59 replies to this topic

[frolik]

Right, now that's all wrapped up I'm off for a game of Turrican on my Dingoo

[qbertaddict]

Right, now that's all wrapped up I'm off for a game of Turrican on my Dingoo

I will do a video of the wiz, caanoo, and dingoo versions of vice 2.2. All will have the same settings and will be running the same game. I will choose the game commando since it is one of my favorites. Hopefully this will end the debate and maybe by matching the configs we will see the needed speed boost on the wiz and caanoo ports. Be patient I have a lot of stuff to do the next couple of days but should be able to get it done by the end of this weekend.

Edited by qbertaddict, 16 February 2012 - 05:19 PM.

[foleyjo]

There is nothing to FIX!

Except the front end as it's old and some of the features don't work.

I have played around some more with Vice and found that you can get good speed in games between 500mhz and 700mhz with frameskip 1.I could play some games as low as 400mhz with the right settings.
On the eyes a frameskip of 1 does not look any different from a real 64.

I did find however that when changing the clock speed the sound would start to mess up. This is easily resolved by switching to fast sid and then back to real sid.

Using this method I played Tusker at 500mhz and it seemed to be fine. Batman the movie needed to be pumped up to 700mhz though in some points I could lower the clock speed.


So I think people who want to see vice improve should adjust the settings more because they will probably find it works fine.

I also think that a developer (with the spare time of course) could probably get better performance out of the emulator as well as improve the front end

[Hansel75]

Hi all, been a while since i commented in here.

I just wanted to say that no, vice is not perfect by any means, and does need fixing, i don't know how anyone could say it doesn't.

Yes if you play around with vice's settings, games will be playable, but there definitely not perfect by any means.

I was an avid fan of the c64 in the day, and i still have a real one here now. I can assure you all that vice is slower and jerkier then the real thing, and slower then other emulators on other systems for that matter.

On a side note, i tested Frodo at 800mhz recently, and i must say apart from some crackling sound, the scrolling/movement was virtually perfect(silky smooth), i tried the same games on vice and they were jerky and the movement was crap compared to frodo.
And with frodo, there was no need to skip frames like u have to in vice to get a playable game.
On vice unless u use auto(terrible) or 2(ok) frameskip, the sound is horrible, and when i have tried 1, yes the games are very smooth, but they are slower then normal and the sound breaks.
Frameskip at 2 on vice has been the best for me, but again, the movement and scrolling are certainly not perfect.

Frodo's downfall is the sound issues, and it doesn't have very good compatibility. If someone could fix the sound issues in Frodo, i would actually use that more then vice because of the awesome speed and smoothness in games, despite it being less compatible then vice.

Vice's frontend doesn't worry me, i would prefer someone improve the actual emulation speed before the frontend.

If you guys want to test this out, try playing something like Delta, Ghosts and Goblins, pretty much any scrolling game.
Compare it running on frodo then vice, then try and tell me vice is fine and doesn't need fixing.

I'm not being agro here, but there is some ignorance going on when people say caanoo the c64 emulation is fine, when it isn't.

Of course we shouldn't complain and demand, i started this topic with a friendly request that seems to off gotten out of hand and had started to cause agitation recently.

For some reason some coders seem to take offense at peoples requests, may i ask then, why is there a topic in this forum called- Cool ideas and other wishes????

Also some people have mentioned raising bountys, yet there hasn't been one coder put there hand up for it or show any kind of interest whatsoever? I would presume most coders interests have moved onto to other formats/projects which is a shame.

Qbertaddict, i look forward to your comparison videos, i think they will prove a good point.

So basically unless someone is kind enough, and has the time to improve 64 emulation on the caanoo, that's as good as were ever gonna get.
Frustrating i know, especially when u see a 32bit 3d playstation game like Ridge Racer, emulated and playing at full speed on the caanoo, yet we can't play some of our 8bit 1mhz c64 faves cause of issues.

TY, Han.

[foleyjo]

Is everyone starting vice via the main caanoo menu? If so that may be why I get a better performance. Try starting from gmenu2x and turn on tweak ram timings

[SuperMarcoVer]

Vice runs great in my opinion. With the option early mentioned (frameskip 1, RealSid, 800mhz) it runs very well.

There are just 3 things i would want to see in the future:

- savestate
- screen adjustment/zoom-out (Caanoo screensize doesn't display correct)
- saving general configuration (everytime i start Vice i have to change the settings

One of the best games on C64 i think is Creatures and it only runs on Vice not Frodo.

