Homebrew blargSnes -- SNES emulator for the 3DS (WIP)

[Arisotura]

All of that was on my TODO list anyway, so go ahead. The idea of coloring folders differently is a nice one. I also thought about something else: repurposing the titlebar to show the current directory (or full path as much as possible) rather than 'blargSNES 1.2'. I'd lose the version display, but I thought about somehow integrating it into the splashscreen.

 

[kraan]

Tested your Emulator out yesterday, some things I noticed;

-Final Fantasy II (EU) works perfectly, although I haven't played it extensively.
-Mario Kart won't load
-Can't seem to find the menu/a way to safely close the HB application. The only way to leave the game is to power off the 3DS. Might be something I'm missing though.

Anyway, great job, love to see what the updates have in store

EDIT: It's possible that I have the 1.1 build. I downloaded this emulator over a week ago, I'm downloading the 1.2 build as we speak. If these problems still arise I'll let you know

 

[DiscostewSM]

Tested your Emulator out yesterday, some things I noticed;

-Final Fantasy II (EU) works perfectly, although I haven't played it extensively.
-Mario Kart won't load
-Can't seem to find the menu/a way to safely close the HB application. The only way to leave the game is to power off the 3DS. Might be something I'm missing though.

Anyway, great job, love to see what the updates have in store

EDIT: It's possible that I have the 1.1 build. I downloaded this emulator over a week ago, I'm downloading the 1.2 build as we speak. If these problems still arise I'll let you know

Mario Kart won't work because it uses a special chip that hasn't been implemented yet.

Interestingly enough with the unofficial build I'm running with (the one I've made my implementations with, not the one on Github), Earthworm Jim 2 works with a repeated "!! SPC IO MIRROR READ 44" message, runs a little slow (because of the messages), and screwed up sound effect (like how ZSNES does).

 

[kraan]

Mario Kart won't work because it uses a special chip that hasn't been implemented yet.

Interestingly enough with the unofficial build I'm running with (the one I've made my implementations with, not the one on Github), Earthworm Jim 2 works with a repeated "!! SPC IO MIRROR READ 44" message, runs a little slow (because of the messages), and screwed up sound effect (like how ZSNES does).

Sounds promising Can't wait for a working MK!

 

[VinsCool]

Mario Kart won't work because it uses a special chip that hasn't been implemented yet.

Interestingly enough with the unofficial build I'm running with (the one I've made my implementations with, not the one on Github), Earthworm Jim 2 works with a repeated "!! SPC IO MIRROR READ 44" message, runs a little slow (because of the messages), and screwed up sound effect (like how ZSNES does).

earthworm jim 2 behaves the same with git builds I use.

 

[DarkFlare69]

Here is a short demo of blargSnes:

 

[DiscostewSM]

Been working on that ROM menu. Here's what I have so far.

- Directory support. Folders and up directory ("/..") shown in yellow. Root has no up directory.
- Folders and games alphabetized (folders first, games second).
- Replaced the title and version number on bottom screen with the current directory starting from root. Will crop to full directories if full directory path is too long.

TODO

- Examine if directory name is too long to fit in the reserved space, and crop as needed. (done)
- Save current directory to the ini file upon starting a game or exiting the emulator.

 

[Loke]

@StapleButter
I reread the first post for small question but wasn't able to find the answer.. I know it's somewhere in the threat but it grows quite fast. What is the rom limit? I got all snes games on my pc but I remember someone saying there's a limit..

Also would you mind edit the first post with the rom limit?

Thanks and keep the amazing work up!

@DarkFlare69
Thank you for the video. I've checked some in the past but it was in early testing.. After I watched your video I'm gonna install this emulator ASAP. The game ran much better then i expected!

 

[DarkFlare69]

@StapleButter
I reread the first post for small question but wasn't able to find the answer.. I know it's somewhere in the threat but it grows quite fast. What is the rom limit? I got all snes games on my pc but I remember someone saying there's a limit..

Also would you mind edit the first post with the rom limit?

Thanks and keep the amazing work up!

@DarkFlare69
Thank you for the video. I've checked some in the past but it was in early testing.. After I watched your video I'm gonna install this emulator ASAP. The game ran much better then i expected!

No problem, just don't judge my skills at Super Mario World xD. It also ran much better than I expected. It's nearly perfect at this point. Many games run at 95 - 100% speed.

