Emulation Dreamcast Emulation?

QuarkTheAwesome said:

As an actual homebrew developer; I can give you some valid reasons. First, however, I'd like to point out the Chip8 emulator and the GameBoy emulator, both of which have been out for months. Go give their devs some love.

1. A complete and utter lack of community support. "the wii u is dead; all the devs are useless; there's no homebrew; just move on" right before someone prints some colours to a screen and you're all over that for months, while I'm just left to my own devices in the background. You start to believe the stuff you're told, y'know. It's finally starting to collectively sink in to homebrewers, have you noticed it?
   
2. The Wii U is a pain. That's why I love it. However, combined with point 1 it doesn't make for a compelling development system.
3. The Exploit Shitshow. I hinted at this in point 1, but all this IOSU stuff is actually really annoying and we should all stop acting like its release will magically make all your dreams come true while simultaneously ignoring the dreams that have already been released. The devs keeping stuff private are only fuelling this fire. I understand there's a development cycle and a brick risk (and SALT is handling this excellently) but someone needs to change PR strategy, and the community sure isn't.
   
4. The forum. There's a link in my signature to my attempt to fix this.
5. Motivation/lack of interest/whatever. Partially my own fault, but also caused by the other points in combination.
6. Sleep deprivation/possible depression. Completely my own fault. I'm working on it.

I'm no speaking for anyone else here, but I suspect they have similar issues too (maybe not that last one). Well, I hope that gives you some "valid" reasons; and hopefully you can realise that it's a number of factors contributing to stagnant development rather than being lazy.

As for the OP, I'm sure it's possible, but who cares? The Wii U is dead, after all. You'll all get your prized IOSU exploit, but you'll have alienated everyone you need to make it useful in the process. Seriously, can we just stop?

Click to expand...

QuarkTheAwesome a huge round of applause that is quite possibly the most intelligent and factual post ever on this site. Thanks for all your hard work and thanks to all the other devs aswell.

Well to be honest, where would the 3DS emulators be if it weren't for RetroArch?
I think most users or developers are just procrastinating due to that fact.
Maybe they are waiting in case RetroArch works on the Wii U, and oh god how I would wish that was true, but unfortunately it seems that might take some time since it seems none of the RA developers have a Wii U for testing and developing.

I would love to see RetroArch ported to the Wii U and have the XBM GUI ported over too, but unless someone from the RA team gets a Wii U, it's not gonna hapen anytime soon, which could also bring the Dreamcast to it with a core.

All I know is that QuarkTheAwesome was working on porting it, but I haven't heard anything about URetro for a while.

QuarkTheAwesome said:

As an actual homebrew developer; I can give you some valid reasons. First, however, I'd like to point out the Chip8 emulator and the GameBoy emulator, both of which have been out for months. Go give their devs some love.

1. A complete and utter lack of community support. "the wii u is dead; all the devs are useless; there's no homebrew; just move on" right before someone prints some colours to a screen and you're all over that for months, while I'm just left to my own devices in the background. You start to believe the stuff you're told, y'know. It's finally starting to collectively sink in to homebrewers, have you noticed it?
   
2. The Wii U is a pain. That's why I love it. However, combined with point 1 it doesn't make for a compelling development system.
3. The Exploit Shitshow. I hinted at this in point 1, but all this IOSU stuff is actually really annoying and we should all stop acting like its release will magically make all your dreams come true while simultaneously ignoring the dreams that have already been released. The devs keeping stuff private are only fuelling this fire. I understand there's a development cycle and a brick risk (and SALT is handling this excellently) but someone needs to change PR strategy, and the community sure isn't.
   
4. The forum. There's a link in my signature to my attempt to fix this.
5. Motivation/lack of interest/whatever. Partially my own fault, but also caused by the other points in combination.
6. Sleep deprivation/possible depression. Completely my own fault. I'm working on it.

I'm no speaking for anyone else here, but I suspect they have similar issues too (maybe not that last one). Well, I hope that gives you some "valid" reasons; and hopefully you can realise that it's a number of factors contributing to stagnant development rather than being lazy.

