Homebrew SNES9x for Old 3DS

[Clydefrosch]

on a n3ds with latest stable luma and cia version, i too run into not being able to switch games (might have something to do with the new rompath feature?)

also crash when closing 3ds while snes9x is suspended.


and one more thing, it seems that if there's a space in one of the foldernames leading to your roms, the path that's saved only goes up to the space character

i have my roms in root://z Roms/snes

if i restart the emulator, its starting in a nonexisting (and thus empty folder) called 'z'

edit: renamed the folder to z_Roms, its working now. actually, its loading games one after another too. so no shutting down the emulator anymore.
so remove spaces from your rom folders names

 

[Michierusama]

Some tests I've done:

- New 3DS 11.2U firmware - Soundhax (*hax 2.8 beta) - .3dsx boots and plays games without problems.
- Old 3DS 9.2U firmware - Soundhax (*hax 2.8 beta) - .3dsx boots and plays games without problems.
- Old 3DS 9.2U firmware - Luma 6.6 EmuNAND (no A9LH) - .cia boots and plays games without problems.

Not too sure what @Michierusama and @Lespna1 have been facing. It may be some memory leaks that I'm not aware of that rears its ugly head in some specific set ups.

@Michierusama - Any specific games you were playing that cause subsequent games to fail to load?

I am using luma3ds 6.6 and new 3ds.
As someone stated on the thread it is a folder issue. I renamed SNES ROMS folder to SNESROMS without spaces and everything is working fine. I can switch games without restarting or closing the emulator.

I was playing donkey Kong country 2 and switched to donkey Kong country 3 and some others.

Issue fixed is not the emulator it was the folder name. So anyone having that issue only needs to rename without spaces.

on a n3ds with latest stable luma and cia version, i too run into not being able to switch games (might have something to do with the new rompath feature?)

also crash when closing 3ds while snes9x is suspended.


and one more thing, it seems that if there's a space in one of the foldernames leading to your roms, the path that's saved only goes up to the space character

i have my roms in root://z Roms/snes

if i restart the emulator, its starting in a nonexisting (and thus empty folder) called 'z'

edit: renamed the folder to z_Roms, its working now. actually, its loading games one after another too. so no shutting down the emulator anymore.
so remove spaces from your rom folders names

Thank you for testing. Renaming worked for me.

Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk

 

[Lespna1]

@bubble2k16 I think it said it's v2.7 gamma, but the screen scrolls really fast so it's hard to tell.

 

[Ryumaru]

@bubble2k16
I loved the emulator, I wonder if you could add a registration panel of Game Genie codes, I found a site that has several codes plus the site do not have the .CHT file for download.

 

[sieroi]

This Snes9x for Old 3DS emulator works on New 3DS too, and it also takes advantage of the New 3DS clock speeds so all games generally run smoother (especially the SuperFX ones)!

I was meaning to ask about this, actually- are you sure the New 3DS detection is working properly?

As things stand, there's a massive difference in performance between running it normally on a New 3DS and running it on a CFW N3DS with clock speeds forced to higher levels with NTR.

Yoshi's Island, for example, is pretty much unplayable under normal circumstances- but force N3DS Clock + L2 with NTR (or, I assume, Luma3DS), and the game plays perfectly. The same's the case for every other SuperFX game I've tried.

Edit: Also, Yoshi's Island doesn't seem to save to SRAM properly- it resets every time you exit the emulator and reload the game.

 

[bubble2k16]

@Clydefrosch - Many things for discovering this! I'll have a look and fix it asap.

@sieroi - It works properly for me in when running the .3dsx version. I have to admit I haven't tried the .CIA version on a new 3ds because I never downgraded my v11 firmware and set up a custom firmware for it. I'll take a look at it... that and the Save RAM problem too. Thanks for pointing them out!

@Lespna1 - v2.7 gamma should work fine. Hmm... how about trying the latest v0.70 version. This new version uses less main memory and video memory, so if it's related to insufficient memory in your particular set up, this version may work. Also try to boot into Homebrew Launcher via Soundhax and see if you can run the emulator to run. Let me know.

@Ryumaru - That means I'll have to draw the keyboard on the screen. I may try, but no promises. Meanwhile you can download a version of Snes9x (Windows), enter the codes there, then copy the .CHT file to your ROM folder.

