High level question on the new AX-HLE

[haddockd]

I was reading up and decided to disable recording devices and my LAN card (I use wireless on this PC). Still no dice. lor, are you using Win 7?

[lor]

Yep also using win7 x64.

[neos]

(04-17-2013, 04:37 AM)ExtremeDude2 Wrote: Eventually the zelda ucode will be redone as well :3

Does anyone know the state of play with the zelda ucode for wii? I remember that delroth said he planned to look into it after AX, but I also recall that he expressed some reservations about what would be possible. Any information on whether this is still on the table?

[Shonumi]

delroth mentioned plans to work on the Zelda ucode, though as far as I know, no code was ever committed to Dolphin, either in master or in other branches. He just finished up on the AX ucode and significantly improved HLE audio (which was previously thought unlikely to happen due to time and effort required). He's left the project supposedly, but I don't know if this is just temporary or permanent. From my understanding, the Zelda ucode is much simpler than the AX ucode, so anyone willing to invest a bit of research could improve HLE audio for it.

Fwiw, I'm trying to implement the Zelda ucode in another GC emulator atm. Who knows, maybe I'll learn something that can help Dolphin :p

[haddockd]

OMG, that would be fantastic. I had no idea Delroth left the team. That is a shame as I understood he/she was a major contributor.

[MayImilae]

Quote:From my understanding, the Zelda ucode is much simpler than the AX ucode, so anyone willing to invest a bit of research could improve HLE audio for it.

Nope, according to delroth it's actually more complex than AX. But the Zelda-HLE in Dolphin isn't as sucky as AX-HLE was, so it's possible that it won't be as much work.

[Shonumi]

(04-26-2013, 06:24 AM)MaJoR Wrote: Nope, according to delroth it's actually more complex than AX.

It may be a matter of perspective; having looked over the AX ucode more in depth today, I could say they're probably actually not too far off from each other. Even with there being three versions of the Zelda ucode, they each follow roughly the same basic steps from what I can tell. Aside from nuances like the DSP-CPU handshake and whether or not you'll take advantage of the DMA, the only major difference I can tell occurs right after the Zelda ucode processes a DSyncFrame command. The Zelda ucode, as a whole, is pretty simple. Without getting into too many details, essentially once it knows where the Parameter Blocks are, it waits for a DSyncFrame command, processes audio using the specified buffers, waits to sync with the CPU, rinse and repeat. The DMA version, obviously needs to check for memory transfers though (dunno too much about that atm :p) but the AX ucode can use DMA transfers as well.

They both have roughly the same number of frequently used commands (4 for AX ucode, 3 for Zelda ucode if you discount DolbyDelay). The address of the PBs comes in a sort of "linked-list" in the AX ucode, which isn't as convenient as just using the same PB address given by the Zelda ucode's DSetupTable command and using that address over and over again. The AX ucode also does a few somewhat fancy tricks with the AUXA and AUXB buffers, such as having the CPU request that data from the DSP for manipulation. Afaik, there's nothing equivalent to that in the Zelda ucode; the Zelda ucode keeps using the same three sets of buffers rather than internal ones, so if a Zelda ucode game wanted to manipulate that data, it'd probably access it manually in memory. It's one less thing for the emulated DSP to worry about, though nothing major.

Overall though, I'd say that while the AX ucode has less quirks (e.g. syncing with the DSP is quite easy), it still has more features that need to be emulated; that's why I decided to start off with the Zelda ucode in Gekko (that, and the fact that some of the code was already written for it). Once I understood how the Zelda ucode worked, it didn't take much to get it off the ground (at least part of it anyway, actual sound is still something I'm working on). They're different to be sure, but now that I've done a little more digging, I can't say one's necessarily more difficult to implement (reverse engineering the Zelda ucode is most likely more difficult however). Though if delroth wants to school me about this (come back bro ) that's fine with me.