GBARunner3?

[eyeball226]

I was referring above all to the DSi XL, where GBA games appear excessively coarse, pixelated, angular, boxy

They're running at native resolution, just as they do on a DSi, DS lite, DS or GBA for that matter.
They look exactly as one should expect them to look on the DSi's screen. The "coarseness" you're talking about is just what the DSi XL's screen looks like. Due to its increased size it has a lower dot pitch than the others. This also affects DS games in exactly the same way and is just in the nature of the hardware.
To get any useful kind of smoothing you need a screen that's at least twice the resolution of the content you want to display.

 

[Nikokaro]

The "coarseness" you're talking about is just what the DSi XL's screen looks like. Due to its increased size it has a lower dot pitch than the others.

Well, you haven't added anything new. However, wouldn't simple bilinear filtering significantly improve the look and feel in this case, in your opinion?

 

[Deleted member 702243]

Well, you haven't added anything new. However, wouldn't simple bilinear filtering significantly improve the look and feel in this case, in your opinion?

I'm not sure you can do bilinear filtering on an image that isn't resampled

 

[DSoryu]

Well, you haven't added anything new. However, wouldn't simple bilinear filtering significantly improve the look and feel in this case, in your opinion?

No, there's not scaling involved in any way, "scaling filters" are supposed to be applied to, well, scaled images. GBARunner3 runs the GBA graphics engine natively using the NDS 2D engine, since is almost the same, which means that the resoultion is 1:1.

There's no point into trying to add scaling filtering to a pixel perfect image, it would be like trying to pour a bucket of water in your garden in the middle of a rain.

 

[eyeball226]

Well, you haven't added anything new. However, wouldn't simple bilinear filtering significantly improve the look and feel in this case, in your opinion?

Not in my opinion, nor in reality. You're seeing the physical properties of this screen. Even if you blurred the image you would still see the coarseness because it's the native resolution of the screen.
You seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of what bilinear filtering is. It's a way of calculating extra pixels in between existing ones. There's nowhere for the extra pixels to go without expanding because this is a 1:1 image.

You say I didn't add anything but there isn't anything to add. As I already said: To do any kind of useful smoothing you need a screen at least twice the resolution of the thing you want to smooth (or at least close to double). Expanding 240 to 256 isn't even close to being a useful amount and it'll still look "coarse" because the coarseness is part of the screen.

In short there's no way to do what you're asking.

Post automatically merged: Sep 30, 2024

I'm not sure you can do bilinear filtering on an image that isn't resampled

This, 1000 times this.

 

[Glx555]

Just dug my DSLite out of the closet to test this out. Amazing job.
Everything runs beautifully and sounds great, a huge improvement over GBAr2.
I'd actually never played a GBA game on a console that was intended to play them, only on PC, PSP, PSV, Xbox, 3DS, Android, just about every platform except GBA/DS.

I do hope GBAr3 eventually gets a normal .nds release though.
I had to wipe my microSD and install TWL++ to get it to run, and as fancy as TWL++ is, it's kind of buggy.
On my first day of usage I managed to get TWL++ to bootloop because I renamed a ROM folder that had the current "last played game," and after renaming it back it didn't fix the bootlooping so I had to wipe the whole thing out and reinstall.
Had some other more minor issues as well, but it just overall doesn't seem very polished.
I much prefer the rock solid and simple AKAIO on my original R4.

 

[RocketRobz]

I had to wipe my microSD and install TWL++ to get it to run, and as fancy as TWL++ is, it's kind of buggy.
On my first day of usage I managed to get TWL++ to bootloop because I renamed a ROM folder that had the current "last played game," and after renaming it back it didn't fix the bootlooping so I had to wipe the whole thing out and reinstall.
Had some other more minor issues as well, but it just overall doesn't seem very polished.

The bootloop bug rarely (if ever) happens around here.
Try reformatting the SD card by following this guide: https://dsi.cfw.guide/sd-card-setup.html

I much prefer the rock solid and simple AKAIO on my original R4.

TWLMenu++ is pretty rock solid for most users, despite the few minor bugs, and even those running on flashcards.
Also, TWLMenu++ has more themes than the default DSi one, if you want to try those out. In terms of simple themes, Original R4 and Wood UI (which can be customized to look like AKAIO) are also included.

 

[a-problem]

I second that. I find TWiLight Menu ++ to be very reliable software, if a little slow at times. It's like RetroArch; it takes some getting used to, but it is very powerful if you know how to use it.

 

[Glx555]

The bootloop bug rarely (if ever) happens around here.
Try reformatting the SD card by following this guide:

I tried reformatting after last time, but had it happen again just now, again after renaming and deleting folders. TWL++ just seems to have no fault tolerance when it encounters a missing folder on boot and ends up crashing and bootlooping.

In terms of simple themes, Original R4 and Wood UI (which can be customized to look like AKAIO) are also included.

The Wood UI one is pretty nice, can display multiple rows of files at once instead of just 3. Only thing that felt a bit off was the flickering when moving from one file to the next. No idea if many people use this theme, maybe it's related to that as well so less people encounter the bootlooping on other themes, but I feel like such a problem shouldn't be related to the theme. Well, this is probably not the right thread for bug reports about a separate program anyway.

Still hoping for .nds release of GBAr3 so it can be used on stock launchers for all flashcarts.

Edit: Fix for bootloop bug is at least simple, just deleting the settings.ini file reset everything to working order. Going to have to make a backup this time for the next time this happens.