[qbertaddict]

Here is a little video comparison. If you want me to add different variables let me know

Video

Edited by qbertaddict, 20 February 2012 - 06:18 PM.

[Pickle]

Here is a little video comparison. If you want me to add different variables let me know

Video

qbertaddict, does turning off true emu on the river raid help at all? That dingoo gui looks like the official SDL one, which my pandora build uses.
Do you know who did the dingoo release? I dont think I did the caanoo vice personally, but i think it was based on my wiz port.

[qbertaddict]

Here is a little video comparison. If you want me to add different variables let me know

Video

qbertaddict, does turning off true emu on the river raid help at all? That dingoo gui looks like the official SDL one, which my pandora build uses.
Do you know who did the dingoo release? I dont think I did the caanoo vice personally, but i think it was based on my wiz port.

It does not seem to make a difference as far as framerate. The sound still skips and distorts with frameskip and truedrive emulation off too. The person that did the dingoo port is Peiselulli. The dingoo version is an official fork on the vice website. Rikku did the caanoo port which was based on your wiz port

[Pickle]

Here is a little video comparison. If you want me to add different variables let me know

Video

qbertaddict, does turning off true emu on the river raid help at all? That dingoo gui looks like the official SDL one, which my pandora build uses.
Do you know who did the dingoo release? I dont think I did the caanoo vice personally, but i think it was based on my wiz port.

It does not seem to make a difference as far as framerate. The sound still skips and distorts with frameskip and truedrive emulation off too. The person that did the dingoo port is Peiselulli. The dingoo version is an official fork on the vice website. Rikku did the caanoo port which was based on your wiz port

Do you have any way to contact Peiselulli, it would be helpful to know if there were any specific changes to dingoo. I did find enough info to know it is using the offical sdl gui.
I may try the games you demoed on the wiz for comparison.

[qbertaddict]

Here is a little video comparison. If you want me to add different variables let me know

Video

qbertaddict, does turning off true emu on the river raid help at all? That dingoo gui looks like the official SDL one, which my pandora build uses.
Do you know who did the dingoo release? I dont think I did the caanoo vice personally, but i think it was based on my wiz port.

It does not seem to make a difference as far as framerate. The sound still skips and distorts with frameskip and truedrive emulation off too. The person that did the dingoo port is Peiselulli. The dingoo version is an official fork on the vice website. Rikku did the caanoo port which was based on your wiz port

Do you have any way to contact Peiselulli, it would be helpful to know if there were any specific changes to dingoo. I did find enough info to know it is using the offical sdl gui.
I may try the games you demoed on the wiz for comparison.

I actually tried to contact him when the caanoo first came out. I offered to give him a caanoo but he did not respond. I will try again. Do you have caanoo? Do you need one? I need to get some sleep(I work nights) but I will check back later. I look forward to seeing what you might find out. If you want me to try any other games or settings just let me know and I will do a video of it.

Edited by qbertaddict, 20 February 2012 - 07:11 PM.

[frolik]

Thanks for the video qbertaddict, Caanoo version looks to have the very same symptoms as the Wiz version.

It may be nothing but on the Wiz I have noticed that displaying the keyboard can slow the game running behind it, possibly indicating that the front end might be interfering with the emulation somehow?

Btw there is an email address (not sure if it's Peiselulli) here which might bear fruit:
http://code.google.com/p/ohboy/downloads/detail?name=Vice-Dingoo-2.3_20110323.zip

Also he has been involved in quite a few C64 scene releases http://noname.c64.org/csdb/scener/?id=14944

Would love to see some progress here!

[Pickle]

@qbertaddict I have both a wiz and caanoo. At one point I think i tried to build the SDL gui for vice, but never got it working for the wiz, so i went with the old gp2x gui. Maybe I should try it again.

@frolik well at least that makes sense since the wiz and caanoo version should be the same (wiz may be slower if it used a rotation for the tear, but i dont remember if i did). Keyboard is drawn on top of the framebuffer, doubt its causing any slow down other than the time needed to write to the buffer.

[frolik]

Pickle, have you downloaded dingoo vice 2.3 from my link above? It includes a patch (diff?) file and a readme with build notes.

[Pickle]

Pickle, have you downloaded dingoo vice 2.3 from my link above? It includes a patch (diff?) file and a readme with build notes.

Yeah thats the patch will all the changes, i did not see anything remarkable other than standard SDL handling. There was some code that appeared to be using some ram banks for loading disk data to.