SNEmulDS homepage

Some news

archeide — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 13:12:04 +0000

No SNEmul is not dead, it’s simply sleeping. I Hope I will have more time later to fix bugs and add improvements to the emulator, but it’s not really possible for the moment.

Due to a change in the MySql from my provider, Wordexpress was not working correctly since some months. I was hoping that the bug will get fix itself but it seems I needed to upgrade Wordexpres. Anyway it seems ok now…

Work In Progress release for Slot 2 device and some words for a friends’ project

archeide — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 01:46:21 +0000

Hello everyone, a tiny and “unofficial” update for slot 2 device users. The 0.6 alpha didn’t work well, so i tried to fix most issues in this release.

Other people can check this release too, it reduces the battery consumption and includes a button to hide the GUI.

http://snemul.com/ds/SNEmulDS06-WIP2.zip

Off-topic :

I want to wish luck for a new project made by friends : a new way of paying for creators, PEPITA !

A digital store where you can sell your music, artworks, pictures and software. You can even include creations of others!

Take a look here :

http://www.pepitastore.com/

I included my store here, and you can donate for SNEmulDS this way instead of paypal

SNEmulDS 0.6 alpha available

archeide — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 02:02:21 +0000

The preview-alpha version of SNEmulDS 0.6 is now available for all the brave testers around the world!

The GUI artworks are not ready, so you have a “naked” and not very pretty GUI, but at least, you have the multi languages support!

You can check if your language is correct.
You can choose one of the language in the firmware or some language by editing the snemul.cfg :
# Language of GUI
# -1 -> Use firmware settings
Firmware languages:
# 0 -> Japanese (Katakana only)
# 1 -> English
# 2 -> French
# 3 -> German
# 4 -> Italian
# 5 -> Spanish
Non firmware languages:
# 106 -> Portuguese
# 107 -> Catalan
# 108 -> Polish
# 109 -> Dutch
# 110 -> Danish

Various External RAM packages can be used to improve large rom emulation, see snemul.cfg for more informations.

Scaling support has three modes :
- Full screen : nearly like snezzids
- Half scaling : “smart” scaling, only reduce half the backgrounds, and doesn’t squish sprites. It looks quite fine in games.
- No scaling : no scaling at all, classic SNEmulDS mode, still default

Here is the complete list of changes compated to 0.5 beta:

- New GUI using framebuffer for sub screen
- Better human interface, improved file selector (alphabetical sorted), buttons, check boxes, multi choose zones, etc.
- New GUI supports joypad (joypad is not supported when emulator is running however).
- Multi language support (more than 10 supported, including katakan japanese !)
- Memory pak support (Opera RAM, Slot 2 card reader, etc. using libram) with paging or with large ROM mapping
- Scaling with pseudo bi-linear filtering and sprites squishing : full screen scaling (like snezzids), half scaling (half scaled and without sprites squishing), and no scaling (classic snemulds mode)
- Autiomatic SRAM saving when needed
- Some other bugfixes and improvements in GUI

http://snemul.com/ds/SNEmulDSv06.zip

Need help: translation

archeide — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 21:28:41 +0000

Hi folks,

The new version of SNEmulDS 0.6 comes closer… The new GUI is nearly finished and is being integrated to the main core. I’m waiting for artworks from my friend to complete the GUI design.

A new feature of the next release will be multi-language support. For the moment, the language setting is read from the DS firmware, and the charset used is ANSI Western occidental (Windows-1252) so the translation is limited to : English, French, German, Spanish, and Italiano. But in future, Japanese and other language will be included.

TRANSLATION PROCESS CLOSED!

All language has been translated already ! Thanks to all who contributed!

Others languagues are welcomed to, but will be not included in next release. Don’t hurry to send new translations because i will not spend much time on translations now.

If you are interested in translating SNEmulDS, this is very simple.

