Emus on Xbox

[ChadTower]

I'm just going about selecting emulators to run on the Xbox.  Any recommendations?

The first one I've seriously attempted to get up and going is FCEUltraX.  It was easy enough to get working but I'm convinced it's running too fast.  The SMB music sounded like it was on fast forward.

[walls83]

http://xbox.nugnugnug.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=UpDownload&file=index


I dont know if youve seen this place but it should help.

[crashwg]

You don't need a high post count at other forums to read them...

http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showtopic=524593

[ChadTower]

No, but I was asking specifically for recommendations from people I trust here.  Guess that was a mistake.  My bad. 

[tetsu96]

Go find the "Big Ass Emulation Disc" for the xbox - that has just about all of the 16 bit and older included.  From that point, if any emus aren't quite right, you can update as needed (BAED is at least 2 years old now I'd guess, but all the EMUs work and most work just fine).

[ChadTower]

Heh, actually did find that.  That's what I was running FCEUltraX from.  Only about half of the emulators actually boot for me, most disappointingly the TG16 and 5200 emulators won't launch and just restart the dashboard.  A bit of searching showed that it could be a problem with the EvoX dash, though, and not the emulators themselves. 

[Hoagie_one]

I use FCE ultra and didn't notice any issues, but you can tweak the frame skip or cpu speed cant you?

[NOP]

my recommendations: all of them! 

I say that for 2 reasons; first I think it is *amazing* to have so many different platforms all under 1 roof.   It's like having a little console museum right in your living room.  Even odyssey 2 gets occasional playtime at my house, and I think it's extremely cool to go through console history in an afternoon, starting at the O2, then working through them all the way up to the PS1 and N64! 

The 2nd reason I say that is that there really isn't too much overlap between emulators.  There are 2 SNES emulators, but only 1 of them is in active development.
IIRC, all other duplicate emulators were simply superseded by one another, since there is essentially only 2 people working on the entire emulator scene, and 1 of them ported 95% of all the emulators.

Being a bit of a purist, I shy away from the handheld emulators, as I dont think they should be played on a TV set.  I have every available console emulator installed though, and I'm in heaven.

This is a nice guide as to what to get:
http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showtopic=386399

and then for everything else you'd need, screenshots and configs and everything else, pop over to that http://xbox.nugnugnug.com site, which I happen to be the owner of.  (thanks for the plug walls83!)   

-jeff!

[tetsu96]

Heh, actually did find that.  That's what I was running FCEUltraX from.  Only about half of the emulators actually boot for me, most disappointingly the TG16 and 5200 emulators won't launch and just restart the dashboard.  A bit of searching showed that it could be a problem with the EvoX dash, though, and not the emulators themselves. 

Heh, that's funky.  Running them off the DVD sucks as scrolling thru ROM lists takes forever but loaded onto the HD they all worked pretty well for me.  Then again, I use XBMC as a dash so maybe that also has something to do with it.

The TG16 is one of the EMUs I'd suggest updating.  Forgot the name of the newer one but it's active and MUCH better emulation quality.  xsnesx I also replaced as it was the only emu that didn't fit in with the others as far as style and such.  Can't remember the name of the replacement offhand, but it seems to be just as competent, maybe a little more thorough with filters and such.

And I agree on the handhelds - you can play them but something that looked good on a 2" screen typically doesn't look right on 20+ sizes.  Of course, YMMV on that point.

[ChadTower]

I am trying to run my emulators off DVD because I still have the stock drive in there.  I have gotten into the habit of keeping 1 Xbox game (whichever I'm working on) on the drive, and once that is there, there isn't a ton of room for other stuff.

[slycrel]

I'd recommend moving the actual emulators onto your HDD and just run the ROMs from the DVD drive in that situation.

I've played around with a few NES emulators and I've always gone back to FCEUltra.  There are options to change the CPU speed and all sorts of other things, most (all?) you can do globally or on a per game basis.

For SNES I'd recommend the zSNES port, I've only recently gotten that and it's been better than anythign else I've tried.

I've had bad luck with N64 emus, you'd have to ask someone else -- I've only ever really wanted to run the N64 shadowgate and It's not worked with anything I've tried.  (Let me know if you have success here!)

Generally speaking I've also had very good results with any of the xport emus that I've tried and have stuck with them for the most part:  http://xport.xbox-scene.com/

I had fun with the apple IIgs emulation and the "out of this world" and "maelstrom" xbox ports.  Too bad the SDL library work never really got finished for porting most PC stuff over to the xbox -- that would have been fantastic.

