As I said earlier, I wanted to do a clean install with the brand new Yellow Dog Linux 6.2 and that’s what I did. The installation wen’t fine, same as usual, and it took forever. Suprisingly the display was set correctly to 720p without any manual tweaking. At the time I thought it would be the ideal resolution for playing emulator games (from my earlier experiences).  There were narrow black borders around the screen, but I can live with that. So the next step, once again, was to install the actual emulators.

I added the PS3Bodega repos as usual and installed following emulators: xe, vice and e-uae. At the time I did this, the YDL 6.2 repos were still missing content, so I had to manually add the dvd as a repository source (there were instructions on the YDL forums for that), but it should only be a temporary problem and not needed in the future. Also, the bluetooth is not currently working in YDL 6.2, but I hope that too will be fixed soon. With the bluetooth not working, you have to use a usb cord for plugging in your controller, but luckily that works out of the box.

All the emulators I tried worked just about the same as before. I knew I couldn’t run most of the them in full screen, because the fps would drop dramatically. Instead I wanted to try the scaling method. With scaling, you run the emulators at their native resolution, which is usually very low. This way the fps should be fine. The scaler is an external program, which is developed for the CELL processor, and it uses the additional SPE’s to do all the work. The main CPU (PPE), which is running the emulator and the operating system, is not stressed. In other words the scaler program magnifies part of the screen, so you can get a bigger picture without using the emulators full screen or double screen actions, which would stress the main cpu and make the fps drop. The scaling method works quite well, but unfortunately it’s not very user friendly.

Scaler

To install the scaler, as root, do:

yum install scaler

Scaler is the original scaler program, but there are some modifications available, like f-scaler, which provides some additional features. Scaler is a command-line program which takes two arguments: -s and -t. “s” is for the scale, it has to be an interger, usually something between 2 and 4. The “t” is for timeout, I usually set it far (like 100000) and kill the process manually. This is how I use the scaler:

1. Start the emulator just as usual and load up the game you want to play
2. Open terminal and start the scaler: “scaler -t 10000 -s 2″
3. -> The display should now be scaled in the middle of the screen
4. Press alt-tab to switch to the emulator game
5. Use alt-mousedrag to center the window so you can see the whole screen.
6. Play
7. When finished, alt-tab change back to terminal and ctrl-c to kill the scaler process

Not very userfriendly as you can see…

You probably might want to try the different scale options of the scaler for each emulator. Unfortunately you have to use integers, which makes it a somewhat limited tool. You cannot give the scaler an option like -s 1.5. I also figured that 720p is not very ideal for screen resolution, when using scaler, because anything over scale option 2 usually gets too big. So I changed my resolution to 1080p to get me more leverage when using the scaler. As you’re not using the emulator to get full screen, it runs perfectly ok, even if the reolution is so big. With vice for example, I use the scale option 4.

You can also start the scaler along with the emulator or create a script for it. You do it like this: “scaler -t 10000 -s 2 & x64 && killall scaler”. So that would first run the scaler, then the emulator x64 (vice) and afterwards when you quit the emulator it would also kill the scaler. I found this to be quite unusable, as you need menus to load up the games etc, but if you can or want to load the game using command line options of your emulator, it might be good way to go. I think people use that when playing mame games for example.

Afterthoughts

So using the scaler in my opinion is currently the best way to play emulator games in (almost) fullscreen. It’s not as easy and userfriendly as I’d hope it to be, but considering the alternatives, well, it’s basically the only way. Scaler is very helpful as it is, but I would like to see following features in the future:

• A Graphical User Interface. Would make it a lot easier to use for newbies
• More scale options, not only integers. At least “half modes” like 2.5 needed.
• The scaler could automatically get the target window size and calculate the optimal scaling to reach fullscreen (dynamic scaling)
• Interactive scaling through hot-keys (like Ctrl+ would increase the scale and Ctrl- decrease)

I know those features will most probably never be implemented but one can always wish right?

EDIT: Implemented Scalergui. Check it out!

