Got new capture card; avermedia gc573. Here are some snaps of my PCE color demos using retrotink 5x. These are mostly just test images to see how my conversion settings looked. I've had these for a while. NOTE: Composite out of the real system - not RGB. #pcengine #PCエンジン

#PCエンジン #pcengine #tg16 #retrogaming I did some testing the other weekend on the Turbo Everdrive Pro. It supports 8megabyte rom images using the SF2 full mapper range. Pretty easy to use. The Pro has 16megabytes of ram, so hopefully we can get a future update for SF2 implementation that supports that range for it. I have a personal build of Mesen that supports it. And hopefully in Mister as well (need to have some working support for it first, before going around asking for updates). I need to unpack my Mister and see what it currently supports. I'm not sure if it supports any of the extended ranges of the SF2 mapper. It needs a better name than "SF2 extended mapper". Turbo Mapper? HuMem mapper? HuGe mapper hahah.

This is a great read-through post! Love hearing the details of stuff under the hood.

#PCエンジン #pcengine #ai #ai_slop #slop_manager I think the debate about AI in related to programming/development is pretty interesting. But the one that sticks out to me the most.. is coding. TLDR; "vibe coding" isn't just development without hands-on coding. People are using "vibe coding" to do a lot more than just "coding". Skip to the end for the point of this post (tldr). As in, defenders of vibe-coding seem to have the perspective that coding is a "means to an end". I think for most modern software.. they're not entirely wrong. Even before AI, there has been this push to do as little coding as possible.. and just "configure" what you need. I mean, Salesforce built an entire billion-dollar platform and motto on it: clicks over code. Tho the irony there, is more complex projects still need coders haha (at the time). But even then, when I saw "frameworks" for front-end stuff.. the pattern I saw was "write as little code as humanly possible". I'm not a full-stack or web-dev "developer". But I did spend more than a year doing full-stack full-time about 7 years ago (Vue was one of the frameworks). Anyway, the trend and pattern was already there. And from a business model it makes sense - why should I hire and pay more for someone with a CS degree.. when I can pay less for a scrapy boot-camp dev - that does "code lite". That is not me saying that.. those were the words of the director on a project I worked on. Her view was CS degree devs always asking for more money, more likely to job hop for better opportunities, etc. Always causing a risk to the projects that ran with a lean crew. And she wasn't wrong. I did exactly that haha - complained and got a big raise.. and then left for better opportunities no long after. But when it comes to retro systems, what does it mean to take code out of the loop (AI does your coding)? Because outside of counting cycles, there are a lot of "high" level optimizations you still need to apply. There are constraints of the system.. as a system design challenge. Nothing is free. You can have the best/fastest code.. but if you high level design is hot garbage.. code won't fix it (performance, capability, whatever). But a high level optimization can overcome garbage (but functional) code. So if you take code out of the equation, you're still left with all sorts of things you still need to understand and optimize on a high level - all around the hardware itself. For example, there's only so much bandwidth for updating VRAM on these system (unless you're the NES haha), right? SMS, PCE, MD, SNES - there is only so much you can upload in a frame. So what happens when you have use case scenarios that blow your bandwidth budget? Do you just take the hit and slowdown the game? Well, if your code is already optimal.. then that level of work is on the system design level. Start with converting the dumb schedular for uploads.. to a smart scheduler. Or start imposing new rules for upload slots. Or Partial streaming and lowest priority drops. Etc. You have all these things that need to update.. what can be delayed that won't have a visual or control-feedback impact? If you have a priority system, how do you avoid starvation of lower priority uploads in the queue? Do you implement a gradual priority increment over time for stuff waiting in the queue? This is what high level optimization looks like. That kind thing, where even if the code was average - your performance optimizations come from a higher level domain - system level design. And I don't mean "system" as physical game system.. I mean system in engineering terms. You could apply this to all sorts of aspects of a game. My point being, you could be a systems architect - principle or senior principle, and not write any code.. but have the biggest impact on performance and execution. In that respect, code IS just a means to an end. As in, you have that deep understanding, knowledge, and skill.. you're just not writing any code. And.. I have found a few people like this - that have NEVER written any code in their life, but just intuitively understand systems at this level.. and can come up with clever solutions that even experienced codes didn't think of (I'm talking a retro game development here). Not everything is code.. and I say that as someone who has cut their teeth in writing crazy "clever" assembly code that takes into account every cycle. But vibe-coding without this system level knowledge/experience/understand.. means you're also vibe-"system engineering" and vibe-"system architecting".. not just vibe "coding". I think the general public just sees or thinks only about the coding part of it.. but a lot of it is vibe-"do everything for me".. and not just code. There's a difference between a "tool" and a "genie". Turning on god-mode in a game doesn't make you better at the game.. and skill atrophy sets in, it makes you worse. Or you never had the skill/experience to begin with. There is a difference between someone who knows what they are doing, has that deep understanding, experience, knowledge and real capability.. and using AI as tool to develop the code. Vs someone that "vibe-coded" a project into existence - with minimal or no experience. Think of it like a veteran Lead that's been given a team of AI workers to perform the tasks, VS the junior engineer that got asked to lead a project with the same AI team. The real Lead is going to be in control of the system design/arch - making corrections, giving thorough directions. The junior SWE is going to be dependent on AI making most (if not all) of those decisions. (tdlr) I have been running some experiments on this over the past couple of months. From the systems-engineering and systems architect perspective.. I'll post some interesting findings for what hands-off "vibe-everything" has produced (from the top models on high effort). To be fair, I used the PC-Engine as the platform of choice... since I know it inside and out.. like the back of my hand. I needed to be able to fully 100% properly assess things/results. I think the results are pretty interesting (and not all of it good way, for sure). I'll post the results in an update. FYI - this isn't "AI sucks", or "AI is great".. just an academic-ish perspective of AI performance with experienced guidance vs hands-off "do it all". If you're a SWE right now in the field, you probably already have some experience with this anyway. But this still might be interesting. At least, I found the results interesting. Note: Those YT videos where they give it a long prompt to make a game - is a lousy way to evaluate any model hahah. This also doesn't deal with art and music - that's a whole 'nother topic.