Hacking TempGBA: NDSGBA revival

[Prof. 9]

Yeah, and then there's the fact that gathering the user's intent with the touch location or pattern isn't that great.

Well, I imagine it could work like this: touch down on the screen to begin tilting, drag to the left to tilt left and to the right to tilt right (or the other way around), basing the amount of tilting on the difference in x-position (or velocity?). You could add a graphical button to the bottom of the touch screen that would open the menu... unless of course the DSTWO only sends the frame of one screen

It's probably better to map to the buttons, or indeed leave it out altogether since only two games use it anyway.

 

[RemixDeluxe]

That would be really cool to see the motion remapped to buttons or perhaps the touchscreen like you said before. You don't have to go through the trouble because of me but I would be excited to try these out if you did anything. Keep up the great work guys

*thumbs up*

 

[Prof. 9]

Here are the patches that are currently out there:
WarioWare: Twisted!
Yoshi Topsy-Turvy
Yoshi's Universal Gravitation

 

[RemixDeluxe]

@Prof. 9

What an amazing find. Thank you.

I don't really care about using motion as long as I get to play the game.

 

[Metoroid0]

It asks me for BIOS, where should i put the BIOS file please?

 

[justinwebb]

If you read you will find out, its been asked a million times

 

[Deleted member 319809]

TempGBA 1.41+memory-access-3.1, the Second Compatibility Edition Redux, is now available. It is not issued from the regular 'master' branch on my GitHub repository, but rather the experimental 'memory-access-3' branch.

In this release:

• A second workaround for an audio bug that makes games crash. (GitHub issue #3)
• Translation gates are not supported at all anymore. They are ignored in game_config.txt if present, and are not checked constantly while compiling blocks. This may speed things up a little.
• "Prefetch patched" versions of the Classic NES games might work. The clean ROMs will not work because gpSP does not emulate the ARM prefetch queue, and the Classic NES games detect emulators this way.
• Self-modifying code is now reused instead of being constantly wasted, in case the game rewrites the same code at the same place again. Even more detailed statistics are present about this in /Tools/Debugging (in English only).
  • Golden Sun 2 is sped up 80%. This eliminates most sound crackling at frameskip 1 and 396 MHz, especially in the Kandorean Temple.
  • Golden Sun is sped up 50%. This eliminates almost all sound crackling at frameskip 0 and 360 MHz.
  • Doom II is sped up 10%-40%, depending on the area. It still crackles and lags at 396 MHz. Its bottleneck is video.
  • Duke Nukem Advance is sped up 30%. This raises the frame rate in more complex areas with lots of polygons. It still crackles and lags at 396 MHz.
  • Mario Tennis is sped up 120%. This makes the game almost flawless at frameskip 0 and 360 MHz.
  • Mario Golf is probably sped up as well.

Of note, I believe this one to be free of additional game crashes, unlike beta 15...

 

[OneUp]

Oh. Nope, no accelerometer emulation. There's no accelerometer in a DS either.

I'm just curious about this. At one point a GBA pak was released for use with homebrew that had an accelerometer and a gyroscope inside: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_DS_accessories#DS_Motion_Card

Would it be possible to make this work with TempGBA? Or is it another thing that the DS2 would be unable to access like using DS wifi?

 

[Metoroid0]

If you read you will find out, its been asked a million times

Sorry but i couldn't find it...
I barely found, it was hidden from the average mortal xD

Why not putting those info on instructions.txt and not separately on read_me.txt in the middle of the page.. i mean, it should be part of instructions because you can't start emulator without BIOS.

And about the Emulator it self, it's Fantastic in compare to GBA emu you can download from official DSTWO website.
I set all of my GBA games on frame-skipping 1 ind they work flawlessly. Well you can notice when you compare it to 0 frame-skipping that its not as smooth as 0, but it works great!

Also, when i set 0FS it works, but it lags a little and sometimes FPS drops dramatically (dippends what's on the screen).


Will there be updates for TemgGBA emulator or that is all that can be done for it?

 

[Boriar]

TempGBA 1.41+memory-access-3.1, the Second Compatibility Edition Redux, is now available. It is not issued from the regular 'master' branch on my GitHub repository, but rather the experimental 'memory-access-3' branch.

In this release:

• A) A second workaround for an audio bug that makes games crash. (GitHub issue #3)
• B) Translation gates are not supported at all anymore. They are ignored in game_config.txt if present, and are not checked constantly while compiling blocks. This may speed things up a little.
• "Prefetch patched" versions of the Classic NES games might work. The clean ROMs will not work because gpSP does not emulate the ARM prefetch queue, and the Classic NES games detect emulators this way.
• C) Self-modifying code is now reused instead of being constantly wasted, in case the game rewrites the same code at the same place again. Even more detailed statistics are present about this in /Tools/Debugging (in English only).
  • Golden Sun 2 is sped up 80%. This eliminates most sound crackling at frameskip 1 and 396 MHz, especially in the Kandorean Temple.
  • Golden Sun is sped up 50%. This eliminates almost all sound crackling at frameskip 0 and 360 MHz.
  • Doom II is sped up 10%-40%, depending on the area. It still crackles and lags at 396 MHz. Its bottleneck is video.
  • Duke Nukem Advance is sped up 30%. This raises the frame rate in more complex areas with lots of polygons. It still crackles and lags at 396 MHz.
  • Mario Tennis is sped up 120%. This makes the game almost flawless at frameskip 0 and 360 MHz.
  • Mario Golf is probably sped up as well.

