Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Back Online

Apologies for the lack of updates. I've not had internet access at home since moving flat at the end of August. My ADSL was activated today so I'm finally up and running again. I can't believe how long it's taken!

Between the flat move and a busy few weeks at work (getting ready for the Tokyo Game Show) I've not had that much time to work on Daedalus, but I have made some progress on a really cool feature people have been asking for for some time, namely savestate support.

For those not familiar with savestates, the basic premise is very much like 'hibernate' or sleep modes on PCs and laptops. A savestate can be created at any point during emulation. At a later time the savestate can be reloaded to restore the emulator to the exact state it was in when the savestate was created.

What's really useful about savestates is that they work even if the underlying save mechanism used by a rom isn't supported properly. I'm hoping that by adding savestate support Daedalus will become significantly more usable for many roms. Savestates also make development a lot easier as it means I can jump straight into the middle of a game when debugging/profiling rather than sitting through the title sequence dozens of times.

I still have a little bit of work left to do on the savestate system, mostly on the UI side, but there are a number of additional optimisations I want to finish off before I release R13. I'm currently planning to get everything ready for release on either the weekend of the 29th Sept, or possibly the first weekend in October.

-StrmnNrmn

46 comments:

Unknown said...

Thanks a lot for the update!

It's good news that you've settled down at your new flat now. We're all looking much forward to future posts from you. Savestate support sounds interesting.

Thanks for everything, good luck with everything!

Rodrigo Cardoso said...

wonderful!!! \o/

mbeck said...

Great to hear from you again! I'm real excited to hear about the save state function. I've been hoping for one for a while now.
Are either of the Zelda games' major glitches fixed for this release? I've got my fingers crossed.
Keep up the great work!

Unknown said...

It would be awesome if it was released on the 30th - that's my birthday, but I'm sure you want to make sure it's ready first. Anyways, thanks for all the great work! R13 is sure to be one of the best releases in the history of PSP homebrew.

Unknown said...

Wh00t! Keep up the good work! Remember, your not on a deadline--you have all the time you need.

Chuck said...

Phew!!! glad your back i thought you had took a haitius on us :p cant wait for r13!

neocec said...

Thanks StrmNrmn. We all appreciate what you do. Don't ever stop until it's perfect! We love ya! :D

Unknown said...

Great ^^

Was wondering something. PSP Slim has double the ram of a standard PSP. If you could utilise this, how much could the additional ram improve deadelus?

Unknown said...

PLEASE, make Star Wars Episode I: Racer's ROM work on the PSP. We all count on you. Daedalus is awesome. Thank you.

andrew said...

Nice to hear from you.

Any thoughts about the Slim?

duncanyoyo1 said...

Cant' Wait for the update, good luck!

Unknown said...

I'm not trying to push you or anything but since the slim is now out have you tried experimenting with the extra ram. Will the extra ram help the speed of the emulator? By the way, thanks for this awesome emulator.

007 said...

hi man, any news on whether youll make a psp slim version that uses all 64 megs of ram? thanks!

Unknown said...

Hey, keep up the great work. I'm looking forward to/hoping to see some good speeds in Zelda. But until then, at least save states are being implemented that's good news. Your work is appreciated.

Zoltan Shapiro said...

WOOT! We love u strmnrmn!!!

Morgan said...

Sounds great StrmnNrmn and I'm glad we will have savestate. I have 2 questions though, what's the status on the Dynarec Hack and it's compatability. Lastly what are you planning on doing with Wally and I's polls, mine being the top 3 games for compatability and his about when the CPU you will be moved to the ME? I'm not trying to rush you but it's been a while so anytime you can I'd appreciate it alot.

Unknown said...

A few questions, you amazing dev, you:

1) Will you compile for the 3.xx kernel, so Slim owners can enjoy your emulator - or are you going to maintain it for 1.0/1.50 only?

2) When newlib in the SDK is updated to make use of the second 32MB RAM partition on the Slim, will you modify your emulator to take advantage of it? (Provided you ARE compiling for 3.xx kernel)

3) Do you realize just how much we all missed you?!

Thanks again for all you've done StrmnNrmn. Keep up the great work!

Unknown said...

Yay!!!!!!! Finally!

M.r Lemony Fresh said...

well better late than never, fantastic news! thanks.

phantoma said...

Interesting little footnote, good luck and keep up the good work.

On a side note i was wondering if you were still developing on OS X and if you are maybe you'll be able to help other developers using OS X for psp development.

As you may know tools for the PSP in OSX development are hard to come by. I was wondering if you had apps with a GUI or if you were doing this all though terminal scripts and codes?

I've been trying using lua but having problems with eboot editing...

Vinorth said...

