Disclaimer

SSE is Copyright(c)2002 Stefano Teso

All the trademarks are property of their legitimate owners. SSE is free software. You are allowed to use and redistribute SSE as long as you don't ask money or other goods for it or any part of it, as long as you don't claim you're the author, as long as you redistribute the package in its entireness, as long as you don't use or redistribute this package with any illegally obtained Saturn or Titan-Video software (such as bios images, cdroms, disk images and rom images). SSE is distributed AS IS. USE IT AR YOUR OWN RISK! The author cannot be held responsible for any damage derived by the use of this software. If you use SSE you inconditionally implicitly agree with all these conditions. The author is in no way affiliated with SEGA or any third party developer.

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What is SSE?

SSE is a SEGA Saturn and Titan-Video (st-v) emulator. This means that it tries to run the software (mainly games) written for these platforms on a PC enviroment.

SSE is still very primitive (it's still, and will be for a looong time, in BETA stage), so don't expect it to be complete nor fast nor anything. Oh well.

SSE is mostly written in C, with a small portion in Assembly, using:

It is known to run under Windows 9X, and known NOT to work under Windows XP. It was not tested under any other OS.

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What do i need?

Memory requirements will probabily lower in the next releases, because the code will be revised and unneeded buffers removed. I don't think this is a big problem, though.

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What is in?

There's in enough Saturn/Titan hardware to play some commercial games. There's in NOT enough Saturn/Titan hardware ro play all the games, and i guess that there will never be enough. An emulator is never 100% perfect because of its inner nature, and always carries some small glitches. Don't bother about that, i'm gonna do it for you ;)

If you are more interested in empirical results than futile theory, go to the compatibility list.

Hitachi SH2 (SH7604) cpu (two of them of course!):

Video Processor 1 (VDP1) - 3d:

Video Processor 2 (VDP2) - 2d:

System Control Unit (SCU) with the following implemented:

System Manager, Peripheral Control (SMPC):

Near-perfect Motorola 68EC000 embedded sound cpu, via Turbo68K - assembly 100%;

Custom sound processor vaguely implemented;

Support for external cartridge: 1MB RAM, 4MB RAM, 1MB BACKUP (not saved to file);

CD Block very rough and partial high level emulation (HLE). Nothing of the CD Block inner hardware is known;

Titan controls are in, but the JAMMA emulation is still very partial (many things are still unknown);

Titan EEPROM chip (93C46-like) implemented;

All the 42 known Titan rom sets are supported, either in a directory or ZIP file (thanks to zLib);

The SCSI2/RS232-C interface is absolutely not implemented (does anyone really care?);

PAR emulation is not working at the moment;

All hardware's timings aren't checked against the real thing, so they may be more or less right; prolly completely bad ...

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What's new?

0.070 -- [MS-DOS]

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Getting started

After downloading the package (usually the package filename is something like 'sse-VERSION-PORT-bin.zip') unzip it somewhere on your hard disk (say 'c:/emulators/sse/') preserving the directory structure. Browse into that very directory and edit sse.cfg with a text editor, configuring all what is needed to. If sse.cfg doesn't exist, run sse.exe a first time and it should build it for you. It's set to the default configuration, and may work just fine even if not configured. The contents of sse.cfg are quite self-explanatory.

First of all, to run SSE you must have at least one Saturn or Titan BIOS image. If you don't, you cannot use SSE (BIOS HLE is not implemented and i don't even know if it will ever be. Request it if you dare! ;) Put it in the 'bios' subdirectory. Of course you can zip it, but be sure that the zipped file has the same name of the file in the zip. Sounds criptic? If you're done with this, you can setup your sse.cfg accordingly.

If you are using the MS-DOS port, there's another important step you have to accomplish before firing the emulator up: build some headers of your cdroms. You don't need to copy the whole thing to an ISO, just the first 16 sectors, in 2048 byte data mode. You can use a CDRWIN-like software (the one i personally use) and download sectors 0~15 (inclusive) in a file (the extension doesn't matter, use 'SGH' if you like) and place it in the 'headers' subdirectory under the emulator's root path. Without this the DOS port is unable to run Saturn games from cdrom. See the faq for more details. You can also try to use extrlow.exe, a little util i wrote to help using the MS-DOS port. Anyway, it's not granted to work... Take a look at its readme.

Place any titan rom you want to play in the 'roms' subdirectory, under the main sse directory, either compressed ('zip' extension only), or create another directory with their name and place there the rom set. To view a complete romset list use the '-list' switch when firing sse up.

Now you're ready to run the emulator; you can accomplish this task by typing, from a DOS prompt, under the sse root directory: 

   sse.exe -help                    - gives you a list af all the command line options
   sse.exe *CDHEADERFILE*           - runs a saturn cdrom from that cdrom header
   sss.exe -g *GAMENAME*            - runs a titan rom

  note: for further informations look in sse.cfg.