Here are the current files containing the string ressources.
If you want to helop, You just have to translate strings, without changing anything else.

http://snemul.com/misc/snemul_str_fr.c

http://snemul.com/misc/snemul_str_eng.c

http://snemul.com/misc/snemul_str_ger.c (German by Snake)

http://snemul.com/misc/snemul_str_ita.c (Italian by scognito)

http://snemul.com/misc/snemul_str_spa.c (Spanish by Zeroshcr)

http://snemul.com/misc/snemul_str_pt.c (Portuguese by MsK)

http://snemul.com/misc/snemul_str_cat.c (Catalan by Sonucais)

Brazilian portuguese (by Claudio Neves)

Katakana Japanese (three versions by ApprentiSorcier, PekePeke, Mog123)

Polish (by Mog123)

Korean (by Deng)

Greek (by akisz001)

Sweden (by Jesper ‘IroniC’ Olsson)

First people to translate his language will be included in credits To give your translation, send me a mail (archeide at yahoo.com) or post in this forum :

http://boards.pocketheaven.com/viewtopic.php?t=6017

As I’m french, the french version should be the main source. If you can find better translation for english, tell me!

Thanks,
Archeide

Happy birthday SNEmul!

archeide — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 21:19:20 +0000

Sorry, no new release yet… I’m busy with work and vacation …

Hope to add new features like screen scaling, new GUI, memory pak compatibilty and some nice things soon…

Anyway, I wanted to wish an happy birthday to.. old SNEmul core!
It was the 14th july 1997, the start of the SNEmul DOS emulator project!

10 years ago… it seems to me like it was yesterday!

A lot to thanks to all SNEmul(DS) users for your support and help!

SNEmulDS 0.5 beta

archeide — Mon, 07 May 2007 19:57:37 +0000

This version aims to improve in sound and graphics. As the emulation becomes more and more complex, it is more and more difficult to add new features without breaking the emulation overall, so some new feature will not be enabled by default for all games. The configuration file select which features are enabled or not, and becomes very important (so don’t forget to put it in the root directory!).

I tried very hard to improve sound, and i succeeded to get much better musics in some games, but there may still some “pops” or “cracks” sometimes, and the sound can slowdown or goes mad in some rare circumtances (the ARM7 seems not powerful enough).

A new menu has been added : the GFX config menu, this menu offer a simple way to change the GFX behaviour in real time. The emulation is not stopped like in the options menu, you can enable/disable several features and see which ones are better for the game. (See README for more informations)
Here is the list of changes

Changed the Sound timers, now the timers should be a bit more accurate and removed the timers hacks

Moved back the Sound RAM in the fast ARM7 RAM, removed unused code from ARM7 codes

Now support sprite address change during frame (limited to two addresses by frame), this makes Ogre Battle much more playable

Left handed people can now enjoy the SNES mouse option (right buttons can be used like left joypad).

Options can now be saved in configuration file

New SNES config menu

Fixed some bugs

Optionnal feature (enabled by configuration file):

Added sound synchronisation fixes, this is a set of flags that make ARM9 slowdown or make ARM9 wait for the ARM7. Those options make Square games (and other games) sound much better, but also break sound in other games. So this option is available through the configuration file. I only changed for the configuraiton file for Chrono Trigger, SOM1 and FFVI. You will have to modify the configuration and test the options for other games.

Added priority per tile for BG3, by detecting if there are more low or high priority per tile at each line (see README)

Added priority per tile for BG1 and BG2, by using the fourth DS layer. Low priority tiles go to fourth layer, and high priority per tiles (this idea was taken from SNESAdvance).

Sprites priorities can now be changed. See configuraiton file for more informations. The default is 1123 but 1223 makes some games look better (like Castlevania IV first level for instance)

Get it here (and patch it with DLDI):

http://snemul.com/ds/SNEmulDSv05b.zip

http://snemul.com/ds/SNEmulDSv05b_M3S_R4.zip

Some news about SNEmulDS 0.5 beta

archeide — Sun, 29 Apr 2007 22:01:57 +0000

It has been a long time i didn’t give any news, so here it is, some news about my progress. I have finally succeeded to improve sound in SNEmulDS. One part has been to work on the sound core (new APU timers, removed speed hacks, put back memory in fast EWRAM) and the other part has been to add a set of emulation hacks that you will be able to play with, thanks to the configuration file.