 

[DiscostewSM]

So I'm at the point of doing the saving of the current directory, but I'm honestly not sure if that would be a good idea, or how I should do it. Should it only save the current directory through the config window like the rest of the settings, or should I go with my original plan of saving when launching a game or exiting the emulator? The former may make it confusing for people as it doesn't become an automatic feature, but it'll only write to the ini on request there. The latter may be more wanted, but it'll write each time a game is launched or the emulator is exited. Some people may like having a "base" directory, which the former idea would allow and the latter would not.

Anyone have any ideas, or should I just drop this idea and have the emulator always start in a specific directory, like "/snes" which is what it does now? Dropping the idea won't remove directory support. You'll still be able to navigate through them.

 

[hippy dave]

Setting tick box for whether to save the current directory?

 

[Arisotura]

An issue of the current config system is that it's not fit for storing strings, unless the strings either contain no spaces or are a fixed size (or whatever is doable with sscanf).

 

[DiscostewSM]

Writing a string to the ini file is simple, but loading a string requires a little bit of a change to the format. My testing has shown that "%[^\t\n]" works, in that it'll continue reading characters until it reaches the tab or newline characters. The entries end with the newline character.

For the time being, I decided to have it save the directory only when launching a game. Decided not to include when you exit the app. Upon launching the app, if the ini is missing, the save directory path entry is missing, invalid, or thedirectory doesn't exist, the system will default to the root directory.

 

[Arisotura]

Oh, nice thing. Didn't know you could do that.


In the meantime, I'm trying to speed up GPU processing. I reduced the resolution from 400x480 to 400x240, graphics look pretty much the same and that shaved off 1ms. This optimization will not be applicable if 3D is used, though.

I moved the border texture and final screen vertices to VRAM. The speed gain from this can be measured but it's small, 40 microseconds or so.

I still wonder whether I should apply it to the hardware renderer, because most of the data there is dynamic. The time taken by DMA transfers might outbalance the performance gains, even though DMA transfers are fast (around 200MB/s from what I measured). But on the other hand, this might also speed up the CPU side by reducing contention between the CPU and the GPU.

 

[Psi-hate]

Well, good news everyone. Smea said that he is updating Ninjhax tomorrow, along with something else to allow larger executable files!

 

[MarkDarkness]

Been working on that ROM menu. Here's what I have so far.

- Directory support. Folders and up directory ("/..") shown in yellow. Root has no up directory.
- Folders and games alphabetized (folders first, games second).
- Replaced the title and version number on bottom screen with the current directory starting from root. Will crop to full directories if full directory path is too long.

TODO

- Examine if directory name is too long to fit in the reserved space, and crop as needed. (done)
- Save current directory to the ini file upon starting a game or exiting the emulator.

I mentioned before and it's still something very relevant to me that we can customize the lower screen more. A minimalistic approach like GameYob's is what would click for me, for example. I'm sure other people prefer different things. But a big blue screen is perhaps not ideal.

 

[DiscostewSM]

Well, good news everyone. Smea said that he is updating Ninjhax tomorrow, along with something else to allow larger executable files!

Indeed. Not just bigger executables, but also executable/writable pages for dynarec. I can see this being used for something like a PS1 emulator. Could this benefit BlargSnes to not only speed up the base emulation, but allow for room involving special chips without needing the extra cores of an N3DS?

 

[shinyquagsire23]

Indeed. Not just bigger executables, but also executable/writable pages for dynarec. I can see this being used for something like a PS1 emulator. Could this benefit BlargSnes to not only speed up the base emulation, but allow for room involving special chips without needing the extra cores of an N3DS?

I know it's definitely going to help with GBA emulation. ARM to ARM isn't entirely too difficult, but the main problem was that we couldn't set pages executable, and we will be able to soon. I'm definitely excited to see what I can get gpsp to do with it.

 

[Idaho]

Let's hope we'll get a proper GBA emulation within 2015 :3

 

[kraan]

A few findings;

-I got an error when I tried to start Doom on the SNES emulator, it said report to staplebutter. Don't have a screen of it right now but can try to get one if you need it.
-Trying to start Chrono trigger destroys everything, freezing up forcing to hard reset console.

Indeed. Not just bigger executables, but also executable/writable pages for dynarec. I can see this being used for something like a PS1 emulator. Could this benefit BlargSnes to not only speed up the base emulation, but allow for room involving special chips without needing the extra cores of an N3DS?

God a PS1 emulator would make me drool, but right now I'd already be happy with a sped up GBA emulator. Very excited to see what will happen with the ninjhax update.