Community The Emulation Thread - When That PC Port Just Ain't Happening

[Alextended]

Always use the nightly build anyway, for the more well developed emus like Dolphin or Citra too. The stable are usually way outdated.

But I agree PCSX2 is generally a mess with too many issues and ugly hacks that fix this or that specific game. Hopefully it'll improve or another emu will turn up.

 

[Parsnip]

There's just not a ton of enthusiasm in the PS2 space, most people seem to think that PCSX2 is "good enough".
Play! is another PS2 emu that's in active dev but I think it's compatibility is worse than pcsx2 at the moment. However it's open source, has an upcoming vulkan backend and even a libretro core. It's been in dev for 10+ years, but it's still probably the one look out for.

I don't have any specific sources or anything, but I seem to recall once looking into some issues on FF12 on PCSX2 and basically the answer for some of the issues was that there were some choices that were made a long time ago that ended up hurting them in the longterm. It would be a huge rewrite of some critical core emulation parts and that there's no one in the project currently that really knows that part of ps2 system or the emulator super well so there's just nothing to be done at the moment.

 

[Kvik]

What NDS emu y'all be using?
O remember there being one that can downscaling or some such.

I used Retroarch's DeSmuME core. It works pretty well, although with a few caveats.

• I have better performance with Interpreter engine compared with JIT dynarec.
• Performance will tank on the highest (10x) internal resolution scaling, this is on Intel i7-5930K 6C/12T at 4.2Ghz with 1080Ti
• There is no proper "book" mode, so if you're looking to play something like Hotel Dusk, for example, it's best to use the standalone DeSmuME

I am still surprised at how behind PS2 emulation is. I have to use a nightly build of PCSX2 to get yAKUZA 2 to output its visuals better and even THAT has its own issues XP.

I'd say for certain games it runs fine, but it's a shame that some of the more prolific titles might have issues still

Yeah, using the nightly build is a must. I recently completed Xenosaga Ep. 1, and one of the most glaring bug in this game which is "save point crash" has remain unfixed for years. Not to mention shadow glitch and/or ghosting which has plagued most titles.

 

[Rando10123]

Play! is another PS2 emu that's in active dev but I think it's compatibility is worse than pcsx2 at the moment. However it's open source, has an upcoming vulkan backend and even a libretro core. It's been in dev for 10+ years, but it's still probably the one look out for.

I doubt Play! is gonna catch up to PCSX2 anytime soon, like you said, it's been 10 years in development and even the developer of Play! made a comment on Reddit that the PCSX2 is the best PS2 emulator and it doesn't have awful coding as what people say IIRC. There's also Dobiestation but no way it'll ever catch up to even Play!

 

[Cordelia]

Yuzu still can't emulate this game yet.

 

[Tizoc]

So RPCS3's latest Nov. build runs this game really nicely, but you can see some odd grid shadows which I dunno what is causing it Maybe Vulkan or maybe it's due to the way RPCS3 emulates and applies some graphical stuff, but otherwise the game looks nice and clean at 200% 'down scaling' and I enjoyed playing through it

EDIT: Sonic the Fighters runs and looks really nice in the new build as well :3

 

[Alextended]

A new SSF version came out. Not sure of the changelog. For me it seems to have fixed instances where settings weren't saved and auto-select of region also seems to work 100% (but you do have to restart the app if the next game is of a different region). I love this emulator the most of all for Saturn even though I've replaced most with RetroArch (but I keep Mednafen proper around just in case some cool update in that doesn't make it over to the core quickly enough).

 

[Alextended]

Yet another version release, no idea what it does either.

 

[Theswweet]

Head's up. Cemu's latest Patreon build has proper Vulkan support now! The public will have access to non-BETA Vulkan support on December 20th!

Time to play Xenoblade Chronicles X at 1440p/60 on my desktop!

 

[Cordelia]

Head's up. Cemu's latest Patreon build has proper Vulkan support now! The public will have access to non-BETA Vulkan support on December 20th!

