Current Performance Of The Emulators Like?


Javacat

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I'm thinking of getting a new handheld for playing a few oldie games and I'm just wondering what the current state of the emulators are for the Dingoo. I've done a load of searching, but most of the information about the emulators is several months old. I know that the emulators that run under Dingux perform better than the ones included on the standard OS. I'd appreciate it if some peoples could answer these questions about the different emulators:

  1. Is the SNES emulator full speed now? From the info I've found it appears as though there used to be issues with it, but I can't work out if these problems are fixed now.
  2. Does the SNES emulator support transparencies? I'm guessing it should do, but I remember there always being performance issues with SNES emulators on the GP2X for transparencies.
  3. Does the SNES emulator support the Super-FX chip? It's not a major issue, but I'd love to be able to play Yoshi's Island on the Dingoo.
  4. Is the NES emulator full speed? I'm pretty sure it should be, but you never know!
  5. Does the NES version of Elite run on any of the NES emulators available on the Dingoo? I've only found a couple of NES emulators that support it on the PC, so it would be awesome if it worked on the Dingoo. If anyone can test it for me, you'll know whether it's working or not pretty much straight away as the start screen/menu is usually pretty screwed up if it doesn't work.
  6. Is the Mega Drive emulator full speed? From the info I've read, I think it might be.
  7. I'm not really that bothered about it, but what is the PSX emulator like for stuff like FF7/FF8?
  8. As above, I'm not too bothered, but can you play NeoGeo games ok on it?
  9. Has development for the Dingoo pretty much died now or is it still finding its feet? I'm sure I read a topic a few weeks ago that said that it had died.
  10. Is the GBA emulator full speed? I've got a DS with a Slot 2 card so not too bothered about this.

If there are any problems with any of my questions above for the Dingoo, are they resolved on the Wiz? I'm wanting to avoid getting the Wiz if possible for a few reasons (Cost, the fact it's made by GPH and my previous experience of them, GPH are apparently releasing a new console next year). I'm also starting to consider getting a Pandora when the next batch arrives, and it'd be nice to have something cheaper and more compact to go alongside it.


Edit: Gah.. messed up the topic :p If a mod sees this, can you remove Like from the topic?
Edit2: Added another question :p
 
1,2 &3

I can't really help you overly much on the snes emulator - To my shame I never owned a snes! (Was still playing with a sinclair spectrum at the time)

I can say that I have not had much luck getting Yoshi's island to run - but I'm more used to the GBA advance version anyway and this seems to run fine.

If I start talking about transparencies and the like I'm really going to start showing my ignorance of all things snes. Basically you have 2 choices for snes emulation. There is a built in one (which doesn't seem to run many of the games well that I wanted to play!) or the snes9x port that runs from Dingux. This is much better - I'm really happy with it.

4 As far as I am concerned NES emulation on this thing is near perfect. There are again a few choices for nes emulation and whatever game it is you should be able to get it running. I tend to use the built in emulator for this -I've found it fine for my needs. But there are also Dingux emulators that appear to run very well.

5. hmmm .. I don't actually have that rom to test. I should really get it as the spectrum version of this game (The one I grew up with is not really playable as it needs too many keys to play.)

6.If you try and run Megadrive games through the emulator that comes built in with the dingoo you are in for a bit of a shock. Its appalling! Luckily when you get dingux up and running you get picodrive - and that is a brilliant emulator. I find it to be full speed although I have not tried anything that required crazy add-ons (megaCD etc. so I'm not sure if they are even supported let alone if they run well.)

7. PSX emulation is a nice tech demo, it is really impressive. But don't buy this device as a portable playstation. I think you knew that already. I'm enjoying playing Diablo, but it is noticeably slow and there are glitches now and then...

8. Again being more of an 8 bit gamer I can't really answer this.

9. I've only had the dingoo a couple of weeks now and for the amount of money I paid for it I think it is a great device. There is a sense tho' that this is just a 'stop-gap' purchase. Emulators are already very mature for it and it's already surpassed the point that it took the GP32 years to get to. For me the lifespan of the dingoo all depends on the abilities and the price of the Pandora, and whatever gamepark holdings comes up with next.

If you head over to dingoonity.org there are still releases happening fairly often so i think there is more life left in this device yet. It's whether we have already seen the best the dingoo has to offer or if more performance can be squeezed out of it. I think the PSX emulator for example is unlikely to get much faster than it is. We may also see emulators being 'polished' rather than the actual emulation improving.

I'd like to see a BBC emulator or ports of some of Rlyeh's f-emulators but it may never happen if the coders move on to the pandora.

10. Ahh! I actually own a GBA :(and a DS with slot 2 support!). For most games the GBA emulator is very good indeed. I have copied a load of GBA games to it and with the exception of Earthworm Jim(unplayable!) you can't really tell that they are not running on a real GBA. The truth is tho' that I already have a GBA, GBASP and a DS with a 3-in-1 card so while this emulator is probably the best of the built in ones, it's the one I tend to use the least.
 
