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The state of N64 emulation - Thoughts


mar00n

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Yes, cycle accurate emulation for the N64 is just recently beginning to become practical because computer technology has progressed extensively since 1999/2005. Cycle accurate emulation would have ran at 1-5 fps back then. That was basically the point I was making. Cen64 will indeed be the answer if the devs don't become uninterested.

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I was never claiming they should have/could have done cycle accurate N64 games back in 1999.

I know, but you were blaming UltraHLE for today's emulation problems, and that's simply not true. Project 64 decided to use HLE on it's own, became uninterested after emulating the most popular games, and that's why we are in the state we're in today. You're the one who brought up UltraHLE, which has been irrelevant for over 10 years now.

Hint: There's a huge difference between UltraHLE and HLE.

We are all aware of this.

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You don't understand the N64 scene. You weren't around for it. Let's put it in a different way.

If the MAME team had all the boards and documentation for a very important system and knew they would be going bad soon if they didn't attempt to dump and preserve them immediately and they instead decided "fuck it, people just want to play Vs. Super Mario Bros. anyways" and let those boards die, and permanently lose the documentation vital to properly emulating that system... what would you say?

That's what happened with the UltraHLE team. Things important for proper emulation (microcode documentation, as one example) were permanently lost and is the reason why our current emulators are so crippled. It's also why the task of bus and cycle-accurate emulation is a far more difficult task now than it should have been. There's a reason why 64DD isn't emulated amongst other things such as it taking forever for games like Rogue Squadron to become playable and only then through hacks.

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You don't understand the N64 scene. You weren't around for it. Let's put it in a different way.

If the MAME team had all the boards and documentation for a very important system and knew they would be going bad soon if they didn't attempt to dump and preserve them immediately and they instead decided "fuck it, people just want to play Vs. Super Mario Bros. anyways" and let those boards die, and permanently lose the documentation vital to properly emulating that system... what would you say?

That's what happened with the UltraHLE team. Things important for proper emulation (microcode documentation, as one example) were permanently lost and is the reason why our current emulators are so crippled. It's also why the task of bus and cycle-accurate emulation is a far more difficult task now than it should have been. There's a reason why 64DD isn't emulated amongst other things such as it taking forever for games like Rogue Squadron to become playable and only then through hacks.

Lol, more false assertions... Okay, first and foremost, UltraHLE never even had proper documentation of the N64's microcode; therefore, nothing was lost. Secondly, there are various microcodes because some games had custom microcodes in the cartridges themselves. That's a major reason why Rogue Squadron and Gauntlet Legends have yet to be properly emulated. The only thing UltraHLE did was create an emulator, that's it. Nothing of relevance was lost with UltraHLE but time that could have been used properly reverse engineering and documenting the N64. Please, stop with the false assertions. Documentation on the Nintendo 64's and it's game's microcode was extremely poor in 1999.

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Enjoy your ignorance, I'm done.

By calling me ignorant does not make you correct, sir. Nice cop out, though. Provide me with a source that UltraHLE's developers had proper documentation of the Nintendo 64's RSP microcode, if not, good riddance. False assertions are not needed.

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Can we all be friends :-) people have different views, opinions and thoughts some wrong some right. In the end as long as we all work together to make hyperspin as good as it can be with a forum that's nice to be in unlike others then we all win. When alls said and done we just all want to play games LOL

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Can we all be friends :-) people have different views, opinions and thoughts some wrong some right. In the end as long as we all work together to make hyperspin as good as it can be with a forum that's nice to be in unlike others then we all win. When alls said and done we just all want to play games LOL

Aha, I agree. I just don't appreciate someone falsely accusing me of being incorrect, then instead of facts, following up with a bunch mumbo-jumbo and using analogies and emulation terms to make it seem as though he knows what he's talking about.

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No worries mate just like it on these forums a lot and would hate to see things get like other sites

Exactly the reason why I've stuck around so long. Apart from the odd blip, it's still a great place to hang out.

This is also a very interesting topic, one I didn't know much about, so was reading with interest.

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Blaming the authors of the early emulators for somehow crippling N64 emulation for later emulators makes absolutely no sense.

Let's make up a theoretical closed source Xbox emulator called XXXX. If the authors of XXXX had not just the XBox SDK (XDK) but all the internal Microsoft confidential information (never supplied to game developers) fully detailing the BIOS, all the various subsystems of the console, security, how the graphics calls all work internally, CPU and GPU breakdowns, timing info, etc... I think you'd agree with me that XXXX would likely be much further along in development than without it. And if all that info got lost, I'd like to think you'd agree with me that anyone attempting to write a new Xbox emulator afterwards would find themselves with a much more difficult uphill battle having to figure everything out themselves. (Of course, I'm totally ignoring the legality of all that.)

If you still think it makes no sense, I don't know what to say.

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Let's make up a theoretical closed source Xbox emulator called XXXX. If the authors of XXXX had not just the XBox SDK (XDK) but all the internal Microsoft confidential information (never supplied to game developers) fully detailing the BIOS, all the various subsystems of the console, security, how the graphics calls all work internally, CPU and GPU breakdowns, timing info, etc... I think you'd agree with me that XXXX would likely be much further along in development than without it. And if all that info got lost, I'd like to think you'd agree with me that anyone attempting to write a new Xbox emulator afterwards would find themselves with a much more difficult uphill battle having to figure everything out themselves. (Of course, I'm totally ignoring the legality of all that.)

If you still think it makes no sense, I don't know what to say.

That's common sense, but you're failing to understand that UltraHLE did NOT have proper documentation as you're using in your analogy, so that renders your entire argument you proposed to me invalid. UltraHLE used just what it's name implies, HLE; inaccurately at that. They made estimates of many timings/functions, and blatantly left majority of them out in favor of speed with the hardware available at the time. UltraHLE was by no means an accurate emulator.

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