Messages

Some features I'd like to have in an emulator in use for map-making are:


-The ability to directly copy to clipboard, whether the emulation screen, the tilemap viewer, sprite viewer, or tile viewer. You can even copy multiple images to clipboard and select them via WIN+V.

This will be available on the next release. You can use a hotkey to copy to clipboard the game screen and the viewers. You can even copy multiple images to clipboard and select them via WIN+V.

Good news. SuperSNES9x does have the option to display "accurate SNES colors". I haven't tested it, but it's there in Video -> Color Correction.

That's great. Tried it myself with the latest release. Getting my hopes higher for the emulator to be the next one I use as default. Here are additional features I'd like to see:

1. Support to combine multiple of the "tools" windows (e.g., the viewers, debugger, cheats, etc.) into a single window, offering tabs to switch between them. Having all these windows opened while I'm also alternating between other external windows becomes overwhelming.

2. Support to enable "widescreen" view. More emulators are supporting this including the latest Super ZSNES. Also, support to disable overscan (to allow 240 pixel height viewable instead of the typical 224 pixels in most games). Lastly, not sure if even possible, but the best would be support to have the emulation screen be the same size as the tilemap viewer and display as much as possible of bg + sprites.

Sorry for the late reply.

1) I suppose I could ask for this to be implemented, although the multiple windows option should stay too in case someone wants to look at all the viewers at the same time. Personally, I wouldn't want to have to be clicking tabs every time I want to check on one of the tools. I much prefer to have them in their individual windows.

2) Widescreen view is not something were you can just push a button and it's enabled. It requires someone to enable it on a per game basis as far as I know (but it is something that will eventually be implemented somehow). Snes9x/SuperSNES9x already displays 240pixel games in that height if they support it. But even if it didn't, there's an option in the video settings that does what you want already. I personally never use it, so if it's not working right, let me know.
Not sure what you mean with that last one. You want the emulation screen (meaning, the game screen?) to be as big as the titlemap viewer? You can modify the size of both the emulator screen and the viewer already.

Pretty much what everyone have already said, but I just wanted to add one feature that I REALLY want in an emulator for mapping and that's scripting. It's extremely useful for automating the screenshot+stitch process and saves a lot of time and work. Sadly, very few emulators have script-support. BizHawk is one of the few that does, which is why it's my goto emulator for mapping games. Plus it has many other excellent features/tools.
https://tasvideos.org/Bizhawk/LuaFunctions

Some other emulators with scripting that I know of is FCEUX, Lsnes and Snes9X Rerecording (snes9x rr).

Scripting exposes an API to the emulator so you get great control of the emulated game. My scripts usually just use the memory read/write functions to change the camera position in the emulated game and then the take screenshot function.

Something BizHawk lacks in its scripting and I would like to see is an in memory drawing canvas that you can blit copy a rectangular part of the current screen to. The canvas could then be used to stitch together the map into and then saved to file. Currently I have to call an external tool that takes a txt-file with blit commands from the BizHawk script that stitches together all taken screenshot files. It works, but it would be nicer if this could be done entirely inside the script.

BizHawk has a canvas (LuaCanvas object), but it's a GUI desktop window and as far as I know it's not possible to close or hide it which is annoying. Especially when stitching a really big map. Plus you cannot copy from the screen to the canvas, only from image files.

I'll add it to the requests, but it can be a bit complicated to grasp especially since none of us use those tools. Could you make a short video showing how it works and how you want that canvas thing to work? Although, it feels like this is getting a bit to close to image-editor territory.

Question, if SuperSNES9x adds LUA support, is there a script you can use or does the emu author have to write its own script?

There is a debugger in the works and once that's added, scripting can also be added.

I see you've written tools too. Can't you write your own tool and add it to SS9X once scripting is available? That way you can make the tool exactly how you (and other mappers) would like it.

6) I took a screenshot of SMW in the title screen using both BSNES, SNES9X  and SuperSNES9X and the colors looked exactly the same. Do you have any pics that show otherwise?

