The sound problem with the size of audio data could be repaired in a few ways.
If the emulator takes the input and encodes it to a lossy format such as mp3, then transcodes it back for the DS software to use, then the mp3 could be stored and used with out a problem.
Alternatively, the mic registers could be logged per frame. If the mic is toggled on/off, then the 0x00000000 that will be there 98% of the time will compress down to zilch, plus it will be a format usable in a frame based file format. This is probably the best way to go about it opposed to storing the actual audio samples. Audio samples will never be frame perfect synced, and can not be hex edited very well, most notably after a compression is applied to them.
I am looking forward to seeing what the many creative minds here can do with DS speedruns. Once this becomes a reality, it should be a very interesting year in this TAS community.
Oh hell yes XD
Just imagine Castlevania - Dawn of Sorrow/Portrait of Ruin,
Maybe even some games like Digimon DS/Dawn/Dusk, DQMJ (o.o)...
I think there are many interesting games to TAS.
But im pretty sure that it'll take min. a year to have perfect
DS Emulators with re-record features and savestats and everything.
Let's see what the future will bring^^
I was wondering about this as well. I'm glad I did a search for "DS" topics rather than create a new thread.
I can't wait to see TAS videos of Contra 4 and the DS Castlevanias. =)
I dunno, Contra 4 seems to emulate fine. Probably the problem, if there is one, is lack of recording and lack of good tools (like recordings that stay in sync). I also remember Rockman ZX superplays made in slow motion, so...
someone is out there who will like you. take off your mask so they can find you faster.
I support the new Nekketsu Kouha Kunio-kun.
What games other than Contra 4 are emulated well? Believe me, I'm all up for DS TASing and related progress, but personally, I don't want a second Mupen. :| So, I'd rather have the developers take their time and implement everything right, rather than having TASers grab hot emulator builds and encounter a truck of problems operating them and such.
Actually NDS emulation is coming along quite well with a number of games being fully playable (phoenix wright, I think even harvest moon DS works fine).
Problem is that no$gba is the most compatible and it isn't open source. ideaDS is actually pretty good at emulating most games as well. I think it would be a good idea to implement re-record into it now and just update as updates are released, I'm not sure if ideaDS is open source either though.
DeSmuME is open-source, and is also quite good; I guess it would make sense to wait for it.
Also, waiting for updates = lame. If you'd followed the history of TASing through, you'd know how big of a problem it can become when an emulator isn't "fully alright" yet. Ask the oldtimers about Snes9x pre-WIP1 desyncs, or watch a couple of GBA runs made on VBA without lag reduction, or just try to watch any N64 Zelda run. I think you'll get the idea pretty soon.
Mupen is the N64 emulator.
I think that controlling the version of the emulator would be just right, like a value in the movie file that tells the current version. It would be easier to parse correctly the movie, and to tell that a movie is not compatible with the emulator. That way, if something cause the movie to desync, it would be easy to tell if it's a bad movie version.
hum well you have a good point, but let's say that this way, if we start now to implement rerecording, it would be easier for taser to start tasing, even before the movie are accepted. That way, it would make TAS of this console of greater quality, and people could experience tricks and route planning.
I think it could generate more traffic to the site, and that would be the first "next-gen" console to be emulated on the site.
It would also allow people to develop tools to tas easier, I think it would be better that way, you have no choice if you want to TAS and not use the mouse too often (to emulate the stylus). There would be a need for a tool like the TAS input plug in of Mupen.
Well, I suppose they can already start with tricks and route planning without rerecording, hmm? At least that's how console runners are doing it for the most part.
And in my opinion, it's easier to start TASing when the needed tools are ready and convenient to use. Ask N64 TASers how convenient it is to use Mupen — an emulator that still doesn't have even a half of Gens's or VBA's features. Obviously it has taken a lot of time to make them what they are now, but on the other hand, the DS emulators are updated more frequently, with numerous fixes and improvements in emulation (which is another reason not to rush and let the developers improve compatibility and emulation quality).
