A board for emulation discussion. Logically, SNES emulation talk is what this board is for, but discussion of Game Boy, GBA, N64 and NDS emulation is also welcome. Relevance to DKC is preferable.
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Remember; posting/requesting ROMs is not allowed. General ROM/emulation talk is fine, of course.
This topic is not just about accurate graphic emulation, but this post is based around the graphical side of things.
I've always been a fan of ZSNES, but although it's a great emulator, it seems to fall behind Snes9x (and other emulators) when handling certain elements. The midground terrain of Bleak's House in DKC3 is a good example:
emu-compare-bleak.png (36.55 KiB) Viewed 48167 times
The above screenshots show a comparison of how the current (as of this post) versions of these two emulators display the terrain of Bleak's House in DKC3. As you can see, the midground is somewhat garbled in the ZSNES screenshot.
Another way that Snes9x seems to better ZSNES is that it correctly displays the bottom line of the display, whereas ZSNES displays a solid line of area-dependant colour instead.
One last observation I've made is that the ZSNES screenshot is fractionally darker than the Snes9x one, although this would appear to be an 'error' of Snes9x, as the slightly darker screen of ZSNES perfectly matches terrain graphics extracted using vSNES.
In the mapping project I only use SNES9XW_XE_PPRO, I hope this isn't that bad... The midground terrain looks really buggy, I wonder that this isn't already fixed, DKC3 is at least one of the more well-known SNES games (I've never completely finished )
Not only Klobber Karnage, other levels like Barrel Bayou or Chain Link Chamber also have that problem. Most likely the rotable barrels never stop moving after you started moving them.
Yeah, that's very weird. Snes9x handles the rotatable barrels just fine... but it seems that when you first rotate one of these barrels in a level, ZSNES will cause the barrel to keep rotating. You can change the direction of rotation, but can't stop the barrel from rotating except by firing out of it. Even after leaving a barrel, ZSNES 'remembers' which direction you last rotated, and will then use that direction for the next barrel you enter, be it the same one, or one elsewhere in the level.
There seem to be numerous reasons to avoid ZSNES when it comes to DKC gaming...
That's funny; an older version of Snes9x had this glitch too. There was also a glitch where you couldn't open an animal buddy crate, making Bramble Scramble impossible.
One last observation I've made is that the ZSNES screenshot is fractionally darker than the Snes9x one, although this would appear to be an 'error' of Snes9x, as the slightly darker screen of ZSNES perfectly matches terrain graphics extracted using vSNES.
The direct screenshot feature of Snes9x sadly does make it a little bit lighter, though when displayed on the emulator directly, it matches vSNES' extraction colors perfectly.
Cody wrote:The direct screenshot feature of Snes9x sadly does make it a little bit lighter, though when displayed on the emulator directly, it matches vSNES' extraction colors perfectly.
How do you compare the emulator's display with vSNES graphics?
Print Screen. I had to use the Snes9x emulator and vSNES together rip Criss Cross Cliffs' layout, and the only way I could use Snes9x was via Print Screen...thankfully, they both maintain the same, accurate color palette displayed in the original game.
And you just look at the two of them side by side? Or do you switch between them to find differences? Switching between them usually lets one with a keen eye spot subtle differences, but you can take things one step further and have Photoshop (if you have access to it) mathematically analyse the difference between images using the 'difference' blending mode.
Explanation/tutorial enclosed (because it would probably bore most people...)
Spoiler!
To accurately analyse any differences between images within Photoshop, start by pasting both images as layers within a Ps document. Ensure that one overlaps the other completely, then change the top layer's blend mode from 'Normal' to 'Difference' in the Layers window/panel. If the images are identical, the 'difference' blend will cause the image to display as pure black. Any differences between the images/layers will cause the display to not be pure black. Usually this will enable you to see any differences more clearly than when using the switching technique, but to be absolutely sure, follow the advice below.
If there is a uniform increase/decrease in brightness, you may have a pure colour other than black; the Info panel or the Color Picker will let you check this. Black will show up as R: 0, G: 0, B: 0. Anything other than 0 0 0 is non-black, and therefore, the image is not a perfect match. Now you can use the Magic Wand Tool to analyse the black (or mostly/partially black) display, and check for 'impurities', which indicate differences. Set the Magic Wand Tool's 'Tolerance' to 0, 'Anti-alias' off and 'Sample All Layers' on. The 'Contiguous' option is up to you... either on or off will tell you valid info, but setting to 'on' is probably more interesting. Now click on the black area. If your whole black image is selected, it's a perfect match. If you see one or more 'subselections' (meaning partial areas of the image are selected), the images are not a perfect match.
Assuming that your comparison is accurate, this means ZSNES screenshots, vSNES rips and Snes9x Prt Scrn captures are all true to the original palette's colours, but there is a distortion (brightness increase) when using Snes9x's own snapshot saving function. Does that sound right?
Hmm... this kind of discussion isn't much to do with actual gaming, is it... I guess it really belongs in the mapping topic. If we talk any further about this screenshotting colour accuracy, let's do it there instead. I'll probably put this kind of info in some sort of mapping tutorial/reference thread that I can link people to if they are interested.
I just noticed another difference between ZSNES and SNES9x - If you die when riding Squawks, in ZSNES your Kong falls offscreen and Squawks just stays there smiling and flapping his wings. But on SNES9x he falls offscreen too!
EDIT: Oh my god...I just downloaded BNES...it's bloody perfect! The sound is just like on a real SNES!
Ah, good to know; I did consider this a possibility (I know ZSNES doesn't get DKC's text quite right), but never actually cross-checked with a more accurate reference.
I have now moved these recent posts to a ZSNES-relevant topic.
Personally I think it looks better in the original (scanned) screenshot; do you suppose they shifted it up a bit in order to more neatly accommodate a third line of text?
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