Snesds

[lion2]

Here's a nice emu for all you DS owners. From the link some games are running full speed which is very impressive, considering the SNES emulator for the PSP doesnt run full speed even with sound turn off.

[nukinetix]

The snes emulator on the GP32 runs pretty much full speed with sound off (and skip frame 1 I think) - but I'd be VERY surprised if it runs anywhere near fullspeed on a DS.

[Shane R. Monroe]

The snes emulator on the GP32 runs pretty much full speed with sound off (and skip frame 1 I think) - but I'd be VERY surprised if it runs anywhere near fullspeed on a DS.

Don't be so quick to discount the DS ... Remember, the hackers have access to DUAL CPUs now - ARM7 and ARM9 ... If they can harness BOTH CPUs as well as the rest of the DS hardware, I should think we could get some decent emus going on.

[Flare]

Wouldn't it be great if someone just made a whitebox handheld? Instead of using the GP32, the NGAGE, the DS or the PSP for emulation, we could just have a small handheld computer powered by a a recent mobile processor or something. Emulators would be running at the same speed as a normal PC.

Maybe Ben Heckendorn will make one someday.

[nukinetix]

The ARM7 runs at 17mhz so it's not even adding a 20% of performance on top of what the ARM9 has, i.e. its impact on collective performance is negligible. Together, combined (assuming full parallelism is possible without getting in each other's way), would be roughly the same as having a single 80mhz ARM9.

Custom hardware won't help much with emulating something like a SNES either.

I know the GP32 SNES emulator has been through many optimisation stages and is now pretty much full speed with sound off - I just can't see how the DS could make the leap from something roughly equivalent to an 80mhz ARM9, to an ARM9 that is clocked at 166mhz. To put it another way, I can't see how its optimal theoretical performance could be instantly doubled (that is a massive 100% speed improvement) due to some unknown factor.

Of course, if it works as promised then I'd LOVE to download the source code and play with it (and port it over to GP32 too ;) ) ... if it's an open source homebrew project of course. Any links? I am very intrigued.

[Shane R. Monroe]

The ARM7 runs at 17mhz so it's not even adding a 20% of performance on top of what the ARM9 has, i.e. its impact on collective performance is negligible. Together, combined (assuming full parallelism is possible without getting in each other's way), would be roughly the same as having a single 80mhz ARM9.

Custom hardware won't help much with emulating something like a SNES either.

I know the GP32 SNES emulator has been through many optimisation stages and is now pretty much full speed with sound off - I just can't see how the DS could make the leap from something roughly equivalent to an 80mhz ARM9, to an ARM9 that is clocked at 166mhz. To put it another way, I can't see how its optimal theoretical performance could be instantly doubled (that is a massive 100% speed improvement) due to some unknown factor.

Of course, if it works as promised then I'd LOVE to download the source code and play with it (and port it over to GP32 too ;) ) ... if it's an open source homebrew project of course. Any links? I am very intrigued.

There is only a download with a little, worthless txt file with it. I don't have the means to test it yet, but its called a "quick and dirty port" so who knows? My PassMe is in the mail, so hopefully I'll be able to test it soon.

Not that I care about SNES in the LEAST. Give me a Genesis emulator, C64 emulator ... then we're talking ...

[nukinetix]

Correction: The DS's ARM7 seems to be running at 33mhz instead of 17mhz (the GBA has an ARM7 running at 17mhz).

If someone tries the SNES emu I'd be interested to hear comments on how good it is (I don't have a passme yet, but I will probably get one pretty soon).

[pissant]

I know the GP32 SNES emulator has been through many optimisation stages and is now pretty much full speed with sound off - I just can't see how the DS could make the leap from something roughly equivalent to an 80mhz ARM9, to an ARM9 that is clocked at 166mhz. To put it another way, I can't see how its optimal theoretical performance could be instantly doubled (that is a massive 100% speed improvement) due to some unknown factor.

Bear in mind that the DS has hardware acceleration and the GP32 doesn't. This makes a huge difference. Also keep in mind that the GBA was able to emulate the SNES actually fairly well... how is that possible with a lowly 16MHz ARM7? Because the graphic hardware of the GBA is very similar to the graphic hardware of the SNES. Now take that snes emulator for the GBA, and stuff it on the DS with just the ARM7 alone running at twice the speed... and you get very very good emulation of snes. With the ARM9 basically just idling away in the background.

