Volts

Yet another emulator

Why?

So there can be another competing standard.

Media

User Q&A

How do I Run a game?

As of Sept 17, 2019. You don't. This emulator is still early stages. If you want to play around with what does exist you're more than welcome.

Roadmap

Planned features

Shortterm features

• Decrypt SELF files and generate ELFs
• Working CELL interpreter
• Minimal RSX implementation

Longterm

• CELL JIT compiler
• Disk decryptor
• Controller input
• Performance improvments

Sideprojects

• Debugger
• GUI frontend

Developer Q&A

Code Style

Its important for a healthy code base to have a consistent style through all internal code. This extends to design patterns as well as just the formatting of the code itself.

Formatting

1. 4 space indents only, not tabs.
2. All classes, structs, varaibles, functions, and arguments are in snake_case
3. All template type arguments are prefixed with T
4. All macros are in SCREAMING_SNAKE_CASE
5. All enums are enum classes
6. * & are on the left side. IE type* name

Patterns

1. All code is in the volts namespace
2. No warnings when building
3. Performance above all else
4. #pragma once instead of include guards
5. All C++ have the .cpp file extension, C files have .c, ObjC++ files have .mm, all headers have .h
6. All code is documented clearly
7. External dependencies are minimal

Bans

1. Exceptions are banned
2. dynamic_cast and RTTI are banned
3. thread_local is banned
4. Nested classes are banned
5. Relative includes are banned

Building

Even if a specific Linux distro, Windows version, or MacOSX version is not listed here it does not mean it will not work. If you successfully build & boot the emulator on your system please provide a pull request with detailed steps to update the README.

Prerequisites

• Python >= 3.5.x
• Meson >= 0.50.x
• Vulkan SDK >= 1.0.3 (on windows & linux set the enviroment variable "VULKAN_SDK" to the path to the installed sdk. on mac who really knows, just try and install the SDK. only god knows how to do this)

Windows

• Install visual studio C++ compiler (C++17 support or later)

meson build
cd build
ninja
volt.exe

MacOSX

This will only build on OSX 10.15 (Catalina) or later

you will also need to install xcode 11.1

git submodule update --init
meson build
ninja -C build
./build/volt

Linux

As of May 9, 2019 supported linux distros are

• Ubuntu 18.04.2 LTS
• Debian 9.9.0

Assuming an entirley fresh install of Ubuntu

sudo apt install git python3 python3-pip ninja-build
pip3 install --user meson

~/.local/bin/meson build
ninja -C build
./Build/volt

Assuming a fresh install of Debian

su -

apt install git python3-pip llvm ninja-build

pip3 install meson

cd Volts
meson build
ninja -C build
./build/volt

Comparison

Volts

Pros

• No warnings while building
• Uses meson
• Fully cross platform
• Has command line utilities built in

Cons

• Cant run ps3 games
• Is nowhere near finished

rpcs3

Pros

• Can run ps3 games

Cons

• Uses cmake and visual studio
• No command line interface
• An almost uncountable amount of build warnings
• Doesnt work on mac
• Uses Qt
• Inconsistent code style