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Artic Base Server

NOTE: Artic Base Server was released very recently and may have unexpected bugs. Please back up the save file of the game you want to broadcast just in case!

Artic Base is a tool for broadcasting games from your 3DS to a compatible emulator. This allows playing your physical or digital games on an emulator without having to dump them. You can find a demo here.

Description

Artic Base Server is a Luma3DS 3GX plugin that allows using the Artic Base protocol to broadcast your games to a compaible emulator (for example: PabloMK7/citra). This works by forwarding the filesystem requests from the emulator to the console.

Features

  • Play games from your console without having to dump them, with purchased updates and DLC.
  • Sync the savedata/extdata of the broadcasted game during the play session.
  • Use the console as the input device by enabling the Artic Controller feature on the emulator.
  • Load shared ext data and NCCH archives from your console.
  • Remove the need to dump AES keys, as the decryption is done by the console's OS.

Advantages over playing on real console

  • Play your games at higher resolutions.
  • Use external controllers that may better fit your playstyle.
  • Switch between playing on your PC at home and your console on the go.
  • Reduce e-waste by reusing partially broken consoles to broadcast your games to your PC.
  • Allow museums or non-profit game preservation organizations to have a centralised database of preserved games, while using an Artic Base Server + a compatible emulator to do research as needed.

Disadvantages over game dumps

  • Slower loading times, ranging from 2x to 5x depending on how much data is needed by the game. Thanks to the use of a cache in memory, loading times get better if game resources that were already loaded are requested again.
  • Constant and stable connection is needed with the console running the server so that it's able to provide the game resources on demand.

Usage instructions

  1. Download the .cia or .3dsx file from the releases page and install it.
  2. Run the Artic Base Server application. Press A to confirm you want to start Artic Base.
  3. Select the application you want to broadcast from the Home Menu.
  4. On a compatible emulator, select the Artic Base option and enter the IP address displayed on your console.

NOTE: A recent version of Luma3DS (v13.1.1 or newer) is requires to use Artic Base Server. You can get it here.

Future Plans

This section lists features that Artic Base Server cannot currently provide. Some of these features may be added in the future.

Things that might be implemented

  • Broadcasting homebrew applications

Things that will never be implemented

  • Dump games, and any of its assets to persistent storage. This includes caching data between play sessions.
  • Dump any kind of system data, such as keys, archives or console unique files. This includes caching data between play sessions.
  • Using the Home Menu of the console that is running Artic Base Server and switching between games.

License

MIT License

Copyright (c) 2024 PabloMK7

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

Credits

Artic Base uses icons from flaticon:

Artic Base uses text renders from cooltext.