Nintendo Ds Emulation On Pandora

[WizardStan]

'Cause it's trippy. h34r: But why does nobody say this stuff about the PSP emulator?

I have said the same thing about the PSP emulator. If someone wants to work on it, I'm not going to stop them. In fact, I will encourage them. In fact, I have encouraged them. Same as a DS emulator; if someone starts working on it then I will be all "yeah! You go man!"
But the person asking for it obviously isn't the person working on it (otherwise they wouldn't be asking, they would be doing)
So the question is valid: why do you want DS emulation? The reason for asking such questions is because when someone says they want something it's usually because they haven't considered alternatives. By asking the question "why", the answer can lead others to alternatives that the requester hadn't considered.
"Because it's trippy" would be a pretty good reason for someone to make one, but it doesn't seem like a good reason for someone to want one. Lots of things are trippy. Go outside and eat the first mushroom you find.

 

[Exophase]

The same arguments come up over and over again, is this ever going anywhere? If you don't want to emulate it on Pandora then that's fine, but why is it so hard to understand that other people do? Hundreds of thousands of people want to emulate GBA on handhelds, is that very different? Hell, is it very different to want to emulate consoles on PCs? Emulators can do things real hardware can't, even with flashcards, and it's more convenient having things in one device. Who seriously wants to plan out "okay, I'm going to play these games today" when they could have any at their disposal and go with what they feel like at the time? What if they want to switch to playing a homebrew game, checking their e-mail or any of the other non-emulator things a Pandora can do better than a DS? Then, even if you alternate between which one you're taking you still have to bother with charging both devices, you still have to maintain both, you still have to pay for both (sorry, $130 + $20+ flash card does not strike me as a a negligible purchase), and you have to worry about the DS's awful hinge breaking.

That the screen argument comes up constantly is amazing, I wonder if people have really played a lot of DS games. Most of them don't have one continuous playfield that's top to bottom, they have a main screen and a subscreen that shows other things. There's nothing wrong with showing them side by side and two 400x300 displays stretched to fit won't look that bad, nor would a 512x384 and 256x192 display. Even for games that do have the a vertical playfield over both screens, you often aren't constantly moving between the two. So having them side by side might be slightly awkward but it won't exactly ruin the game. Then let's say some percentage of games are totally ruined, so what? Since when did an emulator have to be suitable for absolutely every game to be worthwhile? From my perspective an emulator has to only play ONE decent/popular game very well to be worth having, never mind a majority of the library. I don't see anyone calling N64 emulation a waste of time just because Pandora will almost definitely never emulate the custom ucode games. In fact, from the way people have been reacting you'd think they'd be damn thrilled with an emulator that runs nothing but Mario 64. I bet a DS emulator that ran nothing but New Super Mario Bros, Pokemon and the Castlevania games would still be used by lots of people.

But yeah, if you think DS emulation is going to happen on Pandora at release you're kidding yourself. If it's possible with any decent results it'll take a tremendous amount of new work, so unless some expert was secretly doing this for the last year I think there's no chance. And I'm not just talking about secret work like what Ari64 did with Mupen64plus, because that was just optimizing a recompiler for an emulator that already had a recompiler framework - DS emulation suitable for Pandora would need a totally new emulator with far more heavily optimized than just CPU. And DS is far from a simple system to emulate. It's not quite PS2 or Saturn but it's more complex than most other things out there.

 

[WizardStan]

The same arguments come up over and over again, is this ever going anywhere? If you don't want to emulate it on Pandora then that's fine, but why is it so hard to understand that other people do?

Because other people are asking other person to set aside time to do something that they want without understanding why they want it themselves in most cases. If other people want to write the emulator themselves, that's fine. If someone asks me for anything, I would expect them to have a more convincing reason than "because I want it".

 

[Paradox]

confirmed: exophase is not secretly working on a DS emu

 

[Exophase]

Because other people are asking other person to set aside time to do something that they want without understanding why they want it themselves in most cases. If other people want to write the emulator themselves, that's fine. If someone asks me for anything, I would expect them to have a more convincing reason than "because I want it".

