DesmumeX v0.5

DesmumeX v0.5 is released. DesmumeX is a Nintendo DS emulator for Xbox. It is based on the version 0.9 of Desmume, plus the port DSONPSP of Yoshihiro, and some specific changes for Xbox. Besides, lots of things related to 3D functionality have been gathered from version 0.9.2, and the dynamic recompiler has been taken from the 0.9.10 version.

WHAT IS THIS? ------------- DesmumeX is a Nintendo DS emulator for Xbox. It is based on the version 0.9 of Desmume, plus the port DSONPSP of Yoshihiro, and some specific changes for Xbox. Besides, lots of things related to 3D functionality have been gathered from version 0.9.2, and the dynamic recompiler has been taken from the 0.9.10 version. Please, don't expect a good emulation in many of your roms. This emulator is still not fully optimized. Anyways, this version can play some games quite well. IMPORTANT: To toggle between the different display modes, press the BLACK BUTTON (read the "Controls" section for more information). If all the action happens in only one screen, you will feel a much better experience if you choose to show only that screen at full resolution :) Only uncompressed roms are supported. WHAT IS NEW? ------------ DesmumeX v0.5 is a huge improvement over the previous version. These are the most important changes: 1) There is no size limit now!! We can load roms of every size, even if they are bigger than the RAM memory of the Xbox. I have tried to play a Professor Layton game (it was bigger than 64 MB) and it worked (although slow). 2) A dynamic recompiler has been included. Around 75% of the dynamic recompiler has been ported, and this gives the emulator a noticeable boost. Most of the games are still not full-speed, but they work much faster than in the previous version. Anyways, this emulator should work even faster whenever the rest of the dynamic recompiler is ported, and the rest of the optimizations are applied. 3) You can toggle ON and OFF the 3D functionality during the gameplay, in the config menu: this can be usefull in a few games that need 3D enabled in certain points of the game, but in the rest of the game we can disable it to make things a bit faster (Contra 4 is an example). Also, the dynamic recompiler can be enabled and disabled during the gameplay: it should be allways ENABLED to make things faster, but once I saw a game that was hung in the menu until I disabled the recompiler, so in these situations we can disable the dynarec to be able to continue, and enable it again after that. 4) All the video code has been ported to Direct3D. This makes things a bit faster, and also displays the 2-screen mode stretched at 640x480. 5) The GUI has been improved: roms are now sorted alphabetically (uppercase letters will be before) and also you can move faster by the rom list using the left and right thumbstick (like in every other emulator). 6) When you have selected a configuration for your rom in the GUI, you can press the "Y" button (before starting to play the game). If you do this, the emulator will create a config file for that game (stored in the "cfg" folder). Next time that you play that game, the emulator will "remember" your favorite configuration. This system needs that the folder "cfg" is existing, to be able to create the config files. NEW GAMES THAT WORK ------------------- This version can play all the games that the previous version played, and also a lot of additional games can be loaded (thanks to having removed the size limit), but they are still a bit slow. Anyways, with the correct configuration you can play at an "almost playable" speed to many games like "Mario and Luigi: Partners in time", "Barnyard Blast - Swine of the night", "DK - Jungle Climber", "Kirby Mouse Attack", "New Zealand Story Revolution", and many more. Other games like "Dementium" or "Professor Layton and the Curious Village" are very slow, although you can still play them with a high frameskip. Other games like "New Super Mario Bros" can be loaded, but they are extremely slow (you will need frameskip 9 , overclocked sound and reduce the number of channels to have a semi-playable speed, and this is not comfortable). In a lot of games, you will see that the intros and the menus are painfully slow, but the gameplay is faster :) IMPORTANT!!!!! --------------- * Roms MUST be placed in the "roms" directory. * Roms must be UNCOMPRESSED, with the .NDS extension. * Games can be trimmed with a program like "NDSTokyoTrim25Beta2.exe" to make them smaller, and they will use less space in disk. * This emulator can only work from hard disk. PROBLEMS WITH SAVE FILES? ------------------------- Some games will show a message when starting, telling that they are not able to read or write the save file. A few times, resetting the game is enough to fix it, but if it does not work, I have programmed a trick that will fix this issue: in the rom list, place the cursor over the problematic game, and press the "X BUTTON". This will create a BLANK SAVE FILE. You only need to do this step once. After that, you will be able to play the game properly (and you will be able to save your progress normally). Please, do this trick only if you found problems with a game. If you do it with another games, you may have issues (for example, you will loose all your current saved games for that game). This trick is only usefull in the case that you cannot play a game, due to save file troubles. CONTROLS -------- The Nintendo DS has 2 screens. The screen of below can be touched with a digital pen named "Stylus". In this version of DesmumeX, I have implemente both the physical buttons of the DS, and the possibility of "touching" the screen with a virtual cursor. Physical buttons: * D-pad: It's mapped to the