I’ve done a small update to my DS game Don’t Get Crushed (I’ll post it later today) and I decided to test it with all of the major DS emulators to see how they differed from playing the game on an actual DS (using a DSiXL with R4i RTS). Here is what I found.
NO$GBA
No anti-aliasing.
High score isn’t saved.
Everything is darker then it should be.
Some slight flaws in the rendering of textures (the top pixels of the text is clipped off).
DeSmuME
No anti-aliasing.
High score isn’t saved.
Touch screen controls don’t seem to work making the game unplayable.
Ensata
High score isn’t saved.
Both screens flicker well displaying the competition splash screen (this could be the result of my computer being underpowered as the game runs incredibly slow for me in this emulator).
Touch screen controls don’t seem to work making the game unplayable.
DS iDeaS
No anti-aliasing.
High score isn’t saved.
The top screen flickers at all times.
Multiple flaws in the rendering of text.
Touch screen controls don’t seem to work making the game unplayable.
DSemu
It just sits at a black screen. Doesn’t work.
DualiS DS
It crashes immediately. Doesn’t work.
in the end Ensata renders the game the most correctly (it has problems of flickering but its the only one to support anti-aliasing and it flawlessly renders all of the textures) but NO$GBA is the only one that the games touch screen controls work with making it the only one that the game is actually playable with.
ThatOtherDev 
[…] to be loaded the next time you start the game. High score saving only works on an actual DS (check here to see how else the game differs when played with emulators). There are some other slight tweaks […]
Sorry for the late question, but did you try to contact the DeSmuME or/and iDeaS author(s)? It could probably help them to fix the touchscreen issues.
I wasn’t planning to but I’ll think about. I think there probably aware of it already. I don’t remember which one it was but one of the emulators had a wiki that refereed to a known problem with touch controls not working and how they where considering it a low priority for whatever reason. I’m assuming both of them having fully functional touch screen controls with most retail games and my homebrew game is just an abnormality.
Yeah, I see what you did there, but nevertheless the aim of an emu author is to provide the best possible emulation of the whole hardware. And if the homebrew is working on a real ds, it should also working with an emulator. Just look at the FCEU mappers modified project or bsnes for example. They really try to archive 101% compatibility even with the obscurest games, hacks or pirate copys. So probably you could help them to fix the problem, because you know, what you was using while developing the project.
I probably found the wiki, I think you mean the , but I couldn’t find that the error you described is listed for your game yet.
Regards, The Master
[…] to be loaded the next time you start the game. High score saving only works on an actual DS (check here to see how else the game differs when played with emulators). There are some other slight tweaks […]