VOGONS


Reply 20 of 52, by m1so

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swaaye wrote:

If it was easy to translate Xbox games, it wouldn't have been such a bitch to make it happen on XBox 360. The emulator there, years in the making by brilliant people with full hardware knowledge, still can only run a subset of games.

http://www.qbrundage.com/michaelb/pubs/essays/xbox360.html

Xbox 360 is weaker than new PCs today, and it is not in fact x86 based. It has a PowerPC processor.

Reply 22 of 52, by Dominus

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No, xbox 360 ppc is weak compared to todays PCs 😉

But seriously if you look at how much cpu power you need in dosbox to play games like blood, it is no wonder that xbox emulation is not progressing...

Windows 3.1x guide for DOSBox
60 seconds guide to DOSBox
DOSBox SVN snapshot for macOS (10.4-11.x ppc/intel 32/64bit) notarized for gatekeeper

Reply 23 of 52, by swaaye

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Yeah I get the feeling that 360's emulation of Xbox is an amazing feat of software engineering. Undoubtedly it is multithreaded so they can use more than one CPU core, since each Xenon core is rather wimpy on its own.

Though I have not personally tried a Xbox game on a 360. I don't know how well the games run. Some games like KOTOR and Morrowind ran rather poorly even on a real Xbox.

Reply 24 of 52, by mr_bigmouth_502

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Speaking from experience, the Xbox emulation present on the 360 SUCKS. 😜 The compatibility is poor, and some of the games that do work run really slow and/or choppy. Hell, Halo 1 in its cooperative mode even runs pathetically, and not only was that one of the games the emulation was supposed to be optimized for, but it was also a launch title on the original Xbox, so it shouldn't be that demanding. 😜 I should also point out though that I was playing this on a 720p TV, so that might have something to do with it.

Conversely, I played a splitscreen deathmatch on Halo 2 a loooong time ago when my cousins just got their 360 (this was before Halo 3 came out), and I actually remember it running just fine, though this was on a standard definition TV. As well, I recently tried Burnout 3 on my 360 with my 720p TV, and that ran well too, though it's not that surprising considering that it was a multiplatform title likely developed mainly with the PS2 in mind. 😜

Reply 25 of 52, by ElectricMonk

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long Story short, it's the NV2A (custom Geforce 3), and Soundstorm that are preventing this. nVidia and MS had bad blood over royalties, so the blame lies squarely in nVidia's court.

Honestly, best thing to do it get an good, original Xbox, mod chip it and add a HUGE HDD. Copy games from HDD to XBOXHDD. PLay.

Reply 26 of 52, by Mau1wurf1977

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At least XBox One and PS4 Emulation should be a bit easier 😀

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Reply 27 of 52, by ElectricMonk

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Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

At least XBox One and PS4 Emulation should be a bit easier 😀

Think it'll mosty likely require a Jaguar Chip/mobo, Blu-ray Drive, and TrueSound functionality? Or could some enterprising hacker could intercept all the system calls, and translate them magically to standard calls a regular PC can use?

Reply 28 of 52, by leileilol

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mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:

and not only was that one of the games the emulation was supposed to be optimized for, but it was also a launch title on the original Xbox, so it shouldn't be that demanding. 😜

Late ported PC titles can be pretty demanding no matter how early it's for release. Similarly PS2's was Star Wars Starfighter which was made for PC....... then turned PS2-exclusive very late in development. Actually quite pushed the PS2 to its limits early 🤣

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long live PCem

Reply 29 of 52, by ElectricMonk

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m1so wrote:

Xbox 360 is weaker than new PCs today, and it is not in fact x86 based. It has a PowerPC processor.

POWER8 would disagree with you.

/I know what you meant, but XCPU used a subset of POWER for the tri-core. PS3 used a lesser dual-core POWER chip mated with custom SPUs
//Also, you *do* know that POWER chips are used in High-end Mainframes/DBs, Core Routers, Massive Multilayer Switches, and Aggregator Line Cards (along with some high speed Xeons)? They are no slouch, depending on workload. It ain't all MIPS in telco-land.

///Don't get me started on the custom ASICs in HFT market equipment. Acceptable latency is in nanoseconds, and they're always trying to shave off a nanosecond or two when possible. It's a veritable arms race in that sector.

Reply 30 of 52, by mr_bigmouth_502

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Did the original Xbox even have any notable exclusives that would be worth writing an emulator for? Looking back at its library, most of its popular titles were either multiplats, or they eventually got ported to the PC.

Reply 31 of 52, by Jorpho

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Breakdown and Metal Wolf Chaos spring to mind.
http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/breakdown/breakdown.htm
http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/metalwolf/me … alwolfchaos.htm

Reply 32 of 52, by ElectricMonk

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mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:

Did the original Xbox even have any notable exclusives that would be worth writing an emulator for? Looking back at its library, most of its popular titles were either multiplats, or they eventually got ported to the PC.

YES!

