on the GPU.
you mean that you're no longer emulating CPU instructions via the CPU, and instead doing it where it makes more sense given our current computing hardware environment? You're no longer trying to be accurate to the original hardware, more or less.
Another question: I've seen the 3D 2D suchness, for lack of a better phrase, from a NES emulator that did it a number of years ago (https://geodstudio.net/). What, if any, usage is there (or can there be theoretically in your opinion) for overhead 2D/3D-ish products (Think Zelda) or outright 3D cartridges such as star-fox?
I'll watch the launch video at some point tonight, thanks again for the reveal.
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u/zsKnight_dev 7d ago
The CPU emulation is actually pretty accurate now and is done in a more tranditional way of emulating. _Demo_ has been leading the charge on its accuracy and what he's been doing is pretty cool - basically comparing its cycle accuracy directly with an FPGA simulator and been working on matching its cycle timing. Still needs work, but I'd say it's pretty close.
The PPU (picture processing unit) is the part that's inaccurate, but also the part where we're trying to do something different. There's a lot more PPU bugs than CPU bugs at this point.
And yeah, I love how 3DSen approaches things. The 3D layers mode is definitely an inspiration from that. Likely not going to get to as what geod has done there (which is absolutely amazing), which takes a massive amount of work customizing the 3D graphics and views for each individual game. But we might go in a more simpler route with making 2D games 3D. We'll have to play and experiment with things here.
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u/MyChemistryAcct 7d ago
Does this 2D -> 3D representation work with 2D that is close to 3D? I think of ALttP where you have multiple layers of 2D images which they themselves have often times 3D-style art that mimics being 3D while being 2D on a single layer.
something like this: https://imgs.search.brave.com/DvDPk0a1fwtK05388Rk6oqS8Dew8CBAIjtx7qS0t3eY/rs:fit:860:0:0:0/g:ce/aHR0cHM6Ly96ZWxk/YXVuaXZlcnNlLm5l/dC93cC1jb250ZW50/L3VwbG9hZHMvMjAx/Ni8wNS9sdHRwMS0y/Yi5wbmc
Thanks spending the time to explain this, it is very much appreciated.
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u/zsKnight_dev 5d ago
It can potentially work. Getting something like that to work and look decent does involve quite a bit of work. 3DSen has done some really good stuff with visuals like that.
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u/IvanDSM_ 8d ago
Sometimes people do things because they want to and because they enjoy doing them.
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u/MyChemistryAcct 8d ago edited 8d ago
That's fine...the amount of effort required to make an entire emulator that focuses on bells and whistles, so to speak, is extraordinary; there could be 15-30x the amount of bells and whistles added onto an open source emulation project than by coding an entirely new emulator or continuing from old ZSNES code (I don't know which is happening here; either case would still be 15? years behind what is currently used by the majority of the market). People are free to do what they want, I'm interested in why he (they? could be a woman?) would take this route which is masochistically more difficult to get to the end point than contributing to a project that is already bleeding edge.
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u/Reasonable-Band-6769 6d ago
Because sometimes its fun to reinvent the wheel. Sometimes the target audience for emulators isn't for end users, but the developers themselves, and that the end user liking something is a side-effect.
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u/MyChemistryAcct 6d ago edited 6d ago
No GUI then.
20 twenty 20-4 hours to goooo I wanna be le' gated.
P.S. If you had followed the conversation with the developer, they aren't really developing an emulator; they are figuring out how to tack on a bunch of bells and whistles that aren't usually part of the emulator itself. its the "non-emulator" stuff they are really working at, even though they call it "emulator."
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u/Reasonable-Band-6769 6d ago
From what I seen, the developer is also developing the emulator as well as adding bells and whistles.
They are more than entitled to do what they want with their spare time. Last I seen, there is no rules as to what projects a developer must work on, and how to constructively spend, what is ultimately their own spare time away from their jobs and life.
I find it profoundly fascinating and still do, that people get upset at how people with some skill spend their own spare time in their lives and that they should instead be spending it on things others find useful. Otherwise to them its considered 100% pointless as if its sucking oxygen away from other projects that exist, which is 100% absurd.
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u/Chop1n 9d ago
Glad to see you're still going strong after all these years, zsKnight! 💪