SEGA Mega Drive Classics Hub Coming To Steam April 28th

[Patron]

Well, that comes unexpected...

Inside the Sega Classics folder lies uncompressed ROMs with 68K and SGD files ready for the emulator of your choice.

Nice move, SEGA and D3T!

[Cobalt_Bolt]

So I was playing around with the new hub and I decided to boot up Sonic 3&K. Turns out the game runs in a 4:3 aspect ratio with no other options when compared to the old launcher which allows for 4:3 and up. Not exactly off to a roaring start.

[Patron]

Workshop content lies in Steam/steamapps/workshop/content/34270/[Workshop ID]/[file.ext]

[Badnik Mechanic]

Can you open the blind in the room because even when it's mid afternoon it's really dark.

Also, not too happy with it so far, just tried ecco on my girlfriends machine, what used to run fine is now incredibly laggy and the audio is completely messed up to the point that it's almost completely unplayable.

[Hyp3hat]

Yeah, my aging laptop could barely make it through the room and select a game. I mean, I'm buying a new one in a couple of weeks anyway, but I picked this up exactly for the fact that even my shitshow PC can handle Megadrive emulation. At least there's the simple launch option until then, which is just the old interface, but that doesn't have mod support.

There's already people uploading other peoples romhacks on the Workshop too, which doesn't seem like cricket. 

But y'know, this is a really cool idea! A really sweet move on SEGA's part. Looks like I'll be breaking my new laptop in with a playthough of Sonic 2 XL!

[Badnik Mechanic]

8 minutes ago, Hyp3hat said:

Yeah, my aging laptop could barely make it through the room and select a game. I mean, I'm buying a new one in a couple of weeks anyway,

This machine is barely 3 years old and whilst it's not a powerhouse or high end, it's still a pretty respectful one. 

There is no reason at all why it should be having this much trouble trying to run a bloody MegaDrive rom!

[Heckboy]

30 minutes ago, Detective Hogfather said:

Also, not too happy with it so far, just tried ecco on my girlfriends machine, what used to run fine is now incredibly laggy and the audio is completely messed up to the point that it's almost completely unplayable.

Glad to know I'm not the only one with this. My PC is definitely not good for a lot of games, so I set the room setting to "Fast" to make it a bit run a bit smoother. But even then the games themselves are unbearably choppy and unplayable.

A bit disappointed. Hoping they can either patch it or maybe add Workshop support on the old launcher or something.

EDIT: Should clarify that I could run the games just fine before, as well.

[Hyp3hat]

27 minutes ago, Detective Hogfather said:

This machine is barely 3 years old and whilst it's not a powerhouse or high end, it's still a pretty respectful one. 

There is no reason at all why it should be having this much trouble trying to run a bloody MegaDrive rom!

Yeah, that's gotta suck. It's gotta be something to do with the new effects they're putting over the games, is it possible to turn those off? I did try and have a look at the settings, but as I was creaking around the room I could barely change anything. Hopefully they patch in more settings...

[TheOcelot]

1 hour ago, Detective Hogfather said:

This machine is barely 3 years old and whilst it's not a powerhouse or high end, it's still a pretty respectful one. 

There is no reason at all why it should be having this much trouble trying to run a bloody MegaDrive rom!

Yeah, same for me. Slowdown is laughable.

It doesn't state clearly how you back-out of a game on the hub using just keyboard controls which is annoying.

Also, the fish eye lense effect looks lame.

I accidently turned-off my mouse when trying to close Steam which confused the fuck out of me.

It gave me an option to subscribe to Sonic 3 Complete (and presumably download it), but I have no idea how to download it.

Not impressed so far. I see no reason why I shouldn't just keep using Fusion which is an awesome emulator.

I'm bored of the shitty Sonic 1&2 emulations. Where's those remasters XD

[Patron]

1 minute ago, BenderBR said:

[...] It gave me an option to subscribe to Sonic 3 Complete (and presumably download it), but I have no idea how to download it. [...]

Once you've subscribed to a hack, Steam will download it (Check your tab). When you pick a game in the hub and select Mods it should show up in the list and run once you click on it.

The problem with Sonic 3 Complete seems to be that it isn't associated with any game and while it'll end up in your workshop folder, the hub can't handle standalone games yet.

