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

[DiscostewSM]

This guy did some screen grabs a while ago showing how some games can look in 3d.
http://joshuajamesslone.name/temp/snes3d/

Anyway, great work so far, I hope the project goes well.

Pretty good, but the popping out of sprites over layers seems a bit odd. It'll work for various games like Street Fighter, but side-scrollers like Mario and top-down games like Zelda may make it a bit odd. Maybe have the sprite layers be the same depth (or just a teensy less) than the background layer behind it may make it look better for those type of games. There's always the possibility of adjusting this on a game-to-game basis.

 

[DaniPoo]

Yes, for 2D scrollers like mario you want to have the sprites at the same depth as the layer mario in insteracting with.
With other words. You want mario to run on the ground and not in front of the ground.

A lot of people tend to sepparate all the layers with depth just because they can and it's not always pretty. Remember the 3D teck relatively new to the homebrew community and will hopefully mature really nicely.

I hope to see emulators that comes with game specific 3D-settings someday.
It's going need a lot of work and a really active community.
And the first titles you probably would see working well with this would probably be,
Super Mario World, Yoshi's Island, Donkey Kong Country, Metroid, Castlevania and maybe a few other 2D scrollers since these are best suited for 3D and also has some of the biggest titles.

 

[DaniPoo]

Oh and by the way, Do snes games often swap order of different layers? I mean just because you get 3D working well in one level doesnt really mean that it will work on the worldmap or even on a different level right? How do we tackle that problem? We would need the emulator to actively change 3d settings based on where you are in the game right?

Would it be possible to make the emulator aware of what part of the game (Level, overworld, bonus level) you're currently at and apply user settings based on that?

I know it sound like extremely much work and like I said in the post above, it would need an active community working together.
It would probably need the emulator to actively look for specific hexadecimal adresses and when presented apply settings from a gamespecific configuration file or something like that.

 

[pedro702]

iw ould love to get this working when the 3ds homebrew is nearing release.

 

[alexenochs]

Any idea when we can expect a release?

 

[the_randomizer]

Any idea when we can expect a release?

Not for a while I'd guess.

 

[spinal_cord]

Oh and by the way, Do snes games often swap order of different layers? I mean just because you get 3D working well in one level doesnt really mean that it will work on the worldmap or even on a different level right? How do we tackle that problem? We would need the emulator to actively change 3d settings based on where you are in the game right?

Would it be possible to make the emulator aware of what part of the game (Level, overworld, bonus level) you're currently at and apply user settings based on that?

I know it sound like extremely much work and like I said in the post above, it would need an active community working together.
It would probably need the emulator to actively look for specific hexadecimal adresses and when presented apply settings from a gamespecific configuration file or something like that.

SNES games are able to swap layers around, but if the emulator is working properly there should be no issues as the layers will be displayed in z-order anyway. It might mean that the 3D settings would have to be applied to the layer order rather than the layer numbers, but as the emu will know what order to display the layers everything should be good.
I suppose cheat finding could work in a lot of cases to find out what part of the game you're in, it would probably be hard to find the right memory locations as they'd be different in every single game, the .ini /.xml (or whatever) would then have to have multiple sections with default 3D settings, then separated by something like action replay codes for specific other sections of the games, so you'd have a couple of memory locations and values, followed by the 3D settings if the game matches that configuration.
I would say it sounds very possible, even if it does take a lot of hard work to set it up. But with an active community, I can't imagine it being too much trouble.

 

[Arisotura]

A little compatibility report!

* Super Mario World runs nicely, at fullspeed or almost
* Super Mario All-Stars runs. SMB3 is slow, other games have a decent speed
* Super Metroid runs at a nice speed, although lack of mode 7 makes it annoying
* Kirby's Dream Course runs nicely
* Earthbound runs... somewhat. It always ends up freezing, SPC700 sync issues.
* Rock 'n' Roll Racing... is weird. It crashes when starting a race (it runs without crashing in lolSnes). Other than that, some corrupted graphics, same issues as in lolSnes. Probably some CPU bug lingering.
* Super Puyo Puyo is nice too

The graphical issues that plagued lolSnes (SMAS-SMB3 flickering, Super Metroid BG positioning issues, wrong tile priorities...) aren't present in blargSnes due to the different renderer.

New renderer VS old renderer:
* is a software renderer -> slower (hardware acceleration isn't really possible on the 3DS though)
* manages priorities correctly
* doesn't support mosaic or master brightness (those were really easy to do with the old engine, heh)
* doesn't support color math and windows (yet?)


Well, this looks nice enough. Tomorrow I'm going to try implementing some mode 7, and then release it

 

[VinsCool]

A little compatibility report!

* Super Mario World runs nicely, at fullspeed or almost
* Super Mario All-Stars runs. SMB3 is slow, other games have a decent speed
* Super Metroid runs at a nice speed, although lack of mode 7 makes it annoying
* Kirby's Dream Course runs nicely
* Earthbound runs... somewhat. It always ends up freezing, SPC700 sync issues.
* Rock 'n' Roll Racing... is weird. It crashes when starting a race (it runs without crashing in lolSnes). Other than that, some corrupted graphics, same issues as in lolSnes. Probably some CPU bug lingering.
* Super Puyo Puyo is nice too

The graphical issues that plagued lolSnes (SMAS-SMB3 flickering, Super Metroid BG positioning issues, wrong tile priorities...) aren't present in blargSnes due to the different renderer.

New renderer VS old renderer:
* is a software renderer -> slower (hardware acceleration isn't really possible on the 3DS though)
* manages priorities correctly
* doesn't support mosaic or master brightness (those were really easy to do with the old engine, heh)
* doesn't support color math and windows (yet?)


