@StapleButter, a French developer well-known for homebrew SNES emulators blargSNES (o3DS, N3DS) and lolSNES (NDS) is developing since a few months a new DS emulator called melonDS. The open-source emulator, which originally started as a forum joke about the lack of proper Wi-Fi emulation in DeSmuME, has made a lot of progress, with the goal of being as accurate as possible. melonDS, now on its 0.3 release, is now capable of emulating most retail games, although it requires a pretty powerful CPU to work at full speed. Here are some screenshots of the 0.3 release:

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One of the goals of melonDS was also accurate wifi emulation. Indeed, in the past, StapleButter's work on wifi in DeSmuME has been sabotaged by the lead dev zeromus, for various 'reasons'. Wifi emulation in DeSmuME has been since left out and the DeSmuME main page states that "Wifi is not supported and will never be emulated". A few days ago, in a pretty short tweet, StapleButter showed a screenshot of a communication between two emulated DSes in the well-known DS messaging app PictoChat. After a few years, Wi-Fi emulation is back again!

For now, despite the feature being still highly experimental, the feature has been reported working with local VS mode play in New Super Mario Bros. and even Pokémon trading.

Links:

• StapleButter's Wi-Fi emulation blog post
• melonDS blog homepage
• melonDS discussion board
• Related post on Reddit
• melonDS GitHub repository

 

[TheDarkGreninja]

This will be pretty awesome if I can play MK DS online again.

 

[migles]

front news material!
not only news we were wanting for a long time, but it's well written and i like the explanation of the background!

that dude is not related to that other (i think higgen?) which was building the most perfect in accuracy emulators, or is it?

 

[skawo]

It is about time DeSmuMe is thrown into the trashcan where it belongs.

 

[StarTrekVoyager]

It is about time DeSmuMe is thrown into the trashcan where it belongs.

When this happens, you'll be remembered as the guy who made StapleButter begin the project with an ironic reply in a random thread on a random hacking forum

front news material!
not only news we were wanting for a long time, but it's well written and i like the explanation of the background!

Thank you very much!

that dude is not related to that other (i think higgen?) which was building the most perfect in accuracy emulators, or is it?

Actually I don't know StapleButter has been around for ages and is the admin of Kuribo64, a Mario game hacking forum.

 

[zoogie]

Very good work by @StapleButter. Maybe there's even hope someday of open source dsi-mode emulation.

 

[StarTrekVoyager]

Updated the OP with a link to the melonDS GitHub repository.

 

[Kioku]

Yay! Progress!

 

[BARNWEY]

Yay! I'll definitely use this once it has a little more polish.

 

[DarkGabbz]

It is about time DeSmuMe is thrown into the trashcan where it belongs.

 

[eduall]

make alive the ds! thanks for this!

 

[Deleted User]

I wanna see an emulator woth wifi that can play with real hardware ds. Will be so awesome! Keep up the hard work!

 

[StarTrekVoyager]

I wanna see an emulator woth wifi that can play with real hardware ds. Will be so awesome! Keep up the hard work!

Local Wi-Fi? Don't dream. This is likely to be impossible, as it would require almost perfect timing etc. But it should be possible in the future through online (altwfc) whenever StapleButter implements Online (which is going to be quite hard )

 

[Alex119098]

Thanks for another (better) option for DS emulation

 

[StarTrekVoyager]

Thanks for another (better) option for DS emulation

You should thank @StapleButter, not me

 

[Alex119098]

You should thank @StapleButter, not me

Ah, ok. @StapleButter you're a godsend

 

[Mikemk]

So, will this one day support higher rendering resolutions, or is the DS too barebones?

 

[StarTrekVoyager]

So, will this one day support higher rendering resolutions, or is the DS too barebones?

It is on SB's future todo list, and it's definitely possible since DeSmuME X432R does it.

 

[CathyRina]

You see there is a reason why everybody loves melons ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

 

[Ev1l0rd]

I never got why the DeSmuMe devs didn't want WiFi in their emulator. Not even WFC (that would be understandable if they didn't want to risk a C&D), but just local play. That should be relatively risk free right? Oh well... at least soon there will be an emulator that supports that (like VBALink added link cable support to visualboyadvance).