Ask other emulator groups to help out

[Nobbs66]

Ill start digging into pcsx2 one of these days. Ill need to work on my C skills, but I would love to help.

[ssakash]

I randomly change some values and check whether some changes take place in how gsdx works. (though, I have only managed to create glitches instead of solving them ). I think, I have to hone my abilities in c++ to start contributing pcsx2 better.

[dabore]

any help with c# and rendering to UI elements welcome. who needs two windows?!? gotta wrap a whole lotta mess into that couple buttons. never toded a good cool.

[Blyss Sarania]

C is a great language to work directly with the hardware.
It's very powerful and it doesn't hold your hand. If you want to write past an array's boundaries, go right ahead (but know the consequences ).
You'll get the fastest and most efficient programs with C.
It's entirely your responsibility to make your code safe though.
The entire Linux Kernel is C btw

I guess I've always been intimidated by it. I took a C course in college, and in the entire course, literally the most complicated thing we wrote was a console program to calculate the area of a triangle. That was our final -.- and so that class was no help.

However after trying to learn it lately, I've discovered it's actually remarkably similar to the dialect of BASIC I use(FreeBASIC). Not surprising, I guess, since all the "modern" features of FreeBASIC are based on C syntax. You can access outside array bounds in FB too and things like objects and pointers are almost identical between the languages.

The main thing is FB does sorta hold your hand - there are tons of keywords and constructs to make common task much easier. For instance the built in graphics functions.

But the main thing for me is having used the same or very similar language for 16 years. Working in another takes some getting used to. At the same time though, the fundamentals are still the same.

[willkuer]

I think you would learn C#, php or python within hours.... C on the other side is really some complex sh*t.

[JMC47]

Blyss: Thanks for the tip on Burnout 3! I didn't realize that! As with physics? Sometimes I clip through objects/walls/other vehicles and when I tried to reproduce it on my console, I couldn't at all. So I figured it's some rounding mode thing but I'm too lazy to figure out how or why/what settings are needed.

As for Tales of Symphonia, yeah, in older builds of Dolphin it had some issues. It's one of those games that got a lot of attention for the wrong reasons (as I've seen a few in PCSX2) One of the effects in the game is a very, very odd depth of field where it blurs things toward the outside of the screen. For several years, that was listed as bug until someone with component cables and a GameCube got a clear enough shot on console to disprove it. Once tev_fixes_new was merged and cleaned up our hardware renderers, pretty much all the visual bugs disappeared. I've played through the first 10 - 12 hours in a relatively (within about 6 months) new build without issues.

I have a local gameshop that carries Japanese imports, and they have the PS2 version of Tales of Symphonia, and I've been really, really tempted to get it and see if some of the odd visual choices they made were in the PS2 version. As with Capcom, the PS2 ports were often lazy and missing visual effects (Look at MegaMan X: Command Mission on GameCube vs PS2.)

Actually, I had a question regarding some of this. One of the things that I like being a tester in Dolphin is that there are pretty standard accuracy settings. Are there any plans to get rid of all the CPU rounding modes and whatnot? I feel like that's just working around tons of bad CPU bugs that really should be handled in a different manner.

[Blyss Sarania]

Are there any plans to get rid of all the CPU rounding modes and whatnot? I feel like that's just working around tons of bad CPU bugs that really should be handled in a different manner.

Not really any plans that I know of. It's possible, but the result would (likely) be an ultra slow software FPU. You can read here why we even have them: http://pcsx2.net/developer-blog/209-what...ed-it.html

Now, that was written a while ago. I don't know how feasible or not that software FPU is now, but it would likely still be quite slow. I could be wrong though.

For those who don't want to read the whole thing up there: Basically the PS2 handles floating points in a very different way than PC. You can have square roots of negative numbers, NaNs are valid numbers, infinity is representable, you can divide by 0 etc. Our Rounding/Clamping modes are a result of trying to emulate that on PC in a reasonably fast way. The only other way that I know of is a full software FPU.

[willkuer]

But I think this is the exact meaning of the 'Full' setting or?
Maybe one should set 'full' and 'extra + preserve sign' as default and the normal clamp modes as 'speedhacks'.
I think the interpreter can be skipped as well for release and devel builds.

But again.. why changing something that works?

[dabore]

I think you would learn C#, php or python within hours.... C on the other side is really some complex sh*t.

i wouldn't say that. it depends where one started. the object.function thingy is pretty good. the gui stuff looks rather easy to manage. but pcsx2 is native c code. for me it's that weird wrapping in strange dialect to get functions to call native code. translating pcsx2 is not really an easy option... atleast not for me.

[Blyss Sarania]

But I think this is the exact meaning of the 'Full' setting or?
Maybe one should set 'full' and 'extra + preserve sign' as default and the normal clamp modes as 'speedhacks'.
I think the interpreter can be skipped as well for release and devel builds.

But again.. why changing something that works?

The more you clamp, the slower it is. Also, even with the highest settings, it's not not the same way the PS2 handles it(which is again impossible without a complete software representation of the FPU) but it is close enough that 90% of games are happy.

I think that software FPU is a good idea once we have hardware that can do it at good speed.