Kronos very poor compatibility and peformance

Libretro Cores
#21

Ah, well that certainly explains why I’ve never encountered a core that needs its own system folder because I don’t emulate Neo Geo, Gamecube/Wii, or Dreamcast and I use the stand alone MAME emulator. I noticed that Mupen64Plus creates it’s own folder in the system folder but I was never sure why. From now on I will be sure to keep my core info files up to date.

In other news I did try another ISO for Sega Rally which is a Darkwater rip (DW0658) NTSC-U and it still locked at the copyright logo. Interestingly enough the NTSC-J Sega Rally Plus does boot and plays without a hitch…until it locks up lol. The music sometimes goes crazy and skips all around but that could also be a bad rip. Looks great though at 2X and 4X.

#22

will it be possible to add chd support in the future?

#23

While i don’t like this stuff for many reasons :

  • you need to convert your isos
  • you need to convert your iso again when version changes
  • it will cause issues in the long run with emulators like reicast if we want to support mame roms (if you load chd, is it a dc iso converted or a mame rom ?)
  • bounties for this stuff instead of bounties for supporting reference iso set ? i think it is a bad call

I don’t mind if someone want to implement it, kronos already supports direct loading of zipped reference iso set anyway (redump, probably tosec too).

1 Like
#24

This isn’t real, if you want to keep the older version of chd, you can, and they work.

The chd format only is for isos and hdd’s in mame, why cause an issue?

Because the 75% users of RetroArch we have all the collection in chd, it saves a lot of space to the collection.

Take it a consideration, it think it’s not bad to have the two options. I have to redownload some isos to test your core.

I have used the two standalone yabause forks, and it really gives much more speed to a lower devices like GPDWin the dynarec from Yaba Sansiro.

#25

Except you lost half of the audio quality in the process

Detection of system (naomi or dreamcast) is extension based, if we wanted to load a naomi chd “rom”, reicast would think it is a dreamcast iso even if we had mame roms loading mecanism => crash

Totally false :

  • most user don’t use chd because they don’t want to bother converting or reading documentation about conversion, you are perhaps like 10% ? And i think i’m generous. The only reason i ever converted an iso to chd is because your chd stuff broke gdi loading in reicast at some point, which is seriously awful and pissed me off.
  • you won’t save space over zipped isos from a reference set (if chd is any better than zip in terms of compression, which i seriously doubt, it must be marginal and at the cost of not lossless compression), zipped reference set should always be the prefered format as they don’t need conversion, bounty’s money should have been spent in the support for it instead of chd

Again, i don’t mind if someone implement it, don’t expect it will be me though. Of course, don’t break vanilla iso loading like you did in reicast, that’s not called having the 2 options.

Thanks for the information, however i don’t have a test platform for this, so it will be hard to implement it myself.

#26

Let me state for the record that I don’t emulate games with optical media much, and when I do I use ISOs that are normally stored inside zip files, like BarbuDreadMon. I don’t personally have a care whether Kronos supports CHD :slight_smile:

However my sense is that CHD is becoming a standard outside of MAME. It’s spreading from emulator to emulator, partly because it is now lossless (I think!) and because it does compress to be meaningfully smaller than ISOs. I have seen some comparisons posted here in the forums and elsewhere on the web.

It wasn’t too long ago when there lossy ISOs were circulating too, right? It was referred to as ISO+MP3 or something like that? It’s thankfully hard to find anyone advocating for lossy formats now.

Maybe if folks want to make a convincing argument to support CHD, they should make arguments with evidence about file size and other benefits. @Deu do you have a link to compression rate comparisons, etc? Is there any other technical reason why CHDs are good for this application?

edit: I can’t help myself, now it’s annoying me that I can’t find those previous libretro threads about CHD compression. I still can’t! Here’s where I looked so far:

1 Like
#27

In a not-so-distant future, a cd image in chd will be as lightweight and easy to manipulate as let’s say a 16bit zipped rom is today. It definitely is a brilliant format and a great standard for the archival of entire libraries, but I don’t think that chd is best for day to day use, not yet at least. Regular isos are simply easier to access (and patch if needed) and more compatible.

1 Like
#28

Today compression in chd is completely lossless, another thing is the ignorance that is taken by the format, which is why I will not enter into discussion with people who do not know what they are talking about.

1 Like
#29

I understand not wanting to engage empty debates, but just because BarbuDreadmon is an emulator coder doesn’t mean that they’re obligated to be up to date with all file formats out in circulation.

A little more information and the willingness to assume good intent would make this conversationa lot more pleasant and productive IMO. I agree with you that the CHD format has a lot to offer but I gotta say you do come across as impolite.

3 Likes
#30

Don’t misunderstand, i’m not against it, i just explained what i don’t like about it.

1 Like
#31

Like this?

Screenshot_20181030_174107
Screenshot_20181030_174107.png852×507 57.6 KB

1 Like
#32

Is it lossless chd v5 ? Afaik v4 wasn’t lossless

#33

yes it’s s V5 chd file

#34

I confirm this issue on Sega Rally Championship (USA). Afaik, that’s the only version of the game having this issue, so until it’s fixed, i recommend using another region, or using Sega Rally Championship Plus (USA works for this one).

#35

Indeed, the Plus version of Sega Rally Works great. Another little bug I encountered, Fantasy Zone runs without sound.

#36

Pretty odd, but the latest Kronos, at least in standalone, the Kronos cached interpreter is slower, to where it performs the same as the actual interpreter. 1.5.0 has some bugs.

Kronos & Beetle: Sega Saturn Saves
#37

I’d like to give it try, Bettle Saturn saves files in .bkr and .bcr, the first for internal memory (32 KB), the latter the external memory cart (512 KB), Kronos creates a .srm file (64 KB), is there a way to make a Bettle Saturn save file be converted so Kronos can read it?

1 Like
#38

I need to do this as well. SS Backup RAM Parser can read all saves, including Kronos’, but I don’t know how to get compatible srms out of it.

I was able to convert my old SSF saves for Mednafen, but doing it for Kronos is not so easy.

#39

I disabled the external memory cart stuff because i wanted to force the 4MB Extended RAM cartridge for ease of use (~40 games need this stuff, see https://segaretro.org/Extended_RAM_Cartridge). However, the internal memory should be 32kb indeed, i’ll look at this stuff.

3 Likes
Kronos & Beetle: Sega Saturn Saves
#40

Internal memory + 4mb ram cart sounds like a great idea. I tried opening a Kronos srm with notepad to see if I could find any clues, and this is what I got (I will post only a few lines)

srm1
srm1.JPG1358×333 161 KB

Notice the ÿ characters, which probably shouldn’t be there. Removing them results in this, which makes more sense and actually makes the file 32kb in size. Which apparently makes sense too.

srm2
srm2.JPG1353×309 113 KB

I hope this helps.

Kronos & Beetle: Sega Saturn Saves