v1.1

Sections

Introduction Downloading Zinc Installing Zinc Installing dafreaks Zinc GUI Running Zinc The renderer.cfg File Configuring dafreaks Zinc GUI Controls & Keys Playing A Game Image Gallery

Introduction

Zinc has to be one of my most favourite emulators as it runs some fantastic games. Zinc is a combination of two emulators, Impact which is very famous in the emulation world and an emulator called s11emu. It currently supports three system types which are the Sony ZN1 and ZN2 systems and Namco's System 11. These systems are all based on the Sony Playstation and so it makes sense that the two emulators were combined. The games that Zinc supports are some of the classic arcade games of all time. These include Tekken and Tekken 2, Souledge, Streefighter EX and EX 2 and Strider Hiryu 2. Most of the games are 3D based and can be run in any resolution with full texture filtering which improve their look no end. Purists can run the games in their original form as well. As Zinc is still in development there are still some sound issues in some games and a few need a couple of tweaks to get them going but all in all most games run flawlessly. I look forward to see this emulator develop as it has so much potential. Top

Downloading Zinc

You can download Zinc from its homepage here. You will also need to download the firmware.zip file which can be got here. Top

Installing Zinc

You will need a copy of winzip to extract the Zinc files. To install zinc you need to right click over the Zinc zip file and select Winzip-Extract to... In the box that appears type C:\Zinc and press return. You also need to place the firmware.zip into the roms folder. Top

Installing dafreaks Zinc GUI

Zinc is by default a command line program so has no nice GUI. There are a couple of GUI's available so I thought I'd better cover one. The one I'm covering is dafreaks Zinc GUI 1.5. You can get it here. To install it just extract it into the C:\Zinc folder along with Zinc. Top

Running Zinc

Zinc as I said above is a command line program and therefore if you click on its icon all you'll see is a window flash up and disappear. You will need to open up a command prompt to get it working. This can be done by finding it on your start menu under accessories or by going Start-Run and then running either cmd.exe (NT/XP) or command.com (Win 9x). Now type CD \ to get bact to your root directory and finally CD Zinc. You should see this... It is very important when running Zinc that you follow the correct structure. The command should look like this... zinc <Game Number> <option1> <option2>... You can find a list of the games and numbers below but for now if say you wanted to run Streetfighter EX you would type... zinc 2 If all goes well the you will see the following text... C:\Zinc>zinc 2 ZiNc 2002 0.9-beta (C)1997-2002 Drunken Muppets (www.impactemu.com) Opening game: Street Fighter EX (ASIA) DynaChicken Compiler initialising CPU identification: AMD Athlon(tm) XP 1600+ Optimizing for: athlon class rom files loaded ok JAMMA keyboard driver 0.2 initialized and finally this lovely window... Here is a description of the command line options... --help Shows the list of commad options used by Zinc --list-games Generates a games list includin their all important number. --version Show Zincs' version number --verify Verifys the selected romset. --use-config-file=<value> Lets you use a specific config file for Zincs options. --use-renderer-cfg-file=<value> Lets you use a specific renderer config file for Zincs graphics. --roms-directory=<value> Sets the roms directory --use-sound=<yes|no> Enables/Disables Sound (Default = Yes) --renderer=<value> Lets you choose between graphics renderers. Make sure you use full renderer name. (Default = renderer.znc) --controller=<value> Lets you choose between controller plugins. (Default = controller.znc) --use-controller-cfg-file=<value> Lets you use a specific controller config file for Zincs gameplay. --sound-filter-enable=<yes|no> If on will improve the sound quality but uses som CPU time. (Default = Yes) --sound-filter-cutoff=<value> Set where Zinc will limit sound frequencies to. (Default = 22050) --sound-surround-lite-enable=<yes|no> Adds a surround feel to sound. (Default = No) --sound-surround_lite-multiplier=<value> Adjusts the power of the surround feel. (Default = 40) --sound-stereo-exciter=<yes|no> Widens the stereo feel. (Default = No) --use-slow-geometry=<yes|no> If you see graphic errors in games emable this but be warned it can slow things down alot. (Default = No) Make sure that you use the double minus at the beginning of the option as it won't work otherwise. You can also create a config file for you to use when running Zinc. All you need to do is at the command prompt type notepad zinc.cfg. When notepad opens it will ask if you want to create the file so answer yes. The structure for it should be like this... ; Put A Comment Here --roms-directory=.\roms --use-sound=yes --sound-filter-enable=no --sound-filter-cutoff=22050 --sound-surround-lite-enable=no --sound-surround-lite-multiplier=40 --sound-stereo-exciter=no --use-slow-geometry=yes Any of the command options above can be used. When you're happy save it and when you run zinc next use the --use-config-file=zinc.cfg option. Top