A snes emulator for the GBA/DS would be useless to port to a GP32. Completely different systems, even though they share a core processor family.

[nukinetix]

I don't know how "hardware acceleration" could help much in this case - at best it would have to be evaluated in terms of actual performance compared to a highly optimised arm9 implementation of those relevant gfx operations.

Have you actually tried the GBA SNES emulator? I haven't, but I'd be very interested to try it out (links?)

I also don't see how a snes emulator on the DS would be useless to port to GP32 - the graphical operations that may use hardware acceleration (simple bit blitting with transparency, alpha and rotation/scaling basically) can be fully implemented and optimised in arm9 assembly.

I'm keeping an open mind here, but I am not convinced. I would like to try out both GBA and DS snes emulators first.

[Shane R. Monroe]

I'm hoping my PassMe will come today and I'll give it a whirl and report back.

[yuckymucky]

What they could do is pass sound off to processor 1 (lets say ARM7) and run everything else on processor 2 (ARM9). In theory this should run the SNES without any problems. Battery life would drop in half but it should work.

I have coded some stuff for ARM11 at work and there are a bunch of little tweaks you can do to make those things fast on the code level. Some of the code that we were pushing through them was pretty impressive so I am pretty sure that it is possible for SNES.

[pissant]

Have you actually tried the GBA SNES emulator? I haven't, but I'd be very interested to try it out (links?)

Its not too bad for many games, aside from there being no sound (doh!).

http://www.pocketsnes.net/

If you have a flash cart, give it a shot. If you don't, you could always give it a shot on a gba emulator I suppose. :D

I use the sms and nes emulators much more often. Both of them are pretty good, although the sms sound can be sketchy at times.

The GP32 has no sprites, no layers, no tiles, no much of anything... it just has two bitmaps that can be flipped. That means the main processor has to handle everything, whereas the GBA/DS can hand off some of that. I'm not familiar with the DS (other than playing games on it), but the GBA and SNES share very similar tiling engines, as well as sprites, so this stuff only needs to be massaged, not completely emulated. I'm assuming that the DS has that also, not just in GBA emulation mode. The GP32 takes a big hit when it comes to doing any graphics... which is why it needs a big honking CPU to have games which aren't any better than a 16Mhz GBA.

[nukinetix]

I could reply in detail just to explain why what you said doesn't make much of a difference, percentage-wise, and why I'm still totally not convinced (but then, this isn't the place to do so - I suspect we're already taking this a bit too far outside the spirit of this forum). Suffice it to say the gfx operations that need to be emulated can be implemented optimally on an 166mhz arm9 with a small portion of its total power - lack of bit-blitting hardware is mostly irrelevant in this case.

To be more practical: I would like to try earthbound, chrono trigger, mario kart and r-type just to get a feel of how fast it is at frameskip-0 without sound.

I also wonder what they do with pixel scaling ... the GBA screen simply doesnt have enough pixel resolution for a SNES screen to fit in. The same applies to the DS in this case unfortunately. (it fits in perfectly on the GP32 without scaling).

But first things first .. I'd like to evaluate speed performance of the above games, frameskip-zero and no-sound. Assuming it emulates graphics fully of course (if not, I would also need a list of features it DOES NOT emulate).

p.s. incidentally, the GP32 is the only handheld I know of that fully emulates a sega genesis (including sound / full z80 emulation for sound) at full speed.

p.p.s. the SIMD instruction set of the ARM11 (armv6) cpu are cool and indeed can accelerate certain gfx related operations by up to 400% in some cases. But they're not available on either the ARM7TDI or the ARM9TDI

[yuckymucky]

400% ?? Percentages and processors never really go well together, unless everything about them minus clock speed is exactly the same which never seems to be the case.

I can't really see the point of emulating SNES on the GBA though. I know there are a lot of people that will do it just because it can be done but it doesn't make sense to me. The button issue is the biggest obsticle that I see, I don't see the fun in having to hold 2 buttons down to get the desired reaction.

I am not by any means bashing on people that do things just because they can be done so please no comments about that. I always here of people installing Linux on the weirdest of things but usually they are getting something out of it.

