Homebrew Emulation Largest emulator supported ROM size?

[CoffeeBrewer64]

I want to know what the biggest ROM size most emulators can support (Lemuroid, RetroArch and MelonDS).

Why? I wanted to attempt to remake Persona 3 Portable for the DS, which is over 1GB for the PlayStation Portable. I'm aware that it'll be very difficult, but idrc.

The game contains many sounds, 2D sprites and 2D environments. For those who knows P3P already, it'll be a different and more basic battle system, but better cutscenes.

Post automatically merged: Oct 17, 2022

I'm aware people have asked this before, but I want more information

 

[JaapDaniels]

I want to know what the biggest ROM size most emulators can support (Lemuroid, RetroArch and MelonDS).

Why? I wanted to attempt to remake Persona 3 Portable for the DS, which is over 1GB for the PlayStation Portable. I'm aware that it'll be very difficult, but idrc.

The game contains many sounds, 2D sprites and 2D environments. For those who knows P3P already, it'll be a different and more basic battle system, but better cutscenes.

Post automatically merged: Oct 17, 2022

I'm aware people have asked this before, but I want more information

I'm not sure. sure there is a limit, but it depends on the emulator, and console it interpretates.
Beter said, i don't really think the emulator will be limited by the rom size, and even if it's so, you might be able to cercomvent it by keeping the patch seperate as a patch to the rom file.
On real HW there is a point of not functioning, for it isn't capable of handling large chunks of data. the ram is limited, the cpu is limited, the gpu is limited to designed games.
The emulator will only be limited by software bounderies set to secure the pc around it. more likely is the HW of the pc you're running the emulator on to limit your rom from working.

 

[Nikokaro]

Why? I wanted to attempt to remake Persona 3 Portable for the DS, which is over 1GB for the PlayStation Portable.

What??? But this is patently absurd! Porting a PSP (superior system as processor and available ram) game to an inferior system (DS) is impossible, and then of course there is not (would be impossible) a PSP emulator for DS.
Perhaps you meant that you would like to recreate that game by adapting it to the DS, as was done with Final Fantasy VII from PSX to NES? That, on the other hand, is possible, but it would result in a completely different game, and would require great geniality, effort and dedication. Anyway, the maximum size for a DS game is 512mb: that game would perhaps fit in if stripped of voice acting, bgms, FMVs and whatnot.

 

[dub_the_old]

That's a really nice project. I don't know for the size, I've never tested but you can use the cartridge sd card as directory with lot of space.

 

[yoooblls]

U could just DEMAKE the game and make costumes sprites and maps and use the audio from the psp game and try it and try amking it work on a real nds

 

[Latiodile]

the biggest rom a normal DS game ever released on is 512mb, so that's a good start

 

[mrparrot2]

I ported Red Alert tô DSi, which is about 2gb of content. Instead on relying on ROM size, spread the files that wont be readed often (like fmv) into other files. Be careful, tho, because libfat is slow when handling large files and seeking through it can kill performance.

 

[Dionicio3]

Porting a PSP (superior system as processor and available ram) game to an inferior system (DS) is impossible

This isn't strictly true. If it was then there would literally be no 3rd party AAA games on any Nintendo console since the Wii. Porting is simply taking the code that runs on one platform, and making the necessary changes needed to get it to run on another. While it may not be possible to port from a Nintendo Switch to an Atari 2600, porting from the PSP to the DS is definitely possible.

Anyway, the maximum size for a DS game is 512mb

That's only the maximum Nintendo officially supported. A homebrew title, to my knowledge, theoretically shouldn't have any limit (though my guess is that there's a practical limit of 4GB as flashcarts always use FAT32).

U could just DEMAKE the game and make costumes sprites and maps and use the audio from the psp game and try it and try amking it work on a real nds

This is definitely gonna be the more easier option than a proper port.

 

[Pk11]

Anything over 32 MB of NitroFS will cause issues on emulators (on real hardware NitroFS reads from SD so the ROM can be up to 4 GB - 1 byte, FAT-32's limit, but on emulator it does something with mapping NitroFS to the GBA cart memory, which is only 32 MB)

You can get around that by either just reading files directly from SD or using a custom version of the NitroFS that removes the special emulator version, it'll just require emulator users to put the .nds file in an SD image so it can be loaded from the virtual SD

 

[Dionicio3]

Anything over 32 MB of NitroFS will cause issues on emulators (on real hardware NitroFS reads from SD so the ROM can be up to 4 GB - 1 byte, FAT-32's limit, but on emulator it does something with mapping NitroFS to the GBA cart memory, which is only 32 MB)

You can get around that by either just reading files directly from SD or using a custom version of the NitroFS that removes the special emulator version, it'll just require emulator users to put the .nds file in an SD image so it can be loaded from the virtual SD

Huh, interesting. Do you know why the emulator limitation was implemented?

 

[Nikokaro]

In my experience, the largest title I know of that runs on DS phat/lite (slot-1 via flashcard) is "Umineko no Naku Koro mi Chiru (eng patched)" port of the second episode of a famous visual novel, which runs on VNDS reader. The unpacked size is greater than 1GB! As you know VNDS doesn't really work from a DSi's SD-slot, something I tested months ago; if things have changed for the better now, I'd be glad to know.

 

[Cervi]

Anything over 32 MB of NitroFS will cause issues on emulators (on real hardware NitroFS reads from SD so the ROM can be up to 4 GB - 1 byte, FAT-32's limit, but on emulator it does something with mapping NitroFS to the GBA cart memory, which is only 32 MB)

You can get around that by either just reading files directly from SD or using a custom version of the NitroFS that removes the special emulator version, it'll just require emulator users to put the .nds file in an SD image so it can be loaded from the virtual SD

Actually NitroFS can work with ROMs over 32 MB. I'm working on a port of Undertale to the DS and using NitroFS I managed to work with a rom of ~50 MB. The issue is in the implementation of NitroFS, as there's an error which tries to load the data from GBAROM instead of reading from the cartridge. I have a modified file at https://github.com/C3RV1/UndertaleNDS/blob/main/include/filesystem.h and https://github.com/C3RV1/UndertaleNDS/blob/main/source/nitrofs.c.

 

[yoooblls]

Actually NitroFS can work with ROMs over 32 MB. I'm working on a port of Undertale to the DS and using NitroFS I managed to work with a rom of ~50 MB. The issue is in the implementation of NitroFS, as there's an error which tries to load the data from GBAROM instead of reading from the cartridge. I have a modified file at https://github.com/C3RV1/UndertaleNDS/blob/main/include/filesystem.h and https://github.com/C3RV1/UndertaleNDS/blob/main/source/nitrofs.c.

Ayo can't wait for the full release

 

[Pk11]

Actually NitroFS can work with ROMs over 32 MB. I'm working on a port of Undertale to the DS and using NitroFS I managed to work with a rom of ~50 MB. The issue is in the implementation of NitroFS, as there's an error which tries to load the data from GBAROM instead of reading from the cartridge. I have a modified file at https://github.com/C3RV1/UndertaleNDS/blob/main/include/filesystem.h and https://github.com/C3RV1/UndertaleNDS/blob/main/source/nitrofs.c.

ah yeah I suppose that would work too, retail games do afterall... I wonder why that wasn't done in the first place

Huh, interesting. Do you know why the emulator limitation was implemented?

It's intended as a convenience feature, lets you use NitroFS without needing SD support, but for some reason they went with GBA cart instead of DS cart, probably because the GBA cart is memory mapped so it's super easy to use I guess