I was recently thinking about the emulators I've worked on over the past 5 years and decided to rank them using one of those fancy tier-ranking websites.
Although I'm a bit biased, I didn't feel that any of the projects I worked on fell into the 'D' category. Feel free to disagree
So how did I rank my own efforts? I tried to balance them - grading on a curve I suppose.
Starting at the bottom...
Tier C has the two Atari 8-bit emulators. I put a ton of work into those but in the end, the horizontal and vertical resolutions don't match up well with the DS LCD and the amount of crazy tricks that can be pulled off on the A8 machines is very hard to emulate perfectly. The 5200 has the other dubious distinction of an analog controller which is very difficult to emulate properly with the d-pad - and so that was the only one I even considered for the D-list... but let's call it C-minus.
GimliDS is in a similar boat... the resolution isn't a great match (but it is better) but it also features some insane mid-scanline trickery that is difficult to pull off properly. And I never got the SID sound as nice as it deserves... but probably more like a C-plus.
Tier B fares better. The Atari 7800 Pro System took a LONG time to get the emulation where it was nearly cycle accurate. The screen resolution is not a perfect match but most games still look and play nicely. I think this emulator might have the most-effort for the least-downloads ratio for me. The sound is fine ... it's TIA and wasn't all that great to begin with.
SugarDS is a relative newcomer but I think the emulation quality here is quite good. Being a newer emulator, it benefits from the experience I've gained and pulls a lot of tricks to get the compatibility where it is... Solid.
It's probably not fair to rank DracoDS as it's not nearly complete yet... but from what I've done so far and from what I can see in the near future, this wone is likely to end up as a B-tier. The screen resolution is a perfect match... knock a few points off for the dodgy analog-to-digital controller emulation and the sound isn't perfect (but the Tandy/Dragon sounds were never great).
Tier A is where we start cooking with gas. SpeccySE is a perfect screen match and I've added some nice touches for controller setup, slide-n-glide makes its appearance here... sound is excellent thanks to fluBBa's AY driver though the single-bit beeper could use some improvement. This would be one heck of an emulator if it wasn't for the fact that an S-tier ZXDS already exists!
StellaDS is probably closer to A+ but it was the first emulator I worked on and probably has the most hours logged to it... and I'm proud of getting ARM processor support working on the DS handhelds. So much went into this to support all kinds of stuff... Save Key, Paddles, tons of different banking schemes, manuals and high score support... but it suffers a bit from being a little too early for my skill set to really make it perfect. Still - not bad.
Tier S are what I consider nearly perfect emulators on the DS.
ColecoDS is probably the best - there are 11 different sub-emulators in this package and all of them are done quite well. The screen resolution match is perfect. The controls are spot-on. The features are robust. The sound is fantastic thanks to fluBBa's SN and AY and SCC drivers. This one has virtually no more room to add more features - it's packed to the gills.
Nintellivision has one flaw... the screen resolution is not a perfect fit for the screen but it's a scale-up (vs scale-down) so no pixels are "lost". Otherwise it's arguably better than playing on a real Intellivision due to the touch-screen overlay use and tons of modern features. Huge fan base for this one - and my favorite game (AD&D Treasure of Tarmin) is wonderfully playable on the couch.
DS99/4a is again a perfect screen match and has the pitch-perfect SN driver from fluBBa. I did the CPU and peripheral chips from scratch so these absolutely blaze on both the DS-Lite/Phat and any more modern DS handheld. It's got all the features - basically if it runs on a TI99/4a, it will run on this.
That's my list... thoughts of any kind welcome!!
Although I'm a bit biased, I didn't feel that any of the projects I worked on fell into the 'D' category. Feel free to disagree
So how did I rank my own efforts? I tried to balance them - grading on a curve I suppose.
Starting at the bottom...
Tier C has the two Atari 8-bit emulators. I put a ton of work into those but in the end, the horizontal and vertical resolutions don't match up well with the DS LCD and the amount of crazy tricks that can be pulled off on the A8 machines is very hard to emulate perfectly. The 5200 has the other dubious distinction of an analog controller which is very difficult to emulate properly with the d-pad - and so that was the only one I even considered for the D-list... but let's call it C-minus.
GimliDS is in a similar boat... the resolution isn't a great match (but it is better) but it also features some insane mid-scanline trickery that is difficult to pull off properly. And I never got the SID sound as nice as it deserves... but probably more like a C-plus.
Tier B fares better. The Atari 7800 Pro System took a LONG time to get the emulation where it was nearly cycle accurate. The screen resolution is not a perfect match but most games still look and play nicely. I think this emulator might have the most-effort for the least-downloads ratio for me. The sound is fine ... it's TIA and wasn't all that great to begin with.
SugarDS is a relative newcomer but I think the emulation quality here is quite good. Being a newer emulator, it benefits from the experience I've gained and pulls a lot of tricks to get the compatibility where it is... Solid.
It's probably not fair to rank DracoDS as it's not nearly complete yet... but from what I've done so far and from what I can see in the near future, this wone is likely to end up as a B-tier. The screen resolution is a perfect match... knock a few points off for the dodgy analog-to-digital controller emulation and the sound isn't perfect (but the Tandy/Dragon sounds were never great).
Tier A is where we start cooking with gas. SpeccySE is a perfect screen match and I've added some nice touches for controller setup, slide-n-glide makes its appearance here... sound is excellent thanks to fluBBa's AY driver though the single-bit beeper could use some improvement. This would be one heck of an emulator if it wasn't for the fact that an S-tier ZXDS already exists!
StellaDS is probably closer to A+ but it was the first emulator I worked on and probably has the most hours logged to it... and I'm proud of getting ARM processor support working on the DS handhelds. So much went into this to support all kinds of stuff... Save Key, Paddles, tons of different banking schemes, manuals and high score support... but it suffers a bit from being a little too early for my skill set to really make it perfect. Still - not bad.
Tier S are what I consider nearly perfect emulators on the DS.
ColecoDS is probably the best - there are 11 different sub-emulators in this package and all of them are done quite well. The screen resolution match is perfect. The controls are spot-on. The features are robust. The sound is fantastic thanks to fluBBa's SN and AY and SCC drivers. This one has virtually no more room to add more features - it's packed to the gills.
Nintellivision has one flaw... the screen resolution is not a perfect fit for the screen but it's a scale-up (vs scale-down) so no pixels are "lost". Otherwise it's arguably better than playing on a real Intellivision due to the touch-screen overlay use and tons of modern features. Huge fan base for this one - and my favorite game (AD&D Treasure of Tarmin) is wonderfully playable on the couch.
DS99/4a is again a perfect screen match and has the pitch-perfect SN driver from fluBBa. I did the CPU and peripheral chips from scratch so these absolutely blaze on both the DS-Lite/Phat and any more modern DS handheld. It's got all the features - basically if it runs on a TI99/4a, it will run on this.
That's my list... thoughts of any kind welcome!!
