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Sections

Introduction Downloading Nebula Installing Nebula Installing Games Nebula Config Setting Up Nebula Full Screen Setting Up Nebula GUI Running Neogeo CD games Playing A Game In-Game Menus

Introduction

Nebula is the latest Capcom CPS2 emulator for Windows. It is written by a Spanish guy called ElSemi and is a very complete and easy to use emulator. Nebula was also a little controversial as during its development as there was nothing official to say it was real for a long time. Because of the secrecy, alot the people in emulation said it was a fake. As you can see this is not true and I am pleased to say it is very good. Nebula takes a different approach to emulation by using a "Plug In" system for CPS2 games. This means that when a new CPS2 game is decrypted, you don't need to wait for a new version of Nebula to play it. All you need to do download a new data file and off you go. This will only work if the game in question uses that hardware supported in Nebula. Nebula also supports the Neogeo and NeogeoCD systems as well and plays all the games at full speed. There are other emulators around for the CPS2 games such as Final Burn and all of the Mame variants but they aren't as easy to set up as this. As I said above it is very good and I'll be honest, I like it! Top

Downloading Nebula

You can get Nebula from its homepage here. If you want to play Neogeo CD games then you'll need the correct BIOS file which can be downloaded from here. Make sure you download the 512KB version as Nebulas' Neogeo CD support won't work without it. Top

Installing Nebula

To install Nebula you will need a copy of Winzip. All you have to do is to open the zipfile, press the extract button and type C:\Nebula into to the path area of the window that opens. You will need to set up a directory for the roms. To do this open My Computer, then your C: drive and then the Nebula directory. Right click somewhere in an empty space in the folder and select New, then folder from the menu. A new folder icon will appear and will be highlighted. Simply type Roms and press OK when your finished. Once you have run Nebula it will also set up a few directories. These are the folders that should be set up... Cheats - For cheat files Config - Where game config files are saved EEPROM - Where games can save their information Macros - Where Nebula puts its controller macros Romdata - Where rom information is stored Roms - For roms Shots - For Screenshots Skins - Where you put different skins for the Nebula GUI States - Where saved game states are stored To install the Neogeo CD bios file you need to place it still zipped into the Roms folder. You must make sure it's named neocd.zip. If it's not then right click over it and select rename, then type neocd and press enter. Top

Installing Games

All of the roms for Nebula match the Mame equivalents. You can find links for rom sites on the Links page. To install the games you will need to place the zipped roms into the C:\Nebula\Roms directory. If you are unsure on how to do this then try the basics tutorial. If you want to play Neogeo CD games from ISO+MP3 files then I've found the best thing to do is to put all the files into a separate folder. There will be three types of files the xxx.iso game image, the xxx.mp3 music files and the xxx.cue file. you must make sure that none of the files are zipped. Have a quick look at this example... There is a section below on running the CD games. Top

Nebula Config

When you first start Nebula you will be presented with this screen... This window lets you quickly set up some of the features of Nebula. The GUI part lets you determine which GUI you use. If you want to run Nebula in a window use the "Window GUI" version or if you want the original fullscreen GUI choose classic. You can see the differences below. In the romsets section you can tell Nebula to only use Neogeo roms named the same in line with Mame. If you disable this then Nebula will find any sets of roms it thinks are Neogeo. The analyze roms option will scan your set of roms every time Nebula runs to check to see if they're alright. System will let you set Nebulas' priority in Windows. This is useful if you are multitasking with other programs. The GUI options enable/disable the sounds and joystick control of the fullscreen GUI mode. The graphics section lets you add some special effects to your games. The sound section lets you change the sound buffer if you are getting choppy or poor sound. If you have a force feedback controller then you canselect this option and enjoy it in your arcade games. The device mapping button will open this screen... Here you can select which force feedback device to use on which player. Finally the PGM section lets you disable the music in Konami Poly Game Master Games as its still not perfect. Top

