DuoS - Nintendo DS Emulator
sábado, 25 de agosto de 2012
Quick fix and update!
Both DuoS DSEMU links at Linkify has been updated.
The version, uploaded there now, doesn´t require the Visual Studio 2010 Runtime DLLs... which some PCs might not have previously installed.

Until writing some proper documentation, I can tell the emu requirements here:

- PC running Windows XP or newer, both x86 and X64 seem to be alright.

- PC´s CPU must support SSE2 features, basically begining from an old Pentium 4, AMD64 or newer is more than enough. DuoS setup tool will warn you in case SSE2 is not detected.

- .Net Framework 2.0 or newer, only necessary for running the setup tool. If you don´t care about the tool, you don´t need it. .Net 2.0 is already present in Windows versions Vista or newer, if you still use XP and need it, you can grab it from here.

- If you are running the "not fixed" version, you might need to install the Visual Studio 2010 Runtime DLLs, you can download them from here.

For the next release, I promise that the installer version will handle all this stuff automatically.
en 10:43 Sin comentarios:
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viernes, 24 de agosto de 2012
Release time!
Well, finally I made it. I hope you all like it.

A few last minute bugs were detected last night, and some quality downgrade happened... but I wanted to keep my promise and release the emu as it is. There´s a lot of room for improvements, and stuff to improve... but it´s not all that bad for a Beta.

Next week, I´ll try to do some touches to DuoS older sister project AdriPSX PSEMU, so I might re-released it with some updates and fixes around next month. I haven´t touched its blog in ages, but you can visit it at http://adripsx.blogspot.com.

Please refer to the Download Links section, and send me feedback about the emu... you like it or not!

Thanks to you all for your continuous support!

Roor
en 16:34 3 comentarios:
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jueves, 23 de agosto de 2012
A bit too "spartan" ?
This morning I fixed a few last minute bugs from the build...
I created an amiable installer... and coded a simple setup utility.
Since the begining, I wanted DuoS DSEMU to be as lightweight as possible... so far, that goal has been achieved, as the emulator itself is no more than 340kb in size...
With that in mind, I never really cared about features such as keyboard config, joystick support, screenshot support, video recording and such... I´ve always thougth that when you run an emu, what matters is to be able to play.

But then, I´ve received more than one complain regarding keyboard config... so, early this morning I coded this:



It certainly achieves its function... and I must admit I´m not a graphics artist myself.
One of my closest beta-testers has already call it "too spartan" (disciplined and conservative with little to no decoration or color)...

Will anyone care if I ship the first release, tomorrow, using it?

I just await for comments...
en 18:20 3 comentarios:
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martes, 21 de agosto de 2012
DuoS almost ready for first beta release
After a very long weekend of testing and last minute improvements, DuoS DSEMU is almost ready for its very first beta release.

Savestate and Savegame support is working very well, and has succeded in all my tests so far; SPU (sound) performance has increased a lot. Only smaller minutae is left, such as manual, licence text files, settings menu and a fully featured installation package.

If no further problems arise: DuoS DSEMU,Nintendo DS Emulator, will see the light this friday.
en 06:12 Sin comentarios:
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miércoles, 8 de agosto de 2012
DuoS is ringing!
Just last night DuoS attained the state where I may say that "sound emulation" is working.
SPU synch & resampling seems to we working good, fast and stable.
I implemented some SSE2 instructions for optimization, so now we need to implement some more functions to enable/disable SSE2 code based on CPU detection (not all CPUs have SSE2).

Most probably tonight, DuoS binaries will be shipped to our beta testers.
After attaining this stage, and if no further big bugs are found, only save-game functions are left.

First release is coming very close!
en 11:03 Sin comentarios:
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viernes, 3 de agosto de 2012
DuoS is flying!
After the last major improvementdone on DuoS, emulation performance has increased very significanlty. An almost fully featured Dynamic Recompilation Engine has been succesfully integrated, without messing much with emulation timing, and the latest version of GPU skipping works like a charm, without adding any kind of graphical artifact on screen.

Basically, this means : realtime/normal speed emulation on a normal non-accelerated PC without consuming a lot of CPU... as well as a new 8x FastForward feature.. in a relatively high compatibility Nintendo DS emulator ( just use your imagination ).

Regardin the still missing features; Sound is already working, but crappy and with very limited support; a full re-sampler is in the works, which might be ready after next weekend.
After that, only the savegame system is missing...

Once I get tese final features working in an acceptable way, DuoS DSEMU first public release will see the light.
en 07:59 Sin comentarios:
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martes, 31 de julio de 2012
DynaRec and FrameSkip
After all this time that I´ve dedidated to produce DuoS, I can assure that there isn´t any portion of a DS emulator more CPU consuming than its GPU (Graphics Processing Unit).
I´ve tried to optimize it in a lot of ways, without relaying on the host´s (PC´s) multithreading and GPU accelleration as much as I could... in order not to compromise emulation quality and compatibility. To be honest, regarding this... I already ran out of ideas.

On the other hand, since last night, DuoS has now a fully enabled Dynamic Recompiler core, and do not relay on "secondaty calls" to the Interpreter core anymore. This is translated into a huge speed up, as well as a very noticeable reduction of CPU usage in the host computer. It will be the work of our noble testers to determine how does this affect DuoS´s compatibility... but we will soon find out.

In the meanwhile... I see a couple of days of continuous debugging coming my way...
en 10:22 Sin comentarios:
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lunes, 30 de julio de 2012
Emulation Dev Resources
Just for answering Marranus´ question from the other day:
For DuoS, specifically, I digged most of the hardware hacking from the awesome documents of No$GBA, then lots and lots of playing around with DevKitPro... also, studying how the guys from DeSmuME made their GPU (which I must say is AWESOME!) saved lots of time... and finally, I must admit that I´m re-using lots of code from my own previous emulation projects . An extensive personal library of emulation functions stored in my laptop comes really handy...
en 09:01 Sin comentarios:
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domingo, 29 de julio de 2012
Lots of fixes, and a nice performance increase
I spent most of my Saturday making fixes to my ARM Dynamic Recompiler, which were causing some games to just "freeze"... this was a major boomer, as I was becoming very proud of the emu high compatibility. So far it seems to be ok, but I still haven´t managed to get the time to test it on more than a dozen of games yet.

On the other hand, I replaced the WinDIB functions for Direct3D based ones... the speed enhancement is amazing! Now I can say that as far as the Software Renderer is not forced too much, lots of games are fully playable in full speed, with just a little frameskip.

Here are a couple of screen captures from the games I was fixing the Recompiler for, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney and Castlevania : Dawn of Sorrow.


BTW, after some complains, I added a simple synch icon to the emu, also version number has been increased to 0.110, according to my Devevlopment Road Document.
en 07:51 Sin comentarios:
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sábado, 28 de julio de 2012
Some screenshots
Here are the latests screenshots I took, after having fixed the Gouraud Lighting, and plenty of other Software Renderer issues. Performance has been greatly increased by the smart usage of skips on GPU operations, and not just skipping frames to the display window.


These shots are from Super Mario 64 DS, The Logic Machine and Labyrinth.

Pleas notice that I haven´t given an icon to DuoS yet, so suggestions are welcomed.