Homebrew Retroarch Emulation Thread (Nightly Builds Included)

[SG6000]

Dynarec needs CFW to run, not an N3DS...which brings me onto why I've never experienced a crash using gPSP: If you can enjoy the performace boost from dynarec you can also enjoy native GBA VC in all of its glory.

Since obtaining CFW these VC injections have rendered GBA emulation obsolete - although it IS pretty amazing to see an O3DS handle GBA emulation at mostly full speed.

 

[aplant92]

thanks for notifying me about this.
only fps drops i noticed were when:
1: entering a battle/encounter (drops down to 45ish fps about just on the transition)
2: main menu of emerald (drops down to 52 fps)
3: saving (entire game slows down and sound distorts, drops down to like 6fps)

However, I don't consider any of these very gameplay-impacting

Fair enough, my assumption is that there's other GBA games that run worse than this though, hence people needing to put on Dynarec and then the subsequent crashes.

Personally I couldn't deal with Emerald without Dynarec, as having the volume on then having it start crackling whenever I saved got too annoying!

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

Dynarec needs CFW to run, not an N3DS...which brings me onto why I've never experienced a crash using gPSP: If you can enjoy the performace boost from dynarec you can also enjoy native GBA VC in all of its glory.

Since obtaining CFW these VC injections have rendered GBA emulation obsolete - although it IS pretty amazing to see an O3DS handle GBA emulation at mostly full speed.

ALMOST obsolete. RTC functions don't appear to work at all with VC injected ROMs (at least I couldn't get my Emerald to work), and it also requires patching to work (resulting in an annoying message every time you load up Emerald for instance).

Every method to play GBA games seems to have drawbacks at the moment

EDIT: and sorry, you're right about Dynarec, my bad!

 

[AtlasFontaine]

At the end of the day, we still need to wait until someone can maintain this project.

 

[aplant92]

At the end of the day, we still need to wait until someone can maintain this project.

One of the devs for Libretro said he could take a look at Dynarec on 3DS amongst other things, but he needs a 3DS with CFW installed...

 

[SG6000]

@aplant92 Yeah I should've been more specific - GBA emulation is pretty much obsolete for me - I can totally see why using save states or other emulation specific functions would be something important for many.

In my case I was struggling to get anywhere on Rhythm Tengoku (my first replay in about 10 years) and wondered if I was just too old have the timing I once had. Then I read that the GBA player on the Game Cube (what I was using at first) actually runs at an imprecise / inconsistent speed compared to an actual GBA..so I popped the cartridge into my old DS and as if by magic stopped being quite so hopeless with my skills. Now I'm flying through the incredible translated romhacked version of the game on my N3DS XL with zero frame drops, zero lag and on a vibrant large screen - it really is the best possible way to play this massively timing-precision dependent game.

 

[aplant92]

@aplant92 Yeah I should've been more specific - GBA emulation is pretty much obsolete for me - I can totally see why using save states or other emulation specific functions would be something important for many.

In my case I was struggling to get anywhere on Rhythm Tengoku (my first replay in about 10 years) and wondered if I was just too old have the timing I once had. Then I read that the GBA player on the Game Cube (what I was using at first) actually runs at an imprecise / inconsistent speed compared to an actual GBA..so I popped the cartridge into my old DS and as if by magic stopped being quite so hopeless with my skills. Now I'm flying through the incredible translated romhacked version of the game on my N3DS XL with zero frame drops, zero lag and on a vibrant large screen - it really is the best possible way to play this massively timing-precision dependent game.

Yeah for accuracy, at least from what I've read, nothing beats it. And it is great using it, just a shame that there's no RTC support. If there was someway to implement this, I'd use VC for all this stuff in a heartbeat!

For now I've just resigned myself to using my old DS Lite for GBA games I have lying around!

 

[TimX24968B]

EDIT: and sorry, you're right about Dynarec, my bad!

Well, without cfw, any kind of gba emulation doesn't go well. I am using cfw and gpsp as an installed .cia. Still never had a crash with dynarec on.... huh

 

[aplant92]

Well, without cfw, any kind of gba emulation doesn't go well. I am using cfw and gpsp as an installed .cia. Still never had a crash with dynarec on.... huh

Yeah strange that it hasn't crashed for you yet...have you got any filters turned on? Any other settings changed other than the defaults?

Well that being said, if you're getting frame drops when saving, Dynarec definitely isn't enabled, or it isn't functioning. I know when I was testing, if Dynarec was enabled I didn't get any FPS drops at any point. As soon as I disabled it, I got the FPS drops when saving and random spikes here and there.

 

[iSeeNoChanges]

so am i good when i just have installed cps1, cps2, fba neo. or is mame 2003 better? or whats the difference? is mame2003 newer then the other ones? has it more bugs fixed or something?

 

[kenseiden]

so am i good when i just have installed cps1, cps2, fba neo. or is mame 2003 better? or whats the difference? is mame2003 newer then the other ones? has it more bugs fixed or something?

MAME2003 is based on MAME 0.78 from 2003, as the name suggests. The various FBA cores are based on more recent builds of Final Burn Alpha, from maybe within the last couple of years. MAME2003 supports more games, but not all of them will run at fullspeed and you'll also need the MAME 0.78 romset, which isn't as easy to find as the FBA romsets. As well, the FBA romsets are more recent and easier to find. There's more to it, but that's basically the gist of it.