Hope that helps.

[ark_ader]

I'd plumb for the AID 2.0 setup disc.

It has all sorts of emus on it and they ALL WORK.

I have Mamedox, DaphneX running perfectly as well as the Nintendo Emus by ZX81.

It still amazes me how that little box can do so much.

[ChadTower]

Thanks for the advice... I opened up the BAED ISO and it looks as though I might be able to change the emus that are there.  It appears on the surface to have a call structure that would make that possible if I don't change the dir tree names.  If not, it also appears that some of the source code is there, and if I can locate a copy of the XDK (yeah, right) then I can make it work the harder way.

I'm not sure I see the functional difference with having the emulators on HD and the ROMs on DVD.  Either way it's going to load the entire executable into memory.  The emulators do appear to have defaults for paths to spots on the HD for config files, saves, etc.  They appear to be configurable, too, so they can get moved around some.  I'll try your recommendation and see if it makes a substantial difference.  N64 is one of the systems I don't really need emulation for as we still have one in the living room that gets regular use (and about 5 more in the basement).

I was a console collector for years, so for me, emulation is really just a bit of convenience.  I still own multiples of almost all consoles and many of them own half or more of the domestic libraries.

[tetsu96]

I'm not sure I see the functional difference with having the emulators on HD and the ROMs on DVD.  Either way it's going to load the entire executable into memory.  The emulators do appear to have defaults for paths to spots on the HD for config files, saves, etc.  They appear to be configurable, too, so they can get moved around some.  I'll try your recommendation and see if it makes a substantial difference.  N64 is one of the systems I don't really need emulation for as we still have one in the living room that gets regular use (and about 5 more in the basement).

Yeah, I'd either copy everything to the HD or leave everything on the DVD.  It may be faster to load the emu's up (at least before the ROM load), but scrolling through long lists of console roms takes a lot longer on DVD vs the HD.  If the burn isn't as good as it could be, then you can potentially lock up just while browsing rom lists.

Of course, if you're on the stock HD, this maybe more of a challenge than otherwise.  As an alternative, most of the xport stuff can load via SMB shares.  That may be worth experimenting with.

[taternutz]

ANybody on here try to run mame or daphne fro the Xbox? I have the standard hd in my bow and I was wondering if anyone on here has succesfully done it. I do not mind putting the emus on the drive but maybe pull the roms from disc, is this possible??


Thanks,

[ChadTower]

  As an alternative, most of the xport stuff can load via SMB shares.  That may be worth experimenting with.

That I didn't know.  I already have XBMC working with a series of SMB shares so it wouldn't require any setup at all. 

I have yet to find anything in FCEUltraX that allows adjustment of CPU speed.  I looked through every menu and at every setting.

[NOP]

ANybody on here try to run mame or daphne fro the Xbox? I have the standard hd in my bow and I was wondering if anyone on here has succesfully done it. I do not mind putting the emus on the drive but maybe pull the roms from disc, is this possible??

I've got both installed on mine-I've really only installed DL, DL2 and space ace, but others do work.  I recall testing out bega's battle at least.

MAME works quite well.  Since I only have a vertical monitor in my cab, I play MAME to get my horizontal games fix.

MAME can certainly be run off the HDD and have it load ROMs off DVD.  There's a number of "rom path" options in the MAME config windows and all you'd have to do is point one to the DVD drive and hit the rescan button.

Daphne should also be able to be played off DVD, however, you will have to make sure and properly edit your frame files to point the emulator to your video files are located.  Framefiles are typically set up as local paths (ie, ".\lair" instead of "d:\lair")

Really though, having it all on the HDD is lovely.

-jeff!

[NOP]

  As an alternative, most of the xport stuff can load via SMB shares.  That may be worth experimenting with.

SMB hasn't worked really well for me.  There's another alternative called "relax" which works quite well, although only for windows users.

I use relax to share everything I can-there's no point in having 2 rom sets in your house.

Here's a guide and everything you need to know.
http://www.seedwiki.com/wiki/xport_emulator_relax_tutorial

-jeff!

[igboo]

Actually, there's a decent port of the Xbox Media Streaming Protocol for Linux and, I believe, Mac OSX.  It's called CCXstream.

I currently run it under Linux on a small NAS device from Linksys called the NSLU2.  Connected are two 500Gb drives in enclosures communicating over USB.  This nifty little device is serving up movies, music and games to XBox's all over my house.  (Currently 4 of them)

igboo

[shmokes]

You're not playing streaming Xbox games ?

[igboo]

No, Xbox games need to be on the local HD.