The way the sound is implemented in SNES emulators for DS bring some synchronisation problems that make sound garbled or make games not boot at all. I found some ways to improve synchronization, but each game need to be tunned differently. For the moment, i have found a way to have good sound with classic Square and Enix games : Chrono Trigger, Secret Of Mana 1, Final Fantasy VI (FFIII in USA/Europe) Terranigma, Illusion Of Gaia. I will let you find the best configuration for other games that have sound problems.

SNEmulDS 0.5 alpha 2

archeide — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 21:48:13 +0000

This intermediate release fixes the critical issues that appeared with SNEmulDS 0.5 alpha. It also includes a better GFX engine, and the new SNES mouse emulation mode.

Here is the complete list of changes:

Fixed the critical sound bug (should go back to SNEmulDS 0.4f sound)

Better GFX engine (use dynamic memory allocation)

SNES emulation mode (see below)

Fixed a bug in decimal ADC instruction (FZERO chronometer is now ok)

The number of cyles used by DMA is counted correctly (more games boot)

I removed the ARM7 entry addresses, it seems to break ninjads, and is not necessary for others (i hope!).

You can get it here (don’t forget to patch it as always):

http://www.snemul.com/ds/SNEmulDSv05a2.zip

Pre - patched for R4 / M3 Simply:

http://www.snemul.com/ds/SNEmulDSv05a2_M3S_R4.zip

I put below the presentation of the SNES emulation mode. Don’t forget to include snemul.cfg, this is necessary to have the game playable.

You can select the mouse emulation mode with START+L+R+LEFT, then the bottom screen and the upper screen switch. You use the stylus to move the mouse cursor.

-> You can also switch the screen without selecting mouse emulation mode using START+L+R+RIGHT.

Currently there are two methods of emulation:

# One for all games that uses SNES mouse. It compute the distance between two stylus “click” to emulate the move of the mouse.
This is not accurate and some games like Populous II use non linear moving, so the mouse cursor doesn’t follow the stylus.

# Another method modifies directly the variables in RAM where the game stores the X and Y positions of cursor. This way, the mouse cursor moves accurately. But i have to search for each game, where is this information (that’s quite easy with a debugger anyway).
The X Y address are stored in snemul.cfg. You need to have this file up-to-date.

For both methods, the D-pad is used to select the way the stylus emulate the mouse:
- press LEFT: when the touch screen is pressed, the mouse is moved to this point and the mouse’s left button is pressed
- press RIGHT: when the touch screen is pressed, the mouse is moved to this point and the mouse’s right button is pressed
- press DOWN: when the touch screen is pressed, the mouse is moved to this point. When the touch screen is not pressed, the buttons are released and the cursor doesn’t move.

Another option is available with first method:
- press UP and press the touchscreen at the same time : the stylus calibrates to this point. Use this if the mouse cursor doesn’t follow the stylus correctly.

Play your favorite games with stylus!

archeide — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 10:20:59 +0000

DISCLAIMER: This is not a april fool.

With the upcoming 0.5 alpha 2, a few games will be playable through the sylus. For the moment, this is limited to games supporting SNES mouse.

*Really* Playable games for the moment:

Civilization

Populous II

Eye of the beholder

Mario Paint

Look at those videos, i made them myself! Sorry about the bad quality, my camera didn’t focus well and i’m a bit nervous.
Also, games are not fun to play with only one hand, but with two hands that’s really fun

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCytHzEOMas
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nTa5124QcU

Play Populous II with stylus

Play Eye of the beholder with stylus

On a side note, thanks to scognito who fixed SNEmulDS to make it work on ninjads.

Download the correct version there : http://scognito.drunkencoders.com

Thanks to him!

SNEmulDS 0.5 alpha!

archeide — Sun, 25 Mar 2007 22:39:30 +0000

This time, after sound and CPU, the big update is on graphics side! The graphics engine has been entirely rewritten and should offer a much better look for most games (especially RPG like Chrono Trigger)!

Look at those screenshots (sorry for the bad quality):

This alpha version also integrate a new configuration file, that allow you to choose the best options for each game.

