Sega Saturn Core in Development

[Marcellus]

Is still needed latest Mister unstable, for working saves? I have a problem with auto save in Castlevania SotN.
Latest Saturn build.

[blueice80]

Hi everyone, I am new here, and while I've had my Mister for awhile now, I consider myself a noob and I do not know how to play around with scripts or edit Mister INI, etc.

I connect my Mister to a flat panel TV via HDMI.

I have tried several games on the Saturn core and have noticed that some games do not expand to fill up my entire screen, while others do. A rough estimate would be that such games take up just half of the screen real estate.

Decathlete (US) runs like this for me, while interestingly Saturn Bomberman (JP) only runs like this in Battle Mode.

I've had a similar issue with the PSX core, where many games run like this in menu screens, but during actual gameplay, the entire screen would be filled up.

Many thanks in advance to anyone who can advise me on what to do!

First you need to check if vscale_mode=0 is set the mister.ini, easiest way to do it is by using the ini_settings.sh script, just enter the menu for scripts in the OSD and select it. It is quite self explanatory. Just locate the vscale_mode line and if not set to 0, just click on it and change it to zero. You do not even need a keyboard for it. Once changed you select save and reboot.

Thank you so much! This worked great.

[Atohmdiy]

I follow the developpement of the Saturn core, and since the latest version audio start to be a lot worse than before. Games that were working perfectly in that regards, like duke nukem 3d, are now a complete noise garbage. I assume there is a regression somewhere in the audio side.

[FPGA64]

I follow the developpement of the Saturn core, and since the latest version audio start to be a lot worse than before. Games that were working perfectly in that regards, like duke nukem 3d, are now a complete noise garbage. I assume there is a regression somewhere in the audio side.

I have no such issues. The core is very memory dependent. If you are unlucky enough to have purchased a 4 chip ram solution then you will have a bad time

[Atohmdiy]

No it's my old dual chip ram i have since i build my mister, not sure of the version, 2.5 i assume. I never have any issue with it, whatever i am running, and audio was working fine in the previous version of the core. I assume i'll have to order a V3 stick...

[FPGA64]

I run a dual v2.9 and 2.5. The 2,9 posts at 150 in Mem test and the 2.5 at 143 and I have no sound issues

This core pushes memory hard much harder than any other core

[Captain FPGA]

From the games I tested only four dont work properly: Marvel SuperHeroes vs Street Fighter, X-Men vs Street Fighter, Shienryu and Shining the Holy Ark... maybe there some others too, but I think the compatibility is close to 95% working now.

Also had trouble with said games. I'm sure our great Srg will have the bugs ironed out at some point

[Bristles]

New Saturn core update working great with CHDs.
To those having issues, have you tried putting the CHDs in their own individual folders, of the same name as the CHD file ?

[rhester72]

@Bristles I ended up having to start over entirely - my older redump versions extracted to cue/bin just fine, but the CHDs don't work at all. Found another set on archive.org that seems to work fine. Can't explain it.

[Bristles]

Weird. I used the same set that was mentioned earlier on in this thread, and so far everything that I have tested has booted, and works great.
I am using just one 128Mb ram module v2.9, and a Sony PVM for display.

[Akuma]

Which ones? Most I have tested have audio issues with both single and dual. Mainly some crackling or missing sound effects, and volume level issues.

Daytona's BGM audio is very very low, so I can confirm the volume level behavior.

[rhester72]

All of Daytona's audio is very low compared to other games...and it's not a RAM issue.

[Akuma]

All of Daytona's audio is very low compared to other games...and it's not a RAM issue.

How does that compare to the original ?

[Retro-Nerd]

All issues with the current core are listed here. The audio volume issue in several games is known too.

https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/Saturn_MiSTer/issues

[rhester72]

Is there any way to enable SNAC in the core yet?

[Shogun]

Its great the image is displaying correctly on CRTs now with the latest update!

[Akuma]

If I load a couple of bioses (usually to find the correct one with testing) sometimes the display goes black, but sound seems to work. This resolves itself after a reboot.

[rhester72]

Anyone tried Photo CD?

I can get "Photo CD Operating System (Europe)" going (with its default photos), but if I swap the disc with any photo CD, the application seems to ignore the disc and never reads the photos.

[16Bittt]

Was any other core released to public in beta form?
There seem to be so many issues and problems with this core..

[dshadoff]

Every core that is made “official” needs to reach a certain maturity (based on discussion between the author and Sorg) before it is made official.

This does not mean that there would be no known bugs or that there will not be features added; merely that it is working for a lot of things.

Especially tertiary features such as PhotoCD or CD+G, one should basically expect those non-game features to be among the last things added to the cores.

In any case, this core is still actively being worked on (unlike many other official cores which are imperfect)… you should check on its progress from time to time. As one of the largest and most complex cores on the system, there are bound to be a lot of things to fix for a while. I’m sure that srg320 has a list of his own known issues, but I would assume - now that it has been placed into an official repository - that it should be OK to log issues. Just expect that they are more likely to be prioritized if there is more detail in the issue.

[mike911]

Was any other core released to public in beta form?
There seem to be so many issues and problems with this core..

Most issues are from users with incompatible sdram, as of now you really need a 128mb v2.9+ 2-chip to avoid issues, maybe that should be included in the core readme. Also very common is not having a bios or correct bios, which update all does not currently download for you. With this sorted, most games are playable, of my nearly 100 games library, I could only find two that wouldn´t start. So I think for a Beta is very impressive.

[rhester72]

Agreed...for my own purposes, the core is at daily-driver status, with really only lack of SNAC support being the only thing I have much to grumble over. Compatibility is extremely good just compared to the last public release.

[capitaineflam25]

The progress are impressive and the compatibility really good (if you have the good SDRAM references)

I'm hoping for lightgun and multitap suppport (i mean, not via SNAC)

[16Bittt]

Most issues are from users with incompatible sdram, as of now you really need a 128mb v2.9+ 2-chip to avoid issues, maybe that should be included in the core readme. Also very common is not having a bios or correct bios, which update all does not currently download for you. With this sorted, most games are playable, of my nearly 100 games library, I could only find two that wouldn´t start. So I think for a Beta is very impressive.

I built my Mister is 2019.it has 128mb RAM but I have no idea what version it is / 2 chip or not.how can I find out?

[rhester72]

@16Bittt Remove the RAM module and look at it. You can see the chip count and version on the module.

[dmckean]

I think you need at least version 2.5 of the 128mb RAM and preferably version 2.9.

2019 predates all those revisions of RAM.

[Malan]

I think you need at least version 2.5 of the 128mb RAM and preferably version 2.9.

2019 predates all those revisions of RAM.

Be aware that RAM v2.5 is still very glitchy at the moment.

[rhester72]

Be aware that RAM v2.5 is still very glitchy at the moment.

Was this confirmed? I'm not certain that's true.

[WrongWheelDrive]

Interesting issue I have run into. I was playing Policenauts and after getting to Disc 3, I saved my game as I usually do. I then powered the Mister OFF. Next time I tried to play I loaded up disc 3 assuming the save file would be there. The thing is, I can only See my Disc 3 save when loading disc 2. When I try to change to disc 3 it doesn't show my save and it doesn't just pick up the disc change, it actually reboots.

NOTE: I resolved by changing the save file name to match disc 3 in the saves folder. I can now load my game save from disc 3. So just a call out that there is definitely some type of issue with saves related to disc changing.

[roel27]

Be aware that RAM v2.5 is still very glitchy at the moment.

Was this confirmed? I'm not certain that's true.

In my case it was certainly, but this was a few weeks ago.