Regarding screenshots, you'd have to compare the RGB values of the same pixels, preferably as close to dark and white as possible, as the differences wouldn't really be obvious visually.
Apparently, BSNES also does gamma correction by default, so that might also affect the video output.

6) I took a screenshot of SMW in the title screen using both BSNES, SNES9X  and SuperSNES9X and the colors looked exactly the same. Do you have any pics that show otherwise?

I just did the same and compared specific pixel colors. The result I got is that they are the exact same, as you said. Perhaps my memory is failing me or perhaps there are special cases where inaccuracy may occur. Nevertheless, it doesn't seem to be a concern overall.

Good news. SuperSNES9x does have the option to display "accurate SNES colors". I haven't tested it, but it's there in Video -> Color Correction.

Other than that, there are other emulators that may need familiar features added, such as MelonDS, VisualBoyAdvance, to make mapping games quite easier. Can't forget them.

I know I asked an open ended question, but SuperSNES9X is the only emulator in which I talk to the author directly and I can push for features to be added.

1. All layers have priority in SNES games. You can think of priorities as "layers" themselves. Even though order layer is technically BG1 then BG2, with priorities, the order is actually BG1 priority 1, BG2 priority 1, BG1 priority 0, BG2 priority 0. Thus, if the game very effectively used priorities for the background, simply putting BG1 over BG2 may not have an accurate result. This seems especially true in later developed games. In BSNES, you can turn priorities on and off in the emulation screen but not in any of the viewers.

https://nesdoug.com/2020/05/22/layers-priority/
https://snes.nesdev.org/wiki/Backgrounds#Priority

3. Managing image files isn't always ideal for all situations. When you want to do something at the moment, quickly, and only once, copying to clipboard is the approach. Using print screen is one approach, but why not implement a feature that captures just exactly what you want? Having a hotkey (especially one you can manually set) would be even more useful than right clicking. BizHawk effectively does this.

4. Rather than capturing the full view, you may just want a specific portion of tiles or sprites, especially to patch any mistakes or grabbing specific sprites. This saves the effort to have to take extra steps in the paint software. BSNES sprite viewer already allows multiple objects to be selected (but not copied/saved).

6. Palettes for SNES emulation should be more aligned with BSNES. The original SNES9x appears to be inaccurate.

1-4) I'll keep this in mind.

6) I took a screenshot of SMW in the title screen using both BSNES, SNES9X  and SuperSNES9X and the colors looked exactly the same. Do you have any pics that show otherwise?

Some features I'd like to have in an emulator in use for map-making are:

-Not only having the ability to control displaying of individual layers in the tilemap viewer but also the ability to control the priorities.

-The ability to set watches to draw directly on the emulation screen.

-The ability to directly copy to clipboard, whether the emulation screen, the tilemap viewer, sprite viewer, or tile viewer.

-The ability to select a portion within any of the viewers for copying to clipboard or saving as image.

-The option to automatically save program settings to file after changing them. How many emulators I've experienced that don't do this but tend to crash every so often especially while modifying values.

-Not necessarily a "feature", but accurate palette colors to true hardware.

1) Explain, post an example

2) You can do that with supersnes9x

3) Copy to clipboard meaning ctrl+c? You can already right click and save the entire image, that's not better?

4) Sort of like how you can do in windows paint?

5) I'll add it to the request page.

6) ss9x only emulates SNES and GB. For snes it already emulates the real colors. Now, if you mean how colors look on a TV, then it does haven an option for NTSC colors or something along those lines. Never tried it though.

Emulator features that are helpful to video game mappers:

1. A hex editor/access to the game's memory. Good hex editors show you what's going on live and let you change/freeze values right there.

2. A pop out map viewer that can take screenshots. For SNES games, a toggle that controls which BG layers are used in the screenshot.

