After several years, DS Wifi emulation is back.

@StapleButter, a French developer well-known for homebrew SNES emulators blargSNES (o3DS, N3DS) and lolSNES (NDS) is developing since a few months a new DS emulator called melonDS. The open-source emulator, which originally started as a forum joke about the lack of proper Wi-Fi emulation in DeSmuME, has made a lot of progress, with the goal of being as accurate as possible. melonDS, now on its 0.3 release, is now capable of emulating most retail games, although it requires a pretty powerful CPU to work at full speed. Here are some screenshots of the 0.3 release:

melonDS3_1.png
melonDS3_2.png
melonDS3_3.png

One of the goals of melonDS was also accurate wifi emulation. Indeed, in the past, StapleButter's work on wifi in DeSmuME has been sabotaged by the lead dev zeromus, for various 'reasons'. Wifi emulation in DeSmuME has been since left out and the DeSmuME main page states that "Wifi is not supported and will never be emulated". A few days ago, in a pretty short tweet, StapleButter showed a screenshot of a communication between two emulated DSes in the well-known DS messaging app PictoChat. After a few years, Wi-Fi emulation is back again!

get.php
For now, despite the feature being still highly experimental, the feature has been reported working with local VS mode play in New Super Mario Bros. and even Pokémon trading.

Links:
 
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Mikemk

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Things in emulation we've called impossible:
Emulation
GBC emulation
GBA emulation
DS emulation
3DS emulation
Proper zfreeze emulation
Xbox emulation
Wii emulation
PS1 emulation
N64 emulation
PS2 emulation
See where this is going?
Don't forget Wii U and PS3.

Now I'm going to say that Nintendo will finally learn their lesson, and the VR headset after the switch won't be emulated due to encryption.
 
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jt_1258

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Don't forget Wii U and PS3.

Now I'm going to say that Nintendo will finally learn their lesson, and the VR headset after the switch won't be emulated due to encryption.
nb4 ps4/xb1 emu, I'm sure it'll come one day but that that'll be one wild time when it comes real
 

StarTrekVoyager

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Old inspirational meme is old, but right.

In all seriousness though, if there's anything I've learned from my stay here at GBATemp, it's that feats we've previously thought to be impossible have become possible in time. (DS emulation on 3DS and then later native loading is one such example. GBA emulation on the DS was also thought to have been impossible at one point. Sure, they're not exactly pretty but they've been shown to be possible.)

From a technical standpoint, it'd require specific communication devices that you don't easily find, a very, very, very powerful computer and moreover, a completely flawless and virtually perfect communication. And exactly zero lag. Good luck. It ha absolutely nothing to do with hard emulation, it's about communication.
 

Arisotura

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Another problem is that as far as I know, your typical PC network card only notifies you that a packet was received once it's completely received. This, including wifi cards.

The DS wifi hardware can notify you when it begins receiving a packet. Nintendo's wifi stack uses this to analyze the packet header and potentially do things before the packet is done being received.

melonDS has its own RX processing that emulates the reception delay, but when communicating with a DS, you'll have to add that to the existing transfer delay and wifi lag. Maybe this isn't a big deal, there's some room in the timings, but it isn't free.
 

ParzivalWolfram

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Another problem is that as far as I know, your typical PC network card only notifies you that a packet was received once it's completely received. This, including wifi cards.

The DS wifi hardware can notify you when it begins receiving a packet. Nintendo's wifi stack uses this to analyze the packet header and potentially do things before the packet is done being received.

melonDS has its own RX processing that emulates the reception delay, but when communicating with a DS, you'll have to add that to the existing transfer delay and wifi lag. Maybe this isn't a big deal, there's some room in the timings, but it isn't free.
You know the solution to this?

Make your own hardware/driver set.
An RPi is a good place to start, as there is no standard clock signal on the RPi Zero, which is the perfect size for a USB device.
 
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Mikemk

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I don't know if you can have a rom for the pictochat itelf.. if yes, let me know xD
but I know there are a DSgame with built in pictochat, you can use it even in he 3DS
look for Kanji Sonomama Rakubiki Jiten DS
There's a DSiWare rom for it. You can install on a 3DS, but have to launch from FBI
 

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