#155344 - simonjhall - Mon Apr 28, 2008 5:19 pm
Does anyone know of a site or resource which gives info on all the guts that can be found in an N64? I'm obviously talking about homebrew here, not some illegally-sourced SDK. There's got to be something around, esp given how long N64 emulation has been around for!
I wanna know memory maps, io registers etc not the dull stuff that can be found on wikipedia ;-)
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#155345 - silent_code - Mon Apr 28, 2008 5:36 pm
slightly offtopic: something equivalent for ngc would also kick ass! :^)
what i found with google:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/N64_Programming
also check out, although i think this is just about "general" tech information:
http://futuretech.blinkenlights.nl/n64.html
looks promising (site is buggy):
http://64dev.retroactive.be/index.php
although none of this is close to the quality (or even quantity) of information that gbatek has about the gba/nds. :^(
#155348 - simonjhall - Mon Apr 28, 2008 6:35 pm
Hmm...not too much here! Although some of the stuff on sf (http://sourceforge.net/cvs/?group_id=143208) looks vaguely useful. When people make a new N64 emulator, do they just RE the hardware themselves every time?
NGC, try this: http://hitmen.c02.at/files/yagcd/index.html
I've been reading this fat MIPS book on the tube every morning and I'm itching to write some code! If anyone is in the market for a good MIPS I'd defo recommend "See MIPS Run" however the version I've got is a bit old now.
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#155351 - silent_code - Mon Apr 28, 2008 7:02 pm
(EDITED)
ha, that makes me think of nintendo not allowing the devs to modify some stuff (the graphics microcode!)
"Conker's Bad Fur Day" (the name, the name! awesomo?! [if you have animals, you know what "bad fur" means!]) reached the quality it had by slightly breaking that restriction. that, along with other "hacks", allowed it to have pretty nice and crisp textures and very good graphics while performing very well. <- i guess this is totally wrong, never the less, CBFD's gfx kicked ass!
the game i meant was Indiana Jones. look it up in wikipedia. <lol> ;^)
that was kind of like with the nds' default arm7 binary (afaik - i'm not an offical dev, so i only have access to publicly available info ;^D ). dev's aren't allowed to use custom binaries in their products. (?)
yagcd is, although incomplete, a nice doc! thanks! :^)
you know what i suspect? there might not be enough legal doc for the n64... imagine what i might have written next. ;^(
the ps1 also had a mips cpu... wow. just found that out by googling. :^) i guess the ps1 is better documented than the n64, if that's an option (and it's a custom 3000 series based cpu, instead of a 4300.) ;^D
#155380 - Miked0801 - Mon Apr 28, 2008 10:57 pm
The PS1 was actually fun to code for. GTE sub-processor with the R3000 meant you could do all sorts of interleaved CPU coding for nice speed gains. Setup 3 dot products against 1 vectors and dot all 3 with 1 matrix call while setting up the collision code on the result. etc. Good fun.
#155381 - ingramb - Mon Apr 28, 2008 10:57 pm
Maybe take a look at the source to MESS. It's like MAME, but for consoles, and should have well documented code. Sadly, it seems that gbatek stands far above what is availiable for most consoles. I think emulator source code is the only good reference in a lot of cases.
#155388 - SevenString - Tue Apr 29, 2008 12:44 am
I did some PS1 game engine development back in the day, and I liked it so much, I ended up buying a net yaroze kit for fun. I still have it in my home office. Fun piece of gear.
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#155389 - Alphanoob - Tue Apr 29, 2008 1:10 am
| silent_code wrote: |
| slightly offtopic: something equivalent for ngc would also kick ass! :^) |
what is there in the way of ngc homebrew?
#155416 - tepples - Tue Apr 29, 2008 12:22 pm
If you have devkitARM, then you most likely have devkitPro Updater, and you can use that to download devkitPPC and make GameCube and Wii homebrew.
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#155424 - silent_code - Tue Apr 29, 2008 1:59 pm
@ tepples: yet, you still need to know the hw, else what's the deal in coding for a platform you can't use besides the common basics? ;^D
#155440 - sgeos - Tue Apr 29, 2008 5:29 pm
I suspect that the older systems (and less popular) systems are going to have less documentation floating around. Finding decent info on the SNES sound chip is hard. I think it is all documented in the open, but certainly couldn't make much of the docs when I looked at them.
-Brendan
#155450 - wintermute - Tue Apr 29, 2008 6:35 pm
| silent_code wrote: |
| @ tepples: yet, you still need to know the hw, else what's the deal in coding for a platform you can't use besides the common basics? ;^D |
There are a number of examples provided which illustrate various aspects of libogc in the same way we do with libnds. These are in the process of being expanded.
Trying to program a gamecube or a Wii at the same kind of level you program a DS or a GBA is really not for the faint of heart. It can be done but the process will take years if you're starting from limited experience.
Knowing the hardware is a necessity on low spec platforms and for those writing support libraries which provide access to features provided by the low level hardware. For someone writing a game as a hobbyist it's likely to lead to intense frustration.
If you want to know the hardware as a general interest thing then that's a different matter but the acquisition of the knowledge required to understand the hardware of modern consoles is something that's going to require a lot of dedication.
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#155452 - silent_code - Tue Apr 29, 2008 6:56 pm
yeah, that's right. i don't intend to program for the ngc, yet. it's my favorite console and i'm very interested in it's internal workings, as i know that nintendo had good hw designs in the past. :^)
i know it takes a *big*load of time to learn one of the "bigger" consoles... maybe after i master enough of the pc and nds platforms, dunno. ;^D
thanks for the info on libogc. i have downloaded it several times, but had never actually looked at it (and the examples). as i said, i'm only interested in the design. :^D
back on topic: any progress, simon?
#155565 - gladius - Wed Apr 30, 2008 11:47 pm
| sgeos wrote: |
I suspect that the older systems (and less popular) systems are going to have less documentation floating around. Finding decent info on the SNES sound chip is hard. I think it is all documented in the open, but certainly couldn't make much of the docs when I looked at them.
-Brendan |
Anomie's docs are amazing compared to everything before them (and I wish I had them when first working on the SPC700 emu!). http://www.romhacking.net/?category=12&Platform=9&game=&author=&perpage=20&page=documents&level=&docsearch=Go&title=&desc=.