Homebrew blargSnes -- SNES emulator for the 3DS (WIP)

[kyogre123]

Telling me what the actual bugs are would be far more useful than just coming in and saying this >_>

Well, as I said earlier in this thread, I got Super Bomberman to work and even to load the first stage, but all the backgrounds were shown in 1/4 of its original size.

Now, with the version you compiled, that issue is still happening in the title screen, but this time the game freezes after trying to start the Normal Game.

 

[SeriouslySquall]

Newbie here. Im going to give a brief test report on some games just in case .w.

Final Fight:
There's some strange white flash when moving from screen to screen but nothing too bad.
Went to the secret option screen and after exiting the screen became buggy but pressing start restored it.
Player select is okay.
The first level is missing the background layer, it was running and bit slow and when I was about to hit a goon it froze.
I can't even get out through the Home button so had to force shutdown.

Megaman X2:
Lol it introduced me with an error screen. (I thought that was just for show)
Interface Register ERROR!
Register File ERROR!
Data Ram ERROR!
That's it. :V

Super Castlevania IV:
Black Screen! Or so I thought. After a while the Konami logo showed up. It runs a bit slow navigating through the main menu.
Kind of buggy screen transition but it works. Tested the first level, it's quite slow but not too shaby, reminds me of an old PC game lol but yeah, it's playable so far until Stage 1 at least.

Gradius III:
Konami games kinda seem to take a while to start up but still cool.
Title screen felt a little sluggish or maybe it was just me. The option select screen is missing icons but possible to select the options you want.
On gameplay it works excelent! The speed is smooth and the sprites are working as it shoould except the C.Laser beam becomes invisible after a while but I experienced that on other emus as well so it's overall working great.

Chrono Trigger:
Yeah, perhaps too early but still wanted to try lol.
Black screen! Nothing shows up! Could pause and quit though.

Earthbound:
Runs hella fast on the start screen but gets slow on the "War Against Giygas screen". Pressed start and whoooa I think I saw Giygas on that transition screen .__.
Anyway, inputting your name and etc ran smoothly. Afterwards you see a black background with some sprites of bushes, houses. etc and then the background fixes up. Camera moves diagonally to the left very fast and whoa, got out of boundaries and Im met with a green/bluish screen and stopped there. Could pause and exit via Home Menu.

Welp, that's all I tested so far .w.'''

Edit: What I meant by Option Screen on Gradius III was the screen where you select upgrades for your ship, my bad :S

 

[DiscostewSM]

Megaman X2:
Lol it introduced me with an error screen. (I thought that was just for show)
Interface Register ERROR!
Register File ERROR!
Data Ram ERROR!
That's it. :V

That is likely due to not emulating the CX4 chip that the game uses (which is also used in MMX3).

 

[SpaceJump]

Impressive work! SMW runs nearly perfect. And my beloved Super Metroid is doing great too I was pleasently shocked how well the elevator room at the end of the escape sequence runs!

 

[hippy dave]

Tried Super Bomberman 4 (unofficial english translation): intro/menu graphics were messed up but managed to start a game, then when it showed the first level the background was a quarter of the right size, as someone mentioned for the first Super Bomberman, so I guess it uses the same mode or whatever. The game froze once the level was displayed.

Tried Super Mario All-Stars + Super Mario World: SMB1 + Lost Levels ran fine, graphical glitches as a new screen was drawn but they cleared and everything worked. SMB2 wouldn't let me select a character so couldn't start. SMB3 worked slowly but otherwise well. SMW worked fine.

Zelda LTTP: matched what someone else said. Menu was fine, could start/resume a game, it would display Link's house or Sanctuary (where my saved game had got to) but no characters and nothing happened.

Yoshi's Island: black screen, nothing else. Missing a special chip, right?

 

[sj33]

Yoshi Island uses the SuperFX2 chip so no chance with that one anytime soon.

 

[DiscostewSM]

You're right there.

To get any speed benefit, the PICA200 would need to be able to extract individual bits out of the SNES's planar graphics to build the final graphics. Extracting individual bits implies, at best, bitwise logic, but atleast integer arithmetic. It just wouldn't work with imprecise floating-point arithmetic.

Then, the SNES VRAM would be passed to the PICA200 as a texture. You would have uniform variables for things like tileset/tilemap offsets, BG scroll offsets, etc...

Would surely be complex, but maybe it can be pulled off after all. I need to start looking into that PICA200 shiz.