[Kfarc]

So on topic of slowdowns, I highly recomend playing in fullscreen mode. When I was playing in that mode, I experienced no slowdowns (while I was experiencing them while hub was visable). I hope that one day emulator will be able to work with hub side by side, but it's not now. Also, the old luncher is still around, so thats an option...

[Guest]

5 hours ago, Jango said:

Quick, everybody upload Sonic 3 Complete! Show SEGA what we want it lol

You made this post right after mine on purpose, didn't you?

[Indigo Rush]

Excuse me while I level select my way to Launch Base Zone

[shdowhunt60]

The performance I'm getting from this is pretty spectacularly awful, and it shouldn't be like this. My laptop has a quad-core i5 and a GTX 960, I can run Dolphin with ease. Why the hell is this running so bad?

[Indigo Rush]

You don't have the Blast Processing chip installed.

[shdowhunt60]

5 minutes ago, Indigo Rush said:

You don't have the Blast Processing chip installed.

Clearly not. Dolphin be damned, this is the most demanding emulator out there.

[shdowhunt60]

So I finally figured out the problem. And it's a two-folder:

1. The game is broken on Intel HD graphics

2. It's also broken with nVidia Optimus.

So for those of you having problems with this, try running force-running it to run on whatever discrete GPU you have. If you're laptop doesn't have a discrete GPU, well you're boned.

[Indigo Rush]

Okay, so I do have one major gripe with this right now, and that's that the bundle of Genesis games I got from Amazon (which are DRM free, so there's my issue) don't carry over. They're part of the same launcher and software that the old Mega Drive launcher on Steam uses, so when I boot up a Genesis game I bought on Steam, my Amazon bundled games are present there, so I was expecting them to carry over. No such luck, however.

Does any tech-savvy SSMBer know a work-around for this yet? I have over 40 Sega Genesis games that I can't play on the hub because of this.

And, I mean, Sonic 3 & Knuckles and Golden Axe are lovely, but maybe I wanna play Streets of Rage in virtual 1990s land or something, ya dig?

[molul]

Fortunately I'm not experiencing that lag, but it's weird that it's happening even on recent machines.

I like the room and the new emulator, but I think there's too much room for improvement and I hope they do update the app in the following weeks. Things I miss:

-Being able to choose the scanlines effect opacity. The fixed value is uncomfortable to my eyes.

-I hope they remove those white lines at both sides of the game when playing in full screen. I just want a black background when playing at 4:3.

-It would be cool that when you select a game in the collection (in the 3D room) you could see some info like covers (all regions), developers, release date, etc.

-xBRZ filter. At least they added HQ2X.

 

Not bad, but I hope it gets better soon.

[shdowhunt60]

The big thing is getting it to run well on Intel HD graphics. Because the overwhelming majority of laptops out there have an Intel iGPU. I should also point out that on my 960M that I'm getting screen tearing when I pan the camera around the room.

 

I have to beg the question again as to why it is this runs so poorly? Because there really isn't a hell lot of what's going on there.

[Hyp3hat]

They're already looking into it, apparently.

http://steamcommunity.com/app/34270/discussions/0/357284767236774095/

Might be worth keeping an eye on that thread.

[Tenko]

Loving the interesting new HUB setup for the Mega Drive games on Steam. I'm also getting slow down and music stuttering randomly while loading/playing certain games, which is weird when the actual HUB runs beautifully on highest settings, running some carts via an emulator that even an old Intel Pentium could run back in the day even with said HUB still running shouldnt be an issue, so there are certainly bugs there for Sega to iron out.

I realize it wouldn't work with some games, like Sonic 3 & Knuckles for example, but I have to wonder if they plan to update the virtual cases and carts with the proper cart and spine artwork. Dont know about other language/location settings since I haven't tried changing it, but the "English" option mines set on just has carts with the game logo/name on instead of the proper pictures which would be a great touch if they decided to add them.

[molul]

What do you mean with "it wouldn't work with Sonic 3 & Knuckles"? Doesn't that game appear on the games collection?

[Hyp3hat]

I think he means that Sonic 3 & Knuckles never had a dedicated box, so you couldn't make a recreation of the boxart for the hub like you could with Sonic 1, 2, or everything else.

[molul]

Oh, I see. Well, Sonic 3 cover would work for me