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OG Xbox Forums => Software Forums => Emulators => Topic started by: socrates on February 19, 2003, 02:07:00 PM

Title: Any Word On Streaming Emulators Yet?
Post by: socrates on February 19, 2003, 02:07:00 PM

Someone passed info to me that there was a team working on an emulator that will stream the roms off your comp with relax but havent heard any info about it yet?

Title: Any Word On Streaming Emulators Yet?
Post by: socrates on February 19, 2003, 03:23:00 PM

Ya see thats what i thought, i dont know shit but people have said you couldnt stream a regular xbox game cause its so big and would take to long and all that shit but a rom file wouldnt be that hard to do? its only like a meg at the most and thats the newset ones, if you were gunna stream lets say, pacman, that would be nothing.

Title: Any Word On Streaming Emulators Yet?
Post by: EvilWays on February 19, 2003, 06:01:00 PM

On that thought, forget NeoGeo games (especially KOF) since most are well over one meg...

Title: Any Word On Streaming Emulators Yet?
Post by: socrates on February 19, 2003, 06:21:00 PM

Title: Any Word On Streaming Emulators Yet?
Post by: EvilWays on February 19, 2003, 07:33:00 PM

True...but still, forget KOF '99 on due to size of the roms (ok, not really related, but still want to point that out). Hell, KOF '98 kicks in at ~38MB, not exactly lightning fast for streaming...KOF '94 is 12MB. I'm just using these for examples of NeoGeo games that can (I believe) be played on MameX, and to give examples of limitations of streaming roms. I think NeoGeo games (as a category) would be the only limitations, all other roms aren't as hefty in size.

Title: Any Word On Streaming Emulators Yet?
Post by: socrates on February 20, 2003, 05:31:00 AM

So the plan would be to stick the emulators on the xbox hard drive and be able to stream the roms from your PC with relax or some other kind of program that streams.

Title: Any Word On Streaming Emulators Yet?
Post by: rjm2k on February 20, 2003, 09:03:00 AM

QUOTE (socrates @ Feb 20 2003, 01:31 PM)

Ok so were all agreed that its possible, now what would I myself need to know how to do in order to make this work? i dont know jack shit, but i know how to tie my own shoes So the plan would be to stick the emulators on the xbox hard drive and be able to stream the roms from your PC with relax or some other kind of program that streams.

Ok, one way I would approach it is to hack the My Apps interface of xbmp so that it works remotely, recognises a rom file and when launched caches that file on the local hard drive (possibly on a temp drive) and then launches mamex (which may need modification to accept command line paramaters) to run the game.

Title: Any Word On Streaming Emulators Yet?
Post by: EvilWays on February 20, 2003, 09:33:00 AM

QUOTE (wmadoss @ Feb 20 2003, 09:19 AM)

I dont think the size is the issue. (I really dont see any obstacles except that it hjasnt been done yet). I dont see why you cant run a xbox game from the PC (if youre on 100/Full) if you have 5-8 mb/s then its as fast as the HD can manage so it shouldnt be a problem.

Actually, IIRC...you have about 44-55MB of RAM space available for roms for MameX, but...if you could get a larger rom to load in swap space and somehow spool the roms from the xbox hdd as needed (may not be feasable (sp?), but worth a thought). It'd be nice to up the memory in an xbox...

The reason you can't run an xbox game off of a PC is cuz the hdd interface in the xbox is faster at transferring within the system than ethernet. You can get (in theory) up to about 33MB/s from/to hdd to/from system. Ethernet also has a lot of overhead associated with it due to the TCP/IP protocol (and if packets need to be resent, that slows everything down while the system catches up...not very enjoyable for a game).

Title: Any Word On Streaming Emulators Yet?
Post by: socrates on February 20, 2003, 10:08:00 AM

How come we can stream movies without a problem?

Title: Any Word On Streaming Emulators Yet?
Post by: ekengren on February 20, 2003, 02:53:00 PM

First off. The speed issue is not the thing when talking about streaming whole xbox games in realtime. The thing is that the xbox cannot multitask an application wich provides the streaming support (the game-executables don't support relax from within of course) and run the game itself simultaneously. In theory this streaming can be achieved through either native support through bios or altering of the gamecode itself, wich is for sure not gonna happen.

Secondly, running roms larger than the free xbox ram in for example mamex is possible. the thing we need is for someone to program a "swapfile-memory-emulating-system" like most operating systems have but make it small and efficent enough to implement into the emulator itself because again, the xbox cannot do multitask without a real operating system.

And last.. to build in streaming support in emulators would be no problem at all since all it needs to do is download the rom to the xbox hd and then execute it, and through a 100mbps lan a 40mb mame-rom will not take many seconds to stream before launching it.