 

[Clydefrosch]

@Clydefrosch - Many things for discovering this! I'll have a look and fix it asap.

@sieroi - It works properly for me in when running the .3dsx version. I have to admit I haven't tried the .CIA version on a new 3ds because I never downgraded my v11 firmware and set up a custom firmware for it. I'll take a look at it... that and the Save RAM problem too. Thanks for pointing them out!

no problem, it was a rather lucky catch on my end.

and if you're looking into downgrading that 3ds on a latest firmware, its recently become possible without any dsiware and stuff again, so theres no better time to do it. at this point, we're not even doing any real downgrades anymore, just overwriting the internal nand, so bricking is barely possible and frankenfirmwares are pretty much impossible now.

 

[Lespna1]

@bubble2k16 Should I delete the previous versions before I try to upload v.0.70 and does it matter what directory the files are in? Also, what do you mean by Soundhax?

 

[Instandhaltung]

@bubble2k16 Thanks for your hard work! I have a small improvement to suggest: Could you please add a quick scroll function to the emulator, for example if you press left or right on the D-Pad? I have lots of games and scrolling can be tiresome . If you don't want to change the user experience too much, you could use a button not yet used (ZL or ZR on N3DS, or something like "press X while scrolling to scroll faster". I would really appreciate it! Thanks in advance.

 

[Clydefrosch]

@bubble2k16 Should I delete the previous versions before I try to upload v.0.70 and does it matter what directory the files are in? Also, what do you mean by Soundhax?

no need to delete old versions, use any directory as long as no folder has a space in its name.
soundhax is a new entrypoint for homebrew on 11.2 firmwares thats triggered by playing a manipulated soundfile through the 3ds sound-app (god knows why they thought the 3ds should have one of those anyway)

 

[Cid2mizard]

thanks for excellent emu...

maybe you can add icon now...

 

[BL4Z3D247]

@drag0nscythe - No forwarders. I remember a fellow forum member created an VC-style injection for Snes9x for O3DS. I haven't really tried it though.

It's called blargSNES VC injector, runs very well but it litters your Home Menu with tiles so you need to make some folders to house them with. Also features are very limited.

 

[bubble2k16]

v0.71 released

Kind of a hot fix that solves the nasty directory bug (my bad!).

Full list of things updated:
- Fixed nasty bug that breaks loading of the second ROM, if the first ROM was loaded from a directory path that has spaces in it.
- Added feature to allow users to page up/down the options/files in the menu while holding down X.
- Minor optimisations

Additionally, we've finally included an SMDH file with Snes9x 3DS icon.

Some of the bugs I can't solve yet:
- Priority issues in FFMQ
- Yoshi's Island SRAM problem. Seems like it may be a problem with Snes9x 1.43. My suggestion is to use Save States for now.

 

[Lespna1]

no need to delete old versions, use any directory as long as no folder has a space in its name.
soundhax is a new entrypoint for homebrew on 11.2 firmwares thats triggered by playing a manipulated soundfile through the 3ds sound-app (god knows why they thought the 3ds should have one of those anyway)

Oh, I have a Nintendo 2DS w/9.2.19U, I think.

 

[A Fireman]

Oh cool! another update, I was waiting patiently for a new one. heheh


What I like alot about this update is that it fixes the jerky camera scrolling when transparency effects get on screen, it also fixes the mini lags when there's alot of parallax scrolling on screen, awesome!

however, there is still one mayor drawback: several games still lags with alot of sprites on screen...A few examples: axelay, turrican, wild guns, sparkster, Mortal kombat series, Indiana jones greatest adventures, Rendering Ranger R2, Goemon series, The pagemaster have some mini-FPS drops when there's lots of sprites/action during screen(NOT counting screen effects! just sprites)
Others in specific spots: Turrican 2(mainly in boss battles and the underwater level), Dragon view(I found mini-FPS drops in a few dungeon areas)
(Interestigly, smash TV is completely devoid of this issue, even though it displays way more sprites than the games mentioned above..lol?)