New GFX engine that support tile address alteration (For RPG games and others)

Faster HDMA (Makes games like Chrono Trigger faster)

Much better line by line engine, which is now the default (Old tile mode is nearly broken in this alpha)

Better transparency support

Other GFX updates: Moved sprites 1 pixel down, Background color alteration by scanlines, fixed 16px tiles flip, better mode 5, better scrolling, new squish method…

Added configuration file support snemul.cfg (no saving support yet in this alpha) that allow specific configuration for each game.

And Thanks to Lestat for making the nice SNEmulDS Icon!

Get it here : http://www.snemul.com/ds/SNEmulDS05a.zip

As usual you have to patch it, i aldready did it for R4DS/M3Simply :

http://www.snemul.com/ds/SNEmulDS05a_M3Simply_R4DS.zip

Please take a look in the configuration file, you can change the ROMs directory and other interesting stuff.

Another important information, the site has moved to “http://www.snemul.com/ds/”. Please update your bookmark!
On a side note, welcome to a new developper in the SNEmulDS team : oothkoo!

Some interesting facts about SNEmulDS 0.4final

archeide — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 14:29:41 +0000

First, for people asking me the meaning of “final”, don’t be afraid! “Final” only mean that it is the last “0.4″ release. I consider that this version is enough stable to be useable and that i should better work on new features and graphics fixes (which will the main goal of upcoming 0.5).

Second, for people who can’t or doesn’t want to patch (because of their religious belief or whatever), I added a new page containing pre-patched binaries for all known DLDI-supported devices : DLDI.
You just have to put the binary in the root directory of your card, and create a SNES directory with ROMs inside, and that’s (should be) all.
Feel free to add comments if you have found a new way to make SNEmulDS works on your device.
Third, take a look at the Pocketheaven compatibility list : http://wiki.pocketheaven.com/SNEmulDS_Compatibility_List. If you are testing new games, everyone would be grateful that you add an entry in this list, whether it works or not. Thanks to all contributors for this list. It’s quite easy to fill informations and there is a dedicated tool for SNEmulDS.

SNEmulDS 0.4 final

archeide — Sun, 11 Mar 2007 23:51:09 +0000

This release contains various bug fixes, which should improve games compatibility and stability. Some minor features have also been added like options saved in save states, background Layer selector, and hinge support.
Here is a list of changes:

Fixed ROM paging, this should improve stability of large ROMs (especillay DKC2)

Some CPU instructions were bugged because of the way SNEmulDS write in I/O ports, this should also improve stability (ie Crash before first boss in Zelda)

Fixed a bug that made Chrono Trigger freeze during battles

Changed the way emulator detect blank screen (Street Fighter Turbo, RTYPE3, Final Fantasy Mystic Quest now works)

Fixed some bugs with SRAM memory, which unlock most ROM protections (Uniracer, Bust-a-move, … now boot)

Now sound core doesn’t randomly crash when using line by line engine

Better reset of sound core, some games now run correctly when they are launched after another game (ie Super Bomberman >2)

Save states also save options

Added background layer selector. You can again enable/disable backgrounds.

Added hinge support. If you close you DS, emulation is stopped and SRAM is saved.

SRAM is now automatically saved before loading another ROM

Get it here:

http://snemul.free.fr/ds/SNEmulDSv04.zip

Rumble users, there is a solution for you…

archeide — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 11:00:52 +0000

It seems that some people have found a solution to make SNEmulDS and other homebrews (like picodriveds) work on their Supercard rumble.

Thanks to juliobbv and sallaboy from the pocketheaven forum…

Quote from sallaboy:
Anyway, this were my actions:
-Downloaded DSOrganize 2.5: http://www.dragonminded.com/ndsdev/DSOrganize_2_5.zip
-Copy all the files with the directory to the DS card (I didn’t patch
DSorganize!!!)
-Start *.NDS or *sc.NDS file.
-go to “BROWSE” and start the SNEmuDS version 0.4 (patched with
sclt.dldi file)
-it takes time to start it.

By the way, the same way I succeded to run PICODRIVEDS (emulator
for genesis) the latest version. The games are a little bit slow but it worth
it.

