DraStic Nintendo DS emulator teaser video


I suspected as much :)It's kind of ironic that emulating the illegal stuff is actually easier than the homebrew ;-) Thanks for considering it though.D.
What do you mean with "illegal stuff" ? I don't see how Drastic does anything illegal. Are Snes, Nes, C64 and whatnot emulators doing anything illegal in your opinion? 
Not in my opinion; in many countries the act of "format shifting" a cartridge you own into a ROM file is unlawful... Downloading a ROM image is unlawful. The emulators aren't doing anything unlawful, but by running commercial ROM images on them you most certainly are barring a very few more permissive countries. I know, I live in one of them.And yes, I have written my own emulators so I'm pretty well-versed on their legalities thanks.D.
Really ... why ? All your doing is converting them to a different media form . So does this mean mean Nintendo is breaking the law when they rerelease Super Mario bros on virtual console ?
 
How likely is it that you could enough speed increase through optimization to run NSMB at full speed at 600 Mhz ? Any gut feeling so far?
Right now a frame from a fairly normal area takes about 28-29ms (small Mario, no other 3D stuff on the screen). Full speed is 16.67ms. 3D is taking around 11ms of that, so it's not quite even fullspeed with no 3D at all. CPU emulation is taking more time here than I would expect it to, and I hope that more optimizations to it, 2D, and audio will bring the numbers down. But I wouldn't expect it to hit full speed at 600MHz, even if the 3D was brought down tremendously to something well under 5ms. Possibly with frameskip.
Thanks for the answer - very clear. 

So, does this mean that most likely, full speed will not be obtained for most games with frame-skip on the CC or Rebirth Pandoras, but only on the 1 Ghz ones? If that is the case, too bad, but it provides a good reason to upgrade, though :)
 
Thanks for the answer - very clear. 

So, does this mean that most likely, full speed will not be obtained for most games with frame-skip on the CC or Rebirth Pandoras, but only on the 1 Ghz ones? If that is the case, too bad, but it provides a good reason to upgrade, though :)
I wouldn't quite say that. I've tested some good games that don't use 3D at all and can run fullspeed with no frameskip even at 600MHz, or are close to it and will probably reach it with more optimization. I haven't started optimizing the 3D or geometry code at all. I've also encountered plenty of games that use the 3D engine for 2D in a very straightforward way - if I detect this type (it's not that expensive) and use optimized NEON code to handle it as a special case it'll be much faster than even an optimized generic 3D renderer. Some games use this sort of 3D as the only thing on one screen, with no 2D at all. These may not be too slow in the long run. And this is all still figured without frameskip.

And of course this isn't considering the important fact that most CC Pandoras can overclock to at least 850MHz, if not 900MHz or even higher.

Until I do the optimized 3D I can't even give a vague idea of how slow it'll be for intensive 3D games. If there's a huge load frameskip will make a huge difference, and a lot of decent games will still be enjoyable even if you're throwing out half or more of the frames - of course that's highly subjective.

Don't let me discourage you from upgrading though, it will certainly help.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
if you make the program run perfectly on a k6 II 500, an intel i7 will have no problems running it. =)

MarTinazzI
 
Really ... why ? All your doing is converting them to a different media form . So does this mean mean Nintendo is breaking the law when they rerelease Super Mario bros on virtual console ?
Why is because it requires making a copy. If you don't own the copyright you are not allowed to make a copy, even for format shifting. In some places, I mean, many (most?) countries specify format shifting in their copyright exceptions and fair use.Nintendo doesn't have to worry about this because they own the copyright and can make as many copies in whatever format they want.
 
So I take that's why Nintendo has separate virtual consoles for the various regions ?
 
Couldnt the cc units clock to different speeds on different hot fixes if I recall.
Tested my CC unit right when I got it back then, and the max. clock speed I could set it to was 870MHz, above that it was very unstable.
 
@Exophase:

Nice updates coming from your side.

Good to hear that not everything that can be done is already done and there's still room for improvements.

Good luck with the 3D stuff.
 
This thread makes me dream about the new gaming potential of my pandora!
Thanks for your work Exophase!
 
This thread makes me dream about the new gaming potential of my pandora!


Thanks for your work Exophase!
So much Ds games I never saw before (and I saw pretty much of them already).

So much new games I have to play, so much old games I want to play again.

This system was my childhood.

@ Exophase:

At the 13.th of February I have my lase exam at University. Please DO NOT release DraStic before that date. :D
 
Thanks for the answer - very clear. 

So, does this mean that most likely, full speed will not be obtained for most games with frame-skip on the CC or Rebirth Pandoras, but only on the 1 Ghz ones? If that is the case, too bad, but it provides a good reason to upgrade, though :)
I wouldn't quite say that. I've tested some good games that don't use 3D at all and can run fullspeed with no frameskip even at 600MHz, or are close to it and will probably reach it with more optimization. I haven't started optimizing the 3D or geometry code at all. I've also encountered plenty of games that use the 3D engine for 2D in a very straightforward way - if I detect this type (it's not that expensive) and use optimized NEON code to handle it as a special case it'll be much faster than even an optimized generic 3D renderer. Some games use this sort of 3D as the only thing on one screen, with no 2D at all. These may not be too slow in the long run. And this is all still figured without frameskip.

And of course this isn't considering the important fact that most CC Pandoras can overclock to at least 850MHz, if not 900MHz or even higher.

Until I do the optimized 3D I can't even give a vague idea of how slow it'll be for intensive 3D games. If there's a huge load frameskip will make a huge difference, and a lot of decent games will still be enjoyable even if you're throwing out half or more of the frames - of course that's highly subjective.

Don't let me discourage you from upgrading though, it will certainly help.
THanks for the clear answer Exophase. Since it will probably take a long time before you can optimize the different parts of the emulator, do you plan to release a first PND sometimes soon so that we can already try out the 2D games that should work well? Or would you rather release something more complete, later? 

In the meantime keep up the good work :)
 
Last edited by a moderator:
More likely the former than the latter.

Looking at the GAF list is just overwhelming. I haven't tested the vast majority of those games! I'd like some people to help me get a better feeel for things.
 
How does it compare against nds4droid - speed wise?  

Looks better based on some vids I have seen
 
Last edited by a moderator:
How does it compare against nds4droid - speed wise?  Maybe not a straight comparison as I think nds4droid tries to display both screens (split in a portrait orientated smartphone).
I haven't tested it personally, but there are at least some comparisons you could make from youtube videos. For instance this one:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/UR_HHZ-mGto?feature=oembed

Kindle Fire is a 1.2GHz Cortex-A9 so faster than the 1.2GHz DM3730 notaz tested on (particularly where floats are used, and bearing in mind that desmume can multithread the 3D emulation) but the performance difference should be pretty obvious - the video here also shows a massive amount of frameskip. Looks like a little over half speed there. This is for a game that has at least some 3D, for pure 2D games it'll be more exaggerated.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Yes it does look very good - especially comparatively, well done Exophase, all that hard work Im sure you put in, was very well worth it .
 
Perhaps game logic/physics was running at 36/60 speed and every ninth frame was being rendered?
 
Back
Top