Homebrew RELEASE melonDS for Switch — continuation

[SexiestManAlive]

will the gui be updated so we have one menu instead of a bunch of mini menus? also, when will cheats and save states be added? also booting from the ds menu still doesn't seem to work.

 

[Nerdtendo]

will the gui be updated so we have one menu instead of a bunch of mini menus? also, when will cheats and save states be added? also booting from the ds menu still doesn't seem to work.

Booting from DS works fine for me

 

[SexiestManAlive]

Booting from DS works fine for me

it freezes for me, not sure why

 

[sorabora]

No probs, looking forward to the new ui, The Castlevania games so far play almost perfect, just some very minor speed dips every now and then.

Did you manage to make your way through the majority (all?) of the DS Castlevania games? I'm thinking of jumping in from the first to the last but I'm worried I'll hit some significant performance issues and/or emulation bugs.

Thanks!

 

[ploggy]

Did you manage to make your way through the majority (all?) of the DS Castlevania games? I'm thinking of jumping in from the first to the last but I'm worried I'll hit some significant performance issues and/or emulation bugs.

Thanks!

I didnt come across anything game breaking, just minor slowdowns/graphic glitches.. I did use the no touchscreen required rom hack for Dawn of Sorrow tho so i didnt have to mess with seals

 

[sorabora]

just minor slowdowns/graphic glitches

Thank you. Did the slowdowns hit often or sparingly? Not to get to annoyingly granular, but I could see constant (though technically still minor) slowdowns putting me off from a full play through.

one of those things where I'd much prefer a handful of major performance issues rather than many, minor issues (if that makes any sense).

Thanks again.

 

[ploggy]

Thank you. Did the slowdowns hit often or sparingly? Not to get to annoyingly granular, but I could see constant (though technically still minor) slowdowns putting me off from a full play through.

one of those things where I'd much prefer a handful of major performance issues rather than many, minor issues (if that makes any sense).

Thanks again.

Slowdowns only happen in certain areas where there are many effects id say, generally speed is good.

 

[dragnipur]

apparently melonds doesn’t like it if you star it in hbmenu. was hanging on loading a game everytime until i deleted the nro.star file

 

[kidkat210]

apparently melonds doesn’t like it if you star it in hbmenu. was hanging on loading a game everytime until i deleted the nro.star file

Sounds like somethings wrong with your setup, me personally, never had that issue. How long extra do you gotta wait?

 

[sorabora]

Slowdowns only happen in certain areas where there are many effects id say, generally speed is good.

I had to delay starting my playthrough, but wanted to see if you had this problem (issue kicks in at around 3-4 seconds):

https://i.imgur.com/37IJENy.mp4

Other than that, thus far, no issues that I can think of. And thank you for the romhack mention. I did the same!

@catlover007

Sorry for the ping. Are save states a feature in the immediate future? Would love something like that for harder games.

 

[Billy Acuña]

I had to delay starting my playthrough, but wanted to see if you had this problem (issue kicks in at around 3-4 seconds):

https://i.imgur.com/37IJENy.mp4

Other than that, thus far, no issues that I can think of. And thank you for the romhack mention. I did the same!

@catlover007

Sorry for the ping. Are save states a feature in the immediate future? Would love something like that for harder games.

Savestates among other nice features are planned for the next release.

 

[ploggy]

Yes that happens to me too. Don't worry it's a known issue and doesn't hurt the saves

 

[Deleted member 514389]

There hasn't been an update since 0.4, right ?

 

[HinaNaru Cutie]

melonDS is a Nintendo DS emulator mainly developed by Arisotura (@StapleButter). It was first ported to the Switch by @Hydr8gon. I'm responsible for several optimisations and the current port. Depending mostly on whether a game utilises the 3D hardware of the DS a lot of games already reach fullspeed without overclocking.

The last few releases of my continuation where done in Hydr8gon's thread which quickly resulted in a lot of confusion.

Setup

For those coming from older versions of my port, using the /melonds directory located at the sd card root is still possible.
Atmosphere title replacement to launch the hbmenu is the only supported method of running melonDS!

