CEN64 Discussion Forums

Nacho

Wait a minute... Why using LISP as the code to be compiled is a good idea?

I guess the next CEN64 will take a compiled ROM, decompile it into some LISP madness ball of code, and then JIT the hell out of it. Nice. But, why LISP?

Nacho

As I understand, CEN64 has been completely rewrite, taking an entirely different approach: It will take a source file, compile it an execute it.

With this aproach, a .z64 file has to be decompiled and compiled again for CEN64.

As far as I understand...

Nacho

Oh... I see...

Nacho

So... after a few months/years of not using cen64, I tried to run some z64 files yesterday and... well... I'm basically clueless!

How does cen4 work now?

Nacho

This guy managed to execute arbitrary code on N64, effectively messing with Pokemon Stadium via the inbuilt GB emulator.

https://github.com/MrCheeze/pokestadium-ace

Video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bb0v-VDsBkQ

I though you might like this, guys

Nacho

So, if I understood well, are you creating the ultimate emulator? :O Basically, a cycle accurate JIT?

Nacho

That's amazing!

Nacho

That's really a good starting point :P Regarding what I want to do, I think the question is more like "What I'm able to do?", since I want to take a deeper look at the insides of the beast and seeing what can be improved/implemented. By example: some crazy assembler stuff discussed on the previous d...

Nacho

Hi! You may remember me from some post at the forums, but I'd like to introduce myself: I'm Nacho, from Spain, former physicist, computer enthusiast and N64 gamer. I'm somewhat proficient in C and I would like to contribute to CEN64 in a more deep way than a mere ROM testing. That being said, I find...

Nacho

:O I'm going to try it NOW!

EDIT: I had to install libopenal-dev in order to compile. But... Awesome!

Nacho

Was audio an issue?

Nacho

I see no point into trying to reduce so much a file that is not really often downloaded.

Anyway, this post was somewhat usefull for me. I learned a couple of new things

Nacho

Well, now Namco Museum doesn't boot anymore U^_^ Neither SSE2 nor SSSE3 builds.

Filled a Mantis bug report, but I'm not sure if you're still looking at it.

Nacho

Well, I don't believe that the number of threads/cores would be hardcoded on CEN64. So to "loosen" the coherency, you can basically have individual devices predict whether or not they will be interrupted or not in the future. So, CEN would launch so many devices as possible, launching it in a progra...

Nacho

Then, with that approach, the more cores the host proccessor has, the higher is the speed of the simulation?

I mean, a 8 cores processor would perform faster than a 4 cores, asuming the same clock speed. Right?

Nacho

Well, from my testing:

SSE2 -> Affected
SSE3 -> Affected
SSE4.1 -> Not affected
SSSE3 -> Not affected

Nacho

Freshly downloaded and compiled. Release build and SSE2. Same happens with Native builds. Wave Race and Split's Nacho64 demo are also affected. Doom64's intro is also somewhat affected (darker textures, and some of then are not showing at all). Looking closer, it might be that some textures are dark...

Nacho

try to compile it with the latest commits from ~15h ago. (Regarding that, they made me gain 1 or 2 VI/s in Ocarina Of Time)

Nacho

When I first tested Wave Race on CEN rewrite, textures were working fine.

Now, the 3D models are rended transparent. No textures. Not sure what commit caused that.

Nacho

- GPU is not relevant at all, since the simulation is done enterely by the CPU. (well, is not relevant unless you have a very old one)

- The same applies to the RAM.

Nacho

./cen64 -nointerface ../pifdata.bin ../cart.z64 throws a segmentation fault.

Nacho

Is there a way to build it from the GIT (since I've already seen the uploaded files there

)?

EDIT: Figured it out. qmake && make.
EDIT2: I was a bit overenthusiastic.... there's nothing functional... yet...

coming soon.

Nacho

Linux sse4.1 build (dowloaded from the same site as yours) works fine for me. Seems like a windows specific issue...

Maybe we should move to another thread? This one is kinda getting out of control...

Nacho

I'll remember that, teres! thanks! I tried that again. Freshly cloned from git. Compiled with "Native" support and busy wait detection. My CPU is SSE2, SSE3, SSE4.1 capable, but no AVX. Also, I'm running linux (Ubuntu). Same results: Majora's Mask and Pokemon Stadium 2 are running OK for me. (I'll e...

Nacho

Majora's Mask and Pokemon Stadium 2 are booting for me. PS2 does not hang and is fully playable. CEN64 up-to-date.

md5sum:

1561c75d11cedf356a8ddb1a4a5f9d5d *../Pokemon Stadium 2 (U) [!].z64
2a0a8acb61538235bc1094d297fb6556 *../Legend of Zelda, The - Majora's Mask (U) [!].z64

EDIT: md5sums corrected

Nacho

picture of what? of the MGC 2011 demo? There's already a link of a youtube video.

