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    Posted on 19-03-09, 08:38
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    I'm proud of the unofficial higan git repo; I like that there's a publically-accessible, easily searchable and reasonably reliable record of higan's development. However, I only started working on it after I'd been following the project (then known as bsnes) for some time, and bsnes had been under development for quite a while before that, so the oldest and juiciest parts of the story were lost.

    Well, almost lost. Long before I showed up, a person named tukuyomi had been preserving what they could of the SNES emulation scene - releases, changelogs, test ROMs and everything else. They didn't get *everything* (who could?) but they got a *lot* of stuff, including bsnes releases from about v005 up to about v095, and usually with changelogs too. Unfortunately, this was all in separate tarballs with varying layouts, and a separate plain-text changelog file rather than anything machine-readable and searchable. But with a little scripting and elbow-grease, it should be possible to make a bsnes-history repository as easily-searchable as the main higan repo.

    I have not made a bsnes-history repo. It would take a lot of time and effort, and probably manual-checking of individual commits, which I just don't have the patience for right now.

    However, I have made a bsnes-history kit that does about 80% of the cleanup, and produces a bsnes-history repo that can be grafted into the higan repo.

    There's still a few things I'd like to do before calling it "complete" (listed in TODO.md) but the most difficult bits are done: collating the changelogs and archives into a single chronological stream, and writing it out in the format "git fast-import" expects.

    If anybody has any ideas for improvements, I'd love to hear about them. Also, if anybody has changelogs or archives that aren't present in this repo, I'd love to hear about that, too.

    The ending of the words is ALMSIVI.
    Posted on 19-03-09, 21:30
    Post: #15 of 60
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    That's pretty great! Do you plan on putting the output anywhere? Or have you already?
    Posted on 19-03-09, 22:13
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    Post: #151 of 443
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    Right now, it just builds a repo that contains all available history and nothing else. If I uploaded that directly, anybody stumbling over it might assume it was the actual historical bsnes archive, rather than a reconstruction. Once I figure out how to put a README on the front that explains what's going on, without getting the README mixed up with the actual historical data, then I'll put up a pre-built repo for people to poke at. I've got some ideas on how to do that, I just don't have the time to test them all out yet.

    The ending of the words is ALMSIVI.
    Posted on 19-03-09, 22:27
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    That's dedication. Hats off!
    Posted on 19-03-10, 03:41

    Post: #97 of 210
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    I would be interested to see if someone could find the first four, but something tells me no...

    PS Great work as usual!
    Posted on 19-03-10, 10:34 (revision 1)
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    Post: #152 of 443
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    UPDATE: My hunches paid off, and I figured out a reasonably simple way to have the README separate from the history. I also figured out a reasonably simple way to take the full reconstructed history, and graft just the tail end onto the unofficial higan repo to make a full record.

    The pre-generated bsnes-history repository is at https://gitlab.com/higan/bsnes-history/ but the master branch only contains the README. The actual history is in the history branch.

    The ending of the words is ALMSIVI.
    Posted on 19-03-10, 11:35
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    Posted by Kakashi
    I would be interested to see if someone could find the first four, but something tells me no...

    PS Great work as usual!

    Byuu might have them, and otherwise you might be able to find the LiveJournal page where he uploaded the first releases.

    There was a certain photograph about which you had a hallucination. You believed that you had actually held it in your hands. It was a photograph something like this.
    Posted on 19-03-10, 11:59
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    Post: #153 of 443
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    I did ask byuu, and apparently he lost everything up to v018 in a tragic hard-drive mishap.

    I confess I've never heard about byuu using LiveJournal before; I assumed the first bsnes releases were all on the ZSNES forums.

    The ending of the words is ALMSIVI.
    Posted on 19-03-10, 21:31 (revision 2)
    Stirrer of Shit
    Post: #77 of 717
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    Posted by Screwtape
    I did ask byuu, and apparently he lost everything up to v018 in a tragic hard-drive mishap.

    I confess I've never heard about byuu using LiveJournal before; I assumed the first bsnes releases were all on the ZSNES forums.

    His old website (byuu.cinnamonpirate.com) is archived back to 2005-07-17. In a post made 2005-06-12, he writes:

    As for the direction of this site in the future... given that I now have a domain, I want to present a more professional appearance. So for now, I've removed the rants section. Maybe I'll move that over to my LiveJournal page and get some use out of that. As for this page, I don't know if I want to keep all of my stuff on one website, or split it into various subsites. The layout works great for the pages I have now, but won't look so good with things I have planned: like the SNES reverse engineering documentation, my artwork page, etc.

    There are also references to older websites (setsuna.the2d.com and byuu.the2d.com). The former of these is archived, and at one point served "bsnes v0.0.004, with source code". That, however, has not been archived. The Internet Archive also bears witness of a file "bsnes_v002_ir7.rar", but it hasn't archived it.
    Due to the robots.txt file on byuu.org, IA's scrapes of it aren't public. However, they are still being taken and stored. If he were to contact them I am fairly certain they wouldn't mind opening their archives to him.
    EDIT:
    The websites were at one point in time hosted by Derrick, or at least he owned the domain. Maybe he would have it on an old hard drive lying around.
    https://web.archive.org/web/20041206083415/http://setsuna.the2d.com:80/bsnes.php is the page that links to the v002 file, so that's why it's indexed.

    There was a certain photograph about which you had a hallucination. You believed that you had actually held it in your hands. It was a photograph something like this.
    Posted on 19-03-11, 02:44
    Post: #13 of 36
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    Looks like the oldest I have is v033.

