Unified Emulator?

[Tesseract]

What would be the chances of all the homebrew emulation coders banding together to make their emulation cores all part of a single program?

For example, you'd start this Omega Emulator program, and scan through your ROM folders. You'd choose the ROM to play, then the program would automatically detect which emulator core to use and run the game.

I realise it's a lot simpler for stuff like MasterBoy because the three systems emulated all basically use the same Z80 processor... But would something like this be possible?

One program to rule them all from C64 to N64? ;)

[Gizmo356]

There is an emulator similar to what you describe but I haven't seen an update in ages.

Check it out; http://psp-news.dcemu.co.uk/e-mulator-v0-82f-multi-system-emulator-for-the-psp-43005.html

[Tesseract]

Weeellll, not beng updated would be a good reason for someone else to pick up the mantel.

Did e[mulator] use a single similar core for all of the consoles it emulated? What I was thinking was more along the lines of having StrmnNrmn contribute to an N64 Engine, Exophase contribute to a GBA Engine.... that sort of thing. Who knows... there may be some useful commonalities that could simplify things.

The PSP emulation scene seems to be less cutthroat and more cooperative than past Emulation scenes... I wouldn't have suggested something like this for the PC or XBox...

[Exophase]

Not a good idea because emulators like N64 and GBA need every ounce of memory they can get and can't afford to share it. A system to swap out modules would be cumbersome and annoying to program for, even with PRX's.

[Tesseract]

Ah, gotcha. Thanks for the input on that! Would this be the main reason for the lack of GB/GBC compatibility on gPSP as well?

[Exophase]

That and I have no interest in writing yet another GB/GBC emulator.

[Tesseract]

Heh. Fair enough. The work you HAVE done is greatly appreciated!