[nukinetix]

I can't really see the point of emulating SNES on the GBA though. I know there are a lot of people that will do it just because it can be done but it doesn't make sense to me. The button issue is the biggest obsticle that I see, I don't see the fun in having to hold 2 buttons down to get the desired reaction.
Well, to me the biggest issues would be first performance (way too slow to be meaningful) and second screen size (pixel-scaling of the worst kind). I downloaded the emulator, but after reading the following I didn't even bother running it, it's ridiculous:

Hell has frozen over. A SNES emulator for the GBA is born.

Please understand this is a WORK IN PROGRESS. That means lots of things are still broken, buggy, or just plain don't work. A lot of SNES functionality has not been emulated yet. Many (in fact, almost ALL) commercial games are still unplayable or look like crap.
Enough said about that.

Keep in mind that every single SNES game that I've played on the GP32 emulator is perfectly playable.

Now, let me clarify that from a technical point of view I have the utmost respect for the guys who attempted it - technically it's a very interesting project. But I am an iconoclast, I don't go by labels: interesting though this may be, a SNES emulator it simply is not.


400% ?? Percentages and processors never really go well together, unless everything about them minus clock speed is exactly the same which never seems to be the case.
For technical people this is an easy number to translate: it means, all else being equal, there are interesting and useful inner loops (where 80% or more of processing time is spent) which can be made to be up to 4 times faster when using those instructions.

It's called data parallelism. For example, when you "render" stuff on a RGBA buffer (that's 32bits of 4 8bit color elements per pixel) you can do pixel operations, per pixel, between multiple buffers by combining their contents using various operands, and you can do that using one instruction per pixel (4 color elements) - instead of having to break each 32bit element down to its 4 bytes, one at a time, and do the numeric operation on each one of them separately (via actual numeric processing or a look up table, or whatever).

SIMD can accelerate certain things that happen repeatedly in the inner core of a game or application quite significantly. That is usually the case with signal processing, such as image processing, geometric processing, sound processing, and so on. Sometimes we spend weeks to gain a meagre 20% or 30% of performance in some already twisted-beyond-recognition inner loop, so getting 100% - 400% with minimal effort (by switching to SIMD) is more than just a nice option to have.

[yuckymucky]

I am aware of what it is called and even how to produce it. I program slot machine hardware so I know how to squeze every last little bit of performance out of a processor. It's what I do.

What I was getting at though is by using percentages true processor speed is flawed and people don't really get it. If we put a 3.0GHz Intel P4 up against a 2.2 GHz AMD64 the AMD will toast the P4 in most all benchmarks due to the onboard memory controller and shorter pipelines. This shouldn't be though when you try and use percents because the Intel is x% faster.

I think that the problem with the GP32 emulation is that it's just not a popular enough handheld. Nobody I know has one but everybody that I work with has either a GBA, PSP, or DS. If I said you could get a GP32 to emulate SNES they would ask me what the hell a GP32 is. I know that there is an active dev scene for them though.

[Shane R. Monroe]

Well, developers are already making use of the dual processor. The DS version of NESter is using the GBA CPU exclusively for sound processing. That's a great thing. The concept of offloading the sound to the second CPU is perfect - since it seems that sound is the LAST thing to come with ANY emulator.

[yuckymucky]

I was hoping to hear that they were going to be using both. Shane have you got your passme yet?

[Shane R. Monroe]

I was hoping to hear that they were going to be using both. Shane have you got your passme yet?

No, but its shipped, so I'm hoping today ....

[nukinetix]

The DS version of NESter is using the GBA CPU exclusively for sound processing. That's a great thing. The concept of offloading the sound to the second CPU is perfect - since it seems that sound is the LAST thing to come with ANY emulator.
Yep, it's both a good thing and a necessary thing in this case (every little helps). The ARM7 should be perfectly capable of fully and properly emulating the SNES's sound chip, the SPC700 (which kicks ass, and incidentally was designed by none other than kutaragi himself - the "father" of the playstation) - and should have a bit of processing power left for something else as well.