    I'll guess the really early versions could only very few, if any, games completely. Particularly games requiring APU emulation to not softlock.
    When it didn't sound like it was quite yet at the point of replacing even ZSNES. That day would come someday, but not then.
    Posted on 19-03-11, 12:08

    Post: #98 of 210
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    I just asked Derrick and he said he doesn't.
    Posted on 19-03-12, 09:42 (revision 2)
    Burned-out Genius Developer
    Post: #17 of 51
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    You're amazing. Always humbled by your support and interest. Thank you for doing this.

    > As for the direction of this site in the future... given that I now have a domain, I want to present a more professional appearance. So for now, I've removed the rants section.

    History sure repeats itself, doesn't it?

    > Maybe I'll move that over to my LiveJournal page and get some use out of that.

    I never posted anything at all to it.

    > Due to the robots.txt file on byuu.org, IA's scrapes of it aren't public.

    No, I specifically asked archive.org to exclude my domain and Twitter accounts. I also blackholed archive.org and archive.is from accessing my domain.

    > That day would come someday, but not then.

    My guess is we'll reach a 50/50 split when Windows drops 32-bit binary support, Dosbox is abandoned and stops working on the latest Windows, and so you have to run ZSNES inside Dosbox inside Virtualbox.

    > I just asked Derrick and he said he doesn't.

    No one back then anticipated it'd ever be useful to keep these things ...

    Even today, the interest still surprises me, honestly speaking ^^;
    Posted on 19-03-12, 09:49
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    Post: #314 of 1150
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    Posted by byuu

    > That day would come someday, but not then.

    My guess is we'll reach a 50/50 split when Windows drops 32-bit binary support, Dosbox is abandoned and stops working on the latest Windows, and so you have to run ZSNES inside Dosbox inside Virtualbox.

    I'm betting people will use MAME to run Windows 95 to run ZSNES.

    --- In UTF-16, where available. ---
    Posted on 19-03-12, 17:10
    Stirrer of Shit
    Post: #78 of 717
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    It appears tukiyomi got v002 as well, there's just a gap between it and v005. Was v003 ever released?
    In the makefile, what's "Febsnes" refer to? Can't find anything on Google about it.

    $(CC) /Febsnes.exe $(CFLAGS) $(OBJS) $(LIBS)


    >> Maybe I'll move that over to my LiveJournal page and get some use out of that.
    >I never posted anything at all to it.
    Did you upload it to any other websites than the2d and cinnamonpirate?

    >I specifically asked archive.org to exclude my domain and Twitter accounts. I also blackholed archive.org and archive.is from accessing my domain.
    Since how long? They might still have older revisions of byuu.org, unless they deleted them.

    By the way, have you considered redirecting board.byuu.org to the archives here?


    There was a certain photograph about which you had a hallucination. You believed that you had actually held it in your hands. It was a photograph something like this.
    Posted on 19-03-13, 00:35
    Post: #14 of 36
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    Posted by CaptainJistuce
    I'm betting people will use MAME to run Windows 95 to run ZSNES.

    How many coins do I need to insert for 1 credit to play Windows 95?
    Posted on 19-03-13, 03:04
    Custom title here

    Post: #316 of 1150
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    Posted by KingMike
    Posted by CaptainJistuce
    I'm betting people will use MAME to run Windows 95 to run ZSNES.

    How many coins do I need to insert for 1 credit to play Windows 95?
    Probably a dollar a credit, so 380 coins.

    --- In UTF-16, where available. ---
    Posted on 19-03-13, 05:05
    Post: #15 of 36
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    Not sure if there is a good place to say it, but reading a GameFAQs thread on SNES emulators (which is about as expected) someone called a certain emulator Hogan.
    That name is awesome! :D
    Posted on 19-03-13, 06:23
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    Post: #318 of 1150
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    Hulkamania.smc, baby!

    --- In UTF-16, where available. ---
    Posted on 19-03-13, 08:26 (revision 2)

    Post: #62 of 166
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    That's some pretty impressive work, Screwtape.

    Posted by KingMike
    Not sure if there is a good place to say it, but reading a GameFAQs thread on SNES emulators (which is about as expected) someone called a certain emulator Hogan.
    That name is awesome! :D


    Hulkamania is running wild, Brother.

    I think I saw it written like that once or twice. Well, the o is next to the i on a qwerty keyboard so it's bound to happen once in a while I guess.
    Posted on 19-03-15, 12:57
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    Post: #156 of 443
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    No project like this can ever be 100% complete, but I'd done a chunk of work, I'd made something presentable, and I was ready to set it aside and move on to something else.

    Then somebody pointed out that the two oldest release archives in the collection were RAR files, not ZIP, and so they weren't included.

    Then somebody else provided a copy of the changelog text for some of the archives that were missing it.

    So I figured I should modify my scripts to take those things into account, and it turned out to be quite difficult, more or less a rewrite. So I got stuck in.

    And while I was re-writing things, I decided to poke around the zboard, looking for any scraps of bsnes history, and discovered there was once a bsnes megathread, now deleted, but which is archived in the tukuyomi collection and I never noticed. And when I looked at it, I discovered a changelog for v045r09 that I'd been missing, and another set of changelogs for higan releases (which are already in the unofficial higan repo, but for completeness...). And then I was leafing through the old zboard threads and discovered apparently WIP releases used to be posted in the public forum (it was just the downloads that were private), and apparently some (most?) of those WIP announcements weren't recorded either.

    So I've got a few more direct, near-machine-readable sources of changelog text that should be easy enough to integrate, and then some messy human-readable HTML forum dumps that I'll have to read through, or figure out how to index or something.

    In the mean time, I've pushed a new version of bsnes-history-kit and of the example bsnes-history repo that includes the content of the RAR archives. It does mean a new dependency on the "unrar" tool (and also "unzip" and "tar", but those should be pretty widely available already), but I've removed the dependency on "awk", so that's a thing.

    The ending of the words is ALMSIVI.
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