Homebrew [Discussion] Benefits of DS games in 3DS mode.

shortperson1026

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As it stands, the 3DS has DS mode built in. As far as I can understand, this is comparable to the Wii mode on the Wii U, and it's the same reason why we quickly had DS homebrew on the 3DS using the already widely-known DS flash carts.

I've seen at least one or two users on this forum suggest a 'DS Emulator' on the 3DS and initially wrote it off as being a rather dumb idea however I've sort of back-tracked and I'd ask people to consider the possibilities.

SM64DS, as a use-case example. There's still a fairly (somewhat) active modding community for the game even though the controls are shoddy. The only method of getting analog input into DS games was via the touchscreen. In another scenario, modders have taken primarily touch-screen enabled games like Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass and mapped button presses to touch-screen functions. In an emulator environment, or at least in an environment where we have full access to the 3DS circle pad, mapping the analog to the touch screen becomes a possibility.

There's an opportunity to seriously improve the DS gaming experience, especially for a few of these titles like SM64DS, Rayman DS, Metroid Prime: Hunters, Animal Crossing DS, and so on. I'd love to hear from developers about what their take of the possibility of this happening would be. Would the 3DS necessarily need to 'emulate' the DS since it's very similar hardware? Can DS code be executed in 3DS mode? I'm not experienced, just wanted to open up discussion about the possibility and whether that would be feasible or not.
 
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Mr. Elementle

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The only benefit i can think of would be running roms and hacks/homebrew without an r4 card, that and maybe connecting to wifi through you're wpa2 connection without having to switch to wep, but since nintendo wifi went down years ago i hardly see any point to that.

But yeah í'm pretty sure most people that want a ds emu for hacks/homebrew and lets be honest, with flash cards running about 12 dollars, there really isn't much reason or incentive to make a ds emu, not to mention how much work that would be, we barely have gba running on n3ds,

it would take years of work to get ds running since you would need to build a new emulator (Just because a system can run a game natively doesn't mean it can run the rom that way, the 3ds can run gba games but we still needed an emu) unless someone could trick the 3ds into seeing the .nds file as a cartridge inserted into the cartridge slot, but i have no idea how you would be able to do that (not saying it isn't possible since i don't actually know)
 

shortperson1026

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The only benefit i can think of would be running roms and hacks/homebrew without an r4 card, that and maybe connecting to wifi through you're wpa2 connection without having to switch to wep, but since nintendo wifi went down years ago i hardly see any point to that.

But yeah í'm pretty sure most people that want a ds emu for hacks/homebrew and lets be honest, with flash cards running about 12 dollars, there really isn't much reason or incentive to make a ds emu, not to mention how much work that would be, we barely have gba running on n3ds,

it would take years of work to get ds running since you would need to build a new emulator (Just because a system can run a game natively doesn't mean it can run the rom that way, the 3ds can run gba games but we still needed an emu) unless someone could trick the 3ds into seeing the .nds file as a cartridge inserted into the cartridge slot, but i have no idea how you would be able to do that (not saying it isn't possible since i don't actually know)

Agreed about the WPA2 connections being kinda pointless, however you can patch some of the Wifi enabled games to use non-Nintendo servers (which are still running today!)

I currently use a flashcard, I guess the idea is to enhance the experience of DS games by taking full advantage of the 3DS hardware. I think it's worth noting that we barely have GBA running on the 3DS because of hardware differences. Even for the ambassador GBA games on the o3DS, it would still require basically a reboot to play the game so it could take advantage of all the RAM (Super Smash Bros has to do the same). I think it would be comparative to virtualizing one x86 operating system in another since the 3DS processor seems to be an extension of the DS processor.

This post here - https://gbatemp.net/threads/q-about-the-3dss-ds-mode.300820/#post-3768271 - explains exactly why/how it wouldn't necessarily be 'emulation' of DS games but rather an alteration of how the 3DS virtualizes the DS code.

"This. It's virtualization and not emulation.

Basically there are 4 ways nintendo could have handled things the way they did... Emulation, virtualization, native, or hardware locking.

Native would be a DS game running as if it were a 3ds game. Nintendo wouldn't do this because of the fact that the original DS protection is terribly broken and it would be have a negative impact on compatibility (running games too fast, broken timings, etc)

Emulation would require software (everything, or at least almost everything done via CPU) translation of all CPU/GPU/Timings/etc. This would be needlessly complex and a very big battery drain and may not even be feasible given how little we know about the 3DS' true hardware. It also leads to unnecessary compatibility issues (since the hardware is so similar anyways)

Hardware locking would be much like how the Wii plays gamecube games... It basically restarts the system in a 'compatibility' mode where the Wii hardware is locked out and the GPU/CPU are underclocked to match the cube. Theoretically perfect simulation, but then lacks all wii features.