• Download the latest release from here: https://github.com/RSDuck/melonDS/releases
  
• Extract the release onto your sd card, so that there's /switch/melonds folder melonds.nro and some other files inside it.
• The Nintendo DS BIOS and firmware files (named bios9.bin, bios7.bin and firmware.bin respectively) go into /switch/melonds as well
• ROM files can be placed anywhere on the sd card

Release notes

Release 4:
I wanted to make this release already multiple months ago, though always something came into my way, whether it was some feature I wanted to finish or later me loosing seeing it as pointless when a Drastic port will happen sooner or later. Thus a lot of smaller things have been accumulating:

• Fast memory emulation by mirroring virtual memory so that it has the same layout as on the DS. This also should resolve all previous issues with Literal Optimisations
• Start at making geometry submission faster
• The GUI is now rendered using deko3d instead of OpenGL (using mesa). Deko3d not only has less overhead, but this also reduced the binary size significantly. Special thanks go to fincs and where we're at it also to the the other devkitpro and libnx people like yellows8 and Wintermute!
• Misc improvements to the GUI (the rom directory isn't hardcoded anymore, a melony color scheme, ...)
• Better screen layout options
• Alternative ways to give touchscreen inputs, including my (unironically besides using the real touchscreen) favourite mode: motion control. See the FAQ for more info
  
• This isn't really that noteworthy, but in 30 FPS games every second (3D) frame is now skipped automatically
  
• A bunch of fixes, optimisations and features I can't remember because I'm too unorganised

As I've already described in the old thread, sooner or later DSi and wifi support will be added to this port (the first was recently merged into master, the latter is thanks to the improved indirect wifi mode now possible on switch as well). Optimisations to make 3D rendering faster are together with a new GUI on my list as well, but one step at at time.

FAQ?

The GUI looks weird, everything's compressed into a small rectangle?

The GUI consists of multiple windows which can be freely resized and moved. Either use the touchscreen or hold Y while using the left analog stick to move or the "D-Pad" to resize the current windows. Use Y and L or R to cycle to select a window.

How can the GUI be hidden while playing?

Press ZL to toggle between hiding and showing it.

What do the Block Size, Branch Optimisations, Literal Optimisations and Fast Memory settings do?

Ideally they can stay enabled/at maximum all the time because they enable optimisations beneficial for the performance. But if there's an issue with the JIT recompiler it can be tracked down faster. Only touch them if something unexpected happens and mention which (if any) setting makes a difference in bug reports.

I want to play with a Flip Grip. Which settings should I use?

Use the Global Rotation option which rotates the entire GUI. Shout-out here to @uzimakiuchiha who got me a Flip Grip!

I want to play a game where the DS is held side ways (like e.g. Dr Kawashima's Brain Training), which should I do?

For this case it's the best to use the Screen Rotation in the Display Settings, once a game is launched (it rotates the buttons as well, as if you're holding the DS that way).

How can I quickly switch the focussed screen?

Press down the right stick. There's also an automatic mode where we the main screen is guessed in the display settings.

How do I use gyro control?

First enable it in the Navigation window once a game has been started. Both Joy Cons need to be removed. Point the right Joy Con at the bottom screen's center and press ZL and ZR at the same time to set the current orientation as the center. Since this utilises the gyroscope found in the right Joy Con (and not IR like the Wiimote, which gives an absolute position) it's only based on it's rotation, so if you want to move it, you have to recenter it.

How can I change the access the DS menu (e.g. for changing the system language)?

Either search for the firmware.bin file in your melonDS folder and start it or uncheck the Boot games directly option, so that every time you open a game, it opens the menu like on a real DS.

Known issues

• Quickly toggling the lid state results in a complete freeze
• There are audio issues since the last version in Zelda Phantom Hourglass and probably other games as well. The bug already has been fixed locally.

excuse me i have some major issues getting this emulator to run at all on my switch :/ it keeps crashing my games, at first it was just two games like style savvy, and mario/luigi partners through time, so i decided to downgrade on 7.3 since someone on youtube fixed it up, and it started to work fine but i couldn't get all my games to show up at all on my roms folder -_- it was just like 51 games instead of being 200 plus games i believe i got, anyway i decided to separate the games in it's own DS folder to see if that will allow me to play the games instead of making it glitch (7.3 fixed) but no i-it won't let me even choose any of the folders or anythign at all.

so i am basically stuck here, i don't get why the melonds is acting up the latest one you've released but it just won't work ...i really need help.

 

[catlover007]

excuse me i have some major issues getting this emulator to run at all on my switch :/ it keeps crashing my games, at first it was just two games like style savvy, and mario/luigi partners through time, so i decided to downgrade on 7.3 since someone on youtube fixed it up, and it started to work fine but i couldn't get all my games to show up at all on my roms folder -_- it was just like 51 games instead of being 200 plus games i believe i got, anyway i decided to separate the games in it's own DS folder to see if that will allow me to play the games instead of making it glitch (7.3 fixed) but no i-it won't let me even choose any of the folders or anythign at all.