As for the OP, I'm sure it's possible, but who cares? The Wii U is dead, after all. You'll all get your prized IOSU exploit, but you'll have alienated everyone you need to make it useful in the process. Seriously, can we just stop?

Click to expand...

My point is all still valid. I wasn't calling you names or saying anything but if you were more interested you would be more motivated and farther along. I see you post all the time on here. If you expect motivation from these people you might be crazy. But that doesn't change the facterms that you choose how much time and effort you are putting into it. As I said, due to those actual reasons, it won't be out anytime soon if ever finished.

Also, I said emulators with sound, last I saw, those were mute. Maybe they updated?

A Plus Ric said:

My point is all still valid. I wasn't calling you names or saying anything but if you were more interested you would be more motivated and farther along. I see you post all the time on here. If you expect motivation from these people you might be crazy. But that doesn't change the facterms that you choose how much time and effort you are putting into it. As I said, due to those actual reasons, it won't be out anytime soon if ever finished.

Also, I said emulators with sound, last I saw, those were mute. Maybe they updated?

Click to expand...

Ya you choose what to make time for when you work two jobs, go to night school and have a girlfriend....

..
......


That was sarcasm if you couldn't tell.

People have lives and they have to take a damn breather every once in a while. Quark is too polite to say it and would rather point out actual facts, so let me be the one to officially state what every volunteer dev thinks when this reaction happens in the community: if you can't do it, you can't claim "it's so easy!" or "you are just lazy!" because you can straight up NOT FUCKING DO what you claim is so easy.

You don't have the moral right to complain, please have a couple nice cold stfu-tinis, and go wank off, complain on forums or whatever you actually have the free time to do since you aren't getting a degree in computer science or working as an application developer or SQL Server manager.

And while we're at it, I do agree with you that it is easy, but in my mind anything is easy, you just have to dedicate a good chunk of life to anything you want to be good at. I just passed my MTA, a Microsoft certification for Basic Application Development. Was it hard? No. But it required a good 6 months of time, four days a week, 5 hours a day, to get to the point where I could understand everything and pass it. And how much of that has to do with Wii U programming? Honestly, in real world scenarios, nothing at all. But I'd argue that kind of knowledge is a pre-requisite for any kind of application development, especially robust applications like emulators. So let's just tack on another 6 months to a year of time just to get to a point where you could comfortably code on the Wii U and understand what is happening. Now I think you should see that it isn't just a matter of "we don't make time for it." A lot of us CAN'T make time for it. Not a lot of devs came here with automatic knowledge of how to code for this system, and from my understanding many left because of people like you bringing them down. What we have left is some very dedicated people who want to see the homebrew scene flourish here but probably won't, and it isn't because the scene is dead. XBOX hacking didn't take off til the year before it was discontinued and lasted several years afterword. Some homebrew for it, the Wii, the PSP and Vita are still being made. Why? Because there was support for it. I have no clue why but in this community there are not many supporters -- it seems to mostly be whiners.

Case and point ^^^^^^

CJB100 said:

Ya you choose what to make time for when you work two jobs, go to night school and have a girlfriend....

..
......


That was sarcasm if you couldn't tell.

People have lives and they have to take a damn breather every once in a while. Quark is too polite to say it and would rather point out actual facts, so let me be the one to officially state what every volunteer dev thinks when this reaction happens in the community: if you can't do it, you can't claim "it's so easy!" or "you are just lazy!" because you can straight up NOT FUCKING DO what you claim is so easy.

You don't have the moral right to complain, please have a couple nice cold stfu-tinis, and go wank off, complain on forums or whatever you actually have the free time to do since you aren't getting a degree in computer science or working as an application developer or SQL Server manager.

