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Where do I start?

Shnazzman

New member
Hey guys. I'm interested in starting to learn how to make my own emulators, but I have no idea where to start. I'd like to start small (NES, GB) then work my way up from there. I have absolutely no experience, but I'm willing to do whatever it takes to learn. Any suggestions?
 

mesman00

What's that...?
well, i suggest start learning c++ concepts. u can find some really good tutorials on the internet just by using google.com (www.programmersheaven.com is also real good). you can also buy a book and learn that way. then, once u feel u have a good enough grasp on that, start learning some windows programming. then, from there, i suggest learning directinput, directsound, directdraw, and after all that, if u like u can start learning how to program in a specific API, such as directX or openGL. but, u must be patient. it will take u quite some time, and hard work as well, to build ur skills to the point where u will be able to emulate any console with success. As long as u stick with it, and don't give up, and once again, BE PATIENT, u will eventually start making progress toward and emulator.

oh yah, don't try to out do yourself. set practical goals, and when u reach them, set new goals that are a little more challenging, but still practical
 

Hacktarux

Emulator Developer
Moderator
C'est en forgeant qu'on devient forgeron

If you don't know any language then of course you will have to learn one. But if you know one (even if it is just a few notions), don't take too much time too learn graphical apis, all the difficulties of your language...
Instead, define your project. My suggestion is a nes emulator because it is very well documented. Grab all the informations that you can on this machine and also, you must have a good documentation of the language you are using. And then... start your project ! I know, you will not make it as optimized as it has to be but each time you will be confront to a problem, you will learn much more things that you can by just programming little tools...

I know this is a big project to start with but, the real difficulty that you have when you start an emu is to understand how works the real machine. And even if you know every graphical apis..., you will always have this problem.
 

mesman00

What's that...?
yah, i didn't mean for him to learn a whole api first, i was just suguestin, but hacktarux is right
 

linker

Emutalk Member
Of course, it is not necessary to learn both dx8 and opengl to emulate the rdp, for example. The most important thing is to understand how you can decode these commands, to understand what the console want to do, then show it on the screen with some of the apis.
 

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