Nes emulator for playdate?

Discuss emulation of the Nintendo Entertainment System and Famicom.

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wallmasterr
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Nes emulator for playdate?

Post by wallmasterr »

Iv been having a load of fun with my playdate and would like to port my games from nes to it. I created Flea and tapeworm along with help freom some very awesome people in the community.
Iv saw this project on redit for an emulator but its still running slow and from what i can see the source isnt available.
https://www.reddit.com/r/PlaydateConsol ... playdate/
I know spirits and pallets would have to be edited to make best use of the 1 bit display but i think this could be a great other place for people to release ethere games if we get a good reusable emulator wrapper.
For example , we ported tapeworm natively to the playdate and its sold around 1500 copies already just through itch.

I am willing to pay someone to do the work and could potentially provide a playdate for physical testing

thanks for any help on this
Ally
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Individualised
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Re: Nes emulator for playdate?

Post by Individualised »

I'm not too familiar with this system but judging by the specs it should be possible at full speed. Is it an open platform or do you have to use the SDK provided by the manufacturer?
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Dwedit
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Re: Nes emulator for playdate?

Post by Dwedit »

Playdate is over 10 times more powerful than the GBA, so it should have no trouble running an optimized NES emulator, but the screen is not well-suited for the task. Usually you would get gray shades by rapidly blinking pixels on and off, but the screen might have too high a response speed for that.
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wallmasterr
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Re: Nes emulator for playdate?

Post by wallmasterr »

I think u can program directly with no sdk but not sure.
it supports c throguh sdk so was hoping another open emulator could be ported like the redit post. Iv asked them but no response yet.

I think what the redit post example dose for colors is assing a full screen dither pattern per color/hue and mask /unmask the areas it needs to be.
this create some good results but is far from ideal.
We would have to completely redraw the sprites and tiles to make it look good but im seeing this more as a way to port our games easly more than its be a working emulator for all games. So we should hopefully have the ability to swap out graphics.
People could also make rom hacks to make graphics 1 bit if they wanted to.

I did redrew the sprites for tapeworm.
Luckily the vertical res is the same on nes and playdate so pixels can be 1:1 with a border image at the side
https://img.itch.zone/aW1hZ2UvMTUzMjMwM ... nGmXAc.gif
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Individualised
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Re: Nes emulator for playdate?

Post by Individualised »

wallmasterr wrote: Mon Nov 21, 2022 3:30 am I think u can program directly with no sdk but not sure.
it supports c throguh sdk so was hoping another open emulator could be ported like the redit post. Iv asked them but no response yet.

I think what the redit post example dose for colors is assing a full screen dither pattern per color/hue and mask /unmask the areas it needs to be.
this create some good results but is far from ideal.
We would have to completely redraw the sprites and tiles to make it look good but im seeing this more as a way to port our games easly more than its be a working emulator for all games. So we should hopefully have the ability to swap out graphics.
People could also make rom hacks to make graphics 1 bit if they wanted to.

I did redrew the sprites for tapeworm.
Luckily the vertical res is the same on nes and playdate so pixels can be 1:1 with a border image at the side
https://img.itch.zone/aW1hZ2UvMTUzMjMwM ... nGmXAc.gif
The emulator could perhaps not try to emulate the original palette registers of the NES at all, and instead in its place simply read a 1-bit value. This would work similarly to how the VT01 (NES clone chipset/specification extension with support for a special red/blue TFT display) and it's 4-bit palette works.
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rainwarrior
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Re: Nes emulator for playdate?

Post by rainwarrior »

Individualised wrote: Sun Nov 20, 2022 10:54 am I'm not too familiar with this system but judging by the specs it should be possible at full speed. Is it an open platform or do you have to use the SDK provided by the manufacturer?
It's a closed platform. The SDK is freely provided, but explicitly proprietary.

I believe there's some signing/encryption/etc. used to prevent people from dumping games off the console and playing them with the SDK, but I haven't looked too far into it.
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Individualised
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Re: Nes emulator for playdate?

Post by Individualised »

rainwarrior wrote: Wed Nov 23, 2022 5:47 pm
Individualised wrote: Sun Nov 20, 2022 10:54 am I'm not too familiar with this system but judging by the specs it should be possible at full speed. Is it an open platform or do you have to use the SDK provided by the manufacturer?
It's a closed platform. The SDK is freely provided, but explicitly proprietary.

I believe there's some signing/encryption/etc. used to prevent people from dumping games off the console and playing them with the SDK, but I haven't looked too far into it.
Ah. In that case, I assume the console may have some overhead such as an operating system that still runs while playing a game. So I'm not sure if that could be an issue for this.
paul
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Re: Nes emulator for playdate?

Post by paul »

I found this but it looks like Ally/wallmasterr already saw it, and the latest update is older than this thread.

https://www.reddit.com/r/PlaydateConsol ... ormance_on
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