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View Full Version : Snes9x or ZSNES for DS?



Dragonic
December 23rd, 2008, 12:58
I've been thinking about a port of either Snes9x or ZSNES for the DS, and now I decided to post this idea here. I think a port of one of these emulators would be great, because it seems like the development of SnemulDS isn't "simply sleeping", as archeide says. It's more likely dead... I think that's really sad, but if someone would like to port one of the two emulator I've mentioned, then I would be really happy.

It's easy to find the source to both of the emulators, but to make it easier for everyone, here you have the links:

ZSNES_V.1.51 (http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/zsnes/zsnes151src.tar.bz2)

Snes9x_V.1.51 (http://www.geocities.co.jp/SiliconValley-PaloAlto/2560/release/snes9x-1.51-src.tar.bz2)

DanTheManMS
January 8th, 2009, 19:21
ZSNES source is useless as it contains lots of custom assembly code that cannot be ported to the DS.

SNES9X code would theoretically work, but since it uses a software renderer, it would be slow as molasses. All the current SNES emulators for the DS use hardware rendering, in which the DS's dedicated 2D hardware is used to greatly increase the drawing speed at the cost of graphical accuracy. If the entire image is calculated in memory, the graphics look better but each frame must be painted to the screen pixel by pixel, a process that is very time- and CPU-consuming.

Compare NesterDS+ and NES DS to see what a difference a hardware renderer makes. Also compare jEnesisDS v0.4a SW version and v0.4a HW version (this is the only release of jEnesisDS that has a SW renderer version so you must use this to compare rather than the latest release).