PS1/2 Emulator WiiStation - Another Fork of WiiSXRX released

[ssjkakaroto]

Duckstation would we way too heavy. It it recommended to have at least a 1.5 GHz multi-core CPU. The Wii's is a paltry 729 MHz.

At least the Wii does have a dedicated SPU, whereas Android uses its ARM CPU(s) to do all the audio work as well. The N64 and 360 also lack a dedicated SPU.
I'm not sure about the newer consoles, of which modern PS and Xbox are basically x86/x64 computers.

That's also the reason that I find CHD support on the Wii too premature. LZMA decompression is really CPU and memory-heavy. The emulator is not really optimized right now to add such an overhead.

 

[Kirby6417]

That's also the reason that I find CHD support on the Wii too premature. LZMA decompression is really CPU and memory-heavy. The emulator is not really optimized right now to add such an overhead.

This sounds reasonable to me, but then people are reporting no performance drops when using CHD on Wii. You’d expect at least some performance impact, right?

 

[Disorarara]

This sounds reasonable to me, but then people are reporting no performance drops when using CHD on Wii. You’d expect at least some performance impact, right?

Yeah it works fine as of right now.

 

[ssjkakaroto]

This sounds reasonable to me, but then people are reporting no performance drops when using CHD on Wii. You’d expect at least some performance impact, right?

Sure, but devs won't be able to know if any performance issues are related to CHD decompression or the emulation itself if people won't compare both cases.
It would be interesting to have some sort of form to submit compatibility/performance reports with all relevant information and create a database similar to what has been done to Open PS2 Loader in the past.

 

[ber71]

In fact, in the (new) 3ds scene, chd is recommended over iso for psx emulation. Perhaps, the bottleneck might be the sdcard reading speed, instead of the cpu usage.

 

[Ouaz]

Hey, stupid question, can wiistation not load .bin files directly? It only sees .cue files. What if I have a .bin but no .cue?

I think it is to prevent the ISO list to be cluttered, especially with CDDA games having multiple (track).bin files. So only the cue files are listed, for faster navigation.

Sure, but devs won't be able to know if any performance issues are related to CHD decompression or the emulation itself if people won't compare both cases.

Yep, CHD implementation is randomly a hit or miss it seems.
Because many games seem to run perfectly at first, but a crash may happen anytime. So testing a CHD for a few minutes is not very relevant to state that it's OK.

Example:
Colin McRae Rally 1 PAL (v1.1 ; SLES-00477)
- CHD : crash during the second lesson of the Rally School (DSI problem)
- Cue/Bin: no crash.

 

[seam1]

I think it is to prevent the ISO list to be cluttered, especially with CDDA games having multiple (track).bin files. So only the cue files are listed, for faster navigation.


Yep, CHD implementation is randomly a hit or miss it seems.
Because many games seem to run perfectly at first, but a crash may happen anytime. So testing a CHD for a few minutes is not very relevant to state that it's OK.

Example:
Colin McRae Rally 1 PAL (v1.1 ; SLES-00477)
- CHD : crash during the second lesson of the Rally School (DSI problem)
- Cue/Bin: no crash.

That makes sense, but for me it sucks. I have like 100 games that I had been using with wiisx, which can load .bin files directly, and none of my games have .cue files. @Jokippo is this something that could be added? or maybe an option that can be toggled on or off?

Post automatically merged: Oct 7, 2023

Also, I tested the new wiisx 4.0 that just came out, all the issues I have with wiistation still exist with that as well, except the FMV's in Jumping Flash work properly. In wiistation theres garbled stuff at the bottom of the fmv's in that game.

 

[MeXen]

That makes sense, but for me it sucks. I have like 100 games that I had been using with wiisx, which can load .bin files directly, and none of my games have .cue files. @Jokippo is this something that could be added? or maybe an option that can be toggled on or off?

Post automatically merged: Oct 7, 2023

Also, I tested the new wiisx 4.0 that just came out, all the issues I have with wiistation still exist with that as well, except the FMV's in Jumping Flash work properly. In wiistation theres garbled stuff at the bottom of the fmv's in that game.

Question, does Tomba run faster on the latest WiiSX?

Post automatically merged: Oct 7, 2023

Nevermind, tested Tomba! in both latest Wiistation and WiiSX, WiiSX runs it but with frame skipping, and no i did not enabled it on the options, not speed slowdowns.

On Wiistation it runs a bit faster then last time, now it only seems to dip 2-3fps during 3d camera transitions, but i need to get back and play areas that slowed down before.

Play it using Bin/Cue format this time!

Also holy shit we reached 100 pages now! and 3 months since we reached the first anniversary of the release of WiiSXRX 2022, and pretty much over a year since we rebranded to Wiistation!, its been quite a journey, to the point PS1 is now my n1 system to emulate on Wii, before that it used to be GBA.

