Any Gripes?

[GoodLawd]

I thought it would be safe to start this thread so close to production, cuz you can't really do anything about it now

I would have really liked if the following systems could be emulated as good as the PS (or at all):

- Nintendo 64
- Dreamcast
- Nintendo DS

It's a shame really I think those three could have rammed it home for most skeptics.

 

[CCmachined]

I thought it would be safe to start this thread so close to production, cuz you can't really do anything about it now

I would have really liked if the following systems could be emulated as good as the PS (or at all):

- Nintendo 64
- Dreamcast
- Nintendo DS

It's a shame really I think those three could have rammed it home for most skeptics.

N64 would've been much easier if the PC devs used crossplatform libs like they shouldve instead of mostly ignoring the Linux crowd... amirite?

 

[ben_dash]

I wish there were 4 rows of keys below the analog nubs, instead of 3, with the space button in the middle of the bottom row, with ctrl, shift, and fn instead of having space off on the right side.

Other than that it's perfect!

 

[craigix]

We are working on getting another round of consoles out to devs (cased in some cases, ah see what i did there? Lame.) so you will still see new stuff before the launch.

Right now there is a good cross section of working software and it's very hard work to get all this running in a neat and tidy way, it's better I think to get the current set up looking superb rather than start hacking on more advanced stuff right now.

 

[Drack]

- Nintendo DS

I'll be working on porting DeSmuME when I get my andora1:

It runs on x86 Linux with no x86-specific deps, and the code itself is C++ so there shouldn't be any problems there.

The only problems I can see are gui and performance, the latter of which I'll find out when I get the Pandora.

 

[Exophase]

N64 would've been much easier if the PC devs used crossplatform libs like they shouldve instead of mostly ignoring the Linux crowd... amirite?

No. An emulator like Mugen or Daedalus can be ported but it'll never achieve good speed if their recompilers aren't targeted for ARM (how much work depends on how much of a generic framework the emulator has, but it's work beyond porting work). 1964 is also open source as far as I'm aware, even if it hasn't been ported to Linux.

Dreamcast and Nintendo DS, on the other hand, don't have very good open source emulators available for either (or at least, have much better closed ones). But the best Nintendo DS emulator out now (No$GBA) wouldn't be fast enough either (not by a long shot). Nintendo DS emulation would certainly require a recompiler for ARM as well, and unlike with N64 there are no open source Nintendo DS emulators that use a recompiler at all (the closed NeonDS seems to have one though).

Drack; I hope you don't take this as too discouraging, but I just want to make sure that you're aware that a port of DeSmuME will not run well on Pandora. You might have to not take my word for it and find out for yourself though.

 

[GoodLawd]

We are working on getting another round of consoles out to devs (cased in some cases, ah see what i did there? Lame.) so you will still see new stuff before the launch.

Right now there is a good cross section of working software and it's very hard work to get all this running in a neat and tidy way, it's better I think to get the current set up looking superb rather than start hacking on more advanced stuff right now.

Heh, that's great to hear. I think we're quite happy with the stuff that's been shown already I'm sure once the hardware gets properly used and everything is optimized some major pwnage will ensue.

I guess by the time the first 3800 get shipped we'll start seeing some major strides in the software side of things.

 

[logokas]

Nintendo DS emulation would certainly require a recompiler for ARM as well

Quoting from wikipedia:
QUOTE

CPUs: Two ARM processors, an ARM946E-S main CPU and ARM7TDMI co-processor at clock speeds of 67 MHz and 33 MHz respectively. The ARM946E-S CPU processes 3D rendering and the ARM7TDMI processes 2D rendering for DS games and Game boy Advance gameplay.


There's no need for a recompiler if the Cortex A8 supports everything these little ARMs can do. Even if not, it'll still be alot easier then a straight recompile.

 

[CandidStan]

I thought it would be safe to start this thread so close to production, cuz you can't really do anything about it now

I would have really liked if the following systems could be emulated as good as the PS (or at all):

- Nintendo 64
- Dreamcast
- Nintendo DS

It's a shame really I think those three could have rammed it home for most skeptics.

N64 would've been much easier if the PC devs used crossplatform libs like they shouldve instead of mostly ignoring the Linux crowd... amirite?


So I've been out of the loop for a while, we aren't getting n64 emulation now?

 

[Drack]

Drack; I hope you don't take this as too discouraging, but I just want to make sure that you're aware that a port of DeSmuME will not run well on Pandora. You might have to not take my word for it and find out for yourself though.

You're absolutely right. However, Someone's got it running on PSP with 2.5 FPS. If Pandora can get 10 or so FPS without optimization, some games would still be playable with frameskip (Pheonix Wright games for example). I acknowledge that an unoptimized port will not be playable on many games, but I'm doing this more for learning than for practical results.

There's no need for a recompiler if the Cortex A8 supports everything these little ARMs can do. Even if not, it'll still be alot easier then a straight recompile.

Even so, the emulator isn't written for ARM, it's written in cross-platform C++. A Pandora-optimized core working with ARM ASM could be a lot faster, but certainly not easier than porting what's already there. I'm not versed in ARM ASM at this time, so don't expect an optimized core any time soon, perhaps ever as that's not my present goal.

