Emulation Homebrew Emulator The DSi deserves a better SNES emulator

[wavemotion]

Uhm .. are you trying to convince me, or just citing examples? As that was my point - it is already possible.

Just strengthening your point. It’s not only possible - many of us are doing it.

 

[mrparrot2]

I also agree that the state of SNES emulation in DS is not good, yet SneMulDS is quite okay-ish and you can always run for ports of SNES games in Genesis or even GBA.

Now I am quite sure that SNES emulation on DSi can be improved a lot. The CPU speed of DSi is quite comparable to the Nintendo 64, and although its GPU works very differently than the N64 RDP (for example, sprites needs to be explicitly BLT to the framebuffer while in DS you can move them by changing a register), Yet here is an SNES Nintendo 64 emulator running Super Mario World at full speed glitchless:



The emulator in question is Sodium64, completely written in MIPS assembly and seems to not have a JIT recompiler (i.e. is an interpreter).

 

[The Catboy]

@The Catboy

Although it's nice that my existence and reply bring you confidence, I am just a tester and debugger. I do not develop or write any code and my involvement in projects is purely helping find issues and narrow down the causes. At best, I can find some bugs in the code and point them out. I sometimes help with bringing attention to projects I am helping with or believe need more attention, but that's typically when a project is already being worked on. If my presence does inspire someone to take up a project, I am happy to hear and even willing to extend my time to help, if I can. Otherwise, I am just a popular member.

 

[Dre4mR]

Although it's nice that my existence and reply bring you confidence, I am just a tester and debugger. I do not develop or write any code and my involvement in projects is purely helping find issues and narrow down the causes. At best, I can find some bugs in the code and point them out. I sometimes help with bringing attention to projects I am helping with or believe need more attention, but that's typically when a project is already being worked on. If my presence does inspire someone to take up a project, I am happy to hear and even willing to extend my time to help, if I can. Otherwise, I am just a popular member.

Ok that’s fine. Yes I admit it, your reply did inspire me back then, but, since that day, this discussion has evolved a lot and we have more information that proves doing something better in in terms of DSi emulation might be possible. I’m still waiting for new replies though.

 

[Dre4mR]

Hi guys, Some days ago, I was updating the first post when I realized I may have missed something in this scenario, and today I wanted to ask you a few questions about it (I wanted to wait till I was sure your last conversation was over).

So when I was updating the first post with some helpful source codes, I was unsure whether to include CATSFC in them. I knew that it is an emulator made specifically for the Supercard DSTWO and that it cannot be ported in any way into the native DSi mode, and after some research, I found that it wasn't even written in assembly (I also know that the assembly language has a lot of benefits for the less capable machines), but at the same time, this is the only emulator that worked decently on the DS/DSi. At the end, I included it just for the sake of completeness, but that got me wondering: Is there something good that can be taken from this emulator?

Another thing I was wondering is if including some other source codes, like Snes9x for PC, might be helpful. I know it can't even be discussed to use some of the code, but can the "structure" of the code be replicated? (I'm sorry if I don't know these basics lol)

 

[Nikokaro]

Heck, I was hoping that finally some brainiac had come forward with some constructive ideas, but instead it is a simple false alarm. Anyway you do well to bump your thread from time to time, to keep the interest on the topic going and to point out that several users are always waiting for some unexpected breakthrough and maybe an unhoped-for miracle.

 

[Moon164]

Not even the Old 3DS has an emulator that runs all SNES games perfectly, I wouldn't expect something like that from the DSi.

 

[Dre4mR]

Not even the Old 3DS has an emulator that runs all SNES games perfectly, I wouldn't expect something like that from the DSi.Not even the Old 3DS has an emulator that runs all SNES games perfectly, I wouldn't expect something like that from the DSi.

As I said in my first post, I'm not expecting a perfect emulation, but just a decent one.

Post automatically merged: Nov 14, 2023

Something I haven't already mentioned is that I know that @Arisotura, the creator of lolSnes, is working in his spare time on updating lolSnes. The last attempt he made was 3 months ago HERE. Still, this cannot be called an active development, but just a hobby to do in spare time. Something funny, though, is that on his personal website, lolsnes.com, he said "I'm going to complete it. If my motivation doesn't fail me, that is", and after almost 10 years from the first release, that still didn't happen (meaning he probably lost his motivation or got a serious job lmao).

 

[The Catboy]

As I said in my first post, I'm not expecting a perfect emulation, but just a decent one.

Post automatically merged: Nov 14, 2023

Something I haven't already mentioned is that I know that @Arisotura, the creator of lolSnes, is working in his spare time on updating lolSnes. The last attempt he made was 3 months ago HERE. Still, this cannot be called an active development, but just a hobby to do in spare time. Something funny, though, is that on his personal website, lolsnes.com, he said "I'm going to complete it. If my motivation doesn't fail me, that is", and after almost 10 years from the first release, that still didn't happen (meaning he probably lost his motivation or got a serious job lmao).

