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melonDS 0.9.5 is out! Nov 3rd 2022, by Arisotura |
First of all, a bit of a special announcement. As of today, the melonDS project is 6 years old. For this occasion, we present you this special version of the melonDS logo, recolored to the same pretty sky-blue color as 6 itself: ![]() We wanted to have Peach bake a cake shaped like this, but Bowser kidnapped her again. We aren't great bakers at the melonDS HQ, so... yeah. Regardless, these 6 years are a great success. Back in 2016, when I started working on melonDS, I was mostly just making it to have fun and pass time until my job started. I had absolutely no idea the project would go on for so long, and be as much of a success as it has been. So, first of all, I want to thank all the comrades who have helped make this possible. The melonDS team and other contributors. nocash and his great documentation. Everybody else who has been involved in reverse-engineering the DS/DSi hardware, cracking the DSi security, etc... And of course, everybody who has been using melonDS, testing games in it, reporting issues, suggesting improvements, etc... Thank you all. melonDS is a team effort, and you deserve your part of the birthday cake. And, of course, the birthday present. There's only one, but it's a big one. We bring you melonDS 0.9.5, and if you've been following the blog lately, you know it's going to be big. melonDS 0.9.5 ![]() ![]() So what are the highlights of this 0.9.5 release? Improved local multiplayer This is a big change. If you know melonDS, you know that local multiplayer has always been finicky. You had to disable your framerate limiters, sacrifice some goats to the wifi deities, and hope everything would work without disconnecting. Well, this is past now! melonDS 0.9.5 is the result of the first season of the local multiplayer saga, and I dare say that the result is pretty good. As an example: there was no way to get Mario Kart DS multiplayer to stay connected for more than a few seconds, before. Now? It's smooth as butter. Many games have been tested and most of them work absolutely fine, atleast in two-player mode. It is also possible to go for three players and more, but more atypical multiplayer settings might run into problems, or suffer from decreased performance. Oh and if you have an original DS firmware, it's also possible to use download play and Pictochat. However, it is worth noting that I've had to completely rework the way local multiplayer communication and sync were handled. The new method requires all participating melonDS instances to be running on the same machine, so it isn't possible to play over LAN. Not that it has ever worked well tbh. But, essentially, the new IPC communication layer has extra smarts to avoid lag as much as possible, which are made possible by the use of shared memory -- these would be much more difficult, if not impossible, to replicate with BSD sockets over the network. The melonDS UI has also been revamped to make the multiplayer experience smoother. It is possible to launch new isntances of melonDS easily from the emulator's System menu (opening them just by opening the melonDS executable should also work). Certain parts of the emulator's configuration will be unique to each instance, for example it is possible to configure each instance to use a different joystick, to select which instances can output sound, and so on. There are a couple shortcomings to this. First one, some emulator settings (like BIOS/firmware files) are shared across all instances, but if you modify them, they may not reflect to instances which are already opened. These settings should be easily identifiable as I made them editable from the first melonDS instance only. Also, keyboard input, due to how it works, won't be suitable for playing a multiplayer game with a friend -- you will need joysticks for that. However, we have big plans for this. There will be a second season to the local multiplayer saga, where we will implement netplay. This will make it possible to play with your friends over LAN, or even over the internet. The downside is that it will require each participating machine to run every participating melonDS instance, but we're confident that any decent computer can handle this. Besides, this is the cost to keeping a multiplayer game in sync. Due to how tight the local multiplayer timings are, there's no way Nintendo's wifi protocol would ever work over the internet. The improvements to local multiplayer include improvements to wifi emulation itself, which may also improve stability in WFC games. DSi camera support melonDS had basic DSi camera emulation since version 0.9.1, but it wasn't very useful as it was just feeding