How to create an emulator

Need help creating Darkness and Light emulator

Hey there, all the guides I found are only emulators of specific games. Is there any general emulation guides? I want to run a Darkness and Light emulator, game shut down in 2008.
Standalone DotA, but yet very different.
DL Link of client: http://download.mmosite.com/download.php?id=2136

Please tell me how to emulate it, and hosting solutions can come later.

Please have some sympathy and help us out, all I can promise is that there will be a small but loyal fanbase that will be very grateful for it.

//bump still need help...

Server emulators have questionable legality, especially for a game which while may not be active, still has copyrights applied to its content.


That being said. There is no "guide on how to create an emulator" on the Internet. In fact if you had any programming knowledge at all, you would already know that no such guide will ever exist in our lifetimes, and that anyone putting up such a guide is likely just having fun with the idiot masses.

You can't just "whip up" an emulator like a sandwich. It's not gonna happen. You have to intimately understand the hardware you need to emulate, and the software running on that hardware. You have to know all kinds of crap about Assembly Language, and a higher level language like C or C++ or something similar in power.

Just give up now, do yourself a favor. You don't understand what you're asking about.

according to this DAL is just a game.So I dont see why you would want to "emulate" it. I think he means to continue development on it. Either way Zach is right. People dont come to Emulator-zone to learn how to code LOL. No offense EZ. You go to a coding forum, or better yet a place where emulator developers talk. And again as Zach said if you dont know that much you will never create an emulator, its not with in your realm of possibilities. .. sorry, its just not.

Allright, so we DON'T just extract files from the server and slap it on a server?
And pushin my luck, but approx how long will it take to learn the necesary skills to do this?
Hmm thought this was an emulator development forum.

Hmm thought this was an emulator development forum.

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- what gave you that idea?

Allright, so we DON'T just extract files from the server and slap it on a server?

Click to expand...

What the hell do files have to do with emulation?

And pushin my luck, but approx how long will it take to learn the necesary skills to do this?

Click to expand...

Do what? You never really defined what, what is?

Ok for fun here, Let's say you want to emulate a game console...

Here is a list of musts, amusing its of the 3d generation.

1) learn c++ or some sort of code that interfaces with a 3d hardware layer. I went to school for Computer Science and spent 2 years learning c++. And I currently develop 3d game software. My school did jack shit for me... I spent 5 years learning on my own. And keep in mind I have been programming since I was 8, and I dont mean c++ programming. I started with basic. So I would say 5 years minimum is needed here..

2) learn ASM, and how a 8086 machine talks to the hardware. Well I have been doing this for 10 years now.. Off and on, and I will tell you I could not do it.. I write ASM for my Bliss-Box project. But I'm here to tell you I suck! If you want to do this you better get proper schooling on it. Give it 3 years in school and 5 year on your own, and maybe you can swing it.

3)Learn to deal with 3d hardware, like Direct X. Honestly, not long.. Its a very straight forward API, and could be done in less then a year.

4)Windows hardware ( assuming your target is windows ), Another good year ota do it.


6) Patience, not measurable...

So that is 15 years to start with, and I bet I missed a lot here.


Honestly, do you really mean emulation? You want to build an emulator? Code it from ground up? Do you know what your asking?


There are 6,692,030,277 people in this world. Say %70 know what an internet is and of that 70 say %25 can write code.. out of that %25 , %5 can do assembly, so that is like 58,555,264 people. Now out of that, 1% care about emulation... so out of 585,552 people , 4 wrote a good n64 emulator, and one wrote a good game cube emulator... You think they started out by asking such foolish questions?

While that's a good post, it could have been a little less hostile..


It sounds like the poster wants to emulate the game server, like people do with Everquest and WoW and all that.

Well those servers do not use copyrighted code. They are written from the ground up, and it involves painstaking research and reverse engineering of the actual game to even get all the mechanics and formulas to work just like the game does. It's not possible for you to just decide to run a game server, unless server software is already available to be setup (which its not)..

And even assuming you had plans to overcome those obstacles, you say the game never lasted long, or finished development or whatever.. So if there is no running server, how are you going to reverse engineer it?

This is not an emulator development forum. Emulator-Zone has never even remotely advertised itself in that way, in all the years I've been here. EZ offers emulator downloads, and the forum is for people to discuss emulation, and help each other with their problems getting something to work.

