(Yeah I know this probably belonged in General Stuff, but I already posted it. )
Someone pitched an idea in the ZSNES IRC channel a long time ago that movies (save states + input logs) should be used to greatly reduce the memory and performance overhead of the game rewinding feature in some NES & SNES emulators.
Traditionally, it is implemented using only a save state stack (taking a single save state for every frame of video) and some compression to reduce the memory usage, but that only hampers performance even more than usual.
The idea is that movies be used to expand into a handful of metaframes (for example, 4 frames), thus dividing the actual memory usage by that amount. The emulator might load up the movie, play through it real quick with audio and video output and any speed caps disabled, taking a save state each frame into a temporary buffer, then selecting the appropriate state.
Anyone have any other ideas on how to reduce the overhead of game rewinding (and subsequently, increase the frame rate due to less resources used) without simply adding better compression methods?
I know some people don't like it but it's become a pretty standard feature...
Someone pitched an idea in the ZSNES IRC channel a long time ago that movies (save states + input logs) should be used to greatly reduce the memory and performance overhead of the game rewinding feature in some NES & SNES emulators.
Traditionally, it is implemented using only a save state stack (taking a single save state for every frame of video) and some compression to reduce the memory usage, but that only hampers performance even more than usual.
The idea is that movies be used to expand into a handful of metaframes (for example, 4 frames), thus dividing the actual memory usage by that amount. The emulator might load up the movie, play through it real quick with audio and video output and any speed caps disabled, taking a save state each frame into a temporary buffer, then selecting the appropriate state.
Anyone have any other ideas on how to reduce the overhead of game rewinding (and subsequently, increase the frame rate due to less resources used) without simply adding better compression methods?
I know some people don't like it but it's become a pretty standard feature...