Accordind from juliobbv, you can use Moonsheel instead:

P.S. Forget DSOrganize to boot SNEmulDS, use Moonshell 1.6 instead. It boots homebrew instantly and it seems to work with other homebrew that didn’t work before.

To install it, run the setup, select the letter that corresponds to the SD card, select Supercard lite and after that click setup. Wait while it copies the files to the card and run moonshell on the DS.

SNEmulDS 0.4 beta

archeide — Sun, 25 Feb 2007 23:07:16 +0000

SNEmulDS 0.4 alpha contained a lot of stupid bugs that i fixed in this beta release. There are still bugs, but i think it worth a try for most users, because a lot of games were broken. I also added a manual background layers selector.

Here is the complete list of changes:

Fixed the broken BREAK and COP instructions

Fixed the ROM write protection by using the protection unit of the ARM9 (thanks to bubble2k for pointing me that)

Fixed the Emulation flag at startup (problem with DKC3)

Stupid again, SNES’s RAM was not in the cached memory, speed up games (10-20%)

Reduced memory consumption, now ROM memory is static (no more malloced), should remove ROM overflow and RAM overwriten problems

Added an experimental “line by line” engine (buggy, slow, unstable, uncomplete… maybe useful for a few games)

Added a manual background priority selector (can be choosen in options or with START+LEFT+RIGHT+UP or START+LEFT+RIGHT+DOWN for automatic)

Added another speed hack option : “Interrupt speed hacks” that should be better than “Full speed hacks” for some games. “Middle speed hacks” is now “Cycles speed hacks”

You can get it here:

http://snemul.free.fr/ds/SNEmulDSv04b.zip

As usual you may have to patch it with DLDI drivers, for more information see here : http://chishm.drunkencoders.com/DLDI/

Alpha release of SNEmulDS 0.4!

archeide — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 00:29:51 +0000

It has been a long time with no real updates of SNEmulDS.. This first release break this silence, and i hope it will please everyone. First of all, the main change is the integration of the CPU engine of SnezziDS. In fact, I wanted to make my own CPU engine in ASM, but i rapidly saw that i couldn’t do better than bubble2k did. I recognize his work as a masterpiece in DS homebrews. I personnally added some new features from the original C CPU of SNEmulDS: speed hacks, memory protection, and ROM paging/dynamic reloading (giving Large ROMs support for Slot-1 cards). All combined CPU engine and speed hacks give a great boost in speed.
There are also various changes:

Implemented MODE 7

Partial line by line engine for MODE 7 games

Implemented MODE 3,4 (256 colors)

Now SNEmulDS uses devkitpro 20 and libfat library from chishm with DLDI support, for better compatibility

Improved ROM paging, reducing bugs for Large ROMs (> 3 Mo)

Fixed memory leaks (And consequently, fixed famous “Unsupported Large LoRom” bug)

Three level of speed hacks : no speed hacks, medium speed hacks, full speed hacks. Each level give various compatibility and speed enhancements.

Fixed various bugs

Now SNEmulDS sources are under GNU license, to be compatible with snezzids

Get it here : (don’t forget to patch it with your DLDI driver, SNES games are loaded from SNES directory)

http://snemul.free.fr/ds/SNEmulDSv04a.zip

Sources are available on SVN, or with this package : http://snemul.free.fr/ds/SNEmulDSv04-src.zip

Problems with the DLDI version ?

archeide — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 10:18:48 +0000

I’m sorry to see that the compatibility of the DLDI version is far from what i expected …
Some have experienced problems they didn’t have with the regular version.
I tried to fix some bugs in a test release. There are two differences with the release version :

ROMs are read from the root directory (some drivers seem to have problem with paths).

The FAT init loop has been removed (for some drivers the FAT_init functions return false whereas it has initialized correctly).

This should improve compatibility. At least it has solved problems with GBAMP CF and R4.

Here is the file:

http://snemul.free.fr/ds/SNEmulDS_Test.nds

You have to patch it with your own patch.