Virtualization is thus the best choice and is kind of a combination between the two above methods. Both the hardware and software have to be designed with it in mind... The software basically sets up a "computer in a computer". The innie (in this case the DS) lacks any ability to interact with the outtie (in this case, the 3DS) while the hardware is designed to be able to split work between the two tasks. This allows you to have an actual 3ds menu while playing DS titles... While without the system being hacked to be sure, we can assume that the reason why most of the regular 3ds features are probably disabled to insure proper timings inside the VM DS, or that certain features of the CPU which are necessary for certain other functions (like wifi controller on DS) are locked to the VM so there is no resource conflict leading to an ugly screen of death."
 
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Kawaii

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a simple answer.
digital + free + easy

nobody want to carry physical flashcart around if there's alternative. Keeping it in the 3DS as we know theoritically it drains battery
 
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shortperson1026

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a simple answer.
digital + free + easy

nobody want to carry physical flashcart around if there's alternative. Keeping it in the 3DS as we know theoritically it drains battery
I could see why many people might strictly want this to make piracy easier for themselves however my main intention is the benefits from 3DS hardware such as converting analogue inputs to touchscreen strokes.
 

ric.

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a simple answer.
digital + free + easy

nobody want to carry physical flashcart around if there's alternative. Keeping it in the 3DS as we know theoritically it drains battery

That's the problem though - there is no alternative. Also, the battery only drains faster when using the DSTWO AFAIK, the R4 has no such problem.

I could see why many people might strictly want this to make piracy easier for themselves however my main intention is the benefits from 3DS hardware such as converting analogue inputs to touchscreen strokes.

I'm sorry, could you clarify? Even if DS virtualization was achieved - which is even harder than "getting to run DS games on 3DS", as the current method involves the 3DS 'underclocking' itself to essentially become a DS - this won't magically improve DS games. The most you'll get is using the Circle Pad instead of the D-Pad which might be useful for games like Mario 64 DS, but other than that there is no way for DS games to take advantage of the 3DS' hardware.
 

Kawaii

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That's the problem though - there is no alternative. Also, the battery only drains faster when using the DSTWO AFAIK, the R4 has no such problem.

Yup that's why I mentioned 'if'
that's the reason there's a request for it.
And its only good if it could run DS game as good as using cart.
 

Jao Chu

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3DS-mode flashcard users, specifically those eith Gateway emuNAND, could certainly benefit from having SLOT-1 empty (keep GW card in for GW mode launch) and running DS roms from the internal SD card.

I know this is a "discuss the benefits of...." thread, but I'll add it in anyways, i can't see anyone developing a DS emulator for 3DS mode when $5 R4 clone can probably do the job better :(
 

UltiNaruto

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The only benefit i can think of would be running roms and hacks/homebrew without an r4 card, that and maybe connecting to wifi through you're wpa2 connection without having to switch to wep, but since nintendo wifi went down years ago i hardly see any point to that.

But yeah í'm pretty sure most people that want a ds emu for hacks/homebrew and lets be honest, with flash cards running about 12 dollars, there really isn't much reason or incentive to make a ds emu, not to mention how much work that would be, we barely have gba running on n3ds,

it would take years of work to get ds running since you would need to build a new emulator (Just because a system can run a game natively doesn't mean it can run the rom that way, the 3ds can run gba games but we still needed an emu) unless someone could trick the 3ds into seeing the .nds file as a cartridge inserted into the cartridge slot, but i have no idea how you would be able to do that (not saying it isn't possible since i don't actually know)

On PS3 there was ways to mount a folder as a bddrive so it might be possible on 3DS too with the cartridges. But I'm not sure if it wouldn't kill the performances and it would require a kernel exploit.
 

zoogie

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You would get better battery life out of running an r4igold card than running a DS emulator, which would require 3ds mode and max CPU.
ex. 3dsxl battery life
DS 6-10 hrs
3DS 3.5-6.5 hrs

in my tests, a regular ds flashcard takes only about 10% of the battery life out in the lowest brightness settings
I'm not sure, but wasn't it possible to inject a nds rom into the wifi settings?
Thats dsiware games.
 

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