DCEmu Homebrew Emulation & Theme Park News
wraggster
by Published on August 31st, 2006 21:43
Today its our honour to interview RyanB the coder of Picodrive DS, which is a Genesis/Megadrive emulator for the Nintendo DS.
Check out the full interview at DCEmu Interviews --> http://interviews.dcemu.co.uk
Thanks to RyanB for the interview. ...by Published on August 31st, 2006 21:43
Today its our honour to interview RyanB the coder of Picodrive DS, which is a Genesis/Megadrive emulator for the Nintendo DS.
Check out the full interview at DCEmu Interviews --> http://interviews.dcemu.co.uk
Thanks to RyanB for the interview. ...by Published on August 31st, 2006 21:38
Today its our honour to interview the coder of Picodrive DS, which is a Genesis/Megadrive emulator for the Nintendo DS.
DCEmu Can you tell us where were you born, where you live,etc.?
RyanB:I was born in central KY, USA, and continue to live there.
DCEmu What qualifications do you have?
RyanB:I have a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science with a minor in Mathematics, and just started my Master's in CS. My day job is being
the sole PC admin for a small/medium business, where I handle everything from managing our LTSP install to developing and maintaining intranet web apps.
DCEmu What made you get into computers/consoles?
RyanB:My parents got me an Apple IIe when I was a kid, figuring it would "last through college". Obviously it didn't, but that followed up with
PC-clones and trusty old BASIC, which is what got me interested in programming. As for consoles, my first (and for a long time only) was the NES.
DCEmu What projects/coding have you done previous to your Genesis Emulator for the Nintendo DS?
RyanB:Mostly stuff for school and work that wouldn't be of interest to most people, or small personal projects. Things like compilers, video
processing algorithms, large web apps, 3D engines, general OSS stuff, and Linux kernel hacking.
DCEmu What inspired you to code a Genesis Emulator to the Nintendo DS and what difficulties did you have getting it to run properly ?
RyanB:People complaining about the lack of a good one, mostly. I think there were one or two Genesis emulator ports, but they ran at about 1fps.
Thankfully I had a great codebase to work from with Dave's Picodrive, so really the only issues I had initially were figuring out DS-specific things like graphics and FAT access.
DCEmu Can Full Speed and Full Compatability be accessed with your emulator in the future ?
RyanB:I think 30fps is a reasonable goal, though that may be able to be surpassed. Compatibility is already pretty good, although memory usage in the latest version appears to have broken some 3MB ROMs. The next release should have some support for large ROMs on Supercards and in appended mode (and hopefully save states for appended mode as well). I know everyone has been asking about sound, but realistically it's probably not going to happen unless it's running on ARM7 (running it on ARM9 semi-works, but drags emulation down to 6fps), and moving it over is not going to be an easy task.
DCEmu Whats the good and bad points about developing for the Nintendo DS?
RyanB:Good:
-developing for a portable console is just cool
-writing and improving low-level code is very educational
-with devkitPro you have a very familiar development toolchain if you've already used GCC
Bad:
-difficult to debug (though I think masscat has picked up the wireless gdb stub project, which is good)
-difficult to use both processors to their fullest
-limited hardware resources
-limited documentation
DCEmu What got you interested in development for the DS?
RyanB:I fooled around with GBA homebrew at the very beginning of that kind of thing, and had some previous experience hacking around on ARM stuff and it's an architecture I like. I owned a DS at launch, and sort of paid attention to what was going on with the initial efforts to get code running, but didn't really get in to it myself until after I
found out about devkitPro/libnds.
DCEmu Do you have any projects, that you would like to start for the DS?
RyanB:I have a couple of ports I'm interested in doing, right now I'm mostly waiting for libfat to get dirent support so that I don't have to rewrite file code. I don't really want to talk about them though and inadvertently discourage someone else from working on them, or get anyone's hopes up. I'd also like to do some original things outside of
just ports.
DCEmu What would you like to see ported to the DS and what is realistically the limit to what can be done?
RyanB:I think someone talked a while back about working on a port of Cave Story to the GBA, I'd like to see that actually finished and the source put up, as I think a DS version would be nice as well (to take advantage of the added resolution and buttons, for example). Realistically I think all kinds of things are possible, as resourceful
homebrew developers have shown time and time again. Of course there's certain technical limits to what can be done from a processing standpoint, but what that imposes as far as what can be done overall I would be hesitant to say, since human ingenuity can get around that to a small degree.
DCEmu How could the DS Scene be improved ?
I think there just needs to be some more documentation, collaboration, and momentum. There seem to be some new resources coming around that might help, but at the moment there's not really any good "bottom-up" documentation on programming DS-specific things such as video hardware, sleeping, and so on.
DCEmu Whats your favourite games from each console you have owned ?
RyanB:NES: High Speed
Game Gear: Sonic Triple Trouble
Genesis: Sonic the Hedgehog
SNES: Chrono Trigger ...by Published on August 31st, 2006 20:49
PSP owners on firmware 2.71 have a big choice very soon, (well as soon as either the downgrader or eloader are released).
Do you downgrade or do you opt to use the Eloader ?
Both using the downgrader and Eloader will require you to be a bit knowledgable with PSP stuff but id say the Eloader was the safer option.
So to all DCEmu Members and bearing in mind that neither has been released yet, If it affects you would you downgrade or use Eloader?
