FCE Ultra help

[chrisindfw]

Greetings,

I am using FCEU for a emulator for NES games. (Is there one you would recommend for Mamewah?)

The game does not take up the whole screen. I tried messing around with the settings but when I do the game slows to a crawl. My video mode was set at 640x480 so I can read the screen on the tv.

Any ideas?

[Tiger-Heli]

Well, I was going to start a new thread for this, but since my questions apply to this, I'll just add them here:  (I can help you though, just tried FCEU last night and got frustrated with it until I figured it out.)

I am using FCEU for a emulator for NES games. (Is there one you would recommend for Mamewah?)

Don't know anything about Mamewah.  Talking Octopus recommended VirtualNes over FCEU (had used VirtualNES with no problems), so I might be switching to that.

The game does not take up the whole screen. I tried messing around with the settings but when I do the game slows to a crawl. My video mode was set at 640x480 so I can read the screen on the tv.

Go to Config-Video, under Full-Screen options (upper left corner), select custom.  On upper right corner, select 640x480 and either 8 or 16 bpp.  In the mid to lower right side of menu, select Stretch to full screen  (Took me a long time to find that as well).  Note: Occasionally, I've been having problems with the Windows taskbar or systray (motherboard monitor) flashing into the game screen, doesn't happen all the time, and wasn't my main concern, but might be enough reason to check out VirtualNES.

Now here are my questions - (was playing Tetris) - If I get the high score, the game has me enter my name, etc. but when I launch FCE, the scores are back to default.  Isn't this supposed to be saved to NVRAM (the directories settings mentions NV-RAM, but I tried messing with it, and nothing different happened).

Q2 - When I launch a game a screen briefly comes up and goes away for selecting a save state -  I assume this is something that FCE added over the original Nintendo capabilities (like MAME did).  If so, is there a way to disable this as I don't plan to ever use it?

[Tiger-Heli]

Update:  I tried VirtuaNES - and got odd results - using the same file that played fine in FCE Ultra.

Also tried running Tetris in FCE Ultra under Win2k and don't see that Save State Load message - Might need to re-install under Win98.

NOTE - These results are under Win2k, with AFAIK no DirectX installed, but FCE works ok in this setup (windowed mode and VirtuaNES does not).  (However VirtualNES works okay with the tiger_heli.nes file.

Problem one -  the file is named tetris.nes.  When I open the game, VirtuaNES says:

Because a NES header is illegal,
there can be the thing that does not work normally.
Do execute?
Yes - No


Would think that this would be eliminated by the emulator config - ignore illegal opcode setting, but it doesn't seem to be.

This alone would be enough reason for me to dump VirtuaNES and stay with FCE, but after this, the graphics are garbled and the game won't start.

[btoddkelley]

Jcrouse and I run FCEUltra. It works very well under mamewah. I have not tried virtualnes mainly becuase I have not found any problems with FCEultra. (doesn't mean its perfect, but I haven't experienced any trouble.) Jcrouse has a mamewah ini file and a hacked version on his site that makes it cab friendly. I have not noticed the "flash" you refer to and I will check on the high score saving problem.

todd

[Tiger-Heli]

Q1 - Never Mind - Found out from http://www.tendoweb.com/Manuals/NES/Tetris%20%28Nintendo%29.pdf (original Tetris manual) that the game did not save high scores once powered off.  Too bad, but FCE is doing what it should in this case.

Q2 - As I said, I think I accidentally created a save state.  Doesn't seem to happen under Win2K, will try a clean install and see what happens. . .

[Tiger-Heli]

Jcrouse has a mamewah ini file and a hacked version on his site that makes it cab friendly.

I got another cab friendly version from here - http://cah4e3.deruspsx.com/fceultra.html

But this is Jcrouse's site: http://home.comcast.net/~cpviewer/downloads.htm (funny, I just got the hacked Z26 file from there yesterday).  BTW, is this the same jcrouse?  http://idt.gatech.edu/~jcrouse/ (if so, I should have known it was a fellow "Techie" !!!)