Otogi 1 and 2
Breakdown
Jet Set Radio Future
Panzer Dragoon Orta
GunValkyrie
Metal Wolf Chaos (Mr. President! Get in that giant robot and kick ass to save America!)
Voodoo Vince
Ninja Gaiden
Dead or Alive (even the beach volleyball "games:
Conker: Live and Reloaded
Project Gotham Racing
Rallisport Challenge
Grabbed by the Ghoulies
Jade Empire
KOTOR
Murakumo: Renegade Mech Pursuit
N.U.D.E.@ Natural Ultimate Digital Experiment
Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee
Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath
OutRun 2
Phantom Dust
Shenmue II
Steel Battalion (and it's $200 controller)
Stubbs the Zombie

oh, and just because many were multiplatform games doesn;t mean the Xbox didn't get the superior version. Burnout:Takedown, anyone?

Reply 33 of 52, by Jorpho

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ElectricMonk wrote:

oh, and just because many were multiplatform games doesn;t mean the Xbox didn't get the superior version.

Surely not for KOTOR or Jade Empire? I would question the Oddworld games as well, but I'm not sure if they finally worked all the bugs out of the PC ports.

Reply 34 of 52, by ElectricMonk

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Jorpho wrote:
ElectricMonk wrote:

oh, and just because many were multiplatform games doesn;t mean the Xbox didn't get the superior version.

Surely not for KOTOR or Jade Empire? I would question the Oddworld games as well, but I'm not sure if they finally worked all the bugs out of the PC ports.

IIRC, the bloom effects, and edge shading in Jade and KOTOR were exclusive to Xbox. I don't think they reliably got those working on the GPUs of the time. Now, the GOG versions of those games, maybe they got them working. I dunno. JE keeps crashing on me.

I just wish KOTOR 2 wasn't such a rushed, buggy product. It had so much potential... 🙁

Reply 35 of 52, by ElectricMonk

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Oh, and personally, I'd wet myself if Sega released an Xbox Collection, like they did for a couple of Dreamcast games (namely Space Channel 5 and Jet Grind Radio)

JSRF, PDO, Outrun 2, Otogi 1 and 2, Ninja Gaiden, Breakdown, and Metal Wolf Chaos. I'd have a nerdgasm on the spot! 😜

Reply 36 of 52, by leileilol

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ElectricMonk wrote:

IIRC, the bloom effects, and edge shading in Jade and KOTOR were exclusive to Xbox.🙁

sounds like PC gets the superior version then 😀

Some of the first bloom games ever were Orphen and The Bouncer (PS2, 2000). It's all a dirty texture buffer hack that lost its novelty by 2006 and seems to have repeated history in 2013 as some detail coverup.

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Reply 38 of 52, by ElectricMonk

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Firtasik wrote:
ElectricMonk wrote:

Stubbs the Zombie

I played it on my PC. Is the XBox version superior?

One thing I've noticed over the years, is since consoles are a closed ecosystem, with a single configuration, devs often can push the console harder than on a PC with gawd knows what parts are in it.

That's not so true in the last generations, like X360, and possibly XBone/PS4 since they use AMD parts.

Reply 39 of 52, by Stiletto

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Although I realize that this thread was bumped by an overly enthusiastic ElectricMonk... (calm down, man! 😀 ) I will take the opportunity to add some relevance.

Related: Samuele Zannoli's gonna beat everyone to the punch at some point, if you ask me. MAME just today received yet another chihiro.c update. Changelog says what's new. It will be in MAME 0.154 unless you want to compile from SVN to give it a spin. Obviously, with dumps from your own personal Outrun 2 boards/cabinet.
http://git.redump.net/mame/commit/src/mame/dr … 24ecd25f9de54a4
"Now Outrun 2 is able to go through all the attract mode loop without crashing."

For those not keeping score at home, Chihiro is basically Xbox hardware on steroids, for the arcade. MAME has had elementary 2D (and no sound) in OutRun 2 for a while, but the emulation locked up at other points. It's pretty slow, won't be playable any time soon - there's no x86 virtualization, or x86 dynamic recompilation for that matter, or offloading to GPU - MAME as always does low-level emulation first, or only.
April 2013 video (10 minutes for four boot screens...) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbsQHIimnhc
August 2013 screenshots: http://rbelmont.mameworld.info/?p=855

Meanwhile, blueshogun96 these days is crowing about something called "XQEMU" rather than Cxbx.
https://github.com/JayFoxRox/xqemu
https://github.com/espes/xqemu
http://shogun3d-cxbx.blogspot.com/

Although he did not refer to it in this recent interview (eh?)
http://pulp365.com/2014/05/27/last-console-cr … xbox-emulation/

Also, jimmsta experimented with what he called "RCE" in 2013 (a method closer to Cxbx)
http://web.archive.org/web/20130327163536/htt … ex.php?page=rce
http://www.assemblergames.com/forums/showthre … -Virtualization

"I see a little silhouette-o of a man, Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you
do the Fandango!" - Queen

Stiletto