Purpose

This page describes the code inside src/emulator directory tree.

Common themes

It's worth noting that each library generally falls into one of two categories:

1. A stateless collection of utility functions
2. A stateful module corresponding to a subset of Vita functionality

Stateful modules tend to have a public interface divided into data structures (state.h) and functions (functions.h). OOP is generally discouraged at the moment but it's not clear whether the current approach is better or just different. Certainly C++-style OOP tends to inflate compile times because naive C++ OOP lacks adequate implementation-hiding mechanisms.

See recommended viewing.

Structure

app

GUI window and graphics rendering backend initiation and management.

audio

Maintains audio-related state and mixes audio.

codec

Multimedia decodification and video/audio player for games.

compat

Used to display compatibility in the emulator.

config

YAML configuration file management and CLI argument parsing.

cpu

CPU emulation. Uses Unicorn and dynarmic internally but that's largely hidden from the rest of the emulator. While the emulator does create real threads to implement SCE threads, the cpu library is unaware of threads. Each virtual CPU corresponds to a thread and, like threads, virtual CPUs share the same address space.

ctrl

Defines controller state data structures.

dialog

PS Vita OS dialog handling. This folder contains the code necessary to handle the calls from the game to create native PS Vita OS dialogs.

display

Control state of display.

emuenv

This is the interface between the emulator application and the HLE module exports. It groups together the other modules, and the resulting overall EmuEnvState structure is passed as a parameter to every HLE export.

features

Host setup check for emulation features and optimizations.

gdbstub

GDB integration.

glutil

OpenGL utilities, to ease management of OpenGL objects.

gui

UI elements management code. In fact, many functions handled by the GUI are implemented by this part.

gxm

Defines GXM module state data structures.

host

Host operating system abstraction layer.

http

Headers used for http are included here.

ime

Header files for ime.

io

Input/Output such as file or TTY access.

kernel

Low-level process management tasks like threading.

lang

Management lang and translation.

mem

Memory management. This library handles both allocation and address space management, somewhat conflating the two. Does not currently follow the state/functions paradigm, but probably should.

module

Utilities required by HLE modules. Bridging deserves some special attention.

modules

An interface library grouping all the HLE modules together into one library so emulator can depend on them easily.

Within modules, there is a large collection of HLE module exports. The structure is generated by gen-exports.

motion

PS Vita motion emulation.

net

Ground code for SceNet.

ngs

Handles PS Vita ngs audio API.

nids

Utilities for dealing with NIDs. Contains a header of all NIDs and names, generated by gen-modules. Should probably be merged with modules.

np

Handles PS Vita Np trophy API.

packages

PS Vita software package handling.

regmgr

Registory manager.

renderer

OpenGL and Vulkan implementations.

rtc

Real Time Clock. Time and clock implementation.

script

Update script for Vita3K.

shaders

Hand-written GLSL shaders to which the GXM HLE loads when the game tries to compile a shader. There's a GPU reverse engineering effort underway which could eventually remove the use for hand-written shaders.

shaders-builtin

Built in shaders for Vita3K such as FXAA and FSR.

thereads

Thread management.

touch

PS Vita touchscreen emulation.

util

Generic utilities. This library has a terrible name and should probably be merged into an existing library or split up and each new library named better.

vkutil

Vulkan utilities, to ease management of Vulkan objects.