I have not noticed the "flash" you refer to

That only happened a couple of times when I was trying to get full screen to work with the games.  I think the problem might have been that I had both "Full Screen" and "Full Screen after Rom Loads" checked.  (Seems like these should be exclusive options, but anyway).

and I will check on the high score saving problem.

Again, the game I was complaining about wasn't supposed to save high scores anyway, so I think FCE is alright with that.  Clean install should help in any case.

Thanks !!!

[JB]

Problem one -  the file is named tetris.nes.  When I open the game, VirtuaNES says:

Because a NES header is illegal,
there can be the thing that does not work normally.
Do execute?
Yes - No


Would think that this would be eliminated by the emulator config - ignore illegal opcode setting, but it doesn't seem to be.

This alone would be enough reason for me to dump VirtuaNES and stay with FCE, but after this, the graphics are garbled and the game won't start.

NES ames NEED a valid header. Your copy of Tetris has a bad one. That's what's causing the problems. 

Some emulators are better about guessing than others.


Personally, I say feed the games through something that recognizes headers, like NESToy(the functionality MIGHT ahve been added to recent GoodNES versions).

[Tiger-Heli]

Your copy of Tetris has a bad one. That's what's causing the problems. 

Bingo!  Ran Tetris through NesToy and it works fine in VirtuaNES now!!! (Thanks for the tip - hadn't heard of NesToy before).

[JB]

Your copy of Tetris has a bad one. That's what's causing the problems. 

Bingo!  Ran Tetris through NesToy and it works fine in VirtuaNES now!!! (Thanks for the tip - hadn't heard of NesToy before).

*bows*
Everyone focuses too hard on the Goodxxxx tools in console emulation. And they're fatally flawed in some places(like NES headers).

It's a pity NESToy is dead. The database is incomplete, and the app is a bit dated at this point, but what's there is lightyears beyond GoodNES.

[Tiger-Heli]

Okay, did some more testing last night and have some additional questions - in order of preference, here are my findings.  (640x480@8Bpp, 85 Hz in all emu's)

VirtuaNes - this is my current favorite.  The "Starting Emulation" message only appears in windowed mode, not in full-screen from the command line.   I only have two minor gripes about it.

First - the windows cursor appears briefly at launch, anytime that the mouse gets accidentally moved, and sometimes just at random (USB mouse).  If there is a way to disable mouse support, that would be good, but I didn't see one.

Second - I have an XP2800+, 512M of Ram, and a 128M 9200SE vid card under Win98SE.  Initially, I had AutoFrameskipping disabled and the game ran sluggishly at 45FPS, I enabled AFS, and the game played fine, but at an indicated 30 FPS.  Is the emu this much of a performance hog?  We're talking Tetris on the NES.  ZSNES runs fine on about a 1G athlon (maybe lower).

MESS - This came in second.  MESS ran a rock solid 60FPS at Frameskip0.  Only problems were the sound did not seem as good as the other two emulators (might not have played long enough to tell though).  And the graphics looked blurry and washed out, as mentioned in this thread that no one (not NBA) has responded to.

FCE Ultra - Clean installed this and I still see the problems with the status bar flickering through and the emu prompting for save states.  Maybe there were some registry keys I needed to delete.  The gameplay was also sluggish, although I don't remember this before I "fixed" the ROM.  Weird.

[biron]

FCE Ultra - Clean installed this and I still see the problems with the status bar flickering through and the emu prompting for save states.

[Tiger-Heli]

I use the FCEU with windows98se. works perfect. but i don't use mame keys. i have a different setup. but if you use mame standard keys then you see the save state when you start... that is becouse the emu save state when you push a number button. so if you start the emulator with the 1 key. then you will see the "Save state 1"..

Didn't think about that.  Thanks!

i think the version jcrouse use has the save state disabled. but i use the latest fceu stadardversion with no problem at all.

I might try jcrouse version.  I was using one that was linked from www.screenshotarchive.com

and your problem with the taskbar i have never seen.. if you use your frontend as shell. and never use explorer, the problem cant appear..

Well, I am running the Aston shell replacement for explorer, so maybe that's part of the problem, although it's seemed to be stable with most of my other apps.

Thanks for the info