All of my roms get streamed except for Mame.  I believe the newer versions of Mamedox are capable of it, but I haven't felt the need to do the upgrade.

igboo

[ChadTower]

I've been streaming media with great success but no games of any sort.  I have only seen reports that Xbox games need to be local as well and also that they cannot be played from an archive like ISO or ZIP.  I have discovered that some media types can be streamed from inside an archvie.

[shmokes]

In that case I don't see much reason to run a stream server.  SMB is built-into Windows.  It's fast.  It doesn't require any application running on the server. 

[ChadTower]

Not everyone runs Windows, especially for large storage solutions like NAS appliances.

On Windows, SMB has been perfectly fine for me and I use XBMC daily.

[igboo]

For movies that have a high bit rate, I've had better luck with the XBMS protocol. 

SMB seems to have just enough extra bandwidth robbing overhead to cause stuttering and frameskips in some of my videos.

igboo

[shmokes]

MAC and Linux both use SMB natively.




edit: I suppose I should qualify the Linux bit, since this would probably depend on the distro.  At any rate, SAMBA is a free SMB server that is commonly included with Linux and can easily be installed if it's not included. 

[shmokes]

For movies that have a high bit rate, I've had better luck with the XBMS protocol. 

SMB seems to have just enough extra bandwidth robbing overhead to cause stuttering and frameskips in some of my videos.

igboo

That's interesting.  My videos always either work or they do not.  There's never anything in between.  When they don't work (wouldn't play Xvid files recently) it's always a problem with settings on my Xbox, that I figure out through utter trial and error.  Some examples include, video files will not play unless I set the cache to zero.  This seems completely non-intuitive to me, but, whatever.  Also, if the Xbox is set to be able to automatically switch formats (NTSC-M, NTSC-J, PAL-60) Xvid files won't play. 

[ChadTower]

I play mostly DivX video and it works incredibly well upconverting to 720p.  It doesn't seem to like playing mp4 at 1080i, the files don't even start playing, they just bomb out back to XBMC. 

I have had issues with subtitles coming up garbage, like they're using a charset that doesn't match what is stored in XBMC.

[walls83]

Look for "XPORT" emulators for xbox.  They have put a very nice FE on all the emulators.  Thats what I use.

http://xport.xbox-scene.com/

[tetsu96]

For movies that have a high bit rate, I've had better luck with the XBMS protocol. 

SMB seems to have just enough extra bandwidth robbing overhead to cause stuttering and frameskips in some of my videos.

igboo

That's interesting.  My videos always either work or they do not.  There's never anything in between.  When they don't work (wouldn't play Xvid files recently) it's always a problem with settings on my Xbox, that I figure out through utter trial and error.  Some examples include, video files will not play unless I set the cache to zero.  This seems completely non-intuitive to me, but, whatever.  Also, if the Xbox is set to be able to automatically switch formats (NTSC-M, NTSC-J, PAL-60) Xvid files won't play. 

There's in-between, though I'd doubt that you'd have problems with anything wired these days (wireless may give you pros).  Some codecs are painful (h264 anyone?), and others I've noticed that cache sizes make a difference  with minor or not so minor skipping (you actually need to DISABLE cache for it to play proper).

It amazes me to think about how versatile it is when it's just a 733MHz chip in there.  But some of the video formats (HD expecially) have system requirements that just blow it away now.  I keep crossing my fingers for the homebrew scene on the 360 to open up to the masses becuase the horsepower there should get play anything HD well.

[shmokes]

Yeah.  I'm in love with my Xbox.  It is easily the best value in video game consoles today, and probably in the history of mankind.  The things it can do are incredible.  It is one of the greatest, most useful and versatile consumer electronics devices in history.  The fact that once modded all of the new capabilities are literally free boggles the mind just a little bit. 

I like it so much that the fact that I can see limits to its usefulness (inability to play HD sources, lack of video inputs means no TIVO functionality) makes me a little bit sad.  I can see the day when I will retire the Xbox in favor of something else and I really think that it will make me feel just a little bit sad because of just how much use and enjoyment I've got out of the thing.

But, on the one hand, I sound like a total dork right now, and on the other hand, all this is literally years away.  I don't have the kind of storage to be filling up my media server with HD content.  And even if I did have the space, I don't HAVE any HD content.  I don't have anything that will even read BluRay or HD-DVD discs and probably won't until I pick up a PS3, which I honestly can't see myself doing for at least three years.  It's just too damned expensive.  I haven't even started law school, and I honestly think that by the time the PS3 is affordable by my standards I will have finished law school.  So I definitely won't be getting one any time soon (that is, unless my in-laws give me one for Christmas, which is how I ended up with a Wii   )

So, yeah, I guess it occurs to me that I just wrote quite a long love letter to the Xbox with nary a point in sight.  Sorry about that. 