After that semi-fake GBA Snes emulator, I am even more intrigued ... I wonder what the DS Snes emu will be like. Your feedback, once you try it with the passme, will be greatly appreciated Shane :)


If we put a 3.0GHz Intel P4 up against a 2.2 GHz AMD64 the AMD will toast the P4 in most all benchmarks due to the onboard memory controller and shorter pipelines.
Sure but I don't see the analogy with what we were discussing - I've been a professional software engineer (mostly low-level z80/68000/x86/arm, and C/C++) for the past 15 years, I would never make such a naive comparison. I think it's quite clear what I meant and in what context.


I think that the problem with the GP32 emulation is that it's just not a popular enough handheld. Nobody I know has one but everybody that I work with has either a GBA, PSP, or DS. If I said you could get a GP32 to emulate SNES they would ask me what the hell a GP32 is.
I'm not sure what you mean here to be honest. The problem .. for who? Certainly not for the GP32 I can assure you (though I can see how this can be a problem for anyone who is missing out on a shedload of excellent emulators).

Just to give an idea, here's some mature, often "perfect", GP32 based emulators (again, take this to mean "as good as you can reasonably expect an emulator to be"):

MSX, ZX Spectrum (all models), Amstrad CPC (I think all models), Commodore 64, GB, GBC, COLECOVISION, Sega Master System, Sega Genesis, NES, SNES, Neo Geo Pocket Color, PC Engine, Atari ST, a shedload of MAME games. And of course there's more.

Now ask me if I'd advise someone to go and get a GP32; well, like everything in life, it has its pros and cons. It's subjective and it depends on many factors. But when it comes to emulators, it's the best handheld out there - there's no doubt about it: It's got the speed, it's got the screen quality (clarity, brightness, crispness), screen size, pixel resolution, decent controls, and the homebrew developer scene behind it. (though I'm not sure how we got to this - this thread wasn't about it at all!).

I'm honestly looking forward to hearing some detailed comments about the SNES emu on the DS. I do have a DS as well, after all, and I'm planning to get a passme anyway, as I'd love to write some homebrew for it (once the homebrew dev tools mature a bit).

[Shane R. Monroe]

Hey Nuki ... you coming to CGE this year? I'd love to put my hands on a loaded up GP32 and try it first hand. Of course, it would be fun to meet you in person as well ... I think we could have some cool discussions. :)

[Flare]

Hey Nuki ... you coming to CGE this year? I'd love to put my hands on a loaded up GP32 and try it first hand. Of course, it would be fun to meet you in person as well ... I think we could have some cool discussions. :)
I second that... we've been talking on the MSN recently and this guy over here knows his gadgets... he also has an idea of the future of mobile gaming that is very interesting.

Shane, otherwise you can play on my NGAGE... BHAHAHA! :D

[Shane R. Monroe]

Shane, otherwise you can play on my NGAGE... BHAHAHA! :D
I'll take a bye on the NGAGE ... I'll have the DS though ... :)

[yuckymucky]

Sure but I don't see the analogy with what we were discussing - I've been a professional software engineer (mostly low-level z80/68000/x86/arm, and C/C++) for the past 15 years, I would never make such a naive comparison. I think it's quite clear what I meant and in what context.


I was just stating it because that is all that I hear all the time, the P4 has more GHz so it must be faster. It's good to know that I am talking with somebody that auctually knows hardware though. I write arm, 68000, and now mostly x86 C and ASM that runs slot machines so we are auctually on the same page here. :-)

As for the GP32 comment I was just stating it because it is so underground basically. If I got one and took it to work maybe 5 people would know what it is. They just never took off at all here in the states.

After your list of emus for it I am going to check some out on Ebay. Anything special I should look for? I noticed that they only have an A and B button does this cause any issues with SNES or anything with more buttons needed?

[nukinetix]

Guys I wish I could be there at CGE, it'd be awesome .. it's not possible though, not this year.


As for the GP32 comment I was just stating it because it is so underground basically. If I got one and took it to work maybe 5 people would know what it is. They just never took off at all here in the states.
Oh yeah .. You're right it never took off anywhere (not just in the US) ... but that doesn't say anything negative, necessarilly, about the console itself. To be honest, I don't know if there's a future in it at all. In all likelihood the company is going to go bust or simply stop producing them.

