Hacking Saturn, Dreamcast, or MAME emulator?

[doom5]

The Dreamcast and Saturn will never be emulated on the Wii. The Dreamcast is too powerful, and it's PowerVR 3d card used tile based rendering, which adds even more overhead in the emulation process.

Saturn emulation also requires far too much overhead to be emulated at any speed on the Wii.

 

[Smuff]

Saturn emulation will never happen - one of the reasons the Saturn itself failed (?) was because it was sooooo damn hard to code for properly that many third party developers simply couldn't be arsed, especially when the "developer-friendly" PS came along and enabled them to churn out shovelware by the truck load. And they only had to code games for it, not try and reverse-engineer how the damn thig worked in the first place.

I'm glad to see Saturn emulation proving to be so hard, as it makes my collection of original software and hardware that little bit more valuable and desireable.

I'd hate for every Tom, Dick and Harry to be able to experience Burning Rangers, Baku Baku and Panzer Saga without having to buy a Saturn. It's bad enough that the original (and great) Nights into Dreams has been ported over onto the damn Plaything2

 

[lagman]

....
The growing userbase isn't going to offset the fact that Nintendo has been a sinking ship for a while now.

..


LMAO

QUOTEThe question is no longer whether or not Nintendo outsold everybody else, but rather by how much. Find out here.

During the fiscal year ending March 31, 2008, Nintendo had net sales of 1.672 trillion yen, with a net income of 257 billion yen. That's net sales of $16.6 billion US, and a net income of $2.5 billion US. In the previous fiscal year, Nintendo only earned $1.47 billion. By the time the next fiscal year is over, they hope to have increased the figure to $3.25 billion US.

...
Finally, much has been made of Nintendo's "war chest," a reservoir of cash that they hold in reserve and rarely spend. Last year, Nintendo recorded $5.8 billion US under the term "cash and cash deposits." This year, that number has jumped to the equivalent of a whopping $11 billion US.

As good as Nintendo's prospects look, it's worth noting that Nintendo usually provides forecasts that stay on the safe side. Looking at their 2007 Fiscal Year report, Nintendo had expected to sell only 14 million Wiis, 22 million DS systems, and earn only $1.4 billion US. Today's news shows that they've exceeded their predictions

Source

 

[Tanas]

There's a Saturn Emulator being worked on for PSP... if it can run one then the Wii can. Just a matter of time. Patience is key

And pigs might fly.

 

[teq]

The Dreamcast and Saturn will never be emulated on the Wii. The Dreamcast is too powerful, and it's PowerVR 3d card used tile based rendering, which adds even more overhead in the emulation process.

Saturn emulation also requires far too much overhead to be emulated at any speed on the Wii.

What are you talking about? The PowerVR was horrible. It couldn't even do HT&L and it was bad depth queueing. I could go on.
It was comperable to a Geforce 2 in terms of performance, but graphically it couldn't keep up.

And what does tile based rendering have to do with anything? Rasterization is irrelevant to modern GPUs, as even CPUs are capable of doing rasters at tremendous speed.

Throw it in the Wii's pixel shader and it'll spit out a render that's identical to a Dreamcast, if not better looking.


Do you have anything to add that can't be found on Wikipedia?

 

[Jhongerkong]

What about a ps1 emulator? The wii should be able to handle it easily. Also, can the wiis drive be used in homebrew?

 

[teq]

The question is no longer whether or not Nintendo outsold everybody else, but rather by how much. Find out here.

During the fiscal year ending March 31, 2008, Nintendo had net sales of 1.672 trillion yen, with a net income of 257 billion yen. That's net sales of $16.6 billion US, and a net income of $2.5 billion US. In the previous fiscal year, Nintendo only earned $1.47 billion. By the time the next fiscal year is over, they hope to have increased the figure to $3.25 billion US.

...
Finally, much has been made of Nintendo's "war chest," a reservoir of cash that they hold in reserve and rarely spend. Last year, Nintendo recorded $5.8 billion US under the term "cash and cash deposits." This year, that number has jumped to the equivalent of a whopping $11 billion US.