D-pad of the Nintendo DS * A,B,X,Y buttons: They are mapped to the Triangle, Square, Circle, Cross buttons of the DS. * Left and right triggers are mapped to the triggers of the DS. Start button is mapped to the Start button of the DS. Control of the Stylus: * Left thumbstick: Move the virtual cursor. * White button: Touch the screen with the virtual cursor. You can even drag and drop, keeping the white button pressed. * Pressing the right thumbstick changes the color of the cursor. If you don't need the Stylus, you can move the cursor down below the screen, and it will disappear. Move it up, and it will appear again. Change of screen: * Black button: Changes the screen to be displayed on the TV. We can toggle between seeing both 2 screens (above and below), only the first screen at full resolution, or only the second screen at full resolution. Note: Showing only one screen is slightly faster than displaying the 2 screens. With the BACK button, the configuration menu is displayed. Pressing START + BACK simmultaneously, you will exit to the rom list. CONFIGURATION OPTIONS: ---------------------- If a game crashes during the gameplay or it is hung, you can try to enable/disable the 3D functionality, or enable/disable the dynamic recompiler. Please, if you find a game that needs to disable the dynamic recompiler to work, let me know. My final goal is that the dynamic recompiler is used all the time. If a game is slow, you can play with these options to try to make it playable. For example, first of all I try to put a higher Frameskip. If frameskip is not enough, we can go with the sound: disabling the sound can bring a boost of 20% of speed (depending of the game). If you don't want to disable sound, you can decrease its quality (for example overclocking it, or reducing the number of audio channels) and this can make things speed up too. Here is a description of the configuration options: * 3D funcionality: You can enable or disable it. Disabling it, the emulator can work a bit faster in a few games, although you can loose some things of the game. * Frameskip: There are two options related to Frameskip: a Mode (Auto/Fixed) and a Value. Let's explain this with an example: if you select FIXED frameskip and value=3, the emulator will use a constant value of 3 for the Frameskip. On the other hand, if you select AUTO-frameskip and a value of 3, the emulator will change the value of the frameskip automatically, with a maximum value of 3 (i.e, between 0 and 3) to try to achieve a ratio of 60 frames per second. So, in the "AUTO" mode, you configure a value that is the maximum frameskip that you are going to tolerate. Unfortunately, in several games the Auto function does not work very well, so many times the Fixed option is better. * Sound: You can disable sound (of course this brings the greatest boost) or overclock it. Overclocking x2 has no effect (I still don't know why), overclocking x3 or x4 will reduce the audio quality and boost the emulation. * Number of audio channels: The DS has 16 audio channels. We can configure to play 16, 8, 4 or only 2 channels. This speeds up things too. There is no "cracking" sound (as in the overclocking option) but you will feel a lack of notes in the played songs. * Graphics: We can select if the emulator is going to draw only the screen that we are seeing ("optimized"), or both screens ("everything"). The "optimized" choice is faster, but some games will not refresh the screen properly with this method. If your game does not refresh the screen, try selecting "Graphics: everything". * Pointer speed: We can select the speed that the virtual cursor uses in its movement. * JIT/Dynamic recompiler: This should be ALLWAYS ENABLED, because everything will run faster. Please, if you find a game that needs to disable the dynamic recompiler to run, let me know. If a game runs too fast, you can disable the dynamic recompiler, and it will run slower. INSTALLING: ----------- To install the emulator, simply copy it to your hard disk, and put the roms inside the "roms" folder. Create a "cfg" folder if you want to store config files. BACKGROUND LOGO, MUSIC and SCREENSHOTS: --------------------------------------- The image of the screen is the logo.jpg one. You can replace it if you want. The background music is the BGM.ogg file, and you can also replace it if you want. You can put screenshots of your games in the media/artwork/action folder. Some sample screenshots are included. I recommend resizing your screenshots to the same size of these samples (200 pixels height), and they will show very well in the GUI. TRUSTY XBOX / MODIFIED XBOX OWNERS ---------------------------------- Trusty and modified Xbox owners can use the same executables now. The emulator will probably work much better for them ;) FAQ: ---- Q: Can I use compressed/zipped roms? A: No Q: The game is running, but the image is frozen! A: Try selecting "Graphics: everything", or selecting a different value for Frameskip. Some games only refresh the screen on odd frames or on even frames. So, if we use an odd value for frameskip and the game refreshes in odd frames, we will not see any change on the screen... Q: Can I use some software to make the big roms smaller, to be played in DesmumeX? A: Yes, some programs like "NDSTokyoTrim25Beta2.exe" can make roms a bit smaller. Q: This game is too slow, even changing the configuration options! A: I'm sorry, this emulator is still not fully optimized. If you want to help to improve this emulator, let me know ;) Q: This game is too fast! A: Try disabling the dynamic recompiler, and the game will run much slower. Thank you for reading this! :) HCF

Download: DesmumeX v0.5
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