Time to play Xenoblade Chronicles X at 1440p/60 on my desktop!

I wonder if they fixed the stuttering and purple texture issue.

 

[Kvik]

New release.

 

[Alextended]

I tested a bit and for me it doesn't work with SSF, but it does work with the Beetle core in RetroArch (which is basically Mednafen and therefor essentially the recommended in the read me file emulator). Note if your game rip already uses the file format the read me file instructs then you don't need to go through the whole isobuster procedure, just apply the patch. If it's a good rip it should work just fine. I also found one untranslated thing, if you enter Disc 2 first and try to start a new game then it will of course bring up a warning screen that I guess tells you to insert Disc 1 instead but it's in Japanese

 

[Alextended]

I got it to work in SSF as well by mounting the game (in Daemon tools, not WinCDEmu) instead of loading the file so presumably it works with a burned CD too.

Also, it basically feels like an official release, I love the presentation and everything seems spot on with very well written English (no your/you're shit, so far, ha).

 

[Alextended]

Can someone help me make Dreamcast 2D games look nice on RetroArch? By all means the games should look rad most of them being arcade perfect but I always end up preferring how the Saturn iterations of each game or series looks. For example here is Dreamcast Street Fighter Alpha 3 and then Saturn Street Fighter Zero 3 and Night Warriors. It's with the same exact (mostly plain/native) retroarch settings and shader config (just a simple one from the presets, nothing fancy) in both cases so all I can think of messing it up is native Dreamcast rendering resolution? Doesn't it seem like Dreamcast does a 2x upscale of its own for all pixels as it had higher resolution output which means the crt shader passes each line of Dreamcast pixels which separates each actual game line of pixels to two lines each so that the game pixels don't get nicely smoothed but instead they look plain and sharp? Obviously you need to view the images full size (1440p).

Like if you look at an obvious pixel object like the character shadows, you can tell that the scanlines are between each pixel line on Saturn, but actually divide each pixel line in half so there's double the amount on DC? Also from googling it seems people hated this even on original hardware with the VGA cables?

Edit: I've exhausted google, I guess there's no solution to this further cementing the Saturn as the king of 2D with both quality, quantity, and proper game rendering, even if Dreamcast has a handful of top tier titles (yet ruins their visuals so I'd rather play previous or Japan only iterations such as this on Saturn).

 

[Alextended]

Well, fuck. My Retro-bit Official SEGA Saturn USB pad's d-pad just broke. I was playing around on Saturn/DC emulation as above and suddenly the back direction stopped responding. I opened it up to make sure it didn't just need cleaning or something and sure enough the little cross is snapped. Fuck

I've only had it for around 6 months and mostly only used it for like two, some of it when I first got it and again recently as my retro gaming comes and goes in phases. I guess I should have gone for the 8bitdo M30 or the Hori Fighting Commander even if they aren't so nostalgic looking after all.

I think I'll go for the Fighting Commander next, its pricier but the same-sized top and bottom rows of buttons might make it even more convenient for fighting games over pads that emulate Saturn's smaller x y z buttons and it also has extra shoulder buttons making it more versatile for PS1 emulation too.

Edit: just ordered one for 30, should have done it many years ago I guess.

 

[Alextended]

It looks like a Princess Crown fan translation might finally happen. I really hope these progress reports are truthful, I've been wanting to play this forever.

cyberwarriorx/pcrown

Princess Crown Translation Project. Contribute to cyberwarriorx/pcrown development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

I love how bosses look like some stupid weird side scrolling JRPG Monster Hunter & like it works!