And here’s a little tip for those who want to use the xe multisystem emulator. It’s from YDL forum. I had some trouble when I wanted to use the controller to play games, but replacing these options to the configuration file(s) helped (~/.xe/rc/xerc):

# Joystick bindings

Joy     1       up              4
Joy     1       down            6
Joy     1       left            7
Joy     1       right           5
Joy     1       start           3
Joy     1       select          0
Joy     1       button1         15
Joy     1       button2         12
Joy     1       button3         14
Joy     1       button4         13

I’m still going for YDL, since they have made some additional tweaks concerning ps3, that I’d have to do manually if using other distributions such as Ubuntu. There should be some VRAM swap tricks etc. I’m planning to do a clean install and I’m actually downloading the iso as I’m writing this. I hope I find the time to tinker with this soon and write about my latest experiences. So, hold on for “playing emulator games with my ps3 with linux pt. 3″

As long as I’ve played with computers and consoles I’ve also been interested in hockey games. I have a long history with them, starting from Intellivision’s NHL Hockey, to C64 games such as Super Star Ice Hockey and International Hockey, to PC classics like Face off!, along with Brett Hull and Wayne Gretzky brand games to the newest EA Sports and 2K games. EA dominated the hockey genre from 1994 to 2002 with no real competition. Then 2K launched their own series, which was supreme compared to EA. Then, around 2007 or 2008, EA introduced the great Skill Stick –feature and stole the crown back again. As of this moment, EA Sports NHL Hockey 09 is the best hockey game. Ever.

The reason why 09 is the best, is not because of graphics or game play, which are great by the way, but because of the online experience. Finally something new, something really addictive! EASHL, the online hockey league, is just pure genius. It introduces clan-like team play completely new to hockey games. It’s just as fun as playing counter-strike clan matches, and it works just as good. Basically anyone can start a team and recruit players to join it. Then you play matches against other teams, and climb up the EASHL ladder. The league is divided into divisions, which hold 100 teams each. Every team plays in the same league. You start from the bottom naturally. Also, as your player gains experience, it also gains points that you can use to upgrade the abilities such as speed & accuracy. If you haven’t done so already, check out some reviews to learn more.

I have to admit that I wasn’t originally very interested in the whole online team play idea. I had played 1 vs 1 online games for many years and I thought they were as good as online hockey could ever be. The first time I tried the team play, it really didn’t feel that special. I played with some random players from around the world, a single game and no EASHL league. It was somewhat laggy and not very interesting at all. I almost left it there. I’m glad I didn’t.

One day reading through one of my regular bulletin boards (not specific to games/ps3) I noticed that someone had started EASHL team with PS3 platform and was looking for players. I joined the advertised irc-channel and later the team. We actually use irc to communicate and coordinate when to play. We also chat during the matches. We could use headsets but for now irc has proven to be enough for us. We play just to have fun, so it’s not as professional as some other teams (which I hear even practice between games).

The whole experience is all about the community, the team. Just as in counter-strike, when you learn to know the people you play with, the whole experience changes. You don’t just play, you spend time with other people, talk and laugh. You have a role and place in the team. Playing as a team differs a lot from playing solo. You have to consider the other people, especially when you have some connection to them, even though it’s only through irc.

I almost had lost all hope for hockey games before NHL 09. Now I just wait next year, and hope that 2K comes up with something even more fun.

After installation and setting up it was time to test the emulators. I found out that there is an unofficial repository called PS3Bodega Software Repository which has updated emulators and other interesting software that the official ydl repositories lack. So I followed these instructions on how to set it up. It seems that the PS3 Bodega is a gold-mine to everything related ps3 and YDL (especially emulators & games) so i highly recommend it. Check out the how-to section and forums at least.

Again, my first choice was playing sega megadrive/genesis games. As I knew from my earlier experiences, I didn’t even bother to try dgen. Instead I did some digging (in YDL & PS3 Bodega forums) and found out that there is a multi emulator system called xe, that should run megadrive (and many other) games fine. It can be found from the Bodega repository. It worked flawlessly! Well, as I said before, first I had 1080p and the the fullscreen emulation was way too slow but after changing to 720p (which is better anyway, because now you can even read the text on screen as it’s not that small anymore) that worked fine as well. Even the pad worked right away, after choosing to use joystick from the settings menu. GREAT!