It's a probably a good thing you didn't stumble across a real development forum with your questions anyway. You'd have been laughed off the internet in a less than gentle manner.

While that's a good post, it could have been a little less hostile..

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Wow cumming from Mr. hostile him self Point being, targeted at the questions he asked, not what he meant.

That fact is , a bold answer is normally the best. Like you said your self.

>In fact if you had any programming knowledge at all, you would already know that no such guide will ever exist in our lifetimes
>You can't just "whip up" an emulator like a sandwich.
>Just give up now, do yourself a favor. You don't understand what you're asking about.

Those are not friendly comments .. yet true.. Ok I should have refrained from using "Hell" but needed to make a point on that one..

Yeah but your tone was a little more kurt and essentially called him stupid for even asking.

I may not suffer fools, but I'm expected to be a little more nicer when dealing with newbies.

However this isn't really up for debate.

I may not suffer fools, but I'm expected to be a little more nicer when dealing with newbies.

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Right like this?

http://forums.emulator-zone.com/showthread.php?t=16386

Sorry Zach, but that if that is the case you fail!

However this isn't really up for debate.

Click to expand...

Ok, Will say no more.

ulaoulao said:

- what gave you that idea?

What the hell do files have to do with emulation?

Do what? You never really defined what, what is?

Ok for fun here, Let's say you want to emulate a game console...

Here is a list of musts, amusing its of the 3d generation.

1) learn c++ or some sort of code that interfaces with a 3d hardware layer. I went to school for Computer Science and spent 2 years learning c++. And I currently develop 3d game software. My school did jack shit for me... I spent 5 years learning on my own. And keep in mind I have been programming since I was 8, and I dont mean c++ programming. I started with basic. So I would say 5 years minimum is needed here..

2) learn ASM, and how a 8086 machine talks to the hardware. Well I have been doing this for 10 years now.. Off and on, and I will tell you I could not do it.. I write ASM for my Bliss-Box project. But I'm here to tell you I suck! If you want to do this you better get proper schooling on it. Give it 3 years in school and 5 year on your own, and maybe you can swing it.

3)Learn to deal with 3d hardware, like Direct X. Honestly, not long.. Its a very straight forward API, and could be done in less then a year.

4)Windows hardware ( assuming your target is windows ), Another good year ota do it.


6) Patience, not measurable...

So that is 15 years to start with, and I bet I missed a lot here.


Honestly, do you really mean emulation? You want to build an emulator? Code it from ground up? Do you know what your asking?


There are 6,692,030,277 people in this world. Say %70 know what an internet is and of that 70 say %25 can write code.. out of that %25 , %5 can do assembly, so that is like 58,555,264 people. Now out of that, 1% care about emulation... so out of 585,552 people , 4 wrote a good n64 emulator, and one wrote a good game cube emulator... You think they started out by asking such foolish questions?

Click to expand...

I was snooping around on the internet and found this smartass response to some kid that was simply asking about creating a server emulator. Such hostility!

In answer to the question I highlighted there: YES. They did start out by asking foolish questions. So did I and so did you. To get into this business and not fail miserably you have to have an insatiable curiosity and ask the stupid questions. If you don't, I guarantee you will not survive. This business will eat you and shit you back out again if you are not curious enough to dig & ask the dumb questions.

Did you even bother to click the link he posted before going off on your tirade and chest beating over your "15 years" of programming godliness (seriously kids these days :biglaugh: )?

He was asking about creating server emulator. Granted this forum is all about using game emulators (console or specially written), he did have a valid question before you started hosing the guy up & down the street. And I think the guy's questions was answered more than sufficiently by Zach before you decided to go off on a tangent.

Oh, take your 15 years, double it, throw in a decade of low level networking, about a dozen assemblers, just about every programming language invented and you just might come within binocular distance of my experience. I built my first computer S100 8080-based Altair work-alike in 1977 and have been programming them ever since. "There's always a bigger fish."

And yes, I do write server emulators. Sure if you are writing machine emulators you need a lot of what you wrote up there, but server emulators (what the kid was actually asking about)? Nope. A little Java programming skill, a lot of patience and acceptance in an open source emulator group is all you need. It's not rocket science.

So you also have no real intent to help this guy. All you want to do is flash us all with your big c*ck?

The tread is old. As you said yourself its been answered and the OP has not responded. I think he was able to figure out for him self that this is not the place to ask.