 

[Alextended]

I figured I'd try this while waiting for it to land on PC. Saturn/Dreamcast/PS work pretty good on my phone (Mi A2), depending on the game (Daytona USA 2001 is far from full speed but Code Veronica is close). It's naturally unplayable with touch controls unless it's a game without action. It's pretty sweet though, I'd guess it works great on tablets, there are more powerful devices and you can pair controllers. I guess like the various mame apps open up arcade emulation on such devices, this opens up multi console/system emulation for people who don't have a PC to fiddle around with. Then again you probably need a PC to set it all up, acquire games, bios, extract whatever and so on. It's fairly easy to use if you've been into this sort of thing. But it does lack things that I guess you need to get on your PC and manually acquire/modify to get it right (ie there's no Saturn controller layout and the one for Dreamcast - not pictured - has all the buttons to the right so you can't really hold more than certain buttons at once etc., but again you don't wanna play real time games with touch controls anyway).

I can see myself playing Sakura Wars and Front Mission 3 or something on my phone in bed instead of my PC, assuming no crashes etc. ruin the idea of course.

 

[Alextended]

And it's here!

RetroArch 1.8.2 released! – Libretro

www.libretro.com

Merry Christmas, everyone!
RetroArch 1.8.2 has just been released.

Grab it here.

Remember that this project exists for the benefit of our users, and that we wouldn’t keep doing this were it not for spreading the love with our users. This project exists because of your support and belief in us to keep going doing great things. If you’d like to show your support, consider donating to us. Check here in order to learn more. In addition to being able to support us on Patreon, there is now also the option to sponsor us on Github Sponsors! You can also help us out by buying some of our merch on our Teespring store!

Big features
Accessibility for blind people

With RetroArch 1.7.8, we introduced the AI Service. This exciting feature makes it possible to do on-the-fly machine translation of foreign languages to any language of choice. Especially handy for all those dozens of old Japanese video games that never saw a translation either due to lack of financial interests/feasibility or obscurity. Now, with version 1.8.2, we are once again heading into uncharted waters where fear will dare, and introducing fullblown accessibility features for blind people.

This feature can be found under Settings -> Accessibility. Right now, it is only implemented on Windows, macOS and Linux.

There’s an entire article dedicated to this feature alone – read our blog post here to learn more.

To learn more about how to use it, read our dedicated wiki page on it.

Update all your installed cores with one simple press!

One of the most requested features since the beginning!

You can now update all the cores you have installed by going to Online Updater and selecting ‘Update Installed Cores’. It will check every single installed core, verify if there is an updated core on our buildbot, and upon detecting that the version on the buildbot is newer, it will download the new core automagically for you.

This fixes a number of serious issues that people had with the update process before. One, the tedium of having to update your cores one by one. Two, the uncertainty of whether or not an updated core is even available. When you were updating a core before, you had no idea whether you are downloading the same versioned core, or whether it was a newer version.

This brings us to the second biggest improvement. Before downloading a core, RetroArch will check if the core available on the buildbot is newer. If so, it will download the core and rewrite the existing core. If not, it will inform you that this core is already updated to the latest version, and therefore RetroArch won’t bother downloading the core again. This saves us bandwidth and you bandwidth and time. A win-win I’m sure you’d agree.

Manual content scanner (w/o checking the database)

Talk about another long-requested feature, here it is finally!

From this version on, there is a new simple manual content scanner – i.e. a ‘dumb’ scanner that matches all files (based on user configuration) without checking the databases. The interface looks like this:

The scan options are as follows:

Content Directory: Select directory to scan. The starting path for this is configured via the normal File Browser path in Settings > Directory, so it is highly recommended to set this first before beginning a scanning session.

System Name: This corresponds to the conventional ‘database’ setting, used to name the resultant playlist and to identify thumbnails. This has the following options:

Content Directory: The name of the content directory is used

Custom: Allows entry of a custom name

The user can also select the name of any installed database

Custom System Name: This is the name used when System Name is set to (it is otherwise ignored)

Core: Allows a default core to be specified

File Extensions: Allows user to filter scanned files by specifying a space-delimited list of allowed file extensions. Some further notes are required here:

If File Extensions is left blank and no Core is specified, all files are scanned

If File Extensions is left blank and a Core is specified, all files supported by the core (+ all archive files) are scanned

If File Extensions is specified, only files with matching extensions are matched. An example use case: The PCSX ReARMed core supports both bin and cue files, which means you end up with a mess of duplicates in the playlist by default. Setting File Extensions to cue excludes the bins and keeps everything clean.