As good as Nintendo's prospects look, it's worth noting that Nintendo usually provides forecasts that stay on the safe side. Looking at their 2007 Fiscal Year report, Nintendo had expected to sell only 14 million Wiis, 22 million DS systems, and earn only $1.4 billion US. Today's news shows that they've exceeded their predictions

Source


Hmm... sounds a lot like Microsoft to me. Microsoft has trillions stockpiled, yet churning out a bad product(ie: Vista) nets them loss of shareholders.


Let me give you a little insight into how the world works: Fame and fortune go hand in hand, but while fame can earn fortune, fortune can't buy fame.

That is, to say, Nintendo could double their profit margin consistantly over the next few years, but without products that keep them on the map(and not just in the bank), they won't be going anywhere.

Go back and count how many best selling titles there were for the Gamecube, then the Nintendo 64, then the SNES. Compare each to its predecessor and then finally take a look at the Wii. The numbers are dismal. Mario Galaxy did nowhere near as well as Mario 64. Mario Party 8 didn't even do as well as 7, which was horrible IMO.

They might have the money, but if they keep putting out mediocre titles, who will want to keep giving it to them?


JhongerkongWhat about a ps1 emulator? The wii should be able to handle it easily. Also, can the wiis drive be used in homebrew?

A PS1 emulator is definitely in the works. A PS2 emulator could be down the road as well.

And currently, no, the drive is protected by the Starlet. It can't yet be interfaced with in Wii mode. But, what looks more promising than using the DVD drive would be USB Mass Storage, allowing you to hook up a large hard drive instead.

 

[lagman]

Hmm... sounds a lot like Microsoft to me. Microsoft has trillions stockpiled, yet churning out a bad product(ie: Vista) nets them loss of shareholders.

So, Microsoft is also a sinking ship? Because if you think so, I'm losing my time here.

Let me give you a little insight into how the world works: Fame and fortune go hand in hand, but while fame can earn fortune, fortune can't buy fame.
I don't think Nintendo has been as popular as it is now in many, many years.

That is, to say, Nintendo could double their profit margin consistantly over the next few years, but without products that keep them on the map(and not just in the bank), they won't be going anywhere.

The DS has sold more units than the Super Nintendo and even the NES, and it will keep selling for at least 3 years, still it will hardly get close to the numbers the Game Boy sold, does that make it a failure too?


QUOTE(teq @ May 16 2008, 07:16 PM) Go back and count how many best selling titles there were for the Gamecube, then the Nintendo 64, then the SNES. Compare each to its predecessor and then finally take a look at the Wii. The numbers are dismal. Mario Galaxy did nowhere near as well as Mario 64. Mario Party 8 didn't even do as well as 7, which was horrible IMO.

They might have the money, but if they keep putting out mediocre titles, who will want to keep giving it to them?

Did you look at the source of my info? You should have, I could be making up this, also you would have noticed:

QUOTE

Nintendo is also rapidly racking up new million selling-games. Last year the DS had 30 games that sold more than a million copies worldwide, including games from third-party publishers. This year, the DS can count 57 games that have hit that mark. The Wii shows almost as impressive growth. At the end of March 2007, the Wii had been on the market for less than five months but had already garnered five million-selling titles. This year, the Wii added 21 more titles to the list for a lifetime total of 26 million-sellers.

 

[Jacobeian]

It WILL NOT HAPPEN! MAME has been done, but DC and Saturn will NEVER happen. Whomever said the Wii was similar to the DC, that does NOT matter. A system must be much MORE powerful than the system it is trying to emulate in order to get any kind of decent emulation. And a Saturn emulator will not happen because it is so jam-packed with processors and different chips it's nearly impossible to get decent Saturn emulation on the PC without at least a 2.4 GHz CPU.

Obviously you have no concept of programming or CPU architectures, whatsoever.


The processors used in the Saturn, DC, and Wii are all RISC based. PCs are based on x86, which is CISC.

When you run an emulator, you're either interpreting the CPU instructions or recompiling them. Recompiling usually provides less errors, but is slower. That's why most emulators default to an Interpreter, which requires a processor with fast streaming capability(ie high clock speeds and throughput).


Emulating RISC hardware on RISC hardware is rediculously FAST and efficient, because there is no middleman slowing things down.

