Homebrew lolSnes -- SNES emulator for DS

[KazoWAR]

I'm excited about this emulator,
it plays Super Mario World reasonably good,
I think it will be the first(and maybe the the only) emulator to play SMW at fullspeed perfectly.



This 1.1 version, did you compile it from the sources?

yes

Hmm what? IIRC it behaves this way in both v1.0 and v1.1...

Oh maybe it was a random bug i had when i first tested v1.0. also when i was playing v1.1 I also had another bug that i didn't bother to report because i was not able to replicate it.

i was trying to go back the the secret area and this happened. i was stuck in the middle of the path.

 

[Arisotura]

Known. It seems to happen randomly though, and rarely. Debugging that kind of bugs is near impossible unless you inadvertently fix the issue by changing something.


About that: the last commit fixes the autoscroll bug. It probably also fixes the occasional freezing on paths, so if you have time to spare, be sure to test that intensively

 

[Flurry]

http://i.imgur.com/AoY5GlU.png
http://i.imgur.com/FuUXQDt.png

 

[Arisotura]

Nice! That'll fit nicely for the devblog. I'll let you know once all that is put up

 

[Arisotura]

So there, your banner is up on lolsnes.net. I also added your icon to lolSnes.

Thanks again You get to be credited in lolSnes' about page

 

[the_randomizer]

So there, your banner is up on lolsnes.net. I also added your icon to lolSnes.

Thanks again You get to be credited in lolSnes' about page

Nice blog! Did I get that part correctly, that the SMW scroll bug has been fixed? And if you don't mind me asking, how the SPC700 emulation coming along?

 

[user64]

I finally managed to compile it... I ran the build.bat under wine in OSX, and it compiled, unlike the stupid terminal make command! Now you can have another stupid noobie asking you to fix stuff!

Anyways though, time to go test stuff.

 

[Arisotura]

Yes, it's fixed.

As for the SPC700, well, I'm looking for ways to speed up my mixer. I found out that half the time the mixer takes is spent decoding BRR data, so I hope I can come up with a good design for a BRR cache. There's no guarantee it'll be efficient enough, given the limited amount of memory available to the ARM7 program.

 

[user64]

Test Results:

Spoiler

Super Mario World: Mario's jump sounds pretty funky. Yoshi's fire breath sound just beeps. (autoscroll is perfect!)
Super Bomberman 1,2: Guru Meditation Error on launch.
Super Bomberman 3: Nothing past vram printing on bottom screen.
Super Mario All Stars: As described on your site, has a bunch of garbage everywhere and can't play.
Chrono Trigger: Nothing past vram printing on bottom screen.
TLoZ:aLttP: The title loads fine, sound and all. The menu screen is kinda broken, and I tried putting in a save past the rain sceen, but that didn't load either.
Earthbound: Guru!
Eye of the Beholder: Guru!
Shin Megami Tensei: Just the Atlus Logo.
Super Mario RPG: Nothing past vram printing on bottom screen.
Civilization: Nothing past HCOUNT IRQ ENABLE: 31 on bottom screen.
Contra 3: The Alien Wars: Bottom screen spammed with 16X16 tiles not supported, and crash when starting the game.
Final Fantasy II: Nothing past vram printing on bottom screen.

Tested on Supercard DSTWO. All roms are U except for SMT.

I see you have a compatibility button on your site. Will you make your own list, or have that link to the wiki, or something completely different?

 

[Arisotura]

Well, since I used my own blog software, I'll probably be coding my own thing for that too

I also thought about something: having an autobuild system, ie every time a commit is made to the repo, the system would retrieve it and built it, and then the site's downloads page would list all the automated Git builds.

 

[user64]

Well, since I used my own blog software, I'll probably be coding my own thing for that too

I also thought about something: having an autobuild system, ie every time a commit is made to the repo, the system would retrieve it and built it, and then the site's downloads page would list all the automated Git builds.

Will you code a way for users to submit the results of their compatibility testing?

Also, your autobuild system does sound quite interesting.

 

[ShaolinAssassin]

Nice to see someone tring to take care of snes emu on ds, my best wishes of sucess Mega Mario! Bon courage

Maybe users could simply use a google doc like this one : https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0As_WFUFvrRw5dFRxaS1SWTJ3V3RIU1dncndQd1kxTkE#gid=0 to submit their results? It's open to modifications, so feel free to fill it.

 

[Memfis]

Nice to see, that the emulator scene isn´t dead, but I have three questions:

1) Why didn´t you develop this for PSP? The PSP have much more power than the NDS.
2) Can you include FX-Chip support?
3) Can you make, that all games runs with sound and full speed?

 

[Drenn]

Well, since I used my own blog software, I'll probably be coding my own thing for that too

I also thought about something: having an autobuild system, ie every time a commit is made to the repo, the system would retrieve it and built it, and then the site's downloads page would list all the automated Git builds.

When I push an update to gameyob, I use a simple script which also updates a binary on dropbox. Not as sophisticated as what you're suggesting, but it gets the job done.
Openxcom on the other hand, seems to do exactly what you're describing.

I finally got around to trying this, and the sound was a nice surprise, since last I checked that hadn't been implemented. My tests were similar to what's been reported already, although I was able to start Contra III. The music doesn't work, and the background doesn't scroll - although I seemed to progress through the level anyway. Also the titlescreen was complete garbage, I guess it uses an unsupported video mode.

Good luck with this!

 

[the_randomizer]

Nice to see, that the emulator scene isn´t dead, but I have three questions:

1) Why didn´t you develop this for PSP? The PSP have much more power than the NDS.
2) Can you include FX-Chip support?
3) Can you make, that all games runs with sound and full speed?

