This page documents the conversion process of .fcm to .fm2. It also documents known issues with conversion as well as known cases where conversion fails.
FCEUX uses the file format .fm2. It does NOT play .fcm files (Older versions of FCEU). However any .fcm file can be converted to .fm2 by opening FCEUX and going to tools > Convert .fm2. You can mass convert files by highlighting them in the open dialog box. On the SDL build, you can run ./fceux --fcmconvert filename.fcm
-See also:
See also:
+The old FCEUltra had a big problem with its movie recording. Every single movie was recorded with power-on, followed by a savestate. This means that WRAM (or save RAM) was being stored in its initialized state. As a consequence, many games that use save systems would go through an accelerated boot process since the save files were already initialized.
-Typically, a movie maker would load his game and let it sit at the title screen while he sipped his drink or adjusted his pants or steeled his nerves or whatever and then triggered the movie record. At that point the savefile was initialized, and the recording was already compromised. +
Typically, a movie maker would load his game and let it sit at the title screen while he sipped his drink or adjusted his pants or steeled his nerves or whatever and then triggered the movie record. At that point the savefile was initialized, and the recording was already compromised.
When preparing FCEUX for release, we decided that this was unacceptable. Therefore, every FCEUX movie is recorded from a fresh power-on with no WRAM or save RAM. Additionally, the "record from reset" was taken out because it is even worse. Now the game would be starting from initialized WRAM and initialized main ram. This can further confuse matters.
So, your movies might desync because on FCEUX the game is taking longer to boot, while it is initializing its WRAM and/or main ram.
Luckily, these are often easy to fix: since FM2 is a text format, it is trivial to insert additional empty frames into the correct locations during the game boot-up process. We have successfully used this approach to salvage a few movies. So, if you have trouble, let us know, and maybe since we have a bit of experience, we can help.
@@ -34,14 +36,17 @@We have been excruciatingly careful not to do anything else which would adversely affect synching. We take this seriously. We have only found few desynching movies so far that we aren't able to fix.
Nearly all published .fcm files will convert without problem
-Exceptions are noted: -
Exceptions are noted:
+Converting from FMV to FCM to FM2 may work, but it fails at least for these movies:
-Some movies will desync but can be fixed by adding frames to the beginning of the movie. Basically any movie that was recorded from soft reset and uses battery backed ram will probably desync. This is because the soft reset allowed the SRAM to be cleared ahead of time, so frames were not needed to clear it in the movie (This is arguably cheating anyway, and recording from soft reset was removed in FCEUX).
Known desyncs that were fixed by adding frames:
@@ -52,7 +57,6 @@FCEUX offers extensive features and tools for making these movies. The Movies has more detailed information.
For more information visit TASVideos.
Win32
+SDL
+FCEUX is written for two platforms: SDL and Win32. The two ports have some significant differences. + The Win32 port has an extensive set of native gui amenities and tools. + The SDL port supports many of the features of the Win32 build (Lua scripting, movie recording), + however some of the Win32 features are exclusive to the platform. The Win32 port has a built-in GUI, + whereas the SDL port has a GTK launcher GUI. The SDL port should run any UNIX-like OS (Linux/Solaris/BSD). +
+ +Network play is not presently functional. Fixing it is a high priority.
+ +The latest win32 interim build is generally fresh within a day or two. + If you are working with a developer to fix an issue affecting you then this is where you will find your fixed build.
