Homebrew Working Tegra x1 GC/Wii emulator hacking progress

[Deleted member 42501]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/ni...a-working-gc-wii-emulator-for-tegra-x1.19839/

I'm a glitch hunter of the 3D Zelda Speedrun Community and recently we managed to get our hands on the Chinese NVIDIA Shield and Twilight Princess on it. This was made possible by a generous member of my TP community who took the risk of importing a Shield from China for $250 with 0 guarantees it would actually be possible to make it work. Buying the game from the Chinese store proved to be difficult, but a member from this very community here at resetera went ahead and used her wechat account to buy the game for us.

2 days ago Pheenoh, the person who imported the shield, did a full playthrough and glitch testing on this version. You can find the VOD here:

The most remarkable things about this version is how well it performs. It doesn't crash, it has no graphical issues, the framerate is locked at 30 fps pretty much throughout the entire game and the loading times are on par with the Dolphin Emulator with fast load times enabled, so pretty much instant.

There was one thing that hit our attention however. 2 notorious consistent game crashes on the original GC did not crash the game on the Shield. Interestingly enough the same 2 glitches that also didn't crash Dolphin until very recently where an option of proper Memory Management emulation became available.

With the hints mounting up, yesterday we went ahead and dumped the APK from the shield. After extracting it I immediately found the native executable that should be the game executable if this was a true port of the game. But taking a look at it it didn't match its GC counterpart whatsoever - especially crucial game asset strings that are required to run the game are missing.

What I did find however were the following strings:

Note: OSPanic is a GC function called by the game when it encounters a critical error

This leaves pretty much no doubt that the executable I'm looking at is in fact a GC emulator. A GC emulator that runs one of the most demanding games on the Cube very smoothly on the same hardware as the Switch. Something tells me this emulator wasn't created to just emulate 2 Nintendo games on a niche console in China

 

[Kubas_inko]

Possible with heavy optimization

 

[pofer]

Just thinking about all those posibilities gives me goose bumps

 

[PuNKeMoN]

If the implications are true, and my understanding is correct...

I need a bigger SD card than I originally estimated.

 

[Flashed]

Seems interesting. I take site

 

[Deleted member 42501]

Personally I’d be happy if they just hacked the wrapper to load GameCube ISO’s in full hd on the Shield TV first as that seems quite doable.

I do get the feeling though that this will become a legit option on the Switch later in its lifecycle as they already found the hardware profiles for docked and portable emulation performance hidden in there.

 

[kargath]

Anyone try running it on a US shield yet?

 

[Socke81]

No matter how many times you repeat it, some may never understand it. THE TEGRA IN THE SWITCH IS MUCH SLOWER! CPU is 50% slower. GPU 70% (moblie) slower.

Arr, why am I writing this ... It's hopeless anyway.

 

[PuNKeMoN]

Possible with heavy optimization

Whoa.
That's a great idea for a band name.

 

[smf]

Something tells me this emulator wasn't created to just emulate 2 Nintendo games on a niche console in China

It might only be functional enough to run those 2 games as well.

 

[buda81]

No matter how many times you repeat it, some may never understand it. THE TEGRA IN THE SWITCH IS MUCH SLOWER! CPU is 50% slower. GPU 70% (moblie) slower.

Arr, why am I writing this ... It's hopeless anyway.

I thought the underclock is software base and not hardware base. if true, then it can be unlocked.

 

[DeslotlCL]

I thought the underclock is software base and not hardware base. if true, then it can be unlocked.

It's hardware based. The GPU is also arround 30% slower on docked mode, but some emulators (like the dolphin one) are more dependent on the cpu rather than the gpu.

 

[NyaakoXD]

It really comes down to optimization and how much interest there is to optimize the emulator for the Switch. The Switch has potential, and it's still too early to dismiss it now considering Switch homebrew is still very much in its infancy.

 

[Risingdawn]

For all anyone knows the shield could be running that without breaking a sweat, or how much cpu is being taken by the os. RAM as well would factor in as well as drivers, not to mention the fact resolution scaling may well be able to offset performance issues as seen in many Switch titles.
It's still too early to be deciding either way how well Switch could or couldn't run a GC emulator, especially as hinted here if it is an officially coded Nintendo emulator. I would certainly prefer people give it a go rather than write it off.

 

[DiscostewSM]

It's hardware based. The GPU is also arround 30% slower on docked mode, but some emulators (like the dolphin one) are more dependent on the cpu rather than the gpu.

But isn't the TX1 in the Switch literally a stock TX1? Wouldn't that suggest we could alter the frequencies? Let's say we can. As it is, we don't necessarily need the GPU as strongly as the Switch offers for emulation of older platforms, since that emulation is more CPU-based. The savings of heat and energy could then be moved to the CPU, increasing its frequencies. Am i making any sense?

 

[buda81]

But isn't the TX1 in the Switch literally a stock TX1? Wouldn't that suggest we could alter the frequencies? Let's say we can. As it is, we don't necessarily need the GPU as strongly as the Switch offers for emulation of older platforms, since that emulation is more CPU-based. The savings of heat and energy could then be moved to the CPU, increasing its frequencies. Am i making any sense?

That's what I thought. That the Switch is using a stock X1.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

But isn't the TX1 in the Switch literally a stock TX1? Wouldn't that suggest we could alter the frequencies? Let's say we can. As it is, we don't necessarily need the GPU as strongly as the Switch offers for emulation of older platforms, since that emulation is more CPU-based. The savings of heat and energy could then be moved to the CPU, increasing its frequencies. Am i making any sense?

Yup, should be possible since we have full hardware access. GC/Wii isn't very GPU heavy anyway and apparently Dolphin on Switch Linux managed to run Dolphin at 25/30 FPS with OpenGL, once we have Vulkan working FPS should increase further.
That Android-based emulator is probably not going to have very good compatibility, it's probably going to be like N64 VC on Wii where the emulator is tailored towards certain games to make those games run fullspeed without glitches, but with most other games maybe not working at all, or working but with heavy glitches.
Dolphin though already has great compatibility so it's a good starting point, and if it already runs this well on a platform it was never designed for (since it's the desktop version of Dolphin people are running), there's hope for it running fullspeed in the somewhat near future.

 

[Fadi5555]

If you guys remember all rumors about Nintendo switch will gonna have gamecube support. Maybe Nintendo is testing water to be ready for running on switch. If you just think about it. Why Nintendo wasting their time and preparing GC emulator on just nvidia shield tv not switch? It's not logical at all. Nintendo is aware about people would love to play GC games on switch. Also if you can see recently Nintendo makes some trademark on some gamecube games. I'm sure it's not for nothing.

Also about the capability if the switch can handle it or not. Of course it will without any doubt. It's not a dolphin emu which eats a lot of cpu of course not. The code is officially from Nintendo itself so they know what should they do in order to run it without any issues.


Here is a small proof about the switch is more capable of running gamecube games via emulator

Here's someone is able to run dolphin via linux on switch.
The game is animal crossing
https://twitter.com/_mizumi/status/993231506310082560?s=21
https://twitter.com/_mizumi/status/992985496249864192?s=21

See how amazing it is. (Can you see? it's running on this good speed even without gpu drivers and there's still no vulkan api support which will give a big boost).

After you see this information tells me your thoughts
Thanks...

 

[Type_O_Dev]

Anyone try running it on a US shield yet?

yes i have one and i have Hyperspin setup with thousands of games. Gamecube and wii runs perfect and up-scales to hd

 

[AngryCinnabon]

Doot! doot! did you hear that? it's the...


HYPE TRAIN