GBA was then-current generation when the first TASes appeared. And it was already pretty stable and compatible with nearly all games when it became a TASing tool.
(Heh, traffic you say. I wish the site wasn't slow even without this traffic income. >_>)
Yeah you are right :P and unless you can make the change on the current code, it would have to be reimplemented with each new version.
And I agree with you that the website is slow. We should start a financing campaign to buy a new internet connection to the website :P
But I still think that it would be nice to play with it, unless the recording is a pain just like in Mupen.
But there's no "rush" to do it.
I was bored so I looked through my DS library to check what worked. I have a 3ghz single cpu...
A few NDS games that emulated almost perfectly at 100% speed (that I checked with the lates no$gba)are Kirby, the Yoshi games Wario ware(or what the name is)... Picross and 2D games in general worked.
New Super Mario had slowdown on level select, Harvester Moon DS worked. Zelda is slow. Mario Kart sounds horrible, works with frame skip at normal speed (almost).
The sonic games works too if you have a fast computer(mine works with frame skip) exept the really laggy boss fights.
Remember that you have to change the save thing manually or you can't play all games.
EDIT: The sound bug can be fixed on some games by changing the sound settings to stereo instead of surround(grammar ok?).
No$gba v2.5c
EDIT: 3ghz Intel Pentium 4 CPU, 2 GB RAM, the emulator doesn't seem to go slower by using another grafic card. My NVIDIA 7900 GTX broke recently so I had to switch to my old NVIDIA 6600. But thats no real surprise I guess.
The sound bug presented in Mario Kart DS seems to haunt other games too. Don't remember which couldn't be fixed by changing to stereo though.
Are those slowdowns emulation bugs (think Ocarina of Time on Mupen) or due to the CPU being not fast enough? If it's the latter it would not matter too much, because in an exported video file there would be no slowdown.
Somebody was talking about slowdown Megaman runs, I just wanted to point out that with additional hardware (like the Cyclo Evolution) you can use slowdown on the actal console, so maybe that wasn't an emulator movie.
I say it would be the best to have rerecording as soon as possible, simply because I can't wait to see TASing on the DS :p
There are quite a few DS emulators out there that can run almost all DS games at 100% speed so I think now it would be possible to work on DS TAS. The only problem is getting rerecording. Of the Top 3 current DS emulators, iDeaS, no$gba, and DeSmuME only desemume is open source but, iDeaS does have a Plugin Function, a Plugin SDK, and already an Avi capture plugin. Project Homepages: http://nocash.emubase.de/gba.htmhttp://www.ideasemu.org/http://desmume.org/
I sadly have the slightest clue how to make rerecording work. Anyone how knows some bit of how to do it willing to work on a project such as this? I am willing to help and know a bit of C++ and assembly but do not seam capable of making the emulator on my own.
[Edit by Bisqwit: Moving post into the existing topic.]
Joined: 11/11/2006
Posts: 1235
Location: United Kingdom
Try changing the render mode between opengl and nocash. Works fine for me, full speed (though my PC is somewhat extreme).
See above.
I get a sound bug in NSMB (fuzz). changing sound settings only worsens the problem.
<adelikat> I am annoyed at my irc statements ending up in forums & sigs
Hmm... With the newest no$gba (2.6a) nearly every nds game is now
working^^
I just tested it with NSMB.
-No graphic glitches
-runs at fullspeed
but the Sound and Music is pretty distorted...
Mario Kart runs for me at fullspeed, too.
And Music and Sound are also pretty fine^^
Even FFCC Rof is working great!
Imho perfectly!
Now only a re-recording feature is missing ;)
With a decent computer, DS emulation is plenty good as for the mic, most people have a mic on their computer so the emulators should be able use that for mic emulation and implanting that in recording will probablly follow too.