Nintendo 64 Emulation for PSP

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Wally
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Nintendo 64 Emulation for PSP

Post by Wally »

Hi All,

Seeing that nearly everyone in the PSP scene wants an Nintendo 64 emulator so badly, is there anyone here who would like to take on the task to complete Monkey64 or finish Porting daedalus or even make their own New Nintendo 64 emulator. Monkey64 is thriving for attention as its not quite complete yet (practically a port of Project 64).
Daedalus is a completely different story, its probably a bit chunky on the edges and confusing at most.




If anyone would like to take on this task please post!!!
gbj1
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Post by gbj1 »

How is the current progress on the emulator projects?
it is most helpful to post some source here if avaliable, then we can see how to get started.
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Wally
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Post by Wally »

Daedalus - Dynarec is in but lacks a lot of optimisation / not built from ground up
http://sourceforge.net/projects/daedalus-n64

Monkey 64, built from the ground up specifically for the PSP
http://nemo.dcemu.co.uk (or request source from PSmonkey)
gbj1
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Post by gbj1 »

Thanks, I'll look into them.
I suggest we can refer to other success emulators to see how they handle the performance issue. Devs should have docs on this.
Bytrix
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Post by Bytrix »

I wouldn't even consider attempting to work on these projects unless you have experience with N64 development or emulation. I have no doubt a full speed N64 emulator could be developed, but it would take many developers working together each working on emulating their own piece of the N64 hardware (the way the best emulators are usually made). Only when you know a chip inside out can you make the best emulated core for it, and it's virtually impossible for a single developer to create a full emulator.. and if they did alot of it wouldn't be optimized.

Personally, I have no experience at all with the N64 hardware so eventhough I would say I'm a decent programmer I can't help with the project. I look forward to seeing any developments with N64 emulation on PSP though.
gbj1
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Post by gbj1 »

One won't need to be very familar to the chip to help developing an emulator. ppl can do some improvements on the code for a particular job. i.e. find another way to implement memory management, etc.
duane
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Post by duane »

gbj1 wrote:One won't need to be very familar to the chip to help developing an emulator. ppl can do some improvements on the code for a particular job. i.e. find another way to implement memory management, etc.
I agree. Speed and memory management are Daedalus' biggest flaws. This is supposed to be dramatically improved the new release round the corner.
StrmnNrmn
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Post by StrmnNrmn »

I'd agree that Daedalus's biggest challenge is speed - you're right that R9 will show a big improvement here. Personally I think that after speed, compatibility is the main issue that Daedalus needs to address.

I'm not sure what you're refering to by 'memory management' though? Are you talking about the general approach to emulating the n64's memory, or something else?

As I see it the two main flaws with Daedalus' memory handling are a) virtual memory lookups are horribly slow (the speed of most other MMIO accesses is largely irrelevant due to the relative infrequency at which they're called) and b) some MMIO is still not handled correct (namely FlashRAM.)

I think from a memory point of view both those problems are pretty trivial. I've been toying with the idea of using information from the trace generation to determine how to optimise each memory access in the generated code (i.e. I can detect whether a code fragment is typically accessing virtual or physical memory, and optimise the generated code around this.) Hopefully this will significantly improve the virtual memory handling, but I probably won't get chance to work on this for a couple of releases.
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Wally
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Post by Wally »

Hey,

Its good that you can chat here away from all the n00bs (except me :S)

Compatibility is an issue but most importantly I think that people care about performance rather compatibility.

Playing their favourite game in the levels at full speed, hence showing off mario 64 or zelda without getting their head pulled in by saying its too slow or w/e. I do suppose compatibility will give us more chances to save w/e.

I'd like to get in touch with you again somehow just to discuss a few minor issues (I dont really care about the emails sent to you much as its discussing Blend modes which im assuming you have found a way to fix it up so that no Blend modes need to be added (Phew!)

Give or take people will hound at you no matter what the issue is (see your blog for examples) I will be discontinuing the Spiff Up releases hence enhancing the compatibility list much more (That is, if you get the blend modes fixed which i had noticed in the Spiderman screenshot you posted the glitches was much less)

So like I said, ignore those past emails. I will try to keep you up to date on bugs etc via compatibility.spiffup.org.

Have a good Day / Night
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Wally
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Post by Wally »

Hey,

Its good that you can chat here away from all the n00bs (except me :S)

Compatibility is an issue but most importantly I think that people care about performance rather compatibility.

Playing their favourite game in the levels at full speed, hence showing off mario 64 or zelda without getting their head pulled in by saying its too slow or w/e. I do suppose compatibility will give us more chances to save w/e.

I'd like to get in touch with you again somehow just to discuss a few minor issues (I dont really care about the emails sent to you much as its discussing Blend modes which im assuming you have found a way to fix it up so that no Blend modes need to be added (Phew!)

Give or take people will hound at you no matter what the issue is (see your blog for examples) I will be discontinuing the Spiff Up releases hence enhancing the compatibility list much more (That is, if you get the blend modes fixed which i had noticed in the Spiderman screenshot you posted the glitches was much less)

So like I said, ignore those past emails. I will try to keep you up to date on bugs etc via http://compatibility.spiffup.org.

Have a good Day / Night, i would really appreciate it if you replied here than email
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Wally
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Post by Wally »

Sorry was getting an error. (delete)
Last edited by Wally on Mon Feb 19, 2007 1:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Wally
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Post by Wally »

duane
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Post by duane »

StrmnNrmn wrote: I'm not sure what you're refering to by 'memory management' though? Are you talking about the general approach to emulating the n64's memory, or something else?
Well, I was referring to memory management being related to speed. If, like you said, virtual memory handling was improved, I personally think that speed could increase significantly. Correct me if I'm wrong, of course. I'm not any elite programmer and neither do I have a lot of experience with memory addressing.

Duane

P.S. Don't get me wrong; as a fellow programmer, I'm really into all of your work :)
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