Homebrew Stella-DS Improved

MarioKartFan · Dec 13, 2020

@wavemotion Is there any way you can get this to work nicely with the TWiLightMenu++ hot key to return to menu? Unfortunately it has been hit or miss for me.

MarioKartFan · Dec 13, 2020

kane159 said:
Holy s**t This is so cool man [emoji1]is this possible to port this to 3ds?

Hi. While this port is now incredible, if you have a N3DS/N2DS, you can check out the Stella core, which runs extremely well. Pitfall II is full speed on it, for example.

This emu still has some amazing features that are missing from Stella core. But options are always good to have, so FYI!

wavemotion · Dec 13, 2020

MarioKartFan said:
@wavemotion Is there any way you can get this to work nicely with the TWiLightMenu++ hot key to return to menu? Unfortunately it has been hit or miss for me.

Interesting! In theory, when you quit it should exit back to the guy who called it... which I would guess is the TWL++ menu. I don't know what I could do differently but hopefully someone will have a suggestion and I can implement it!

RocketRobz · Dec 14, 2020

wavemotion said:
Interesting! In theory, when you quit it should exit back to the guy who called it... which I would guess is the TWL++ menu. I don't know what I could do differently but hopefully someone will have a suggestion and I can implement it!

The combo should be L+R+DOWN+B. It should be implemented in arm7 side. (See TWLMenu++ DSi theme's arm7 code, for reference).

wavemotion · Dec 14, 2020

Robz8 said:
The combo should be L+R+DOWN+B. It should be implemented in arm7 side. (See TWLMenu++ DSi theme's arm7 code, for reference).

Yeah, the code I started with does it the same way - boy the ARM7 doesn't do much! A bit of sound and mostly it just looks for those keys to exit.

You can also use the QUIT graphical button on the Atari 2600 console to quit. That seems to return me to TWL++ every time.

Indy13 · Dec 16, 2020

Hi @wavemotion and lots of thanks for your work on StellaDS & A7800DS

I tested the versions of your emulators on my nds lite with an R4 SDHC Gold Pro 2016 and HBMenu (0.4.1 version), I still get the same result : a white screen.

When I use the classic version of StellaDS and A7800DS, I have no problem, the emulators are working correctly.

Are the versions of your emulators only compatible with TWiLight Menu?

Is the problem with my R4?

Thanks in advance

wavemotion · Dec 16, 2020

Hey Indy,

I'm not sure - I just downloaded my StellaDS 1.6 and placed onto my R4-SDHC cart (those $10 jobbers from China) in my DS-LITE and it worked fine (no TWL++ menu on that unit). Here is what I have visually:

Indy13 · Dec 17, 2020

@wavemotion ,

I understood where my problem came from, it was the version of HBMenu I was using that was too old, it works with HBMenu 0.7.1 but it does not work with HBMenu 0.4.1

Cool ! Now it works on my ndsl ! :grog:

I also noticed that your version of A7800DS could start directly without going through HBMenu, which is not the case with StellaDS 1.6.

If I try to start StellaDS directly without using HBMenu, I get this message:

wavemotion · Dec 17, 2020

Indy13 said:
I also noticed that your version of A7800DS could start directly without going through HBMenu, which is not the case with StellaDS 1.6.

Now that IS interesting! I have no idea why they would be different... hrm.... I'll check the linker - maybe something different there.

Indy13 · Dec 17, 2020

Maybe it could be useful, I don't know, but the difference I noticed between the two emulators is that StellaDS tries to generate a .SAV file like the nds commercial roms which has the consequence of launching the process of creating a .SAV file in a partial way since after that crashes and we get an error message (as in the photo above).

The .SAV file is created because it can be found on the root of the SD card but it must be corrupted because the procedure could not be completed completely.

Beside that A7800DS does not create .SAV file, I think maybe this is the reason why this emulator can work without HBMenu, it is just a guess and maybe I am completely in the false but this is the comparison that I could observe by installing the two emulators on the root of my SD card and starting the two emulators without using HBMenu.

Pk11 · Dec 17, 2020

wavemotion said:
Now that IS interesting! I have no idea why they would be different... hrm.... I'll check the linker - maybe something different there.

The problem is that you added a title ID and title, most flashcards kernels use the "####" title ID and sometimes the "HOMEBREW" title as their homebrew check. HBMenu always boots like homebrew and TWiLight Menu++ uses more sophisticated checks so it usually gets it right, but most flashcard kernels just check that.

https://github.com/wavemotion-dave/StellaDS/blob/master/Makefile#L28

Edit: If you want to make one with a title ID for making CIAs and installing with TMFH, maybe make it with a .dsi extension?
That should still work in TWiLight Menu++ and makes sense imo since the title ID is only needed on DSi, might be a bit confusing though since .dsi isn't a very common extension but it is sometimes used for dsiware and unlaunch uses it. I think I'm going to start making .dsi files with title IDs for my projects now that I've thought of it

wavemotion · Dec 17, 2020

Interesting.

