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< melonHLE?HLE, wifi, netplay: recent developments and ideas >

melonHLE, facts and ideas Jun 6th 2023, by Arisotura

So first of all, I'm done with the mold problem and its consequences, meaning that my apartment finally looks like an actual apartment and I can exhale a big sigh of relief. I continued my work on melonHLE, taking it to a point where it may be something serious. The compatibility rate seemed good, even though some games don't run because some auxiliary services aren't completely implemented. I've had some fun reverse-engineering the sound engines and implementing them, with decent results. So I did a quick performance comparison: The tests were done on my laptop Crepe (Core i7-5500U, 2.4GHz). Numbers are an average measure of frames per second. melonHLE shows to be faster, but it's not mindblowing either. However, keep in mind that this is largely a quick and dirty experiment. There are some simple ways to make melonHLE faster, one of which is increasing the maximum CPU time slice (kMaxIterationCycles). The current value of 64 is chosen to keep the ARM9 and ARM7 somewhat in sync, but obviously, in melonHLE we don't need to keep the ARM7 in sync. A much bigger kMaxIterationCycles value increases performance to some extent and has no downsides. Regardless, melonHLE may prove a viable option for lower-end platforms. In the end, it might be integrated into melonDS as an option, though it needs more work and testing. Now, you may ask, how does any of this relate to the netplay saga? This joins the general idea of optimizing melonDS for lower-end platforms. For example, Generic is trying to optimize melonDS for the Switch, and more particularly trying to optimize the whole 3D graphics pipeline. Full 3D games are more demanding, so this is a worthy optimization target. Optimizing melonDS will also benefit local multiplayer and netplay, seeing as these require running multiple melonDS instances at the same time. I want to make it accessible to a broad audience and not just those with the absolute bestest computers, especially in these troubled times of chip shortages and such. Which brings me to another point: HLE wifi. So far, I haven't done any work towards it, but I'm tempted to give it a try. The wifi service may be high-level enough to be emulated separately from melonDS's current wifi implementation, and with less complexity and more lax synchronization, but the only way to know is to give it a try. If it works out, it might make local multiplayer possible with lower performance requirements. Stay tuned!

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< melonHLE?HLE, wifi, netplay: recent developments and ideas >

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