Homebrew dev hoopla with StrmnNrmn: a Daedalus R9 FAQ

Ever since StrmnNrmn pulled a mighty comeback and revealed an agonizingly teaser of a changelog for the R9 version of his homebrew N64 emulator Daedalus, everyone in the homebrew scene has been talking about it. You gotta hand it to the guy: he has achieved audio support for the next version. And to top it off, he followed it up with a chart showing the speed boost framerates of certain N64 games.

He’s gotten a lot of feedback from people (including the usual “first postz!!1onezyeah”), and it goes without saying that some people have been asking questions about its development. For example, most have been asking about the possibility of moving the audio processing over to the ME, however he says he’s not too familiar with the ME structure yet, so he’s yet to look more into it.

He’s also answered a couple of questions about an in-game menu, viewport scaling, and screen size ratios. To these, he answers with:

I’m currently working on the in game menu – this is the last main thing I want to squeeze into R9. With this you’ll be able to change the screen size while the rom is running, as well as a few other things (toggle audio on/off, swap controls etc). I doubt that knocking the screen size down will help the framerate all that much, as the framerate is still largely limited by the cost of CPU emulation rather than rendering.

When asked about the possibility of incorporating frame skipping into the emulator, he says that with audio support functional, frame skipping makes that much more sense and that he might be able to pack it into R9. As for running Daedalus on 300mhz, it won’t really matter since the numbers in the previous charts already show it running at maximum clock frequency.

We know that some of you aren’t really that “friendly” with more technical jargon and homebrew dev hoopla so we’re putting the rest of the Q&A/FAQ behind the “Full Article” link below. Just click the link if you want to get into the whole mix of things.

Thanks to StrmnNrmn for shedding some light on what we can expect for R9 (and some possible peek into an R10, even). But while that’s all and good, the biggest question on everyone’s mind right now is its release date. He’s answered this with a note that he’s going on a week-long skiing trip on the 25th, and he’d hope to release R9 before then.

Time to notch those calendars, folks. Christmas happens on the month of hearts.

Just click Full Article to see the promised Q&A/FAQ.

Ever since StrmnNrmn pulled a mighty comeback and revealed an agonizingly teaser of a changelog for the R9 version of his homebrew N64 emulator Daedalus, everyone in the homebrew scene has been talking about it. You gotta hand it to the guy: he has achieved audio support for the next version. And to top it off, he followed it up with a chart showing the speed boost framerates of certain N64 games.

He’s gotten a lot of feedback from people (including the usual “first postz!!1onezyeah”), and it goes without saying that some people have been asking questions about its development. For example, most have been asking about the possibility of moving the audio processing over to the ME, however he says he’s not too familiar with the ME structure yet, so he’s yet to look more into it.

He’s also answered a couple of questions about an in-game menu, viewport scaling, and screen size ratios. To these, he answers with:

I’m currently working on the in game menu – this is the last main thing I want to squeeze into R9. With this you’ll be able to change the screen size while the rom is running, as well as a few other things (toggle audio on/off, swap controls etc). I doubt that knocking the screen size down will help the framerate all that much, as the framerate is still largely limited by the cost of CPU emulation rather than rendering.

When asked about the possibility of incorporating frame skipping into the emulator, he says that with audio support functional, frame skipping makes that much more sense and that he might be able to pack it into R9. As for running Daedalus on 300mhz, it won’t really matter since the numbers in the previous charts already show it running at maximum clock frequency.

With technical jargon and homebrew dev hoopla, we now introduce… the Q&A portion:

Are the rom files you are using zipped or unzipped? Will the extensions of the rom files even matter anymore?

I was using unzipped rom files. The extension shouldn’t matter, provided it’s recognised (.v64, .z64, .rom etc) Daedalus should always figure out the correct thing to do with a given rom. I suggest you use a tool like RomCenter to manage the naming of all your roms, and extract them to the roms directory on your PSP as required.

Will expansion pack be implemented in your blessed R9?

The expansion pack should already be supported: ‘Expansion Pak: Yes’ in the Rom Settings screen (just before the rom launches). If it’s not working, it’s a bug, and it’ll be easy to fix.

Have you always been able to add audio support? Or did you hold it back because of the slow framerate?

I’ve been holding off because of the framerate – I just thought it would sound horrible. The framerate is still a limiting factor with audio support, I’ll talk a bit more about this soon.

Is there any official way to support your work? Either through paypal donations or whatever?

No, not currently. To be honest, I’m a bit uncomfortable about accepting money for this. Financial reward has never been a motivating factor for me, I do this because it’s an interesting project with lots of juicy technical problems to solve. If I was to ever accept donations, it would be for a specific goal (e.g. if I broke my development psp and it needed replacing, or to pay for hosting/bandwidth etc).

The best update possible for R9 is an icon for the PSP menu.

Yes, I know 🙂 I do like the Pochi Style icons. I emailed him asking for permission to use them with Daedalus, if I get the go ahead I’ll bundle them with R9 by default.

Thanks to StrmnNrmn for shedding some light on what we can expect for R9 (and some possible peek into an R10, even). But while that’s all and good, the biggest question on everyone’s mind right now is its release date. He’s answered this with a note that he’s going on a week-long skiing trip on the 25th, and he’d hope to release R9 before then.

Time to notch those calendars, folks. Christmas happens on the month of hearts.