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After several years, DS Wifi emulation is back.

@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:

melonDS3_1.png
melonDS3_2.png
melonDS3_3.png

​
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!

get.php
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:
 
Last edited by StarTrekVoyager,
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Arisotura

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StarTrekVoyager said:
Local Wifi? Don't dfream. 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 :P)
Click to expand...
Online is actually easier than local multiplayer, as it only uses standard wifi features :P local MP on the other hand uses some pretty sick specific features, I made a post about them on the melonDS blog.

It even worked in desmume, for a while. I believe the related NGEmu thread is still stickied in their desmume forum.


also re: WFC

I don't believe there's much of a legal issue with having an emulator than can connect to WFC. This is moot though as the WFC servers are offline, but...

>people will use it to cheat and ruin WFC
They never needed a fancypants wifi-enabled emulator to cheat and ruin WFC. They just had to have an ARDS and tick a few checkboxes. And this isn't a problem if the servers have proper cheat protection (but of course lolnintendo).

I don't know of any legal action against a network-enabled emulator, but then again I haven't been paying attention to everything.
 
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zero2exe

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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
 
Plstic

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StapleButter said:
Online is actually easier than local multiplayer, as it only uses standard wifi features :P local MP on the other hand uses some pretty sick specific features, I made a post about them on the melonDS blog.

It even worked in desmume, for a while. I believe the related NGEmu thread is still stickied in their desmume forum.


also re: WFC

I don't believe there's much of a legal issue with having an emulator than can connect to WFC. This is moot though as the WFC servers are offline, but...

>people will use it to cheat and ruin WFC
They never needed a fancypants wifi-enabled emulator to cheat and ruin WFC. They just had to have an ARDS and tick a few checkboxes. And this isn't a problem if the servers have proper cheat protection (but of course lolnintendo).

I don't know of any legal action against a network-enabled emulator, but then again I haven't been paying attention to everything.
Click to expand...
There was some legal action for programmed world which was a Konami eamuse emulator. Pretty sure that was all related to use of Konami assets ie. qpro parts and the like and they also ran the latest data which was in arcades in japan.
 
leon315

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It requires a very powerful cpu to emulate properly huh??? Let's see:

I7 6700k 300+bucks vs a used ds lite 50bucks

11/10 would get last gen cpu to emulate cheap ds
 
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Costello

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leon315 said:
It requires a very powerful cpu to emulate properly huh??? Let's see:

I7 6700k 300+bucks vs a used ds lite 50bucks

11/10 would get last gen cpu to emulate cheap ds
Click to expand...
you will need actually two i9 CPUs (one for each screen of the DS) and make them work together via SLI
 
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SpongeFreak52

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Costello said:
you will need actually two i9 CPUs (one for each screen of the DS) and make them work together via SLI
Click to expand...
I superglued my SLI bridge onto the processors but now it just ignites when I hit the power button. Gonna keep a bucket of water handy to see if that helps it run better.

EDIT: It works! I can run Settings at a blazing 3 frames per secon! Take THAT, Nintendo! Smell of electrical smoke has filled the room but I can scan for access points all day now!
 
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D

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StarTrekVoyager said:
Local Wifi? Don't dfream. 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 :P)
Click to expand...
But...but...:cry:
 
D

Deleted User

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Nokia9000000000000 said:
56 internets
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Lol
StapleButter said:
Online is actually easier than local multiplayer, as it only uses standard wifi features :P local MP on the other hand uses some pretty sick specific features, I made a post about them on the melonDS blog.

It even worked in desmume, for a while. I believe the related NGEmu thread is still stickied in their desmume forum.
Click to expand...
But the picture of pictochat shows that it works, I think... it uses local comunication, right?
 
YayMii

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Plstic said:
There was some legal action for programmed world which was a Konami eamuse emulator. Pretty sure that was all related to use of Konami assets ie. qpro parts and the like and they also ran the latest data which was in arcades in japan.
Click to expand...
There's a difference between "network-enabled emulator" and "private server for arcade cabinets running pirated software"...
 
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