Keep up the great work mate..im just curious though, have u considered working with a team, it might be a big help to you and to the project, just a thought :-)

moyz said...

excellent news savestates work really well on my snes emulator! i do hope this will be an addition to R13. I'm so impressed with the current emul.. its come a long way since R5 when i first found out about this. looking forward to the day i can play Killer instinct gold on the move. cheers!

BrendanL said...

One has to wonder what your job is. I mean, the Tokyo Game Show? Hmm. Do you work at 1UP?

Unknown said...

That will be awesome.


BTW...What are some of the other features or R13 going to be?

I am sure they will all be awesome upgrades to R12, hopefully with some speed boost. I am not really interested in more rom compatability because all the games that i want to play already work.

Unknown said...

Thanx sooo much Strmn for updating again!!

savestates sounds fantastic and hopefully the speedup will end up with like 30 % from R12 :D

thanx so much for doing this fantastic emulator. its the best homebrew on the psp, thats for sure!!

Jess said...

You're awesome.

Raul said...

Good work.. i just wanted to know if you really did get the 15 or 10 % speed increase. The speed should be the major fux and then the graphics, but i am loving the savestate part. Mayb one day once the emu is pretty decent around r 20 lol jp you can ad adhoc. That would be insane lol..Well thanks again and goodbye

Unknown said...

Will there be SSB on it?

Sam Vila said...

please DO NOT RUSH, take your time and bring us a good release, I think you should focus on optimize the speed instead the save states option, we all are waiting for speed improvements, so I think is better to delay a little bit the R13 but bring a good speed increase, the save state options is OK, but in my opinion, the optimization to gain speed is the most important.

Jody said...

X(

I've been checking into your blog everyday, but the one day (aug.19) that I didn't check-in was the day to put up a new blog. aaaahh! I'm cursed. LOL

OK I've been waiting to ask you this ever sinse the PSP Slim/Lite came out. Sinse the new PSP has more RAM installed, will this bring in faster speeds for Daedalus?

Jomann said...

have you tried your emulator on the slim? i heard the slim has more ram.

ShadowSeeker said...

cool cant wait.
great update thought you were on vacation or something lol
but are you gonna start optimizing the code to take advantage of the extra 32Mb of ram on the slim? or does it already run faster? just asking no pressure or anything.
thanX

Xam B said...

Great news! It must be hard to make averyone "happy" though to that so many people are following your everymove and are so exited about your progress, Don't stress your self! We are glad anyway that you do what you do. If you ever decide to leave the scene I hope someone else can continue youre project to perfection.

Me myself are hopeing for better sound support in the furure.

Keep up The great work

MaTiCeK said...

Hey StrmnNrmn, you work is really appreciated.

I have a request. Could you please make Paper Mario working. Now it works superbly through the intro into the game, but when you try to make a savefile it hangs. I'd really appreciated if you could take a look at it. It may be a small fix that is needed and could be incorporated into the next version.

thx, you rock!

Unknown said...

Great news strmnrmn :)

Just wondering (i asked before i believe) if there is any hope of a linux version? The only n64 emu on linux is Mupen64 which is in dire need of a update and i would love to see daedalus on linux.

Please answer the question :)

Thanks and keep up the great work mate :D

Anonymous said...

I have question for you if you don't mind...

Would it be possible to make external support to load Rice's plugin to run hi-texture roms?y

Unknown said...

Very much looking forward to this update :)

Thanks so much for all your work on this emu strmnrmn; your a true asset to the community. Can't wait to test my fav games!

Chiraag said...

Nice your back on!

Any thoughts on the PSP Slim?

Anonymous said...

Downloaded your latest SVN build,

Noticed a few things.

* Conkers Bad Fur Day starts to work (Blue screen)
* Super Smash Brothers halts at the Nintendo / HAL screen, does not progress any further

Thats all i have noticed other than a massive speed improvement :)

Wally

Razor950 said...

Welcome Back, I was wondering what had happened with you, Its nice you have settled done. This is very small suggestion, have the R13 support 3.x fw since the new one doesn't support 1.5.

Anonymous said...

Perfect dark finally works aswell amit no graphics :)

Rodrigo Cardoso said...

......
please dont focus on psp slim ok? =(

Unknown said...

YAY!!! I cant wait, THX for the update lol =].

Simon said...

whats happening? do you have a better idea of when it will be released now that it's hit the 29th in england now? will it be the next weekend now?

Alex said...

Keep it up =) Anxiously waiting for the next release =)

Anonymous said...

I admire your continued devotion to this project. I can't wait to try out the next release. As several other users have stated, the PSP Slim contains 64MB of RAM that is used for the UMD cache feature. Dark_AleX has managed to write some code that allows it to be used by other applications. The SDK is available in 3.71 M33. Have you thought about trying it out? If you need a slim, I'm sure plenty of people would be willing to donate to help get you one.

~BelmontSlayer