nesdev.com

So I noticed a change has been made to the savestate file type. Changing the filetype from .pXX to .pns (or manually loading them after selecting "show-all") works, but what do I do about previously having .p01-.p09 vs now where it seems like one .pns file contains all the slots?

This emulator is fantastic, although I can only report one oddity and that may be in the sound emulation (although I lack the real hardware on me t the moment to test if this is true.) It happens (most prominently) in Castlevania 3 and Akumajou Densetsu. The drums (I believe the Noise channel, as they're called in the emulator) don't sound....I guess proper is the word. This is the only issue with puNES that I can report. If this gets fixed at any point in time it will be literally perfect.

It's probably the same problem I reported a few years ago: viewtopic.php?p=100793#p100793

_________________
Download STREEMERZ for NES from fauxgame.com! — Some other stuff I've done: fo.aspekt.fi

Speaking of, well, 'problems' reported a long time ago: Perhaps you, FHorse, might still be interested in a realistic sprite delimiter enhancement option that's not as potentially destructive concerning accuracy?

Other than that, I can only second the "literally perfect" comment. Thank you for your hard work! I'm enjoying the emulator immensely.

I checked CV3's music against Nestopia's and the percussion did seem a bit less punchy. The noise and DPCM channels were playing, just quieter. I think lowering the volume of the square waves a little may have compensated. Both emulators display the incorrect behavior of the whole scanline flickering between the status area and the play area on vertically scrolling screens. Nintendulator, nemulator and real hardware only show the scanline flicker on the left side of the screen.

_________________
Nerdly Pleasures - My Vintage Video Game & Computing Blog

Hi, I really like puNES, especially its sound emulation and display filters. I would like to report some odd behavior with the APU channel volumes. If I turn down the "master" control close to the bottom, the audio starts exhibiting "pumping" as if heavy dynamic range compression were being applied - is this intentional?

Also, the APU controls appear to be in linear space, which is inconvenient UX as the perceptible differences for volume are non-linear. Any of (slider percentage^2), a dB -> percentage power (1 - 10 ^ (dB/10)) or dB -> percentage voltage (1 - 10 ^ (dB/20)) would work better.

I can confirm the audio - specifically, the percussion - doesn't sound quite right. I used Contra as my testbed, as that's a game that I'm very familiar with, listened on my real NES, and even compared it against a couple other emulators I use; melodically, the audio seems to be there; percussion-wise, it should sound more like someone actually hitting a drum - I guess a bit more "pointy" (if that makes sense) and less "flat," like it sounds now, especially on the Noise channel; meanwhile the DMC channel sounds a wee bit too "muddy," I guess is the right word for it, though it seems less affected than the Noise channel. I wish I had better words to describe it, but I know for sure that what I'm hearing isn't _quite_ right. Keep trying, and you're bound to get it spot-on.

Also, sorry to say, but I'm having some significant audio lag, regardless of the settings I use. It's very noticeable - several miliseconds at least. I'm running Manjaro Linux, a derivative of Arch. At first I thought it may have been input lag, but after thorough testing with Contra, as I am acutely familiar with the timing nuances in that game, I can confirm that input is not the issue. I am running the ALSA backend, and I do not experience audio lag with other emulators (I used to when I had JACK enabled, but not since I removed it a while ago).

Other than that, man....this emulator is an impressive piece of work. Keep it up.

A nitpick for the mapper 31 implementation:

At power-on the $F000 bank should be set to the high bank, but at reset it should not be changed.

I made some test ROMs. Look at "STARTUP MODE" in the test display. It should correctly say "POWER-ON" or "RESET" depending on how the ROM is started.
http://rainwarrior.ca/projects/nes/31_test_16.nes
http://rainwarrior.ca/projects/nes/31_test_32.nes
http://rainwarrior.ca/projects/nes/31_test_64.nes
http://rainwarrior.ca/projects/nes/31_test_128.nes
http://rainwarrior.ca/projects/nes/31_test_256.nes
http://rainwarrior.ca/projects/nes/31_test_512.nes
http://rainwarrior.ca/projects/nes/31_test_1024.nes

Hi FHorse, great emu, I would like to ask if you can implement in PuNES a ROM bookmark feature like in Spectaculator. It would be great if I could bookmark any ROM that I find interesting to play later, and not have the necessity to remember its ROM path or No-Intro name.

I discovered a bug in Nestopia's and puNES's implementation of VRC2a = mapper 22.

Both Nestopia and puNES implement¹ the CHR banking registers as:
but the hardware (and Nintendulator and FCEU(X)) does this:

This bug was masked because both m22 games use their CHR banking with something equivalent to
causing 'D' to be written to both locations.

Attachment includes a validation ROM for CHR banking: it uses cc65 and knes, and I was too lazy for a Makefile so there's just a script that runs cl65 three times instead. The source even includes a (commented out) "officially wrong" implementation that produces the desired results in Nestopia/puNES but the wrong results in FCEU/Nintendulator. In the center of the screen, it should appear to count from 0 to 127, without skipping any, and the color emphasis bits should change twice as fast (indicating that the LSB is ignored).
¹ I think I can blame Nestopia's original author for being too clever here.

Both puNES and FCEUX have similar bug. APU volume sliders works incorrect.
This error doesn't occur when vol=100%. But if you try to reduce volume, then:
1) On squares/noise slider work like threshhold filter, causing cut-off when channel volume goes to fade-out (lower slider volume = stronger cut-off)
2) On triangle slider work like distortion, causing distort triangle timbre.

Here is test ROM i've made for show this bug.

Does this happen on multiple computers or only one? Does it happen only with your set of speakers or headphones or also with others? Because I'm guessing it's likely that there's a clipping problem after the emulator in your computer's audio path.

It happen on multiple machines / operating systems (Win7/WinXP/LinuxMint) / headphone and speaker sets.
FHorse can confirm that this bug was real. He fixed it just now.

Also, i tried Nestopia and BizHawk, it doesn't have this bug.

Is this statement entirely accurate? In this video taken from the real NES pixels on the right half of the scanline seem to flicker for about a second at 1:15:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQshjMgwBEY

Changelog:
0.95
- The resampler reviewed and optimized. Now the sound quality is dramatically better and the audio output more accurate and correct.
- Added a russian translation (many thx to EXL and Eugene.S).
- Added an option ho hide the mouse cursor.
- Added a new mouse cursor when using the Zapper.
- Fixed APU volume sliders that did not work properly.
- Correct identification of submapper for MMC1 (http://forums.nesdev.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=9350&start=90#p153298) and for the mapper 34 (http://forums.nesdev.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=9350&start=90#p153334).
- Fixed a bug in the CHR banking registers of mapper VRC2A (http://forums.nesdev.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=6928&start=495#p153176).
- Tons of others bugfixes.