Homebrew W.I.P. Nestopia port!

[Deleted User]

The 3DS might not be fast enough to handle it at constant full speed without extensive modifications to the core (which might end up sacrificing accuracy), and at that point, using a less accurate emulator like FCEUX would make more sense, since the focus is speed more than accuracy. I think that's what we're trying to find out while Steve improves the speed via GPU rendering. Once that stone's had the water squeezed out of it, then we'll see where that leaves us.

Yeah, most of the speed issues are likely in the emulator itself. I ran it once with graphics disabled and it still ran a bit slow. It's likely a need for optimization in the NES PPU and/or CPU code.

 

[daxtsu]

Looks like they're going to make the 3DS an official platform for RetroArch soon: https://github.com/libretro/RetroArch/pull/1559

 

[Idaho]

Let's hope it will bring more emulation to the 3DS, for now it's rather poor, only blargSNES works well :/

 

[Sizednochi]

Looks like they're going to make the 3DS an official platform for RetroArch soon: https://github.com/libretro/RetroArch/pull/1559

I thought I heard SquarePusher saying they wouldn't, that's nice to see. Really looking forward to it.

 

[Deleted User]

Looks like they're going to make the 3DS an official platform for RetroArch soon: https://github.com/libretro/RetroArch/pull/1559

Nice! That'd certainly blow this out of the water.

 

[Kikirini]

I finally got a chance to try this out. Great job so far! I'm really looking forward to future developments.

 

[weatMod]

Looks like they're going to make the 3DS an official platform for RetroArch soon: https://github.com/libretro/RetroArch/pull/1559

nice i was about to ask yesterday is twinaphex/squarepusher was officially working on this
wasn't sure if the aliaspider was him,guess not

i hope he adds support for 3d

i know he said before he had no interest in 3ds, glad to see he has changed his mind, now that here is more documentation on 3ds
i think 3ds is the most natural platform for these emulators
the controls are perfect plus 2nd screen for emulator option
id rather play these emulators on 3ds over any other platform

 

[davhuit]

The 3DS might not be fast enough to handle it at constant full speed without extensive modifications to the core (which might end up sacrificing accuracy), and at that point, using a less accurate emulator like FCEUX would make more sense, since the focus is speed more than accuracy. I think that's what we're trying to find out while Steve improves the speed via GPU rendering. Once that stone's had the water squeezed out of it, then we'll see where that leaves us.

But then, you have to put some work in it to get a better accuracy, so I suppose it might be better to start from a pretty accurate one then rework it a bit to get it more fast (a bit like Bsnes/Higan did. There's an accuracy core and a faster one).

And I can be wrong but I think I understood the aim was to help other ports, by doing more or less a "standard thing" :

One of my goals is to not touch the actual NES emulator code, allowing the libretro frontend code to be reused on other emulator cores. Of course, if that proves too slow, I can always delve into the NES rendering code and make some changes.

 

[minexew]

Looks like they're going to make the 3DS an official platform for RetroArch soon: https://github.com/libretro/RetroArch/pull/1559

Born too late to explore earth.

Born too early to explore space.

Born just in time to emulate the 3DS... on a 3DS.

 

[davhuit]

No hurry at all but just wondered if there were any news about the emulator? (as the last github update about the GPU is 28 days old).

Again, thanks for your work

 

[Deleted User]

No hurry at all but just wondered if there were any news about the emulator? (as the last github update about the GPU is 28 days old).

Again, thanks for your work

I've kind of paused work on it for now. I've been busy with other projects like FBI, I kind of got stuck after realizing that the texture copy input had to have a power-of-two size as well, and now that RetroArch is getting an official 3DS implementation, there isn't really much of a point, as this is a port of a libretro core.

 

[the_randomizer]

I've kind of paused work on it for now. I've been busy with other projects like FBI, I kind of got stuck after realizing that the texture copy input had to have a power-of-two size as well, and now that RetroArch is getting an official 3DS implementation, there isn't really much of a point, as this is a port of a libretro core.