a fixed stripe pattern as camera input. You guess this doesn't help sell our DSi emulation, seeing as cameras are the number one feature of that console, and the main reason some games support it at all instead of just sticking to the original DS. melonDS 0.9.5 has actual DSi camera support now. That is, you can configure camera input to be sourced either from physical cameras on your computer, or from a fixed image file. Camera emulation has also been improved, which means that for example it is possible to take pictures in the DSi camera app, and they will be saved to your emulated SD card if you have one. Not the most useful thing, but this should also mean better camera support in DSi games. Revamped OpenGL context handling The way melonDS handled OpenGL contexts in the Qt frontend was weird. It was responsible for a number of problems, such as for example the inability to support proper vsync. This is past now. Generic has been porting Stenzek's OpenGL context code from DuckStation to melonDS. This reworks the way OpenGL contexts are handled to be more sane and less prone to problems. This also means that we now have an actual, proper vsync setting. DSi DSP support Well, technically, we've had support for that since melonDS 0.9.3. It just didn't work due to a bunch of issues with it. Now it does. Don't get overly excited over this, though. While I have verified that it atleast works to some extent, teakra (the DSP interpreter) is slow enough that melonDS will likely fall to a single-digit framerate when the DSP is used. That's an improvement over just freezing, but certainly nowhere near playable. We will work on a DSP JIT to alleviate this. CLI improvements courtesy patataofcourse The command line interface (CLI) of melonDS has been revamped. Most notably: • It is possible to boot melonDS with no game loaded, or to load a game without booting, with the -b (or --boot) switch (values: always/never/auto) • the -f (or --fullscreen) switch lets you start the emulator in fullscreen • when loading an archive via the CLI, it is possible to specify which file to load from the archive • the CLI help (invoked by the --help option) will show all the possible CLI arguments and values We plan for this release to be the last of the 0.9.x series. melonDS 1.0 is coming next, and it will be big. In the meantime, enjoy, and stay tuned for more! melonDS 0.9.5, Windows x64 melonDS 0.9.5, Linux x64 melonDS 0.9.5, Linux ARM64 melonDS 0.9.5, macOS universal |
69 comments have been posted. |
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Guest says: Nov 4th 2022 |
How about the mobile version? Will the update available on Google play store? Looking forward for it |
Arisotura says: Nov 4th 2022 |
we don't maintain or support the Android port, you'd have to ask whoever is in charge of it |
Shadowwolf1337 says: Nov 4th 2022 |
i've noticed that if you try configuring player 2's controls in the middle of a game, it slows wayyy down and eventually crashes |
Amnesia1000 says: Nov 4th 2022 |
You are great! Waiting for the big 1.0 |
AsPika says: Nov 4th 2022 |
Yabebabedu!!!! 😝 Is time for enjoy! |
Shadowwolf1337 says: Nov 4th 2022 |
so you say that for netplay, each participating device will have to run every instance of melonds at once what i wonder is if we will be given an option to hide those other instances from being seen, as there are some multiplayer games which would be ruined by you seeing your opponent's screen |
Link1448 says: Nov 4th 2022 |
Thanks for the v-sync support ! |
Somebody says: Nov 5th 2022 |
Great update but i wish there was a option to remove the duplicate screen in hybrid mode orientation and have black space instead |
keisui says: Nov 5th 2022 |
@Somebody a way to get around your issue is to use auto mode with horizontal orientation , ive found it works as a good substitute for what youre describing |
Freakmulator says: Nov 5th 2022 |
I'm excited to know when it will be available in Android devices |
AkumaX says: Nov 5th 2022 |
Congrats to the whole team for the new release of MelonDS & looking forward to version 1.0. Keep up the excellent work! |
Guest says: Nov 5th 2022 |
@Shadowwolf1337 I believe that the other instances will probably be running in the background, hidden. |
lucaspltn says: Nov 5th 2022 |
I just redownloaded melonDS 0.9.5, and it works! 👏🏼 |
phoenix says: Nov 6th 2022 |
I tried increasing the resolution of Hotel Dusk but it doesn't seem to work, the screen also has some weird shaking going on. |
hyphenHoik says: Nov 7th 2022 |
oh hell yeah, local multiplayer feels like its going to open a lot to the online world of the DS, and the online later down the line will blow it out of the park |
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