The renderer.cfg file

Unless you use a frontend you have to configure the graphics renderer manually. You will need to open a file called renderer.cfg in notepad to do this. What you will see is this... ; renderer settings XSize = 640 ; window/fullscreen X size YSize = 480 ; window/fullscreen Y size FullScreen = 0 ; Fullscreen mode: 0/1 ColorDepth = 32 ; Fullscreen color depth: 16/32 ScanLines = 0 ; Scannlines: 0=none, 1=black, 2=bright Filtering = 0 ; Texture filtering: 0-3 Blending = 0 ; Enhanced color blend: ogl: 0/1; D3D: 0-2 Dithering = 0 ; Dithering: 0/1 ShowFPS = 0 ; FPS display on startup: 0/1 FrameLimitation = 1 ; Frame limit: 0/1 FrameSkipping = 0 ; Frame skip: 0/1 FramerateDetection = 1 ; Auto framerate detection: 0/1 FramerateManual = 100 ; Manual framerate: 0-1000 TextureType = 3 ; Tetxures: 0=default, 1=4 bit, 2=5bit, 3=8bit TextureCaching = 2 ; Caching type: 0-2 TurnDisplay = 0 ; Turn the whole display (0-2, 0=default) Heres a description of the options... XSize / YSize Screen Dimentions (For fullscreen only use resolutions that you card supports. You can find these on the windows display control panel) Fullscreen Enables/Disables fullscreen graphics. Colordepth Set the screen colour depth (only use 16bit if you have a pre Voodoo 4 3DFX card) Scanlines Uses alternate lines to simulate low resolution arcade monitors. Filtering Filters the textures giving less blockiness. Blending Uses colour blending to remove jagged edges from graphics. Dithering Uses dithering to give the appearance of more colours when using a 16bit display. ShowFPS Shows how many frames per second Zinc is running at. FrameLimitation Limits the FPS to the games default FrameSkipping Enables autoframe skipping to speed up games if they run slow. FramerateDetection Automatically detects the best framerate for a game. FramerateManual Lets you manually enter a framerate for a game. TextureType Sets the texture resolution used in games. TextureCaching Sets how Zinc caches textures in memory to improve performance. TurnDisplay Lets you rotate the game display so you can use it in vertically mounted arcade monitors. Make the changes you want and save the file. You can also create extra renderer config files and run them using the command option --use-renderer-cfg-file=<config name>. Top

