The latest news on melonDS.
Yeah, I haven't been great at this. I told myself I would work on 2D filters, since it's one of the last things to do... then I ran into a bit of a wall: I need my filters to have alpha support, but the filter shaders I can find don't support it. I would need to spend some time figuring out how they work and how I can add that in based on other references (there is code for xBRZ or HQX filters…
As far as melonDS is concerned, my last work was all about CPU timings... and I couldn't yet find an elegant way to handle them. I had some kind of caching in mind, but it's still less than ideal. Code fetch timings could be cached, but data fetch timings aren't really predictable, and there are other mechanics coming into play. What I had in mind was a sort of graph system, but I don't know how…
A bit of a status update since the last post... "I've been taking a bit of a break from melonDS lately... mental health reasons, a silly side project, the usual stuff." More of the same stuff, but add to it that I've been getting started in this new job. While it's been nice to have time to myself in order to deal with mental health matters, unemployment gets old after a while, so I was eager to…
I've been taking a bit of a break from melonDS lately... mental health reasons, a silly side project, the usual stuff. Regardless, I've been rethinking my plans for melonDS. I think I might postpone the timing work to melonDS 1.3. It's bigger than anticipated. I want to address some other issues, most notably finishing the new OpenGL renderer, and release melonDS 1.2. There's also some codebase…
Emulator Examination is a DS demo which has been released recently, and has been programmed by PoroCYon. I figured this would be an opportunity to write about something other than CPU timings for once! But first, a video of this demo, comparing the hardware results against melonDS. This demo bends the DS hardware in creative ways. You can read PoroCYon's writeup here , but I figured I would write…
At this point, this might as well be its own little saga... albeit not as exciting as the local multiplayer one, atleast on the surface. What is exciting, though, is the possibility to deal with timing issues once and for all. Maybe not. We can't get it 100% perfect without cycle accuracy. But we can get as close as possible, and then see how much leeway we have. It should be easier to figure this…
As promised. Timings work is underway. I'm mostly done collecting numbers, minus stuff like CP15 operations and any special cases that might crop up. I started fixing up ARM7 timings. Thing is, timings work isn't always easy. Collecting timing numbers is one thing, understanding the logic behind them is another thing entirely. Geometry engine timings, which I've worked on years ago, are a prime…
[POST IS AN APRIL FOOLS JOKE] It has appeared to us that after nearly 10 years of development, we are still very far from having a perfect DS emulator... thus, something has to be done. After all, you can't keep doing the same thing and expect different results, can you? So we have been looking at those AI coding assistants. We have seen Windows 11, and how the use of AI has helped turn it into a…
Ah, timings. The infamous Horseman of Timings. This post is going to be about a decision I'm taking for melonDS, but first, I'll write about my recent research regarding two old timing issues. I found it very interesting to dig into those games and figure out how they work. 1. Corrupted FMV audio in Over The Hedge - Hammy Goes Nuts Basically, you start a game, and you have a bit of a video…
Things have been difficult lately, mental health wise. However, despite this, we're still on a pretty good upward trend on that front. Anyway, I mentioned the cartridge interface in the previous post, so I've been doing an accuracy-oriented revamp of this. I've already been through the technical details, so instead, I'll post about the outcome of this. This fixes the freeze in Surviving High…