I've Been Thinking About This For Awhile Now.

[Phawx]

When I have some time, I'll put together some samples of different ways it could work. I'm pretty sure it would work out okay, but to satisfy my own curiosity, I'll set it up and share.

We've been over this before. Sorting out the dual displays is easy. Coding a functional NDS emulator is hard. Anyone capable of the latter will have no problem with the former.

I never even thought about doing it like that Chip. That's actually a pretty good idea. I wonder, for games that are rendered in 3D, we could actually make use of the entire screen and draw it out completely. I know a few N64 games can work in widescreen mode. So that would be pretty cool. I'd actually really like to play Metroid Prime: Hunters in full widescreen. Would be sweet as hell with Multiplayer. I don't really use desmume at all, I see it has the option of only showing the main screen, anyone know of or see someone managing to get anything to run widescreen?

Thanks for sharing Chip, I only started frequenting these forums late September of 08'.

Edit: I reread your post. Coding a functional NDS emulator would be nice, but it's honestly the last thing I want to talk about. To give an analogy: It would be super interesting to follow how a car's engine is created and all the efficiencies an engineer could get out of it, but I created this thread so we could talk about what features we would want *in* the car. I understand a lot of people will want to ask how fast the car can go and even if it could go or would be worth going in, but I just want to talk about ergonomics of the seat or steering wheel.

I can see that the topic had been brought up before and it's old news to you. But I haven't talked about it yet and there maybe some other people that haven't. It's also a possibility that someone that has talked about it, thought of something different and wants to share. Again, if you can find a better subforum to move this thread to, that would be fine. It seems like you would like this thread to just stop, I apologize if I am interpreting that wrong, but maybe if you've already had this conversation, you don't necessarily have to participate.

In real life, if someone started talking about something you've already talked about, do you just tell them, "it's already been discussed, if [this] happens [this] will occur."? I could see that happening in a business meeting, but I only started this to be lighthearted and non-technical. Again, (sorry for sounding like a broken record) if you feel this thread doesn't belong in Pandora General chat and would like to keep it clean, by all means, move the thread.

Thanks for sharing that other thing though, it was actually what I was looking for, in terms of throwing ideas around.

 

[fiveseven]

To give an analogy: It would be super interesting to follow how a car's engine is created and all the efficiencies an engineer could get out of it, but I created this thread so we could talk about what features we would want *in* the car.

But what use is a car without an engine?

 

[Phawx]

@fiveseven

Shelter? Maybe I should follow up with something very literal. In real life, have you never had a conversation about how teleporters could actually work? Or nanobots replacing the human immune system?

Just because something doesn't exist and would be very hard to actually do, doesn't mean we can't or shouldn't talk about how it might work. In the end, everything we say maybe completely false. This isn't a serious thread.

 

[WizardStan]

Shelter? Maybe I should follow up with something very literal. In real life, have you never had a conversation about how teleporters could actually work? Or nanobots replacing the human immune system?

Yes, I believe I've had each of those conversations exactly once with the same group of friends. You were here for the other bajillion DS threads, yet you started one to discuss the exact same thing that was already discussed in the earlier ones. That is the issue people are taking with this thread being JUST about features: we've discussed them before, and found them to be more or less non-issues.

 

[Phawx]

Shelter? Maybe I should follow up with something very literal. In real life, have you never had a conversation about how teleporters could actually work? Or nanobots replacing the human immune system?

Yes, I believe I've had each of those conversations exactly once with the same group of friends.

Just so I understand that correctly, once? So if there isn't anything new to talk about, you just don't talk? Also, all the DS threads I've seen talked about DS emulation. I want to talk about the "non-issues".


You guys are funny.

 

[ashdjones]

I go on about future technology all the time to my friends. About ten years ago I described what a mobile phones would look like at the end of the decade to a friend of mine. He wasn't really that interested, it seems most people don't care for hypothetical devices and speculation. He's now an avid iPhone user, the irony being that it's practically identical to what I described to him (being an optimist I suggested it would have gaming buttons, I guess the Odroid is closer).

