Hacking TempGBA: NDSGBA revival

[Rydian]

I recall reading that someone else was able to run the Fire Emblem games. Even with the latest version I'm still getting a lot of freezing... Not sure what I'm doing wrong.

Freezes happen if the emulated framerate drops too much. Turn the frameskip up.

 

[kukuasir]

I was made some minor adjustments for the language of simplified Chinese

and I added some space to fix the #MSG_PROGRESS_MAPPING_WAITING_FOR_KEY_OR_CLEAR display problem

 

[Aeter]

I recall reading that someone else was able to run the Fire Emblem games. Even with the latest version I'm still getting a lot of freezing... Not sure what I'm doing wrong.

I said that they were completely playable at frame skip 1.

 

[masterz87]

About the frameskip, I saw on github that anything but the default "keep up with the game" frameskip wasn't supported and that apparently does frameskip 2(1/3) and also does the same 20fps with random dips in terms of frame rate even with 396mhz setting. I've not yet tried the same game on my psp with the same level of frameskip(even on 3 randomly sound gets garbled when the framerate drops). I will say that this emulator is very good as far as performance goes/games it's able to emulate. I can't wait to see how much more this advances since I honestly didn't think a GBA emulator for the ds even with the ds2's cpu would be possible.

Anyway keep up the great work, I can't wait to see this thing advance more. I may try the hypervisor one to see how far it's advanced, I hope that that one gets fast enough, since that'd be a nice thing to have, since I'm unsure of how much power the ds2 uses when emulating games. Also btw, does anyone know what the CPU's set at when it's doing the "nds" plugin?

 

[Deleted member 319809]

About the frameskip, I saw on github that anything but the default "keep up with the game" frameskip wasn't supported and that apparently does frameskip 2(1/3) and also does the same 20fps with random dips in terms of frame rate even with 396mhz setting. I've not yet tried the same game on my psp with the same level of frameskip(even on 3 randomly sound gets garbled when the framerate drops). I will say that this emulator is very good as far as performance goes/games it's able to emulate. I can't wait to see how much more this advances since I honestly didn't think a GBA emulator for the ds even with the ds2's cpu would be possible.

Frame skip 0 works for a lot of games, but it's still not officially supported. Notably, frame skip 0 can make the emulator itself crash outright, due to a bandwidth limit in the DS-to-DSTwo link in the cartridge pins, or a nested VBlank interrupt, or something like that. Frame skip 0 is there for the games for which it works well, and you should not be using it for all games.

Anyway keep up the great work, I can't wait to see this thing advance more. I may try the hypervisor one to see how far it's advanced, I hope that that one gets fast enough, since that'd be a nice thing to have, since I'm unsure of how much power the ds2 uses when emulating games. Also btw, does anyone know what the CPU's set at when it's doing the "nds" plugin?

ichfly's GBA emulator is odd; it emulates backgrounds larger than on a GBA, and it has enough information to show 256x192 pixels of overworld maps in some games. But in others, it displays garbage in the remaining columns and rows (from 240x160 into 256x192, so 16 columns and 32 rows). The sound is very poor in some games. And you get to select one of 9 emulation backends, I believe. Maybe the topmost one, chosen by default, is suitable for more games than the others, but I haven't tried all of them.

I don't know what the DSTwo's CPU is set at when it's running code on the DS. Presumably it would enter various idle states, waiting for the DS to ask the DSTwo for data from its microSD card, so the CPU's clock would be largely irrelevant for the DSTwo's overall power consumption.

 

[Aeter]

About the frameskip, I saw on github that anything but the default "keep up with the game" frameskip wasn't supported and that apparently does frameskip 2(1/3) and also does the same 20fps with random dips in terms of frame rate even with 396mhz setting. I've not yet tried the same game on my psp with the same level of frameskip(even on 3 randomly sound gets garbled when the framerate drops). I will say that this emulator is very good as far as performance goes/games it's able to emulate. I can't wait to see how much more this advances since I honestly didn't think a GBA emulator for the ds even with the ds2's cpu would be possible.