Overwrite Existing Playlist: When enabled, any existing playlist content will be erased (useful if the user previously made a mistake, and wants to start over). When disabled, only content not already present in the playlist will be added (useful as a second pass to a conventional database scan, to pick up any files that were missed)

Scan inside archives

In addition to this, the manual scanner also has an option called ‘Scan Inside Archives’. Here’s how it works:

Scan Inside Archives DISABLED:

If no Core and no File Extensions are specified, all archives will be treated as valid content, and will be added (as the archive itself) to playlists

If a Core or File Extensions are specified, archive files will be ignored unless they have a file extension included in the Core or File Extensions list of supported file types (and again, in this case the archive itself will be added to playlists)

Scan Inside Archives ENABLED:

If no Core and no File Extensions are specified, all archives will be scanned: if they contain a single file, the internal path to that file will be added to playlists; if they contain multiple files, the archive itself will be added to playlists (i.e. we assume MAME-style content if archives contain multiple files)

If a Core or File Extensions are specified, archives in the supported file types list will be added to playlists directly. Other archives will be scanned, and the first internal file on the supported file types list will be added instead

This makes scanning quite a bit cleaner and more rigorous. Users who don’t archive their ROMs can leave Scan Inside Archives disabled and not think about it. Users who do archive their ROMs can enable Scan Inside Archives and be assured that only compatible content will be added to playlists, using the same ‘internal referencing’ that is currently used by the old database-based scanners.

Enable automatic naming of arcade content via DAT files

The manual content scanner also has a new Arcade DAT File option.

This is compatible with DAT files in either Logiqx XML or MAME List XML format. When a DAT file is selected, a lookup is performed for each item of scanned ‘archive-type’ content. This allows automatic conversion of ‘meaningless’ arcade file names (e.g. garou.zip) into proper description labels in playlists.

These DAT files are readily available online – e.g.:

libretro/FBNeo
MAME DATs Repository
libretro/mame2003-plus-libretro

Less RAM-intensive

We recommend that systems that are RAM-starved, such as game consoles, make use of this feature if they experience problems with the database-based scanner system that has been the only option up until now.

Much faster video playback with improved ffmpeg core

An entire article was dedicated to this. Read more about it here.

RetroArch 1.8.2 now has much faster video decoding. You can select between hardware video decoding or threaded software decoding.

When using the video playback core (ffmpeg), go to Quick Menu -> Options in order to fiddle with the options. To set it to hardware video decoding, set ‘Use hardware decoder (Restart)’ to ‘auto’. If your GPU driver supports any of the accelerated video backends that ffmpeg supports, it should use this under the hood. If it fails to find either a suitable backend or if the video codec is not hardware accelerated, it will fall back to software video decoding (the previous default in past RetroArch versions).

NOTE: If you know what you’re doing, instead of setting ‘Hardware decoder’ to ‘Auto’, you can set it to any of the specific APIs – DXVA2, D3D11VA, VDPAU, VAAPI, QSV, CUDA, Videotoolbox, DRM, OpenCL, and/or MediaCodec.

If your system for whatever reason does not have hardware accelerated video decoding capabilities available but it does have a multi-core CPU, you can alternatively take advantage of threaded software decoding. To use this, go to Quick Menu -> options, and set ‘(Use hardware decoder (Restart)’ to ‘off’. The next setting to configure is crucial – ‘Software decoder Thread count (Restart)’. You can either leave this at ‘auto’ if you trust in the program to intelligently pick the right amount of cores for decoding based on your CPU’s capabilities, or set it to a specific number.

Make sure to restart the video player if you make any of these changes, the changes won’t take effect on the fly.

