Snes9x crashes when exiting fullscreen

MethidMan · Post by **MethidMan** » Mon Jun 14, 2010 2:26 am

I'm having problems exiting fullscreen in Snes9x v1.52.

Basically I wanted to turn on vsync to eliminate screen tearing and overall choppiness but this caused major lag in the emulator. I then realized that turning off 'EmulateFullScreen' fixed the lag but then I noticed a new problem: every time I exit fullscreen the emulator crashes and I get an error message saying "Snes9x has stopped working". This also happens when I press Esc for the menu.

Is there any way I can have both vsync and fullscreen emulation without the lag or at least have vsync without the crashing? Or could this be a computer-related problem? Here are my specs:

Windows 7 Home
Toshiba Satellite L455
Intel Celeron 900
2GB RAM
Video card: Mobile Intel(R) 4 Series Express Chipset Family (this is up-to-date, I checked)

If you need more info I'd be glad to assist.

Camo_Yoshi · Post by **Camo_Yoshi** » Mon Jun 14, 2010 5:09 pm

What res are you in when in fullscreen? Because 640x480 usually works the best... you really don't need higher resolutions.

MethidMan · Post by **MethidMan** » Mon Jun 14, 2010 9:36 pm

That's the one I'm using: 640x480 16bit 60Hz. I just downloaded this version a few days ago so I haven't really changed the configuration much.

It seems whenever I turn off EmulateFullscreen I have this problem regardless of anything else, and in order to turn it back on again I have to do it by editing the config file.

Camo_Yoshi · Post by **Camo_Yoshi** » Tue Jun 15, 2010 12:36 am

Would just maximizing the window work instead of going into fullscreen?

MethidMan · Post by **MethidMan** » Tue Jun 15, 2010 1:43 am

Hmm...okay, that does work with both vsync and emulate fullscreen, but why would setting it to fullscreen slow it down? I thought fullscreen improved the framerate?

Although a maximized window works, I'd still like to find a way to fix (or at least report) this problem with fullscreen because I'd much rather use fullscreen. I'll have to check to see if this happens in other computers.

Edit: Looks like at least one other person has had this problem before although that part of his question was never addressed (BTW, is it okay to link to other forum sites?)

MethidMan · Post by **MethidMan** » Tue Jun 15, 2010 4:57 am

Yeah, I figured. Sorry for posting in your forum BTW; I was having trouble registering in this one and I thought while waiting for help with the activation your forum would've been the next best place to post this in the meantime.

OV2 · Post by **OV2** » Tue Jun 15, 2010 12:35 pm

Are you using fix4?

Does it happen in both Direct3D and DirectDraw?

MethidMan · Post by **MethidMan** » Tue Jun 15, 2010 8:14 pm

Okay, I tried this out on another computer and here's what I found:

Emulatefullscreen and vsync both work flawlessly! Therefore it must be a problem with my own computer after all. However, turning off emulatefullscreen and exiting fullscreen mode causes the same problem (crashes).

I dunno what it could be about my own laptop that could be causing slowdown with both emulatefullscreen and vsync on... I checked my video card and everything seems up to date. Now, when I say slowdown, I mean it runs like it were in slow-motion. The only other thing I can do besides playing in maximized window mode or turning off fullscreen emulation is to set the max skipped frames to 1, but then that makes the animation look slighty choppier.

OV2 wrote:Are you using fix4?

I've tried almost everything on this site: http://snes9x.ipherswipsite.com/ Version 1.52, 1.51, Fix3, Fix4, Win9x...all the same results with my computer. I even tried 1.43 but I couldn't even access vsync on that one at all.

OV2 wrote:Does it happen in both Direct3D and DirectDraw?

No slowdown on DirectDraw but then that's only because there's no vsync with that option :/

But back to the vsync/emulatefullscreen lag problem... Is there anything I can do with my computer that might somehow fix this?

Camo_Yoshi · Post by **Camo_Yoshi** » Wed Jun 16, 2010 6:04 pm

Update Video drivers is the best I can come up with.

MethidMan · Post by **MethidMan** » Thu Jun 17, 2010 10:20 pm

Welp, I did just that...and unfortunately it's still the same problem.

I've come to realize I just happen to have a crappy video card. The only real bug is that turning off emulatefullscreen causes problems when exiting fullscreen mode regardless of the settings. Just thought I'd point that out to the devs here for reference.

To be honest, the only reason I switched to Snes9x is because I had problems with the sound emulation of Contra 3 in ZSNES. I've made a couple of audio samples of the gameplay's sound effects (the Spreader weapon and flame gush) for comparison. Here's how it sounds like in Snes9x and here's how it sounds like in ZSNES on my computer. Notice any difference? It sounds a little more "spluttery" in ZSNES regardless of however I set the frequency, interpolation, etc.