Of note, I believe this one to be free of additional game crashes, unlike beta 15...

A) Is that workaround for the crashes at frameskip 0 present at early betas or the one at beta 15?

B) What meaning that, translation gates is not necessary anymore or it's ignored to get more speed?

C) All that's the benefit from beta 15 plus the mod to avoid crashes or is there something new behind the scenes?

 

[Shadow#1]

I'm just curious about this. At one point a GBA pak was released for use with homebrew that had an accelerometer and a gyroscope inside: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_DS_accessories#DS_Motion_Card

Would it be possible to make this work with TempGBA? Or is it another thing that the DS2 would be unable to access like using DS wifi?

the DS Motion card is a slot 1 device.

 

[Boriar]

the DS Motion card is a slot 1 device.

But exist a DS Motion Pack which is the Slot2 version from the same company with dsllite chase

 

[LolGuyX]

TempGBA 1.41+memory-access-3.1, the Second Compatibility Edition Redux, is now available. It is not issued from the regular 'master' branch on my GitHub repository, but rather the experimental 'memory-access-3' branch.

In this release:

• A second workaround for an audio bug that makes games crash. (GitHub issue #3)
• Translation gates are not supported at all anymore. They are ignored in game_config.txt if present, and are not checked constantly while compiling blocks. This may speed things up a little.
• "Prefetch patched" versions of the Classic NES games might work. The clean ROMs will not work because gpSP does not emulate the ARM prefetch queue, and the Classic NES games detect emulators this way.
• Self-modifying code is now reused instead of being constantly wasted, in case the game rewrites the same code at the same place again. Even more detailed statistics are present about this in /Tools/Debugging (in English only).
  • Golden Sun 2 is sped up 80%. This eliminates most sound crackling at frameskip 1 and 396 MHz, especially in the Kandorean Temple.
  • Golden Sun is sped up 50%. This eliminates almost all sound crackling at frameskip 0 and 360 MHz.
  • Doom II is sped up 10%-40%, depending on the area. It still crackles and lags at 396 MHz. Its bottleneck is video.
  • Duke Nukem Advance is sped up 30%. This raises the frame rate in more complex areas with lots of polygons. It still crackles and lags at 396 MHz.
  • Mario Tennis is sped up 120%. This makes the game almost flawless at frameskip 0 and 360 MHz.
  • Mario Golf is probably sped up as well.

Of note, I believe this one to be free of additional game crashes, unlike beta 15...

Are games that did work in Beta 15 slower in this release, or do they have the same speed?
For example is golden sun faster in Beta 15 or in Tempgba 1.41?

 

[masterz87]

Are you ever going to use the merged game_config.txt into the main branch? Or are people always going to have to just download it seperately. I can understand still having it there as a different download as it can be updated on its own, but not using a newer version seems a bit crazy to me.

By the way, the sleep mode _doesn't_ seem to work with the latest build. I just downloaded it and tried it out, and the LED indicator light stays fully lit up, and doesn't dim to ~50%(what it looks like) brightness and pulses back and forth. So it's apparetnly not sleeping. I was in the menu, and I tried it midgame(paused). The game if this effects anything is mario & luigi superstar saga the USA version. I'm on a dsi(I don't know if that effects anything or not) since I know the ds2 cannot change the brightness in the menu that it has, but if that's true I'm saddenned that the dstwo can't do sleep mode with plugins.

 

[Deleted member 319809]

Are you ever going to use the merged game_config.txt into the main branch? Or are people always going to have to just download it seperately. I can understand still having it there as a different download as it can be updated on its own, but not using a newer version seems a bit crazy to me.

You make a lot of sense. If 1.41+memory-access-3.1 works well, 1.42 will be a no-change build with the newer game_config.txt.

I'd like people to test 1.41+memory-access-3 for the wiki page, please. As you need to put the version in there, use "1.41 mem 1" for the version; it's shorter.

By the way, the sleep mode _doesn't_ seem to work with the latest build. I just downloaded it and tried it out, and the LED indicator light stays fully lit up, and doesn't dim to ~50%(what it looks like) brightness and pulses back and forth. So it's apparetnly not sleeping. I was in the menu, and I tried it midgame(paused). The game if this effects anything is mario & luigi superstar saga the USA version. I'm on a dsi(I don't know if that effects anything or not) since I know the ds2 cannot change the brightness in the menu that it has, but if that's true I'm saddenned that the dstwo can't do sleep mode with plugins.

It does work... just not that light, on the DSi.

On the DS Lite, sleep mode works 100% correctly, and brightness setting in the EOS Menu also works.

