Release DraStic Nintendo DS emulator

[dummi]

What model and clockspeed are you running at? I've had some similar random hangs when overclocking, even at what I consider "safe" overclocks (1.1GHz on my 1GHz model).

I will test it. Normally it runs with 1.1GHz. My Model is a 1GHz pandora.

 

[Exophase]

We've seen freezes w/o overclocking before but don't have definitive explanations for them, except that one of them had to do with audio capture. Something that freezes the Pandora is really difficult to debug.

Next version won't initialize capture until microphone is used, that might help mitigate things if that's the problem for everyone. On the other hand that'd also obscure things more. There are probably other things I can do to help, like pausing capture or trying to read it continuously while in the menu.

 

[mmKALLL]

Before this, I didn't even know that the Pandora had a mic! I had always wondered what the hole was, hahaha..

Perhaps just make audio capture on/off an option in the game setting menu, leave it off by default and leave it to the user to set it according to their preferences on a per-game basis? Then again, it's probably not the optimal solution, but I wouldn't mind it - so few games use the mic anyway. And freezes are apparently very infrequent.

 

[Exophase]

I don't want users to have to deal with the headache of turning on the microphone once they realize a game needs it (possibly already having been penalized in-game for not having it, see Wario Ware Touched). Nor do I want to deal with the headache of people complaining that the microphone support is broken It'll be pretty unusual to not want the microphone automatically enabled if the game needs it. The only ambiguity is if a game that reads from the microphone really needs it, and if it really needs it any time in the near future, and will need it continuously afterwards. Maybe a reasonable compromise would be to have the option to turn mic off, but still allow games to turn it on when it needs to be on. That way if a game just uses it for one part (as I think is the case for a lot of them) you can go in and turn it off afterwards, to save battery life.

First priority is to somehow determine if the mic enable is the actual cause of all of the freezes :/

 

[dummi]

Ah okay. Thank you for response. I tried to run at 850MHz, but it crashes after ca. 20min. But as you mentioned before this is not the fault. An option to turn off the mic would be a good thing.

Btw thank you for the great work

 

[mmKALLL]

I.. Don't know the details, but from my one-freeze-experience, I doubt that the mic reading is what's crashing anything. The emulator is so smooth for the most part that I doubt that disabling the mic until it's read would really help battery life either. Thus, in my opinion, the way it's now is the best, unless it's the reason behind freezing.

 

[Linux-SWAT]

I had a crash right after a savestate that killed my savestate !!!

Fortunately i also often use the ingame save, so i lost only 30mn.

 

[apersonthinks]

I know you dislike porting stuff, but this might be helpful to easily support DLDI patches and nand emulation at least to the point so nand games boot:

https://desmume.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/desmume/trunk/desmume/src/addons/slot1_retail_nand.cpp

https://desmume.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/desmume/trunk/desmume/src/addons/slot1_r4.cpp

https://desmume.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/desmume/trunk/desmume/src/slot1.cpp

 

[Exophase]

There's only one game with that large, non-standard NAND. It's not a priority. Stop nagging me, please

I know where stuff is in desmume's source. Of course I'm not going to lift it's code because I can't steal from a GPLed program (unless I were going to make this emulator GPL which is not going to happen)

 

[gotwake424]

@Exophase 

The most fantastic thing about this emulator,  besides that fact that I get to play fricken nds game on my pandora, is that you are constant with your gui and its function throughout pcsxrearmed,DraStic, gpSP. It makes for a very pleasant/enjoyable/hassle free experience when using anyone of these emulators. I think I read a while back that it is a little hard to implement your gui. So thank you so much for the extra work!!

 

[Exophase]

Thanks, but PCSX-reARMed isn't using GUI code written by me (actually the only thing I wrote that the emulator uses is the NEON-based rendering plugin). And gpSP's GUI is really old and totally different code, that works pretty differently.. the only thing DraStic's GUI shares any commonality with is Temper. notaz did ask me to change some key mappings to make it more consistent with other emulators but I think I haven't gotten them all in properly yet, I think he's still annoyed with some of it

 

[ShleeDragon]

I know you're totally rad. but to everybody DLDI is used by homebrew only to write to the storage on carts and has nothing to do with real games or their saves

 

[dummi]

Is it possible to log DraStic. So we can see why it crashes the whole Pandora sometimes. Would be good to put it on nand or SD-Card.

 

[Neelix]

I've only ever once had the whole pandora freeze on me while using DraStic (that wasn't related to me pulling out the USB networking cable) and that was when I was running very close to (possibly over, I only ran the stress test for a few hours) the maximum stable speed for NEON at the OPP I was running at..

Out of interest, have you tried running the stress test PND for any significant length of time?

- Neelix

 

[gotwake424]

Thanks, but PCSX-reARMed isn't using GUI code written by me (actually the only thing I wrote that the emulator uses is the NEON-based rendering plugin). And gpSP's GUI is really old and totally different code, that works pretty differently.. the only thing DraStic's GUI shares any commonality with is Temper. notaz did ask me to change some key mappings to make it more consistent with other emulators but I think I haven't gotten them all in properly yet, I think he's still annoyed with some of it

Haha good to know  

They function pretty close to the same in my opinion so it makes using them a joy. 

Thanks again  

 

[moxie]

There is a certain flavour shared by your and Notaz's emulators, though, UI-wise. And it is a good one

 

[Klumpen]

There is a certain flavour shared by your and Notaz's emulators, though, UI-wise. And it is a good one

Indeed. I like this style.

 

[Zero3K]

Another issue I've been experiencing when playing Monster Tale is that I get stuck going a certain direction every so often. I can fix it by pressing the D-Pad in all directions a few times.

 

[_wb_]

If you hold some direction on the dpad (or maybe any button) while you enter the menu, save the state, and then load that state, that button gets "stuck" until you press and release it a few times.

 

[Exophase]

If you hold some direction on the dpad (or maybe any button) while you enter the menu, save the state, and then load that state, that button gets "stuck" until you press and release it a few times.

I don't know about pressing and releasing it a few times, but if you have to press and release it once I wouldn't really consider this is a bug and could be desirable. Is that what you're experiencing Zero3K?