Project Status?

[jtmorrisbytes]

Would any current contributors like to speak about the status of this emulator? I know its been a while but I have been looking for a pet project for a rust port and would like to know if there would be any interest. it seems that the project has stalled. I would be happy to take on this project for a few months as I have nothing really to do. I will be forking this if anyone is interested please check out cen64-rs

[jtmorrisbytes]

Hey everyone so I managed to get the project building on windows and msvc via rust build scripts. I defenately needed ai help to translate this LONG build script. Some MSVC compatibility patches were required to move away from cmake and audio is broken right now but it without the audio engine running I am getting near full emulation speed on windows in release mode if your interested please track https://.github.com/jtmorrisbytes/cen64-rs

[lee-b]

I was hoping that the README would provide status as to current performance.

That seems important, as it's cycle-exact with the "hope" of one day running at full speed "on modest hardware".

This could mean anything from "one frame takes a day on a supercomputer right now" to "there's one game that drops one frame on a raspberry pi 2, but we think we have the working code for that in a PR right now, and just merged it to the beta branch", you know?

EDIT: just browsing some of the issues, it's clear that this isn't feature complete yet. A roadmap / feature matrix (not necessarily one with deadlines, just what features are known to be needed, and their current state) would be good.

[jtmorrisbytes]

My profiling suggests that optimizing n64video.C or providing a gpu backed implementation would make cen usable. Currently cen takes 50% approx cputime in debug mode in color combiner 2 cycle, doesnt appear to be a interpreter issue at the moment Warm regardsJordan morrisOn Apr 20, 2026, at 6:36 AM, Lee B ***@***.***> wrote:lee-b left a comment (n64dev/cen64#242) I was hoping that the README would provide status as to current performance. That seems important, as it's cycle-exact with the "hope" of one day running at full speed "on modest hardware". This could mean anything from "one frame takes a day on a supercomputer right now" to "there's one game that drops one frame on a raspberry pi 2, but we think we have the working code for that in a PR right now, and just merged it to the beta branch", you know? —Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub, or unsubscribe.You are receiving this because you authored the thread.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[woot000]

I think it's worth noting that, at least for myself, CEN64 runs way faster on Linux compared to Windows (tested on SM64's title screen + menu select). It might be worth looking into a potential bottleneck that only Windows executables encounter

Windows 11 (this screenshot is when I compiled with MSYS2's CLANG64 env, but the framerate was basically the same (if not worse) on UCRT64 (gcc)):

CachyOS 6.19.11:

[loganmc10]

CEN64 had a stated goal of being a really accurate N64 emulator, but it never really got all the way there. For some reason, people heard of the goal and assumed that the emulator was already that.

It's a really important emulator, since I think it got people interested in more accurate N64 emulation, but if I were going to port an N64 emulator to Rust today, I would have probably picked Ares rather than CEN64.

Or, if you have the desire to work on a Rust-based N64 emulator, there is https://github.com/gopher64/gopher64 (I am the author).

[jtmorrisbytes]

I’m not sure which direction I want to go yet as I realize in order for cen to continue in my opinion I definitely think that from my testing at least the video engine is holding us back a lot. I shifted my focus over to something a bit similar so I could get a feel for graphics API’s and audio processing. I’m not sure where I want to go with this yet, but when I got it building on windows using rust as the build system, I just used a general profiler and in debug mode on the legend of Zelda, where it got hit the most color combiner two cycle. I really do want to see this emulator playable but again I’m not sure what I really wanna do yet. I just thought it was cool. Unfortunately, a full rust port would require refacing the entire data access pattern as rust does not allow &mut mut static T and really required raw pointers everywhere and sometimes ptr reads and writes dont “stick” even when volatile is used. My ultimate goal for this emulator would be to do something similar to what paralelrdp folk steady and provide a modern graphic implementation of N 64 video.ca in my opinion that would be the only way to make it playable. I haven’t tried other games yet, but I still think that the graphic engine is holding us back. Warm regardsJordan morrisOn Apr 21, 2026, at 12:06 PM, Logan McNaughton ***@***.***> wrote:loganmc10 left a comment (n64dev/cen64#242) CEN64 had a stated goal of being a really accurate N64 emulator, but it never really got all the way there. For some reason, people heard of the goal and assumed that the emulator was already that. It's a really important emulator, since I think it got people interested in more accurate N64 emulation, but if I were going to port an N64 emulator to Rust today, I would have probably picked Ares rather than CEN64. Or, if you have the desire to work on a Rust-based N64 emulator, there is https://github.com/gopher64/gopher64 (I am the author). —Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub, or unsubscribe.You are receiving this because you authored the thread.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[jtmorrisbytes]

I would be interested in comtributing to your project. Where should i get startedWarm regardsJordan morrisOn Apr 21, 2026, at 12:06 PM, Logan McNaughton ***@***.***> wrote:loganmc10 left a comment (n64dev/cen64#242) CEN64 had a stated goal of being a really accurate N64 emulator, but it never really got all the way there. For some reason, people heard of the goal and assumed that the emulator was already that. It's a really important emulator, since I think it got people interested in more accurate N64 emulation, but if I were going to port an N64 emulator to Rust today, I would have probably picked Ares rather than CEN64. Or, if you have the desire to work on a Rust-based N64 emulator, there is https://github.com/gopher64/gopher64 (I am the author). —Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub, or unsubscribe.You are receiving this because you authored the thread.Message ID: ***@***.***>