On the DSi, for .plg (Supercard-only) plugins, sleep mode works 95% correctly (backlights do shut down, audio cuts off, ARM9 and ARM7 processors are put into idle, etc.), only the pulsing effect doesn't work.

On the DSi, for .nds (cross-flashcart) plugins, sleep mode works 100% correctly.

Regarding brightness setting on the DSi, it is general. You simply press the SELECT button and the volume buttons to change brightness on a DSi. This works even in games and in .plg plugins.

 

[masterz87]

You make a lot of sense. If 1.41+memory-access-3.1 works well, 1.42 will be a no-change build with the newer game_config.txt.


It does work... just not that light, on the DSi.

On the DS Lite, sleep mode works 100% correctly, and brightness setting in the EOS Menu also works.

On the DSi, for .plg (Supercard-only) plugins, sleep mode works 95% correctly (backlights do shut down, audio cuts off, ARM9 and ARM7 processors are put into idle, etc.), only the pulsing effect doesn't work.

On the DSi, for .nds (cross-flashcart) plugins, sleep mode works 100% correctly.

Regarding brightness setting on the DSi, it is general. You simply press the SELECT button and the volume buttons to change brightness on a DSi. This works even in games and in .plg plugins.

That's good to hear that only the backlight doesn't work. It'd be nice if you could include that in the FAQ or the readme in the files themselves. I just used that to tell hwo it was working as I play w/o sound on so I don't have any way to gauge it really w/o that LED pulsing.

About the issues with it, I'm going to try up kingdom hearts gba including a zipped and unzipped one. And also try out goldensun/2, to see if they have issues. As I know that golden sun 2/kh(especially zipped) gave huge issues to the original gpsp.

I normally rarely change the brightness except when I'm out and about, something I wish is that the ds lineup had a sleep mode as good as the psp. That thing could last weeks in sleep mode, but the ds line always seems to drain too fast to make me just want to do a full shutdown unless it's a very quick amount of time being asleep.

Edit: Also I don't know if there is/are any trimmers out there that are able to trim kh for the gba. Each one I've tried always messes it up. NDSTokyo Trim is the only one I've ever used so maybe I've not looked into them that much, and yes I realize that only ~0.1MB per rom is not a lot but I'm all about shaving off needless space wherever possible.

 

[Deleted member 319809]

A) Is that workaround for the crashes at frameskip 0 present at early betas or the one at beta 15?

B) What meaning that, translation gates is not necessary anymore or it's ignored to get more speed?

C) All that's the benefit from beta 15 plus the mod to avoid crashes or is there something new behind the scenes?

a) There was a first workaround in a beta, but now this is a second one, more robust. Having gotten the Supercard with the serial line after that beta, I could see that the DS2 SDK returned "there are -1 audio buffers used" sometimes with frameskip 0, which was turned into "there are 4294967295 buffers used". This second workaround is a way to stop infinite loops when "4294967295 > 4" is always true.

b) Translation gates were a way to tell gpSP to stop generating code at a certain point of a portion of RAM that the GBA game rewrote code into. They are not necessary anymore because of the work done in betas 10, 11, 12 and 13, and the memory-access, memory-access-2 and memory-access-3 branches. And they can be ignored to get more speed because they're not necessary anymore.

c) You may remember that beta 15 made many games crash when they previously wouldn't, like Final Fantasy VI being reported broken in post #715 and that huge list of newly non-working ROMs in post #716. So memory-access-3 was my way to validate the beta 15 improvements and find out what was wrong with them in beta 15. It does what beta 15 did, hence the repeat of "this game was made faster", etc., but those games should not crash.

 

[Deleted member 319809]

Sorry but i couldn't find it...
I barely found, it was hidden from the average mortal xD

Why not putting those info on instructions.txt and not separately on read_me.txt in the middle of the page.. i mean, it should be part of instructions because you can't start emulator without BIOS.

You raise a good point there. It is indeed essential. So I've added it into installation.txt in commit e274f8e.

 

[dave1z]

Just a quick heads up, Lego Drome Racers won't work with tempgba, but it will work with ndsgba. The game freezes at the third title screen. I have tried several different roms for the game along with changing settings for frameskip, cpu speed etc. All to no avail. Anyway, I commend the efforts to continue development on this emulator. I was starting to think that the whole DS scene had died, and was surprised and thrilled to see that work was continuing. Thank you for your efforts. Great job!

 

[Deleted member 319809]

Just a quick heads up, Lego Drome Racers won't work with tempgba, but it will work with ndsgba. The game freezes at the third title screen. I have tried several different roms for the game along with changing settings for frameskip, cpu speed etc. All to no avail. Anyway, I commend the efforts to continue development on this emulator. I was starting to think that the whole DS scene had died, and was surprised and thrilled to see that work was continuing. Thank you for your efforts. Great job!

Did it ever work with TempGBA?

If it did, I'd like a GitHub issue stating which version was the last it worked in. I can then investigate it not working anymore.

If it never did, then I'd still like a GitHub issue, so that someone else can fix it. I don't have the knowledge required to make something work from scratch.