4 ms·

Mastering Motion: The Journey to Emulate MotionPlus

73 points by bdz 7y ago

dmitripopov 7y ago
I just wonder how people behind this emulator do that enormous amount of work for free. I mean it takes a lot of time from your regular job and your family to do an in-depth research like this, not to mention writing quality emulator code. They must be angels. Or demons. Or both.
- mebo 7y ago
  Everyone needs a hobby - for a lot of people, doing this kind of research and development is just plain fun, especially if it involves working with video games you enjoy or collaborative work with a lot of people that share the same interests. I guess it's a bit like an online hackerspace?
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    Emulators in particular seem to attract a lot of extremely talented programmers, since they often demand advanced or novel techniques in reverse engineering, compilers, graphics, etc. and I guess serve as a nice "challenge" for those who are good at these things.
saagarjha 7y ago
> Just a year later, Nintendo announced their newest edition to the Zelda series, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword as a MotionPlus exclusive. I believe this should be Wii Sports Resort? The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword came out quite late in the Wii's lifecycle, in 2011. > In a bit of good fortune, while developers were analyzing the calibration data, the NSA released a reverse engineering tool called "Ghidra". This tool helped Billiard more easily examine the calibration data and see how the games were using it. With Ghidra, it only took a few days to determine what all of the data meant, and give Dolphin the ability to generate perfect calibration data. I am curious how Ghidra helped here. Does the Dolphin team not have access to IDA Pro or other similar reverse-engineering software?
- tinco 7y ago
  Have you seen the IDA pro license fee? It is obscenely expensive. At least it was when I was last interested in reverse engineering which is admittedly over a decade ago.
  - herohamp 7y ago
    It's currently at 1200$ for a pro license
  - TheAceOfHearts 7y ago
    IDA 7.0 is free for non-commercial use, so I think Dolphin developers could've used it.
    - Vogtinator 7y ago
      It has neither a decompiler nor PowerPC support.
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    I mean, I doubt everyone working on Dolphin has a 100% legitimate IDA license ;)
- ivanbakel 7y ago
  The announcement for Skyward Sword was in 2009 - though at that point the name wasn't released. The fact that it relied on the new MotionPlus technology was part of the announcement.
tardyp 7y ago
The fr mirror worked for me as the original server is overloaded... https://fr.dolphin-emu.org/blog/2019/04/26/mastering-motion/ https://fr.dolphin-emu.org/blog/2019/04/26/mastering-motion/
faissaloo 7y ago
It's great to see Ghidra being put to good use

73 points by bdz 7y ago

I just wonder how people behind this emulator do that enormous amount of work for free. I mean it takes a lot of time from your regular job and your family to do an in-depth research like this, not to mention writing quality emulator code. They must be angels. Or demons. Or both.

mebo 7y ago
Everyone needs a hobby - for a lot of people, doing this kind of research and development is just plain fun, especially if it involves working with video games you enjoy or collaborative work with a lot of people that share the same interests. I guess it's a bit like an online hackerspace?
- saagarjha 7y ago
  Emulators in particular seem to attract a lot of extremely talented programmers, since they often demand advanced or novel techniques in reverse engineering, compilers, graphics, etc. and I guess serve as a nice "challenge" for those who are good at these things.

saagarjha 7y ago

> Just a year later, Nintendo announced their newest edition to the Zelda series, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword as a MotionPlus exclusive. I believe this should be Wii Sports Resort? The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword came out quite late in the Wii's lifecycle, in 2011. > In a bit of good fortune, while developers were analyzing the calibration data, the NSA released a reverse engineering tool called "Ghidra". This tool helped Billiard more easily examine the calibration data and see how the games were using it. With Ghidra, it only took a few days to determine what all of the data meant, and give Dolphin the ability to generate perfect calibration data. I am curious how Ghidra helped here. Does the Dolphin team not have access to IDA Pro or other similar reverse-engineering software?

tinco 7y ago
Have you seen the IDA pro license fee? It is obscenely expensive. At least it was when I was last interested in reverse engineering which is admittedly over a decade ago.
- herohamp 7y ago
  It's currently at 1200$ for a pro license
- TheAceOfHearts 7y ago
  IDA 7.0 is free for non-commercial use, so I think Dolphin developers could've used it.
  - Vogtinator 7y ago
    It has neither a decompiler nor PowerPC support.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  I mean, I doubt everyone working on Dolphin has a 100% legitimate IDA license ;)
ivanbakel 7y ago
The announcement for Skyward Sword was in 2009 - though at that point the name wasn't released. The fact that it relied on the new MotionPlus technology was part of the announcement.

tardyp 7y ago

The fr mirror worked for me as the original server is overloaded... https://fr.dolphin-emu.org/blog/2019/04/26/mastering-motion/ https://fr.dolphin-emu.org/blog/2019/04/26/mastering-motion/

faissaloo 7y ago

It's great to see Ghidra being put to good use