Arisotura is actually a girl

 

[Nikokaro]

Arisotura is actually a girl

On his/her profile you can read: occupation= farting.
Certainly a french lady, and among the finest and most refined, I daresay...

 

[CrashMidnick]

I missed that thread.
Good SNES emulation is something possible for sure. The DC runs it almost full speed With sound and this console is a pain due to its soundchip.

I travel a lot, the DS battery life is just amazing over new devices like 3DS, PSP, Switch. I am going to Carabean Islands tomorrow and guess what is inside my handbag ? I will play some SNES games With the DStwo but With frameskip.

 

[Nikokaro]

I am going to Carabean Islands tomorrow and guess what is inside my handbag ? I will play some SNES games With the DStwo but With frameskip.

So all this, if I understand correctly, for the not too veiled purpose of bragging because:
1) you own the coveted DSTwo;
2) you are going on an upcoming trip to the Caribbean.
Welp, I won't say lend me the first one (I wouldn't have returned it to you anyway), but you could have at least invited me for the second one: it just so happens that I really need a vacation (chick hunting).

 

[SlCKB0Y]

Lad, you pointed out something obvious. Note that the same thing was done many years ago by porting Snemul for MS-DOS to DS consoles. So nothing new there. Even at that time Zsnes for dos was much better in performance and compatibility than Snemul. Zsnes ran fast even on very weak processors and little available RAM: this was because ms-dos was a simple, light, and manageable operating system, I surmise.

ZSNES was fast because it is grossly inaccurate emulation.

 

[mrparrot2]

ZSNES was fast because it is grossly inaccurate emulation.

Isn't ZSNES written in very optimized i486 asm to the point that It wasn't ever ported to anything other than 32-bit x86?

 

[Nikokaro]

Isn't ZSNES written in very optimized i486 asm to the point that It wasn't ever ported to anything other than 32-bit x86?

To be precise, it was programmed in x86 assembly, C and C++, to run mainly in 16bit video mode. I'm pretty sure it even worked on my prehistoric 286 PC, adjusting sound quality and graphics resolution here and there.

 

[gameboy64]

Absolutely! My friend told me to delete it since it's not going to work as it should. And DSi is great for gameboy emulation so snes shouldn't be the exception

 

[TheGlutton]

I agree with the OP, the DSi XL is the best handheld for 4:3 retro gaming, the screens are beautiful, and nothing available today can compete. It is begging for SNES emulation.

I understand that the SuperCard DSTWO was particularly decent at SNES Emulation, and I am aware that EZ-Flash just launched the Parallel Flashcart with an FPGA onboard. It's a pity that they didn't add a CPU similar to what SuperCard did.

I am here to offer my support, however I can, for this sort of project getting off the ground.

 

[Apache Thunder]

I agree with the OP, the DSi XL is the best handheld for 4:3 retro gaming, the screens are beautiful, and nothing available today can compete. It is begging for SNES emulation.

I understand that the SuperCard DSTWO was particularly decent at SNES Emulation, and I am aware that EZ-Flash just launched the Parallel Flashcart with an FPGA onboard. It's a pity that they didn't add a CPU similar to what SuperCard did.

I am here to offer my support, however I can, for this sort of project getting off the ground.

FPGA does not equal doing what DSTwo does. Almost all higher end flashcarts use an FPGA. What you really need is an additional CPU to do what DSTwo does. The FPGA in the EZP is likely only powerful enough to handle cart protocol stuff and nothing else. Don't expect anything more from them besides perhaps better DLDI/Game performance assuming they manage to fix those issues.

 

[anotherthing]

The FPGA in the EZP is likely only powerful enough to handle cart protocol stuff and nothing else.

It's a GW1N-LV9. I have no idea what the clock is for it, but it has 6000 flip-flops. It's not a skimpy FPGA for it's size.

 

[kruggy]

Finally made an account just to say I appreciate you having done so much research and that *I* understand what you were saying. I don't understand the people being weirdly negative over a perfectly reasonable point of inquiry, and am hoping that six months on from when you first posted, we are that much closer to getting a proper snes emulator on the DSi.

The incredible work done by people in this thread on projects like twilightmenu++ and others is really encouraging, and I think we will get there. Like you said, it won't be perfect or 100% of games, but from everything I understand about the topic and everything I've learned reading the op and replies, I really am hopeful that we could see serious movement, hopefully soon.

Buona fortuna con i tuoi studi e spero che la tua domanda aiuti a cambiare le cose! Ciao!