Emulation is nice if you go for an authentic experience. This is better: It allows a lot more easier modding, especially for older titles which then get widescreen support and improved graphics.
Comment on Sony is losing exclusives as their games get ported to PC with AI
Stern@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
werent they already ‘ported’ to pc with rpcs3 and the like
Wildmimic@anarchist.nexus 15 hours ago
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
What I’m hearing through the grapevine is that these quick and dirty executables are not conducive to any of those benefits, because it’s hardly different from just emulating it in the first place.
xan1242@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 hours ago
That I can confirm firsthand. Recompiled code is just prebaked CPU instructions in another language that can be compiled. That’s all there is to it.
So for modding, it’s only slightly easier technically as you have the option to inject code easier than on the emulated platform and providing facilities for the host OS to load them (dynamic libraries, which is a big benefit which most of the slop coders don’t fully understand how or why it is).
For proper modding research, a decompilation (of the portions of the game you want to mod very extensively) is needed.
For a simple aspect ratio and UI fix patch (and other simple improvements) - that is achievable on the original code itself via cheats/code injection (anything that has an FPU should work, PS1 and older are harder generally). You generally do not need a whole recompilation/decompilation for this kind of a thing.
Sometimes even the original hardware without any performance boost can handle it, but most of the times this is where emulator’s overclocking and memory extension features come into play to help.
Honestly, in my opinion, machine code hacking is not that hard. It takes way less time and energy to do it than this to achieve the same “improvements” with way lower barriers to entry.
Wildmimic@anarchist.nexus 14 hours ago
But emulating does not give you Ultrawide(in beta) or 4K @ 240FPS, FSR (currently still disabled in source, coming soon), Discord Rich Presence and Background Shader Compilation.
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
What I’ve seen are posts like these floating around. I haven’t done much emulation lately, but aspect ratio and frame rate adjustments don’t sound new to me, nor do background shader compilations. It also sounds like the functionality can often be unreliable and difficult for a human to get in there and fix, unlike a “proper” decompilation that we’ve seen so much of out of the N64 scene.
spankysalmon@fedinsfw.app 14 hours ago
It’s hardly different from an end user perspective (except emulators often have extra features the direct games don’t), but it is a very different way to get things running.
serpineslair@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
Rpcs3 never ran well for me anyway tbf.
David_Eight@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
I’ve had success with RPCS3 even on Steam Deck, seems to work way better on Linux from what I’ve seen. Its been greatly improved over the years.
serpineslair@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
I am on linux. Tbf, I did try it a while ago, so maybe I need to give it another chance.
thingsiplay@lemmy.ml 14 hours ago
I think the replies about “Emulation is not a port” misses your point. That’s why you put it in quotes as ‘ported’.
But besides that, some official “ports” from game companies are also just emulation. They do not port the game code, but they port the game over this way, in the sense of making it playable.
NekoKoneko@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
It’s a more subtle but powerful difference, which is recompiling creates native code, which is more expansible and efficient (usually).
Emulation can appear similar but the code remains unchanged, so the system itself has to be emulated to run the non-native code, which (unless the emulator is very efficient) will usually be more limited and slower.
Artemis_Mystique@lemmy.ml 12 hours ago
if i remember correctly rpcs3 actually does recompilation on the fly