But I don't care - I don't see that as a problem for me at all, and I never go with the mainstream "just because others do too" .. I have a nice development kit for it, I have fun programming it (it's pure fun) and this is always going to be there, it's not going to change. On top of that, these high quality emulators cover my every gaming need when I'm on the go. Add to that mp3 playback (RGR on the go :)) and divx playback (once you set it up on the PC it's easy to get any kind of movie converted to the divx codecs the GP32 needs). It's cool.

As mentioned in another thread, go for a BLU (not a BLU+ if you can), specifically one that can go up to 166mhz (not all GP32s can - some can get up to 150/156 which is also ok, but you want 166mhz for the emulators ideally). Buttons haven't been a problem, you can switch key map/layout on the fly easily if need be, but there's A, B, L/R shoulder buttons and of course start/select. It can be a small inconvenience, one that may not be ideal but it's understandable nevertheless.

[Shane R. Monroe]

Alright folks ... the PASSME came in today ... Here are my initial findings ...

My first goal was to flash my DS's BIOS and get rid of the need for the PASSME at all. It was incredibly simple. I wrote the flash tool to my GBA Flash Cart, popped Metroid Demo DS cart into the Passme, plugged it into the DS. Then, I opened the battery compartment, removed the little cover off the jumper. I fired up the DS, and the flash util started. I put my screwdriver into the hole in the battery compartment to jumper it. After about 40 seconds, the process was complete, and the passme was removed. The system will now AUTO boot any NDS file on the flashcart on boot up. If there isn't NDS code on the flashcart, then it goes to the main DS menu. As promised, the HEALTH WARNING screen is now GONE. Insta-boot ... THAT, my friends, is worth the $25 for the passme. Can't put a price on your time.

So, what happens next...

SNESDS comes with a GBA filemaker. You choose the SMC files you want to burn, and this neat tool joins them and the emu into a single file. You then burn this file to your flashcart (NO LOADER!). Pop it in, and fire it up.

You get a menu on the bottom screen. Old school scroller style selector. You select it and the game runs on the top screen.

First off, I haven't seen a game yet run 100% right. MOST games crash (I could SERIOUSLY be missing out playing with settings and bits - the interface is filled with buttons switches and knobs) but some run and when the graphics aren't trashed (seems to be the most common deal) the picture and quality is amazing. Sound is actually the BEST part of the emulation!

On the games that you can play even with the trashed graphics (Prince of Persia comes to mind) the emulator runs very well ... I can't see any speed loss here. But until I have a game that plays totally right, I'm holding back judgement.

Its early ... two builds have been released in two days. I see it just getting better.

I tried out some of the other homebrew stuff like Duck Hunt and the first Tetris. I haven't checked out much - but its very encouraging.

Apparently there is a Nester port that uses both processors and its supposedly mega leet. I'll be checking that out later.

[yuckymucky]

I am ordering one just so I can get rid of the health warning screen.

[gondar]

The system will now AUTO boot any NDS file on the flashcart on boot up. If there isn't NDS code on the flashcart, then it goes to the main DS menu.

Sorry for a question that might seem really stupid :) In other words it doesn't "break" it's original functions? What I mean is, you can still play GBA/DS games like you normally would? And is there anyway you can restore the original bios if future games breaks because of some new copyprotection (or is this even likely)?

My cashflow is quite limited during the summer so I have not been able to justify a DS yet, thus I know very little about it. I've more or less just seen pictures of it, but I think I will get one later this year. Playing portable snes in fullspeed sounds like da b0mb, looking foreward to hear about your future experience.

[Shane R. Monroe]

Sorry for a question that might seem really stupid :) In other words it doesn't "break" it's original functions? What I mean is, you can still play GBA/DS games like you normally would? And is there anyway you can restore the original bios if future games breaks because of some new copyprotection (or is this even likely)?

My cashflow is quite limited during the summer so I have not been able to justify a DS yet, thus I know very little about it. I've more or less just seen pictures of it, but I think I will get one later this year. Playing portable snes in fullspeed sounds like da b0mb, looking foreward to hear about your future experience.

Everything seems to work as it should and I understand you can 'roll back' but they don't recommend it since you can't be absolutely sure what you had BEFORE. They are actually SELLING pre-hacked DSs in China or something as retail units.

[sci]

So it can load any type of nds files from any regular flashcart?

[Shane R. Monroe]

So it can load any type of nds files from any regular flashcart?

Nothing commercial will work (yet). Anything homebrew that is "Passme" or WIFIME compatible appears to work fine.