 

[TimX24968B]

Yeah strange that it hasn't crashed for you yet...have you got any filters turned on? Any other settings changed other than the defaults?

Well that being said, if you're getting frame drops when saving, Dynarec definitely isn't enabled, or it isn't functioning. I know when I was testing, if Dynarec was enabled I didn't get any FPS drops at any point. As soon as I disabled it, I got the FPS drops when saving and random spikes here and there.

I don't use any filters, and here are my settings:

Spoiler: Settings

under the 'video' tab:
No Hardware Billinear filtering
NO VSYNC OR HARD GPU SYNC
no frame delay
I turned on integer scale so that way the game is not being distorted by the viewport, currently at 320x240 (oddly, this is different from the original gba resolution of 240x160, yet I don't recognize any stretching).
I do not use any sort of filters

For under the 'audio' tab:
audio latency is 64ms

pokemon emerald stays in the 59-60fps range during most of the game, only dropping at the transition from overworld to battle by like 10fps, the main menu drops down to 52 fps for me, and the only drop I would consider super significant is when you save, it drops down to 6-8 fps (then it shoots right back up, but honestly, you really aren't doing anything when you save other than saving and waiting)

Also, I am using a gba bios. With gpsp, you have to set the bios directory under the "directory" tab.

Finally, under the quick menu (when you pause a game while its running) and under "options", dynarec IS enabled.

 

[aplant92]

I don't use any filters, and here are my settings:

Spoiler: Settings

under the 'video' tab:
No Hardware Billinear filtering
NO VSYNC OR HARD GPU SYNC
no frame delay
I turned on integer scale so that way the game is not being distorted by the viewport, currently at 320x240 (oddly, this is different from the original gba resolution of 240x160, yet I don't recognize any stretching).
I do not use any sort of filters

For under the 'audio' tab:
audio latency is 64ms

pokemon emerald stays in the 59-60fps range during most of the game, only dropping at the transition from overworld to battle by like 10fps, the main menu drops down to 52 fps for me, and the only drop I would consider super significant is when you save, it drops down to 6-8 fps (then it shoots right back up, but honestly, you really aren't doing anything when you save other than saving and waiting)

Also, I am using a gba bios. With gpsp, you have to set the bios directory under the "directory" tab.

Finally, under the quick menu (when you pause a game while its running) and under "options", dynarec IS enabled.

Alright thanks for posting that!

I'm convinced that dynarec isn't actually functioning on your gPSP install though. Like I said, I know (for me at least) when it is enabled and working properly, that save behavior doesn't happen, and there aren't any frame drops. That would explain why you're not getting the crashes, as dynarec doesn't appear to be functioning as it should. I'm assuming you installed the CIA for libretro?

 

[SomecallmeBerto]

Question(couldn't find the answer)

Should I install these as .cia or 3dsx?

I can do either or; I'm just wondering which will give me better performance.

 

[ihaveahax]

Question(couldn't find the answer)

Should I install these as .cia or 3dsx?

I can do either or; I'm just wondering which will give me better performance.

CIA always. 3dsx is only if you can't use .3ds/CIA.

 

[SomecallmeBerto]

CIA always. 3dsx is only if you can't use .3ds/CIA.

Do you have a link with an explanation as to why it's better? Just want to learn more.

Also another question in pocket snes I get a screen tearing issue on the left hand side. Any ideas?

 

[ihaveahax]

Do you have a link with an explanation as to why it's better? Just want to learn more.

Also another question in pocket snes I get a screen tearing issue on the left hand side. Any ideas?

CIAs have access to more things than 3dsx. a few emulators (gpsp, picodrive, pcsx, maybe another) can use dynamic recompilation for much faster speeds. also try using 1.3.3 stable since it seems to be the best apparently.

 

[SomecallmeBerto]

CIAs have access to more things than 3dsx. a few emulators (gpsp, picodrive, pcsx, maybe another) can use dynamic recompilation for much faster speeds. also try using 1.3.3 stable since it seems to be the best apparently.

I have installed them as .cias

When I went with pocket snes v 1.3.3 the screen tearing is gone!

Thank you

 

[geheim]

I tried the standalone mGBA (latest nightly cia version) but don't get any sound... Do I need to configure some paths to dsp driver or something like that??
Perhaps you know @sj33 or @AtlasFontaine ?? Thanks!

Anyone?? So much People that got it running, what did you do to get Sound onmGBA standalone?? I'm on 11.0 with GW or Luma 3DS emuNAND, both of them don't get sound...

 

[aplant92]

I've got professional programming experience (not as low level as Libretro though), but I'd be interested in taking a look at gPSP and just seeing if I can wrap my head around the current implementation and possibly try to figure out what's going on when it crashes. The only issue is I'm not entirely sure how to debug a built CIA file. Does anyone know how you go about doing this (I.e. To try and see what's happening when Dynarec crashes)?

 

[TimX24968B]

Alright thanks for posting that!

I'm convinced that dynarec isn't actually functioning on your gPSP install though. Like I said, I know (for me at least) when it is enabled and working properly, that save behavior doesn't happen, and there aren't any frame drops. That would explain why you're not getting the crashes, as dynarec doesn't appear to be functioning as it should. I'm assuming you installed the CIA for libretro?

yes, on cfw.