And I would say you are wrong too: CPU architecture (RISC & CISC) have nothing to do when dealing with emulation, you simply can not compare SH2 or SH4 cpus (used in Saturn & Dreamcast) with PowerPC CPU used in GC/Wii, they use completely different instuctions set and low level ASM language. To emulate those on Wii, you have two choices like with ANY other emulated system: either you use an existing SH2 or SH4 core coded in C, or you recode everything into PowerPC ASM for better performance...
Dynamic recompilation and intepreter are just two alternate way to emulate a processor in software, this is different (and you are mistaken, dynamic recompilation is indeed FASTER than interpreters,it's just harder to implement)
in any cases, the fact that those consoles share RISC architecture would NOT make you the job easier...

not to mention that a console system is not only a main CPU but also often integrate a specific GPU and other hardwares (sub CPU, sound processor, Drive unit, Memory unit, etc) and the more complex it is, the more horsepower it requires to be reproduced on another system (which will ALWAYS be slower than original hardware, since you always will need software to emulate most specific stuffs)


PS: btw, there are no PS1 emu in the work, all that we got is the C sourcecode for a wellknown opensource emulator, which only add some basic libogc code copypasted from existing GC/Wii emu ports... the guy who released this like if it was a "gift" he made to the scene is nothing but a clown

 

[Tariq909]

I meant, I want to be able to play Marvel vs Capcom without a 60 minute loading time. lol

 

[doom5]

The Dreamcast and Saturn will never be emulated on the Wii. The Dreamcast is too powerful, and it's PowerVR 3d card used tile based rendering, which adds even more overhead in the emulation process.

Saturn emulation also requires far too much overhead to be emulated at any speed on the Wii.

What are you talking about? The PowerVR was horrible. It couldn't even do HT&L and it was bad depth queueing. I could go on.
It was comperable to a Geforce 2 in terms of performance, but graphically it couldn't keep up.

And what does tile based rendering have to do with anything? Rasterization is irrelevant to modern GPUs, as even CPUs are capable of doing rasters at tremendous speed.

Throw it in the Wii's pixel shader and it'll spit out a render that's identical to a Dreamcast, if not better looking.


Do you have anything to add that can't be found on Wikipedia?

The PowerVR chip was fantastic for the Dreamcast. Of course it wasn't as powerful as a Geforce 2. Name one graphics console that had a superior graphics processor compared to a PC one at it's release, please.

What distinguished the PowerVR chip was it pioneered hidden surface removal. However, I'm not going to debate anything with you as you've come across at very elitist. Head over to Beyond3d's forums with your "technical prowess", and try to argue that the PowerVR chip in the Dreamcast was terrible for it's time.

 

[teq]

So, Microsoft is also a sinking ship? Because if you think so, I'm losing my time here.
Compared to how omnipotent they appeared when Windows 95 came out? Yes, actually they have been going downhill.

Linux(namely Ubuntu) and Mac has stolen a lot of marketshare away from Windows.

I don't think Nintendo has been as popular as it is now in many, many years.
Maybe so, but you have to consider at what cost this is. A lot of their recent publicity has been due to the fact that they have a shortage of consoles... and the rest has been how casual gamers have found their niche.

We're definitely a long way from Mario.

The DS has sold more units than the Super Nintendo and even the NES, and it will keep selling for at least 3 years, still it will hardly get close to the numbers the Game Boy sold, does that make it a failure too?
I don't see how this is relevant.
QUOTE(lagman @ May 16 2008, 05:36 PM) Did you look at the source of my info? You should have, I could be making up this, also you would have noticed:
QUOTE

Nintendo is also rapidly racking up new million selling-games. Last year the DS had 30 games that sold more than a million copies worldwide, including games from third-party publishers. This year, the DS can count 57 games that have hit that mark. The Wii shows almost as impressive growth. At the end of March 2007, the Wii had been on the market for less than five months but had already garnered five million-selling titles. This year, the Wii added 21 more titles to the list for a lifetime total of 26 million-sellers.

Individual titles don't make up for lackluster sales across the board. The ratio of blockbuster games to movie based titles is jarring... don't tell me you're denying this fact.

