[F.Rq.] Expose GPGX' "disable sprite limit" setting

[Sonia-7]

It's an enhancement feature that's nice to have for casual playing and such. We already have it for other cores like NES/SMS/PCE, so why not.

Standalone bsnes v115 can already do it natively, so it's just a matter of importing over.

[Morilli]

I'm not actually sure what this option does exactly, is it just visual or does it actually affect emulation?
In any case this would be easy to implement; it's one of the configuration options not currently exposed anywhere in the frontend:

BizHawk/waterbox/bsnescore/bsnes/sfc/interface/configuration.hpp

Line 40 in f1f0f16

bool noSpriteLimit = false;

[Sonia-7]

It's just a visual setting. In the case of SNES it makes possible to display more than 32 sprites per scanline, bypassing the original PPU's limitation.

Such options can be toggled on/off whenever in a core and it's a non-sync setting.

[getCursorsExe]

To my surprise, this is also an issue in Genplus-gx, the upstream frontend has this option present, while BizHawk doesn't.

[Morilli]

Do you perhaps know a specific game or test rom that could be used to test this functionality?

[Sonia-7]

Do you perhaps know a specific game or test rom that could be used to test this functionality?

Yes. On Alttp's Helmasaur King battle, after you kill him the explosions will normally flicker a little, but with limit disabled they won't.

There's a practice rom of the game floating on the web that's pretty easy to find. Just google "alttp practice rom". It will let you skip straight to that battle through the in-game menu (accessible by pressing R+Start).

[Morilli]

Hm, I couldn't figure out how to get the actual boss fight to work, and from a 100% TAS playthrough I also couldn't spot the flickering in the encode (it looked pretty normal to me).

[Sonia-7]

I made a save state on e7e587d, using the vanilla USA rom:
helma.zip

This will send you straight to the boss dying. Play it with the limiter enabled, then disabled so you can see the difference. Basically, some of the explosions aren't fully rendered (parts of the graphics are missing).

[Morilli]

Have resolved the bsnes part of this with c21fedc. Wanna keep this open for genplus-gx specifically @YoshiRulz ?

[Sonia-7]

GPGX is currently the only major older system missing this feature. Do you think you can expose for it as well, @Morilli?