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LMSW: An emulator inside Lunar Magic

LMSW: An emulator inside Lunar Magic



For the last few months, I have been working with FuSoYa to add an emulator inside Lunar Magic, to lower the time spent savestating on the overworld to test our levels. The result is what you see above.

To use it, download the latest Lunar Magic from here, put this in the same folder, and open it up. The relevant buttons are in File->Emulator.

In case anyone wonders, the emulator this tool uses is bsnes 0.88 Compatibility. If you're feeling courageous, you can pull out something else from here and rename it to retro.dll, but since this one throws juggles around the WRAM haphazardly, I'm not sure if that's useful. Ignore all snes9xes dated before this point, they can't savestate and give me VRAM pointers.

Credits list:
  • FuSoYa - Alpha and beta testing, support in LM, various helpful input. For trophy purposes, I want this user to get no less trophies than me for this thing, this tool would've been much lower quality without his cooperation.
  • WhiteYoshiEgg, imamelia - Beta testing, various helpful input.
  • byuu, Themaister, the Snes9X developers - Making linkable libraries out of bsnes and Snes9x, removing the need for me to hack up the emulators directly. Even though I can't use the snes9x builds in their current state, I appreciate their intentions, and I believe it'll get fixed soon.

<blm> zsnes users are the flatearthers of emulation
This could be a tremendous help when testing levels. I will use this immediately.
I've seen Alcaro talk about this project quite a bit in #serioushax these past few months, and I'm pleased to see it finished. I'm pretty excited to use this!
This is way better than my idea of having an "emulator" view mode! The stuff being release in this C3 is just astounding!


But seriously, it's impressive, but simply not enough for my needs (lack of savestate support). Also, I'm sure I had time limit set to 400... perhaps it's connected to C5 level which has time limit of 100.
Oh my god, this is amazing alcaro! no more doors in a level to test its sublevels!

One thing, I suck at playing with a keyboard, what about adding controller support? or it's not possible?

Edit: The music it's supposed to not appear? because I only can hear SFXs.

Edit 2: Ignore that, apparently the emulator is incompatible with addmusicM :(
Just tried this out, and being able to play my levels immediately makes testing super simple. Thank you so much for this. #w{=3}

I wish LM scrolled smoothly with the level, however. The sudden scrolling when you reach the right edge of LM is quite jarring and has caused a few deaths so far.
Originally posted by TRS
Just tried this out, and being able to play my levels immediately makes testing super simple. Thank you so much for this. #w{=3}

I wish LM scrolled smoothly with the level, however. The sudden scrolling when you reach the right edge of LM is quite jarring and has caused a few deaths so far.

Options -> Change Animation Rate... -> High (60 fps)

Extras



I should have something witty to put here (even if it's just to update dated info), shouldn't I?

Advertising Space

I like how this is also a (subtle) way of saying that LM2.0 has been released, which I don't believe has been posted anywhere yet.

As for the emulator, I'll try to check it out shortly. It looks pretty interesting to mess with.

I thought something like this could be useful (since I've seen a SMB1 level editor that had this feature), but I never thought this would be made and never bothered to suggest the idea; I was actually in disbelief at first thinking this might of been a joke thread. This will definitely be useful to me, considering I never even bothered to use savestates and had to walk to the levels... anyway, this is simply awesome.

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Very interesting indeed. So LM 2.0 at least, eh? God how has the time passed by. Well, I will definitely see about trying out this emulator as I see some uses and whatnot.

Originally posted by GlitchMr

Options -> Change Animation Rate... -> High (60 fps)


This isn't what I was talking about. I was talking about the level editor scrolling with the emulator.

Also I found two bugs:
1: If I enter a level LM can't render (like the boss battles) I get an error (expected), but I also get a short, loud sound that keeps repeating until I close the editor.
2: When I start up the emulator to play a level, the level plays as if the switch palaces hit according to the editor are hit. But as soon as I leave the level via pipe, door, etc., the switch blocks revert back to normal (no palaces hit).
Now this is some useful stuff, really (and its kind of amusing seeing how the emulator moves so it stays aligned with the editor's Fg)

The only annoying thing that hasn't been mentioned is that if the music goes wrong, you have to close & open LM again, and some times you have to close LM via Task Manager.
I do pixels sometimes
I think this is a great addition to Lunar Magic and will change the field of level testing for sure. Minor complaint, I can't seem to get the config to recognize my controller. I triedJoyToKey for a work around but, have had no luck so far.
Edit: Scratch that, Joytokey works, and I was just had it set up incorrectly.
Okay, I've fooled around with this a bit in a clean ROM, and god is it amazing. It's a perfect emulator, makes testing a lot easier, and it's really fun to use! Niece job, Alcaro (and also FuSoYa)!
Alcaro is obviously a wizard, as his black magic demonstrates. Let's stone him.
I've had the pleasure of beta testing this, and I knew this C3 was going to be awesome as soon as I tried it for the first time. Not only will this make a lot of hackers' lives remarkably easier, it's also fun to just mindlessly play around with.

Again I applaud your amazing abilities, Alcaro!

(Spoiler: The LM this works with will actually be 1.92, not 2.0, as far as I know.) oh wait it actually is 2.0 derp


 
I have to agree with TRS that getting to end of what can be seen on your computer screen transitioning to the next screen is jarring - it makes me really dizzy.
Wow, very interesting.
I might use this pretty frequently, although it already crashed many times on my hack ("The ROM crashed.582" and the music freezes). I'm really not sure why, it doesn't seem to be AddmusicM's inaccuracy (it broke in a level which uses a vanilla SMW song) nor HDMA nor anything else that is anything "special" hacking-wise. Maybe it's just because it doesn't work in bsnes 0.88 as well? (I didn't try it yet, but I see no reason why it shouldn't, it's really just a normal level)
Originally posted by Masterlink
Oh my god, this is amazing alcaro! no more doors in a level to test its sublevels!

One thing, I suck at playing with a keyboard, what about adding controller support? or it's not possible?

Edit: The music it's supposed to not appear? because I only can hear SFXs.

Edit 2: Ignore that, apparently the emulator is incompatible with addmusicM :(



well not with all of addmusic just some music because it plays some of the custom music I have fine also it has problem playing a normal smw song (cave drum) when you use addmusic 4. It also has problems playing the can't not render level boss

Edit
also (sometimes!)the message block message will glitch




and at level 105 when I got to the goal it acted like a vertical level and stop mario after he/I got the goal tape and gave the the switch place message(sometimes!)