While you have a good point, it all seems moot considering that no one who could get DS emulation working in a way that's worth using would decide to do so because some newb asked for it.

I'm sure that won't stop us from seeing at least one DesMuME port though ;p And then the usual "this is amazing! everyone said it couldn't be done but they were WRONG! only feature it lacks is being fullspeed, should be easy though right, just adjust it so it's faster"

confirmed: exophase is not secretly working on a DS emu

Why would you ever think I was to begin with..?

 

[juniorm33]

Sorry not read it all, apart from when would you want to carry both, i.e. you can carry one or the other.
I don't care too much about DS, but reason being that Pandora is not just a games machine!
So if I was into DS I'd never take it anywhere as I'd always have to have my Pandora on me. E.g. PDA

 

[borgqueenx]

hey exophase, i said i'd like 15FPS. or is that already a very had job?
Its to bad that the ds with its crappy ram, processor and other shitty stuff cant be emulated one two three And while the ds is such a crap, the best games are released on that platform -_- ... gameplay will always come first.

so a port of dsemu wont give us 5fps with slight optimalisations or is it even worse?

and +1 for keaft:

Reason 1 for having DS emulator: You only have to carry one device.
Reason 2: you only have to carry one device.
Reason 3: The pandora is so much cooler than a DS.
Reason 4: read my sig.
Reason 5: People enjoy an all in one device.
Reason 42: Hassle of switching between devices.
Reason 512: Easier to get into the DS homebrew scene when it's emulated.

 

[Phawx]

Sweet Exophase ported DesMuME and is going to optimize it so it runs faster!

 

[borgqueenx]

Sweet Exophase ported DesMuME and is going to optimize it so it runs faster!

confirmed!
Thanks exophase! Now give us screenshots or we flame you to death

 

[Exophase]

hey exophase, i said i'd like 15FPS. or is that already a very had job?
Its to bad that the ds with its crappy ram, processor and other shitty stuff cant be emulated one two three And while the ds is such a crap, the best games are released on that platform -_- ... gameplay will always come first.

so a port of dsemu wont give us 5fps with slight optimalisations or is it even worse?

This has been answered over and over again. Even your very posts from months ago have been. I don't know why you have to keep asking, much less make this thread. The only reference we have on how DesMuME (not "dsemu", DesMuME) performs is cpasjuste's comment of "2D games were 10fps or less", that is all anyone can tell you. There are tons of variables we don't know to what he said.

Personally I don't see how anyone can be happy with 15FPS. Maybe you don't understand that this means the game runs 1/4th the speed it's supposed to run at. For most games that aren't purely turn based the gameplay will be completely ruined.

I don't know what "slight optimizations" you're expecting (optimalisations is not a word!) but don't hold your breath, people who port slow emulators usually aren't pros at optimizing them.

 

[Tokiopop]

5fps? You really want an emulator that's 5 frames per second? I'm not trying to be mean here, but that's just pointless and pretty much ruins any points to have it.

Most of the best DS games are quite slowish games, and some people overclock their DS just to make it a little better. To have it running considerably slower than normal would just be horrible. Can you imagine grinding on FF games at 5-15 seconds? Not fun.

 

[Exophase]

Sweet Exophase ported DesMuME and is going to optimize it so it runs faster!

My god, would you please not joke like this in threads borgqueenx is reading? ;P

Especially ones he started..

 

[borgqueenx]

i couldnt find the DS topic and cant remember i asked. but im sure i have, because it would be nice.

5fps wont be playable but nice anyways to show. 15fps is playable, really, it is.
i play unreal tournament 2004 on this computer, with believe it or not, a normal FPS speed of 10.
sometimes i wanna throw the pc out of the window, but its still playable.

damn exophase you sound like its a impossible job, while its not. although i do understand people asked before, and i even asked before(although i cant remember like i said) and its just a big puzzle architecture, what makes the impossible job, comes close to impossible, but not there yet.

