Hello
I got random questions here that if you can answer 1 or more of them please do , cause I am kind of confused.
1)To make games run on ScummVM , they are basically PC games. You need original CD/Floppy for with the files. But PC games are used to make an install on the PC. So how does it work? I know how ROMs works for snes and genesis, but how does this work?
2) MAME emulation is confusing to me. You get the emulator and you get the game but then they ask you for something called BIOS files or something like that. What are these, where can I find them, why are they just not downloaded with each game or installed within the emulator itself?
3)Wii homebrew emulators, I thought they got everything right as I hear that everything out there can be emulated pre(ps2/xbox/gamecube)era except for the saturn. When I looked at the star reviews in the homebrew browser, the only thing the has decent star rating are the SNES and GENESIS emulators. The Wii64 says it runs games at half-speed and neo-geo emulators got only 3/5 stars I think. Some one on this forum told me homebrew emulators are better than Nintendo's through VC.
4) I checked out SF alpha on SNES emulator using my Wii. When it says "FIGHT" it pauses for a bit. When I play Snes/Genesis games on any emulator I find them to be slow in response. For example you can do a lot more hadukens and faster in Dreamcast Street Fighter than on a Snes. Is this due to frame rate? Were games played like this during the 16-bit era?
5) Running emulators using ROMs is easy, but how is it for ISOs? Do you just run the ISO in the emulator like a ROM or do you have to burn the iso on a cd then play it through an emulator?
Thanx for any help.
Random Emulation Questions
Re: Random Emulation Questions
1. ScummVM sometimes use non-PC versions as well I think. In any case this is probably a bit "case by case" and I don't have much experience with it so I can't help you more. I'm sure if you google for it you will find some info.
2. Some emulators use "BIOS" files. These are basically files that have information about the BIOS of the original hardware (BIOS being the basic software that boots up the machine I think). In the case of MAME, I presume you need BIOS for Neo Geo emulation. Once again, try google. In many cases the reason that they are not supplied with the emulator is to avoid legal problems. BIOS is often still copyrighted or whatever.
3. and 4. Can't help you there.
5. There are ways to "mount" images of CDs (like ISOs) in your hard drive as if they were in a CD. One free program that lets you do that is called Daemon Tools - google for it and you will be able to download "Daemon Tools Lite", which lets you mount images of CDs.
You may not even need to mount the image however - some emulators are able to load up images directly (so instead of "Load ROM" you have something like "Load Image" and you just select the .iso file).
Ivo.
2. Some emulators use "BIOS" files. These are basically files that have information about the BIOS of the original hardware (BIOS being the basic software that boots up the machine I think). In the case of MAME, I presume you need BIOS for Neo Geo emulation. Once again, try google. In many cases the reason that they are not supplied with the emulator is to avoid legal problems. BIOS is often still copyrighted or whatever.
3. and 4. Can't help you there.
5. There are ways to "mount" images of CDs (like ISOs) in your hard drive as if they were in a CD. One free program that lets you do that is called Daemon Tools - google for it and you will be able to download "Daemon Tools Lite", which lets you mount images of CDs.
You may not even need to mount the image however - some emulators are able to load up images directly (so instead of "Load ROM" you have something like "Load Image" and you just select the .iso file).
Ivo.
Re: Random Emulation Questions
1. Most PC games that do an install actually just copy files to your computer. Occationally the files might be packed into an archive; this is the only time an install is really doing something you couldn't easily do yourself. For all the old Scumm games an install was just copying files to your HDD. So to get ScummVM to work you would need to copy the files from the diskette/CD into the appropriate directory and point ScummVM at that directory.
2. Already answered pretty well.
3. The Wii hardware is capable of emulating anything running on the VC. However, that doesn't mean that emulators for those systems by the Homebrew community have been properly tuned to use the Wii hardware in the right way. With PC emulators you can start off brute forcing everything and then optimizing so that it will run on a wider selection of hardware. With the Wii you have very limited system specs. I suspect the problem is that the community just hasn't used all the tricks on the Wii yet.
4. I'd recommend downloading ZSNES and trying your ROMs on there, to see if you're getting the same amount of delay. Alpha 2 on the SNES really is a game that should never have been, considering that the other platforms it was on were the PSX and Saturn. It's the only SNES game I know of with load times.
5. Already answered well.
2. Already answered pretty well.
3. The Wii hardware is capable of emulating anything running on the VC. However, that doesn't mean that emulators for those systems by the Homebrew community have been properly tuned to use the Wii hardware in the right way. With PC emulators you can start off brute forcing everything and then optimizing so that it will run on a wider selection of hardware. With the Wii you have very limited system specs. I suspect the problem is that the community just hasn't used all the tricks on the Wii yet.
4. I'd recommend downloading ZSNES and trying your ROMs on there, to see if you're getting the same amount of delay. Alpha 2 on the SNES really is a game that should never have been, considering that the other platforms it was on were the PSX and Saturn. It's the only SNES game I know of with load times.
5. Already answered well.
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Re: Random Emulation Questions
thanx a lot
its been really helpful specially the BIOS and the ISO images and how they work.
I always thought the bios was different for each game
its been really helpful specially the BIOS and the ISO images and how they work.
I always thought the bios was different for each game
Re: Random Emulation Questions
I keep a small collection of MAME roms (~200) but even so it can be annoying to update the romsets whenever MAME is updated. For instance MAME .130u2 needs a new NeoGeo BIOS dump that I had a hard time finding.. Your best bet is to update your ROMs only when a major MAME increment is released (e.g. .129->.130) so that when you grab ROMs from websites you guarantee their validity.
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