From what I researched and understood, the PICA200 offers OpenGL ES 1.1 API support + optional OpenGL ES 1.1 extension packs + some DMP proprietary extensions. Regarding just OpenGL ES (embedded systems), programmable shaders weren't introduced until 2.0, meaning as far as the API is concerned, we could not develop a GPU-side program to handle the rendering of SNES information on the 3DS. However, information suggests the DMP proprietary extensions have the included programmable shaders that allow various effects like procedural textures, per-vertex subsurface scattering, etc., having up to 4 programmable vertex shaders able to be rearranged to be 4 pixel pipelines for the 3D processing core.

So I guess the question is, are these DMP extensions available and capable of doing what we want? We know Smealum recently got stable GPU rendering working, but that may just be the base of it, and doesn't include the extensions.

 

[Snailface]

From what I researched and understood, the PICA200 offers OpenGL ES 1.1 API support + optional OpenGL ES 1.1 extension packs + some DMP proprietary extensions. Regarding just OpenGL ES (embedded systems), programmable shaders weren't introduced until 2.0, meaning as far as the API is concerned, we could not develop a GPU-side program to handle the rendering of SNES information on the 3DS. However, information suggests the DMP proprietary extensions have the included programmable shaders that allow various effects like procedural textures, per-vertex subsurface scattering, etc., having up to 4 programmable vertex shaders able to be rearranged to be 4 pixel pipelines for the 3D processing core.

So I guess the question is, are these DMP extensions available and capable of doing what we want? We know Smealum recently got stable GPU rendering working, but that may just be the base of it, and doesn't include the extensions.

The leaked SDK shows support for ES 2.0.

 

[DiscostewSM]

The leaked SDK shows support for ES 2.0.

Yeah? Think it may includes bitwise operators? Would be nice.

 

[cracker]

Killer Instinct works surprisingly well aside from slightly longer delays between screen transitions. A couple of frameskips will probably be needed.

Vanilla Mario hacks seems to be problematic. I tried Brutal Mario, SMB 3X, and Return to Dinosaur Land but all hung at the welcome screen or shortly after.

 

[Arisotura]

Do those hacks run on bsnes/higan, or are they known to require unaccurate emulators?

 

[cracker]

Yeah, they run on bsnes, real hardware.

 

[Arisotura]

Good to know then, I may want to look into them.

I also got reports about some homebrew not working. A shame, really

 

[kyogre123]

I have also noticed that your emulator displays colours in a funny way (they're accurate, but it looks like there's movement on them) and after activating the 3D slider, pressing home and going back to the emulator, the colours somehow get fixed.

If I had to guess, I would say that maybe your emulator is using the full 800x240 resolution of the 3DS, but then it gets back to 400x240 after doing all of the above.

 

[gamesquest1]

Good to know then, I may want to look into them.

I also got reports about some homebrew not working. A shame, really

homebrew running homebrew......that sounds unhealthy wonder if there is any emulators for the snes....get some homebrew running homebrew running homebrew

 

[Arisotura]

I have also noticed that your emulator displays colours in a funny way (they're accurate, but it looks like there's movement on them) and after activating the 3D slider, pressing home and going back to the emulator, the colours somehow get fixed.

If I had to guess, I would say that maybe your emulator is using the full 800x240 resolution of the 3DS, but then it gets back to 400x240 after doing all of the above.

Dunno, but that's possible. I noticed the color instability too. All the framebuffer magic done in blargSnes is crap, really. I'm waiting for the new ctrulib if that's not already released, it's said that it will manage framebuffers correctly.

 

[cracker]

I tested those SMW hacks again and for some reason they worked properly now.

 

[wheezyNoiZe]

Hey StapleButter, awesome work bro! Can't wait to try it out when my Gateway card arrives. Snes on a Nintendo machine just seem right to me. Again, really appreciate your work.

 

[bobmcjr]

I tested those SMW hacks again and for some reason they worked properly now.

I've had blargSNES randomly freeze for some games (including SMW hacks) that worked fine before amd work fine if I relaunch them again.

Had a really bad crash in Wario's Woods. The game screen area went purple and the entire 3ds locked up (touching the screen did nothing, home button not responsive). That game seems to use a lot of SRAM writes.

 

[Arisotura]

Doesn't Wario Woods use SRAM as additional RAM rather than for saving data?

I might want to disable SRAM autosaving in cases like that.