And while we're at it, I do agree with you that it is easy, but in my mind anything is easy, you just have to dedicate a good chunk of life to anything you want to be good at. I just passed my MTA, a Microsoft certification for Basic Application Development. Was it hard? No. But it required a good 6 months of time, four days a week, 5 hours a day, to get to the point where I could understand everything and pass it. And how much of that has to do with Wii U programming? Honestly, in real world scenarios, nothing at all. But I'd argue that kind of knowledge is a pre-requisite for any kind of application development, especially robust applications like emulators. So let's just tack on another 6 months to a year of time just to get to a point where you could comfortably code on the Wii U and understand what is happening. Now I think you should see that it isn't just a matter of "we don't make time for it." A lot of us CAN'T make time for it. Not a lot of devs came here with automatic knowledge of how to code for this system, and from my understanding many left because of people like you bringing them down. What we have left is some very dedicated people who want to see the homebrew scene flourish here but probably won't, and it isn't because the scene is dead. XBOX hacking didn't take off til the year before it was discontinued and lasted several years afterword. Some homebrew for it, the Wii, the PSP and Vita are still being made. Why? Because there was support for it. I have no clue why but in this community there are not many supporters -- it seems to mostly be whiners.

Case and point ^^^^^^

Click to expand...

Never said it was easy, but over 30 days with no commits or updates, you can say all you want. That is lack of motivation. Which is either not caring much, or being lazy. My case and points are still valid and no matter how many paragraphs of things you say, it's still the same answer, if you are really interested, you find time, if u semi care, u dont. You didn't change my view or point.

Just because you are upset by truth doesn't give you a right to act like I'm calling them out or disrespecting like 99 percent of the bi-polar people on this forum. I just stated facts. And gave my reasons, which are still proven valid.

I mean, I could be rude and shit talk if you would like since you all use that route as a response?

Marko76 said:

QuarkTheAwesome a huge round of applause that is quite possibly the most intelligent and factual post ever on this site. Thanks for all your hard work and thanks to all the other devs aswell.

Click to expand...

Agreed! Also what's this mysterious link?

A Plus Ric said:

Face the facts. We probably won't see any, and if we do it will be I a long time as noone really cares about it. Get over it and move on.

Click to expand...

Hey! If everyone had this attitude nothing difficult would get done.

A Plus Ric said:

Also, I said emulators with sound, last I saw, those were mute. Maybe they updated?

Click to expand...

I haven't the foggiest idea how 1. sound is generated on a computer, 2. sound is emulated, 3. the sound libraries on the Wii U work. I am not exaggerating when I say I know as much about how implementing sound would work as you do.

We're truly suffering from a lack of developers here. A generous estimate puts us as 10 active developers. This is likely due to the very attitude that you're presenting here. If spirits were higher, we'd have more developers-- and maybe one of them would know something about sound!

http://devkitpro.org/wiki/Getting_Started/devkitPPC

Anyone can set this up by downloading the devkitppc files for your OS, downloading dimok's portlibs and libogc folders and putting them in the devkitpro folder. Then that person can use @brienj's HBL chip8 emulator frame as a base to port whatever emulator their heart desires. There are no dragons here.

A Plus Ric said:

Just because you are upset by truth doesn't give you a right to act like I'm calling them out or disrespecting like 99 percent of the bi-polar people on this forum. I just stated facts. And gave my reasons, which are still proven valid.

Click to expand...

You just posted again while I was typing this so I'll.. reply to this too I guess. Whether your points are "valid" or not, you have a bad attitude. I'm curious, where do you think motivation comes from? Is it from being told to "Get over it and move on?" I sure hope that the person who knows how sound programming works doesn't read that and decide it's not worth their time.

...

My only regret in these paragraphs of replies is I didn't plug Quark's paypal enough!

A Plus Ric said:

To say you have no free time is to say you are lazy essentially

Click to expand...

A Plus Ric said:

you might be crazy

Click to expand...

Clearly not disrespecting or calling out. Clearly.

A Plus Ric said:

over 30 days with no commits or updates,

Click to expand...

Ok, and that wasn't addressed in my post above?

"it required a good 6 months of time, four days a week, 5 hours a day, to get to the point where I could understand everything and pass it. And how much of that has to do with Wii U programming? Honestly, in real world scenarios, nothing at all. But I'd argue that kind of knowledge is a pre-requisite for any kind of application development, especially robust applications like emulators. So let's just tack on another 6 months to a year of time just to get to a point where you could comfortably code on the Wii U and understand what is happening."

A Plus Ric said:

My case and points are still valid and no matter how many paragraphs of things you say, it's still the same answer, if you are really interested, you find time, if u semi care, u dont.