3. The ability to change a game's background color. (Some games have map tiles with pixels that are the same color as the background. Black on black is a problem when you need to rip background layers separately.)

4. The ability to screenshot Mode7 data as a 2D image. It is impossible to map some SNES games without this. ZSNES had a special tool called vSNES. It was a stand alone program that could load ZSNES savestates and display Mode7 data in a flat plane. It would let you screenshot this data all at once. As an example, the Human Cannonball map from American Gladiators is something I took with just ONE screenshot in vSNES.


Also, the Super FX chip...

Games like Stunt Race FX use this chip. It generates 3D objects and environments. As far as I know, no one has ever figured out a way to extract any maps from these games. It's not the same thing as Mode7 so vSNES can't do anything with it either.

Thanks for the reply.

1) A Mesen styled debugger is planned for SuperSNES9X, so that should cover that.

2) ss9x already has a titlemap viewer and you can right click to save the image. There's also hotkeys to disable layers (but that's in regular snes9x too).

3) That's already in snes9x as a hotkey.

4) That's doable in ss9x through the titlemap viewer. Verified the Human Cannonball event, and yes, you can save a picture of the entire image.

5) Will add it to the requests. Let see what the author can come up with. So basically you want a way to view polygonal characters and the 3d map as a flat image or as a 3d image?
I don't know if that's possible, but I'll add it anyway.

Like the title says, what features helpful to map-making you wish emulators would have?

I'm working with the author of SuperSNES9X (who has already added a ton of improvements over the regular snes9x) and I can push to get new stuff added to it.

So, what would your dream emulator be like for map-making? What helpful features would you like to have?

It could be tiny things obscure emulators already do, but more popular ones don't; or even features from external programs that could realistically be implemented in an emulator.

I think there's a tool that takes screenshots of games and auto stitches them together? It would be awesome if something like that could be implemented natively.

SuperSNES9X now has native Super Game Boy support.

Someone called shanytc has developed a fork of SNES9X called SuperSNES9X which has a lot of good features lacking from the main branch, features which can be helpful to map makers.

Some of these features, of course, are available on more modern emulators such as BSNES, Bizhawk, Mesen and the sort. But personally, I still prefer to use snes9x because it's really fast and has the least amount of annoyances when compared to other emulators.

Anyway, some of the new features it has is a BSNES-quality sprite/titlemap viewer with the option to export the graphics.

The cheat search and cheat editors have been updated too. You can now batch add addresses and edit them. There's right click implementation too and having the cheat editor open no longer pauses the game. It also now allows to have multiple bindings so you can assign both a controller and keyboard to the same input.

Every config file or save state from the regular snes9x will work with this branch and viceversa.

Here's the latest release:
https://github.com/shanytc/snes9x/releases/tag/1.63.10

I've amassed a ton of save states across the decades, but honestly a lot of them need specific emulator versions and in the case of Visual Boy Advance, you even need the specific bios version used or else the state won't load.

That's the name, yes.

Just wanted to let people know that the main snes9x branch has now implemented an option to have a colored background when disabling layers.

That version is still not public, but if you download any of the nightly versions, it will be there to use!

Here's a collection of Bitmap Font Writer fonts I've created over the years.

https://mega.nz/file/rFQVHKaZ#irlWoay0-lGX9FUSxCFkXHMj6jN4C0sr36ZjFWJYLaM

They do not have a complete character set because I just create the characters I'm going to use, but most have the basic alphabet at least.

So Samurai Shodown RPG was recently translated (after 15 years).

The author of the patch also extracted all of the game's maps, but he doesn't want to release them unmarked like that. He found someone willing to populate the maps with all the chests and important stuff, but the person went M.I.A.

So my request is, would anyone be willing to play through the game and populate the maps? I'm afraid that if no one does it, the maps will just go to waste on his hard drive.

Here's an online tool that lets you create any palette you want and save it in .pal format so you can use it with FCEUX:

http://drag.wootest.net/misc/palgen.html