Hey everyone, a friend of mine who goes by the name hcfcoder (or just hcf) recently made a rudimentary port of Desmume's last stable release (from 2015) to PSP. It runs and boots games, but as everything is running on layered code using SDL and everything is completely unoptimised (interpreter used, all code running on CPU, no GPU at all...) so right now, it purely exists as a proof of concept. It runs about as well as Mupen64 on Vita for the very same reasons.
That's where I want some help! Using DSonPSP (another proof of concept, but with hardware acceleration and some improvements) by Yoshihiro as a reference, I'd like to:
- Use Exophase's gpSP ARM7-to-MIPS dynarec instead of the slow ARM7 interpreter
- Move ARM7 code (the DS secondary CPU) to the PSP's secondary CPU, the Media Engine
- Make everything native, removing the abstraction layers (eg. SDL)
- Hardware accelerate the graphics
Eventually, down the line, a dynarec for the main ARM9 CPU would be a goal and so would a bit of assembly to speed up important parts of the code base, but right now that's for the distant future. If anyone is interested, please let me know. One or two DaedalusX64 programmers have some interest in working on this as well, but we will need more people than that.
I am optimistic about this project but we'll need people onboard. Yoshihiro's code is based on Desmume code that is over 10 years old, yet using only interpreters and some hardware acceleration it attains 30-40% speed in games such as Ace Attorney and Yoshi's Island. That's incredible - DaedalusX64 in interpreter mode only reaches those speeds on a select few titles as well, and that's a well optimized emulator! It will require work and time to get it to a good state, but it is definitely doable.
The GitHub repository can be found here, with an invite to our PSP discord if you have questions: https://github.com/TheMrIron2/DeSmuME-PSP/ and it compiles under Minimal PSP SDK. (Update: as of 17/6/19 it compiles on the latest toolchain!)
And here is a video of the code booting Zoo Keeper:
If you can't contribute to the programming yourself, please let people know who might be able to - thanks!
That's where I want some help! Using DSonPSP (another proof of concept, but with hardware acceleration and some improvements) by Yoshihiro as a reference, I'd like to:
- Use Exophase's gpSP ARM7-to-MIPS dynarec instead of the slow ARM7 interpreter
- Move ARM7 code (the DS secondary CPU) to the PSP's secondary CPU, the Media Engine
- Make everything native, removing the abstraction layers (eg. SDL)
- Hardware accelerate the graphics
Eventually, down the line, a dynarec for the main ARM9 CPU would be a goal and so would a bit of assembly to speed up important parts of the code base, but right now that's for the distant future. If anyone is interested, please let me know. One or two DaedalusX64 programmers have some interest in working on this as well, but we will need more people than that.
I am optimistic about this project but we'll need people onboard. Yoshihiro's code is based on Desmume code that is over 10 years old, yet using only interpreters and some hardware acceleration it attains 30-40% speed in games such as Ace Attorney and Yoshi's Island. That's incredible - DaedalusX64 in interpreter mode only reaches those speeds on a select few titles as well, and that's a well optimized emulator! It will require work and time to get it to a good state, but it is definitely doable.
The GitHub repository can be found here, with an invite to our PSP discord if you have questions: https://github.com/TheMrIron2/DeSmuME-PSP/ and it compiles under Minimal PSP SDK. (Update: as of 17/6/19 it compiles on the latest toolchain!)
And here is a video of the code booting Zoo Keeper:
If you can't contribute to the programming yourself, please let people know who might be able to - thanks!
Last edited by TheMrIron2,
