Homebrew SNES9x for Old 3DS

[vander263]

I've tested Kirby Super Star on O3DS XL, and without frame-skipping and with In-Frame Palette Changes it runs at 35-40 frames, visually it's perfect, and Super Mario RPG runs close-to-perfect at the battles and at 40+ frames on world view, i hope you find someway to speed it up

 

[dktung]

tested on my o3ds and played Uncharted Water, very good )

 

[Soulsilve2010]

Super Mario RPG works fine on my Old3ds with frameskip.I've been wanting to replay it so thanks for the great work!

 

[coinblock]

@bubble2k16 Do you plan on adding 3D slider support eventually? It offers a pretty significant improvement in image quality.

 

[Laserschwert]

I know there's been a bit of discussion about turning off the lower screen, but would it be in any way possible to have a custom image shown on there, on a per-ROM basis? So basically putting a JPG with the same filename as you ROM in the ROM folder would display that instead of it being black? It would still have the functionality of tapping it to open the menu, of course (unless there's any way to actually drag-to-scroll an image that's larger than 320x240 on there).

 

[majoru]

does this work better than the retroarch version for the new 3ds ?

 

[Clydefrosch]

does this work better than the retroarch version for the new 3ds ?

mario rpg and kirby run full speed on n3ds (if you turn off auto sram saving for mario rpg)
retroarch has a few other features, but it also has random crashes in my experience so...

 

[raphamotta]

Any chance to run zipped roms?

 

[Trebuchette]

@bubble2k16 Do you plan on adding 3D slider support eventually? It offers a pretty significant improvement in image quality.

The only thing the 3D slider does is send a value to the app; it's up to the app to decide what to do with it. (Although maybe adding depth to the background layers is a possibility?)

 

[hyprskllz]

mario rpg and kirby run full speed on n3ds (if you turn off auto sram saving for mario rpg)
retroarch has a few other features, but it also has random crashes in my experience so...

doesn't run full speed on my N3DS. Do i also have to turn on N3DS clock?

 

[bubble2k16]

@bubble2k16 Do you plan on adding 3D slider support eventually? It offers a pretty significant improvement in image quality.

Someone suggested this to improve the quality. Since now SA-1 is my primary focus, I'll probably put this on the back burner for now.

I know there's been a bit of discussion about turning off the lower screen, but would it be in any way possible to have a custom image shown on there, on a per-ROM basis? So basically putting a JPG with the same filename as you ROM in the ROM folder would display that instead of it being black? It would still have the functionality of tapping it to open the menu, of course (unless there's any way to actually drag-to-scroll an image that's larger than 320x240 on there).

Hmm... Not likely to do this.

Any chance to run zipped roms?

I almost wanted to include this in this release, but I couldn't find some important zlib libraries that I gave up. As you can tell, I had other things to work this release. Maybe sometime in the future.

The only thing the 3D slider does is send a value to the app; it's up to the app to decide what to do with it. (Although maybe adding depth to the background layers is a possibility?)

3D depth to background layers is a definite no no for me. But if other devs are willing to try, I have no objections.

doesn't run full speed on my N3DS. Do i also have to turn on N3DS clock?

My .3dsx version on the N3DS runs with full clock speed without me having to start any other program. I'm not sure about the .cia version since I don't have CFW on my N3DS now. But if yours doesn't run at full clock speed, yes you might have to use some other program to bump up the clock speed for now. Was it HANS?

 

[RupeeClock]

I just tested this, and the .cia version will run at O3DS speeds on a N3DS, if you haven't configured Luma3DS to run using N3DS clock speeds.
Whilst launching the .3dsx version from the homebrew launcher will always use N3DS speeds.

I'm not sure if any other existing homebrew with their CIA versions know when to run at N3DS speeds without being explicitly forced by a CFW, but if they do you should look into that.
There's also an issue with the .CIA when installing it via FBI, it will not display an app icon like other homebrew do.
That also goes for when checking it as an installed title on FBI, you can see the Product Code is CTR-P-SNSX and the Title ID is 0004000000384900, but it doesn't display an actual title or icon like most other homebrew do.

 

[hyprskllz]

My .3dsx version on the N3DS runs with full clock speed without me having to start any other program. I'm not sure about the .cia version since I don't have CFW on my N3DS now. But if yours doesn't run at full clock speed, yes you might have to use some other program to bump up the clock speed for now. Was it HANS?

nope, i never uses HANS. Why the 3dsx version runs faster? It isn't coded differently right?

 

[bubble2k16]

nope, i never uses HANS. Why the 3dsx version runs faster? It isn't coded differently right?

It's coded the same way. It calls a special function to set the clock speed, but in some N3DS setups, it may not take effect. Not too sure why yet. I only know that when I run the .3dsx version on my N3DS, all my SA-1 and SuperFX run at full speed.

