A guide to getting Snatcher PCE emulated perfectly

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A guide to getting Snatcher PCE emulated perfectly

Post by HorseFactory »

A definitive guide to getting Snatcher PCE, and other PCE games for that matter emulated successfully with no issues on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux/other *nix's. If this is a bit off topic for this forum, apologies, though I think there'll be some benefit here :)

If you've had any interest whatsoever in PCE emulation, or read any of the discussion here on the topic, you'll know that there's a semi-reliable payware solution in MagicEngine and Yame which has issues for some people, particularly a lack of CD Audio as I know Mr Seed suffered recently. However, a new multi-platform emulator, Mednafen, does the job perfectly and runs on Windows, OS X, Linux and other *nix OS's. It may scare some of you off as it's commandline based as opposed to the attractive GUI of Magicengine, but it's still quite easy to configure and has a lot of the modern conveniences found in emulators these days such as HQ3X filters and so forth.

So:

Windows

Grab Mednafen and find SYSCARD3.PCE, the PCE bios which i'm not going to link to here for obvious reasons, but some creative googling should sort it out for you. When you have Mednafen and SYSCARD3.PCE unzipped to say, C:\mednafen, go to Start - Run and type cmd. From here type "cd mednafen" (assuming it's in a folder named mednafen obviously). Firstly, you'll need to configure Mednafen to know where the PCE Bios is, do this with the following command:

mednafen -pce.cdbios syscard3.pce

Then, assuming you're running the game from CD:

mednafen -loadcd pce D:

Of course, substitute D: for the letter of the CD/DVD drive on your system. If you've made your own .bin/.cue copy with CDRwin or cdrtools in Linux for example (Which i'd recommend if possible as my DVDRW is very noisy when it spins up, plus there's the luxury of not getting the CD out all the time and getting it scratched and so forth) try this:

mednafen -loadcd pce C:\path\to\snatcher.cue

To configure controls, press F3. It'll bring up a prompt with "Gamepad 1: I (1)" Press whichever button you want to be mapped to that button on the PCE controller, then press it again to confirm. To make everything prettier on faster machines, you can try adding -pce.special hq3x to the command line. For fullscreen mode, add -fs to the command line. Example:

mednafen -pce.special hq3x -fs -loadcd pce D:

Settings like pce.special and -fs are saved so you don't need to do it every time.


Linux

Mednafen's website lists a few dependancy packages you need, i'm sure you linux folks know what to do from there. Then you just ./configure and make as usual when compiling stuff.

Mac OSX

Ah, Snatcher on OSX at last is sweet, even if it is Japanese. Ironically, getting Mednafen set up on OSX is probably the toughest of the three OS's and may be something to avoid unless you have some unixy experience, though i'm kinda aware that there's not gonna be millions of people who want JP Snatcher on OSX I'll post how anyway :)

Grab X11 and XCode from your Tiger/Panther CD or Apple's website, and Darwin Ports if you don't have these already. Then it's a case of using darwinports to install all of the dependancies listed and installing exactly the same way as from Linux, i.e. compiling the source code. If you do ./configure --help it lists some flag like --with_apple_opengl or something, use that to avoid issues.

So, screenshots?

Image

Only one, and from OSX as i'm not at my computer right now. Apologies if this is a bit hard to follow, it's late here and I suck at documenting stuff plus this isn't the most user friendly emulator.
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Post by Artemio »

Hey man, thanks a lot. I didn't know about this emu, it is great there is new stuff that does the job so well.

Kudos for sharing an dtaking the time to write for the community.
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Post by Junker_05 »

That doesn't look much like the PCE version.. That looks very much like the Sega CD version, and that's a whole lot better... I'll take the time to read it while I do my homework..

Speaking of which, who agrees that all P.E teachers are assholes? :x
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Post by Marc »

Come on, I'm sure he knows which version of the game he's running.

I forgot to say thanks to HF for writing this. I'll be sure and try it the next time I'm playing the game.
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Post by Junker_05 »

Yeah, I guess. Sorry, Horse.

Is there an English translation of the PCE version?
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Post by HorseFactory »

I'm glad this will have some use :)

And yeah, it is the PCE version sorry :(

Image

Mednafen kinda chugs a bit on my G4 iBook from 2004, but on anything faster than that it'd be perfect i'm sure.

edit: lets not forget that there are quite a few more awesome PCE games, i'd recommend Dracula X and the nice port of Gradius.
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Post by Junker_05 »

HorseFactory wrote:Mednafen kinda chugs a bit on my G4 iBook from 2004, but on anything faster than that it'd be perfect i'm sure.
That's good then, considering I currently own an iMac G5. It's not the Intel version, but I still think it horizontally stomps on asses.
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Post by 8bitsonic »

I'm having trouble understanding how to get Mednafen running on OS X. Could you post some sort of step by step thing, or direct me to one?
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Post by HorseFactory »