[ChadTower]

The difference between actual HD source and the XBMC upconverted 720p isn't substantial enough to spend the required money to upgrade anyway.  Not for quite a while.  Maybe if you're using a projector and 85" screen but on my 32" LCD even upconverted DivX compressed movies look really good.

I watched My Super Ex-Girlfriend last night from a 700meg DivX file, upconverted to 720p, and it looked just as good as the HD broadcasts I see at other peoples' houses.

[J_K_M_A_N]

I watched My Super Ex-Girlfriend last night from a 700meg DivX file, upconverted to 720p, and it looked just as good as the HD broadcasts I see at other peoples' houses.

Ok, I LOVE my xbox and the upconvert of it, but if that looks just as good, you haven't seen good HD yet. I download TV shows that we miss and watch them through the xbox and it is great but it is NO WHERE NEAR real HD content. I am not trying to rip the xbox because it is my favorite thing right now but...not THAT close to real HD.

I have a Panasonic 50" LCD projection screen and real HD is UNBELIEVABLE! Xbox upconverted video is good if not even great but, not the same. So maybe it is the size of screen you have seen HD content on (size DOES matter).

J_K_M_A_N

[ChadTower]

So maybe it is the size of screen you have seen HD content on (size DOES matter).

I actually said that in the post to which you replied. 

[J_K_M_A_N]

So maybe it is the size of screen you have seen HD content on (size DOES matter).

I actually said that in the post to which you replied. 

I quoted the part I was referring to. You didn't specify the screen size you had seen HD on at other people's houses. I realize you were watching the movie on your 32" screen. I would guess it would look pretty good on that.

I am actually thinking of replacing my 27" CRT in the bedroom with a screen that size just for the xbox.

Out of curiosity,  what do you use to convert your movies to divx? I use autogk and convert to xvid myself. I am wondering if divx is better. I don't want to take a ton of space on my computer for movies but I also like good picture quality.

J_K_M_A_N

[ChadTower]

I, erm, don't usually bother to convert them myself.  Y'argh.

[J_K_M_A_N]

I understand.

I use the library as a source myself. Works pretty well. 50¢ a day rental and it is fairly close to my house.

J_K_M_A_N

[shmokes]

I HIGHLY recommend Intervideo DVD Copy to convert your files.  It is so incredibly easy to rip DVDs with it.  And they always work.  Previously I was using #1 DVD Ripper, which is an awsome program and actually allows much better customization features (specifying exactly what bit rate to encode at, etc.), but files fairly frequently turned out to have video that didn't quite sync up with audio so I'd have to start the whole process over, which sucks cos encoding a video takes a few hours.  I have less options with DVD Copy, but it just works so well that I only use that program.

It does all the ripping and converting in a single step.  Incredibly easy-to-use interface.  Just a couple of button clicks from DVD to Divx.

Also, independent testing shows Xvid files to be slightly better quality than Divx as well as having slightly smaller file sizes.  But I have much more trouble getting Xvid codecs to work properly, so I actually prefer Divx.  The differences are incredibly slight.  In fact Xvid started life as Divx.  The Divx guys released their code to the open source community and development forked from there, with teh Divx guys continuing to use Divx and the Xvid guys using the code to start the open source Xvid project.  Fun fact:  I can't believe it took me years to notice, but Xvid is Divx spelled backwards   

[ChadTower]

I usually don't even bother checking to see which a particular file happens to be.  They all end in .avi anyway.   

[J_K_M_A_N]

Fun fact:  I can't believe it took me years to notice, but Xvid is Divx spelled backwards   

That is pretty funny. I just noticed that myself the other day.

I use RipIt4Me and it works beautifully. I actually had to rip my Grey's Anatomy Season 1 with that because I was getting the audio out of sync over and over (using DVD Decrypter in ifo mode) because of some protection. It works for those also. Usually I use DVD Decrypter for episodic discs because I have a batch file that rips all episodes automatically. I just have to setup which VTS's and PGC's to rip.

Either way I rip though, I use AutoGK to convert. I like having the subtitles separate and zipped which xbmc can use and it gives pretty good quality for the file size. I usually compress movies to 1.4 gig and 45 minute TV shows to what seems to be the standard 350 megs and 25 minute shows to 175 megs.


J_K_M_A_N