What is your most wanted new feature in Cd-iEmu

[Nitrosoxide]

Anyways, I figured this would be a new fun topic for everyone to voice their opinion.

Plus, it might give cdifan a good list of things he might want to look at.

For me

1. Keyboard Support and Joystick/Gamepad support

Recent Emulator and PC gaming has never been so smooth. After getting an Xbox 360™ Wireless Gaming Receiver for Windows + a x360 controller. It makes me wish that CdiEmu supported gamepads, including support for the analog stick.


2. Save State Support

Of course what good is playing a lengthy game on your cd-i Emulator, if you have to restart to the beginning each time. So this feature is a must.


3. Multi-player Support.
Currently I'm pretty sure only 1 player is supported on CdiEmu. And While a good deal of Cd-i Games are only single player. The Upcoming Frog Feast indeed is a two player game. Of course multiplayer support would only be truly effective with gamepad support.


4. Emulation of the "weirder" Cd-i Peripherals

Mainly the Roller Controller and CD-i Trackball.
Perhaps analog sticks of the newer game pads would be a perfect fit. I know the 360's joystick is pretty accurate.

[cdifan]

Jostick support is already available but a bit spotty. Check out the RELNOTES file alongside the exe.

The rest are already on my list, but thanks for explicitly listing them!

[Nitrosoxide]

After playing around with the emulator alot more in the last week I've come up with a couple more feature ideas

A more advanced Mouse Cursor Interface

While the mouse interface of Cd-i Emu is useable, there are definitely major glitches.

1. When the emulator is active with a game the computer mouse is only able to function within the emulator. By this I mean that you often can’t use your computer mouse to click outside the emulation screen, its “trapped”. Nor can you click the emulator menus (File, Emulate, Decode, Window, Options, Help). This means that it’s often hard to exit the emulator, switch games, or get full screen mode without a good amount of trial and error. By trial and error I mean usually pushing either (cntrl+alt+del) or hitting the windows start button a couple times and fidgeting the mouse.


2. When using a gamepad the mouse is not able to be hidden. Instead the cursor will appear in the middle of the Cd-i Screen. You can try to move it out of the way, but it just reappears in the same place. Which is kind of annoying.

Better Full Screen Support

While Full Screen Support is definitely implemented, it doesn’t make the Windows Taskbar disappear. Nor can you have a experience (even by pulling down the taskbar) where the entire screen is 100% Cd-I since the cd-I emulator does have a button toolbar which I don’t think you can get rid of.


Different Display Supports

After hearing the cdi supported SCART and so and so, I’d really like to see how much the platform can be pushed to get the best display possible. Currently with cd-I emulator I hook it up to my widescreen HDTV through the computers VGA port. So I’d love to see the best display possible. I really don’t know much about this topic. But, Nintendo’s virtual console and xbox live seems to do a good job of displaying older games in 480p.

I’m not sure if it would make any difference for widescreen users, but maybe a widescreen option that emulated some of the cd-I models abilities to stretch to widescreen might also be kind of cool. It was also mentioned that SCART was supported and I hear that SCART can be used as component video… so maybe there’s something there.

[Nitrosoxide]

Guess I'll add one more to this list...


Emulation directly from CD

Honestly the main reason for this, is that there are plenty of CD-i games, that are notoriously difficult to make a playable image out of. I Indeed spent about a year working on trying to get a suitable copy of The Apprentice, which is unfortunate since its probably one of the best games on the system.

[cdifan]

Emulation directly from CD

Honestly the main reason for this, is that there are plenty of CD-i games, that are notoriously difficult to make a playable image out of.

I don't see how this situation can possibly improve by moving the CD access into CD-i Emulator.

On a PC, getting data from a CD-i disc requires "raw" read techniques which differ greatly accross drives and drivers (read: Windows versions); I could never spend the amount of time on this that the authors of e.g. IsoBustor or CloneCD have. Some CD drives don't support reading CD-i or CD Ready discs at all, anyway; there is just no way that CD-i Emulator could fix this...

And there are also emulation timing issues that can only be fixed by using "read-ahead" which quite possibly requires making CD-i Emulator multithreaded...

[Nitrosoxide]

You definitely shouldn't spend time on it... it was indeed my last idea of things that would make a welcome addition, as it obviously would. But, I think that, the fact that even if games are notoriously hard to make a image out of, with some work its possible.

Just if this ever gets open sourced its would be nice. But ya I definitely can see what you mean now that you point out the problems with making it.

[WindowsKiller]

First of all, please don't take the following words as an offence. I just write down my opinion without caring about being polite. That's what I always do, even if most people don't like it.

On a PC, getting data from a CD-i disc requires "raw" read techniques which differ greatly accross drives and drivers (read: Windows versions); I could never spend the amount of time on this that the authors of e.g. IsoBustor or CloneCD have. Some CD drives don't support reading CD-i or CD Ready discs at all, anyway; there is just no way that CD-i Emulator could fix this...