++ Table of Contents: +
FCEUX is a cross platform, NTSC and PAL Famicom/NES emulator that + is an evolution of the original FCE Ultra emulator. Over time FCE + Ultra had separated into many separate branches. +
+The concept behind FCEUX is to merge elements from FCE Ultra, + FCEU rerecording, FCEUXD, FCEUXDSP, and FCEU-mm into a single branch + of FCEU. As the X implies, it is an all-encompassing FCEU emulator + that gives the best of all worlds for the general player, the + ROM-hacking community, and the Tool-Assisted Speedrun Community. +
+ ++ FCEUX stores configuration, savestates, movies, screenshots, amount other things + in "~/.fceux". This is referred to as the "base directory". +
++ FCEUX emulates the standard NES gamepad, the Four-Score multiplayer + adapter, the Zapper, the Power Pad, and the Arkanoid controller. The + Famicom version of the Arkanoid controller, the "Space Shadow" gun, the + Famicom 4-player adapter, and the Family Keyboard are also emulated. +
++ Most Zapper NES games expect the Zapper to be plugged into port 2. + and most VS Unisystem games expect the Zapper to be plugged + into port 1. +
+ The left mouse button is the emulated trigger button for the + Zapper. The right mouse button is also emulated as the trigger, + but as long as you have the right mouse button held down, no color + detection will take place, which is effectively like pulling the + trigger while the Zapper is pointed away from the television screen. + Note that you must hold the right button down for a short + time to have the desired effect. +
++ You will need the FDS BIOS ROM image in the base FCEUX directory. + It must be named "disksys.rom". FCEUX will not load FDS games + without this file. +
+ Two types of FDS disk images are supported: disk images with the + FWNES-style header, and disk images with no header. The number + of sides on headerless disk images is calculated by the total file + size, so don't put extraneous data at the end of the file. ++ You should make backups of all of your FDS games you use with + FCEUX. This is because FCEUX will write the disk image back to + the storage medium, and the disk image in RAM might have been corrupted + because of inaccurate emulation(this case is not likely to occur, but + it could occur). +
++ The Game Genie ROM image is loaded from the file "gg.rom" in the + base directory the first time Game Genie emulation is enabled and + a ROM image is loaded since the time FCEUX has run. +
+ The ROM image may either be the 24592 byte iNES-format image, or + the 4352 raw ROM image. +
+ Remember that enabling/disabling Game Genie emulation will not take + effect until a new game is loaded(this statement shouldn't concern + any of the "run once" command-line driven ports). +
++FCE Ultra currently only supports VS Unisystem ROM images in the +iNES format. DIP switches and coin insertion are both emulated. +The following games are supported, and have palettes provided(though not +necessarily 100% accurate or complete): +
+ Place the IPS file in the same directory as the file to load, + and name it filename.ips. +
++ Examples: Boat.nes - Boat.nes.ips + Boat.zip - Boat.zip.ips + Boat.nes.gz - Boat.nes.gz.ips + Boat - Boat.ips ++
+ Some operating systems and environments will hide file extensions. + Keep this in mind if you are having trouble. +
++ Patching is supported for all supported formats(iNES, FDS, UNIF, and + NSF), but it will probably only be useful for the iNES format. It + can be used with the FDS format, but be warned that it will permanently + patch your disk image, as the disk image is written back to disk + when the game is unloaded(unless the disk image is in a zip file, in + which case it isn't written back to disk). UNIF files can't be + patched well with the IPS format because they are chunk-based with no + fixed offsets. +
++ +
++ NOTE:There is not a GUI available to remap these hotkeys for SDL. If you really + want to remap the hotkeys, you can edit the config file manually and replace the values + with SDL keysyms. However, hotkey remapping is planned for gfceux in the near future. +
+
| Key: | Action: |
|---|---|
| F1 | Cheat menu (command-line only). |
| F2 | Toggles savestate binding to movies. |
| F3 | Load lua script. |
| F4 | Toggle background rendering. |
| F5 | Save state. |
| F6 | Toggle skipping lag in frame advance. |
| F7 | Load state. |
| F8 | Toggle lag counter display. |
| F9 | Toggle movie frame counter. |
| F10 | Toggle movie subtitles. |
| F11 | Reset emulation. |
| F12 | Save screen snapshot. |
| Shift + F5 | Begin movie recording. |
| Shift + F7 | Open a movie for playback. |
| 0-9 | Select save state slot. |
| - | Decrease emulation speed. |
