N64 Emu

[N64DUDE]

does anyone want to or think a nintendo 64 emulator will be ported over to the dreamcast? i heard monkey64 will be available to psp and dreamcast users. i would love to see project 64 on the dc.

[Eric]

I dont think N64 is possible but i heard sometime in the past months that there working on one i could be wrong. But there trying to cut roms into 2 i think so that ram can be handled by the Dreamcast. Dont get your hopes up.

Eric

[Darksaviour69]

i don't think we will ever get a full speed N64 emu, but we might get something that runs something at some sort of speed at some stage ;)

[SnoopKatt]

I saw something about someone working on one, but it looks far from being complete or even being able to run anything.

[nerdocalypse]

i would be absolutely reborn if there were an n64 emu on DC, but even the SNES emu is kinda lame... dont know if its the unqualified coders or the hardware limitations (i'm guessing the former, tho)

[ACID]

Theres always hope.

[Elven6]

Why is this a problem? I thought the Dreamcast was more powerful?

[Junixx]

A system need to be alot more powerful to emulate another system, i would say 7-10x more powerful, someone correct me if im wrong

[quzar]

N64 on the Dreamcast is possible. If it's any indication, bleem was looking into creating an n64 cart reader for the DC, which indicates that they thought it was possible.

Will it ever happen? yes.
Will it be fullspeed? most likely not.
Playable? maybe.

[Nemo2006X]

bleem was looking into creating an n64 cart reader for the DC

Do you mean to say Rand Linden thought about it ?

[ACID]

A system need to be alot more powerful to emulate another system, i would say 7-10x more powerful, someone correct me if im wrong
it need to be atleast 4 times the power of the emulating counsil:D

[quzar]

it need to be atleast 4 times the power of the emulating counsil:D

That's an extremely arbitrary number.

[ACID]

Thenlet us all know. For thats what other coders say.

[quzar]

it's 100% dependent on the emulated system and the target platform.

[ACID]

So its about what i was told then.

[Elven6]

So what did we agree on?

[GPF]

I was able to port Monkey64 for the 2D portion to the dreamcast and was able to play the homebrew pong game on the dreamcast.

Unfortunetly I know very little about 3d coding, and even less about the dreamcast opengl like api and nothing about the psp 3d api

Troy(GPF)
http://gpf.dcemu.co.uk

[Elven6]

So the only problem here is the fact that the rom file is to big to be loaded onto the main ram correct?

[Smurph]

So the only problem here is the fact that the rom file is to big to be loaded onto the main ram correct?

Pretty much, and the processor and GPU emulation.

N64 cart = ~50mB
DC RAM = 16MB

[SSaxdude]

Mario 64 is only 6 mb. But the Dreamcast isn't powerful enough to emulate the N64.

[Smurph]

Mario 64 is only 6 mb. But the Dreamcast isn't powerful enough to emulate the N64.

It depends on the cart. However, it does have 3D hardware, unlike the PSP.

[SnoopKatt]

An N64 emulator could probably be designed for certain games...

[Elven6]

Mabye a team should work on this so we could get one lol.

[sixtyten]

An N64 emulator could probably be designed for certain games...

That's what I was thinking...I'm sure if a great emulator was coded that was almost or as close as we could get to full speed, a system could be developed that could divide the ROMS up and do proper loads off of a disc. Maybe some sort of...I dunno...program that you coiuld plug a ROM in and do very little code manipulating. If it were too complciated to emulate single games we'd never get anything done. Maybe Mario 64 and OOT.

[SnoopKatt]

Don't forget Goldeneye :)

[peens]

it must be possible in some way shape or form. i mean if dreamcast can handle dreamcast games which are larger than 64 games. mind you i understand that emulating is totally different than just reading a normal game but still....theoretically it should be possile right.... right..????
yeah i am probably wrong..

[Darksaviour69]

dreamcast games are loaded from the disc into memory (ram) in small parts. But with cart based console the cart pretty much becomes part on the memory of the console, and so is not structured into parts. Thats why emulators have to load the whole rom into memory. but the dc has got 16mb or ram, so a rom of over 16 can't fit.

but yes there is away around this Using MMU for loading large rom files. AES4ALL does this for large Neo cart games like Metal slug X ( which is about 27 Mbs). you have to convert the rom with a prorgram that breaks it up into smaller parts for the emu can load, but this method is far from perfect and can lead of miss gfx, sounds bugs.

Having said all that, i sure quzar will come in a say " well actually that not 100% right (or even 50% right), i'm a smart ass, and i will tell you how it works...." ;)

[quzar]

dreamcast games are loaded from the disc into memory (ram) in small parts. But with cart based console the cart pretty much becomes part on the memory of the console, and so is not structured into parts. Thats why emulators have to load the whole rom into memory. but the dc has got 16mb or ram, so a rom of over 16 can't fit.

but yes there is away around this Using MMU for loading large rom files. AES4ALL does this for large Neo cart games like Metal slug X ( which is about 27 Mbs). you have to convert the rom with a prorgram that breaks it up into smaller parts for the emu can load, but this method is far from perfect and can lead of miss gfx, sounds bugs.

Having said all that, i sure quzar will come in a say " well actually that not 100% right (or even 50% right), i'm a smart ass, and i will tell you how it works...." ;)

I heard my name! =P Yea, that's mostly right, but it's important to note that the mmu is not necessary to do this (and part of the reason that it's so buggy is that kos is designed to work specifically with the mmu turned off). The general Idea is to simply load up only as much as is needed at a time. With arcade systems it should be a LOT easier than how it was done in aes4all because the data is already spanning multiple files (and is usually divided by level or area of the game.

Also, a 16mb rom is way higher than the Dreamcast can fit, you have to remember that in the 16mb of ram we also need to fit: the emulator itself (maybe 1mb), all the data associated with it (which is why I don't use graphical menus =p), the emulated system's ram, buffers for the gfx and audio that is being sent to the pvr and aica, and all sorts of smaller temporary buffers. Depending on the system this usually leaves us with not much more than 8mb of free space. Lots of people say: "well what about the video and sound ram? there's an extra 10mb there" and they are absolutely right, but it is extremely slow compared to main ram, and is meant to be used by the video and sound systems. I know warmtoe in one of him SGAs used video ram to store one rom to load a large game, and in some of my wip things I've stored data to both video and sound ram, with the intention of swapping it into main ram when it's needed (which is faster than reading from the GDROM).

I don't doubt that N64 emulation could be done at good speed on the Dreamcast, although rom loading and control mapping would certainly be at the low ends of what will make it difficult.

[peens]

lol @ darksaviour

way to predict the future:P