There are a lot of other emulators out there that can play discs with weird formats directly without having the user to make an image. I fail to see the problem; raw reading isn't as problematic as you seem to think. Now if a drive simply doesn't support CD-Ready, ok, you can't change that, and no one says you should try. But 98% of all CD-i discs aren't in CD-Ready format anyway, and the remaining 2% *can* be read too if the drive supports it.

Anyway, emulation directly from CD and keyboard controlling support are the main things I'm missing most as well. But I gave hope up long ago... Two years have passed since I bought the emulator and not even the smallest update has been released since then. I know you say you're busy and such, but seriously, how long does it take to add something like keyboard support? 5 minutes, 10 minutes maybe - unless your code is badly structured. Seems like you got your money from all the people and don't care about your product any longer. Really a shame.

Before you say I've got no clue what I'm talking about: I'm a programmer as well and worked on emulators, tools involving cd reading, custom file systems (e.g. 3DO) etc.

Bottom line: I can't recommend anyone wasting money on this "emulator". Any company providing such non-existing support for a commercial product would have long ran out of clients...

[Devin]

Bottom line: I can't recommend anyone wasting money on this "emulator". Any company providing such non-existing support for a commercial product would have long ran out of clients...

I don't think we were ever under much of an illusion about CD-i Emulator. It was going to serve a die-hard core contingent of CD-i fanatics anyway. Yet, like yourself I look forward to the day when CD-i Emulator offers increased compatibility and additional features like those listed above. Hopefully expanding the emulators user base.

The demo offered by cdifan allows users to trial whatever CD-i software they have before purchasing the unlimited product. So I hope they know what the emulator offers!

Fact of the matter is that cdifan is not a multi-national conglomerate and by no means a 'company'. If the emulator wasn't a 'pay for play' program we wouldn't be discussing this, and I for one don't begrudge cdifan a few Euros for the return I've had playing around with CD-i Emulator and enjoying the exceptional visual quality of SPC Vision games (those pesky CD-Ready Discs!).

... and you should know we don't take offense easily WindowsKiller, we support one of the most loathed video game formats in the world for Christs sake!

[Bas]

Before 2005 I never believed a true CD-i Emulator was going to happen, and yet cdifan offered a miracle to CD-i fanatics! It's an amazing achievement without a doubt, and it certainly attracted me to CD-i more and more. No-one promised a time frame for new updates.

I'm a programmer as well and worked on emulators, tools involving cd reading, custom file systems (e.g. 3DO) etc.

Windowkiller, seriously, when you're a programmer you should know how irritating it sounds when kids post stuff like that... Now what is your intention? Demanding more updates? I expected more of you...

When time increases more and more regular CD-i players will die and people will appreciate CD-i Emulator more and more.

The website is very clear about trying the trial first before you buy. I think it's worth all its money, but CD-i will always be for the specific CD-i enthusiast!

[rdjnl]

(...) we don't take offense easily WindowsKiller, we support one of the most loathed video game formats in the world for Christs sake!

I happen to have seen the last post of the GameEx guy (Nologic) on these boards, also with 'critisism' ( ) about cd-i emulator. I see it has been removed.

[Bas]

Well, you catched that quick
As long as people behave, criticism is fine. His initial criticism is available here though. About the rest: Take it or leave it.

[eproxy]

Before 2005 I never believed a true CD-i Emulator was going to happen, and yet cdifan offered a miracle to CD-i fanatics! It's an amazing achievement without a doubt, and it certainly attracted me to CD-i more and more. No-one promised a time frame for new updates.

I'm a programmer as well and worked on emulators, tools involving cd reading, custom file systems (e.g. 3DO) etc.

Windowkiller, seriously, when you're a programmer you should know how irritating it sounds when kids post stuff like that... Now what is your intention? Demanding more updates? I expected more of you...

When time increases more and more regular CD-i players will die and people will appreciate CD-i Emulator more and more.

The website is very clear about trying the trial first before you buy. I think it's worth all its money, but CD-i will always be for the specific CD-i enthusiast!

These are logical replies not necessarily bashing anyone just cries for help and wanting to know the progress and when to maybe expect an update also offering support for things to take under consideration.

[Devin]

Yeah, back to the subject. We want KEYBOARD support

[cdifan]

Believe me, I am aware that keyboard support is the most wanted feature for CD-i Emulator

But it's not as easy as you might think, especially since the original structure of that piece of code has turned out to be a bad design in view of the differences in pointing device handling between the various player models. I did some work on the Goldstar and CD-i 370 players recently and that has uncovered yet another set of misfeatures in that design...

[Bas]

These are logical replies not necessarily bashing anyone just cries for help and wanting to know the progress and when to maybe expect an update also offering support for things to take under consideration.

Thanks for the explanation