Make your own emulator/ game emulation?

Do you have good coding skills ?
If not,you're wasting your time.
 
Of course it's possible to make your own emulator... That's how we got emulators in the first place..
 
Chip 8 wasnt actual Hardware or an actual system it was a virtual machine that ran ontop of hardware, i forget which RCA hardware it ran on but it later ran on HP graphing calculators. Think of Chip 8 as the java console and the programs as compiled .Jars, unfortunatly dissaembling and interpreting java is a much harder task.

This aside the nature of a virtual machine is much like that of emulating cross platform machien code so its worth doing very worth it. Taught me alot more about memory addressing.
 
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CHip 8 is the bare bones to emulation IMO. If youve managed to understand them concepts, try doing a NES. Im having a hard tym understanding how to program it efficiently in C++
 
hey guys im pretty new to this whole thing, but i was wondering if anyone could give me like instructions on how to start the most simplest emulator or something cause this stuff sounds really cool to me im just not sure where to start out any help would be greatly appreciated :D
 
I dont know much about how emulators work but this sounds like a fascinating idea!


Welcome to the site fallenstan :)
 
thanks dude111 but yeah seriously any help on how to start would be cool, cause me and my friend are gonna try to figure it out saturday just for the hell of it lol:D
 
Study a language very closly. Example: C++

Learn assembly. Know what pops and pushes, and registers are very well.

Start with a very primitive console.

get failure with An IDE for displaying graphics, example DirectX

If you have no knowledge of the above plan on investing 1 year minimum for a very basic introduction. This is assuming more the 2 hours a day. Sorry, an emulator will not rise from this 1 year into crash course. Though if you have dedication it could be possible. Most emulators are built with programmers that have 5+ years in these areas.

Remember a rom is a hex dump. You will not see anything in there but machine code calls. And this is built for that console. Your goal is to interpret these calls and trick the OS in to thinking its for it. If you dont know what they are for , you will never get anywhere...

Is this simple? Well I can't say for certain but I have been using c++ for 20 + years and I have worked with assembly. c++ Is fun.. The closest analogy for assembly I can thinks of is.. When you where younger, and assuming you have a vindictive brother... Imagine if you will, one day getting on your bike, sitting down only to find your brother ran off with the seat.. Lets just say its not a conferable experience. But seriously I have never attempted to write an emulator, nor do I have the ambition to.. but its not child's play and you will need to focus.

Tip, get involved with the open source gamecube emulator dolphin. The source is freely available and you can join the project. Most of the assembly calls are written in to an api so you wont need to deal with that but it will give you an idea of how an emulator is constructed.

Good luck and my the force be with you, you will need it.
 
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You got to be a genius or smarter than the average bear to even make Emulators I'm just glad people make them and most are free. Wonder how many are working on the M.A.M.E. team?
 
Mostly for understanding machine required is assembler then translate it to any high language like C++
 
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