Anyway keep up the great work, I can't wait to see this thing advance more. I may try the hypervisor one to see how far it's advanced, I hope that that one gets fast enough, since that'd be a nice thing to have, since I'm unsure of how much power the ds2 uses when emulating games. Also btw, does anyone know what the CPU's set at when it's doing the "nds" plugin?

What game do you mean?

 

[masterz87]

Frame skip 0 works for a lot of games, but it's still not officially supported. Notably, frame skip 0 can make the emulator itself crash outright, due to a bandwidth limit in the DS-to-DSTwo link in the cartridge pins, or a nested VBlank interrupt, or something like that. Frame skip 0 is there for the games for which it works well, and you should not be using it for all games.


ichfly's GBA emulator is odd; it emulates backgrounds larger than on a GBA, and it has enough information to show 256x192 pixels of overworld maps in some games. But in others, it displays garbage in the remaining columns and rows (from 240x160 into 256x192, so 16 columns and 32 rows). The sound is very poor in some games. And you get to select one of 9 emulation backends, I believe. Maybe the topmost one, chosen by default, is suitable for more games than the others, but I haven't tried all of them.

I don't know what the DSTwo's CPU is set at when it's running code on the DS. Presumably it would enter various idle states, waiting for the DS to ask the DSTwo for data from its microSD card, so the CPU's clock would be largely irrelevant for the DSTwo's overall power consumption.

I'm not going to do individual quoting things snice I don't want to mess up formatting... but anyway I'll go onto replying now.

The one I was talking about was the "[-]" option. I'd never try to do 0, that's just nuts. I can't imagine the thing can handle 60/60 frames sent to the device. So then are the other frameskip modes also not supported? As in 1 and 2? Since I thought it was _all_ but "[-]" which seems to be frameskip 2. Is that what it is/does by default? Whenever I played a couple of games and tried out the emulator I did -, and then tried 1 to see if the audio played better during some of the battles in golden sun to see how the audio responded when trying various CPU speeds.

Next about ichfly's one, that's really interesting that he's able to do the full screen size for the games, that's definitely interesting. But since as you said, it's not exactly good yet, I'll hold off on it right now.

About the ds2, I figured it'd go into idle states, but I was just wondering what it was when it was reading stuff from the microsd card. It was mostly just a random question about the system that I had, I don't know why I was wondering about it, I just was for some really odd reason.

Edit: @aeter it's golden sun obviously. That's the one I know that _all_ gba emulators have issues with in battles. I also tried kingdom hearts but the video at the start was messed up, I think NDS Tokyo trim trimmed the game a bit too much because the same issue happened with visual boy on my computer too. So I need to reget it and see if it is playable then.

 

[Kikirini]

I said that they were completely playable at frame skip 1.

I was playing them at frameskip one, but still experienced the freezing...

 

[Aeter]

Next about ichfly's one, that's really interesting that he's able to do the full screen size for the games, that's definitely interesting. But since as you said, it's not exactly good yet, I'll hold off on it right now.

Edit: @aeter it's golden sun obviously. That's the one I know that _all_ gba emulators have issues with in battles.

I don't know if ichfly's hypervisor is still being actively developed, but I don't think it will improve that much anymore anyway.

And you say it is obviously golden sun, but how am I to know what game you mean, when all you mention is the word game?
There are other games that have issues, and you could have meant any one of them by that.

I was playing them at frameskip one, but still experienced the freezing...

Okay, well I didn't really test it thoroughly, but it seemed to run pretty smooth to me on frame skip 1 on the first few chapters on both games and I just assumed it would perform well on other chapters as well.
What chapters or parts do you experience the freezing on?
Perhaps you can upload the save game(s), so I can try to reproduce the freezing.

 

[masterz87]

I don't know if ichfly's hypervisor is still being actively developed, but I don't think it will improve that much anymore anyway.

And you say it is obviously golden sun, but how am I to know what game you mean, when all you mention is the word game?
There are other games that have issues, and you could have meant any one of them by that.


Okay, well I didn't really test it thoroughly, but it seemed to run pretty smooth to me on frame skip 1 on the first few chapters on both games and I just assumed it would perform well on other chapters as well.
What chapters or parts do you experience the freezing on?
Perhaps you can upload the save game(s), so I can try to reproduce the freezing.

