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Topic: Odd debuging issue - Geiger's Snes9X Debugger. (Read 2 times)
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Lenophis
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« Reply #15 on: March 17, 2009, 01:51:14 pm » |
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I've tried to get the source from Geiger to fix it up and update it myself, but he never responded to any attempts to contact. He's given the source to one person, as far as I know. And unless you share a specific mentality with Evil Peer, I doubt he'll give it to you, either. Is there anything else to use really? This is what exists, as far as I know. bsnes v0.013 + debugger, which cannot be found anywhere now and since when did RHDN have this? I've never found it here before. :banghead: If memory serves, byuu said it was rather incomplete, or something. He didn't like it that much, or he would've continued to implement it in newer versions (that's my opinion, anyway). Snes9x tracer, which on top of being only a tracer, is buggy! The built-in hex editor that comes with it will corrupt the rom if you try to edit the rom with it, it can't trace and log everything, it has a very outdated emulation core, and to top it off, comes with a mindset that you must follow just to use it. :banghead: Super Sleuth, which hasn't been updated since before any of us was born (you get the idea, it's been a while). I haven't used it, but there were a myriad of other quirks with this one, from what I've heard. Oddly enough, this has been a rather interesting topic on the IRC channel, but it's been mostly a bunch of complaining. Nobody wants to make a debugger. There's a mentality with the developers and the users that is preventing any new debugger from ever surfacing. |
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Nightcrawler
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« Reply #16 on: March 17, 2009, 03:20:05 pm » |
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I've tried to get the source from Geiger to fix it up and update it myself, but he never responded to any attempts to contact. He's given the source to one person, as far as I know. And unless you share a specific mentality with Evil Peer, I doubt he'll give it to you, either. I guess wanting to update it to a newer version of SNES9x and fix some bugs didn't cut it! I don't know why he would care, he's not done anything with it for years and I doubt he ever will. Is there anything else to use really? This is what exists, as far as I know. bsnes v0.013 + debugger, which cannot be found anywhere now and since when did RHDN have this? I've never found it here before. :banghead: If memory serves, byuu said it was rather incomplete, or something. He didn't like it that much, or he would've continued to implement it in newer versions (that's my opinion, anyway). Snes9x tracer, which on top of being only a tracer, is buggy! The built-in hex editor that comes with it will corrupt the rom if you try to edit the rom with it, it can't trace and log everything, it has a very outdated emulation core, and to top it off, comes with a mindset that you must follow just to use it. :banghead: Super Sleuth, which hasn't been updated since before any of us was born (you get the idea, it's been a while). I haven't used it, but there were a myriad of other quirks with this one, from what I've heard. Oddly enough, this has been a rather interesting topic on the IRC channel, but it's been mostly a bunch of complaining. Nobody wants to make a debugger. There's a mentality with the developers and the users that is preventing any new debugger from ever surfacing. We've had BSNES since 21 December 2005!! Seems that way. Most emulator authors don't seem to want to do it for some reason. People like me aren't too interested in getting so intimate with the mechanics of the emulator code because well, many are coded less than friendly to say the least. That's why I thought starting with an established base would be a bit easier and I'd be more motivated, but I never got to see the source anyway, so I'll never know. |
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Vehek
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« Reply #17 on: March 17, 2009, 05:31:55 pm » |
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Geiger said this back in 2007 (over at the Chrono Compendium) If I can even compile the new version (last I checked, I couldn't), I'm not sure I want to update GSD to use the new GUI, despite the emulation improvements. I'm not sure what he was talking about though, because I don't see much difference in the GUI of SNES9x. |
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Parasyte
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« Reply #18 on: March 17, 2009, 07:07:39 pm » |
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The only thing I can say without repeating myself is that I've been saying for a very long time that the world is ready for a better debugging experience. Basically, everyone just need to get fed up enough with crap (as shown in this bug) to gain the motivation to do something about it. I don't know what more I can do but start coding and *hope* that someone out there is also serious enough to pitch in? Correct me if I'm wrong, but this is how FCEU* became what it is today; I had an itch, and my goodness, I scratched it good. |
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BRPXQZME
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« Reply #19 on: March 17, 2009, 07:30:51 pm » |
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Because I am such a bleeding heart at times, I actually would add a debugger to various emulators (including bsnes) if I really knew what the @#$% I was doing. And therein lies the problem....  \ |
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MathOnNapkins
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« Reply #20 on: March 18, 2009, 12:05:30 pm » |
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He's given the source to one person, as far as I know. And unless you share a specific mentality with Evil Peer, I doubt he'll give it to you, either. *Ahem* That would be me. And I don't share his mentality about rom headers, it's rather I'm not one to break a promise. He asked me that if I edited or gave it to anyone else, not to disable that "feature". Personally I'd love to be rid of it, not for my own projects, but for working with other people that use headers and ips files that require headers. I dunno, I'm trying to remember if he agreed to not care about that anymore. I see him on gmail occasionally, I could ask him sometime. I think the other thing he mentioned was making sure he wouldn't receive any e-mails about future releases concerning bug reports, etc. Imo though, it might be a waste of time to continue working on the debugger as I'm not a huge fan of the interface he designed to begin with, in spite of the fact that I can use it very competently now. It could use some work in the graphics department (things like displaying vram, oam, and cgram). I have more optimism about the prospects of Parasyte's ideas than in working with the Geiger debugger. Not that I think the Geiger debugger is bad, I think it gets a bit too much criticism from some people *winks*. It's just too limited for more advanced debugging. |