 

[Phawx]

I go on about future technology all the time to my friends. About ten years ago I described what a mobile phones would look like at the end of the decade to a friend of mine. He wasn't really that interested, it seems most people don't care for hypothetical devices and speculation. He's now an avid iPhone user, the irony being that it's practically identical to what I described to him (being an optimist I suggested it would have gaming buttons, I guess the Odroid is closer).

If the iPhone had gaming controls, actually scratch that, if the N900 had gaming controls I'd be all over that.

 

[ashdjones]

I go on about future technology all the time to my friends. About ten years ago I described what a mobile phones would look like at the end of the decade to a friend of mine. He wasn't really that interested, it seems most people don't care for hypothetical devices and speculation. He's now an avid iPhone user, the irony being that it's practically identical to what I described to him (being an optimist I suggested it would have gaming buttons, I guess the Odroid is closer).

If the iPhone had gaming controls, actually scratch that, if the N900 had gaming controls I'd be all over that.

And battery life. My Ipod Touch runs dry after an hour of gaming.

 

[WizardStan]

Just so I understand that correctly, once? So if there isn't anything new to talk about, you just don't talk? Also, all the DS threads I've seen talked about DS emulation. I want to talk about the "non-issues".

Oh no, if there's something new to discuss then it is a new conversation.
Problem is, we've talked about these extra features before. You've talked about these extra features before. Everyone (that cares) has talked about these extra features before. Everything has been discussed, there is nothing new to add to the conversation that hasn't already been said a dozen times or more (or less, but more than once for sure).

 

[Phawx]

@Wizardstan

<shakes fist> Someone mentioned controlling the DS touch screen with the analog stick? I thought for sure that was a new "thing". Ah well, I just wanted to talk about something else for awhile until we hear more about the cases.

Luckily for me, My Xmas office party is at a go-kart place today. I know it's weird for a Monday...probably the higher ups being cheapskates. But I'll take what I can gets.

 

[Chip]

So if there isn't anything new to talk about, you just don't talk? Also, all the DS threads I've seen talked about DS emulation. I want to talk about the "non-issues".

If you're going to discuss trivial UI options for non-existent software, why limit it to DS emulators? I'm curious what people think about the imaginary PS3 emulator, and whether or not we should use 3D "Home" style avatars, or stick with the old 2D ones.

I'm pretty sure we've gone over this before as well. What color do you want your flying carpet?

 

[Dunny]

What color do you want your flying carpet?

Ooh! If I have a choice, then I'd like red with gold trim. And I'd like to drop kittens off of it.

D.

 

[ashdjones]

What color do you want your flying carpet?

Ooh! If I have a choice, then I'd like red with gold trim. And I'd like to drop kittens off of it.

D.

Does it park in the bikeshed?

 

[Phawx]

So if there isn't anything new to talk about, you just don't talk? Also, all the DS threads I've seen talked about DS emulation. I want to talk about the "non-issues".

If you're going to discuss trivial UI options for non-existent software, why limit it to DS emulators? I'm curious what people think about the imaginary PS3 emulator, and whether or not we should use 3D "Home" style avatars, or stick with the old 2D ones.

I'm pretty sure we've gone over this before as well. What color do you want your flying carpet?

Red. NO BLUE! (WOOOOSH)

I suppose we could talk about PS3 options (or any for that matter) as well. As to your question of the 3D home avatars or 2D ones, I don't recall Home ever having 2D avatars. But I think we would have to include some type of accelerometer to get the six-axis working. Speaking of, why wasn't a rumble motor included on the Pandora?

Actually more onto the flying carpet, to keep it more of "just a carpet" we'd probably have to use zero point energy. But would it wave around when flying on it? Or would it be static? Personally, if a magic carpet isn't all billow-y I don't want to be riding on it.