1. do you use Atmosphere and title injection to start the hbmenu?
2. input in the old versions doesn't work anymore because Nintendo (likely purposefully) changed how input was given to applications which broke all homebrew to this point, because they need to be adapted to that
3. the older version could only display a limited amount of roms
4. Mario & Luigi Partners through time not working is a known bug (though it doesn't crash, there's just a whitescreen). The bug has been fixed and the fix will be included in the next version.

 

[Deleted member 514389]

1. do you use Atmosphere and title injection to start the hbmenu?
2. input in the old versions doesn't work anymore because Nintendo (likely purposefully) changed how input was given to applications which broke all homebrew to this point, because they need to be adapted to that
3. the older version could only display a limited amount of roms
4. Mario & Luigi Partners through time not working is a known bug (though it doesn't crash, there's just a whitescreen). The bug has been fixed and the fix will be included in the next version.

Might this 'next version' perhaps contain a "fullscreen" mode too ?
I'm looking for a reason to dust off my V1.

 

[catlover007]

Might this 'next version' perhaps contain a "fullscreen" mode too ?

fullscreen as in one DS screen stretched onto the entire Switch screen?

 

[HinaNaru Cutie]

1. do you use Atmosphere and title injection to start the hbmenu?
2. input in the old versions doesn't work anymore because Nintendo (likely purposefully) changed how input was given to applications which broke all homebrew to this point, because they need to be adapted to that
3. the older version could only display a limited amount of roms
4. Mario & Luigi Partners through time not working is a known bug (though it doesn't crash, there's just a whitescreen). The bug has been fixed and the fix will be included in the next version.

Thanks for responding back q v q!

1) you mean jits? the red object that you slide on your right joycon? yes I do =o, it's how i boot up my atmosphere always (note: I haven't updated to the latest atmosphere, stopped at .....hold on..lol gotta check on my switch-.. atmosphere version 15.0 not 16 - yet because it was still early in release, plus I rather wait for it's full release of it =3)

2) oh I didn't know this at all, I am honestly surprised 7.3 works lmao

3) I was questioning that decision a lot lmao but thanks for telling me why.

4) ahh okay => that's good news, so I wanna ask you; can I show you how I set up the melonds -? I wanna know if i did something wrong, because no matter how many times i downloaded version 4.0 which is the one that is out on your files as of my knowledge it just won't work, ;-; for style savvy - I can understand now =0 for mario/luigi..now I am a bit worried for my game list that I have xD I can show you?? If you want to see what the heck I got..cause I wanna be warned ahead of time to know if any of these even work well.

 

[Deleted member 514389]

fullscreen as in one DS screen stretched onto the entire Switch screen?

Yes.

 

[catlover007]

Yes.

why exactly do you want that? You gain nothing but a terribly disorted picture while loosing the secondary screen.

1) you mean jits? the red object that you slide on your right joycon? yes I do =o, it's how i boot up my atmosphere always (note: I haven't updated to the latest atmosphere, stopped at .....hold on..lol gotta check on my switch-.. atmosphere version 15.0 not 16 - yet because it was still early in release, plus I rather wait for it's full release of it =3)

no, how do you launch the hbmenu from the Switch's system menu?

4) ahh okay => that's good news, so I wanna ask you; can I show you how I set up the melonds -? I wanna know if i did something wrong, because no matter how many times i downloaded version 4.0 which is the one that is out on your files as of my knowledge it just won't work, ;-; for style savvy - I can understand now =0 for mario/luigi..now I am a bit worried for my game list that I have xD I can show you?? If you want to see what the heck I got..cause I wanna be warned ahead of time to know if any of these even work well.

it's all in the main post:

For those coming from older versions of my port, using the /melonds directory located at the sd card root is still possible.
Atmosphere title replacement to launch the hbmenu is the only supported method of running melonDS!

• Download the latest release from here: https://github.com/RSDuck/melonDS/releases
  
• Extract the release onto your sd card, so that there's /switch/melonds folder melonds.nro and some other files inside it.
• The Nintendo DS BIOS and firmware files (named bios9.bin, bios7.bin and firmware.bin respectively) go into /switch/melonds as well
• ROM files can be placed anywhere on the sd card