THE GBATEMP SWITCH HOMEBREW BOUNTY
MONTH 3: SWITCH EMULATORS​

What is the GBAtemp Switch Homebrew Bounty? Read more here.
The third month has now officially begun. You have until March 15th (23:59:59 UTC+00) to submit your Switch homebrew emulator and get a chance to win a massive cash reward! There will be 4 consecutive months, one for each category. We'd like to remind you that this is the third month, and this month dedicated to the following category.

CATEGORY 3: Switch Emulators

This category is meant to reward authors of Switch emulators, as in, either emulator programs that run natively on the Switch itself and emulate another console or system; or an emulator that runs on PC and emulates the Switch. If your project isn't an emulator then it doesn't belong in this category. WINNERS ANNOUNCED! CLICK HERE

The top 5 highest-voted projects in this category will receive:
#1: $1,000 reward
#2: $500 reward
#3: $300 reward
#4: $150 reward
#5: $55 reward

In order to submit your project, please respect the following instructions:
• Upload your project to the GBAtemp Download Center. Make sure to give a proper description, screenshots, anything you might find useful. This is your chance to showcase your project, the better your page looks, the more chance you may receive votes from judges.
• If your project is not entirely new, it must at least come with a major/significant update, so please describe specifically what new feature(s) the upgrade brings forth.
• After your project is posted to the download center, please post a comment in this thread to link to your project.

After March 15th, two voting sessions will begin simultaneously: a staff vote, and a patron vote (for our backers on Patreon). The results will be announced a week after.

Sponsors

Half of this sum is generously donated by yours truly, GBAtemp!
Thanks to ad revenue and to our Patreon backers, GBAtemp is the biggest donator.
The other half comes from our generous sponsors as listed below.

MOD3DSCARD.COM
Buy flashcard to mod 3DS and Switch | Team Xecuter SX | Sky3ds+ | Stargate 3DS | R4 3DS - mod3dscard

AXIOGAME.COM
Axiogame | Backup Units, Modchips and more

And let's not forget Team Xecuter who made a very generous donation too.

Member donations

The bounty isn't only about sponsor companies: you, beloved members of our community (and even guests) can contribute too! If you want to make a donation, simply click the button below to send a payment to our Paypal. Needless to say, 100% of the amount we receive will be transfered to the authors of winning projects.



Upon submitting your donation, you can indicate whether you want the donation to go to a particular category, or all of them.
Also please note that our Paypal account name is "FILETRIP" - this is normal.

We have already received the following donations:
• Eric C. donated $100 towards the Game bounty
• Pierce T. donated $25 towards the Emulator bounty
• Jonah N. donated $10 to the bounty
• Andrew B. donated £5 towards the Tools and Utilities bounty
• Michael C. donated $5 to the bounty
• Raphael G.V. donated an incredible $0.36 towards, hmm, creating complexity for our accountant?

Thanks a lot guys! To everyone else, feel free to make additional donations, which will go to the other 2 categories.

 

[cpasjuste]

5 days until this competition ends.

if you've got something you plan to submit, now may be a good time to post...

I do need this 5 days, timing is in a bad shape for me!

 

[Costello]

I do need this 5 days, timing is in a bad shape for me!

welp, two days left only... hurry up !

 

[cpasjuste]

welp, two days left only... hurry up !

I am, I am! So many changes in the past months = so many stuff to finalize :/ I'm in a coding rush since a few days (8h/days).
I'm going to publish them tomorrow afternoon (pSNES, pFBA, and... pNES). Not sure if i should make one entry for them, or 3 ? (but i know i'll only win for one entry ).

 

[Cyan]

Heh, I see we've been having some fun here. Anyways, I just released an update for melonDS for Switch, so I suppose it counts for this competition! Here's the download center page, and here's the forum post. Good luck to everyone, hopefully we see more competition soon

I checked the sources and changelog, all the work since Fev 10th (bounty starting date) is from @StapleButter (Arisotura), working a lot on network, wifi and LAN support, which is a lot of work! you only merged his changes to your fork and compiled it. There's no work from you.


I'm not sure how to consider this entry. did you meant to submit the emulator in his stead (it's his emulator, but he didn't work on the switch part?), or only for the changes you did in your fork? Or are you a team, and working on separate forks merging both work? in that case I'd consider you both entered. I wouldn't be happy if I made a homebrew, and someone fork it and submit it for changes I did.

For now, there's nothing new if we look at the changelog since Fev10th, except "fix wav with 2 channels" from him. the Network is not switch compatible yet, is it? if it is, it's his work too.
If we count all the changes since latest major release 0.7.2 -> 0.7.3 (Jan 6th) from your fork only (switch only, right?), then there are commits from you in this period.

 

[Hydr8gon]

I checked the sources and changelog, all the work since Fev 10th (bounty starting date) is from @StapleButter (Arisotura), working a lot on network, wifi and LAN support, which is a lot of work! you only merged his changes to your fork and compiled it. There's no work from you.