If you mean a picture of the 64drive menu, there you have another video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYnJmnKtTsI

Nacho

Yes! I remember the rooster at the roof

I wonder what kind of checks it does to tell the emulators and the real hardware apart.

Nacho

Hello! I remember reading somewhere (perhaps in Hacktarux's thread on emutalk?) something about a rom that would only boot on real hardware. When running on emulator, it will display a "pwned" message. Does anybody too remember this? Would CEN64 be able to run something like that? Also, can somebody...

Nacho

Great explanation!

I was curious about how those fine pitch optimizations and tricks were implemented.

Nacho

So.... As far as I know, CEN64 implements different vectorization methods depending on the different capabilities of the CPU. Right?

Then, the same opcode is written twice for, let's say, SSE2 and AVX?

When testing, should we try with different compiler options, in order to chase bugs?

Nacho

Confirmed that. DK64 now boots on Linux. Flickering issues included.

Regarding Expansion Pack, it may be a nice feature a 4/8MB switch. Some games would behave differently without expansion pack (say Perfect Dark)

Nacho

Well, I'm confused. If I want to compile CEN64 to take advantages of the intrinsics of my processor... which flag do I have to choose? If I write "Native" at CEN64_ARCH_SUPPORT, then build fails. If I write SSE4.1, then builld success. But I'm not sure if I'm taking all the possible advantage from m...

Nacho

Testing Mario Kart I get strange behavior of the textures, specially the track textures: they rotate in a funny way.

Maybe it's supossed to happen like that, maybe not, but I drop it here

Nacho

ohh, that's why you were so angry at the other thread. Now I get it

Nacho

That's impressive, MarathonMan!

I didn't knew that the old RSP was so unoptimized!

Nacho

http://hackaday.com/2014/12/18/counting ... aystation/

Apparently, some team is working with hi-res microscope photos of the original PSX chips in order to achieve an insane level of accuracy!!

Wouldn't be wonderful if they take the n64 as their next project?

Enjoy the NAND-porn

Nacho

Performance boost? Does that apply to all CEN64 builds, or just the SSE2 one?

Nacho

Awesome!

Did you crushed the cache bugs that were affecting the keyboard?

Aside of that, are you going to rewrite the RDP/RSP from scratch, or are you going to reuse the existing code?

Toughts about sound?

End of the interview

Nacho

I'v checked the preliminary input support. A few toughts: - No DPAD. Ouch. Must be trivial to implement. - When you keep pressing a keyboard button (without releasing it), it seems that CEN64 interpret that as a fast series of press-release events. Like a "turbo mode". (at least on linux). os/input:...

Nacho

Mario Kart 64 now boots successfully and running with CEN64-backport's last commit! ;) Hmm... never even realized it was broken before, heh. OoT has been working fine for quite some time, and that's been my primary test ROM. OoT worked for me, but after a while at the intro, it freezes with "BadVAd...

Nacho

The new commits broke Namco Museum 64. It exits with a segfault. Both cen64 and cen64-backport

Anyway, two general questions.... (maybe a bit naïve, but...)

1. Is there any compatibility list with commercial ROMs? Which commercial ROMs are booting?
2. Is there support for controller?

Nacho

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/glid ... ics-plugin

well, what do you think about this? It's a new chapter of the fragmentation of N64 scene? A new opportunity? Could CEN64 use the research behind this new plugin?

Nacho

Snowstorm64 wrote: Maybe you need to convert the demo to .z64 format, because CEN64 is big-endian as the N64 hardware, and all ROM must be in a big-endian format (.z64, while .v64 is little-endian) in order to run on it.

Tried the .z64 file of plasma demo. Works fine

Thanks

Nacho

Well... I feel kinda dumb asking this, but when I try Plasma Demo or Fire Demo by LaC, I get hundreds of ... bus_read_word: Failed to access: 0x00A10D78 bus_read_word: Failed to access: 0x00A10D7C bus_read_word: Failed to access: 0x00A10D80 bus_read_word: Failed to access: 0x00A10D84 bus_read_word: ...

Nacho

Could you tell us a few working roms, so we can test?

Nacho

That's likely a Wayland's problem, not a CEN64 one.
....

Nacho

Since you mentioned FPGAs... Would it be even possible (in a far far far future of course) to have a FPGA hardware implementation of CEN64? That would be truly epic! or... you know... use actual N64 hardware... (which they do sell in China) and maybe... I dunno... replace the DAC I guess. Yeah, I c...

Nacho

What Marathon Man was trying to say is that when you attempt to parallelize (multithread, GPU, whatever...) you have a huge penalty caused by latency between CPU cores, or between CPU-GPU. So, the benefit of "multicoring" CEN64 is ruined by the latency between cores. ...Unless... someone comes with ...

Nacho

These are real-time videos? It's amazing how close is CEN64 to full-speed simulation. And there's still margin for RCP optimizations.

Nacho

Well, is this a forum or what? Merry Christmas to you all, folks!

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