PS4 Emulation is now a reality, sorta....

[leadeater]

7 minutes ago, Kisai said:

The implication of a working emulator, means there is a way to play pirated games.

Or the convenience of being able to go back to using a single device, PC, and/or not having to buy the game again if it's not a console exclusive. Also being able to mod the game, speed it up, save states or heck if you just bored of playing it normally load up cheat engine etc and just have some fun.

 

Far as I've the the large portion of the emulator community is those that actually own the devices and games.

 

The implications of a working emulator is that there is a working emulator. There's a lot easier ways to pirate games than relying on emulators.

[Mark Kaine]

2 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Far as I've the the large portion of the emulator community is those that actually own the devices and games.

I sometimes lurk the rpcs3 discord - its kinda funny they apparently can see if a game is an illegal copy (through log files) and refuse to help these people  - and yes, this happens regularly (which isnt the point im trying to make, its 50/50 in my impression however tbh) I just think its funny because of people's reactions... "How do you know!!???"

 

Otherwise the discord is great too, for quick questions,  etc, i just wish they would do more with emulated psn,  apparently its an option,  but only supported for very few games ( for example id love to play Tekken Revolution,  game loads, but you cant play cause it waits for server authentication...) 

[Dracarris]

46 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Or the convenience of being able to go back to using a single device, PC

Not being force to buy, accomodate and use what is essentially yet another PC, just artifically locked down and crippled through the OS/BIOS/Firmware.

 

Edit: .. that often have such a bad thermal design and/or are so underpowered that they die early due to thermal overload.

[Kisai]

1 hour ago, Mark Kaine said:

I sometimes lurk the rpcs3 discord - its kinda funny they apparently can see if a game is an illegal copy (through log files) and refuse to help these people  - and yes, this happens regularly (which isnt the point im trying to make, its 50/50 in my impression however tbh) I just think its funny because of people's reactions... "How do you know!!???"

This is the thing I brought up in this thread twice. The vast majority of people who use the (console) emulators are the pirates. Likewise it's also usually kids/teens who are not technically proficient enough to understand that the emulator isn't for playing pirated games, and asking the developer for help is just setting off their warning flags. They know the game images are pirate copies because they've probably been cracked.

 

This isn't unique to emulators, it's just heavily prevalent in the emulation communities. Dosbox for example does not care what you do with the emulator as it requires no PC firmware to operate. However ask for help on getting a game to run, and it'll inevitably be a readily found pirate copy. ScummVM on the other hand actually whitelists non-pirate versions of games. However a rather testy attitude between the two exists because ScummVM correctly knows that pretty much all unknown versions of a game is a pirate/cracked copy.

 

Then you have MAME and it's variations which the goal is to preserve the games, but people grab the ROM libraries off the internet and package them as arcade cabinets on eBay.

 

1 hour ago, Mark Kaine said:

Otherwise the discord is great too, for quick questions,  etc, i just wish they would do more with emulated psn,  apparently its an option,  but only supported for very few games ( for example id love to play Tekken Revolution,  game loads, but you cant play cause it waits for server authentication...) 

A lot of network-related stuff is probably due to having to decrypt and re-encrypt packets. Like emulating a game server is a lot more complicated than simply allowing the games to talk to each other. So you're basically asking for two separate emulation layers, one for the PSN, and one for the game server. As it's doubtful that any PS3 game is designed around peer-to-peer communications, and no cross-play exists for PS3 games other than I think Portal 2 and FFXI/XIV (old versions.)

 

[Mark Kaine]

20 minutes ago, Kisai said:

 

A lot of network-related stuff is probably due to having to decrypt and re-encrypt packets. Like emulating a game server is a lot more complicated than simply allowing the games to talk to each other. So you're basically asking for two separate emulation layers, one for the PSN, and one for the game server. As it's doubtful that any PS3 game is designed around peer-to-peer communications, and no cross-play exists for PS3 games other than I think Portal 2 and FFXI/XIV (old versions.)