Then I tried vice (c64 emulator), which didn’t even launch on psubuntu. Vice can also be found from the repository. And yet again, it worked out of the box. Now, however, I ran into my first real problems. There is no fullscreen in vice. That’s right, no fullscreen! What a bummer. This is strange, as I remember playing vice with my pc-linux in fullscreen (I could be wrong, didn’t check if it can be done). Well, the ps3 version doesn’t support it, or at least the version I installed didn’t support it. Also, the emulator complained something about the sounds when started. After spending few hours to find a fix for these I came across this forum post that saved my day. It doesn’t give you fullscreen, but it shows how to set up vice to double screen size and other settings as well (like fixing the sound problem). I guess I could have figured out the settings eventually but vice isn’t exactly the most intuitive piece of software when it comes to setting up (most of the settings are under vic-II in setting menu).

So now I have a working environment to play my sega & commodre 64 games with my ps3. I can use my sixaxis gamepad and I’m happy. What’s next? I have already installed amiga emulator and I’ve read great things about an emulator called sdlmess (again, multi emulator system). I have also installed snes9x-gtk for super nintendo games, but haven’t tried any of these yet. I also want to set up my sixaxis controller to use bluetooth so I don’t need to attach USB cord to play games. I’m probably going try some fps games as well, and dosbox of course! It seems my exploration days are not over…

The first thing I did was to install bigger hd. That was surprisingly easy as the manual had detailed instructions how to do it. The only tool you need is a philips screwdriver. The linux installation requires you to format your hd anyway, so it was a natural thing to do at that point. Ps3 provides a backup utility that you can use to backup up your games, music, pictures & everything to external USB-drive, so you don’t need to loose anything. The first strange thing was, that you can only partition the disk to either have 10GB to “other os” or 10GB to ps3. That’s it. I figured I was going to use my ps3 primarily for other things than linux, so I decided to allocate the smaller partition to linux. Why there is such a restriction, who knows?

I have used Debian & Ubuntu distributions in the past with my pc so my first choice was psubuntu. Version 7.10 (Gutsy), as newer versions don’t support ppc I followed installation instructions from the wiki and about an hour later it was running fine. Fine but slow. Really slow! I guess the low amount of RAM in ps3 was the main reason, or GNOME. Well, the slowness didn’t bother me that much. There were also problems with screen overscanning but googling with keywords: “1080p full screen overscan ps3videomode” helped out a lot. The cool thing was that the sixaxis controller worked out of the box. You just needed to press the ps button to get it registered (to test and calibrate it I used jcalibrator). Also, it needed to be connected with usb cable, as bluetooth connection required some additional tweaking. I also installed new kernel, for no particular reason, and it took a lot of unanticipated work.

Finally I was ready to play some games. I figured I’d start with dgen, the default megadrive emulator from ubuntu repositories. It installed fine and loaded my sonic the hedgehog rom. I was eager to heard the famous “Seeegaaa” sound… Duh, segmentation fault: core dumped. What the hell? After a lot of googling I found out that dgen isn’t working with ps3, nobody seems to know why. Damn. No problem, I’ll just try some another megadrive emu. Turns out most of them are not working or not found from ubuntu repositories. I even tried to compile some of them by hand but it just took way too much effort so I gave up (for some reason compiling with ps3 seems to be a lot harder than with i386). I moved on to c64, and tried out my favorite emu vice, also from the repo. Guess what? It didn’t work. At this point I had spent an entire day trying to play emulator games with my ps3 without luck. After a good night sleep I decided to ditch ubuntu, even though I love it in pc world. It worked great in every other way except for emulators. I’m sure they would’ve worked eventually, but it just seemed like too much work. I decided to try fedora based (yuck) Yellow Dog Linux, which I think is the “preferred” ps3 linux distro. Watching youtube videos and reading forums posts I expected it to run the desired emulators… But that’s another story. (to spare you, it did run them ok).