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ExcruciationX
February 11th, 2007, 15:33
StrmnNrmn has answered some questions asked by his blog users:

Via: strmnnrmn.blogspot.com:


A few common questions cropped up in yesterday's post so I thought I'd deal with them here so everyone could see the responses.

Firstly, lots of people were asking about the possibility of moving the audio processing to ME. I'm really keen on doing this, but I'm not very familiar with the ME yet so I need to spend a few hours investigating it before I can figure out how much work is involved. Maybe I can do a few technical posts about the ME as I find out more about it?

A few people were asking about an ingame menu and screen size.

gotwake424 said:
will there be an ingame menu? that will let you change the size of the screen and other stuff in game?

xabier:
i have just one question: you have mentioned viewport scaling/screen ratio a few months ago. is that going to be featured in Release 9 of daedalus? and i think that i heard somewhere that it should speed up the emulator a little with the new scaling, is that true?

flyinghippo:
One of your earlier posts showed your progress on implementing a 4:3 screen ratio. Would this possibly have any effect on the framerate?

reuben:
A while ago you noted that you had been working on viewport scaling. Will that be implemented in the upcoming release?

I'm currently working on the in game menu - this is the last main thing I want to squeeze into R9. With this you'll be able to change the screen size while the rom is running, as well as a few other things (toggle audio on/off, swap controls etc).

I doubt that knocking the screen size down will help the framerate all that much, as the framerate is still largely limited by the cost of CPU emulation rather than rendering.

From philip:
Do you have plans to implement frameskipping? That would greatly improve the speed, and shouldn't be too hard to add.

on the rise1:
have you ever thought or messed about putting in frameskipping in the emulator?

Now that audio support is in, I think frameskipping makes a lot more sense. I'll see if I can squeeze this in for R9 too.

yatahaze:
can Daedalus run under 300mhz? would that boost those numbers in the table even more?

Unfortunately Daedalus is already clocking everything at the maximum frequency, so there won't be an easy win there :(

imitiaz:
Are the rom files you are using zipped or unzipped? Will the extensions of the rom files even matter anymore?

I was using unzipped rom files. The extension shouldn't matter, provided it's recognised (.v64, .z64, .rom etc) Daedalus should always figure out the correct thing to do with a given rom. I suggest you use a tool like RomCenter to manage the naming of all your roms, and extract them to the roms directory on your PSP as required.

sroon said:
Will expansion pack be inplented in your blessed R9?

The expansion pak should already be supported: 'Expansion Pak: Yes' in the Rom Settings screen (just before the rom launches). If it's not working, it's a bug, and it'll be easy to fix.

nick:
Have you always been able to add audio support? Or did you hold it back because of the slow framerate?

I've been holding off because of the framerate - I just thought it would sound horrible. The framerate is still a limiting factor with audio support, I'll talk a bit more about this soon.

jeffrey said:
Is there any official way to support your work? Either through paypal donations or whatever?

No, not currently. To be honest, I'm a bit uncomfortable about accepting money for this. Financial reward has never been a motivating factor for me, I do this because it's an interesting project with lots of juicy technical problems to solve. If I was to ever accept donations, it would be for a specific goal (e.g. if I broke my development psp and it needed replacing, or to pay for hosting/bandwidth etc).

andrew said:
The best update possible for R9 is an icon for the PSP menu.

Yes, I know :) I do like the Pochi Style icons. I emailed him asking for permission to use them with Daedalus, if I get the go ahead I'll bundle them with R9 by default.

A few people were asking for videos of the work in progress. I'm not all that keen on doing this as I'd rather spend the time getting the final few features in place and releasing early rather than spending the time making videos. You'll be able to play with it yourselves soon enough :)

As for a release date, I'm going skiing for a week on the 25th February, and I'd like to have R9 out before then.

-StrmnNrmn

sroon
February 11th, 2007, 16:27
Teehee theres me:P
anyway will be awsome for the wally comat list because the expansion pack works:)
( O ) ( O )

Lerkan
February 11th, 2007, 16:28
nice :D

camcorderdoctor
February 11th, 2007, 16:57
I am excited - I can't wait to check it out - I saw the sceenshots that's incredible!!:thumbup:

gunntims0103
February 11th, 2007, 16:59
This is great news, please like to his blog :)

cal360
February 11th, 2007, 17:03
I'll be glad when this comes out its sounding great

Gene
February 11th, 2007, 17:14
wow StrmnNrmn is probably one of the most informative coders in my opinion. StrmnNrmn, keep up the amazing coding.

ExcruciationX
February 11th, 2007, 17:22
I'll be glad when this comes out its sounding great
I'll say. :)

Zion
February 11th, 2007, 17:38
This really is exellent news.

