X-Box emulators

**RyanUK** · 25th July 2004

Hi All,

Just a quick question. I dont want to buy an X-Box so is there anywhere I can download a program/ emulator and games from?

If you know of any websites can you reply to this messgae please!.

Cheers

**Porthos** · 25th July 2004

No you won't find one mate, not for a while anyway. Remember when a console is released it is on a par with PC's current technology (well it should be in the same ball park), emulating takes the equivalent power plus A LOT more to 'translate' (if you wana call it that) on the fly. As such, you'll rarely find a console emulated if its still the latest. I've also been told that it is against emulating etiquette to emulate the latest consoles. I'm guessing the reason why is because you will be diminishing their profit and encouraging piracy rather than allowing people to play games that no longer are available for sale (and therefore do not negatively effect the original producers). That answer was probs too long, anyways you won't find an xbox emuator for a while mate

**RyanUK** · 27th July 2004

OK, Cheers for that, so my mate was chatting runcorn again, cheers again

**fe_man2000** · 27th July 2004

give it 2 or 3 years maybe - they are just emulating the Dreamcast at the moment - that came out in 1999 !

Cheers
Ironman

**405turbo** · 15th August 2004

When I worked at MSN between 2001-2002 they had an internal XBox emulator - saw it running but no way could I get my hands on it.

It'll take a while for people to write an emulator cos whilst many know that the OS is encrypted, not many know the key is stored on the controllers (which is why you can only used MS approved ones). Oops, did I say that out loud? :tongue

**kracken** · 15th August 2004

Originally Posted by 405turbo

When I worked at MSN between 2001-2002 they had an internal XBox emulator - saw it running but no way could I get my hands on it.

really ? u remember what it was called or what it was running @ the time m8 ?

Originally Posted by 405turbo

It'll take a while for people to write an emulator cos whilst many know that the OS is encrypted, not many know the key is stored on the controllers (which is why you can only used MS approved ones). Oops, did I say that out loud?

could you explain a bit further on what you mean , ie what key ?

i understood the RC-4 was to be found in a hidden boot sector in the southbridge chip ?

**harryb** · 21st August 2004

usually once a console has become "last gen" people have the power to start emulating them... so hopefully it becomes possible in a year or 2

**BIG-TED** · 23rd August 2004

There is an xbox emulator that plays halo, i think it's called xeon i'll have a look on google BRB.....

try this link
acording to that there are two.

http://www.emulator-zone.com/doc.php/xbox/

and this one

http://www.xbox-scene.com/tools/tool...page=emulators

Ted :thumbs

**fe_man2000** · 23rd August 2004

I think that Xeon just boots Halo - its not actually playable.

Cheers
Ironman

**Kookai** · 31st August 2004

Originally Posted by Porthos

No you won't find one mate, not for a while anyway. Remember when a console is released it is on a par with PC's current technology (well it should be in the same ball park), emulating takes the equivalent power plus A LOT more to 'translate' (if you wana call it that) on the fly. As such, you'll rarely find a console emulated if its still the latest.

This is usually true but doesn't the Xbox share a lot of the same hardware with a PC, such as Intel Pentium CPU, Geforce GFX, Microsoft OS, etc etc. So I would think an xbox emulator should be able to run on current PC's easily.

Normally when making console emulators the PC will have to emulate some bizarre make of CPU and custom gfx chips.

What 405turbo said sounds about right.

Xbox emulator for pc would be very cool. :thumbs

**fe_man2000** · 31st August 2004

yeah you'd think that was true, but its not that simple. In the same way you cant run any games similar in content to the curent crop of Xbox games on a PC with a 733 cpu and 64meg of ram and a Geforce 3 card. There are a lot of custom instructions and bespoke differences.

Cheers
Ironman

**Bad Ad** · 1st September 2004

Originally Posted by fe_man2000

yeah you'd think that was true, but its not that simple. In the same way you cant run any games similar in content to the curent crop of Xbox games on a PC with a 733 cpu and 64meg of ram and a Geforce 3 card. There are a lot of custom instructions and bespoke differences.