But yeah, I've only really noticed this problem in just Contra 3, no other games, whereas Snes9x has problems no matter what rom I play. So I guess I'll just go back to ZSNES.

Camo_Yoshi · Post by **Camo_Yoshi** » Fri Jun 18, 2010 8:16 pm

You may want to try bsnes or SNEeSE in that case.

There are some caveats though:
bsnes - You might have issues running games that use SA1, Mode 7, or Super FX.

SNEeSE - There is no support for SA1 or Super FX, and Mode 7 support is iffy depending on the game.

adventure_of_link · Post by **adventure_of_link** » Sun Jun 20, 2010 12:24 am

didn't BSNES recently get updated to where you can run SA-1 games, specifically Mario RPG

also, SNEeSe just emulates the base SNES console. No special chips, nothing.

the_randomizer · Post by **the_randomizer** » Sun Jun 20, 2010 3:12 pm

Camo_Yoshi wrote:You may want to try bsnes or SNEeSE in that case.

There are some caveats though:
bsnes - You might have issues running games that use SA1, Mode 7, or Super FX.

SNEeSE - There is no support for SA1 or Super FX, and Mode 7 support is iffy depending on the game.

Shouldn't that other one be SnesGT? Its sound core is almost as good as the one in Bsnes, not to mention it actually supports all special chips and has support for graphics filters. Zsnes? You can forget about that one.

Camo_Yoshi · Post by **Camo_Yoshi** » Sun Jun 20, 2010 3:28 pm

the_randomizer wrote:
Camo_Yoshi wrote:You may want to try bsnes or SNEeSE in that case.

There are some caveats though:
bsnes - You might have issues running games that use SA1, Mode 7, or Super FX.

SNEeSE - There is no support for SA1 or Super FX, and Mode 7 support is iffy depending on the game.

Shouldn't that other one be SnesGT? Its sound core is almost as good as the one in Bsnes, not to mention it actually supports all special chips and has support for graphics filters. Zsnes? You can forget about that one.

I though SnesGT was for Wii.

The author already tried Zsnes, and it's not solving his issues either.

MethidMan · Post by **MethidMan** » Sun Jun 20, 2010 9:17 pm

Okay, I'm back, and I've been around the emulation world a bit.

From what everyone in the emulation community's been telling me and going by my own observations, ZSNES is one the suckier emulators. Its sound emulation is just crap. I'm not bothering with it anymore, at least until they improve it significantly.

Snes9x is better; its latest version (1.52) just has a bug that causes fullscreen crash upon exit (which seems to be fixed in a just-released test version that I'm trying out).

BSNES is awesome, though it can require a lot out of your computer and requires quite a bit of tweaking to get it working with your computer. Despite this, though, its missing a couple of things according to Byuu.

I was gonna consider SNESGT, but I've decided not to bother with it. It's primarily a Japanese emulator (and therefore doesn't have much english technical help) and there's no Game Genie support...and Game Genie just makes some games that much more fun for me (can you say Debug Earthbound?)

My choice? I've come to like BSNES and it has great emulation, but since I've only played a few games with it so far I have a feeling it might disappoint me down the road the more games I play. Snes9x has always had almost everything in an emulator and while it may not be as accurate as BSNES, I'm more than happy with it now that I have a version that works great with my laptops relatively sub-par standards. I think I'll stick with Snes9x.

kolechovski · Post by **kolechovski** » Mon Jun 21, 2010 6:50 pm

I agree that ZSNES's sound sucks. Back in the day, there were only 2 reasons I'd use it over SNES9X-individual sound channel toggling (does SNES9X do this yet?), and movie recording, which has been done since 1.43, I think. if you do want want something as power-hungry as BSNES, you might try downloading the modified version of SNES9X from tasvideos.org. They can likely offer many of the features you want without quite being as power-hungry, and should be usable with all your other SNES9X save states.

MethidMan · Post by **MethidMan** » Tue Jun 22, 2010 1:11 am

The latest versions allow turning sound channels on and off through the sound menu. Dunno if there's a shortcut for that though.

As for recording, I know you can do SMV and AVI recordings but I've only used the recording features once so I don't know much about it. The version you're referring to in that website seems to be made mostly for making videos, hence the main idea in that site. I would suggest giving the latest version of Snes9x a try and see if it has what you need now.

BTW, I've heard about Snes9x-rr and from what I've read about it, it probably wouldn't be what I'm looking for since I'm not big on recording and the version I'm using already has enough recording options for me anyway.

franpa · Post by **franpa** » Wed Jun 23, 2010 4:24 am

It makes it easier to rip Sound FX and music, I doubt many people would disable sound channels for any other purpose.