Ill be interested to see the general feelings on this issue. ...by Published on August 31st, 2006 20:32
La fear has released a new PMP encoding kit for the Mac, heres the info:
Hello everyone, I know some people would like to have a tool for encoding pmp or pmp_avc on the Mac. The one PEnGUIn (PMP Encoder Software) was released finally. It's a easy, small software. And there are two parts PEnGUIn(Encoder) and PEnGUIn(Muxer) included. PEnGUIn(Encoder) is a frontend program for mplayer, mencoder and x264(modified for compatible with pmp_avc_muxer). It means that you still need to download these binaries for mac seperately. And the other, thanks for Jonny's efforts, according to his souce codes of Perl Modules and then I can produce PEnGUI(Muxer).
About PEnGUI(Muxer), I just make a Cocoa GUI based on Perl Modules of Jonny.
For getting more information about PMP and relative source codes, you can visit Jonny's website.
Everyone who loves playing pmp movie should take a look of it.
http://jonny.leffe.dnsalias.com/
You can find PMP_MUXER, PMP_MUXER_AVC, PMP_DEMUXER and x264 source codes in it.
Download and Give Feedback Via Comments ...by Published on August 31st, 2006 20:15
StrmnNrmn posted a new news update to his Nintendo64 emulator, heres the info:
Display List Debugger
I've been working on a few new features which I'm eager to talk about, but I thought it would be interesting to give some details about some of the tools I use to help me debug various problems with the emulator.
Some of the hardest problems to identify and fix are various graphical issues that crop up when running certain roms. Sometimes it's unhandled combiner modes (this is what results in the purple-and-black textures seen in so many screenshots). Other times there are black or white polygons, or scrambled textures and so on. Sometimes the screen is just totally black
When I'm trying to figure out what's causing a particular problem my first step is to recompile Daedalus with the Display List Debugger enabled. If you've been playing with the source, this is done by setting CFLAGS = $(DEBUG_DLIST_CFLAGS) in the Makefile, and linking in Source/PSPGraphics/DisplayListDebugger.o.
The debugger is accessed by pausing emulation and hitting the right trigger button. You need to have PSPLink set up in order to use it, as I didn't want to clutter up the display with various debbuging output. When the debugger is activated, it keeps the emulator paused and replays the current display list over and over. The first thing is does is dump out a list of all the commands in the display list to a logfile which looks something like this (I've edited it somewhat to create a simple example):
For those interested in the very long newspost check it out Here ...by Published on August 31st, 2006 20:10
The ACAMM animated PSP magazine series continues with an early October release of “SAMURAI CHAMPLOO”. This issue of ACAMM continues with the flip-based animation concept including 68 pages of action packed page sequences. This issue also includes special animates scenes directly from Samurai Champloo that you just can’t miss. If you haven’t checked out Ergo Proxy yet, be sure and get it along with this latest release of ACAMM.
Download Here ...by Published on August 31st, 2006 20:09
Issue 15 of the XTREME PSP Magazine is now available to download. It is packed with over 90 pages of great content including previews of The Sims 2: Pets, Myst and Gun Showdown, and reviews of Tekken: Dark Resurrection, Juiced: Eliminator and Miani Vice. And all the regular content including tips and cheats, the latest news, a new competition and more… Download it now.
Download Here ...by Published on August 31st, 2006 20:07
Heres an excerpt
SOE stopped by our offices with a playable copy of Cash Money Chaos, their recently announced shooter for the PSP. While there have only been a couple of shooters on the handheld, none of them have focused upon the fast-paced, shoot anything that moves experience. Cash Money Chaos should easily solve that issue, with lots of fun for both single and multiple players across a variety of radically twisted levels, letting you blow away everything from clowns to chickens with wild abandon.
Easily inspired by Smash TV and Total Carnage, the story behind Cash Money Chaos is being told with tongue firmly planted in cheek. Four humans named Sonny, Cher, Ike and Tina have been captured by aliens who have a love of game shows and the 1970s. Rather than the standard abduction and experimentation scenario that people have always heard of, the aliens decide to put the humans into a twisted version of a game show to fight for their very lives. However, survival isn't the only prize that the characters will win as they play their way through the various episodes; just like "The Price is Right," the characters can win cash and prizes as they shoot their way through more than 50 separate levels.
Full preview at IGN ...by Published on August 31st, 2006 19:56
Another update from the coder behind the Command and Conquer Clone for DS Project and not me (godknows who thought i did it
)
Heres the update
You can now go into any map from the main GUI, although currently you cannot leave the GUI again. I'm now working on about three things at once....
#1 Callbacks for the debug menu. Will let me have better debug functionality. Shouldn't take long to add.
#2 Map Editor - I need to produce some bigger maps, so this needs some work to make it easier. Going to add the template support to it so expect some much prettier looking maps soon
#3 Tilemap scrolling - Still haven't coded this in! I'm not expecting it to be a lot of work.
The main job will be updating the map editor. Once I've got these three done I'll add a little polish, get it working nicely on target hardware then release a first beta test. It will let you load the game, choose a level and view it. Nothing particularly exciting but it will be a big project milestone for me. It will prove the game works on everyone else's machines, will iron out problems with the asset conversion process and loads more. It'll probably get to this point in about a week from now
More Info --> http://cncds_project.livejournal.com/ ...- Search DCEmu
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Catherine: Full Body’s English translation for the Vita