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Author Topic: with tempgba's author ending development of the emulator...  (Read 4379 times)

133794m3r (OP)

  • Posts: 72
Is it going to get ported to teh gpsp? The primary issue with that emulator _seems_ to be the fact that the ds2's a clusterfuck of a SDK with hamfisted monkey patched code eveywhere so the emulator has to work around all of that "fun". I'd love to see it on the zero and since the developer is not sure she'll(she refers to herself as a she so that's what i'm going off of) is done developing it b/c of the huge issues with the ds2's sdk. It is damn fine though, and especially on that _weak_ of a processor and almost _no_ ram to use, I'd imagine on the zero it'd be damn fine, damn fine indeed.

RupeeClock

  • Posts: 234
Re: with tempgba's author ending development of the emulator...
« Reply #1 on: July 25, 2013, 02:05:29 pm »
It's my understanding that TempGBA's development can be transferred to gpSP.
Emulators in general appear to utilise a core for the actual emulation, and then other parts of the program deal with the platform it is compile for, DSTwo on DS, GCW Zero, PSP, GP2X, Dingoo etc.

Among making the gpSP core play nicely with the DSTwo's tricky SDK and having to work in tandem with an on-board Ingenic JZ4740, and the DS itself, it appears the developer has done a lot to improve the gpSP core itself for better performance and compatibility as some problematic titles were concerned.

From what I can tell, TempGBA on the DSTwo is capable of processing the 60fps, but not capable actually rendering them. It still does remarkably well at rendering at frameskip 1 with 30/60 frames, quite an accomplishment for a 360Mhz on-board MIPS processor, working in tandem with the DS's own ARM processors.

In any case it seems like the developments on the emulation core for TempGBA, which is based on gpSP can be transferred over to the main gpSP project, we may see a significant improvement to gpSP on the many platforms it is compiled for thanks to Nebuleon.
I guess it is up to Nebuleon, Notaz and Exophase to see what happens to gpSP next though, if I have my facts straight.

Pliskron

  • Posts: 124
Re: with tempgba's author ending development of the emulator...
« Reply #2 on: July 25, 2013, 03:49:32 pm »
As far as open source ds emulators I'd really like to see Gameyob on the zero. The current crop of GB emulators lack the awesome features like gba bios support. 

Nebuleon

  • Guest
Re: with tempgba's author ending development of the emulator...
« Reply #3 on: July 25, 2013, 11:33:05 pm »
Greetings.

A bit of context for those who come to this thread asking what "tempgba" and "dstwo" are: TempGBA is a project I improved on the Supercard DSTwo, a flashcart for the Nintendo DS. It contains a MIPS processor, the JZ4740 by Ingenic, clocked nominally at 360 MHz but rather safely overclockable to 396 MHz (the default is kept at 360 MHz for battery life and because not that many games require 396 MHz). TempGBA is a GBA emulator for this DSTwo-on-Nintendo-DS combination.

The lineage of the emulator is not exactly "gpSP-Exophase 0.9 -> TempGBA", however. It's actually "gpSP-Exophase 0.9 -> gpSP Kai-Takka 3.2 with some updates -> NDSGBA-Supercard 1.21 -> TempGBA-Nebuleon-Normmatt-BassAceGold 1.44".

I did do some work on the core which could be transferred to gpSP-Exophase 0.9, or even better yet to gpSP Kai-Takka 3.2. Most of all, I improved the code generation and code storage/flushing so that some GBA games recompile far less code... but some modifications to the MIPS assembly stub and recompiler were required. Those would need to be implemented anew in non-MIPS devices. The GCW Zero being a MIPS device, it would be far easier.

However, NDSGBA-Supercard is not flexible at all. Being a Chinese team, Supercard did not think to keep the code cross-platform using conditional compilation (#ifdef) per platform where required, or even a cross-platform source directory and per-platform source directories. As a result, cross-platform or more general code is intertwined with DSTwo details like needing to communicate with a Nintendo DS, and all other previously supported platforms are stripped out of the TempGBA source directory. I have lost a lot of hope to be able to take the code and compile it again on the PSP, the GP2X Caanoo or the PC.

I am waiting for a unit to develop on. And then I may start handling the project in a more "cross-platform code separated from per-platform" manner, like Snes9x.

- - - - -

Re: #2 (GameYob)
Yes, GameYob would be good to have on the GCW Zero, but I'm afraid that has also become a project deeply intertwined with the DS's rendering details. In particular, it hooks into the Nintendo DS vertical and horizontal blanking interrupts to more efficiently emulate the Game Boy LCD interrupt.

Addendum: And the GBA BIOS to run GB games with the "GBA flag" on the GBA is not really the GBA BIOS. It's just a modified GBC BIOS that sets a bit in a register to indicate to the GBC game that it runs on a GBA. Only 2 games use this bit in their processing. There's the Zelda game that give you the Advance Shop, and then there's another I forgot. GameYob doesn't need the GBA BIOS for that.
« Last Edit: July 25, 2013, 11:42:03 pm by Nebuleon »

133794m3r (OP)

  • Posts: 72
Re: with tempgba's author ending development of the emulator...
« Reply #4 on: July 26, 2013, 09:05:30 pm »
ah well that's really good to hear then, thanks for the update that you'll be looking to port it to teh gpsp. I'm really glad to hear that, I was worried that it'd not be. I can't wait for it, b/c I feel like the issues with tempgba is in the ds2 sdk, and I imagine the gcw0 will alleviate them.

Rosenkranz

  • Posts: 114
Re: with tempgba's author ending development of the emulator...
« Reply #5 on: July 26, 2013, 10:16:36 pm »
This is the real reason I love dingoonity. ;D It gathers great programmers and porters who work together building great community. Welcome Nebuleon!

P.S. 100th post. Yaaay! :)