Setting Up Nebula Full Screen GUI

This is what you see when you run Nebula with its fullscreen... On the left hand side of the screen you will see all of the games available in you roms directory. If the game is white then it is OK, if its yellow then there is a problem in that file with CRC errors (a CRC is a check generated when a rom image is dumped) and if it is red then there are files missing (or misspelled) in that file. The easiest way to find these problems is to run the game, you will see as Nebula checks the roms any errors it finds. Make a note of these and re-download the correct rom file. There are several settings you can change in Nebula. You can see from the main screen that you have video, audio, control and other. Heres an explanation of what you can do. Video Video Config For... Lets you do different setups for the three different systems supported by Nebula. Resolution Lets you pick the resolution of the screen for you games Image Enhancement If you're bored with those jagged edges this options lets add a little eye candy to your games. Heres what they do. Hardware blit - Uses all of your video card hardware capabilities. Scanlines - Show black lines between the image lines. This simulates the lower resolution arcade monitors. Software 2x Stretch - Stretches the screen using software which avoids the filtering in Geforce cards Scanlines 50% - The lines between the image ones are less bright for a better arcade feel. Light Interpolation - Filters the image to reduce pixelation on a stretched screen. Full Interpolation - Does a better job than the option above. 2xSAI - 2x stretch and interpolation. 2xSAI 75% Scanlines - 2x Stretch with scanlines Super 2xSAI - Improved 2x Stretch and smooth. 2xSAI Super Eagle - 2x Stretch, Smooth with Eagle effect. Eagle - Smoothes edges of graphics. Vertical Scanlines - This simulates the lower resolution arcade monitors. HW Blit No MMX - Does the same job as Hardware blit but for those without MMX Processors. VSync Synchronizes your display with the game your playing smoothing out the graphics. Stretch Stretches the game to fill your screen. This can be done with or without keeping the screen aspect. Surface Allocation Tells Nebula whaether to use the memory on your graphics card or the sometimes slower but often more abundant system memory. Triple Buffer Uses a triple buffered screen to smooth the display. Audio Audio Config For Lets you have different audio settings for different supported systems. Enable Sound Enables/ Disables sound. Sometimes useful if your games are too slow. Sound Frequency Chooses the quality of the sound Nebula produces. Interpolation Improves the overall sound quality but costs you some CPU speed. Processing Mode Lets you choose which sound system Nebula will use. QSound Amp Boosts the volume in CPS and PGM games. Control This is where you can set up the controls for games. The controls you configure will only affect the game you have highlighted. All you need to do is to click on the player you want to change, then control you want to change and press the relevant button / key you want. Simple Eh! Other Alternative Roms Dir Lets you choose an extra roms directory. Useful if you want to share roms from another emulator such as Final Burn. Check Roms Audits your roms to check for errors. Skin Selection Lets you change the Nebula GUI if you have downloaded skins. Show Games Filters the games list to only show what you want. Auto Save/Load Automatically saves/loads settings Macros/Hints Lets you decide whether Nebula shows Hints when using games on an 800x600 screen with no stretching. Also tells Nebula to use Macros to do complex moves in fighting games which is useful for doing combos. Details on how to set up Macros are in the macros.txt file supplied with Nebula. GUI Animations Enables / Disables the lovely animations on the main menu. (For anyone impatient!) Top