Here's a small walkthrough for the most important steps: 


  EXAMPLE: how to start Sonic Jam for the Saturn

   I suppose you are using CDRWIN as the image extractor software.
   If you are not you can easily use a demo and extract all the
   sectors you want. Gather all your Saturn cdroms and spend some
   time doing this, since it will save time for plying later.
   Ok, here we start:

   Put the cd into the cdrom drive you're gonna use, open CDRWIN,
   click on the upper row middle button ('extract disc/tracks/sectors')
   and then select 'select sectors'; choose an output file you like,
   and the input cdrom drive; the 'start' field must be set to '0',
   the 'end' field to '15', 'datatype' to 'data mode1 (2048)'.
   Leave everything else as it is.	Press 'start'. Ok, you're done
   for this game. I called the file 'SONICJAM.BIN'.

   Once you have extracted all the games you wanted to, go to
   the DOS prompt (i assume that this version of sse has no gui),
   change to the sse directory, then type:

		sse.exe SONICJAM.BIN

   The emu shows up directly to the saturn bios, then the
   emulation will have its route. Good luck.

   NOTE: SSE should autodetect if the cdrom drive you specified is bad, and
   use the the first drive automatically.

  EXAMPLE: how to start Dynamite Deka (Die Hard) for the Titan/STV

   Place the Dynamite Deka rom in the 'roms' subdirectory, and call
   the zipped file (if you have it zipped) or the directory (if you
   have it unzipped) either 'dnmtdeka.zip' or 'dnmtdeka'.

   Popup a DOS prompt and change to the sse directory, and type:

		sse.exe -g dnmtdeka

   If an invalid rom name is written, the emu guesses what you wanted
   to do, and do it for you. This might fail sometiems, as the guessing
   algorythm is pretty naked, as of now.

   The emu shows up directly to the titan bios, then the
   emulation will have its fate. Good luck.

   NOTE: to get light-speed booting speed , press '9' when the titan bios
   displays the cartridge name.

Backup RAM is stored in bram.s.bin (Saturn) anr bram.t.bin (Titan), so don't delete those files unless you want to lose all your savegames. If you already did this, well, the only thing you can do is having sse regenerating them by executing it once. The new bram file is already formatted, so you won't need to reformat it in the Saturn cd player menu.

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Basic controls

The emulator can be controlled runtime with some special keys. They cannot be configured yet, so go for it. Here they are:

 ESC            quit
 9              activate STV hack: super speed!
 F1             take screenshot
 F2             save a savestate in the current slot
 F3             change the save state in the range 1 to 5
 F4             save the current slot savestate
 F7             switch normal scroll plane 0 on/off
 F8             switch normal scroll plane 1 on/off
 F9             switch normal scroll plane 2 on/off
 F10            switch normal scroll plane 3 on/off
 F11            switch sprites/polygons on/off
 F12            switch rotation scroll planes 0 and 1 on/off
 INSERT         mirror higher palette into lower addresses (*)
 DELETE         mirror lower palette into higher addresses
 HOME           switch texture info on/off (**)
 END            switch light debug screen on/off (**)
 PAGE UP        change the video stretching method
 PAGE DOWN      fill the palette with random colors

 Saturn controls (player 1):

 ARROWS         digital pad
 Z,X,C          A,B,C buttons
 A,S,D          X,Y,Z buttons
 W              START button
 Q,E            L,R triggers

 Titan controls (common) (***):

 F5             TEST (from the SMPC)
 F6             SERVICE (from the SMPC)
 7              TEST (from the JAMMA)
 8              SERVICE (from the JAMMA)

 Titan controls (player 1):

 1              start
 5              coin
 W,S,A,D        digital directions
 T,Y,U,I        buttons 1,2,3,4
 R              gun trigger

 Titan controls (player 2):

 2              start
 6              coin
 ARROWS         digital directions
 V,B,N,M        buttons 1,2,3,4
 C              gun trigegr

 Titan controls (player 3):

 3              start

 Titan controls (player 4):

 4              start

 * this is useful if you cannot get the ST-V bios displaying correctly; press it and be happy!
 ** you usually don't need these, unless you are interested in developing.
 *** JAMMA or SMPC doesn't matter: they do exactly the same in gameplay terms.

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Final Words

Herein some gotchas:

I'm writing this just for fun, so don't expect frequent updates nor professional support. Keep it in mind.

Do NOT ask for Saturn cdroms or bios images, nor Titan roms or bios images. I'm not allowed to give you one (or more, for what matters). I will trash all the emails concerning this argument.

Do NOT send my any file attached to your emails. Ask before.

Do NOT bother sending me mails on sse being to sloooow(i know!) or buggy(i know!). I'm its author, and i already know what it's capable of. Be patient and wait for future releases, they might be better.

So you don't really like sse, heh? Ok, burn it and use some other emulator: i can see that Satourne is the most promising, but also GiriGiri is very good. SSF is VERY good, but lacks english documentation and has not seen an update in a looong time. Else, if you really cannot be satisfied with emulators, USE THE REAL THING! It features high compatibility and full speed! What could you wish more? Savestates you say? :)

If you want to donate something (either Saturn cdroms or real cash) you're welcome! After all i'm doing this fo free ;)

If you find bugs or typos of any kind, or you just had a cool idea for new features, write me!

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Greetings

Huge thanks fly out to these wonderful people:

I wish the best of luck to all the ones putting their efforts on emulation (especially on Saturn/Titan ones!). Many thanks to the MAME dev team, and to the authors of ZSnes, Snes9X, UltraHLE, NeorageX, Raine, PSEmu Pro ... too many to list ...

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Links

to be added


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