Instructions are here:
http://chishm.drunkencoders.com/DLDI/index.html

Don’t forget that games have to be put in the root directory not in the SNES directory…

SNEmulDS 0.3 with DLDI

archeide — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 01:11:43 +0000

I just finished building SNEmulDS v0.3 with DLDI support. This system made by chishm should make SNEmulDS compatible with much more devices:

DSLink (microSD Card)

Ewin2 (SD Card)

EZ Flash 4 (SD Card)

EZ Flash 5 (SD Card)

G6 Flash (version 0.15)

M3 Adapter (Compact Flash)

M3 Adapter (SD card)

Max Media Dock (Compact Flash)

GBA Movie Player (Compact Flash)

GBA Movie Player (SD Card)

NEO Flash MK2 & MK3 (SD Card)

NEO2 (SD Card)

Ninja DS (SD Card)

R4(DS)- Revolution for DS, M3 Simply compatible

SuperCard (Compact Flash)

SuperCard DS (Slot-1)

SuperCard (SD Card)

More informations here :

http://chishm.drunkencoders.com/DLDI/index.html

You can patch SNEmulDS.nds to support others devices as long as those device have been made compatible with the DLDI system. So you should visit this site regularly for update, if your device is not supported by SNEmulDS yet!

Please try it with your device and tell me on the pocketheaven forum if you have any problems…

SNEmulDS v0.3 beta

archeide — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 02:32:43 +0000

It seems indeed that save feature was broken for most users in alpha release. This beta version of 0.3 includes a simpler save system that should work for all devices that support saving. Another little change : larger items in all file selections and a back button in the Select ROM selection.

SNEmulDS v0.3 alpha

archeide — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 02:25:57 +0000

It’s not a real release yet, it’s a preview release because i’m disappointed with my save feature which stopped to work properly for me. It seems it comes from my SD card but i’m not sure.
I need help from people who had no problems saving with 0.2… This new release have sound! I need to know if this new reelase reload music correctly…
If you have any bugs with this preview release please tell me. For more infos, take a look here : http://boards.pocketheaven.com/viewtopic.php?t=4817

SNEmulDS v0.2 GBFS

archeide — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 02:36:09 +0000

AlekMaul, another author of emulators for DS, has made a GBFS version of SNEmulDS 0.2. This should work on devices that are not compatible with FAT library (as G6). You cannot save your progress though.
Download this version here.

SNEmulDS forum

archeide — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 02:30:44 +0000

SNEmulDS has its own forum thanks to Titney from pocketheaven! Look here

SNEmulDS v0.2 for Max Media

archeide — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 02:37:36 +0000

SNEmulDS 0.2 has been rebuilt for Max Media devices. Thanks to korbob for pointing me about libfat changes. Download this version here.

SNEmulDS v0.2 sources

archeide — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 02:30:08 +0000

SNEmulDS 0.2 sources are available here.

SNEmulDS v0.2

archeide — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 02:38:44 +0000

This new version has a lot of improvements:

Support for ROMs bigger than 2 Mo (size of ROM is not limited)

Speed improvement (+30-40%)

Load / Save states (*). You can save up to 8 states by game. Games are stored in SNEmul file format (SML) in the SNES directory, along with the SNES ROM.

Fixed most scrolling bugs

Load / Save SNES SRAM (*). SRAM is read from a “XXXX.SRM” file put in the SNES directory, along with the SNES ROM. SRAM has to be saved manually using the “Save SRAM” option in the main menu.

New “No Vblank” mode which is by default enabled. This mode allow much faster emulation speed, and can fix some graphical problems, but can also bring other issues.

Fixed initial crashes due to “strange” filenames in SNES directory.

Fixed many other bugs, improved memory consumption.

(*) Saving is experimental due to the limitations of the FAT libraries.

Like the initial release (0.1), ROMs are loaded from the SNES directory in your card.

Sources will be updated soon.

SNEmulDS alpha for testers

archeide — Sat, 23 Sep 2006 02:39:23 +0000

This version is not intended to be used for end users. ROMs are read from the root directory. Use it at your own risk!

SNEmulDS v0.1

archeide — Sat, 23 Sep 2006 02:30:51 +0000

Source code of SNEmulDS v0.1 has been released

SNEmulDS v0.1

archeide — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 02:40:26 +0000

SNEmul has been ported to Nintendo DS