Click to expand...

No, your points aren't even remotely valid, I just explained that most of the devs here didn't get to where they are today because they took it easy. They aren't lazy and in most cases probably have very little time to devote because they are almost definitely honing their programming skills in a college classroom and a workplace. Wii U hacking doesn't pay bills and to be as skilled at programming as many devs are they're definitely applying their skill outside this forum in a profitable way. We have families to support and futures to make for ourselves. The fact that you think time is something you make clearly tells me that you either have way too much of it or neglect your responsibilities. You don't make time when you work and go to school and have any kind of social life. I get your sentiment, but this isn't a social activity like riding Harleys or fixing up old cars or collecting things or hanging out playing games. Those can all be a form or relaxation or recreation. This is not comparable. This is frustrating and something you have to do outside of your social activities as well. It's only rewarding after the fact -- getting there is rarely pleasurable.

A Plus Ric said:

99 percent of the bi-polar people on this forum

Click to expand...

You try to say you aren't whining by comparing yourself to "the whiners?" How about you ACT instead of talk? Contribute something, it doesn't have to be a program, just a nice post without attitude. Again, btw, clearly not calling out or disrespecting, oh no!

A Plus Ric said:

I just stated facts.

Click to expand...

A Plus Ric said:

I mean, I could be rude and shit talk if you would like

Click to expand...

Oh, I'm sorry that my f-bomb hurt your feelings. Hmm, why does someone expressing their opinion in an obnoxious way for the sole purpose of cutting people down sound so familiar...?

A Plus Ric said:

Face the facts. We probably won't see any, and if we do it will be I a long time as noone really cares about it. Get over it and move on.

Click to expand...

At least I go all out and only respond obnoxiously to obnoxious people. Sure, the eye for an eye mentality is probably not the best way to act but I am so sick of the Debbie Downers and naysayers who cant let anyone dream because they're so miserable. Do you really think you're helping anyone by being a pessimistic raincloud? Also, passive aggressive just sounds like you aren't even sure how well your OPINION will go over. You don't need to curse or be edgy but that's just how I talk when I am passionate about something, and I don't do it a lot. You or anyone else can too in the same moderation per board rules. If you want to say something you say it. If you aren't sure about it then you don't. You mull it over and research it and come back later.

To be honest the only reason emulators would even be maybe iffy without IOSU is lack of a proper codegen area, although I believe that is set up by PPC kernel anyhow, so provided the right patches I don't see why it wouldn't be possible? But for the most part the lack of emulators likes somewhere between lack of interest and (in my opinion) the massive amount of bloat the GX2 examples have, and just the quirkiness of the .elf running environment. I had to do quite a bit of work just to get myself a basic 2D sample which didn't have tons of C++ layers on top of it.

Hoo-wee, this got interesting ;D

@ploggy and @ShadowOne333, I got a bit stuck on URetro and figured it'd probably be best to just write individual emulators anyway; code not written specifically for the Wii U can sometimes be a bit of a pain and I was finding libretro cores have exactly that problem. With the hardware the way it is you can have more fun with it porting/writing a proper emu.

@pedro702 has made point 1 exactly. Think about what stuff like that says to developers.

@A Plus Ric woooooow i hope you aren't calling me a lazy bipolar
(Not that there's anything wrong with being bipolar, more that I'm just not bipolar. I am pretty lazy, though.)

Both of you - Sound support does not an emulator make.

@JasonH I don't really have any connections to Wii devs and I'm fairly sure none of the other guys do; though we'd love to have anyone that's interested. Try #wiiubru on Freenode, that's where most of us hang out (although you can probably understand that there isn't much going on over there)

@shinyquagsire23 That 2D sample looks amazing. Hopefully I can start understanding GX2 now that you've made some simpler examples.

Everyone - I was feeling pretty down when I wrote my last post, I'm not actually depressed or anything.
Also people please don't guilt-trip me through PayPal I'll just stop accepting payments kthnx

(schemes a NES emulator that only does the CPU and sound; no graphics)

QuarkTheAwesome said:

As an actual homebrew developer; I can give you some valid reasons. First, however, I'd like to point out the Chip8 emulator and the GameBoy emulator, both of which have been out for months. Go give their devs some love.