Because he wanted a good challenge on the DS.

 

[Arisotura]

Nice to see someone tring to take care of snes emu on ds, my best wishes of sucess Mega Mario! Bon courage

Maybe users could simply use a google doc like this one : https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0As_WFUFvrRw5dFRxaS1SWTJ3V3RIU1dncndQd1kxTkE#gid=0 to submit their results? It's open to modifications, so feel free to fill it.

Thanks

Also I'll make something proper and easy on my devblog

Nice to see, that the emulator scene isn´t dead, but I have three questions:

1) Why didn´t you develop this for PSP? The PSP have much more power than the NDS.
2) Can you include FX-Chip support?
3) Can you make, that all games runs with sound and full speed?

1) Because I chose to make it for the DS. And I don't have a PSP. I'm pretty sure there are already good emus for the PSP.
2) Like you mentioned, the DS isn't much powerful, so we'll see.
3) see 2). Emulation isn't magic.

When I push an update to gameyob, I use a simple script which also updates a binary on dropbox. Not as sophisticated as what you're suggesting, but it gets the job done.
Openxcom on the other hand, seems to do exactly what you're describing.

I finally got around to trying this, and the sound was a nice surprise, since last I checked that hadn't been implemented. My tests were similar to what's been reported already, although I was able to start Contra III. The music doesn't work, and the background doesn't scroll - although I seemed to progress through the level anyway. Also the titlescreen was complete garbage, I guess it uses an unsupported video mode.

Good luck with this!

Actually, I'm considering webhooks, a feature of Github where they send a POST request to the URL you give them whenever a commit is pushed to your repo. I'm already using this system in another place to report commits in an IRC channel, and most times it works fairly well.

Garbled graphics most likely come from unsupported video modes, yeah. In those cases lolSnes doesn't know how to convert graphics, so yeah.

As for sound, given the processing power it takes, I'm envisaging reducing the sampling frequency to 24KHz. It wouldn't affect quality much while giving a speed boost. It was already done in JenesisDS before, and apparently it worked well, so uh...

And I know that the compatibility is poor, I'm working on it

Thanks

Oh by the way, how's GameYob going?

 

[The Real Jdbye]

Lol, SNES.
Some tips:
- FPS display has too large text for the limited resolution.
- Add proper layer depth detection. This was a major issue with SnemulDS as you pretty much had to set it manually for most games and often you couldn't make it work perfectly. I'm sure you are working on this, I just want to point out how important it is.
- Name change. If you can come up with a better name, change it. I'm no good at coming up with names myself so I understand, but it's rather silly.

Looks great though. I just hope you can achieve your goal of supporting most games. The DS isn't very powerful, so even SnemulDS is rather impressive, but it does have a lot of issues. It has a high compatibility though.

Thanks

Also I'll make something proper and easy on my devblog


1) Because I chose to make it for the DS. And I don't have a PSP. I'm pretty sure there are already good emus for the PSP.
2) Like you mentioned, the DS isn't much powerful, so we'll see.
3) see 2). Emulation isn't magic.


Actually, I'm considering webhooks, a feature of Github where they send a POST request to the URL you give them whenever a commit is pushed to your repo. I'm already using this system in another place to report commits in an IRC channel, and most times it works fairly well.

Garbled graphics most likely come from unsupported video modes, yeah. In those cases lolSnes doesn't know how to convert graphics, so yeah.

As for sound, given the processing power it takes, I'm envisaging reducing the sampling frequency to 24KHz. It wouldn't affect quality much while giving a speed boost. It was already done in JenesisDS before, and apparently it worked well, so uh...

And I know that the compatibility is poor, I'm working on it

Thanks

Oh by the way, how's GameYob going?

Actually the PSP has a severe lack of good emulators, SnemulDS actually runs a lot of games better than the PSP which is laughable. The PSP has speed issues even with simple games (mainly because it uses ports of Snes9x which was never designed for maximum speed)

 

[Rydian]

Actually the PSP has a severe lack of good emulators, SnemulDS actually runs a lot of games better than the PSP which is laughable. The PSP has speed issues even with simple games (mainly because it uses ports of Snes9x which was never designed for maximum speed)

If you're using the old shitty emulators most sites are still handing out for some reason...
http://wiki.gbatemp.net/wiki/Emulation_on_PSP

 

[Arisotura]

* The FPS display is a feature of DeSmuME. lolSnes has no such thing. I'll likely implement one at some point, though.

* I'll do my best regarding layer priorities. Be aware though that the SNES supports giving higher priority to individual tiles, and the DS doesn't support that, so it's not going to be 100% perfect. If there's an insane game that abuses it, it won't work.

* I'm not changing the name. Get over it, people. Besides I already have that domain registered and all.

Thanks, but there's still a long way to go Just see how many games the last lolSnes runs

 

[VMM]

- Name change. If you can come up with a better name, change it. I'm no good at coming up with names myself so I understand, but it's rather silly.

That's something a I always tought too.
Lol Snes sounds just bad, it's rather silly and makes the project look like nothing serious.
This emulator has a lot of potential and a better name would help to show it.

I'm not very good at making names but I could think of some:
DSnes
Dual Super Famicom(DS Famicom)
SNES4DS
Super DS

Just see how many games the last lolSnes runs

You could make a compatibility list and post it on the first page.
It also would be interesting if you updated the compiled version on the first post periodically,
weekly would be ideal, but if that's too much troublesome you could make it in a larger space time.