There is supposedly some addressing issue above 4 megs on Flashcarts. I dunno. But nothing has worked that I've tried.

I DID find a nice NDS package containing several homebrews AND all the E3 demos from Nintendo (Meteos and that surgery game kick ass). That works a treat.

[lion2]

Wow! Right now you're convincing me to buy a GP32! If the SNES and Genesis emus work perfect, that's enough for me to order one today. How are the Genesis and SNES emus? Do you have any websites that you recommend on the GP32?



Just to give an idea, here's some mature, often "perfect", GP32 based emulators (again, take this to mean "as good as you can reasonably expect an emulator to be"):

MSX, ZX Spectrum (all models), Amstrad CPC (I think all models), Commodore 64, GB, GBC, COLECOVISION, Sega Master System, Sega Genesis, NES, SNES, Neo Geo Pocket Color, PC Engine, Atari ST, a shedload of MAME games. And of course there's more.

[nukinetix]

Keep in mind it won't be easy to find a GP32 BLU (i.e. not a NLU, BLU+ or a FLU) that is guaranteed to clock at 166mhz, though EBay is your best bet in this case. If you do find one (second hand but good condition is fine), the only thing that might bother you is the fact GP32s don't have a Li-ion recharchable battery; you only need 2 AA batteries though, and most of us use rechargable ones anyway. An external recharger, and a 4-pack of 2300-2500mah work great giving more than 6 hours of continuous use per pair - more than 12 hours total (actually being able to change batteries on the go is an advantage IMHO). Also keep in mind it works with memory cards of the SMC kind - very cheap, but max 128mb capacity.

Genesis is full speed with everything on (including full z80/sound emulation) - SNES is pretty much full speed with full emulation on, sound off - with sound on it's playable but slower than full speed (emulator is still work-in-progress, constantly being updated).

Hope this helps:

http://www.gp32x.com

http://www.gp32x.de
http://www.gp32x.de/cgi-bin/cfiles.cgi?0,0,0,0,5

http://www.gp32.co.nz
http://www.gp32.co.nz/links.php

http://www.gp32news.com/

[nukinetix]

Nothing commercial will work (yet). Anything homebrew that is "Passme" or WIFIME compatible appears to work fine.
This is all I need - I am not interested in running commercial software on a passme anyway.


There is supposedly some addressing issue above 4 megs on Flashcarts. I dunno. But nothing has worked that I've tried.
Not a problem really, that's plenty of space for most things.

[Zaphod]

Nothing commercial will work (yet). Anything homebrew that is "Passme" or WIFIME compatible appears to work fine.

There is supposedly some addressing issue above 4 megs on Flashcarts. I dunno. But nothing has worked that I've tried.

I DID find a nice NDS package containing several homebrews AND all the E3 demos from Nintendo (Meteos and that surgery game kick ass). That works a treat.

Hey Shane, could you tell us more about the surgery game. I am really excited about it. How graphic is it, and is it easy to control with the stylis? I remeber playing a game, I forget what it was called, back on my dads Machintosh Classic. I always had problems with the surgury parts because I was never good with the mouse, always making the cuts to jagged, cause you to lose the patient.

[yuckymucky]

If you are looking for BLU one this is the only place that I know that has them. http://www.gbax.com/new/gp32.html

I have check around a lot of places and that was pretty much all that I found. They are pretty damn expensive though.

[nukinetix]

Unfortunately, I think the ones on gbax.com are all BLU+ (which isn't a disaster, but not what I'd recommend - although I think many/most emulators now have a special BLU+ version compiled, as well)

[gondar]

I remeber playing a game, I forget what it was called, back on my dads Machintosh Classic. I always had problems with the surgury parts because I was never good with the mouse, always making the cuts to jagged, cause you to lose the patient.

Could it be "Life and Death"? http://www.the-underdogs.org/game.php?gameid=636

[Shane R. Monroe]

I've been playing TRAUMA CENTER on the DS (the E3 demo). Its nothing short of amazing. The tactile interface using the touch screen and stylus totally unlocked a new feeling to me. I can't wait for this game.

[Zaphod]

Could it be "Life and Death"? http://www.the-underdogs.org/game.php?gameid=636

Thats it! God that game was hard.