 

[RocketRobz]

I tried reformatting after last time, but had it happen again just now, again after renaming and deleting folders. TWL++ just seems to have no fault tolerance when it encounters a missing folder on boot and ends up crashing and bootlooping.

Edit: Fix for bootloop bug is at least simple, just deleting the settings.ini file reset everything to working order. Going to have to make a backup this time for the next time this happens.

TWLMenu++ defaults to the SD root if the last-used folder is found missing. Sounds more like there's some corruption issue going on, if deleting "settings.ini" fixes your issue.
If/when you are still able to reproduce the issue, please upload your "settings.ini" file over at either the TWiLight Menu++ thread (in a .zip file), or our Discord server.

 

[DSoryu]

Just dug my DSLite out of the closet to test this out. Amazing job.
Everything runs beautifully and sounds great, a huge improvement over GBAr2.
I'd actually never played a GBA game on a console that was intended to play them, only on PC, PSP, PSV, Xbox, 3DS, Android, just about every platform except GBA/DS.

I do hope GBAr3 eventually gets a normal .nds release though.
I had to wipe my microSD and install TWL++ to get it to run, and as fancy as TWL++ is, it's kind of buggy.
On my first day of usage I managed to get TWL++ to bootloop because I renamed a ROM folder that had the current "last played game," and after renaming it back it didn't fix the bootlooping so I had to wipe the whole thing out and reinstall.
Had some other more minor issues as well, but it just overall doesn't seem very polished.
I much prefer the rock solid and simple AKAIO on my original R4.

GBARunner3 won't have any file explorer included, so a fronted will be always needed to use it btw.

 

[Xdqwerty]

How could I enable gbarunner3 in twl menu? I forgot

 

[RocketRobz]

How could I enable gbarunner3 in twl menu? I forgot

Just put "GBARunner3.nds" in "sd:/_nds/TWiLightMenu/emulators/".

 

[Glx555]

TWLMenu++ defaults to the SD root if the last-used folder is found missing. Sounds more like there's some corruption issue going on, if deleting "settings.ini" fixes your issue.
If/when you are still able to reproduce the issue, please upload your "settings.ini" file over at either the TWiLight Menu++ thread (in a .zip file), or our Discord server.

Unfortunately, I didn't consider backing up the bad settings.ini file at the time, I was still just stumbling around trying to identify the cause. And now that I'm attempting to intentionally reproduce it, it's not happening. I'll be messing with this a lot over the next few weeks so I'm sure I'll manage to encounter it again. Next time it happens I'll upload the settings.ini in the other thread.

 

[ssjkakaroto]

GBARunner3 won't have any file explorer included, so a fronted will be always needed to use it btw.

I hope a basic/simple browser (frontend) gets released for it. It seems quite excessive to need TWLMenu++ just to launch a rom.
I could never get it to work with a 2DS + Acekard 2i.

 

[DSoryu]

I hope a basic/simple browser (frontend) gets released for it. It seems quite excessive to need TWLMenu++ just to launch a rom.
I could never get it to work with a 2DS + Acekard 2i.

There's one in early development https://github.com/flashcarts/gbar3-frontend/releases

And the DSpico flashcard Kernel will have native support for GBARunner3, including a configuration menu.

 

[Glx555]

I could never get it to work with a 2DS + Acekard 2i.

If you have a 2DS you can run GBA games almost natively since the 2DS/3DS CPU is just a more advanced version of the original GBA CPU. You can use one of the many VC injectors out there and package them as .CIA and install like any other 3DS game. It's pretty much the same way Nintendo sold GBA games on 3DS. That method is doable for most systems you'd want to emulate like GB, GBA, NES. Just not SNES, but SNES9x works fine for that.

 

[ghjfdtg]

If you have a 2DS you can run GBA games almost natively since the 2DS/3DS CPU is just a more advanced version of the original GBA CPU. You can use one of the many VC injectors out there and package them as .CIA and install like any other 3DS game. It's pretty much the same way Nintendo sold GBA games on 3DS. That method is doable for most systems you'd want to emulate like GB, GBA, NES. Just not SNES, but SNES9x works fine for that.

Fixed that for you. GBA mode on 3DS is fully native.

 

[Deleted member 702243]

It's pretty much the same way Nintendo sold GBA games on 3DS.

that, except they didn't sell them, because they are allergic to money

 

[ChronoCrossfangirl2002]

If you have a 2DS you can run GBA games almost natively since the 2DS/3DS CPU is just a more advanced version of the original GBA CPU. You can use one of the many VC injectors out there and package them as .CIA and install like any other 3DS game. It's pretty much the same way Nintendo sold GBA games on 3DS. That method is doable for most systems you'd want to emulate like GB, GBA, NES. Just not SNES, but SNES9x works fine for that.

except using injectors can get your home screen cluttered pretty fast and if not that save files are a pain to reach if it's not in the already existing title database or just overall a GBA CIA injection, it's a caveat that I've personally never been a fan of, so for the 3DS specifically my go to recommendations for classic games are:

-Open AGB Firm
-SNES9x (updated fork)
-VirtuaNES
-Picodrive

With the last 3 i tend to use the .3DSX version to keep my home screen as clean as
possible. While your idea is still a fantastic one, I haven't used the injector program since uhhhhhh frickin' 2017, and last time i tried using it as of recent it just straight up broke on me lol