Zsnes now front-end friendly!

[Howard_Casto]

Yes a new zsnes, the first in nearly 3 years!

The latest version of zsnes fixes various command line related bugs, allowing games to be launched from the command line without issue.  Previously there were some length limits and the parser got confused on certain characters.

And more importantly, the no gui switch has been fixed allowing the use of zsnes in a front end with a smooth exit without the aid of a wrapper or a cfg file hack!

To autolaunch a rom and have zsnes shutdown on the press of the escape key simply run

zsnesw.exe c:\path to rom\romname.zip -m

The newly fixed "-m" switch disables the gui.

 

[biron]

zsnes is updated very often. new version every month or so.. but as you said this is the first _official_ release in a long time.

but you can always grab the latest version here:
http://ipherswipsite.com/zsnes/

and you don't need to use the "-m" switch. just set DisableGUI to 1

[jcrouse]

I've been using it for a week or so, without incident. Another AWESOME featue is the ability with a switch in the cfg file to allow Player 3 and Player 4 to act as Player 1 and Player 2 respectively. What this means is you can configure Player 1 and Player 2 to use keyboard input and Player 3 and Player 4 to use gamepad input and then Player 1 and Player 2 can be controllable with either the keyboard (control panel) OR a game pad.

One of my personal cabinet goals (very long range) is to allow the user to pop in an original controller for a specific platform into a USB port and use that as opposed to the control panel if he/she so desires. In thinking about it I figured the emulator would need to be able to save seperate configs and then have the called as a commandline switch. The if your front end had an alt launch you could use that but I must say, I've test what they have done with the latest ZSNESW and it works flawlessly.

Does anyone know of any other emulators that can be setup to use key input or pad input simultanously?

IMHO, ZSNESW sets the standard for usability and feature to be what I consider a cabinet friendly emulator.

John

[BuZz880]

Does anyone know of any other emulators that can be setup to use key input or pad input simultanously?

Short Answer: No, at least I don't know any others (besides Mess)
Long Answer: I am trying this using JoyToKey with Nostalgia (Intellivision) This lets me map everything to keys and use JoyToKey to map the Joy inputs.  I use a bat file in mamewah to launch JoyToKey before the emulator.   The bat file also shuts off JoyToKey when I exit the emulator - using taskkill

[jcrouse]

Buzz,
     I am curious as to how you are accomplishing this in MESS. I run about six or seven platforms out of MESS. I must admit that my understanding of ctrl files is very weak and could use a little tutoring.

John

[mms332]

Does anyone know of any other emulators that can be setup to use key input or pad input simultanously?

Hi John. VirtuaNES allows multiple settings for controls, so for example you could have both keyboard and gamepad configs for the same pad control and use them simulatenously, just like you said.

If you happen to have an adaptoid N64 usb adapter, then the driver comes with a keymapper which would let you emulate keystrokes as you play.

[Howard_Casto]

I love mess... I've even written a utility specifically to aid the use of mess as an emulator for a mame cab. 

With that being said, I almost always use it as a last resort.  I don't like the hierarchy setup within mess in that a whole game system is treated as a parent and the games clones.  It makes for confusion when setting up configuration and ctrlr files.  Also it handles some of the games with odd chips horribly, which is due to their goal of accurate emulation.  Also it should be noted that the snes is virtually unemulated in mess, so it's a moot point.

I think snes emulation has always been great with the third party emulators, but the fact that all console emu developers tend to force their own gui on everyone was holding them back.  The fact that the zsnes team is back and is making steps towards fixing command line related bugs is a step in the right direction.
(the real team at that... i don't know about you guys, but the unofficial releases didn't seem to be any different than the last official one 2 and a half years ago.)

[biron]

The fact that the zsnes team is back and is making steps towards fixing command line related bugs is a step in the right direction.
(the real team at that... i don't know about you guys, but the unofficial releases didn't seem to be any different than the last official one 2 and a half years ago.)

hmm.. it is the zsnes team that are making those unofficial releases. (most of the work by pagefault.)

and this -m switch (wich you said were new), it has been in zsnes for at least a year. it's in the december 03 release. so i don't understand how you can say it is nothing new in the releases, read the changes-file

[Minwah]

Nice to hear of a new official release, sounds good

I wonder if it can run low-res without bilinear filtering?...that was my only complaint previously when using an AVGA...I'll try it later...

[Howard_Casto]

The fact that the zsnes team is back and is making steps towards fixing command line related bugs is a step in the right direction.
(the real team at that... i don't know about you guys, but the unofficial releases didn't seem to be any different than the last official one 2 and a half years ago.)

hmm.. it is the zsnes team that are making those unofficial releases. (most of the work by pagefault.)

and this -m switch (wich you said were new), it has been in zsnes for at least a year. it's in the december 03 release. so i don't understand how you can say it is nothing new in the releases, read the changes-file

I do.... although the -m switch has been in there for ages, it's also been broken for ages but nobody noticed.  Read my post again, I said it was recently fixed, not recently added.  One member does not a team make. 

One guy does not a team make. 

[biron]

The fact that the zsnes team is back and is making steps towards fixing command line related bugs is a step in the right direction.
(the real team at that... i don't know about you guys, but the unofficial releases didn't seem to be any different than the last official one 2 and a half years ago.)

hmm.. it is the zsnes team that are making those unofficial releases. (most of the work by pagefault.)

and this -m switch (wich you said were new), it has been in zsnes for at least a year. it's in the december 03 release. so i don't understand how you can say it is nothing new in the releases, read the changes-file

I do.... although the -m switch has been in there for ages, it's also been broken for ages but nobody noticed.

[Howard_Casto]

I'm sure they are slighty different, but the bulk of the changes were made on the most recent release. 

It's not worth arguing over, sorry.