I said obviously, since I could've sworn I said golden sun, and also I saw your post _after_ I had already posted my message/reply and thus my mind was in the state of yours being _after_ my own post, when it was above it. Thus my brain wasn't working just right. It still does have issues randomly though, which is no real surprise to me really though.

Also since apparently the ds2 can't handle frameskip 0 due to the xfer between the ds2->ds must mean that the maximum read speed of the cartridges(even small retail) has to be ~4MB/s which is in line with what others have said about "non shit class 4." It's either that, or the latency is god awful. Either way, frameskip 1 is _OK_, frameskip 2 is tolerable if it's stable but I've never managed to get it stable even outside of battle it _randomly_ drops down ~5fps at random points. Even at the 396mhz clock speed even though I heard that it was "OK" at that level. Hopefully it gets some other speedup(sometime) in the future to make it possible to run it at a stable 20fps with audio(even though I rarely play with audio on anyway).

P.S. even w/o audio, I still have random drops in frame rate.

 

[Rydian]

It's too bad that the later games for any given system are generally the most content-filled and well-done (meaning attractive to gamers), but also tend to strain the hardware at that point, meaning emulation/virtualization issues aboung.

</commentary>

 

[takuwelteel]

I have a question regarding Golden Sun: The Lost Age. I've been playing Golden Sun through this program, beta 15, despite the problems it has with other games, because of the speed of Golden Sun. However, after 20 minutes of playing, give or take 5 minutes, the game freezes on me, forcing me to reset the system. I'm sure it is because of two reasons. The first was mostly from overclocking at 396mhz for long periods of time, as the Supercard's chip was a bit hot when I took the game out. The second was when I turned the Clock Speed down to...336mhz I think it was, and had most likely a frameskipping freeze because of the lower Clock Speed, using Frameskip.

My question is, has anyone found a sweet spot in the settings to get GS to work at a consistent (IE playable) speed? I've tried a couple combinations of Frameskipping and Clockspeed but to no avail, although I'm sure I've not tried all the combinations. Or is it something I'll have to deal with currently?

I really hope it can be done. Sadly, no PSP GBA emulator I've found can run Golden Sun 2 reliably, especially in battles, so as of now this emulator is the best I've seen in this concept to play the game handheld, beyond the actual cartridge.

I'm running it on the 3DS if it means anything, don't think it does though.

 

[Deleted member 319809]

I have a question regarding Golden Sun: The Lost Age. I've been playing Golden Sun through this program, beta 15, despite the problems it has with other games, because of the speed of Golden Sun. However, after 20 minutes of playing, give or take 5 minutes, the game freezes on me, forcing me to reset the system. [...]

I have revoked beta 15. Given that it crashes (with or without Guru Meditations) on so many games, it may even be unstable for the Golden Suns in odd ways. Please retry on the first release version, 1.40, which is based on beta 14. Beta 15 is mostly for those who wish for raw speed, not stability. The first release uses the stabler (but sound-cracklier) recompiler of beta 14.

 

[Deleted member 319809]

Also since apparently the ds2 can't handle frameskip 0 due to the xfer between the ds2->ds must mean that the maximum read speed of the cartridges(even small retail) has to be ~4MB/s which is in line with what others have said about "non shit class 4."

I'll have to give you a *buzzer* here - the microSD access is only up to "cart pin speed" (~6 MB/s) if it's the Nintendo DS initiating the access. That's when you run DS homebrew emulators and such, and they run on the DS's ARM processors.

MicroSD access speeds are unrestricted when it's the DSTwo itself reading from its slot, but then it's the sending of images and audio to the DS's ARM9 processor that's limited to "cart pin speed".

Even at the 396mhz clock speed even though I heard that it was "OK" at that level. Hopefully it gets some other speedup(sometime) in the future to make it possible to run it at a stable 20fps with audio(even though I rarely play with audio on anyway).

P.S. even w/o audio, I still have random drops in frame rate.

I'm working on it; I drafted a specification to be implemented, which should be stabler but faster.