Setting up Nebula Windows GUI

This is what you see when you run Nebula in a window... Heres what you can access from the menus... Emulation Load Rom Opens the Load Rom window. On the left you have the list of games you have and at the bottom you have a couple of buttons to add/remove games to a favourites list. On the right at the top the is a box where Nebula will show a preview picture of the game you've selected. Under that you have some buttons where you can filter out certain types of games from the games list and finally you have the rescan button which will recheck the roms you have if you have added or changed any. Rom Directories Lets you add more roms directories if you have roms you want to share from other emulators. Unload Rom Remove current game from memory. Turbo Mode Runs games as fast as they will go. Reset Reset the current game. Pause Pauses the current game. Step Frame Steps the game one frame forward which can be useful if you want to capture an animated sequence. Save State Saves the current game into 1 of 10 slots. Load State Loads in a saved state from a slot. Record Movie Records your controller movements and stores them in a file. Play Movie Plays back a saved movie file. Stop Record/Play Stops recording or playback of movies. Options Opens the Nebula config window. Exit Uses a triple buffered screen to smooth the display. Video Fullscreen Mode Lets you set up Nebula to run in a full screen. First can set the resolution to run in and whether to use screen effects. You can also set how the screen stretching works and finally what kind of graphic synchronization to use. Windowed Mode Lets you choose how games are displayed in a window. First you can set the window size and whether to use screen effects. You can also set how the screen stretching works. Switch To Fullscreen Switches from windowed mode to fullscreen mode. Surface Allocation Tells Nebula whether to use the memory on your graphics card or the sometimes slower but often more abundant system memory. CPS 1 Lets you access the shots factory for CPS1 games to rip game graphics. CPS 2 Lets you enable/disable the sprite masking and raster effects in CPS2 games. You may need to do this if you are getting poor performance. Also you can access the CPS2 shots factory. Neo Geo Lets you enable/disable the raster effects used in Neogeo games which can give poor performance on slower machines. You can also access the Neo Geo shots factory. Sprite Transparency Lets Nebula to replace the normally flashing graphics used in shadows and fire effects with blended versions. This can use alot of CPU power so only use it if the games performance doesn't suffer. Transparency Table To do sprite transparency Nebula need some info in a file. If it is present it will show up in this menu and let you select it. If there isn't one then transparency won't work. Automatic Transparencies Makes a sprite transparent if it flickers over a certain speed in a game. Sound Qsound This menu lets you change different aspects of the QSound emulation. Sound Enabled - Enables the QSound emulation Sampling Frequency - Sets the quality of the sound. Interpolation - Improves the sound at the cost of speed. Processing Mode - Lets you use 2D or 3D sound. Preamplify volume - Boosts the QSound volume. Neo Geo This menu lets you change different aspects of the Neo Geo sound. Sound Enabled - Enables the Neo Geo sound. Sampling Frequency - Sets the quality of the sound. Interpolation - Improves the sound at the cost of speed. CPS 1/Konami This menu lets you change the sound for CPS1 games. Sound Enabled - Enables the Neo Geo sound. Sampling Frequency - Sets the quality of the sound. DSP Plugin Lets you select plug-ins that enhance the sound in Nebula Los Sound to Wav Lets you save the sound produced by Nebula to a wave file. Dump PGM Music Outputs a file with the music from PGM games. Game Config Controls Lets you configure the controls for each game individually. Macros Enables support for macros to do the special moves in games with one key press. Hints Enables extra windows that show the movements to achieve special moves in games. Macro Layout Let Nebula choose different combos for different characters either automatically or specifically for one character. Region Lets you choose the language used in games for the CPS1 & CPS2 systems. Cheats Shows the cheats available for the loaded game if you have any. Cheats can be downloaded from Cheatmania and unzipped into the C:\Nebula\Cheats folder. CPU Overclock Lets you overclock the emulated CPU. Neo Geo Options Allows you to pick the region for the Neo Geo game. This is useful as there is normally one version of the game for all of the world and by default it could be set on Japanese. Of course if you are Japanese this is very useful but for everyone who doesn't understand Japanese, it can be a bit of a problem. I suppose you could go out and learn Japanese to play the games but that would be very time consuming and unecessary as you have this option to change it to English. Anyway... You can also tell Nebula to emulate the arcade version or the rarer home version of the Neogeo. Theres also some debugging stuff for the experts out there. Misc Generate Romcenter DAT If you select this option Nebula will create a DAT file for use in the rom utility Romcenter. This can be useful to find out any problems in your rom sets especially after updates. Autoswitch to 16bit desktop Automatically switches your windows desktop to 16bit colour as this is the mode Nebula is optimized for. Autoswitch to fullscreen This will automatically run a game in fullscreen when it loads. Language Lets you select the language you want for the GUI. Top