But how do we know how well RetroArch 3DS will fare?

 

[Deleted User]

But how do we know how well RetroArch 3DS will fare?

Well, it seems to be using some form of GPU rendering already, and it seems to have working audio/input. I was just rendering the full framebuffer to the screen as a texture, so it should be at least on-par. Not to mention, it'd work with more cores out of the box.

 

[the_randomizer]

Well, it seems to be using some form of GPU rendering already, and it seems to have working audio/input. I was just rendering the full framebuffer to the screen as a texture, so it should be at least on-par. Not to mention, it'd work with more cores out of the box.

I wonder what cores they plan on porting over...

 

[davhuit]

I've kind of paused work on it for now. I've been busy with other projects like FBI, I kind of got stuck after realizing that the texture copy input had to have a power-of-two size as well, and now that RetroArch is getting an official 3DS implementation, there isn't really much of a point, as this is a port of a libretro core.

I'm not really fan of all-in-one emulators because it's often less accurate that a specific emulator (because you have to fix a lot of emulators and can't really focus on one) but okay.

Seems the 3DS emulator scene is pretty doomed :/ (BlargSnes, CitrAGB, Nestopia, 3DNES, all of them are actually in pause).

Seems the most advanced one is the gameboy one but it's still lacking hardware scaling so unfortunately, can't really be used confortably for now).

Thanks for you work, though!

 

[Psi-hate]

I'm not really fan of all-in-one emulators because it's often less accurate that a specific emulator but okay.

Seems the 3DS emulator scene is pretty doomed :/ (BlargSnes, CitrAGB, Nestopia, 3DNES, all of them are actually in pause).

Seems the most advanced one is the gameboy one but it's still lacking hardware scaling.

Thanks for you work, though!

It's funny how each developer is working on something to fix/help them improve. Blarg, Citra, and 3DNES are all postponed because the developers are working on bigger projects to help practice and hone their abilities and knowledge. Take shinyquagsire for example. He'sin the KARL team, and he's there to get inside and work out the 3ds, which will let emulators like CitraAGB to run amazingly. (He said that he can easily do it now. )

 

[the_randomizer]

I'm not really fan of all-in-one emulators because it's often less accurate that a specific emulator but okay.

Seems the 3DS emulator scene is pretty doomed :/ (BlargSnes, CitrAGB, Nestopia, 3DNES, all of them are actually in pause).

Seems the most advanced one is the gameboy one but it's still lacking hardware scaling.

Thanks for you work, though!

RetroArch is only a GUI and independent of the actual emulators, not truly all-in-one as the cores are also swappable. RetroArch also, at least on PC, has the best iterations of the emulator cores that have been ported over. the GUI just runs on top of it.

 

[Deleted User]

I'm not really fan of all-in-one emulators because it's often less accurate that a specific emulator but okay.

Seems the 3DS emulator scene is pretty doomed :/ (BlargSnes, CitrAGB, Nestopia, 3DNES, all of them are actually in pause).

Seems the most advanced one is the gameboy one but it's still lacking hardware scaling.

Thanks for you work, though!

RetroArch is actually pretty good, especially since it incorporates full emulators as cores most of the time. Plus, this Nestopia port *is* a port of a libretro core, so there's that.

I may work on adding hardware scaling to GameYob soon. Perhaps I'll get around to it tomorrow. Shouldn't be too hard.

 

[davhuit]

So, it mean people will be able to release those emulators as stand-alones emulators (removing the gui which is often pretty useless) ?

But how someone will be able to port/maintain so much emulators at the same time ?

I can see how it can be done on Windows as most systems are already emulated, but that's not the case on 3DS?

 

[Deleted User]

So, it mean people will be able to release those emulators as stand-alones emulators (removing the gui which is often pretty useless) ?

But how someone will be able to port/maintain so much emulators at the same time ?

I can see how it can be done on Windows as most systems are already emulated, but that's not the case on 3DS?

Only RetroArch has to be maintained for a system, usually. The emulation cores are usually fairly flexible, using libretro for platform-specific stuff.