1. A complete and utter lack of community support. "the wii u is dead; all the devs are useless; there's no homebrew; just move on" right before someone prints some colours to a screen and you're all over that for months, while I'm just left to my own devices in the background. You start to believe the stuff you're told, y'know. It's finally starting to collectively sink in to homebrewers, have you noticed it?
   
2. The Wii U is a pain. That's why I love it. However, combined with point 1 it doesn't make for a compelling development system.
3. The Exploit Shitshow. I hinted at this in point 1, but all this IOSU stuff is actually really annoying and we should all stop acting like its release will magically make all your dreams come true while simultaneously ignoring the dreams that have already been released. The devs keeping stuff private are only fuelling this fire. I understand there's a development cycle and a brick risk (and SALT is handling this excellently) but someone needs to change PR strategy, and the community sure isn't.
   
4. The forum. There's a link in my signature to my attempt to fix this.
5. Motivation/lack of interest/whatever. Partially my own fault, but also caused by the other points in combination.
6. Sleep deprivation/possible depression. Completely my own fault. I'm working on it.

I'm no speaking for anyone else here, but I suspect they have similar issues too (maybe not that last one). Well, I hope that gives you some "valid" reasons; and hopefully you can realise that it's a number of factors contributing to stagnant development rather than being lazy.

As for the OP, I'm sure it's possible, but who cares? The Wii U is dead, after all. You'll all get your prized IOSU exploit, but you'll have alienated everyone you need to make it useful in the process. Seriously, can we just stop?

Click to expand...

Well, as for the reason, the Wii U is dead, no. There has even been a Not64: Second Edition for Wii this April.
Ofcourse you want to port it over to the more powerful Wii U. Same as on the SNES9x GX on Wii which has crashing on a lot of Super Mario World ROM Hacks.

Your points 3, 4 and 5 are the main reasons. Where the 3DS gets releases everything and even immediately, where the Wii U gets not, only crappy discussions about it (point 4, the forum) and people fighing, arguing and idk lmao.
Point 5 comes also in place because of reasons 3 and 4. I'd have no motivation at all if nothing gets released and you only see people fighting and trolling.
Sure we have VC inject, but try to inject ROM Hacks. Most are larger than the largest VC game, so they can't be injected. Emulators has to be made.

Well, only time™ will tell.

QuarkTheAwesome said:

Hoo-wee, this got interesting ;D

@ploggy and @ShadowOne333, I got a bit stuck on URetro and figured it'd probably be best to just write individual emulators anyway; code not written specifically for the Wii U can sometimes be a bit of a pain and I was finding libretro cores have exactly that problem. With the hardware the way it is you can have more fun with it porting/writing a proper emu.

@pedro702 has made point 1 exactly. Think about what stuff like that says to developers.

@A Plus Ric woooooow i hope you aren't calling me a lazy bipolar
(Not that there's anything wrong with being bipolar, more that I'm just not bipolar. I am pretty lazy, though.)

Both of you - Sound support does not an emulator make.

@JasonH I don't really have any connections to Wii devs and I'm fairly sure none of the other guys do; though we'd love to have anyone that's interested. Try #wiiubru on Freenode, that's where most of us hang out (although you can probably understand that there isn't much going on over there)

@shinyquagsire23 That 2D sample looks amazing. Hopefully I can start understanding GX2 now that you've made some simpler examples.

Everyone - I was feeling pretty down when I wrote my last post, I'm not actually depressed or anything.
Also people please don't guilt-trip me through PayPal I'll just stop accepting payments kthnx

(schemes a NES emulator that only does the CPU and sound; no graphics)

Click to expand...

I can complete feel you bro! I would behave similiar when I'd spend my time and the community (only parts of it to be fair) are sucking balls and flaming like there's no tomorrow.
And that's the tragedy since the Wii U is the best console ever for emulation and stuff thanks to its GamePad and I think you won't disagree here with me.
Also it's really sad that it's so impracticable to port RetroArch over to Wii U. But that's how life's going sometimes.