Playing A Game

If you are using the windows version go to the Emulation menu and select load rom. This part works for both windows and fullscreen versions. On the left hand side of the screen you will see a list of all the games available in you roms directory. If the game is white then it is OK, if its yellow then there is a problem in that file with CRC errors (a CRC is a check generated when a rom image is dumped) and if it is red then there are files missing (or misspelled) in that file. The easiest way to find these problems is to run the game, you will see as Nebula checks the roms any errors it finds. Make a note of these and re-download the correct rom file. You dont need to configure anything initially. Just doubleclick on the game you want to play and it will load. Here are the in-game keys... Control Keys Cursor Keys Up, Down, Left & Right A Fire 1 S Fire 2 D Fire 3 Z Fire 4 X Fire 5 C Fire 6 1-4 Players 1-4 Start 5-8 Players 1-4 Coin Extra Keys F1 Service Button (Just seems to add credits!) F2 Test Menu F3 Reset Game F4 Cheat / Region Selection Screen F5 Sound Recorder (Saves sound in shots directory) F6 Audio Jukebox (lets you hunt around in a games memory to find sound samples) F7 Save Screenshot (saved in shots directory) F8 Shots factory (lets you grab different elements of the screen such as background or sprites) F9 Profiler (Shows Frames Per Second, time played and CPU usage) F10 Save State Shift+F10 Record Movie F11 Load State Shift+F11 Play Movie Scroll Lock Enable / Disable Frame Limitation (for all you who want a challenge!) Pause Pause Emulator Space Advances the emulation whilst paused Enter Frame by frame advance - Decrease Volume = Increase Volume + (NumPad) Increase Frameskip - (NumPad) Decrease Frameskip Escape In game menu (Full Screen) / Hide Menubar (Windowed) Tab Open main menu (Full Screen) / In game menu (Windowed) Put in some money and have a play. Here is Nebula running some games... Top

Running Neogeo CD Games

This can be a little tricky so I thought I'd put it in its own little section. To get the Neogeo CD emulation running a few things must be done right. You must have the neocd.zip file in your roms directory. (see the Installing Nebula section) and if you want to run the game with music you need to have the right filenames and a CUE file (see the Installing Games section). O.K. to run a game you need to go to the load the rom called NeoGeo CD from the rom list. You will now see this screen... Now press the in game menu button (Tab for windows, ESC for fullscreen) and select CD Settings. You'll see this menu... If you have an original Neogeo CD leave the cd mode on Real CDROM. If you want to use an ISO image or a combination of ISO+MP3 music press left and you'll see this... Go down to "Select ISO Image" and press enter. This opens a file window. At the bottom you can select whether to open a CUE file or just a plain ISO image. Remember your CD game folder should look something like this... Once you have selected the file you want just press OK and then press Escape twice to close the ingame menu and your game will load. Just to prove it heres a game running on my machine... Top

In-Game Menus

There are a few settings you can access whilst playing a game mainly to do with graphics and sound grabbing oh... and cheating! Cheat / Region Selector - F4 When you press the F4 key it will bing up the cheat / region selector. All you need to do is to move up or down to select the option you want press enter and then press escape to close the menu. You will need to press "F3" to reset the game to activate what you have selected. Audio Jukebox - F6 It is advisable to run the audio jukebox whist in Test mode ("F2") as this keeps the game keeps running in the background but without actually doing anything. Press select "Start Logging" and press enter as this starts the whole thing going. Use the on-screen keys to move the memory address around and when you've finished press escape to exit (I'll be honest, I haven't quite worked out the usefulness of this option yet. I'm sure someone will tell me though. Shots Factory - F8 The shots factory lets you hide / show different elements of the screen before you take a lovely snapshot. on the menu you will see tiles which are used for backdrops and some menu elements whilst sprites are used for the main game characters. All you need to do is to go down the list , enable / disable the options you want and finally go to take a snapshot and press enter. You masterpiece will be saved in the shots directory. Top

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