Faq

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* Q. Why is the emulator slow?
 
* Q. Why is the emulator slow?
* A. Because nobody pays us to work on it full time and it runs fast enough for us to be happy. Well, almost. The cheapest way to get 60fps is to buy the cart. Buying a newer, faster computer is somewhat more expensive, and it has other side benefits. Also, if you are in Windows, make sure you have tried the SSE build which helps a little bit. Additionally, if you are using someone else's interim build it might not be fully optimized since we make our Windows releases using some profiler-guided optimization which helps by several FPS
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* A. Because nobody pays us to work on it full time and it runs fast enough for us to be happy. Well, almost. The cheapest way to get 60fps is to buy the cart. Buying a newer, faster computer is somewhat more expensive, and it has other side benefits. Also, if you are in Windows, make sure you have tried the SSE build which helps a little bit. Additionally, if you are using someone else's interim build it might not be fully optimized since we make our Windows releases using some profiler-guided optimization which helps by several FPS. You could try turning off the sound. And one last thing: try a new video card. But only as long as it is an nvidia.
 
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* Q. Does desmume support wifi ?
 
* Q. Does desmume support wifi ?

Revision as of 07:04, 23 March 2009

  • Q. Why doesn't my desmume play this game?
  • A. Go to desmume.org and make sure you are using the latest version. Hint: desmume 0.8 is very old. Older versions will not be supported, under any circumstances.

  • Q. Why does this game fail to save?
  • A. Desmume's autodetection for save types is not very good. For now, you need to manually specify the correct save type for your game. Consult the manual for details on how to do this for your platform. We want to fix this, but there are no specific plans so far.

  • Q. Why can't I find a mac binary?
  • A. There is no official 0.9.1 mac binary. We do not have a very active mac port maintainer. Volunteer yourself. Or wait for 0.9.2 where the windows release manager is going to give it a shot.


  • For a Windows build, you first have to download and install Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Express Editon and TortoiseSVN. Then make a folder that you want the desmume src to be in. Then right-click it and do svn checkout. Fill in: https://desmume.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/desmume. Then hit ok, and it should download the current src. Then, in desmume/src/windows, open Desmume2008.vcproj. Then visual studio should open up, then press f7 to compile. After the compile completes, the executable should be located in windows\__bins\DeSmuME_VS2008.exe.
  • For building in linux, make sure that you have a GCC compiler toolchain installed. Most Distributions provide for this by offering a 'development install' at install time. Then either download the latest source tarball from desmume.org or run the svn command to download the latest source. proceed by cd'ing to the source directory, and run ./autogen.sh. Next, run ./configure, make, and make install. Please note that 'make install' needs to be run as the root user.

  • Q. Whats 'svn' ?
  • A. svn is a developers tool. It's used to let multiple developers work on the same codebase without conflicts. If youre an end-user, don't worry about it. And if you're a developer, see the question on how to get the latest svn code and build desmume yourself.

  • Q. Why doesnt my 3d openGL work in linux?
  • A. View the threads HERE and HERE and HERE. Alternatively, wait for 0.9.2 which will have a software rasterizer

  • Q. Why doesn't my 3d openGL work in windows?
  • A. You are probably using an ATI video card. ATI driver support of OpenGL is known to be poor. Get an nvidia. Do not argue with that, we are professional programmers and know what we're talking about. Alternatively, wait for de3smume 0.9.2 which will have a software rasterizer instead of having to rely on openGL.

  • Q. Why doesn't a menu option or tool exist in my linux or mac build?
  • A. Because making portable tools and platform harnesses are not our cup of tea and so a developer puts a feature into whichever ports he cares about. This policy is never going to change, although soem features might migrate to other platforms over time.

  • Q. Why does music sound bad sometimes?
  • A. Most DS music is sequenced music, loaded from the cart to the ARM7 entirely when the level loads. This works fine. Your music that doesn't work is probably streaming music, which loads from the cart on the fly and goes straight to the speakers. This is much harder to emulate as it requires correct timing, which is not one of desmume's strengths right now. This may not be fixed for a while.

  • Q. Why doesn't my game boot or progress into the main game engine?
  • A. Desmume is not perfect yet. Some games may fail due to wifi emulation. Apparently if you search the web correctly you can find ways to patch games to work better on emulators.

  • Q. What hardware features are emulated?
  • A.
  • All known 2d graphics features are correct. Mosaics work but are imperfect. There may be small issues with colors as the correct color bit depths are not used at all points in the pipeline.
  • All 3d features are emulated, except for: tests, wireframes, edge marking, fog, and antialising. The opengl engine is near its limit and renders some things incorrectly. Eventually the software rasterizer (in 0.9.2+) will support more features and be far more precise in the basic features.
  • All sound features are emulated. The microphone support is new and the manual should be consulted, where you will find out, among other things, that it is only supported in windows right now.
  • As of version 0.9.1, Wifi is not supported. It is currently under slow and incomplete development.
  • We are unaware of any outstanding issues in the core system hardware (cpu, dma, mmu) but there are certainly still some. The instruction and memory timings are quite incorrect; however, this seems not to hurt most softwares.
  • DLDI does anybody know if this still works?
  • RTC (real-time clock); will be working as of 0.9.2

  • Q. Does the GDB stub still work?
  • A. This has not been built into the public releases, nor has the feature been tested in a while. If you want to be a test user, please hop on IRC and coordinate with us.

  • Q. Where/what is IRC?
  • A. IRC is part of basic internet operations principles. Consult your manual. Then download mirc and visit irc.freenode.net #desmume

  • Q. Where is the manual?
  • A. It came with your binary. It may not have the information that other entries in this FAQ promised that it would.

  • Q. Why is the emulator slow?
  • A. Because nobody pays us to work on it full time and it runs fast enough for us to be happy. Well, almost. The cheapest way to get 60fps is to buy the cart. Buying a newer, faster computer is somewhat more expensive, and it has other side benefits. Also, if you are in Windows, make sure you have tried the SSE build which helps a little bit. Additionally, if you are using someone else's interim build it might not be fully optimized since we make our Windows releases using some profiler-guided optimization which helps by several FPS. You could try turning off the sound. And one last thing: try a new video card. But only as long as it is an nvidia.

  • Q. Does desmume support wifi ?
  • A. As of version 0.9.1, Wifi is not supported. It is currently under slow and incomplete development.

  • Q. Does desmume support the microphone ?
  • A. Yes, but only on the Windows port. You do have to have an actual microphone attached to your PC, though.


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