 

[MiniSinisterMinister]

Desmume on Windows PCs needs a middle class x86 CPU that is not more than two years old. The Pandora architecture is maybe 8 years slower than that. This is a great performance discrepancy. The 1,6 Ghz Atom cannot run Desmume properly either. Furthermore, displaying the dual screens 1:1 on the Pandora screens would result in very small screens while zooming one or both of the screens would need heavy (and ugly) scaling.

 

[Phawx]

Desmume on Windows PCs needs a middle class x86 CPU that is not more than two years old. The Pandora architecture is maybe 8 years slower than that. This is a great performance discrepancy. The 1,6 Ghz Atom cannot run Desmume properly either. Furthermore, displaying the dual screens 1:1 on the Pandora screens would result in very small screens while zooming one or both of the screens would need heavy (and ugly) scaling.

I still have an original DS and games already look like they have ugly scaling. Currently I'm playing Zelda: Spirit Tracks and I'd like to overcome the "stylus only" form of input. You could definitely run around no problem by mapping the touch screen to the analog. But tapping to talk/pickup/use/attack is the problem. Hell there's a problem when you have to control how Princess Zelda walks past some guards and I'm finding it very difficult to come up with a proper solution other than the stylus.

As it is, with Zelda ST, I'd prefer to just play it on my DS. Unless it was possible to control the game otherwise, natch.

 

[laurencevde]

AFAIK, desmume is a purely interpreting emulator, and not a particularly fast one at that. It's not a good benchmark to see what kind of ds-emulation-speed we can get out of the pandora. I can't see any real reason why a decent dynrec/"virtualisation*"-emulator won't be able to reach full speed. It's just that a good emulator-writer would need to spend a significant amount of time getting it doing something...

As for the screen, that's just a matter of making the emulator so that it can store screen-preferences on a per-game basis, and have a couple of different screen-layouts, f.ex: 1:1 above/below; ×2 next to each other; one bigger than the other, next to each other; only show one screen, fullscreen; ×2, next to each other, rotated. Then it's just a matter of choosing what orientation works best for that game. Problem solved.

And I can think of a couple of reasons why you could want a ds-emulator on your pandora: not having to carry around two devices; having more, better working, "features" (like RTS, cheats, compressed-roms-support, reading guides, slowdown, etc) than even the best flash-cart can provide; longer battery-life; faster-than-normal speed; multiplayer on only 1 device(ok, those 2 would be even more difficult to get done); or not having to buy a DS and stuff.
I don't think my DS will be seeing much use once/if a decent DS-emulator for the DS gets developed...

* just for the record, for me, virtualisation means (natively) running unmodified code of the target device on the host. That doesn't mean all code, just part of it (ie. the CPU) would be enough, while truly emulating everything else (ie. I/O).

 

[VRAndy]

So if there isn't anything new to talk about, you just don't talk? Also, all the DS threads I've seen talked about DS emulation. I want to talk about the "non-issues".

If you're going to discuss trivial UI options for non-existent software, why limit it to DS emulators? I'm curious what people think about the imaginary PS3 emulator, and whether or not we should use 3D "Home" style avatars, or stick with the old 2D ones.

A lot of people think that it's impossible to emulate the PS3 on the Pandora. I've been thinking about this for a while now, and I think it could be done. You see, the L2 and L3 buttons could easily be mapped to keyboard presses, likewise the R2 and R3 buttons. This leaves the SIXAXIS motion controls as the biggest stumbling block, but I don't think it's a huge issue. Many games don't use SIXAXIS and for those that do we could map touch-screen gestures to the motion axes.

So, obviously, I can't see any problem with a PS3 emulator.

 

[Chip]

So, obviously, I can't see any problem with a PS3 emulator.

Every time some dimwit quotes your post as proof that the Pandora can emulate the PS3, you owe me a dollar.

 

[MiniSinisterMinister]

@VRAndy: I don't see a problem in PS3 emulation either

@Laurencedve: Some time ago, someone on this board explained to me why virtualisation is not an option with a DS emulator for the Pandora. Once you send the original code to directly to the CPU, it gets "out of control". It would cause huge snychonisation problems with the rest of the emulation.