Custom path support has been merged
As title says.

This also comes with some extra features. For comparison, the File menu in melonDS 0.9.3, and the new File menu:


First of all, the 'Open ROM inside archive' option has been merged with 'Open ROM', to declutter the menu and make things more intuitive. The file picker dialog just lets you pick either a ROM file or an archive, and in the latter case, it asks you which file you want to open from the archive.

When opening a ROM from an archive, the recent ROM menu remembers the archive file but also which ROM you picked inside it. Similarly, you can now pass a ROM inside an archive to the command line, like so:

melonDS path/to/archive.zip|dupermario.nds

As I wanted to make the GBA ROM/addon feature more obvious, it has been decoupled from the regular 'Open ROM' feature. Previously, you had to open your GBA ROM before opening your NDS ROM, but it wasn't obvious at all that the feature existed or how it worked. Now, the separate menus should make this more obvious.

The way DS ROMs are handled has been revamped in a similar fashion. Basically:

* 'Open ROM' loads a DS ROM and starts running it, resetting emulation if another ROM was loaded previously, basically retaining its existing behavior.

* Under the DS slot section, 'Insert cart' will load a DS ROM, and that's it. Just like inserting a cartridge in a DS. The current cart, if any, will be ejected prior. This makes it possible to hotswap carts while running a game or the DS/DSi menu. Similarly, you guess what 'Eject cart' is for.

* The GBA slot section works in much the same way. You can choose to either insert a ROM cart, mimicking the presence of a GBA game cart for the DS games that can sense that, or insert an add-on cart, like for example the memory expansion cart which the DS browser uses. Note that melonDS does not support running GBA games.

* Resetting emulation does not reload the currently loaded carts (as you would probably expect, but it did that before). Stopping emulation keeps the carts inserted, until they're ejected or something else is loaded.

That should be it for the differences in functionality.

Other than that, a lot of the old ROM handling code has been bulldozed, resulting in code that is much cleaner and easier to deal with. Means nothing for the end user, but it makes life easier for us as well as anyone who wants to port melonDS.

Anyway, we encourage you to provide feedback about these changes! I want the UI to be feature-rich without being too galaxy-brain or unintuitive, and that is challenging at times.
lemonds says:
Jan 10th 2022
thanks for the good work
Iris says:
Jan 10th 2022
Sounds great! I never knew melonds had a GBA slot function before, and I had a few games that would've worked better with a few GBA carts. I guess I'll try them out now. Looking forward to the next release!
Nintendo says:
Jan 10th 2022
I forbid you to play dupermario!
Arisotura says:
Jan 10th 2022
* Arisotura farts on Nintendo
Nice says:
Jan 10th 2022
While it sounds great, I think it's not released yet, so I guess the feedback would be "good work"

I concur, It never occured to me that the GBA slot was already a feature.
kirimaru says:
Jan 10th 2022
looks great, i'm going to try as soon as is released, do you plan to add more command-line options like launch the emulator in fullscreen?
NICOEMU says:
Jan 10th 2022
Honestly, melonDS is the best DS emulator ever, I hope that one day melonDS will be able to run all DSiWare games without the need for them to be integrated into the NAND and for GBA games to be executable! :D
Bob says:
Jan 10th 2022
Would be cool to have a launch dialog like in Citra or current DSi title manager, with game icons and internal game titles instead of file names.
AsPika says:
Jan 11th 2022
Congratulations!!!! 🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉 Waiting for next version!
Vivi92 says:
Jan 12th 2022
Great work
AmyRose1288 says:
Jan 13th 2022
well,any planning for auto importing cheats? (some game contains more than 100 cheat opitions,and manually input these is a total pain)
Digifiend says:
Jan 15th 2022
Bob: Or like Dolphin, the Gamecube and Wii emulator.
Minessota Klei says:
Jan 27th 2022
Hi,

I thought it was really good! Please give more love to the Linux versions 💖
Rayyan says:
Feb 4th 2022
Minessota Klei: what's wrong with the Linux version?
Minessota Klei says:
Feb 13th 2022
In Linux Mint 20.3, the emulator has the same bug as the previous version, I can't enable OpenGL renderer option by emulator interface. I can only activate the OpenGL renderer by changing the melonDS.ini file (3DRenderer = 1).
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