I'm not sure how to consider this entry. did you meant to submit the emulator in his stead (it's his emulator, but he didn't work on the switch part?), or only for the changes you did in your fork? Or are you a team, and working on separate forks merging both work? in that case I'd consider you both entered. I wouldn't be happy if I made a homebrew, and someone fork it and submit it for changes I did.

For now, there's nothing new if we look at the changelog since Fev10th, except "fix wav with 2 channels" from him. the Network is not switch compatible yet, is it? if it is, it's his work too.
If we count all the changes since latest major release 0.7.2 -> 0.7.3 (Jan 6th) from your fork only (switch only, right?), then there are commits from you in this period.

Hm, I didn't really think about this. The new Switch stuff I did for 0.7.4 was meant to be what I was submitting, but yeah, I committed that stuff before the emulator bounty officially started. I did plan these changes for the bounty, but I ended up working on it earlier than expected because I found myself with some extra time

Also, I'm in contact with Arisotura frequently on IRC, and if melonDS wins we will be splitting the prize money, so consider it a team submission. If you do decide to let us enter with the stuff that was committed in January, any potential winnings will help motivate us to work on the hardware renderer and Switch network support

 

[cpasjuste]

@Cyan, i did also work on my emus since more than a month for the contest. I didn't understand that we needed to work on something only for a month, which to my opinion is impossible for an emulator , and even more difficult with real life stuff going on. I thought changes would be checked from latest release, which make more sense to me.

 

[Hydr8gon]

Alright, I did a super small update to melonDS 0.7.4 (not worthy of a version change), so I suppose it qualifies now. I updated the download in the download center, and you can check GitHub for more details, but it really isn't much.

More importantly, I've uploaded a completely original project! This is NoiES, an NES emulator that I've been developing from scratch while I wasn't working on melonDS. I know it doesn't bring anything new to the table; in fact it actually still has a fair amount of imperfections (that I'm actively working on!), but the entire development of this emulator falls within the time frame for this competition, and I wrote it entirely myself, without looking at any other code for guidance.

I'm not sure what the rules are for multiple submissions, but I think Arisotura still deserves to be considered for melonDS, at least. The Switch port wouldn't exist at all if she hadn't done such an amazing job creating the core project!

Again, good luck to everyone. It's a shame we didn't see more projects come about this time around, but I guess that's what happens when RetroArch holds the emulator monopoly

 

[cpasjuste]

Just to be sure, if I live in France, I have until 00:59 this night to submit?

 

[Costello]

Just to be sure, if I live in France, I have until 00:59 this night to submit?

I think so yes. We aren't assholes though, if anyone releases something even a few minutes/hours after the deadline we will still allow it.
It would be silly to be super strict about the deadlines for projects as big as these we want to *encourage* projects, not discourage them, haha

 

[cpasjuste]

I think so yes. We aren't assholes though, if anyone releases something even a few minutes/hours after the deadline we will still allow it.
It would be silly to be super strict about the deadlines for projects as big as these we want to *encourage* projects, not discourage them, haha

Thanks

 

[Cyan]

you are not limited to the work you did in the month, you have to submit it with a major update.
it's certainly hard to only submit changes on github for each release (with increased version number), and that's why I also check the changes done since last numbered release.

We asked in the rules that you provide the "major update" changelog to take in consideration for the bounty's window.
Like I said in bounty month2, this is primarily a fun competition (nothing serious, it's not a work) to encourage users and developers to create new things and promote homebrew on the new console.
it's not a award on existing project of past work. in that sense, you need to create something new, or if not new you need to provide something new to that existing project.
We are not voting your coding style or amount of work you spent to add features, but how much fun and useful they are. voters aren't developers.
This is how I see it.

I don't know if we will make exception this month and consider the work to port the emulator to the Switch, or only the major changelog since last release.
Just remember, the vote is not only from the Staff, but users are also voting and will probably vote on their enjoyment using it. it if works fine, they would certainly be happy with it, not necessarily considering the last bugfix.


I know emulators aren't make in a month, and they requires months if not years of work.
the only "new" project I would see fit as "created while the bounty was running" are of course not usable or neither fun to notice if the work was good or bad : Switch's Android emulator, and Android's Switch emulator !
they are not even submitted as part of the bounty, even if I left a message in the thread saying to consider it.
that would be hard to determine how much work has been put in these project, even more if it's not running anything yet.


hydragon : thank you for your answer. I'm happy you understand my concern and see you are working as a team.

could you tell me what you consider as "major update" ? a little list, or a last commit date. thanks
is january fine for you ?


edit:
Oh, I wrote this reply too soon. I see you submitted Noies
thanks for your work and sharing it, even if it's a personal learning project it's always nice to have different way to do things.
I always wondered how emulators works, yours takes only a single file!

