What is Exophase currently working on?

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Anduin1357
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What is Exophase currently working on?

Post by Anduin1357 » Sun Oct 30, 2016 12:26 am

Title.

ZAD-Man
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Re: What is Exophase currently working on?

Post by ZAD-Man » Mon Oct 31, 2016 6:19 pm

Also interested in this.

Exophase
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Re: What is Exophase currently working on?

Post by Exophase » Mon Oct 31, 2016 8:10 pm

Short term, getting over a really bad cold :( Fortunately that only hit me for a couple of days...

DraStic-related, right now RPi 2/3 version and maybe other Linux ARMs. I've got a lot of longer term stuff I've been kicking on gradually that hasn't seen anything in a release yet, like more CPU optimizations, OGL ES rendering, AArch64 stuff, more stuff for DLDI/homebrew.. we'll see however far any of that goes.

I want to do some work for other emulation stuff, which I think would probably be free/open source.. I'd like to see some better optimized VDP1/VDP2 stuff for Saturn, maybe w/Mednafen. But I haven't gotten much of a start on this yet.

Anduin1357
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Re: What is Exophase currently working on?

Post by Anduin1357 » Tue Nov 01, 2016 5:01 am

Disappointed that NDS client to server support isn't on the roadmap. :(

It's nice to have optimization but we could really do with high latency multiplayer...

Exophase
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Re: What is Exophase currently working on?

Post by Exophase » Fri Nov 04, 2016 2:01 am

I'm going to try to see if I can see any hints of how DS games talk to WFC at a high level, and if something similar to POSIX sockets can be emulated with HLE (high level emulation) instead of emulating the WiFi hardware and libraries on the DS's ARM7.

I don't know how much potential there is here or if I'll find anything, especially since I'm not really that skilled with networking code, but I'll post if I think I'm on to anything.

Anduin1357
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Re: What is Exophase currently working on?

Post by Anduin1357 » Fri Nov 04, 2016 4:23 am

Thanks! You're the best!

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huckleberrypie
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Re: What is Exophase currently working on?

Post by huckleberrypie » Sat Dec 03, 2016 4:35 am

Exophase wrote:I'm going to try to see if I can see any hints of how DS games talk to WFC at a high level, and if something similar to POSIX sockets can be emulated with HLE (high level emulation) instead of emulating the WiFi hardware and libraries on the DS's ARM7.

I don't know how much potential there is here or if I'll find anything, especially since I'm not really that skilled with networking code, but I'll post if I think I'm on to anything.
I'd be just as interested in this, even if it's more of a hack-ish approach than a (cycle) accurate implementation.

Also, from what I heard the Saturn's way of drawing 3D is by actually distorting the sprites to form the level geometry, as what Digital Foundry mentioned in their Tomb Raider 1 analysis video. I know the Saturn handles 2D well (which led to debates on whether it is actually more of a 2D-cetric console than something made primarily with 3D in mind), but how true is this?

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Re: What is Exophase currently working on?

Post by Exophase » Sat Dec 03, 2016 4:25 pm

I did try to find if I could dig out any net functions but I wasn't very successful. My takeaway is that it'll be extremely hard to do this without having a lower level implementation of infrastructure netplay first (something that at least can connect to the custom servers). Then I'd have something that I could work with going from the hardware interface in the direction back to where the commanding functions originated, instead of trying to find it in the middle of the ARM9 to ARM7 communications interface.

First step is going to be to setup our own internal custom servers somewhere.
huckleberrypie wrote:Also, from what I heard the Saturn's way of drawing 3D is by actually distorting the sprites to form the level geometry, as what Digital Foundry mentioned in their Tomb Raider 1 analysis video. I know the Saturn handles 2D well (which led to debates on whether it is actually more of a 2D-cetric console than something made primarily with 3D in mind), but how true is this?
It's pretty 2D oriented and the way it does 3D, while it has some advantages, also has a bunch of problems and is all around pretty awkward.

There's a lot of Q&A about Saturn's hardware in this thread here: https://forum.beyond3d.com/threads/ques ... urn.58086/

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huckleberrypie
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Re: What is Exophase currently working on?

Post by huckleberrypie » Sat Dec 03, 2016 9:26 pm

Exophase wrote:It's pretty 2D oriented and the way it does 3D, while it has some advantages, also has a bunch of problems and is all around pretty awkward.

There's a lot of Q&A about Saturn's hardware in this thread here: https://forum.beyond3d.com/threads/ques ... urn.58086/
Which pretty much explains why top-down JRPGs seem to be a staple for the system, only for them not to see a North American release as they felt it wouldn't appeal to western audiences.

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Re: What is Exophase currently working on?

Post by Exophase » Sun Dec 04, 2016 3:54 am

huckleberrypie wrote:Which pretty much explains why top-down JRPGs seem to be a staple for the system, only for them not to see a North American release as they felt it wouldn't appeal to western audiences.
I've always been curious about this, since Saturn is oft-touted as an RPG powerhouse but the selection outside of Japan was pretty meager. I found this ancient site that seemed to be talking about the games while the Saturn was still active:

http://www.sega-saturn.com/rpg.htm

Like you said, a lot of traditional 2D stuff. A pretty good amount of 3D stuff too, though.. and a lot of the 2D games look kind of lazy.

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