Emulator problems

thatnewyorker · 2011-06-28 20:29:26

Fceux keeps segfaulting after a few minutes of gameplay and sometimes all on it's own when it's just open. I've changed the settings countless times to no avail. Is anyone else experiencing this and how can I fix this?

Also, Snes9x plays games just fine until I want some sound. Having sound enabled will slow the game to around 5fps. It plays just fine without sound but with sound, it's slow as hell.

So what the hell is going on here guys? I just want to play some old Nintendo games without having to boot into my Windows partition everytime.

Using 64 bit Arch, Nvidia GTX 580 with proprietary drivers and an Asus Xonar STX sound card if it means anything.

Last edited by thatnewyorker (2011-06-28 23:21:56)

Zucca · 2011-06-29 20:55:25

My gf had serious problems with propietary nVidia drivers. Especially with flash (no one's surprised). Other problems were ghost windows == didn't disappear even if they were closed.
Answer to all these problems were Nouveau drivers. No problems no nagging. I hope this works for you as well as it works here.

Meyithi · 2011-06-29 23:10:35

Snes9x is funny, 1.53 is fine on my i686 netbook (Intel) but on my X86_64 desktop (Nvidia) I get the same problems when I try to enable sound, so I rolled back to 1.52 as snes9x-git in AUR had the same problems.

sand_man · 2011-06-29 23:22:42

Give zsnes a go. I know it's 32-bit only because it's written in assembly but I've always found it almost flawless, even in it's early days.
btw: last time I tried, it ran fine on 64-bit with proprietary nvidia drivers

Last edited by sand_man (2011-06-29 23:23:15)

Grinch · 2011-06-30 14:04:21

Sounds weird for sure. Anyway, if you are looking for the best Snes emulator as far as accuracy goes (and also one that is actively being developed) I'd say go for BSnes. It's not the fastest (due to it's accuracy, although there are faster/less accurate settings available) but it certainly is the the one closest to the real thing, it even has lots of nice opengl glsl based filters that makes it look like you are playing on an old TV/RGB monitor.

schnitz · 2011-09-26 09:40:43

Is there anything new on this subject? Both fceux and Snes9x shows the same behaviour; running for several seconds and then segfaulting. This can't be due to the emulators themselves, I've had the same Snes9x-GTK version from AUR during a long time and it used to work like a charm. The Nvidia proprietary driver seems to be a possible source of error, but how can it be resolved? Is using the nouveau driver the only solution in sight? That would mean going through the Xorg tweaking and font size hell while trying to get my desktop slightly usable again.

This used to be the best part of Linux Gaming.

Last edited by schnitz (2011-09-26 09:45:49)

defears · 2011-09-26 10:38:12

For snes9x, uninstalling pulseaudio, did it. Also change frameskip to 0, better for vsync. And set playback rate to 48000, so it doesn't have to resample twice. If you use gnome-shell I've noticed the shell taking the same amount of cpu as snes9x so it's really doubled.

For me gnome-shell and pulseaudio would max out 4 cores, but with both uninstalled, down to 2% total. IDK what's causing it but with icewm and alsa it never ran better.

schnitz · 2011-09-26 18:08:45

Thank you defears, that was actually a really good idea, though it doesn't seem to be the reason for the segfault crashes.
I changed /etc/pulse/client.conf to "autospawn = no". When starting fceux it now says "Loading SDL sound with alsa driver...", so Pulseaudio is really disabled, but the segfault still occurs.
I use openbox, so there are no odd shells or effects or anything that can affect my system.

Edit:
Actually, it seems to make a difference to Snes9x! I can play a loaded game for as long as i like, but when choosing "preferences" it still crashes by segfault.

Last edited by schnitz (2011-09-26 18:21:10)

e_tank · 2011-09-29 16:48:01

for those of you having problems with snes9x-gtk when enabling sound, the issue is either a bug in the gui of snes9x or in gtk (the author has said it's the latter). see this bug ticket item for details. the problem is, with current versions of gtk you can no longer set the sound input rate to anything other than 0, which isn't what it should be set to and can cause speed issues. you can fix the problem by editing your snes9x.xml config file and manually setting sound_input_rate to 31950, which is the default, or some other value that works for your system/setup. be aware that each time you make and apply _any_ change on the settings window it will reset this value back to 0, which will require that you exit snes9x-gtk and repeat this process.

edit: i haven't used snes9x-gtk in a while but i just checked and it turns out this issue has since been resolved with the latest version of gtk2 (2.24.6). if you're still experiencing sound/speed issues with snes9x-gtk make sure you have the latest version of gtk2 installed.

Last edited by e_tank (2011-09-29 17:08:22)

Arch Linux

#1 2011-06-28 20:29:26

Emulator problems

#2 2011-06-29 20:55:25

Re: Emulator problems

#3 2011-06-29 23:10:35

Re: Emulator problems

#4 2011-06-29 23:22:42

Re: Emulator problems

#5 2011-06-30 14:04:21

Re: Emulator problems

#6 2011-09-26 09:40:43

Re: Emulator problems

#7 2011-09-26 10:38:12

Re: Emulator problems

#8 2011-09-26 18:08:45

Re: Emulator problems

#9 2011-09-29 16:48:01

Re: Emulator problems

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