 

Yeah, i know its complicated,  just saying, they already have the basis (rpcsn) its just most games don't work yet. And in the case of the aforementioned game (TR) I think whats really happening is the game waits A) for some sort of verification and B) for "event data" which it can't get because there's no server sending that data (getting around the "verification" alone would probably a lot easier) but basically a custom server is probably needed. 

 

 

20 minutes ago, Kisai said:

The vast majority of people who use the (console) emulators are the pirates

Well, that's just your guess,  from what im seeing its roughly 50/50, I'm sure the rpcs3 guys would have more concrete info on that...

 

Edit: also realistically, the vast majority of console pirates will use the actual console for sure, its way cheaper,  should technically run without issues,  unlike many emulators... a pc that runs ps3 and up is *expensive*...

[Kisai]

1 hour ago, Mark Kaine said:

 

Well, that's just your guess,  from what im seeing its roughly 50/50, I'm sure the rpcs3 guys would have more concrete info on that...

 

Edit: also realistically, the vast majority of console pirates will use the actual console for sure, its way cheaper,  should technically run without issues,  unlike many emulators... a pc that runs ps3 and up is *expensive*...

One $2000 PC can replace thousands of dollars in consoles. You're looking at 5 generations of Playstation, Xbox, Nintendo hardware that at full price were $500 each, in each country. So even an optimistic estimate is $10,000 for NTSC and another $10,000 in PAL. That number only goes up as time goes up. Now consider that many people try to play emulators on much weaker hardware than necessary.

 

If your only goal is to play pirated games, then the emulator is more flexible to getting a game working, where as the amount of tinkering necessary to get the actual console to work is significant, and risks having it bricked or banned, which is why there is no aftermarket for game consoles that are banned. A working console is $500, a banned console is $150, same as broken ones.

 

[Craftyawesome]

5 hours ago, comander said:

also Nintendo apparently distributed a ROM that was floating on the internet, also Wii Virtual console

It looks like that because the guy who made the iNES header worked at Nintendo. https://www.resetera.com/threads/tomohiro-kawase-mightve-been-hired-by-nintendo-to-put-rom-headers-into-vc-updated-dec-1-2018.64755/#post-13593223

and at the very least, Clu Clu land was sourced from their own archive. https://www.resetera.com/threads/tomohiro-kawase-mightve-been-hired-by-nintendo-to-put-rom-headers-into-vc-updated-dec-1-2018.64755/page-3#post-13620946

[JZStudios]

9 hours ago, comander said:

To clarify context - your comment was to something I wrote as being legal (copying content you legally own onto another medium and then playing it on another device). That's 100% legal. 

I want to add on, specifically NINTENDO sells emulators (SNES mini - also Nintendo apparently distributed a ROM that was floating on the internet, also Wii Virtual console, also DS gamestore, also...). So does Sony (PlayStation Classic, PS2 emulation on PS3). So does Sega (SEGA Genesis Mini - also a game pack on STEAM that likely uses an emulator, also a Nintendo switch game pack that likely uses an emulator). 

You missed the part again where I explicitly said copying cartridges, not emulation itself. And license owners distributing their own licensed products is not in question.

 

6 hours ago, Mark Kaine said:

I sometimes lurk the rpcs3 discord - its kinda funny they apparently can see if a game is an illegal copy (through log files) and refuse to help these people

How are you supposed to make a legal copy? Do they expect everyone to buy a $60 blu-ray drive? Or maybe hack their PS3? Neither of which I'm frankly want to do. In this particular case the PS3 is my brother's but I don't think he cares if he ever gets it back.

[suicidalfranco]

5 hours ago, comander said:

SquareEnix has all but abandoned the Chrono series, which saddens me. 

 

Better finish a game with a single title than make a continuous soulless series meant only to be a quick cash grab.

1 chrono trigger > every ff

[Quackers101]

emulators are legal, in a sense.

emulated games, less to never.

do it for yourself can be fine, download/send it to someone else, not so much.

 

gaming companies do want ALL emulation to be looked at as illegal, even if some of them use emulated content, sometimes "stolen" from others.