 

[Exophase]

There's no need for a recompiler if the Cortex A8 supports everything these little ARMs can do. Even if not, it'll still be alot easier then a straight recompile.

No, that isn't how things work. What you're referring to is virtualization and there are many problems with attempting this, such as cache coherency (Nintendo DS has high speed uncached memories that do not have coherency problems), trapping privileged instructions (ARM generally can't, although maybe TrustZone would allow it there's no real documentation on it), potential address space conflicts with Linux, real-time low latency timing requirements that could completely break the game if not met (and would invariably not be met, I'm talking about for things like hsync), difficulty in debugging, speed control, pausing the game.. the list goes on.

A recompiler is a recompiler, even if the host target is compatible with the emulated target there's still a lot of front end work (and overhead) that needs to be done to take care of the mapping from one to the other, and to allow for this (especially on a load/store arch like ARM - x86 is a lot better for this sort of thing) the code can't be ran verbatim because you need to use some of the available registers for emulation state.

QUOTE
You're absolutely right. However, Someone's got it running on PSP with 2.5 FPS. If Pandora can get 10 or so FPS without optimization, some games would still be playable with frameskip (Pheonix Wright games for example). I acknowledge that an unoptimized port will not be playable on many games, but I'm doing this more for learning than for practical results.


Personally, I wouldn't consider any game playable at 1/6th speed, but this is very subjective.

 

[Fishbong]

I thought it would be safe to start this thread so close to production, cuz you can't really do anything about it now

I would have really liked if the following systems could be emulated as good as the PS (or at all):

- Nintendo 64
- Dreamcast
- Nintendo DS

It's a shame really I think those three could have rammed it home for most skeptics.

You seem to believe that emulators are features of the system.

In any case, the omap3530 is the fastest SoC there is, you can´t really blame the devs for not picking the best possible hardware. (and to think we even considered the mmsp2+ once )

 

[Mithrildor]

You're absolutely right. However, Someone's got it running on PSP with 2.5 FPS. If Pandora can get 10 or so FPS without optimization, some games would still be playable with frameskip (Pheonix Wright games for example). I acknowledge that an unoptimized port will not be playable on many games, but I'm doing this more for learning than for practical results.

Personally, I wouldn't consider any game playable at 1/6th speed, but this is very subjective.
[/quote]

Phoenix Wright and co (ace attorny and such) are. That are games which are text +pics games.

 

[Butterman]

Back when I was doing homebrew on the PSP, this was about 6 months after release, we never thought anybody could pull off N64 emulation about a year later and we're playing some Mario game at ~25fps.

Nothing is impossible.

 

[darkblu]

gripe: why the heck doesn't the pcb have green silk screening? AARRGGhhhh!!

 

[kattle87]

QUOTE
You're absolutely right. However, Someone's got it running on PSP with 2.5 FPS. If Pandora can get 10 or so FPS without optimization, some games would still be playable with frameskip (Pheonix Wright games for example). I acknowledge that an unoptimized port will not be playable on many games, but I'm doing this more for learning than for practical results.

Personally, I wouldn't consider any game playable at 1/6th speed, but this is very subjective.


I know, but LOTS of games for DS aren't "fast paced" games. The best-selling game according to wikipedia is Nintendogs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendogs
Even it has some 3D, well, nothing you really need more then 12-15 FPS

Or think about "brain trainer" stuff 5 FPS and you're fine

 

[clippa]

Or think about "brain trainer" stuff 5 FPS and you're fine

He's calling you slow Exophase, I wouldn't stand for that.

 

[Consequence_9]

The author of NullDC has stated that he will be working on a port for the Pandora & he seems to be a great coder & is very excited about the Pandora's prospects, so we could possibly see Dreamcast at playable speeds someday (although probably not for a long while).

DS emulation seems plausible, but still kinda odd to me. Personally I feel like the control schemes for most games would be really awkward, but I could see games that do not use both the touchscreen and buttons at the same time being playable. I wouldn't use a DS emu much (seeing as I've got a DSL with a flashcart), but it would still be nice to have around.

Also I'm sticking with my hunch that StrmnNrmn will be porting Daedalus to the Pandora. I honestly can't think of any other platforms that would make sense for him to port it to (maybe save for pc). If he isn't, no big deal, I'm sure someone will eventually seeing as the demand is definitely there. We'll all have plenty to keep us occupied with our Pandoras without N64 & such.

Having said that, this is pretty much all speculation, so I wouldn't put money on it. Don't hate, just my take.

 

[GoodLawd]

You seem to believe that emulators are features of the system.

Come on.

In any case, the omap3530 is the fastest SoC there is, you can´t really blame the devs for not picking the best possible hardware. (and to think we even considered the mmsp2+ once )

Fastest SoC, you say? Good then. No need to change anything

Still, the ability to emulate other consoles is a feature of the Pandora, I'd say. Just that those 3 in the near future would have been sweet.

 

[Exophase]

Remember, 1/6th speed means the controls are 1/6th as responsive, the music is at best 1/6th as fast, but more likely is a mess of cracks and pops, the text scrolls by at 1/6th the rate, etc.