 

[takuwelteel]

I have revoked beta 15. Given that it crashes (with or without Guru Meditations) on so many games, it may even be unstable for the Golden Suns in odd ways. Please retry on the first release version, 1.40, which is based on beta 14. Beta 15 is mostly for those who wish for raw speed, not stability. The first release uses the stabler (but sound-cracklier) recompiler of beta 14.

I'll try it on 1.40. Before beta 15, I played it on beta 12 and 14, with the same effect, but did not experiment extensively on those two version.

Thanks!

 

[Deleted member 319809]

TempGBA 1.41 is now available with the following improvements:

* Completed localisations (7): Simplified Chinese (thanks kukuasir), Dutch (thanks Aeter), German (thanks SignZ), Portuguese from Brazil (thanks Diego Liberal), Spanish (thanks Boriar). I always keep English and French up to date.

* Themeable colors have been expanded to message box text (MessageText), the color of the screen around message frames during gameplay (Background), as well as selected/unselected main menu items (ActiveMain and InactiveMain). See TEMPGBA/SYSTEM/GUI/uicolors.txt for examples using the default purple skin. This should now suffice for theme authors.

With this you might see more dark skins pop up specifically for TempGBA 1.41, because authors won't be stuck using the hard-coded purple!

 

[Aeter]

TempGBA 1.41 is now available with the following improvements:

* Completed localisations (7): Simplified Chinese (thanks kukuasir), Dutch (thanks Aeter), German (thanks SignZ), Portuguese from Brazil (thanks Diego Liberal), Spanish (thanks Boriar). I always keep English and French up to date.

* Themeable colors have been expanded to message box text (MessageText), the color of the screen around message frames during gameplay (Background), as well as selected/unselected main menu items (ActiveMain and InactiveMain). See TEMPGBA/SYSTEM/GUI/uicolors.txt for examples using the default purple skin. This should now suffice for theme authors.

With this you might see more dark skins pop up specifically for TempGBA 1.41, because authors won't be stuck using the hard-coded purple!

Updating my TempGBA skin as we speak.
Already done, thanks VatoLoco. The new Orange stuff looks nice.

 

[masterz87]

I'll have to give you a *buzzer* here - the microSD access is only up to "cart pin speed" (~6 MB/s) if it's the Nintendo DS initiating the access. That's when you run DS homebrew emulators and such, and they run on the DS's ARM processors.

MicroSD access speeds are unrestricted when it's the DSTwo itself reading from its slot, but then it's the sending of images and audio to the DS's ARM9 processor that's limited to "cart pin speed".


I'm working on it; I drafted a specification to be implemented, which should be stabler but faster.

That is probably going to make this emulator(when it's done) the most interesting GBA emulator I've seen ever, and probably one of the coolest emulators I've ever seen(outside of the LLEs out there that do some insane stuff)... but anyway whenever you get that done, that's definitely going to be _very_ _very_ nice. Anyway keep up the great work, I'm hoping that the cache isn't too architecture specific, even if it is mips based, that's fine since I have a gcw coming, and I'm hoping they get that added to their gpsp. Since I'm hoping to combine that+my ds2 for the ultimate "only have to carry this" thing. With the psp emulator making a nice amount of progress, I'm hoping they do a mips one so I can literally only have to carry one console with me. But that's off topic, thanks for the great work keep it up, I love the progress you're making since I honestly never thought that this'd be as good as it is right now even with the cpu it has. Anyway thanks for the info that it is ~6MB/s maximum read speed. I may end up using a slightly faster card(since I'm getting a bigger one anyway and it's cheaper to get a faster one), but anyway thanks for the information.

P.S. are you the guy who's also doing the snes emulator for the ds2? If so, will that then try to use something similar? Or is this going to be a gpsp only system since I remember reading that you said exophase had an idea for it, no idea how well developed it was when he quit but was just wondering. Keep up the great work!

 

[Aeter]

Nebuleon is also doing the snes emulator called CATSFC, which you can find in the sticky section.

 

[masterz87]

Nebuleon is also doing the snes emulator called CATSFC, which you can find in the sticky section.

Ah ok, that makes sense then, I was thinking that he was also doing an emulator since the name sounded familiar. That is really cool that he's doing so.