@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

 

[Oleboy555]

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

I downloaded that desmume build, and it looks amazing, even better then my DS itself...

 

[APartOfMe]

i wonder if wifi emulation will come to drastic

 

[Gamer4647]

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

The DeSmuMe team will probably be pissed now, lol. Their problem for turning it down.

 

[skawo]

Why should anyone care about what the DeSmuME team thinks if they constantly disregard what other people say?

 

[59672]

It's always a bit disheartening when a GPL licensed project like DeSmuMe actively tries to shut down other development on it. Someone having to fork, patch and maintain a modified codebase would have been a pain, this sounds like great work. Nice to see GPL license for melonDS too.

 

[StarTrekVoyager]

Apparently DeSmuME recently moved to GitHub and abandoned SourceForge. The project is stagnating though, commits are rare and mostly random fixes. The 0.9.12 version is supposed to bring to Mac the features from the Windows version, but at this rate, it won't be released until 2025. So yeah. I really look forward the moment when melonDS becomes really viable as an emulator for gaming

 

[NightScript]

Nicely done, as usual.

 

[emmauss]

another interesting stuff on a similar project, wifi emulation( or something similar to that) for citra is in development. it has been so for months. did you guys know that?

 

[Ev1l0rd]

It's always a bit disheartening when a GPL licensed project like DeSmuMe actively tries to shut down other development on it. Someone having to fork, patch and maintain a modified codebase would have been a pain, this sounds like great work. Nice to see GPL license for melonDS too.

Seems they're taking the GNU approach to it.

 

[pikpol]

I only want to see wifi emulation in the drastic emulator for my phone. Than you can always carry a DS without having to bring 2 devices with you.
But as DS emulation never worked for me on PC's, maybe this emulator can pull it off, so it looks very promising.

 

[DJPlace]

is this for local wi-fi or wi-fi with alt severs?

 

[Ev1l0rd]

is this for local wi-fi or wi-fi with alt severs?

Local I think.

 

[StarTrekVoyager]

is this for local wi-fi or wi-fi with alt severs?

It's said in the OP; it's local wifi emulation.

 

[DJPlace]

It's said in the OP; it's local wifi emulation.

i searched through too quickly so my bad. hopefully some one will make a wi-fi emulator to connect online on the alt severs.

 

[StarTrekVoyager]

i searched through too quickly so my bad. hopefully some one will make a wi-fi emulator to connect online on the alt severs.

Don't worry, it's planned in StapleButter's todo list

 

[Oleboy555]

So this seems to require some bios and firmware.bin files from an actual DS. Is there any available homebrew on temp that dump such files? I'd love to try it

in order to dump those files you need dsbf dump and run it on a flashcart

EDIT: download for dsbf dump: http://www.mediafire.com/file/frq0em1z9f4w15n/dsbf_dump.nds

 

[Mikemk]

@Oleboy555 will a 3DS work, or do I have to pull out my old DS?

 

[DarthDub]

Take that zeromus!

 

[CuriousTommy]

@Oleboy555 will a 3DS work, or do I have to pull out my old DS?

From what I read, you can use a dump from a 3DS, but keep in mind that the DS firmware on the 3DS is barebones compared to the original DS. Just make sure you enable direct boot, skip bios, or whatever it is called.

 

[Gimzie]

Great, maybe this emulator will perform better.