 

[Kirby6417]

I’m completely in love with the success of PS1 emulation on the Wii. When I started modding Wiis 3 years ago, it was nothing like this. That was about when WiiSXRX came out and it was blowing my mind, and things have just kept getting better. I just stayed up all night playing Who Wants to Be a Millionaire on WiiStation lol. Good times.

 

[retrodern]

I'm only using bin/cue (redump) files from a large collection on archive.org and I haven't had any problems

Mine were ripped roms, so I thought that was the problem, but I remember that they worked very well with WiiSXR so I did a test: I redownloaded the ripped roms and used them in bin/cue format, the games work great so the The blame can be attributed to the PBP format because I further compressed those games as well as having already been ripped, and this certainly created problems in correctly loading the game data (the same situation also occurred with Urban Chaos) The only thing I don't understand is why these problems occur only while you are on the game menu but once you enter a race the games work without problems?

 

[ssjkakaroto]

In fact, in the (new) 3ds scene, chd is recommended over iso for psx emulation. Perhaps, the bottleneck might be the sdcard reading speed, instead of the cpu usage.

Well, compressed files need to read less from the card for the same amount of data. Depending on the sdcard read speed, decompression could be faster than reading raw data. Still, I doubt this is the case for the 3DS or Wii when using LZMA.
You can force your CHDs to only use zlib and flac, which are much more resource-friendly than LZMA and may not affect performance at all.
I'm still hoping that LZ4 and/or ZST get added as compression options for CHDs, that would solve all performance issues the format has (at the cost of worse compression than LZMA).

 

[SaulFabre]

You can force your CHDs to only use zlib and flac, which are much more resource-friendly than LZMA and may not affect performance at all.

Interesting, but is there any way for tell CHDMAN for not use LZMA and only use ZLIB/FLAC for make CHDs?

EDIT: Nevermind, i figured it out:
chdman createcd -i input.cue -o output.chd --compression cdzl,cdfl

 

[GustavoReis]

Mine were ripped roms, so I thought that was the problem, but I remember that they worked very well with WiiSXR so I did a test: I redownloaded the ripped roms and used them in bin/cue format, the games work great so the The blame can be attributed to the PBP format because I further compressed those games as well as having already been ripped, and this certainly created problems in correctly loading the game data (the same situation also occurred with Urban Chaos) The only thing I don't understand is why these problems occur only while you are on the game menu but once you enter a race the games work without problems?

It's been a while since I played test drive, but the last times I played, it was working perfectly, without any problems, 99% of my games are bin/cue, but my test drivers are all img, even so I didn't have any problems .
@SaulFabre @Jokippo one question, would it be possible to add triple buffering to the WiiStation?

 

[SaulFabre]

It's been a while since I played test drive, but the last times I played, it was working perfectly, without any problems, 99% of my games are bin/cue, but my test drivers are all img, even so I didn't have any problems .
@SaulFabre @Jokippo one question, would it be possible to add triple buffering to the WiiStation?

It would be hard.
Yesterday i tried to implement triple buffering in WiiStation but the code of P.E.Op.S. Soft GPU in WiiStation isn't the same as used in latest WiiSX, as WiiSX uses upstream P.E.Op.S. plugin i think?

Maybe @Jokippo could adapt the triple buffering to WiiStation? Just asking.

 

[Disorarara]

It would be hard.
Yesterday i tried to implement triple buffering in WiiStation but the code of P.E.Op.S. Soft GPU in WiiStation isn't the same as used in latest WiiSX, as WiiSX uses upstream P.E.Op.S. plugin i think?

Maybe @Jokippo could adapt the triple buffering to WiiStation? Just asking.

What about backporting the unai GPU plugin? It seems to work pretty well, although there are still some bugs here and there. The performance gain seems to be good.

EDIT: WiiSX isn't using P.E.Op.S. anymore I think, it's using a new plugin I've never heard of called unai, might be why the code is too different,

Post automatically merged: Oct 7, 2023

Well, compressed files need to read less from the card for the same amount of data. Depending on the sdcard read speed, decompression could be faster than reading raw data. Still, I doubt this is the case for the 3DS or Wii when using LZMA.
You can force your CHDs to only use zlib and flac, which are much more resource-friendly than LZMA and may not affect performance at all.
I'm still hoping that LZ4 and/or ZST get added as compression options for CHDs, that would solve all performance issues the format has (at the cost of worse compression than LZMA).

But you're talking about things that aren't happening. There isn't performance issues with CHD on wiistation, the issue is with compatibility. There hasn't been any indication that the Wii is having performance issues at all with CHD in any emulator yet.

