4 ms·

Dolphin has support for two consoles: Gamecube and Wii. It supports both of them because the architectures are extremely similar. I don't get what you mean by "

by sprayk 7y ago

Dolphin has support for two consoles: Gamecube and Wii. It supports both of them because the architectures are extremely similar. I don't get what you mean by "ease of programming model". Saturn/Playstation/N64 were the first to have games programmed primarily in C with libraries provided by the system developers. This generation is harder to emulate simply because the system architectures contain more chips connected with wider buses running at much higher clock speeds. All of those factors make low level analysis, like with a logic analyzer, impractical. Another factor is the popularity of the system and level of interest in emulation of the system. The original XBox is a good example of this. Gamecube and PS2 have much more polished emulators because they have more titles that interest people, while little effort is spent on emulating the original Xbox (despite being essentially a PC) arguably due to the lack of exclusive titles to make it worth it.

Polylactic_acid 7y ago
Nintendo consoles seem to always have the best emulators, likely due to being almost all exclusive games. Every nintendo console recently has had a working emulator before the end of the consoles life. I remember nintendo ds emulators adding support for games that had only just come out.
- thristian 7y ago
  The other reason Nintendo consoles have the best emulators is because Nintendo generally avoids cutting-edge technology, or at least they prioritise "simple" and "cheap" over CPU and GPU performance. Apart from the latest consoles (the Wii U and the Switch), the worst-emulated Nintendo console is the Nintendo 64, which also had the strangest hardware (RAMBUS RAM, a general-purpose GPU, etc.)
  - ridv 7y ago
    On that note about the N64, there is a project (created by a friend of mine in college) that is looking to go down the cycle accurate route that the Byuu has gone down with higan. It's called CEN 64 and can be found at https://github.com/n64dev/cen64 https://github.com/n64dev/cen64 Lots of work that still needs to be done but it's quite impressive!

by sprayk 7y ago

Polylactic_acid 7y ago

Nintendo consoles seem to always have the best emulators, likely due to being almost all exclusive games. Every nintendo console recently has had a working emulator before the end of the consoles life. I remember nintendo ds emulators adding support for games that had only just come out.

thristian 7y ago
The other reason Nintendo consoles have the best emulators is because Nintendo generally avoids cutting-edge technology, or at least they prioritise "simple" and "cheap" over CPU and GPU performance. Apart from the latest consoles (the Wii U and the Switch), the worst-emulated Nintendo console is the Nintendo 64, which also had the strangest hardware (RAMBUS RAM, a general-purpose GPU, etc.)
- ridv 7y ago
  On that note about the N64, there is a project (created by a friend of mine in college) that is looking to go down the cycle accurate route that the Byuu has gone down with higan. It's called CEN 64 and can be found at https://github.com/n64dev/cen64 https://github.com/n64dev/cen64 Lots of work that still needs to be done but it's quite impressive!