I really do hope that the Wii U will have some emulators. It's kind of dissapointing that the strongest Nintendo console, that's exploitable on the latest firmware doesn't have much besides piracy yet...
But I'd rather have no emulators and instead have developers live their lifes instead of a lot of them and having devs lose their minds.

I kind of miss the Wii and DS scene, there were so many homebrew, original games, emulators, tools, apps etc. for those systems, you always had something to do. I remember playing a homebrew mystery solving game that was so amazing and high quality. I really hope the NX will be like this, but I doubt it.

Good luck to anyone who's developing anything on the Wii U now.

The lack of respect in this thread is depressing. Some people need to remember that homebrew developers receive absolutely nothing in return for their hard work. I for one am grateful for the thousands of hours that developers spend working on exploits and homebrew. Anyone who claims they are too lazy doesn't deserve the free stuff they think they'll get by barking.

QuarkTheAwesome said:

@ploggy and @ShadowOne333, I got a bit stuck on URetro and figured it'd probably be best to just write individual emulators anyway; code not written specifically for the Wii U can sometimes be a bit of a pain and I was finding libretro cores have exactly that problem. With the hardware the way it is you can have more fun with it porting/writing a proper emu.

Click to expand...

Ah I see.
Nice of you to let us know how it went.

Thanks for giving it a try, though, it is really appreciated, and much more that you explained it.

@QuarkTheAwesome So what do we do now? Just simply give up on ever seeing any kind of port of an emulator on the Wii U? Because that's what it sounds like the direction it's headed in? I thought the Libretro Team said they could help with porting emulators over on their IRC channel, guess that can't happen either, go fig. Wii U emulators via homebrew really are a lost cause then.

the_randomizer said:

@QuarkTheAwesome So what do we do now? Just simply give up on ever seeing any kind of port of an emulator on the Wii U? Because that's what it sounds like the direction it's headed in?

Click to expand...

I say to just give it time.
There are already some emus floating around, it's just a matter of those getting polished to begin with so that others can grab those as a base for examples and start other emus.

Also, RA might jump into it at some point if some of the devs get their hands on a Wii U for developing.
I say just give it time until they are bored of the exploding Vita scene for a while and we might see something on the Wii U.
Remember that RA has always been about porting LibRetro to almost every possible hardware in existence.

ShadowOne333 said:

I say to just give it time.
There are already some emus floating around, it's just a matter of those getting polished to begin with so that others can grab those as a base for examples and start other emus.

Also, RA might jump into it at some point if some of the devs get their hands on a Wii U for developing.
I say just give it time until they are bored of the exploding Vita scene for a while and we might see something on the Wii U.
Remember that RA has always been about porting LibRetro to almost every possible hardware in existence.

Click to expand...

The problem with RetroArch is that none of the developers actually have a Wii U, SquarePusher was one of them that told me that on the forums, so uh that's gonna make things quite difficult; someone else would have to either do a lot of guesswork, or someone will have to donate a used Wii U to the team. You did read what QuarkTheAwesome said, right? URetro is pretty much dead in the water, there's a glaring lack of interest as there aren't a lot of people interested in the Wii U, but I'm probably wrong, and if I am, I'm more than glad to be proven wrong with emulator ports.

I want to see emulators as much as the next guy, I just don't know what to think anymore.

the_randomizer said:

The problem with RetroArch is that none of the developers actually have a Wii U, SquarePusher was one of them that told me that on the forums, so uh that's gonna make things quite difficult; someone else would have to either do a lot of guesswork, or someone will have to donate a used Wii U to the team. You did read what QuarkTheAwesome said, right? URetro is pretty much dead in the water, there's a glaring lack of interest as there aren't a lot of people interested in the Wii U, but I'm probably wrong, and if I am, I'm more than glad to be proven wrong with emulator ports.

I want to see emulators as much as the next guy, I just don't know what to think anymore.

Click to expand...

Yeah I do know that URetro might be dead, but that doesn't mean no one else will pick it up or do something on their own.
Who knows, perhaps someone else will get RA working on the Wii U, or maybe the devs might get a Wii U in the upcoming days or perhaps they will have one donated, no one can tell, all we do is just wait, that's the only option so far.

Just give it time, things will happen eventually.