Configuring dafreaks Zinc GUI

This is dafreaks GUI in action... Here are the menu options... File Menu Run (save) Run the selected game and save game settings. Run Now (no save) Run game but dont save games settings Exit Exit Zinc GUI Options Menu Open defaultzinc.cfg file If you muck up a games config then this will reload the default config file for you to use. Create dats Creates a set of dat files containing rom information and comments for all games. Create Audit File Checks all you rom sets and outputs a file with any problem found in it. Select game on startup Thi option sets a game that will automatically be selected when the GUI starts. Rollover images Displays an image of a game if you have one as the mouse passes over it. Show available only Only show the game that you have. Show comments Adds a small box at the bottom of the games list which has comments on the game. Now the buttons... Run Now Runs a game without saving its config file. Save and Run Runs a game and saves its config file. Rescan Roms Rescans the rom sets and checks if they're OK. This is useful after you've added games. Use game config Uses an individual configuration file for the game. Edit games config Lets you edit a game configuration. This is done on this window... and follows the command line options format. Use winterblasts config Use winterblasts controller configuration plugin to set up the buttons for your games. Edit controller layout Opens this screen... The page above is for global key settings. The most useful page is this one... This is the page where you can change the settings for your controller. This will only affect the selected game. The combos button lets you set a button for combo's set up on the combo management tab. This is the combo management screen... This is where you can enter the movements for your fancy combo movements in fighting games. If you want info on entering combos the press the info button and this windows will appear... Once you are happy then press the apply button to apply the changes and close the window. Show Zinc output This will show the text output from Zinc as it runs which is very useful if you are having problems as it will show you where the error is. Show renderer config Adds this to the GUI... The buttons at the top will select the graphics renderer that you want to use. The rest of the buttons do as their equivalents do in the renderer.cfg file that I've described above. Trainer config Opens the trainer config window which is based on joyriders trainer for games. Most games have cheats or region selectors and are selectable on a window similar to this... Use joyriders trainer Enables the cheat system. That it for the GUI stuff. As with most GUI's it is alot easier to follow that typing in all the commands which makes it better for beginners. Top

Controls & Keys

These are the default key for playing Zinc games...   1 Player 1 Start 2 Player 2 Start 4 Enter Test Menu 5 Player 1 Coin 6 Player 2 Coin Cursor Up, Down, Left, Right Joystick Movement a Button 1 s Button 2 d Button 3 f Button 4 g Button 5 z Button 6 x Button 7 c Button 8 q,w,e,r Test menu controls Escape Exit Zinc F5 Take snapshot of game If you use the Zinc GUI to chang the keys then these defaut keys will change also. Top

Playing A Game

To play a game then simply load the game you want, once the system checks are done press 5 to add some money and finally press 1 for player one start. Here is a list of supported games in version 0.9beta... 1 Street Fighter EX (JP) 2 Street Fighter EX (ASIA) 3 Street Fighter EX Plus (USA) 4 Street Fighter EX Plus (JP) 5 Street Fighter EX 2 (JP) 6 Street Fighter EX 2 PLUS (JP) 7 Star Gladiator 2 (JP) 8 Rival Schools (ASIA) 9 Justice Gakuen (JP) 10 Strider Hiryu 2 (JP) 11 Strider 2 (USA) 12 Kikaioh (JP) 13 Battle Arena Toshinden 2 (JP) 14 Tetris The Grand Master (JP) 15 Sonic Wings Limited (JP) 16 Beastorizer (bootleg) 17 Psychic Force (JP) 18 Magical Date EX (JP) 19 Soul Edge (JP) Ver. A 20 Soul Edge (JP) Ver. C 21 Tekken (JP) Ver. A 22 Tekken 2 (JP) Ver. B 23 Dancing Eyes (JP) Ver. A 24 Xevious 3D/G (JP) Ver. A 25 Star Sweep (JP) Ver. A 26 Kosodate Quiz My Angel 3 (JP) Ver. A Remember Zinc requires the game number to run when you are using the command prompt. There are a few tips for getting certain games started... For Psychic Force, the first time you it you may go into the test menu. Select "Factory Defaults" then "Yes" then "Exit". The screen will say "RESET" and just sit there. Wait a second or two then quit the emulator and restart it. Psychic Force will then play correctly. For Sonic Wings Limited to avoid locking up your system, insert coins and start a game immediately and don't let it go into the attract mode. Once you are in game there are no hazards and it plays great. Top

Image Gallery

Here are some picture of zinc playing games (I've had to reduce them in size to fit on lower res screens)... Top

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