If there's anyone who knows which home-brew app runs automatically at N3DS full clock speed in a custom firmware, please let me know. I'll have a look at what they did.

I just tested this, and the .cia version will run at O3DS speeds on a N3DS, if you haven't configured Luma3DS to run using N3DS clock speeds.
Whilst launching the .3dsx version from the homebrew launcher will always use N3DS speeds.

I'm not sure if any other existing homebrew with their CIA versions know when to run at N3DS speeds without being explicitly forced by a CFW, but if they do you should look into that.
There's also an issue with the .CIA when installing it via FBI, it will not display an app icon like other homebrew do.
That also goes for when checking it as an installed title on FBI, you can see the Product Code is CTR-P-SNSX and the Title ID is 0004000000384900, but it doesn't display an actual title or icon like most other homebrew do.

Yup I realized that FBI doesn't display the app icon. But I didn't really spend time to fix that since it is still installable, and after it installs, the app icon appears correct in the custom firmware, so I left it as that.

 

[Vague Rant]

Kirby's Dream Land 3 (has opaque front layers that should be translucent, this includes water)

This is a bit complicated, the way KDL3 achieves translucency is to run at double the display width of most other games (512 wide instead of 256 wide), and then foreground objects are shown every second column on the screen. On an old TV, the columns would blur together and you'd get a translucent effect, even though the game was just using (alternating on-off) opaque foreground layers.

Before

After

To do this on 3DS would require at a minimum some kind of video filtering on the image to blur every second column together. Hopefully this is something @bubble2k16 is interested in implementing, but it's a trick that very few games use (Kirby is the only one I know, personally), so it may not be a priority. It's certainly something the 3DS would be capable of, however, and the filtering should be doable on the GPU for additional savings.

 

[DiscostewSM]

@Vague Rant
Yeah, it's using the system's pseudo hi-res setting to alternate between drawing the main and sub layers for backgrounds, much like with Jurassic Park.

 

[coinblock]

Someone suggested this to improve the quality. Since now SA-1 is my primary focus, I'll probably put this on the back burner for now.

Thanks for considering it, anyway. If you want to see the difference for yourself, just run Retroarch snes9x2005 and flip the slider on, the improvement is quite dramatic.

 

[bubble2k16]

Thanks for considering it, anyway. If you want to see the difference for yourself, just run Retroarch snes9x2005 and flip the slider on, the improvement is quite dramatic.

Will try that! If it was just a simple fix, I could put it into the next version.

This is a bit complicated, the way KDL3 achieves translucency is to run at double the display width of most other games (512 wide instead of 256 wide), and then foreground objects are shown every second column on the screen. On an old TV, the columns would blur together and you'd get a translucent effect, even though the game was just using (alternating on-off) opaque foreground layers.

To do this on 3DS would require at a minimum some kind of video filtering on the image to blur every second column together. Hopefully this is something @bubble2k16 is interested in implementing, but it's a trick that very few games use (Kirby is the only one I know, personally), so it may not be a priority. It's certainly something the 3DS would be capable of, however, and the filtering should be doable on the GPU for additional savings.

Thanks for bringing this to my attention. I've heard on the translucency problems, but never saw it for myself until you made those screens, that is. Thank you for that.

Technically we'll have to generate 2 screens, one with the odd pixels, the other with the even pixels and blend them together to achieve the same TV effect (and this time without the flickering). But I'll have to think of how to handle this efficiently.

---

Some minor news. I've tried some speed hacking on SMRPG. Seems to keep FPS above 50-55 most of the time on an old 3DS. It's quite playable with an occasional slowdown. Not too bad actually. Seems like that SA-1 doesn't do that much work on SMRPG.

But for other games (Kirby Dreamland, Oshaberi Parodius), speed hacks offer some to no improvement at all.

And some others like Kirby Super Star, I haven't found a way to speed hack it in the traditional ways, because it's coded a little differently than other games.

I'll probably not stay on this SA-1 optimization for too long. The Old 3DS simply doesn't have the juice for powering it even with speed hacks. I'll try porting more of the v1.51 sound emulation over, together with all the nice Gaussian Interpolation. Anyway, it's probably more accurate than the v1.43 one based on the one I've tried on Windows. Just hope the Old 3DS has enough juice for the interpolation.

 

[CeeDee]

Any chance the CIA could be built with N3DS speeds automatically enabled?

Also, has anyone ever figured out if you could enter extended memory mode through a homebrew CIA on o3DS?

 

[bubble2k16]

Any chance the CIA could be built with N3DS speeds automatically enabled?

Also, has anyone ever figured out if you could enter extended memory mode through a homebrew CIA on o3DS?

Not too sure about the N3DS speeds part. Does Retroarch automatically run with full N3DS clock speed enabled? Maybe I can take a look and what HANS does.