Well, this looks nice enough. Tomorrow I'm going to try implementing some mode 7, and then release it

Keep it up! I can't wait fo the ssspwn being released and try your emu

 

[Sizednochi]

* is a software renderer -> slower (hardware acceleration isn't really possible on the 3DS though)

Isn't possible or isn't possible right now? Smealum said they have preliminary GPU support and their goal is getting OpenGL going

 

[alexenochs]

A little compatibility report!

* Super Mario World runs nicely, at fullspeed or almost
* Super Mario All-Stars runs. SMB3 is slow, other games have a decent speed
* Super Metroid runs at a nice speed, although lack of mode 7 makes it annoying
* Kirby's Dream Course runs nicely
* Earthbound runs... somewhat. It always ends up freezing, SPC700 sync issues.
* Rock 'n' Roll Racing... is weird. It crashes when starting a race (it runs without crashing in lolSnes). Other than that, some corrupted graphics, same issues as in lolSnes. Probably some CPU bug lingering.
* Super Puyo Puyo is nice too

The graphical issues that plagued lolSnes (SMAS-SMB3 flickering, Super Metroid BG positioning issues, wrong tile priorities...) aren't present in blargSnes due to the different renderer.

New renderer VS old renderer:
* is a software renderer -> slower (hardware acceleration isn't really possible on the 3DS though)
* manages priorities correctly
* doesn't support mosaic or master brightness (those were really easy to do with the old engine, heh)
* doesn't support color math and windows (yet?)


Well, this looks nice enough. Tomorrow I'm going to try implementing some mode 7, and then release it

So can we expect a first release compiled version tomorrow?

 

[DiscostewSM]

Good work Staple. While I haven't tried it myself, I plan to once Smea releases the exploit (and if the project requires shifting to it for it to work).

 

[the_randomizer]

A little compatibility report!

* Super Mario World runs nicely, at fullspeed or almost
* Super Mario All-Stars runs. SMB3 is slow, other games have a decent speed
* Super Metroid runs at a nice speed, although lack of mode 7 makes it annoying
* Kirby's Dream Course runs nicely
* Earthbound runs... somewhat. It always ends up freezing, SPC700 sync issues.
* Rock 'n' Roll Racing... is weird. It crashes when starting a race (it runs without crashing in lolSnes). Other than that, some corrupted graphics, same issues as in lolSnes. Probably some CPU bug lingering.
* Super Puyo Puyo is nice too

The graphical issues that plagued lolSnes (SMAS-SMB3 flickering, Super Metroid BG positioning issues, wrong tile priorities...) aren't present in blargSnes due to the different renderer.

New renderer VS old renderer:
* is a software renderer -> slower (hardware acceleration isn't really possible on the 3DS though)
* manages priorities correctly
* doesn't support mosaic or master brightness (those were really easy to do with the old engine, heh)
* doesn't support color math and windows (yet?)


Well, this looks nice enough. Tomorrow I'm going to try implementing some mode 7, and then release it

Awesome work, man!

 

[PhoenixWrightX]

A little compatibility report!

* Super Mario World runs nicely, at fullspeed or almost
* Super Mario All-Stars runs. SMB3 is slow, other games have a decent speed
* Super Metroid runs at a nice speed, although lack of mode 7 makes it annoying
* Kirby's Dream Course runs nicely
* Earthbound runs... somewhat. It always ends up freezing, SPC700 sync issues.
* Rock 'n' Roll Racing... is weird. It crashes when starting a race (it runs without crashing in lolSnes). Other than that, some corrupted graphics, same issues as in lolSnes. Probably some CPU bug lingering.
* Super Puyo Puyo is nice too

The graphical issues that plagued lolSnes (SMAS-SMB3 flickering, Super Metroid BG positioning issues, wrong tile priorities...) aren't present in blargSnes due to the different renderer.

New renderer VS old renderer:
* is a software renderer -> slower (hardware acceleration isn't really possible on the 3DS though)
* manages priorities correctly
* doesn't support mosaic or master brightness (those were really easy to do with the old engine, heh)
* doesn't support color math and windows (yet?)


Well, this looks nice enough. Tomorrow I'm going to try implementing some mode 7, and then release it

Are those the only games compatible?

If you don't know, I might as well do a compatibility list unless its too early...

 

[Cyan]

I'll add a NES compatibility list on Wiki (for 3DNES), I could also create one for BlargSnes, I just need to know which column you need to list.
I guess more users will test released .3ds homebrew when SSSPawn will be available, because currently there's not a lot of reports on NES side.

 

[pedro702]

once homebrew is released i would gadly start testing both snes and nes games and adding them to the compat list if it exists but until then i cant do much.

 

[gamesquest1]

Tbh I think compatibility charts so early will be a bit of a waste of time, things will be changing and improving quite rapidly I would imagine, so it might be better to wait till after the initial "rush"

One more note I'm pretty sure 3Dnes is still lacking the select button which makes some games that "work" unplayable like zelda as you need to press select to register your name before you can play

 

[pedro702]

Tbh I think compatibility charts so early will be a bit of a waste of time, things will be changing and improving quite rapidly I would imagine, so it might be better to wait till after the initial "rush"

One more note I'm pretty sure 3Dnes is still lacking the select button which makes some games that "work" unplayable like zelda as you need to press select to register your name before you can play

the 3ds has a select button i dont see why you say it wouldnt work.

 

[gamesquest1]

the 3ds has a select button i dont see why you say it wouldnt work.

Because st4rk forgot to link it in the nes emulator......no technical reason just an oversight, I did mention it to him so it will likely be fixed in the next release

 

[alexenochs]

3dnes 1.2 has the select button working tho I've played Zelda on it? As in his last release not his upcoming one