 

[teq]

The PowerVR chip was fantastic for the Dreamcast. Of course it wasn't as powerful as a Geforce 2. Name one graphics console that had a superior graphics processor compared to a PC one at it's release, please.

What distinguished the PowerVR chip was it pioneered hidden surface removal. However, I'm not going to debate anything with you as you've come across at very elitist. Head over to Beyond3d's forums with your "technical prowess", and try to argue that the PowerVR chip in the Dreamcast was terrible for it's time.
I never said it was bad for the Dreamcast.

My argument was leaning more toward the fact that even the worst GPU from five years ago could run circles around the PowerVR.

I'm knocking these systems because I would love to see them emulated on the Wii, but for some reason you guys don't believe it'll be up to the task.

And I would say you are wrong too: CPU architecture (RISC & CISC) have nothing to do when dealing with emulation, you simply can not compare SH2 or SH4 cpus (used in Saturn & Dreamcast) with PowerPC CPU used in GC/Wii, they use completely different instuctions set and low level ASM language. To emulate those on Wii, you have two choices like with ANY other emulated system: either you use an existing SH2 or SH4 core coded in C, or you recode everything into PowerPC ASM for better performance...
Uh... right... this is why I can go to any x86 processor and still pull legacy instructions from it?
SH is RISC based, thus it has legacy instructions that are shared by all RISC processors, from the Power PC to the Cell to the Itanium. The Power PC has a tremendous amount of legacy instructions, most(if not all) of which make up the entire instruction set of the SH.

Try reading some documentation.

Dynamic recompilation and intepreter are just two alternate way to emulate a processor in software, this is different (and you are mistaken, dynamic recompilation is indeed FASTER than interpreters,it's just harder to implement)
in any cases, the fact that those consoles share RISC architecture would NOT make you the job easier...

Recompilation is faster when you're going across architectures. Interpretation is faster when you're dealing with similar architectures that share instruction sets.

If that doesn't make sense to you, I'd be happy to explain it.
Jacobeian

not to mention that a console system is not only a main CPU but also often integrate a specific GPU and other hardwares (sub CPU, sound processor, Drive unit, Memory unit, etc) and the more complex it is, the more horsepower it requires to be reproduced on another system (which will ALWAYS be slower than original hardware, since you always will need software to emulate most specific stuffs)

The components are evenly matched. They both use OGL for their graphics API.

The Wii is simply tailored for emulating these consoles.

 

[Jacobeian]

The PowerVR chip was fantastic for the Dreamcast. Of course it wasn't as powerful as a Geforce 2. Name one graphics console that had a superior graphics processor compared to a PC one at it's release, please.

What distinguished the PowerVR chip was it pioneered hidden surface removal. However, I'm not going to debate anything with you as you've come across at very elitist. Head over to Beyond3d's forums with your "technical prowess", and try to argue that the PowerVR chip in the Dreamcast was terrible for it's time.
I never said it was bad for the Dreamcast.

My argument was leaning more toward the fact that even the worst GPU from five years ago could run circles around the PowerVR.

I'm knocking these systems because I would love to see them emulated on the Wii, but for some reason you guys don't believe it'll be up to the task.

And I would say you are wrong too: CPU architecture (RISC & CISC) have nothing to do when dealing with emulation, you simply can not compare SH2 or SH4 cpus (used in Saturn & Dreamcast) with PowerPC CPU used in GC/Wii, they use completely different instuctions set and low level ASM language. To emulate those on Wii, you have two choices like with ANY other emulated system: either you use an existing SH2 or SH4 core coded in C, or you recode everything into PowerPC ASM for better performance...
Uh... right... this is why I can go to any x86 processor and still pull legacy instructions from it?
SH is RISC based, thus it has legacy instructions that are shared by all RISC processors, from the Power PC to the Cell to the Itanium. The Power PC has a tremendous amount of legacy instructions, most(if not all) of which make up the entire instruction set of the SH.

Try reading some documentation.

Dynamic recompilation and intepreter are just two alternate way to emulate a processor in software, this is different (and you are mistaken, dynamic recompilation is indeed FASTER than interpreters,it's just harder to implement)
in any cases, the fact that those consoles share RISC architecture would NOT make you the job easier...

Recompilation is faster when you're going across architectures. Interpretation is faster when you're dealing with similar architectures that share instruction sets.

