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I'm trying to let someone play an emulator on another monitor while I use my computer normally on the main monitor.

I need to set up an emulator for SNES that will continue the emulation and accept joypad input even when the window doesn't have focus. Numerous emulators for other systems allow me to do this, but at least trying zsnes and snes9x I can't do this. I found a modified version of snes9x that sort of works, but the sound is a little iffy in game and when the game loses focus sound stops entirely. zsnes will run by default when it loses focus, but I can't move it to the other monitor, and taking focus away means it won't accept input.

Steve V.
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ssb
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    Close voters: I don't think this is off-topic as per this [meta] post: http://meta.gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/102/whats-the-official-stance-on-console-emulation – galacticninja Mar 18 '13 at 11:23
  • It might be a better question for one of the other sites though, this one is about games themselves, not about settings of software used to play games. – Kevin Mar 18 '13 at 11:42
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    Emulators and emulation are considered on topic. We have numerous questions about emulators here, just check the [tag:emulation] tag for lots of examples. – agent86 Mar 18 '13 at 13:00
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    @galacticninja I voted to close this because it's essentially a recommendation request, not because it's about emulation. I stand by that vote. – LessPop_MoreFizz Mar 18 '13 at 14:27
  • Why can't you move zsnes to the other monitor? If it's just not knowing how, then that's easily solved: put it in windowed mode, then click and drag the blue bits between the menu items. – SevenSidedDie Mar 18 '13 at 19:06
  • Also, why are you trying to do this? If you told us what use you're trying to enable, you might find we can help more. For instance, if you're trying to just play the music and not the game, there is specialised software for that you should be using instead of a full emulator. – SevenSidedDie Mar 18 '13 at 19:07
  • @SevenSidedDie You'd think it would be as simple as dragging zsnes from one monitor to the other but it's not quite that simple. zsnes simply stops at the edge and won't move to the other. I tried to get around this by using windows 7 hotkeys to move windows to other monitors, and that "works" until you try to return the mouse to the window, at which point it still acts like the window is on the main monitor. Also I mentioned in my post that I'm trying to let someone play a game on the other monitor while I use my computer. – ssb Mar 19 '13 at 00:50
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    @LessPop_MoreFizz I realize this is on the border of what might be acceptable but I think it's beyond a simple recommendation ("Which SNES emulator should I use?") and more of a specific search for a specific feature that I can't seem to reliably find. The field of potential answers seems pretty small, if one exists at all, and there's no subjectivity involved. – ssb Mar 19 '13 at 00:52
  • @ssb Sorry, I missed that sentence somehow! I blame the mobile site I was using. ;) – SevenSidedDie Mar 19 '13 at 00:56
  • @LessPop_MoreFizz Recommendations per se are not off-topic (as per this meta post). And like in that linked meta post's answer and as OP mentioned, there is a concrete problem described here - it does not merely ask for a recommendation: '"I want to solve this concrete problem" is a good question for this site, with or without a ["recommendation"] at the end.' – galacticninja Mar 19 '13 at 04:48
  • @ssb I think this is completely on-topic and is a good question (not "on the border of what might be acceptable"), as I explained in my comment here. I have voted to reopen this question - I believe you can vote to reopen it too. If it does not get reopened after a day or two, please raise this issue at [meta]. – galacticninja Mar 19 '13 at 04:53
  • I've edited this question to make it sound less recommend-y. If the OP is not okay with this, please feel free to revert it.
    @LessPop_MoreFizz - what do you think of it now?     – Steve V. Mar 19 '13 at 06:29
  • You have my blessing for any edits that can salvage the question. – ssb Mar 19 '13 at 07:07

2 Answers2

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Virtualize the emulator!

No, I'm not kidding - run a small Linux or Windows setup on a virtual machine fullscreened to one monitor and inside that run the emulator (it's only SNES after all). And since at least vmware player supports a dedicated USB mode where the host system won't even know about USB devices "attached" to the VM, you can even plug in a second pair of keyboard/mouse, and split the audio output to e.g. only the front plug - see this question. That's how we managed to play Minecraft two persons on one PC simultaneously, without each other's sound interfering!

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Zommuter
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    Neat solution. +1 – SevenSidedDie Jul 19 '13 at 18:53
  • I do like that, I never would have though of it. Relatively a lot of work I guess but if it gets the job done... – ssb Jul 20 '13 at 04:52
  • @ssb It's not that complicated actually, in fact I consider it easier than some GPU settings ;-) Be sure to upvote Tyler's answer whose idea this was originally. As I mentioned once we got it set up (vmware player running an old WinXP license from a discarded notebook) my not too powerful machine managed even two instances of Minecraft plus a server - yup, the VM even has hardware acceleration – Zommuter Jul 20 '13 at 06:44
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I pulled out my old monitor to test the very small list of SNES emulators.

  • zSNES uses DirectX calls that ignore Windows' own monitor logic, which requires that zSNES handles multiple monitors itself (which it doesn't). Without a rework of its rendering code (which has been promised and undelivered since 2006, at least), zSNES is out of the running.

  • SNES9x though handles multiple monitors fine, and under the Emulation menu it has Pause When Inactive on by default. Turning that off makes it continue emulation when it doesn't have focus just fine, at least in the version I'm testing (v1.53 W64) on my hardware. (It's possible that it has sound issues that are hardware dependent.) However, I appear to be suffering an odd bug where SNES9x will recognise my gamepad when I'm configuring the controls, but ignores them during emulation, so I can't directly confirm that input works when it doesn't have focus. In theory it should.

  • higan is a bit idiosyncratic in a few ways – you have to "import" the cart if it isn't a .sfc format ROM, and it offers a very granular degree of control over video and audio sync that doesn't give an optimal out-of-box experience (there is an AV timing wizard to mess with) – but my testing confirms that its configuration options for background emulation and background input work just dandy with my gamepad and my second monitor. It won't run in fullscreen on the second monitor – attempting that fullscreens it to the main monitor. You'll also need to make sure that the controller config not only uses the gamepad, but that you also remove all the keyboard bindings as well, since otherwise higan will respond to your typing while your friend tries to play.

I haven't tested OpenEmu or NO$SNS yet, but if higan or Snes9x v1.53 doesn't do it for you, I can track those down too.

SevenSidedDie
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    I swear I tried that version of snes9x last night and something with it didn't work quite right, which led me to get this. It's based on an older version, though. I'll try higan when I get home, I haven't heard of that one. – ssb Mar 19 '13 at 07:06
  • What about ZSNES in windowed mode? – Zommuter Jul 19 '13 at 10:18
  • @zommuter These tests were done in windowed mode. ZSNES is doing direct-draw stuff that ignores anything but the primary monitor. Notice that it doesn't have a Windows frame and buttons. – SevenSidedDie Jul 19 '13 at 16:52