| = | Increase emulation speed. |
| Pause | Pause emulation. |
| \ | Advance a single frame. |
+ Could someone test this please? +
| Key: | Action: |
|---|---|
| F8 | Insert coin. |
| F6 | Show/Hide dip switches. |
| 1-8 | Toggle dip switches(when dip switches are shown). |
+ Could someone test this please? +
| Key: | Action: |
|---|---|
| F6 | Select disk and disk side. |
| F8 | Eject or Insert disk. |
These are the default keys for the first player gamepad. These can + be remapped using the --inputcfg command line parameter or using gfceux. +
| Key: | Button on Emulated Gamepad: |
|---|---|
| K | B |
| J | A |
| Enter/Return | Start |
| Tab | Select |
| W | Up |
| A | Left |
| S | Down |
| D | Right |
+ Could someone test this please? +
| Side B | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| O | P | +[ | ] |
| K | L | ; | ' |
| M | , | . | / |
| Side A | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| P | +[ | ||
| K | L | ; | ' |
| , | . | ||
+ All emulated keys are mapped to the closest open key on the PC + keyboard, with a few exceptions. The emulated "@" key is + mapped to the "`"(grave) key, and the emulated "kana" key + is mapped to the "Insert" key(in the 3x2 key block above the + cursor keys). +
++ To enable or disable Family Keyboard input, press the "Scroll Lock" key. + When Family Keyboard input is enabled, FCE Ultra will also attempt + to prevent any key presses from being passed to the GUI or system. +
++ FCEUX supports arguments passed on the command line. Arguments + are taken in the form of "--parameter value". Most arguments that have + both a parameter and a value will be saved in the configuration file. +
+ NOTE: This list is incomplete! For a full list of options, run + fceux without any arguments. ++
| Argument: | Value Type: | Default value: | Description: |
|---|---|---|---|
| --pal | 0|1 | 0 | Emulate a PAL NES. Otherwise emulate an NTSC NES. |
| --gamegenie | 0|1 | 0 | Emulate a gamie genie (gg.rom required). |
| --nospritelim | 0|1 | 1 | Disbales the 8 sprites per scanline limitation. |
| --frameskip | integer | 0 | Sets number of frames to skip per emulated frame (must be built with frameskip support). |
| --palette | filename | 0 | Load a custom global palette from given file. Specifying "0" will cause FCEUX to stop using the custom global palette. |
| --ntsccolor | 0|1 | 0 | Enable NTSC NES colors. |
| --sound | 0|1 | 1 | Enable sound |
| --soundvol x | integer | 100 | Set sound volume. |
| --soundq x | 0|1 | 1 | Enable high-quality sound emulation. |
| --clipsides | 0|1 | 0 | Clip leftmost and rightmost 8 columns of pixels of the video output. |
| --slend | integer | 231 | Last scanline to be rendered. |
| --slstart | integer | 0 | First scanline to be rendered |
+
| Name: | Contribution(s): |
|---|---|
| punkrockguy318 | +FCEUX SDL Documentation rewrite. |
Table of Contents:
+A lot of work that has been done on the FCE code base was been windows only, so + some features have not been implemented into the more portable SDL version.
+Here is a list of planned features that are currently in the Win32 build + but are missing from the SDL build:
+I'm going to reiterate that much of the work that has been done of the FCEUX + code base has been windows only, so some features will probably never be ported + to the SDL version. If you are a casual user that just wants to play old NES games, the SDL + build will be sufficient for you. However, if you want to use the extensive + TAS and debugging features that FCEUX has to offer, you are better of using + the windows build in wine. Here is a list of features + that will most likely never be ported to the SDL port.
++ You can configure the first gamepad by running fceux --inputcfg gamepad1
+When you do this, you'll be presented with a black window with a titlebar + indicating what button to map. FCEUX will look for two + of the same keypress/joystick event in a row. If it doesn't find two of the same + keypresses in a row, it will allow you to map the button to four seperate keys.
+Input configuration is planned for gfceux.
+ +You don't! As of version 2.0.3, lua is optional. However, the lua scritping + engine in fceux is very powerful, and will be used more and more by fceux in the future.
+ ++
| Name: | Contribution(s): |
|---|---|
| punkrockguy318 | +Author of this document |
For more details see the version history
+ +You can find out what we've been up to since the last release by checking the changelog directly.
+ We also have and IRC channel #fceu on freenode.net
- - +
03 November 2009
The 2.1.2 release that fixes some bugs of 2.1.1, increases game compatibility, launches a new PPU core, and adds usability enhancements to the windows port.
+-
+