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

[the_randomizer]

So he just gave up, on region lock removal? Damn. So much for wanting free region free mods, now we have to spend $80 to have region free. Damn.

 

[davhuit]

I don't really know if he really gave up but reading his last tweets about it (where he was answering to some other peoples about it), it seems so.

At least, if he didn't gave up, it seems it won't be for now, when he first said he would try to have it done before the end of the year (or something like that).

You can also buy another 3DS but it'll cost as much or more.

I just noticed Cubic Ninja price seems to be more or less back to normal (at least, on Amazon.com). Seems lot of people rushed to buy the game and probably reselled it when it got blocked with 9.3/9.4.

Price is still higher than before Ninjhax but a lot lower than after smea's announcement.

 

[the_randomizer]

Well that's asinine, no way am I paying 80 bucks to remove region locking.

 

[davhuit]

You don't miss a lot of games anyway. Most japanese obscure games require to be able to read japanese to fully enjoy them and people who read japanese often directly buy a japanese system (that's what I did) so they don't really have this problem of region lock.

Actually, in USA, Gateway lowest price seems to be 65 bucks by the way (70 with shipping costs).

But we're off-topic so let's go back to BlargSnes discussion.

 

[the_randomizer]

You don't miss a lot of games anyway. Most japanese obscure games require to be able to read japanese to fully enjoy them and people who read japanese often directly buy a japanese system (that's what I did) so they don't really have this problem.

Actually, in USA, Gateway lowest price seems to be 65 bucks by the way).

But we're off-topic so let's back to BlargSnes discussion.

Well, if there can be dynarec in the latest exploit, methinks it would help Blargsnes tremendously, right? I mean, it's getting better all the time, don't get me wrong. Anything that can help with speed would be a boon.

 

[davhuit]

Help it in which way? Can you develop?

Biggest problem in Snes Emulation, from what I know, is to have SPC (sound) and CPU synchronisation. Just one desynch can broke/freeze some games and that's why some games don't boot for now (on SnesAdvance, you had to nop SPC instructions with a hack to make those games works).

I don't even think StapleButter have a Cubic Ninja to try/test that by the way. Except if things changed, last time he was saying he was doing tests with a gateway.

 

[BlindEdict]

I don't even think StapleButter have a Cubic Ninja to try/test that by the way. Except if things changed, last time he was saying he was doing tests with a gateway.

You can load Cubic Ninja from a Gateway in order to trigger NinjHax.. I currently use both.

 

[Kazanye]

Help it in which way? Can you develop?

Maybe the extra processing power would help with emulating special chips, or to allow rewinding ? And what about layer-based 3D effect ?
I know I'd be glad to play Starfox in 3D ! Probably seems a bit crazy even to StapleButter right now, but who knows, blargSNES could possibly become a full-fledged glitch-free emulator in the future.

Plus... who'd refuse extra power anyhow ?

 

[davhuit]

I know, but using a gateway to use cubic ninja to use ninjhax to use an emulator is a bit much, don't you think? (especially when gateway already run homebrews).

Just my opinion though.

(and this thing will probably speed up GBA rather than SNES, because the GBA emulator is a port which can take advantage of it, as it's written in the GBA emulator thread).

Maybe the extra processing power would help with emulating special chips, or to allow rewinding ? And what about layer-based 3D effect ?
I know I'd be glad to play Starfox in 3D ! Probably seems a bit crazy even to StapleButter right now, but who knows, blargSNES could possibly become a full-fledged glitch-free emulator in the future.

Plus... who'd refuse extra power anyhow ?

Where did you see it would give extra processing power?

 

[DiscostewSM]

Dynarec + executable pages helps in the overall emulation process by converting blocks of code to native 3DS code and saving them as pages. Not having to re-interpret the code each time the execution runs over it means a lot of the CPU load is relieved. This means the CPU can do other things, like more accurate timing, and even special chips.

 

[davhuit]

Well, the only real SNES emulator that is near perfection which low-level emulation of all chips is Higan, and it require a 3Ghz PC processor.

Emulating chips on 3DS is, in my opinion, a dream a bit too big (except for DSP which seem to be the easiest to do).

