Homebrew 3dsgba

[dragonfromiso]

what's this ? first working GBA emu for the 3DS ? yes. https://github.com/Steveice10/3DSGBA … runs pretty slow but still awesome ! place rom named boot.gba in root of sd card.

Found this on smea twitter

 

[Gh0sti]

well lets hope it can be optimized to play more games would be cool to see it run close to 100%

 

[Foxi4]

I think efforts should be focused on harnessing AGB FIRM which is already there, but other than that, splendid.

 

[RevPokemon]

well lets hope it can be optimized to play more games would be cool to see it run close to 100%

Way I see it is for me SNES ran pretty good on NDS tho it had incompatiblity and couldn't work on games with special chips and on NDS GBA had tons of issues and was unplayable. So with that being said GBA should work relatively well considering it much stronger than the NDS (certainly so if it becomes optimized for the new 3ds)

 

[Seanshoots]

Does anyone know how they port these? Do they just change file loading and input/output to work with the 3DS or does it require much more of a re-write?

 

[gamesquest1]

I think efforts should be focused on harnessing AGB FIRM which is already there, but other than that, splendid.

yeah but, relying on the built in AGB_FIRM also means you loose the potential for extra features like save states cheats etc etc and your stuck with whatever compatibility AGB_FIRM has....one of the reasons i always prefer homebrew emulators over the VC injects, if its built from the ground up you have more freedom to add features than if you rely on VC injections....yeah it (virtual console AGB_FIRM injections) would probably work better off the bat, but some games would probably have issues and there would be no real way to fix compatibility...lets just have both coz we are greedy (not that i have seen any movement from gateway regarding the GBA support they mentioned, but i suppose they have their plate full elsewhere atm )

 

[Nemix77]

I just want a GBA emulator that works as good as the one on the PSP and can also potentially make use of the New 3DS's faster hardware is that too much too ask but it's still early in the scene for 3DS emulators so I'm willing to wait it out and not complain too much for the time being.

 

[ChrisRX]

Does anyone know how they port these? Do they just change file loading and input/output to work with the 3DS or does it require much more of a re-write?

In the case of 3dsgba, they've taken the core of vba-next from libretro and written the 3DS specific functions. The libretro cores handle all of the GBA emulation specific functions and then added the parts that handle input, draw to screen etc.

Porting is different for every project depending on what you're starting from and how "portable" the code is. ie. some code will work differently or not be supported at all when moved from one architecture/compiler to another. In those cases large sections of code have to be rewritten in order to make them work.

I just want a GBA emulator that works as good as the one on the PSP and can also potentially make use of the New 3DS's faster hardware is that too much too ask but it's still early in the scene for 3DS emulators so I'm willing to wait it out and not complain too much for the time being.

The new 3DS doesn't have a faster CPU than the original, it just has more cores. For emulation, raw clock speed is a lot better than more cores. While there are definitely improvements that can be made using the extra cores, it's not as simple as 2x cores = 2x clock speed. Multiple cores just aren't too helpful for emulation.

 

[shinyquagsire23]

The main problem is interpretation vs recompilation here. GBA is ARM based so it could very easily be recompiled to ARM, the problem is that ninjhax (or rather, ctrulib ninjhax it is then) can't set RAM pages as executable for now. I personally had attempted a port of gpsp but it ended up failing because I couldn't execute from RAM. That's not to say that interpretation will never get anywhere, because optimisation can definitely get us somewhere as seen with ichfly's GBA emulator for DS. It'll just take time.

 

[piratesephiroth]

The main problem is interpretation vs recompilation here. GBA is ARM based so it could very easily be recompiled to ARM, the problem is that ninjhax (or rather, ctrulib) can't set RAM pages as executable for now. I personally had attempted a port of gpsp but it ended up failing because I couldn't execute from RAM. That's not to say that interpretation will never get anywhere, because optimisation can definitely get us somewhere as seen with ichfly's GBA emulator for DS. It'll just take time.

But can't you do it for Gateway? Are you a casual or what

 

[Nemix77]

The new 3DS doesn't have a faster CPU than the original, it just has more cores. For emulation, raw clock speed is a lot better than more cores. While there are definitely improvements that can be made using the extra cores, it's not as simple as 2x cores = 2x clock speed. Multiple cores just aren't too helpful for emulation.

Yeah I knew that it works the same way on PC computers but it should give it a bit more power the main thing is the VRAM increase from 6MB to 10MB and just perhaps an unconfirmed and undocumented increase in the GPU speed.

Still I think a GBA emulator optimized for the 3DS should be very close to that of the GBA emulator on the PSP, the true testament here is patience and time.

 

[smealum]

The main problem is interpretation vs recompilation here. GBA is ARM based so it could very easily be recompiled to ARM, the problem is that ninjhax (or rather, ctrulib) can't set RAM pages as executable for now. I personally had attempted a port of gpsp but it ended up failing because I couldn't execute from RAM. That's not to say that interpretation will never get anywhere, because optimisation can definitely get us somewhere as seen with ichfly's GBA emulator for DS. It'll just take time.

that's not a ctrulib limitation, it's an OS limitation. outside of dynamically linked libraries (which have to be signed), regular applications just do not have the right to map executable pages.


fortunately ninjhax isn't really a regular application so we'll make it possible to map executable pages pretty soon.

 

[Kikirini]

THIS was the reason I was waiting for 3ds homebrew.

The emulator is slow, as was mentioned, but I am running Fire Emblem without a hitch, which makes me happy.

 

[Canadacdn]

Awesome! Can't wait to see how this evolves.

 

[Adeka]

Ruby works perfect aside from the speed obviously.

 

[Phantom_User]

Wow. That's all I can say. Wow.

 

[Melon__Bread]

Just got a file selector about a hour ago:
https://github.com/Steveice10/3DSGBA/commit/95876881859534267b63dbeaeb20b55d2afc437e

Download link: (Taken from the README on GitHub)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/fraixj1fn9ql3w4/3DSGBA.zip?dl=0

 

[Fishaman P]

Wow. Since this is a port of the decently-accurate VBA-Next and not written from the ground up, this should have relatively accurate emulation from the get-go!
Sound should be a matter of hooking up Libretro's sound interface to the 3DS one. Speed will be a bit harder.

 

[NyaakoXD]

Can't wait to see how much this will grow.

 

[xantoz]

The file selector is buggy on long names...
It seems the text drawing routine is drawing out of bounds (and overlapping into the framebuffer for the current back-frame causing a flickery effect)