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Lenophis
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« Reply #21 on: March 18, 2009, 01:30:25 pm » |
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He's given the source to one person, as far as I know. And unless you share a specific mentality with Evil Peer, I doubt he'll give it to you, either. *Ahem* I didn't feel like throwing you to the wolves.  Considering how bad they get when there's a font they don't like, I figured they didn't need more fuel. *winks*  Now that's a wink. Because I am such a bleeding heart at times, I actually would add a debugger to various emulators (including bsnes) if I really knew what the @#$% I was doing. And therein lies the problem.... \ There's nothing quite like learning. :angel: |
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Nightcrawler
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« Reply #22 on: March 18, 2009, 02:15:36 pm » |
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He's given the source to one person, as far as I know. And unless you share a specific mentality with Evil Peer, I doubt he'll give it to you, either. *Ahem* That would be me. And I don't share his mentality about rom headers, it's rather I'm not one to break a promise. He asked me that if I edited or gave it to anyone else, not to disable that "feature". Personally I'd love to be rid of it, not for my own projects, but for working with other people that use headers and ips files that require headers. I dunno, I'm trying to remember if he agreed to not care about that anymore. I see him on gmail occasionally, I could ask him sometime. I think the other thing he mentioned was making sure he wouldn't receive any e-mails about future releases concerning bug reports, etc. Imo though, it might be a waste of time to continue working on the debugger as I'm not a huge fan of the interface he designed to begin with, in spite of the fact that I can use it very competently now. It could use some work in the graphics department (things like displaying vram, oam, and cgram). I have more optimism about the prospects of Parasyte's ideas than in working with the Geiger debugger. Not that I think the Geiger debugger is bad, I think it gets a bit too much criticism from some people *winks*. It's just too limited for more advanced debugging. So, what does this mean? You haven't done anything with it, you're not going to do anything with it, and you're not going to give it out? As far as his request goes. Easy. Release it under a different name, on a different website, with a different e-mail for contact. Nobody will bother him about it. The interface can be fairly easily changed. It's a .NET WinForm as far as I can tell The valuable part of the source in my opinion is the hooks already made into the emulator. |
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BRPXQZME
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« Reply #23 on: March 18, 2009, 02:27:48 pm » |
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Because I am such a bleeding heart at times, I actually would add a debugger to various emulators (including bsnes) if I really knew what the @#$% I was doing. And therein lies the problem.... \ There's nothing quite like learning. :angel: Allow me to overemphasize the qualifier “ reallyâ€. It is not a lot of work to make a PoS debugger that is functional but nearly unusable – you just need to make an editable hex viewer that tracks the registers, maybe add breakpoints, maybe a crap disassembler... done! Here’s lookin’ at you, gdb It takes a considerable amount of work, knowledge, and just plain knack to make a good debugger that people can use. I have neither the patience nor the experience it’d take to enumerate the required features, much less implement them. EDIT: forgot to mention... bsnes does have a tracer, but as with all things bsnes, you have to roll your own to even enable it. Obviously, I don’t even know if it’s any good, but it’s certainly there. |
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« Last Edit: March 18, 2009, 03:54:52 pm by BRPXQZME »
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MathOnNapkins
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« Reply #24 on: March 18, 2009, 02:33:43 pm » |
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I *was* going to do something with it, but I ended up putting that off indefinitely until I can get some other projects out of the way. Looking at emulator source is not my idea of a good time, to be frank. If I had done anything with it, I would have released it. I had a feature that I was researching how to do but I never got very far.
IIRC, the main window is a MFC dialog but I'm not positive. I got the sucker compiling just fine in VS 2005 almost a year ago.
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Parasyte
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« Reply #25 on: March 18, 2009, 06:43:10 pm » |
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Not that I think the Geiger debugger is bad, I think it gets a bit too much criticism from some people *winks*. It's just too limited for more advanced debugging.
I criticize it because I made the initial debugger hooks and interface for FCEU*. Maybe that gives me some leverage to do so, maybe it doesn't. But none of that changes the fact that people [still] have problems using Geiger's debugger. |
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Nightcrawler
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« Reply #26 on: March 19, 2009, 07:27:10 am » |
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I *was* going to do something with it, but I ended up putting that off indefinitely until I can get some other projects out of the way. Looking at emulator source is not my idea of a good time, to be frank. If I had done anything with it, I would have released it. I had a feature that I was researching how to do but I never got very far.
IIRC, the main window is a MFC dialog but I'm not positive. I got the sucker compiling just fine in VS 2005 almost a year ago.
Oops, you're right. I could have sworn I read somewhere it required .NET, but it only required the VS2003 DLLs. My mistake. Either way, the interface isn't hard to change around. I would assume the source has resource files for the dialog in VS. Anyway, it's a moot point being that nobody is going to do anything with it anyway.  |
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