A really interesting article about Snes emulation can be read here (for those who didn't read it yet) : http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2011/...-3ghz-quest-to-build-a-perfect-snes-emulator/

 

[DiscostewSM]

Well, the only real SNES emulator that is near perfection which low-level emulation of all chips is Higan, and it require a 3Ghz PC processor.

Emulating chips on 3DS is, in my opinion, a dream a bit too big (except for DSP which seem to be the easiest to do).

Higan requires that much because it was designed to get as close to 100% accuracy as possible (down to the cycle-basis), and dynarec may interfere with that. I doubt StapleButter is trying to achieve such accuracy.

 

[davhuit]

Of course, but I would already be exceptionnally surprised to just see all regular games emulated properly on a 3DS without any hacks, so if you also count game with chips like sa-1 or c4, seems not feasible, though I would be happy to be wrong.

I'm already pretty happy with how blargsnes works right which is really promising.

 

[DiscostewSM]

imo with BlargSnes emulating everything as an interpreter, I don't see it handling special chips (on a regular 3DS/XL) because it spends a lot of time just converting code. If/when StapleButter switches over to dynarec + written executable pages, I can see it happening.

 

[davhuit]

As I said, would be happy to be wrong but after having followed all Bsnes/higan developpement, I suppose it would ask a lot more extra power (especially if we talk about low-level emulation).

For example, SA1 clock speed is 10.74 MHz, compared to the SNES 3.58 MHz and also use faster RAM.

Let's hope I'm wrong

 

[dronesplitter]

Just stopping in to say Merry Christmas!

 

[Arisotura]

IMO attempting to emulate a SNES with a dynarec would pretty much be asking for trouble. That thing is better emulated with an interpreter, and CPU emulation isn't where blargSNES spends most of its time anyway.

 

[Psi-hate]

Can someone give me an example of their Blargsnes folder? I can't seem to get my roms to show. I have it as 3ds-Blargsnes

I don't know where to put my roms. It says "no ROMs found in /snes" and when having the snes folder, it still doesn't work. Anyone wish to help?

 

[cvskid]

Never said it was garbage, but if you check twitter, you can see some of those who was using it updated to keep playing their games (Pokemon or Smash Bros) so it's just the reality to assume most of people who are on 9.2 will switch on using a gateway instead for homebrew, even more if it has emunand (which will won't block their future game updates). Not to mention "Cubic Ninja" now cost near as much as a gateway. Even the creator of Ninjhax don't really have plans to support it in higher firmwares as he said himself.

https://twitter.com/smealum/status/547607160289378304 (it's written "some", not "all").
https://twitter.com/smealum/status/547607245874155520 (gba and we can exepct , not "it will definitively give")

He even seemed to have gave up on it's project to make a region-free mod, now that the gateway exploit have been announced, refering to his lasts tweets about it.

I know a bit how much work you have to put in an emulator as I'm myself a romhacker/translator (you can find my lastest translation here : http://www.romhacking.net/translations/2301/ not the same nickname but I can be pmed there to check if I'm the same guy, gbatemp account have my brother nickname) and where you are, you often have to use debug functions/follow emulators developpement/etc... (though the PS2 translation was done without any debuggeur as there is no working debugger for PCSX2, the one we had was just crashing near all the time...) though, I don't understand your point. Never said my opinion was an absolute truth, it's just my opinion and StapleButter is free to do what he wants.

So if someone don't know anything about emulators, he shouldn't talk at all? That's the old debate of elite who say for example you can't make a movie critic if you are a movie director, which is a fucking retarded point (but well, what could I except more for someone who is an anti-GW and try to bash every people who refer to it? Not the first time, not the last time).

Anyway, I'm curious to see how it might give a big speedup for SNES emulation when most games already seems to run at the right speed.

If "useless = garbage" for you, then I understand your message but in my dictionnary, "useless =/ garbare". A really good thing can become useless become something else appeared, without making the old thing "garbare".

Can't you just use a copy of cubic ninja on a gateway 3ds to get the same results as using the actual game?

 

[DiscostewSM]

Ok, I believe I got noise implemented for the audio. Will need to have StapleButter look over what I did to see if it's acceptable.