 

[SaulFabre]

What about backporting the unai GPU plugin? It seems to work pretty well, although there are still some bugs here and there. The performance gain seems to be good.

EDIT: WiiSX isn't using P.E.Op.S. anymore I think, it's using a new plugin I've never heard of called unai, might be why the code is too different,

Post automatically merged: Oct 7, 2023

But you're talking about things that aren't happening. There isn't performance issues with CHD on wiistation, the issue is with compatibility. There hasn't been any indication that the Wii is having performance issues at all with CHD in any emulator yet.

Yeah i know WiiSX is using UNAI GPU plugin right now, but i have seen that in latest artifact builds on GitHub they are still building the P.E.Op.S. GPU plugin version along with the UNAI one?

Also, UNAI still doesn't have the "game hacks" that P.E.Op.S. has, and these hacks (ex. Fake Busy states, Repeat Tex Triangles, etc.), are needed for make some games to run correctly (ex. Hot Wheels - Turbo Racing, Star Wars - Dark Forces, etc.)

Post automatically merged: Oct 7, 2023

PS: @xjsxjs197 looks like he's merging some more changes from PCSX-ReARMed...
CDRISO and CDROM!!!

Will try to compile a new build later.

Post automatically merged: Oct 7, 2023

I will leave a compiled build of the branch RearmCdromCdiso of WiiStation ( https://github.com/xjsxjs197/WiiSXRX_2022/tree/RearmCdromCdiso ), where here @xjsxjs197 updated the CDROM and CDRISO codes with the latest ones from PCSX-ReARMed.

Unfortunately this update didn't fix This is Football 2 (whcih i guess it's because of something else in the emulator, which i honestly don't know), but it should fix some other problematic games.

EDIT: Seems This is Football 2 doesn't even let start the game even in Interpreter?? Weird. :v
I think the PSX interpreter in WiiStation should also be updated... but we'll check.

Please test this, thanks

 

[GustavoReis]

Yeah i know WiiSX is using UNAI GPU plugin right now, but i have seen that in latest artifact builds on GitHub they are still building the P.E.Op.S. GPU plugin version along with the UNAI one?

Also, UNAI still doesn't have the "game hacks" that P.E.Op.S. has, and these hacks (ex. Fake Busy states, Repeat Tex Triangles, etc.), are needed for make some games to run correctly (ex. Hot Wheels - Turbo Racing, Star Wars - Dark Forces, etc.)

Post automatically merged: Oct 7, 2023

PS: @xjsxjs197 looks like he's merging some more changes from PCSX-ReARMed...
CDRISO and CDROM!!!

View attachment 397996

Will try to compile a new build later.

Post automatically merged: Oct 7, 2023

I will leave a compiled build of the branch RearmCdromCdiso of WiiStation ( https://github.com/xjsxjs197/WiiSXRX_2022/tree/RearmCdromCdiso ), where here @xjsxjs197 updated the CDROM and CDRISO codes with the latest ones from PCSX-ReARMed.

Unfortunately this update didn't fix This is Football 2 (whcih i guess it's because of something else in the emulator, which i honestly don't know), but it should fix some other problematic games.

EDIT: Seems This is Football 2 doesn't even let start the game even in Interpreter?? Weird. :v
I think the PSX interpreter in WiiStation should also be updated... but we'll check.

Please test this, thanks

Any news on compatibility? I haven't been able to test it yet

 

[MeXen]

Any news on compatibility? I haven't been able to test it yet

So far, Street Fighter EX Plus Alpha now runs almost at full speed without crashing, except for the ending text when you beat M.Bison in arcade mode (i played the Japanese version), in which it dips down to 45-47 fps, the rest of the game is solid 59fps.

Tomba doesn't slow down as much as before except during 3d stage camera transitions.

Spider-Man, now runs but you must NOT use dithering, otherwise it remains at 50-55fps, without it, it runs at full speed, but in game there's framerate dropouts and the FPS counter goes down a tiny bit but doesnt seem like slowdown, just framerate dropout, but i must confess this was a quick test boot.

Need to remember to update that damn list i made.

 

[Disorarara]

Also, UNAI still doesn't have the "game hacks" that P.E.Op.S. has, and these hacks (ex. Fake Busy states, Repeat Tex Triangles, etc.), are needed for make some games to run correctly (ex. Hot Wheels - Turbo Racing, Star Wars - Dark Forces, etc.)

Perhaps including both P.E.Op.S and Unai in the same emulator with a selectable option? Similar to how we can pick Dynarec and Lightrec.

 

[MeXen]

Nevermind, got a DSI crashing on Spiderman in the middle of the 2nd stage while i was changing the Input from standard to analogue.