Cheers
Ironman

1:) emulators are easier for xbox, go look at cxbx website and read his "log" and mission statement, as someone else said, its a i386 processor in there, so all the instructions are pretty much the same.

2:) about computers not being able to run same games on similar spec machines, your reasoning is wrong..... for starters the Xbox doesnt have the operating system overhead like a pc does (so theres plenty of ram and cpu to spare for just games), it just runs the games..... also pc games need to be programmed very generally so they work on a wide varity hardware, but xbox's all have the same cpu/gpu etc so you can use very specific code.

oh and on cxbx's site you will see he has turok running 4x xbox speed on a 2.4ghz processor and its not straining the machine much.

and lastly halo does run on xeon. it was an early version of cxbx that just initalized halo (copying cache files etc) but didnt run.

**fe_man2000** · 2nd September 2004

fair points and I see your logic but your over simplifing. I concur that a Xbox emu would appear to be much easier than say a PS2 due to the fact that your PC already fully supports the Intel CPU and that as mentioned in point 2. PC's have overheads and varing hardware but thats the whole point in why it not so easy..

If you write an emu for a PC it will also be running under windows (unless its linux based or also a boot disk) and hence will need extra power and what if your PC is using a AMD chip and have a ATI graphics card (not to mention the make of sound card) and hence are not using the exact same type of hardware as a Xbox ??

The Answer is DirectX - this is what makes it possible for a common PC platform for PC games programmers - BUT and heres a the kicker, Xbox doesnt use a normal version of Direct X - its a custom one for the Xbox only and hence will need to be rewritten by any Emu author so it works on difference PC hardware .

I think this is why turok runs - the game and the graphics have been ported from another platform (i suspect it isnt using the full xbox libaries)

From Cxbx's website

. Xbox doesnt use Direct X in the same wasy as a PC hence when righting a Xbox EMu you must run a modified version of Direct X
Direct3D is a complex system in itself. In addition to this complexity is the added optimizations provided on the Xbox system. Since it is safe for the developer to assume a very specific set of hardware, many pieces of code are literally removed by an optimizing compiler. Other pieces of code have changed in significant ways from Windows Direct3D. There are also many Xbox specific features which must be emulated, including hardware specific precompiled texture formats, vertex and pixel shaders, CPU optimized routines, texture swizzling, special alpha ops, etc. In order for a game to not only run but look good, these features must be accurated emulated.

Cheers
Ironman

**Bad Ad** · 2nd September 2004

remapped direct x api's is alot less system intensive than you are making out, all the grunt work is emulating the cpus instructions which isnt needed, turok runs on the xbox directx lib's but obviously doesnt use them all, no game would.

hes working one game at a time, next game he tries to add support for will have most already mapped from his work on turok, eventually most games will run with little tweaking until all are mapped

as you see from his site his 2.8 ran the game 4x speed, so like i said it will run with ease once complete

also from his site

"SSince the Xbox uses an Intel Pentium processor, a large percentage of the code (most importantly, the code that tends to eat up the CPU) can be executed directly. This means there is no need for DynaRec (Dynamic Recompilation), which saves alot of CPU and RAM. Emulators such as UltraHLE and Project64 have proven that High Level Emulation is a really great way to achieve high performance. Cxbx takes this idea and, because of the Xbox's architecture, takes it to the next level by combining it with direct code execut1on. The result is speed and accuracy."

what needs emulating mainly for xbox isnt harware as the cpu is intel, its just the xbox software which is no where near as intensive like i said.

**fe_man2000** · 2nd September 2004

well seeing as we are both quoting from thr same website we are both right - and I agree it should be easier to work on a I86 based system emus that on custom processors I was just pointing out that usually the delay on a good emu is 2-4 years after realease of the system - which I still stand by - I dont count the current emu which only just plays one (crap) game from a over 12 months ago as a working emu

you mention halo runs and can be played - can you give more info on that as I cant find it.

cheers
Ironman