I love strmmnrmns exellently detailed progress reports and seeing as he indicated that sound may be moved to the me proccessor and frameskip should be added, i feel that mario64 will "feel" like full speed or near too it with this release :)

factor remix
February 11th, 2007, 17:41
25th february..thats a lot, but it worth to wait :)

Kramer
February 11th, 2007, 17:57
25th february..thats a lot, but it worth to wait :)

Not really it's only like 2 weeks. considering how long we have been waiting fo an update 2 weeks is nothing.

Shadowblind
February 11th, 2007, 18:03
Hopefully it'll be out before Mardi Gras break, a full week away from school! :D

xg917
February 11th, 2007, 18:25
he said that he is going Skiing on the 25th, and that he is going to try to release it earlier than the 25th
so we dont have to wait that long, we are at the 11th, maybe we will get it on 20th

johnsk
February 11th, 2007, 18:41
I'd rather be interested whether it will be possible to get near full speed (or even full speed) emulation in the long run. Does StrmnNrmn still have some tricks up his sleeve? All these optimizations sound sweet and they really help, but does the code still have places that will really speed up things? Can't wait for R9 and subsequent builds..

factor remix
February 11th, 2007, 19:23
Not really it's only like 2 weeks. considering how long we have been waiting fo an update 2 weeks is nothing.

if you put it that way... its nothing:)

dj2005
February 11th, 2007, 19:30
Great news.

BrooksyX
February 11th, 2007, 19:35
Sounds like we should be expecting a release in the next week or two. This is great to hear. I am just dying for this latest release.

brainpan
February 11th, 2007, 19:46
I'd rather be interested whether it will be possible to get near full speed (or even full speed) emulation in the long run. Does StrmnNrmn still have some tricks up his sleeve? All these optimizations sound sweet and they really help, but does the code still have places that will really speed up things? Can't wait for R9 and subsequent builds..


I think StrmnNrmn said something about game specific optimizations so maybe after he goes as far as he can with general emulation of the N64 he will try that route.

CaptainMorgan4
February 11th, 2007, 19:47
I'm so happy StrmnNrmn has returned and R9 is looking amazing, I can't wait till it's released to start trying various games. I also can't wait until Wally and others come out with edited versions of R9 with possible graphical fixes (if we even need it) and such things as that.

starogre
February 11th, 2007, 20:04
gah i'm still excited to know if diddy kong racing, dk64, or super smash bros will work :P

couldn't he also release his source code to other programmers so he can get more help with this, if he's stumped?

xg917
February 11th, 2007, 20:20
i think super smash bros will work

emuking
February 11th, 2007, 20:24
awesome what hes done in such a small amount of time :) so can we expect a release on the 24th :)

xg917
February 11th, 2007, 20:42
or maybe a little earlier. lol, we never know

salomon st
February 11th, 2007, 21:08
i hope he fixed the saves in zelda

gr42178
February 11th, 2007, 21:37
Cant wait for this one!

aries2k4
February 11th, 2007, 22:28
Wow, this is great news. I didnīt think I could get excited on an emu since pops came out but this is one emu that Iīm really looking forward to.

NeoXCS
February 11th, 2007, 23:10
I can't wait for this release. This is one of my favorite projects for the PSP! Good luck StrmnNrmn! :D

sroon
February 12th, 2007, 00:19
i hope he fixed the saves in zelda

lol I know how to save in Zelda so if you need help just pm me n il tell u how:)
( O ) ( O );)

pkmaximum
February 12th, 2007, 03:14
Zelda still isn't looking that good (speed wise) in the upcoming release, I think he said it averages out around 13 fps. Which is good, but if that is the frame rate of the game currently with a good dyranec engine we may never see Zelda playable (near full speed (30fps) ) w/sound.

But still I would be totally phyched if most of the other 8 - 16 mb games worked great =D

ICE
February 12th, 2007, 03:48
were those stats he gave for games with sound enabled? if so turning it off would speed it up a little.. anywho since i have been a nintendo fan-boy for my entire life this is the one thing ive wanted more than anything on psp so StrmnNrmn thank you soooo much man.

pkmaximum
February 12th, 2007, 04:29
No unfort. the stats he gave us did not include sound. So don't expect sound to not slow down the emulation until it takes a look at the ME. Because there is no way we could have sound run in the main CPU of the PSP. But still R10 we may have sound running through the ME, and once that happens decent N64 emulation will not be too much out of reach =]

BelmontSlayer
February 12th, 2007, 04:33
As for a release date, I'm going skiing for a week on the 25th February, and I'd like to have R9 out before then.

OMG. My birthday is on the 22nd! This will be a great present...