Another mayor problem is that in several games, background gradients simply don't work or appear completely screwed up(using the accurate mid-frame palette changes, of course), like in ganbare goemon 2, goemon 3(in specific areas), top gear 2, Turrican, indiana jones greatest adventures(only tested up to the 3rd level), Tales of phantasia shop menu, and other games im forgetting right now.


aaaaanyway new bugs I noticed the most recent version:
Dragon view:

Hard to see, but it's the issue is that green square in the left side of the screen, this happens in all the overworld areas(I think it might be related to the gradient issue?)

Turrican 2:
Sprite layering errors in the first boss

Cu-On-Pa SFC:
Controls freeze in the main menu

Weird issue in 256x239 resolution games:
At first the game is loaded with the standard 256x244 resolution, however if you change the "in-Frame Palette Changes" options, it changes to the proper game resolution. Strange...



Lastly, don't forget the bugs I reported here:
https://gbatemp.net/threads/snes9x-for-old-3ds.435568/page-44#post-6727233
Note that some of these may be (very)outdated!

 

[Instandhaltung]

- Added feature to allow users to page up/down the options/files in the menu while holding down X.

I love you! Thanks

 

[bubble2k16]

@Lespna1 - Soundhax also works on 9.2U. Do google it. It's all the news these days.

@A Fireman - Wow, thank you very much for pointing out some of these. Just want to clarify some things:

- Frame drops: This is to be expected. The emulation is running very close to full 100% of the CPU's power and it will tip over 100% from time to time when there's a lot of things on screen (wavy backgrounds, lots of sprites). It's worse if the game uses this offset-per-tile mode (Modes 2/4 in particular), which is currently still unoptimised. These modes will cause the emulator to drop 30 frames or more.

- In-Frame Palette Change - The "More Accurate" setting is not 100% accurate . The hardware rendering engine is currently not able to properly handle any form of palette changes, but the "More Accurate" setting tries its best to do so, but in some games it will fail. It can also cause some discoloured fonts / tiles (like in Tales / Ghost Chaser Densei). It's likely this can never be fixed due to the limitations of hardware rendering. @DiscostewSM talked about some tricks to do 8-bit rendering, but I haven't got around to look at it.

- Sound bugs: You mentioned in your previous thread. Some seem to be related to Snes9x v1.43 nasty bugs, especially the Clay Fighter ones. Don't think I can fix those, unless I overhaul the whole engine to v1.53/1.54; I doubt I'll fix this because performance will definitely take a hit.

- Flickering: Probably related to timing issues. Battle toads' flickering appears in Snes9x v1.43. So, I doubt I'll be able to fix this.

- As for Dragonview Turrican 2, Cu-On-Pa and the 256x239 resolution games, I'll have a look at them to see if anything can be done. By the way did these bugs happen in previous versions?

 

[DiscostewSM]

@bubble2k16 There are some problems with 8-bit rendering, though I'm slowly planning out how it could be dealt with. I can say though is that you can't bind 2 textures a multi-texture way with both using the same exact texture location but set with L8 and A8 separately because that causes reading conflicts, producing corruption. Using LA8 fixes this, but it means doubling up on texture allocation.

So what was the idea behind how you tried to fix sprite priority?

 

[Mr.Faq2015]

Really nice work man, thanks a lot for it
I look forward to the day I can play Super Mario RPG on my 3DS with this, that would be the ultimate thing

 

[A Fireman]

Frame drops:
Well, if you read my post, I said that the games lagged only and only when there's lost of sprites on screen, I didn't mentioned the special effects. even though this new update did fixed the transparency and parallax laggy screen issue, which again, is just too damn awesome! I am more worried about the (mini)fps drops with lots of sprites on screen, all the games I mentioned in my previous post run 100% perfectly in blargsnes, with no FPS drops; but in your emulator is still lagging a bit(different rendering engine, I presume), I am optimist that it can be fixed somehow.
I'm aware of the unoptimized level modes, Turrican 2 has FPS-drops in Wormland and Rocket Ride levels, Pagemaster has heavy FPS-drops in the flying book bonus areas, but as you can see I did not reported them yet because I know there's more important thing to optimize(see above)

in-frame:
ok...

sound:
Fair enough, sound emulation may not be accurate but sounds good enough for now; upgrading sound emulation at the cost of performance is up to you.

Flickering:
oh.... ok. I reported that because I find flickering lines is so damn distracting, a shame nothing can be done about it.

-Dunno, but I know those games had worse bugs and low-FPS in previous versions(especially Turrican 2 I think...)