< Why make it simple when it can be complicated?OpenGL renderer: status update, and "fun" stuff >
Merry Christmas from melonDS
Dec 26th 2025, by Arisotura
I know, I'm one day late.

There won't be anything very fancy for now, though. I haven't worked much on melonDS lately. Over the last week, my training period has been intense, and the long commute didn't help either. However, that went quite well, so I'm hopeful.

Another thing is, there isn't much more to show at this point.

What remains to be done is a bunch of cleanup, optimization work, and adding certain missing features, like proper chunked rendering if certain registers are changed mid-frame. Much like what the blargSNES hardware renderer does. Basically, turning this whole experimental setup into a finished product. It's always nice, but it doesn't really make for interesting screenshots.

As far as the 3D renderers are concerned, my work is mostly finished. I have ideas to improve the regular OpenGL renderer, but that's beyond the scope of the blackmagic3 branch for now. I could mention some, though: for example, attempting to add proper interpolation, instead of the "improved polygon splitting" hack. There would be some other old issues to fix in order to bring both OpenGL renderers closer to the software renderer, too.

With all this, I hope to be able to release melonDS 1.2 by early 2026. We'll see how this goes.

Either way, merry Christmas, happy new year, and all!
19 comments have been posted.
< Why make it simple when it can be complicated?OpenGL renderer: status update, and "fun" stuff >
NoBlink91 says:
Jan 3rd 2026
I get a white screen after using a game from roms/reddit, I use 7-Zip to extract the file. I'm on windows and I don't use a ds.
shawnchalfant says:
Jan 4th 2026
Awesome work, play games all the time, this 48 year old is in bliss!
ken says:
Jan 4th 2026
RetroAchievements support would be amazing! Thanks for all the joy you've brought us.
Lockstar64 says:
Jan 9th 2026
Thanks Ari! Bit of a late response to your last comment, but the job's been going well :) i appreciate it
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