Emulation woes

It used to be that I was trying to make my emulators full-screen without blurring. Here was my findings from fall, that I never posted, though I intended to:


Snes9x
Emulates: Super NES
Tested: The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (Nintendo, 1992)
FS: Via Preferences command
Notes: Initially blurry, I found out that the setting to change was defaulted on "Smooth", not "Blocky". Hooray! It solved it. Nice and crisp...if blocky!
Status: Solved!

ScummVM
Emulates: Doesn't emulate, but rather recreates the SCUMM engine.
Tested: Sam & Max Hit the Road (LucasArts, 1995)
FS: Alt (Option)-Enter
Notes: The Mac version of the game were the ones tested on SCUMM (hence the later date). It originally was not full-screen, rather, it had a black border. Even altering the graphics style (to be smoothed slightly) was not helpful.

DOSBox
Emulates: MS-DOS shell (no MS-DOS required)
Tested: Zork I (Infocom, 1980)
FS: Command-F (Boxer)
Notes: Used Boxer. DOSBox will produce a black border but still blurry/anti-aliased.

Stella
Emulates: Atari 2600
Tested: Pitfall! (Activision, 1982)
Notes: Performs nice and blocky in the biggest screen size available, in full screen becomes slightly blurry. Even the options window in full screen is blurry, leading me to the conclusion it's OS X's fault.

Mini vMac
Emulates: Early all-in-one Macs
Tested: System 6.0.1 (Apple Computer, 1988)
FS: Control-F
Notes: Mini vMac uses a very odd proprietary method for setting all options (perhaps that it why it has so many ports). It has full-screen magnified (control-M) and a black border but proper resolution variant.
Status: Solved!

Catakig
Emulates: Apple II series (except Apple IIGS)
Tested: Apple //e ROM (Apple Computer, 1983)
Notes: Preferences section is extremely basic with only two options (color toggle and joystick control).

MacMAME
Emulates: Arcade ROMs
Tested: Paperboy (Atari Games, 1984)

Sweet16
Emulates: Apple IIGS
Tested: GS/OS 6.0.1 (Apple Computer, 1993)

BasiliskII
Emulates: Color 68k-based Macs
Tested: System 7.5.5 (Apple Computer, 1995)
Notes: To make it a good full screen without blurring or anything, you have to set it to the screen's native resolution. System 7.5.5 rendered in 1280 x 800 was a sweet, wonderful thing.
Status: Solved!

sixtyforce
Emulates: Nintendo 64
Tested: StarFox 64 (Nintendo, 1997)

KiGB
Emulates: Game Boy and Game Boy Color
Tested: Super Mario Land (Nintendo, 1989)
Notes: See Nestopia

Nestopia
Emulates: NES
Tested: Mega Man 2 (Capcom, 1989)
Notes: Changing the graphics filter to 4x helped, with only a single gray contrast pixel. Hardly noticable.

Games and ROMs © Capcom, Nintendo, Apple, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, Activision Blizzard, LucasArts


Since then, I changed my N64 emulator, which I haven't yet tested in full screen (prognosis looks good, though), and downloaded the newly updated Boxer, which now offers "the sharpest pixels in the West."

The party had hardly begun, though when I tried to plug in a Logitech f310 controller, which to my dismay, didn't work. Some kludgy (and non-free) programs like USB Overdrive do kinda work. Maybe I'll fiddle with it, but it's bad form to "pay someone just to make something go away"--USB Overdrive harasses me every time I start up. Considering the author made the great SimpleText Color Menu back in the 1990s, which adds a boatload of features to good ol' SimpleText, for free, I'm a little mad that he'd add in a really harassing "feature" so that you'd pay. It almost wants me to make me not pay for it and use a serial finder to get rid of it. Seriously.

Now, in Windows, I tried three emulators: Project64 (for Nintendo 64), KiGB (for Game Boy), and Snes9x. I downloaded the Xbox 360 Controllers for Windows to make the Logitech work (it does resemble a 360 controller), but downloading homemade drivers for Mac doesn't work, and the author has gone AWOL. Rats.

Project64 worked alright, but the sound pops.
KiGB in full screen for Windows is not good at all, it tries to stretch to the screen size, and it's really washed out. To make matters worst, I can't transfer the save files from the port of KiGB (the Mac version, which is better), to the Windows version. I tried emailing Richard Bannister, creator of KiGB in regards to this problem.

"The .sav files are compressed on the Mac using gzip.
Decompress them with your favourite tool and you should have more luck."

Well, that being said, I couldn't decompress them, at least the straight .sav files, unless there's another way...

Snes9x, I downloaded elsewhere and didn't find the current official site until today. That being said, I'll try again soon. Hopefully the version I download next time won't demand that I have some new version of DirectX just so it will run sound.

However, when I played Project64 a few days with a controller, three things really bothered me.

1) The sound popped at annoying intervals. Granted, it's not like the old sixtyforce on the OS 9 iMac that had a note every few seconds (with major slowdown, at that), but it was still irritating.
2) The screen stretched, I wasn't given an option for 3:4 (the native resolution)
3) Finally, when assigning buttons, I wasn't given an option for the full 3D joystick, only assigning "Joystick Up" to be "left" or whatever. This made movement stiffer, and especially showed up when you grab the bad guys in Super Mario 64 (even such as the first boss) to throw them, movement went in very jagged up-right-down-left movements instead of the original smooth approach.

The first, second, and maybe the third problem could be solved by going to Mupen64 (like I have on the Mac side).

Perhaps this Spring Break, I'll try to get the Wii remote working with the Classic Controller on Bluetooth, and my brother is coming, so maybe we can try that. Perhaps I can also try to get the joystick working on the Apple IIGS emulator, which says it has joystick control, but I haven't been able to work it. This is especially evident on Three Stooges, which is designed for joystick use. The keyboard use utilizes the keypad, but I don't have the keypad because I use a laptop.