So if I understand correctly, the STELLA-DS version has this in the makefile:

And the A7800DS version has this:

Both of these are unchanged from Alekmaul's originals - I didn't have enough knowledge on NDSTOOL to know what they did and so didn't make any changes.

Can I just safely strip away the title change and options in yellow highlight from StellaDS?

Pk11 · Dec 17, 2020

wavemotion said:
Interesting.

So if I understand correctly, the STELLA-DS version has this in the makefile:

View attachment 238392

And the A7800DS version has this:

View attachment 238393

Both of these are unchanged from Alekmaul's originals - I didn't have enough knowledge on NDSTOOL to know what they did and so didn't make any changes.

Can I just safely strip away the title change and options in yellow highlight from StellaDS?

Looks like Robz added them: https://github.com/DS-Homebrew/StellaDS/commit/21ec7a44b642e2f9c54f81077c884b6676cdda1f

And yeah, you can just remove that line and the \ at the end of the one before and it should be good

djleviticus · Dec 31, 2020

wow. Just wow, thanks for breathing new life into this emulator!!!!!!!!!!!!

wavemotion · Dec 31, 2020

Pk11 said:
Looks like Robz added them: https://github.com/DS-Homebrew/StellaDS/commit/21ec7a44b642e2f9c54f81077c884b6676cdda1f

And yeah, you can just remove that line and the \ at the end of the one before and it should be good

I gave this a try and it builds fine and runs fine on Unlaunch and TWL++ but still won't load on my R4 directly (though A5200DS and A7800DS both launch fine). Just hangs at the "R4 loading..." screen. Still loads fine using HBMENU on the R4.

wavemotion · Dec 31, 2020

Just to keep everything tidy for the end-of-year... Version 1.7

Just a bit of cleanup and polish. No performance improvements over 1.6

https://github.com/wavemotion-dave/StellaDS

wavemotion · Jan 17, 2021

Oh 8-bit love of my life, I have not forgotten thee!

I'm not ready for a new build but the nightly check-in has significant changes.

https://github.com/wavemotion-dave/StellaDS

It's up-revved to 1.7a and contains the new CPU core borrowed from Stella 2.7 (basically a couple years newer than the core that was in place). This fixes a number of small core bugs plus improves timing to the point where you can now play great new homebrews like Venture Reloaded and for the first time you can play the Starpath Supercharger games! Those games don't run at full speed yet... some are close and others are, well, less close. But it's a start.

Deleted member 668561 · Jan 17, 2021

Makes me wonder how much gain would one get if it was ported to assembler?

wavemotion · Jan 17, 2021

aadz93 said:
Makes me wonder how much gain would one get if it was ported to assembler?

Quite a bit, I would imagine. It's actually well-structured C++ and some of the speedup was undoing that beautiful encapsulation by doing some direct memory reads/writes. Even just a port to straight hand-tuned C might provide some benefit. But I'll leave that to someone else - the code is available! My goal is to get as many games playable as possible on the aging hardware but generally steer clear of a total ground-up re-write.

wavemotion · Jan 19, 2021

Version 1.8: https://github.com/wavemotion-dave/StellaDS

This is a big one.

Booster Grip Implemented (Omega Race and Thrust+ working as two-button games... use A and B)
Improved timing accuracy so games like Venture Reloaded work.
Implemented "AR" handling so Supercharger carts work!
Improved timing across the board... about 5% faster than 1.7 despite being a more timing-accurate emulator.
DPC+ Carts now recognized... and message will come up stating they are not supported.
L-TRIG+DPAD bumps screen offsets. R-TRIG+DPAD changes Y-Scaling

This will render almost the entire library playable except the newest DPC+ homebrew games which require a co-processor that can't be emulated properly with the limitations of the DS.

Edit: Just for fun, I loaded up StellaDS 1.1b which is the earliest version I have with enough debug in place to be able to see benchmarks. I compared them to what 1.8 will do... here's some compares when games are "unthrottled" (running as fast as they can):

Adventure was 88FPS and is now 155FPS.
Adventures of Tron was 45FPS and is now 70FPS
Alien was 44FPS and is now 61FPS
Chopper Command was 58FPS and is now 77FPS
Demon Attack was 79FPS and is now 126FPS

I'd say from this sampling that we are a solid 50% faster in emulation with at least twice the accuracy (i.e. more games are playable and more controller-types are properly emulated). This is a beast of a system to emulate as a lot of add-ons were cart specific.

Once I get all the screen tweaks and positions correct, next up: one-page mini-manuals for the games so you can just click a little booklet icon and get brief instructions on how to play!

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