Debug 360/PS3 + future of console emulator ports

via http://blackbird.usask.ca/wordpress/?p=25

I have acquired an Xbox 360 XDK recently and am in the process of acquiring a Test PS3 as well. The main reason for me buying these two is to further improve the already existing emulator ports on PlayStation3 – the lack of any decent performance profiling tools was really becoming a hindrance to the future development of the ports, and to get anywhere, I thought it was necessary to take a financial hit and buy proper debug units.

Screenshots

Some still images I’ve taken from the 360 XDK -

360 XDK screenshot album

Future of the PS3 emulator ports

Now that I’m able to target both Xbox 360 and PlayStation3 (and also given that the two consoles are quite similar to each other), I’m planning to make the emulator ports cross-platform in a similar vein to FBANext. FBANext runs on both Xbox 360 and PlayStation3 with only minimal differences. If I take a look at my own PS3 emulator ports – there exists the possibility to do something similar for projects like VBA, SNES9x, FCEU and Genesis Plus GX PS3. VBA PS3 is very heavily based on Lantus’ VBA 360 – and since Lantus does not actively maintain VBA 360 anymore and there is still some work remaining to be done on the 360 front (such as Sonic Advance 1/2 support and D-pad controls) – I’m planning to make a separate project on Google Code so that both platforms will have an up-to-date version of the emulator -

VBANext

https://code.google.com/p/vbanext/

VBANext will target both PS3 and Xbox 360, and will be based on the VBA PS3 codebase. It will most likely supersede VBA PS3 as it stands.

MAME 360/PS3

https://code.google.com/p/mame-360-ps3/

This is Lantus’ MAME 0.72 port to Xbox 360. I have co-ownership of the project – and I will be porting it to PS3 shortly.

Games like Mortal Kombat 1/2/3/Ultimate run at full speed on 360 – similar performance is expected on PS3.

I could target even more machines than just these two – I have DevkitPro set up for Wii and I’m also able to compile for Xbox 1 – but perhaps it’s best to focus on 360/PS3 for now instead of spreading myself too thin. I’m still intent on helping out madmab with his Xbox 1 port of SNES9x 1.52 though -

SNES9x Slim

https://github.com/squarepusher/snes9x-slim

SNES9x Slim aims to be a slimmed-down version of SNES9x for use on platforms that currently struggle to run the latest versions. The codebase still lags behind the PS3 version considerably – but once done, it will target PS3, Wii, Xbox 1, Android, Xbox 360 and other systems. Most of the improvements/removals are totally platform-agnostic.