If that doesn't make sense to you, I'd be happy to explain it.
Jacobeian

not to mention that a console system is not only a main CPU but also often integrate a specific GPU and other hardwares (sub CPU, sound processor, Drive unit, Memory unit, etc) and the more complex it is, the more horsepower it requires to be reproduced on another system (which will ALWAYS be slower than original hardware, since you always will need software to emulate most specific stuffs)

The components are evenly matched. They both use OGL for their graphics API.

The Wii is simply tailored for emulating these consoles.

sorry but this is not enough to make emulation easier: even if that's true that they share the same instructions FUNCTIUNALITY but the implementation is different , low level instruction decoding and reinterpreting is still needed (like in most emulators, even snes9x is working like this, is just using C code instead ASM), so there is no benefit... and yes, dynamic recompilation (that's what they try to implement in mupen64 port) is still faster because by definition, it directly translates the code into PowerPC code instead of taking instructions one by one...


and I repeat, each console has his own architecture around their cpu, and GX is not openGL, even it's similar, there is no way emulating PowerVR with GX hardware would be easy just because they use a similar API (btw, there are no easy-to-use pixel shaders in GX hardware), emulating a system needs far more than that

 

[teq]

sorry but this is not enough to make emulation easier: even if that's true that they share the same instructions FUNCTIUNALITY, low level instruction decoding and reinterpreting is still needed (like in most emulators, even snes9x is working like this, is just using C code instead ASM), so there is no benefit... and yes, dynamic recompilation (that's what they try to implement in mupen64 port) is still faster because by definition, it directly translates the code into PowerPC code instead of taking instructions one by one...


and I repeat, each console has his own architecture around their cpu, and GX is not openGL, even it's similar, there is no way emulating PowerVR with GX hardware would be easy just because they use a similar API (btw, there are no easy-to-use pixel shaders in GX hardware), emulating a system needs far more than that

Uh... the Nintendo 64 was also a RISC processor..... the ONLY reason for using recompilation in this instance is that the Wii's processor can handle the extra work. Essentially, they're going for compatibility, not speed.

Graphics APIs are so easy to come by it's rediculous; that would be the least of the concern for the emulator.

 

[Jacobeian]

Uh... the Nintendo 64 was also a RISC processor..... the ONLY reason for using recompilation in this instance is that the Wii's processor can handle the extra work. Essentially, they're going for compatibility, not speed.

no, they are going for speed first, if you don't believe me, ask them why they throw up the original interpreter core


you obviously never coded an emulator, theorical references are not enough to make emulation a reality
why do you think a saturn emulator on dreamcast is so slow an so difficult to make ? If I follow your point, it should be done easily because SH4 is compatible with SH2, but in reality , there are MUCH more things to take in account...
about OpenGL, this is also supported by most PC video card, does this make PowerVR emulation came immediately and easily ? again, certainly not

and again, the fact that two RISC CPU use similar instructions set does not change the fact that they have deeply DIFFERENT architectures and instruction implementation, that need to be taken in account. I worked around the Yabause port on Wii, from the released source, and I can tell you a SH2 core does not take any advantage of running on a PowerPC instead of X86

 

[retrospect]

Of course the Wii could emulate the Saturn. It's not a power issue at all, it's just damn difficult to do.

Give it time. Sega is a huge player in the Virtual Console and it's likely that there will be a Saturn emulator for NiGHTS and the Panzer Dragoon series - they'd make a bomb.

My most wanted is a 64DD emulator for F-Zero X Expansion, but again it's not even been done on PC yet. Come on Nintendo! Come on Hackers!

 

[retroguy]

There's a Saturn Emulator being worked on for PSP... if it can run one then the Wii can. Just a matter of time. Patience is key

Really, I didn't hear anything about this development, but it would certainly be great. Imagine NiGHTS into Dreams on a PSP!! Or Panzer Dragoon, or Astal, or Battle Garega, or ...... Oh my God, If this would become true! Do you have a link where I could read something more about this?

 

[phaerun]

To sum it up its what someone mentioned before. If you have a ton of chips that each one is dedicated to a specific operation, simulating all that stuff with software will make it slow.