 

[m4xw]

My entry: https://gbatemp.net/download/mupen64plus-next-gliden64-3-0.35683/

 

[Hydr8gon]

hydragon : thank you for your answer. I'm happy you understand my concern and see you are working as a team.

could you tell me what you consider as "major update" ? a little list, or a last commit date. thanks
is january fine for you ?


edit:
Oh, I wrote this reply too soon. I see you submitted Noies
thanks for your work and sharing it, even if it's a personal learning project it's always nice to have different way to do things.
I always wondered how emulators works, yours takes only a single file!

Regarding melonDS, everything in the changelog for 0.7.4 was what I wanted to submit, the most "major" things being support for input remapping and displaying the NDS icon beside the games in the file browser. Relevant commits would be here and here, though I also tweaked them outside of these commits.

And yeah, NoiES is a single file When I first started I had the intention of splitting it into multiple files once it was more complete, but it sorta just... never happened. Though now that I ported it to the Switch I'll probably at least split the platform-dependent code off into separate files so the desktop and Switch builds can be combined and easily maintained.

 

[Cyan]

m4xw:
thank you for your entry
I'll have to update, I'm still on 4.0.1.

can you launch it as standalone, or retroarch is required? I never used retroarch, If it's required I'll follow reddit guide from your link.

 

[m4xw]

m4xw:
thank you for your entry
I'll have to update, I'm still on 4.0.1.

can you launch it as standalone, or retroarch is required? I never used retroarch, If it's required I'll follow reddit guide from your link.

It was actually added in 4.0.0, you should be fine. I will edit the post

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

can you launch it as standalone, or retroarch is required? I never used retroarch, If it's required I'll follow reddit guide from your link.

RetroArch is basically built-in.
You don't need a full installation, but you will need the assets for the menu driver (best is to just use the Online updater and click update assets).
For fancy stuff like playlists etc you will need a full RA installation or some trickery.

Install guide: https://docs.libretro.com/guides/install-libnx/

 

[cpasjuste]

I hope people won't think I'm a bad guy but I do think submitting a retroarch port is not fair. While I guess a lot of work have been done on the mupen core, all the user interface, core interface etc is made by a lot of people contributions, while, for example, I had to write a full frontend and interface (audio/video/input...) from scratch which took ages. By submitting this, you're almost sure to win.. Well, this is my point of view!

 

[m4xw]

I hope people won't think I'm a bad guy but I do think submitting a retroarch port is not fair. While I guess a lot of work have been done on the mupen core, all the user interface, core interface etc is made by a lot of people contributions, while, for example, I had to write a full frontend and interface (audio/video/input...) from scratch which took ages. By submitting this, you're almost sure to win.. Well, this is my point of view!

I don't submit any RetroArch part for this (it's also not stated in the Changelog).
If you have a alternative libretro frontend for Switch, you can just link to it.
Also don't forget that I wrote all the platform switch drivers
Side note: This core has been developed pretty much from scratch, with primarily switch in mind (heck I developed the whole core just doing printf debugging)

 

[Cyan]

I might not be the best to judge this "next" core as I never used retroarch before and won't notice what's different than the other mupen64 (non glide64).
I see the other is also part of the cores, so I could test both and compare. I also don't know the interface, but I can see if it's common interface from libretro/retroarch by testing other emulators.

I also thought retroarch would win everything due to notoriety, everyone uses it and like it.
I feared all cores would be submitted and we would have to choose, but I see this entry is focuses on something new/different (single and new GPU plugin only for easier maintainability). I hope I'm right, that's what I wrote on wiki


edit:
last update from the full retroarch package is from 2019-02-04, I have to use the one from your link instead?

 

[m4xw]

I might not be the best to judge this "next" core as I never used retroarch before and won't notice what's different than the other mupen64 (non glide64).
I see the other is also part of the cores, so I could test both and compare. I also don't know the interface, but I can see if it's common interface from libretro/retroarch by testing other emulators.

I also thought retroarch would win everything due to notoriety, everyone uses it and like it.
I feared all cores would be submitted and we would have to choose, but I see this entry is focuses on something new/different (single and new GPU plugin only for easier maintainability). I hope I'm right, that's what I wrote on wiki

The GlideN64 update pulls ~2.5 years of changes and about 1k commits in.
It's mostly about compatibility improvements, like RE2 does now run (although still some depth Issues) and many many many other things (accuracy improvements etc)
Also it's not finished yet (but runs fine), still have many options to expose and cleanup to do.

Old mupen (not next) also had lots and lots of Issues, mupen next is basically new mupen64plus-core, new mupen64plus-hle-rsp, new GlideN64, new cx4d-lle-rsp and lots of libretro glue and GL loader fixes.
This is months of work.

 

[Cyan]

this month will be hard to judge, and you all win if there are only 5 submissions!