And yeah im not a hero in speaking english.

sorry if i asked before, i tried the search function like i said.

 

[WizardStan]

Reason 1 for having DS emulator: You only have to carry one device.
Reason 2: you only have to carry one device.
Reason 3: The pandora is so much cooler than a DS.

If the Pandora is so much cooler than the DS, why have DS emulator at all? Why not just use the huge collection of stuff already available for the Pandora instead of asking for more? (Arguments work against you, rewrite them)

Reason 4: read my sig.

Irrelevant. I'm not saying don't, I'm asking why someone who is not you should do it for you. (Non-point. Remove it)

Reason 5: People enjoy an all in one device.
Reason 42: Hassle of switching between devices.

These are basically the same argument, and almost the exact same as argument 2. (Duplicate arguments. Reduce to one)

Reason 512: Easier to get into the DS homebrew scene when it's emulated.

No it's not. It's easier to get into the DS homebrew scene when you can either run it directly on an actually DS, or when emulated in a system with sufficient resources to run the ROM and display debug info as well. The Pandora is neither of these. (Argument is almost an argument against DS emulation on Pandora. Really, REALLY remove this one)

And this is what I meant earlier about asking for something without understanding why. Especially that last one: you want to emulate DS on Pandora so you can develop homebrew, but the Pandora is a poor platform for testing homebrew.

 

[calc84maniac]

i couldnt find the DS topic and cant remember i asked. but im sure i have, because it would be nice.

5fps wont be playable but nice anyways to show. 15fps is playable, really, it is.
i play unreal tournament 2004 on this computer, with believe it or not, a normal FPS speed of 10.
sometimes i wanna throw the pc out of the window, but its still playable.

damn exophase you sound like its a impossible job, while its not. although i do understand people asked before, and i even asked before(although i cant remember like i said) and its just a big puzzle architecture, what makes the impossible job, comes close to impossible, but not there yet.

And yeah im not a hero in speaking english.

sorry if i asked before, i tried the search function like i said.

15 gameplay frames processed per second when there should be 60 processed? That's 1/4 speed, dude. Frameskip shouldn't even be part of the discussion there.

 

[kingoddball]

How about people stop piracy and buy the games?

N64 is a "dead" console.. Roms dont hurt AS MUCH (besides, you can buy the games for only a few dollars each and dump them with a gameshark).

Dreamcast - Dead

PS1 - (kind of) dead

Look at the trend.. Sega, Nintendo..

Just buy a DS, buy the games.
Or get an R4DS or CycloDS and play roms that way.

 

[guizm]

Frameskiping is always the solution, for everything.

Btw: 25fps is playable, that are the frames i get in crysis max out.

 

[juniorm33]

How about people stop piracy and buy the games?

N64 is a "dead" console.. Roms dont hurt AS MUCH (besides, you can buy the games for only a few dollars each and dump them with a gameshark).

Dreamcast - Dead

PS1 - (kind of) dead

Look at the trend.. Sega, Nintendo..

Just buy a DS, buy the games.
Or get an R4DS or CycloDS and play roms that way.

IF I was interested in DS and it could be emulated that's what I would want instead of having to carry both around, because just carrying DS woundn't be an option.

Doing as you say, flowing on from kind of dead leads to alive

edit - oh god didn't even realise you tried to bring piracy in to this, wouldn't have even bothered replying

 

[Exophase]

Frameskiping is always the solution, for everything.

Btw: 25fps is playable, that are the frames i get in crysis max out.

Uh, no. The sooner you guys understand this is faulty logic the better. Emulators can skip video frames and they can render less audio samples per second too but they can't skip CPU emulation. If it takes more than 16.67ms to emulate the number of cycles where the CPU isn't detected as idling then the game will run slower than it would on the real platform, no matter how many frames you skip.

 

[guizm]

yeah, i was just joking

Maybe we can skip the cpu emulation and skip everything except for the audio and video, then it will just emulate the audio and video, i think it's a good idea.