I'll try to fill in the spots the above poster could not...

1. I have not used the Dingux SNES9x very much yet, the native SNES emu seems to run fins on all the games I want, anyway, and, at present, that is 62 titles. Just that I know of, because they are on my Dingoo.

2&3...not too sure what "transparancies" are. And Yoshi's Island is not one of the games I currently have on my Dingoo.
I'm much more old-school than that.

4&5 Same answers.

6. I don't have any trouble with MegaDrive. Everything I play on it works great. Have not yet tried Picodrive, as I haven't had a need to, nothing has run poorly enough on native to make me bother with it yet.

7. No idea about PSX...never put it on my Dingoo. For one, the installation is far too complicated for my little brain to manage. For two, not enough games there hold my interest enough for me to muddle through installing it, unless someone holds my hand, and gives me step-bby-step exact installation instructions...so far no one has been willing to do so. So PSX can go to hell. Too hard for me.

8. Neo Geo works pretty good, as you can have Final Burn Alpha in Dingux. For the few games that do not seem to run or work well in FBA, the native side does offer support for CPS1 CPS2 and MVS games, although you DO have to "convert" CPS2 and MVS games...CPS1 you can just use the .zip's. Also, with FBA, sometimes, you can just use the .zip files, other times you have to convert them to a type of file known as an .fba file...and there's a relatively easy-to-use converter out there to help you make all that happen.
I'm more old-school than a lot of Neo-Geo, BUT, I have 31 titles working between FBA and CPS2, and MVA. all my CPS1's worked on FBA.
Additionally, there are some other games I have, currently on MAME4ALL, that I would rather play on FBA, but FBA currently does not support screen flipping...once it does, I'll be moving 1941, 1942, and 1943 over to FBA...they all currently work with FBA, but the screen orientation is wrong, and that drives me batshit, so, for now, I'm keeping those on MAME4ALL.

9. I don't see any evidence to support the notion that /dingoo development is dying...in fact, it looks more and more like it's ramping up...not dying! Besides, no one seems to know when...or even IF...the Pandora is ever going to release. On the other hand, they now make the Dingoo without the paw-print on it, so that rotten nasty resellers can slap a different name on it and amp up the price a bit.

10. I have no trouble with GBA/GB/GBC emulation, even using just the native Emulators...there currently isn't, AFAIK, any GBA emulator available for Dingux, but they do have GNUboy for GB/GBC on Dingux. I've never used it, though, because I've no problem with the native emulators.

I hope these answers are somewhat helpful to you. I know that I very much enjoy the Dingoo, I now own 4 of them.

Still planning on getting a Wiz or two at some point here...and, possibly a Pandora if it ever gets released. But I think that is as far as my gaming desires will go, as those should ultimately fill all my gaming needs for years to come.
 
Well, I've been playing around with the nes version of Elite using the native nes emulator.

It works very well. I've had less luck with the dingux emu's so far but I don't really have them set up properly as I just rarely use them.

And by the way Kalisiin. I am definitely no genius at dingux either. The only reason I have PSX4all set up and working is because I downloaded 'the local pack 0.33b'.

I can't even get the 'power off' command to work!
 
Thanks for all the info! It sounds as though everything I want runs pretty nicely on the Dingoo, and glad to hear that the NES emulator supports Elite! I'll have a look later for somewhere to order the Dingoo from, along with the mini/micro SD.
 
thingley said:
Well, I've been playing around with the nes version of Elite using the native nes emulator.

It works very well. I've had less luck with the dingux emu's so far but I don't really have them set up properly as I just rarely use them.

And by the way Kalisiin. I am definitely no genius at dingux either. The only reason I have PSX4all set up and working is because I downloaded 'the local pack 0.33b'.

I can't even get the 'power off' command to work!

So PSX4ALL is easy to set up from the local pack 0.33b is it?

I may be able to set it up from there, just pulling off PSX, and keeping all the rest of my stuff intact.
 
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1) Dingux SNES9X works great (a newly compiled version was released a couple of days ago). Dingoo native SNES is pretty good too.
2) I believe so. I haven't noticed any transparency issues yet, anyway.
3) No. And DSP chip games are very slow. However, Yoshi's Island runs great on the Dingoo GBA emulator (ripped-off from Exophase's gpSP).
4) Yep.
5) I got in-game and could fly around & shoot. There was a little flicker on the menu bar though.
6) On Dingoo native some games dip below full-speed. PicoDrive on Dingux however is super-fast.
7) No idea, never tried it. From videos it seems pretty slow.
8) Yep. The native NeoGeo emu is actually quite good! And Final Burn Alpha is even faster.
9) Seems to still be going. OpenBOR was released last week, for example.
10) For many games I've tried, seems pretty close to full speed (if not full - maybe some frame skip). Stuff like the Camelot sports games are very slow though.
 
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