Homebrew List of DS Emulators

[AMPonzi]

Here's the current ranking of the DS emulators in my opinion at this point in time:

And in the olympic spirit we'll do some countries and medals as well for the first heat.

February 22, 2006

GOLD (FRA) - DeSmuME 0.3.3 - Highest game compatibility of the six and fastest of the six for the most part. Touchscreen emulation is near flawless from what I can tell. Many games at least boot and a few games actually run near perfect such as Polarium and Bomberman.
SILVER (ITA) - iDeaS 1.0.0.8 - High game compatibility as well with pretty good touchscreen emulation. A good amount of games go in-game with this emulator and the speed is decent as well. Highlights of the recent release include much better graphics in Metroid Prime Hunters, an in-game Meteos, and a working Polarium. This emulator is a very close 2nd, look for it to potentially steal first in the future.
BRONZE (GER) - NO$GBA 2.2b - Game compatibility is minimal but this emulator is building for the future making full use of the DS BIOS files. How this emulator will develop in the future remains to be seen, but it may make a run toward the finish.
4TH (SWE) - Dualis R14.2 - Updates are very frequent and this author may just be adding features only to make a surprise strike in the end with excellent compatibility. As of now, however, no commercial games are running. Dualis supports a number of rendering modes however including OGL and D3D.
5TH (CZE) - DSEmu 0.4.10 - Very few updates recently with an unknown status of what is coming in the future. This emulator runs some demos but no commercial games. The original author seems to be back in the mix and may be the update releaser for the future.
6TH (RUS) - VGBA 3.0r - Unknown compatibility due to the fact that this emulator charges and few people, if any, actually bought it. Updates seem to be few and far between as well.

There you have it, we'll have another heat soon as more releases get done. But for now, looks like the western half of Europe is stealing the medals!

 

[AMPonzi]

Dualis 14.3 comes in

CPU: Added SWI 11 (CpuSet)
GPU: Added support for some paletted texture formats
GPU: Added support for some more vertex formats (VTX_XY, VTX_XZ, ...)
GPU: Added support for multiple textures
GUI: Improved the texture viewer

 

[AMPonzi]

Dualis 15 hits the scene

CPU: Changed CPSR bits when entering IRQ mode
MMU: Fixed some bugs introduced in Dualis 14.1
MMU: Fixed writes to the DMA0 registers
GUI: .nds files are now entirely loaded into memory (for romfs/gbfs)
GUI: Fixed some bugs in the disassembler (CLZ, register-specified shifts)

 

[_ORiON_]

DSemu-ng development has been stopped.

Tuesday saw the failure of my sturdy old Powerbook. The little Kanga had struggled along for about 8 years before ever it saw my grubby mitts, and then I got a hold of it, and strangled the last vestige of life from it. The hard drive lasted nigh-on two years, before it collapsed under the strain of serving this place and oopsilon.

Concurrent with the failure of the webserver drive, I've decided to throw in the towel regarding development of DSemu-ng. Before the crash, I hadn't touched the codebase for over a month, since just after the new year in fact, so the project has become somewhat stale.

To that end, I'm releasing the code as the final iteration of DSemu-ng, hoping that someone can find a use for it. At some point, I intend to use the code to generate a tutorial series on how (or how not, dependent on your view) to write an emulator, focussing on the plugin architecture; at least this iteration of DSemu has a plugin system.

Anyways, what is DSemu-ng?

 

[Normmatt]

DSemu-ng = DSemu but more portable and coded in c++

 

[Dirtie]

The original DSemu was given to another guy who carried on with it, and the original author started coding DSemu-ng. So now DSemu-ng has been discontinued, but not DSemu.

 

[_ORiON_]

amponzi should have included it then, making it as seven contenders since their different going on in different ways

 

[AMPonzi]

I decided against it since DSEmu-ng never had any releases other than sourcecode.

 

[AMPonzi]

Dualis releases the second update of the DAY... R15.1 is up

GPU: Fixed rendering of transparent areas on 256-color bitmap BGs
GPU: Fixed background color in the OpenGL renderer when luma effects are used
MMU: Added support for 64bit/32bit operations to the hardware divider
MMU: Fixed 32-bit reads from the IF register
MMU: Modified IRQ handling a bit

 

[Dirtie]

Dualis releases the second update of the DAY... R15.1 is up

GPU:Â Fixed rendering of transparent areas on 256-color bitmap BGs
GPU:Â Fixed background color in the OpenGL renderer when luma effects are used
MMU:Â Added support for 64bit/32bit operations to the hardware divider
MMU:Â Fixed 32-bit reads from the IF register
MMU:Â Modified IRQ handling a bit

I'll say it again; with so many updates they must be making some decent progress. This emulator interests me even more than DeSMuMe (or whatever it's called) at the moment.

 

[Opium]

Dualis will be good for homebrew but as I understand the author doesn't have any intentions of running commercial games on it.

 

[_ORiON_]

personally, i can't consider his updates being major ones. he might just be releasing so many minor updates; he might release another one with only the screenshot button added or something like that...

hear hear, good to know he doesnt have any intention on running commercial games on it, so that we dont have to expect from him something big

 

[krustydemon9]

or maybe he is just sayin that so he does not get stupid emails sayin when will it run commercial roms and stuff like that for all we know he could be the closest but he is just takin the long way with putin it together who knows

 

[_ORiON_]

maybe. you've got a point, puttin it all together after doing all minor things. he could just make a more private email address if he wanted more privacy.

 

[AMPonzi]

Dualis r16 is out

CPU: Added emulation of the ARM7TDMI
GPU: Modified the hblank/vblank code to handle both processors
MMU: Added the ARM7TDMI memory space (incomplete)
MMU: Added some support for the WRAM control register
GUI: The disassembler can now be used for both processors
GUI: The disassembler now shows the CPSR mode bits
GUI: Fixed overwriting of program code for programs loaded at 0x02000000

 

[Dirtie]

Ahh, so only the ARM9 processor was being emulated up until this point?

 

[krustydemon9]

so i guess i was right he is take in the long way for some reason i got a fellin that this mit be the first full workin emu

 

[AMPonzi]

Dualis R17 is now out, man this author is quick!

CPU: Added SWI 3 and 6
CPU: Fixed some problems with SWI 5
CPU: Modfied MSR a bit
GPU: Added support for the VTX_DIFF command
GPU: Fixed some bugs with rotation parameters on the sub core
GPU: Fixed the GL_INVALID_OPERATION error that could occur when switching back and forth between different renderers
MMU: Fixed accesses by the ARM7 in the 0x02100000-0x023FFFFF memory range
MMU: Changed initial value of WRAMCNT to 3
MMU: Fixed a typo that lead to bad 16/32-bit WRAM writes from the ARM7
GUI: Added a few more Thumb opcodes to the disassembler
GUI: Added a "Turbo SWI" option on the CPU tab for ARM7 binaries that mainly sit and wait for vblanks

 

[krustydemon9]

he must not have a job or he works from home and just has alot of free time all i can say is keep it up buddy

 

[Dirtie]

Looks like iDeaS is still making progress: