I just saw this!

http://www.emucamp.com/

It sounds like he might be getting somewhere.

Hooray for Hikaru!

Sounds like the 12mb and under games are working so far

If I can find his website, I'll do a better translation than google can spit out.

Here's my quick translation of it, mind you I'm not too used to technical writing in Japanese, so there are some mistakes. Anyone who can translate better, go right ahead:
"
Using the Nintendo64 Emulator Daedalus, as a base, previously I was thinking the CPU emulator would be a faliure, since there is insufficient memory it appears. With 4X Anti-aliasing, 900KB of background textures, menus, sound effects, and fonts, about how much memory is being used I don't really know. U-VBA when using hardware anti-aliasing, also has out of bounds memory.
Super mario when ran on Windows Daedalus doesn't have the same problem running. *

-Program (1MB)
-Hardware Anti-alias(4.8MB) (1280x960x32bpp resolution)
-Background textures (0.9MB)
-Sound bank (0.2MB)
-Font Buffer (1.0MB)
-Frame buffer for front (1.0MB)
-Xbox system (5MB)

Maybe 32MB rom is the limit, however Daedalus when emulating N64's 4-8MB memory, it uses 40-50MB of memory, and because of this if anything is to be used above the xbox's 64MB memory running limit, I don't know how. But 8MB roms and 12MB roms keep running normally.

Right now because I'm testing the graphics plugin, I don't know how long it will take to port it.
"
* = sentence fragments complex, so translation could be wrong, 2nd part of the sentence was left out since it is unclear to me what he fully meant.

At least it makes far more sense than the automatic translated page.

well i think i'll be playing N64 game sonner than i expected it

Great job Mage!

The only thing I understood was the editor saying he was glad it had sound!

Ok , I will start by saying that I dont know the foirst thing about porting Emu's to the XBOX, but maybe people are looking at it from the wrong angle. First QUestion. How come the xbox can run games with such graphics and magnitude of such games as MGS, Splinter Cell, etc. These games must use more then 64Mbs of RAM. But it cant run a little game like Basbeall Stars(Neo-Geo), Salamader (MAME) which is less than 1Mb. I just dont understand. Second INfo that might help someone. On the game spy hunter for Xbox, it lets you put in a code to play the old school Spy Hunter that use to be in the arcades. Maybe there is someway to use original games and add soemthing to them to run other games within them like the Spy Hunter game. As I said to start with I'm only trying to find some light on this project that I would love to see.

PS. I just watched "Indentity" and it was a really good movie.

First of all, games like MGS, Splinter Cell, etc do not use more than 64MB of RAM. They are just programmed to make use of the Xbox's features only, whereas the PC version of Splinter Cell etc would need to work on a huge range of hardware configurations, not to mention the required hardware overhead of the operating system.

Sencondly, the reason Baseball Stars and Salamander may not work on Xbox would have more to do with compatibility issues rather than RAM size.

If the community is going to port EMU's why dont they make use of the Xbox's power and figure out how they do this???

Aussie you cant just port one systems hardware over onto another systems hardware, it just doesn't work that way.
Firstly, the N64 hardware was created specifically for that machine, it had it's own GPU,CPU and everything. The software created for the machine was created to take advantage of the features which that hardware provided, so in a way everything created for the N64 was optimised to use the N64 hardware as best it could.

Now you have the Xbox, it has a completely different hardware configuration to the N64, it may be more powerful but everything created for the Xbox is optimised to use all of the Xbox's hardware features, just like the N64 and every other console.
So here you are trying to tell one machine (the Xbox) to completely change it's way of running in order to emulate (which is where the term came from) another machine's hardware. So now all of it's CPU cycles have to be re-programmed in order to behave like an N64, and it's graphics architecture need's to be completely changed in order to behave like an N64. All of this "re-programming" uses a hell of alot of resources, and it's all because the hardware wasn't designed to behave like another machine.
It's like trying to squeeze a styrophome cube into a circular hole, sure it'll fit once you eventually push it past it's limits, but in order to do it it's going to be twice as difficult and require alot of changing in order to accomplish the task. And even then your not guaranteed to fit it in.....you may have to cut a few parts off it, and make it more circular shaped to get it to work.
It's the same with PC's and emulation. PC's nowadays are a hell of alot more powerful than an N64, but you still need a pretty damn fast machine in order to emulate at full speed with all the emulated features on. And it all comes down to the fact that the PC's hardware isn't designed to run like a machine which has it's own hardware configuration.

Hopefully i cleared a few things up.
Cheers.

You did cleared a few things up Drewus

QUOTE (Aussie14 @ Apr 28 2003, 07:01 AM)

If the community is going to port EMU's why dont they make use of the Xbox's power and figure out how they do this???

let me guess, you are 14?

Nice Translation

Well, this is where the hard drive in the xbox kicks in. I am sure they is some way to utilize some kind of swap space on the hard drive. I'm not a expert on this, but this is the first thing that poped in to my head.

Ok I don't know if I'm missing the point here, an correct me if I am...But why bother porting Daedelus to Xbox. It wasn't a good emulator on PC it's definitely not gonna be a good emulator on Xbox. Not without a hell of a lot of work, which is probably beyond alot of the people that are trying to do stuff like simply port it over. Might I suggest instead Project64. Its compatibility and speed are heaps better than daedelus, and all it would require is some1 (possbily the people who wrote the windows plugins) to write/edit custom plugins for the Xbox. I'd do it myself if I had the know-how, I'm just not familiar enough with the DirectX calls that the Xbox uses to be able to pull it off...its just that there is source to Project64 out there, but the people who are porting want an easy way to get their name in lights with little work.

Also, if the 4x anti-aliasing is the problem, wouldn't a simpler solution be to turn it off. I'm pretty sure a stock-standard Nintendo 64 didn't run with 4x anti-aliasing, and it also didn't run at a stupidly high resolution like 1280 x 1024(???). Most N64 games ran at the most at 640x480 which was then formatted to fit your television standard. Sure they implemented edge antialising but is it really gonna matter if anti-aliasing isn't implemented at all. And lastly, in order for games larger than 32mb to run maybe a different strategy should be taken. As far as I can tell all emulators on the PC first load the entire rom into memory, then play it from there. Maybe there is a way to stream the rom from the HDD, flushing the memory when necessary to stream more of it. I dunno, but its worth looking into.

Anyway good job to Hikaru, if you can get daedelus working I praise you, however I believe its the wrong path to be taken.

Daedalus is the best emulator that will run on 64MB of RAM.

Lantus tried to port Project64 and concluded that it needs at least 128MB of RAM to run even the smallest games (as told in the PJ64 system requirements).

UGH! PROJECT64 WILL NOT WORK! EVER

its not the right path to take.

interesting.. hope he gets through those problems.. perhaps other dev.:ers have something to add?

I Want my XBE!

Even if it is the best emulator to run on 64mb of ram what is the use of it if the compatibility is shot. Compatibility is what its all about and daedelus doesn't have it.

If you consider the CPU speed (it is only a P3 afterall) then you lose out all over then.

Recommended Specs from PJ64.net
-----------------------------------------------------------
600Mhz+ Pentium3 or Athlon CPU
160MB+ RAM
Good 3D graphics (e.g. GeForce1/2, Radeon)
Adaptoid and a real N64 controller
------------------------------------------------------------

Well let me see here...CPU we have, RAM possibly if someone can figure out disc caching, Top-end 3D card(yes I'm pretty sure its a Geforce 3) and a decent controller. Mmmm it seems PJ64 could run on a Xbox, especially with Xbox optimised plugins. Sure 160MB ram on a PC, but that would have to include operating system overhead, and the fact that the entire rom is loaded into memory before execution takes place.

Daedelus is not going to make anyone happy, if you've got a PC you may as well just run it on there.

Or better yet...UltraHLE...too bad there is no directx plugin for it

great to see to total n00b telling the porters how to do their job. i assume you figure disc caching would be easy to implement, heck windows does it. you're WRONG! no two ways about it. how about you go off and learn about such things before you go preaching your shit around here again

it seems once the virtual memory thing is figured out (albit difficult) it will solve almost EVERY problem the emulators have right now; Esspecially MAME.

has anyone tried the hardware route ... figured out how to add more physical ram to the xbox? not sure if the architecture would allow it but if it did and you could figure out how to get a dim slot in there you'd be all set...

just trying to think outside the (x)box.

I've seen people who have added another 64MB of RAM to the Xbox, bringing it up to 128 MB, although it's a tricky job (it's not just a handy SIMM/DIMM socket, unfortunately!) I think it also breaks compatibility with real Xbox games and probably most homebrew stuff unless it's recompiled to allow the extra RAM. Probably a non-starter for most people.

The thing about Project64 needing 128MB of RAM wouldn't be solved with virtual memory, as far as I know. It's for the dynamic recompilation cache I seem to remember, which really needs to be in RAM as it is accessed all the time. Virtual memory only works when there are large portions of memory that are only accessed rarely, like (we hope) large parts of ROM files. Otherwise you'll get terrible disk thrashing and the emulator will be dog slow.

pelago

Thankyou for your input on my question, now I totaly understand the concept. For "pakaman" Some of use arent as all mighty as you and your flaming and smart ass remarks arent welcome here so go fuck off back to your flaming wars somewhere else. End of story. And by the way I have a Bachelor of Arts degree, and am working in networking.

I think some people are forgetting about one little part of why Daedulus was picked. Open Source, Direct X based. Do you honestly expect people to write from scratch their own emu? I don't think so. There are most likely MANY other reasons for the choice, but its always funny to see a bunch of people with no porting or even programming experience knock the choice of daedulus. The whole scene is based upon the efforts of people willing to take the time. I'm sure if you really want to help, that Hikaru or others would gladly accept any aid you can provide them, just please make it anything other than "daedulus sucks man".

QUOTE (mattseds @ Apr 28 2003, 06:24 PM)

I think some people are forgetting about one little part of why Daedulus was picked. Open Source, Direct X based. Do you honestly expect people to write from scratch their own emu? I don't think so. There are most likely MANY other reasons for the choice, but its always funny to see a bunch of people with no porting or even programming experience knock the choice of daedulus. The whole scene is based upon the efforts of people willing to take the time. I'm sure if you really want to help, that Hikaru or others would gladly accept any aid you can provide them, just please make it anything other than "daedulus sucks man".

Strange. You only have 4 posts and are posting something with such value. Just goes to show ya
that post count does NOT count! Welcome to XS.
g

i agree with MATTSEDS,
who care what they use if ti works?

Any full game compatibility > None at all.

QUOTE (guile @ Apr 28 2003, 06:51 PM)

QUOTE (mattseds @ Apr 28 2003, 06:24 PM) I think some people are forgetting about one little part of why Daedulus was picked.  Open Source, Direct X based.  Do you honestly expect people to write from scratch their own emu?  I don't think so.  There are most likely MANY other reasons for the choice, but its always funny to see a bunch of people with no porting or even programming experience knock the choice of daedulus.  The whole scene is based upon the efforts of people willing to take the time.  I'm sure if you really want to help, that Hikaru or others would gladly accept any aid you can provide them, just please make it anything other than "daedulus sucks man". Strange. You only have 4 posts and are posting something with such value. Just goes to show ya that post count does NOT count! Welcome to XS. g

Never underestimate a lurker.

are there any N64 emulators written in assembly? can the xbox accecpt programs written in assembly?

I know back in the day of Bleem there was another program called Virtual Game Station. chim in if you know what I'm talking about. Anyway bleem was written in direct X (I'm pretty sure) and VGS was written in assembly. Sure bleem looked great but it sucked up resourses and was sketchy at best. while VGS ran blisteringly fast on even the slowest PC but did absolutly nothing to enhance the graphics.

is there an open sourse NO NONSENCE N64 emulator out there?

VGS is pretty cool, and you can drop down into Assembly in C++

QUOTE (pakman21 @ Apr 28 2003, 08:03 AM)

QUOTE (Aussie14 @ Apr 28 2003, 07:01 AM) If the community is going to port EMU's why dont they make use of the Xbox's power and figure out how they do this??? let me guess, you are 14?

I was wondering the same thing LOL!

QUOTE (lucas @ Apr 28 2003, 02:10 PM)

great to see to total n00b telling the porters how to do their job. i assume you figure disc caching would be easy to implement, heck windows does it. you're WRONG! no two ways about it. how about you go off and learn about such things before you go preaching your shit around here again

Oh yeh I am a NOOB...mmm interesting considering I am in my final year of an Information Technology degree and I know a fair bit about how disc caching works. And I know it has to be implemented in software as there is no operating sytem. I'm not WRONG, disc caching wouldn't be THAT difficult to implement.

pelago - yes disk thrashing would be a result of virtual memory, but I don't think it would really be that noticeable. I was testing a simple memory allocation program written in C++ on my PC today which makes a huge amount of arrays to fill memory. On a 512mb system running Windows 2000 I generated enough arrays that used all of system ram and 1.3gig of virtual memory, with average of 29 pages/sec and still only maxed out at 17% processor usage. I do believe virtual memory is a possibility on the xbox and I do think it will help with the emulation situation. You are also right about the dynamic recompilation cache, but if I remember correctly PJ64 can also run as an interpreter (albeit a fair bit slower) which would mean it wouldn't need nearly as much system ram. I am going to research into programming a virtual memory allocator in the coming weeks so I will get back to you if I find anything that is useful.

So fuck you lucas, I'm just trying to get my point of view across, which is just as valid as mine.

And don't assume some1 is a NOOB coz they haven't made as many posts as you. I can guarantee you don't know shit about computer architecture or programming so get off your ass and learn something instead of flaming other people.

P.S. Programming in assembly probably wouldn't make that much of an improvement for the extra work becoz most compilers these days can produce code which is almost as fast as pure assembly.

QUOTE (saunderez @ Apr 29 2003, 06:01 PM)

Oh yeh I am a NOOB...mmm interesting considering I am in my final year of an Information Technology degree and I know a fair bit about how disc caching works. And I know it has to be implemented in software as there is no operating sytem. I'm not WRONG, disc caching wouldn't be THAT difficult to implement.

buddy, im calling you a noob because you come here acting like you've got some new brilliant idea, when its been mentioned countless times before. people have thought of it long ago and its been worked on by some of the best coders in the scene with no luck yet. if you feel it would be so easy to implement, step up and code it. show the world how much you actually learnt in that IT degree.

An Information Technology degree? Lemme guess, you couldn't figure out PC repair or any programming language, so your conselor recommened that? Sorry you wasted your money on that. It MIGHT give you a position as an administrative assistant.... and if you don't know what that is, I'd have to wonder how much knowlege of the real world that you have, in general.

QUOTE (saunderez @ Apr 29 2003, 12:01 AM)

P.S. Programming in assembly probably wouldn't make that much of an improvement for the extra work becoz most compilers these days can produce code which is almost as fast as pure assembly.

MSVC++ doesn't produce a good mix of SSE2/MMX code automatically which is what you'll be using for xbox...
Nor will it take advantage of many CPL0 instructions.
Use C/C++ for the majority of your code, write in asm the parts that really need speed.

Not to mention your "disk thrashing" won't matter, this isn't a disk based system being emulated, so paging is the only true method to get larger roms loaded, without re-designing the main core of these emulators.
Windows 2000 is already using hardware demand-paging for its virtual memory, so your tests don't really matter. If you want to program a real virtual memory system, just pickup the Intel docs...there isn't anything else really needed, and if you cannot understand those docs, you might as well not bother writing it.

Speed isn't an issue with hardware paging, its adding it to an already running kernel, and then using the xbox kernel calls for the disk i/o. It'll happen in due time, however everyone who has the ability to do it, doesn't need your guys ideas on methods to do it...so just stop flaming each other and wait.

*tips hat and sultes*

Althings come to those who wait ! Freeloaders Delay and leak and most wanted Apps / Toolz / Games

Go play with what u have and enjoy the possiblitys of what u'll get when u finsihed what u got

*back to work i go*

Hiiiii HoooooO!!!!

QUOTE (saunderez @ Apr 29 2003, 08:01 AM)

P.S. Programming in assembly probably wouldn't make that much of an improvement for the extra work becoz most compilers these days can produce code which is almost as fast as pure assembly.

Are you on crack? There isn't a programming language out there (unless you count binary) that's as fast as assembly. C/C++, in particular, is noted for making large binaries (once compiled) and being a bit of resource hog unless managed carefully. And don't even begin to tell me Java can move anywhere near the speed of assembly...

yea!

About that 4x antialiasing...

I really can't see the point of using it. Sure, the real N64 has this "fuzziness" -thing, but it sure as hell isn't antialiasing. Personally I think it looks lousy compared to just having the graphics drawn in (quite) sharp 640x480 with no antialias at all. I don't think there's that much wrong in having an emulator that looks better than the original machine - after all, if the technology would have been usable back when N64 was released, I bet Nintendo itself would have opted for non-fuzzy, crisp graphics.

I remember trying out that leaked Daedalus thingy with a "wOW! this is better than the real thing!" -effect with Mario 64 ;)

Sure, there's always the case of "but the games wont look like they should". This if of course true, but first of all even the NES emus out there feature crisper graphics and better sound than the original setup in most people's living rooms had back in the day when NES was The console. Secondly, I have very hard time believing that N64 developers used the fuzziness-feature in a manner that would spoil the game if it wasn't there and was crisp instead - it'll just look better.

Of course there probably are people who (for some obscure reason:) like the smudgy feel of the N64, and for them, if it becomes possible, a 4x antialias should be included, as an option. It still won't look the same and it'll eat more power. Point is not to get stuck in implementing it.

Just my humble opinion :)

N64 X(xbWatson Debug Edition)
- Graphics not support.
- Audio not support.
- Input not support.

So what hte hell is supported then

QUOTE (housefreax @ Apr 29 2003, 07:27 PM)

N64 X(xbWatson Debug Edition) - Graphics not support. - Audio not support. - Input not support. So what hte hell is supported then

It is used to determine if the ROM will load. Not to play it.

At least we know someone is dedicated and working on n64 emulation

ok. now i don't mean to sound ungrateful or anything and i'm probably just showing my ignorance and also insulting the writter at the same time (sorry in advance mate ) but how long has this bloke been working on this supposedly? and is this it? TO SEE A SODDIN' ROM LOAD!?!?!?!? i'm not expecting miracles (i know for sure i couldn't do this shit) but its been quite a few months for this flimsy piece to come out. all apologies if i'm wrong. i mean if the background stuff is all done and everything then i can see how long it would take and i retract all my banter but from all i can see and what everyone is saying is that its too see if a rom loads. that sounds soooo lame. please PLEASE(!) enlighten me and remove my ignorance. just tell me that it isn't just to see if the soddin' rom loads. just tell me that there is a lot of hard work involved to get to this stage! i'm sure there is but it sounds such a stupid thing for people to get excited about. i really hope this means that most of the emulator is up and running apart from the graphics and sound. please tell me if i'm wrong and where i'm wrong but don't flame


his other emulators are great and he has my greatest support (apart from this crap i'm posting) and praise. keep going (he won't read this i expect. hes japanese).

In short, yes it takes work getting to this stage, and yes you do come off sounding like an ungreatful ass that wants this handed to him on a silver platter.

QUOTE (kezzz @ Apr 30 2003, 12:22 AM)

ok. now i don't mean to sound ungrateful or anything and i'm probably just showing my ignorance and also insulting the writter at the same time (sorry in advance mate  )  but how long has this bloke been working on this supposedly? and is this it? TO SEE A SODDIN' ROM LOAD!?!?!?!?

OMGZ I HVE TEH ENTIRE GOODN64 SET AND NUTHING WORKZ WITH HIKARUZ N64 EMUZ. DAMN I WNT TO PLAY CONKERZ

moron

haha, great.

by the way lantus doomx1.3 owns, no music but network is great too bad you can only join pc i think, anyway is there a way to host a network game (on the xbox) instead of just joing pc servers? I know you put doomx on hiatus, but when you get the chance please rls 1.4 sometime this year with music . And ability to host a server.

Thanks

Mech...zZz.

QUOTE (lantus @ Apr 30 2003, 02:21 AM)

QUOTE (kezzz @ Apr 30 2003, 12:22 AM) ok. now i don't mean to sound ungrateful or anything and i'm probably just showing my ignorance and also insulting the writter at the same time (sorry in advance mate  )  but how long has this bloke been working on this supposedly? and is this it? TO SEE A SODDIN' ROM LOAD!?!?!?!? OMGZ I HVE TEH ENTIRE GOODN64 SET AND NUTHING WORKZ WITH HIKARUZ N64 EMUZ. DAMN I WNT TO PLAY CONKERZ moron

youve got to be jokin right? lol im just playin... its the same for me i couldnt get any roms to load... Obviosuly im not expecting them to play. just load.. but not even that happens lol

I always wondered why coders wait till they have essentially finished code before any release, now i know exactly why. Hikaru released this so we had a little something to wet our whistle with, and everyone jumps down his throat because it's not fully working yet.

If you don't have a constructive comment about the DEBUG (note the capital DEBUG) build from hikaru, please don't comment.

QUOTE (kezzz @ Apr 30 2003, 11:22 AM)

please PLEASE(!) enlighten me and remove my ignorance.

your ignorance appears far to deep beneath your skin for anyone but yourself to remove. before you go mouthing off about something you know nothing about, do a little research into it