Get Xcode from [url="http://developer.apple.com/tools/xcode/]here[/url] or your tiger dvd
Get X11 from here " "
Get Darwinports from here

In that order. When all that is done, open Terminal.app (in Applications/Utilities) and type:

sudo port install libcdio

This will compile libcdio, one of the programs mednafen depends on. When that's done, go through the rest of the dependancy programs:

sudo port install libsdl
sudo port install libsdl_net
sudo port install libsndfile
zlib

When all of those are done, grab the source code - http://mednafen.com/releases/mednafen-0.6.1.tar.bz2 is the latest at this time, I think Safari will extract it automatically, then, in Terminal.app change directory to wherever it is, i..e

cd /Users/username/Documents/mednafen

then type the following commands one after the other;

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/lib
./configure --with-apple-opengl-framework --prefix=/usr/local
make
sudo make install

Now, when that is done, when you want to run mednafen:

Open Applications/Utilities/X11.app, this will run x11 and bring up an xterm window, think of it as a very minimal terminal.app. From here, change folder to /usr/local/bin:

cd /usr/local/bin

and run mednafen;

./mednafen -loadcd pce /Users/username/Documents/Snatcher/Snatcher.cue
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Post by 8bitsonic »

Hm, OK. My problem is that I get these odd compile errors when I try to install the libraries fpr Mednafen, like libcdio and the others. What do I do?
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Post by Artemio »

I am not into Macs, but I do know something about compiler undr Unix.. What errors are you getting? It sounds like you need to install the libraries for the linker, so the errors appear to be after compile time.
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Post by 8bitsonic »

It tells me things like there is no C compiler, and stuff like that.
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Post by Artemio »

Ok, then it is the configure script.... In such case you need to install all the needed tools.
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Post by 8bitsonic »

And what tools would those be?
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Post by Artemio »

A compiler (gcc) at least. And probably you'll need automake.. and from teher it depends on the specific program dependencies.

I don't know what you'd need on a Mac to get those, or if tehy are default. But I just downloaded the source and it compiles undex Linux quite nicely. I also cross-compiled it for my GP2x... will be testing it now and see how well it performs there.


Now for libcdio go to http://directory.fsf.org/libcdio.html and you'll need to compile and isnatll that as well, in case that is the only thing that is missing. If you could give the specific text you are getting it would be easier.
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Post by HorseFactory »

You need the XCode tools from your OSX cd, or the url I gave in the guide. The gcc compiler and stuff are included in that.

I'm actually kinda surprised that Darwin ports will even start up without it being installed
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Post by 8bitsonic »

That's the thing, it IS installed, but I only installed the bare minimum amount of stuff you need. Anything specfific I should install?
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Post by 8bitsonic »

YAY! After feeling sorry for myself and crying nonstop for a few months because I couldn't figure out this damn Mednafen, I found this site: http://www5f.biglobe.ne.jp/%7enekocan/g ... _soft.html that has a Mac OS X graphical frontend for it.

YAAAAAAAAAAYYYY!!!!!

And after much fiddling and tinkering and sweating over the Japanese documentation, I had PCE Snatcher up and running. Only one problem- CD audio comes up as total static. Am I doing something wrong, or is this the emulator's fault?
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Post by Modnar »

I cant find those damn bios, and when i extract it says that some files were missing. It also didnt come up when i went to Start and Run.
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Post by RzaRecta »

What's different in the PC version?

The segacd version is SIMPLE to emulate, just use Gens and get the right bios and your set, works perfectly without slow downs I LOVE IT!.
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Post by Artemio »

Regarding the PC-Engine version please visit http://junkerhq.net/Snatcher , just keep in mind it is not PC, it is PC-Engine, the equivalent of the TG-16.

They are talking about emulation on the Mac, not on a PC.
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Post by 8bitsonic »

RzaRecta wrote:The segacd version is SIMPLE to emulate, just use Gens and get the right bios and your set, works perfectly without slow downs I LOVE IT!.
Uh...yeah...I know that. I'm playing the PC-Engine version for a reason. Thanks for the grossly redundant tip, though.
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Post by RzaRecta »

I wasn't trying to tell you, I was just mentioning, obviously you guys have probably played every single version there is haha.

Im gonna go read up about the PC version now, since you have a reason for playing it, it must have something rather different from the Segacd version right?
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Post by 8bitsonic »

I'm playing it as a Snatcher enthusiast who wants to eventually try every version. So far I only have not tried the 32-bit versions.

And while there aren't any huge differences between the Sega CD and PC-Engine version, there are many smaller ones- enough to warrant a playthrough from me.
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Post by RzaRecta »

Well that is the version with Alice's corpse moving right? That's good enough reason for me. Hey, there are no games better than Hideos, and If I can still play MGS1,2, and 3 more than I play my xbox 360, thats gotta mean something.

I think i'll get around to playing that version too, that's the original version of Snatcher right? I just gotta figure out how to run it on XP. (After I beat SD Snatcher haha)
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