New emulator
4 years ago
Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, France

I am unhappy with the emulators currently allowed in the rules. Every single one of them has lead me to errors, glitches, lags, delay etc... So I tested some not in the rules and found this one called Mesen: it is essentially FCEUX but without all the lag(game and inputs). Is it possible to use it for runs?

sweatypiranha likes this
LunaSpeed
She/Her, It/Its
4 years ago

hey! thats the emulator i use for smb!

Michigan, USA

@StudentGaming Unfortunately, I believe the only emulators currently allowed for runs are the ones listed in the rules. (somebody correct me if I'm wrong). The reason for this is that random emulators may run faster/slower or have other strange quirks that make it harder to verify runs. However alternative emulators are still useful for practice until you are able to resolve the issues you have with the other emulators or buy an acual NES/better computer :)

Edited by the author 4 years ago
Aljotzi, kcaj and 2 others like this
Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, France

@raymondamantius I understand but, i have tried every settings possible within both of these emulators and none of them fixed the problem. I do not think it is my computer specs(they are able to run r6s on ultra at 55 fps and ds3 at max at 60 fps). Buying an NES is off the charts since I live in Europe and buying an NTSC cartridge from here would cost me loads. Mesen has the same logo when you play or record movies(TASes) and having to reset to the main menu every time should be enough to make it "cheater proof" shouldn't it?

Colorado, USA

It's not a cheater issue, it's an accuracy issue.

For us to consider additional emulators, you will need to provide us with reputable data that shows it's sufficiently accurate.

Oklahoma, USA

Why haven't I heard of "Mesen" before? Is it new? the only emulator to literally pass everything in that list ( @i_o_l link ).

Especially if it's pc lag friendly, as OP stated.

Edit: Looks like version 0.1.0 was released in February 2016 - so it's 3.5 years old

Edit #2: After playing with it... I can confirm it's way less laggy than FCEUX or bizhawk ever were on my laptop.

Edit #3: Hey mods - what would you need to verify the emulator from your own standpoint? A video of standstill timeout from 1-1? lag test in a level like 6-4? Some sort of softlock? A full 32 level warpless run? or is the link @i_o_l provided sufficient. I'd be happy to provide some test footage if you'd like

Edited by the author 4 years ago
Sadler, FrameImperfect and 5 others like this
Sweden

I've used Mesen quite a lot, in my experience (primarily as a developer) it's a very accurate emulator with good performance. Of course I've primarily tested for emulation accuracy not so much speed accuracy.. I think doing speed and lag comparisons would be a good idea. Unfortunately it doesn't have a TAS editor last I checked, so it can be a bit of a pain to work with.

Also not sure how accurate tasvideos emulator test is, there are still inaccuracies in Mesen's emulation (but there are also inaccuracies in bizhawk and fceux, so.)

Germany

Yeah, no current emu is 100% accurate for all NES games, but I don't know if that actually matters for this game. FCEUX is rated as pretty inaccurate on Tasvideos, but movies from FCEUX synch just fine on the Neshawk core which is highly rated. A lot of tests cover edge cases or mappers, that don't apply to this game. (Also passing 100% of tests is not the same as being 100% accurate as not everything is tested.) (Also you see frome some of the failed tests that playing on PowerPak and Everdrive is also not 100% the same as playing from a cartridge.)

raymondamantius and Darpey like this
Oklahoma, USA

I wouldn't make that assumption - I'd use only the exact emulators that are whitelisted if you want to have a run verified.

"FCEUX, Nestopia, Bizhawk, OpenEMU"

Edited by the author 4 years ago
raymondamantius likes this
Colorado, USA

Re: Mesen. I'll discuss this with the other mods.

Re: RetroArch. It's not permitted. https://twitter.com/garadas21/status/1125436334133456896

raymondamantius likes this
Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, France

Are there any updates with Mesen as a speedrunning emulator?

Sadler and Darpey like this
Wichita, KS, USA

Have you tried going into Task manager and setting the priority to high for the emulator?

Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, France

I just tried it and it hasn't changed anything for me. Any of them.

Wichita, KS, USA

What computer do you have? There is probably something that can be figured out for you. I don't know if this is against the rules or not but in FCEUX go to the Configure tab, Video and under Windowed Settings turn the DirectDraw to hardware acceleration and no sync method. I just found that after playing with the settings for a bit and it seems like it made it run a lot smoother

Wichita, KS, USA

Nestopia should run just fine though. Do you have a lot of things running while trying to play?

Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, France

I don't have a lot of things running in the background, i have a built computer which should be powerful enough and I will try FCEUX with those settings

Edit: It seems to be working fine, I guess I'll just have to stick to it. I just really prefer Mesen, the way it looks and feels.

Edited by the author 4 years ago
Oklahoma, USA

Any word on mesen mods? Has it been discussed?

Edited by the author 4 years ago
Wichita, KS, USA

It has no input lag! That's actually crazy for an emulator. I wonder what it's framerate is though.

Wichita, KS, USA

Okay nevermind it might have a frame of input lag. It just seems so different than Nestopia.

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Requirements for High-Level Any% Runs

Any% (NTSC) runs below 4:57.000 must now fulfill additional requirements in order to be verified.

  • The run's full session must be included in the submission description.
  • For emulator runs below 4:57.000, some form of input display must be visible for the duration of the run. A hand-cam or input
3 months ago