CLEARLY the emulator everyone should focus on should be.....

[GoblinX]

I'm praying to see NES emulation, SMS emulation, T-16 Emulation, and C-64.

 

[Nightwind0]

I'm praying to see NES emulation, SMS emulation, T-16 Emulation, and C-64.

No problem. Mednafen for the NES and T-16. LittleJohn for SMS (Also another NES).
C64... not sure off hand but I'm SURE theres gonna be something.

 

[quadomatic]

I'm not going to comment on the viability of Dreamcast emulation on the Pandora, but drkiiRaziel had said he's planning to port nullDC to the Pandora. I asked him and he said he did get his pre-order in.

 

[polkunus]

+1 for DC emulation

 

[jbr]

Ah, I don't know what to think here. Sure, I'm a big fan of dreamcast emulation, but the topic is about _porting_.

Now, I think the topic starter got a pretty good explanation of what the difference is, so I'm not going to reiterate that.

All the discussion that took place makes me wonder this though:
Think about WINE. It takes x86 binaries and runs them on the same processor without an operating system with binary compatibility.
Could there ever be such a thing for a game console emulator? Something that emulates the dreamcast _operating system_ and executes the binaries directly on the ARM processor?
Dreamcast may be a very bad example because of all the other processors thrown in, but could the concept at least every be applied?

 

[drkIIRaziel]

We'll likely see SOME sort of DC emulation, but it will more likely be a proof-of-concept "LOOK I GOT DC RUNNING AT 2SPF!" and not "We now have playable DC on the Pandora".

P.S.: SPF here is not "sun protection factor", but "seconds per frame".

It runs at 1-3 FPS on the psp without a dynarec. Pandora can't be worse than that

ARM is very different from the sh4 (it is mostly a superset of it; i don't know about the fpus ...) and emulation will be hard and possibly slow.
The SGX chip is very different from the CLX2. They cannot be compared speed wise. SGX is much more flexible and it does keep some ideas from the CLX2 (32 bit fpu z buffer, works always with 32 bit colors, uses tiles, ...) but the api (openg |es) hides most of these similarities. A good thing is that dreamcast games never pushed clx2.

Sound is totally different and will have to be emulated in software.

I did preorder a Pandora, and i do plan to release as soon i get some code running
As someone else said, better not hold your breath though. Working emulator != fun and playable

 

[sixstringmonk]

C64

 

[Ryzure]

As someone else said, better not hold your breath though. Working emulator != fun and playable

But always appreciated. :wink:

 

[GoblinX]

I'm praying to see NES emulation, SMS emulation, T-16 Emulation, and C-64.

No problem. Mednafen for the NES and T-16. LittleJohn for SMS (Also another NES).
C64... not sure off hand but I'm SURE theres gonna be something.

Awesome news. C64 portable is just plain awesome. Here's hoping it can do Project Firestart.

Also, as I previously mentioned, Vectrex and 3DO would be amazing.

 

[Gilrad]

As someone else said, better not hold your breath though. Working emulator != fun and playable

But always appreciated. :wink:

Exactly. I imagine it is in no small part thanks to proof-of-concept emulator PSX4GP32x that we will have some pretty decent PSX emulation right out of launch.

Remember: Just because it can't benefit the Pandora, doesn't mean it won't benefit any other (future or current) system.

 

[AireTamStorm]

To reiterate what others have said, yeah. Having a predecessor for a GPU and having a similar CPU isn't making DC much easier a job. There are still major differences in the GPUs (programmable shaders, anyone?) and you'll still need taxing emulation for the CPU. The best technical achievement I actually hope for is playable 2D sidescrollers and maybe an emulator optimization for a specific game. Other than that, it is a technical demo and the groundwork for the next handheld to do well. Nothing more, nothing less.

 

[TaG]

The iPhone/iPod Touch both use ARM processors and PowerVr 3D accelerators, so surely the interest would be there to develop a DC emulator for ARM would be there?

I say a large chunk of the developers fund should be set aside for anyone at least giving it a shot!

Surely the dev fund should be targeted and things that we think are possible, not devoting a 'large chunk' to something most think is very unlikely. Besides, I thought the dev fund would be awarded for working software, not like wages,so i would quite possibly go unclaimed.

 

[Kyosys]

Yeah. it's not a "I'll give you a hundred bucks if you program this for me", it's a "hey, thanks for the awesome software! So... uhm, here are hundred bucks"

 

[CCmachined]

Yes, because everybody rushing about trying to get Dreamcast emulation working on release and most likely ending up with a halfspeed unplayable emulator is WAY more important than PS1, N64, SNES, Amiga and other classic computers and consoles emulators and open source games on launch.

NO. If someone is trying, fair enough. It's just not important enough for the amount of work required to (maybe) get it working well. I'm sure we'd all appreciate F-Zero X, SM64, Wipeout etc etc. Don't get ahead of yourself.

 

[lastrite]

Surely the dev fund should be targeted and things that we think are possible, not devoting a 'large chunk' to something most think is very unlikely. Besides, I thought the dev fund would be awarded for working software, not like wages,so i would quite possibly go unclaimed.

I suppose you're correct, perhaps I was jumping the gun a bit . . . highly optimised older emulators would be great initially, especially if they can tap into the GPU's power ^_^

 

[hlidegp2x]

as long as we are talking about emulators that would push the pandora to its limits (dreamcast not see n say), hlide expressed interest in making a PSP emulator for the pandora. http://forums.ps2dev.org/viewtopic.php?t=10364

I hope he got in on the pre-order!

I ordered it. I should get one in the first batch.

And drk||Raziel (porter of nullDC on PSP) told me he got in one the preorder.

 

[GoblinX]

Zdoom would be lovely to see on this system.

 

[MonkeyChops]

as long as we are talking about emulators that would push the pandora to its limits (dreamcast not see n say), hlide expressed interest in making a PSP emulator for the pandora. http://forums.ps2dev.org/viewtopic.php?t=10364

I hope he got in on the pre-order!

I ordered it. I should get one in the first batch.

And drk||Raziel (porter of nullDC on PSP) told me he got in one the preorder.

does that mean you are still going to try to develop a psp emulator for the pandora? Any guesses on framerate? Thanks!

 

[anexanhume]

as long as we are talking about emulators that would push the pandora to its limits (dreamcast not see n say), hlide expressed interest in making a PSP emulator for the pandora. http://forums.ps2dev.org/viewtopic.php?t=10364

I hope he got in on the pre-order!

I ordered it. I should get one in the first batch.

And drk||Raziel (porter of nullDC on PSP) told me he got in one the preorder.

does that mean you are still going to try to develop a psp emulator for the pandora? Any guesses on framerate? Thanks!

I believe we discussed this on gp32x. It will basically be a proof of concept, like the DC emu will probably turn out to be. Doesn't mean there isn't value in it though as long as we have open sourced code for future ARM implementations.

 

[OldGamer]

Zdoom would be lovely to see on this system.

Oh yeah. Pandora needs Doom. I'd also be delighted if someone ported the Doomsday Engine. I believe it's open-source, but I'm not sure how much horsepower it requires.