The code has plenty of comments, and there are some older blog posts from air and cotton which give overview of some subjects. Nothing major has changed at the engine itself since the last of these blog posts were written, because honestly, with almost 100% games fully playable in software mode - there are not many things to do other than more fine tuning.
GSdx is another issue - it's perfect or near perfect in software mode and runs fast enough on many modern systems, but has some issues in hardware/"upscaling" modes. It was mostly written and updated by one guy (gabest) and might hard to get into. That being said, Gregory has been making useful efforts to add linux and OpenGL support, so he's probably the most knowledgeable about GSdx right now, other than gabest. That being said, nothing prevents anyone from starting their own GS plugin which would end up better than GSdx.
However, any way you look at it, PCSX2 and GSdx are complex projects which emulates a complex system, and so it's a complex piece of code. While even more docs might make it slightly easier for newcomers, it's still a task which requires a lot of patience, time, and skill. There are no shortcuts.
Also, I don't think any of the devs would not or did not share info which they have if they were asked for help or if they noticed they could help someone new.
The main issue is lack of developers time to put into the project. Whoever else who wants and can put the time and effort, be it in analysis and documentation, or whatever tasks, it's welcome, and always has been.
(01-30-2015, 05:01 PM)avih Wrote: [ -> ]The code has plenty of comments, and there are some older blog posts from air and cotton which give overview of some subjects. Nothing major has changed at the engine itself since the last of these blog posts were written, because honestly, with almost 100% games fully playable in software mode - there are not many things to do other than more fine tuning.
GSdx is another issue - it's perfect or near perfect in software mode and runs fast enough on many modern systems, but has some issues in hardware/"upscaling" modes. It was mostly written and updated by one guy (gabest) and might hard to get into. That being said, Gregory has been making useful efforts to add linux and OpenGL support, so he's probably the most knowledgeable about GSdx right now, other than gabest. That being said, nothing prevents anyone from starting their own GS plugin which would end up better than GSdx.
However, any way you look at it, PCSX2 and GSdx are complex projects which emulates a complex system, and so it's a complex piece of code. While even more docs might make it slightly easier for newcomers, it's still a task which requires a lot of patience, time, and skill. There are no shortcuts.
Also, I don't think any of the devs would not or did not share info which they have if they were asked for help or if they noticed they could help someone new.
The main issue is lack of developers time to put into the project. Whoever else who wants and can put the time and effort, be it in analysis and documentation, or whatever tasks, it's welcome, and always has been.
You can not honestly say that GSDX is perfect in sotfware. There are also improvements that could be made to the VU recompilers. PCSx2 isn't near 100% compatibility
(01-30-2015, 05:01 PM)avih Wrote: [ -> ]The code has plenty of comments, and there are some older blog posts from air and cotton which give overview of some subjects. Nothing major has changed at the engine itself since the last of these blog posts were written, because honestly, with almost 100% games fully playable in software mode - there are not many things to do other than more fine tuning.
GSdx is another issue - it's perfect or near perfect in software mode and runs fast enough on many modern systems, but has some issues in hardware/"upscaling" modes. It was mostly written and updated by one guy (gabest) and might hard to get into. That being said, Gregory has been making useful efforts to add linux and OpenGL support, so he's probably the most knowledgeable about GSdx right now, other than gabest. That being said, nothing prevents anyone from starting their own GS plugin which would end up better than GSdx.
However, any way you look at it, PCSX2 and GSdx are complex projects which emulates a complex system, and so it's a complex piece of code. While even more docs might make it slightly easier for newcomers, it's still a task which requires a lot of patience, time, and skill. There are no shortcuts.
Also, I don't think any of the devs would not or did not share info which they have if they were asked for help or if they noticed they could help someone new.
The main issue is lack of developers time to put into the project. Whoever else who wants and can put the time and effort, be it in analysis and documentation, or whatever tasks, it's welcome, and always has been.
You can not honestly say that GSDX is perfect in sotfware. There are also improvements that could be made to the VU recompilers. PCSx2 isn't near 100% compatibility
(01-30-2015, 05:12 PM)Nobbs66 Wrote: [ -> ]You can not honestly say that GSDX is perfect in sotfware. There are also improvements that could be made to the VU recompilers. PCSx2 isn't near 100% compatibility
There are always bugs and improvements which could be made to almost any system.
You just need time, people and knowledge to do that, and we don't seem to have that.
As far as GSdx in software mode, it's _VERY_ compatible. I won't use the work perfect or almost perfect if you don't like it, but it _IS_ very compatible.
(01-30-2015, 05:12 PM)Nobbs66 Wrote: [ -> ]You can not honestly say that GSDX is perfect in sotfware. There are also improvements that could be made to the VU recompilers. PCSx2 isn't near 100% compatibility
He did mention
almost 100% game. Rather than that, I think Gregory can provide some idea about articles in gsdx, he was the last one who authorised the gsdx plugin in github. I think its great if we make more articles about pcsx2. Will any valid articles from any member be acceptable to post on the website?
(01-30-2015, 05:12 PM)Nobbs66 Wrote: [ -> ]You can not honestly say that GSDX is perfect in sotfware. There are also improvements that could be made to the VU recompilers. PCSx2 isn't near 100% compatibility
How do you know that? Do you know any games that don't work with GSdx software mode and the problem is the GSdx software mode? Games that don't work because of the issues of other components don't count.
I don't think it's perfect either but perfect and 100% compatibility/playable are not the same. According to the website, 94.27% of the games are playable.
(01-30-2015, 05:40 PM)Nobbs66 Wrote: [ -> ]Jak shadow rendering.
Thanks for the information.
I think a distinction between compatibility and accuracy generally has to be made. GSDX is very compatible in that it will run the vast majority of games and you'll be able to get through most of them. But its problems lie mainly in accuracy, which leads to some disturbing graphical bugs in some games. Many are fixed by software mode but some still are not like the problem mentioned by Nobbs66. Another I recall is one I noticed in Xenosaga with a couple blacked out cutscenes that also isn't fixed by software mode:
https://github.com/PCSX2/pcsx2/issues/83
I've also found 2 separate issues with software mode.
This one (
https://github.com/PCSX2/pcsx2/issues/287)
and a cut-scene rendering issue with G-surfers (which is actually fixed by ZeroGS). There are also two additional Software mode tagged issues on github.
It is
very compatible, but some issues still fall though the cracks
(01-30-2015, 04:32 PM)neobrain Wrote: [ -> ]To be honest my main impression comes from the two(-ish) IRC channels and GitHub, since I don't really check these forums more than a few times per year.
The #pcsx2 channel is pretty much dead, and #pcsx2dev is dead unless there is active discussion and work happening.
On the forums we usually get around 15 new support threads a day, plus countless, countless threads and post in Off topic.