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melonDS 0.9.4 is out!
I know this has been a long wait, but finally, here it is: melonDS 0.9.4 is out.
It has been numbered this way because 1.0 is going to be a milestone release: we want to get local multiplayer stable for 1.0.
Anyway, what's new in melonDS 0.9.4? A bunch of improvements that should make things easier for the average end user.
Most notably, in DS mode, melonDS no longer requires you to obtain BIOS/firmware files. You can always supply these if you have them around, for a more accurate experience, but if you don't, melonDS will default to using DraStic's FreeBIOS clones. Similarly, a barebones firmware with default configuration data will be generated.
However, for now, DSi mode still requires you to provide BIOS/firmware/NAND dumps. We are studying ways to get around this requirement, but it's going to take us some work.
There is also a new dialog for firmware settings, which allows you to override the firmware settings with your own. This is intended for when using the default internal firmware, but it can also override the settings in an external firmware, and it even works in DSi mode.
DLDI support has also been upgraded: it is now possible to have melonDS generate a SD image for DLDI on its own, and it is also possible to have said SD image synced to a folder on your computer. This means that you can place files in that folder and they will show up in the emulated DLDI SD card, and conversely, any changes made to the emulated SD card will be reflected to the folder on your hard drive.
While this has been tested extensively, we still recommend that you keep a backup of any folder you intend to use with this, just in case. You can also set your DLDI SD card to be read-only if you don't need it to be writable.
All of this is also supported for the DSi SD card in DSi mode.
Support for ARM9 PU exceptions in interpreter mode has been added. For commercial games, this doesn't mean a lot, other than making certain crashes work like on hardware. But this may definitely come in handy for homebrew developers, as that means exception handlers will work as they should.
We have added a much requested feature: custom paths for saves, savestates and cheat files. The default behavior is that melonDS will place these files alongside your ROMs as it has always done, but you can specify paths where you want these files to be placed if you don't want them to pollute your ROM directory.
In the same vein, the File menu has been revamped to hopefully make the process of loading ROMs more intuitive. This post already talks about it in detail, so read it if you have any doubts.
Generic has been working on properly supporting wifi power saving. This is probably not perfect yet, but it should fix the weird issues you can encounter in Pokémon games when communications are enabled.
We also have some new fun features: Github user 2jun0 made a RAM search dialog, which may come in handy to those who want to make cheat codes. Rayyan also made a new dialog for changing the emulated battery level, which may come in handy to homebrew developers and such, and he's been remaking the input config dialog to be all fancy.
And, as usual, there's a bunch of little fixes and additions we aren't covering here, but you can find them all in this release's changelog on the downloads page (or on Github).
Enjoy!
melonDS 0.9.4, Windows x64
melonDS 0.9.4, Linux x64
melonDS 0.9.4, Linux ARM64
melonDS 0.9.4, macOS x64
melonDS 0.9.4, macOS ARM64
melonDS 0.9.4, macOS universal
Last edited by Arisotura,