Multi-threaded video decoding and color conversion

Not only can the video decoding itself be multi-threaded, but so can colorspace conversion. This was previously a single threaded operation. This also obviously results in a big performance boost.

To play it safe, the default encoder being used is the software decoder for now, since it’s the most robust decoder and should produce the best results for most users right now (Embedded systems aren’t particularly well supported yet by the ffmpeg hw decoding backend). Both the threaded video decoding and hardware video decoding are orders of magnitude faster than video playback in previous RetroArch versions.

Vulkan Android fixes

Themaister spent some time fixing some longstanding issues with the Vulkan driver on RetroArch Android.

You can now finally change from landscape to portrait orientation and vice-versa. The framebuffer is now properly rebuilt on the fly. Seems like a minor thing, but it was very inconvenient to have to start something from landscape mode and then be forced to stay in landscape mode (or vice versa) if you didn’t want the screen output to be messed up as a result.

An even more important bug got fixed related to glslang – this should improve overall system stability for every video driver that implements glslang for shader support (Direct3D 10/11/12, Vulkan, OpenGL Core, WiiU GX2 Video driver, Metal).

Usability improvements

We have dedicated an entire separate article to it since the list of improvements is so exhaustive. Check it out here.

Vita improvements
The Vita platform port has seen some significant improvements too.

We have a bounty now where we stress the importance of bringing over OpenGL 1 hardware context support to libretro. Many old game platforms have fixed function GPUs with a featureset roughly comparable to OpenGL 1.4, so it makes sense to have a hardware context for GL 1.x. Right now, Libretro offers a couple of options for people wanting to make cores implementing OpenGL – you can either target desktop OpenGL (of any particular version), or you can target OpenGL ES 2/3. The key requirement for both though is that it requires the use of FBO (Frame Buffer Object) – if your GPU and/or API has no support for that, it’s over and out as far as GL core support is concerned.

OpenGL 1.x had no notion yet of FBOs, so obviously this hardware context will not have any such requirements. We encourage you to contribute to this bounty if you are excited about the potential this can bring to older game console platforms and other older hardware. You can find the link here.

Vita now has an OpenGL 1 driver implemented. As soon as the Libretro GL 1.x support is done, Vita users can stand to benefit from the GL-centric cores that can be brought over to Vita as a result.

However, for now, we heavily recommend you use the Vita2D driver as your primary video driver. Speaking of which, several improvements have been made to it as well – menu widgets have been implemented, and it should be more optimal now due to a reduction of draw calls.

Changes

We could write an entire book about all the changes, improvements and features that made this release what it is thanks to our dedicated inhouse team and all the generous contributors that continue to contribute to the project. So without further ado, view our changelist below – and realize that there are many things we might not have even covered in this release.

1.8.2

• BUG/CRASH/GLSLANG: Fix glslang crashing error – managed to reproduce an issue which has been plaguing users for a while, where glslang throws an assert after closing a game (and starting a new one). This would affect all video drivers that use Slang for shaders, such as D3D10/11/12/Vulkan/Metal
• CHEEVOS: Display Unofficial and Unsupported achievement states
• CHEEVOS: Pass RetroArch and core versions through User-Agent HTTP header
• CHEEVOS: Use PSX.EXE if SYSTEM.CNF cannot be found
• CHEEVOS: Prevent loading state while achievements are still being fetched from server
• CHEEVOS: Pause hardcore if core doesn’t support achievements
• CHEEVOS/CRASH: Fix AddressSanitizer + CHD cause hard crash when Cheevos are enabled
• CORE UPDATER: Only download when new core is available
• CORE UPDATER: Add option to update all installed cores
• DRM/KMS: Better detection for the current video mode
• DYNAMIC RATE CONTROL: Support DRC even when using a vsync swap interval higher than 1
• EMSCRIPTEN: Fix bug in Emscripten input code
• EMSCRIPTEN: Changes to support upgraded emscripten SDK
• FFMPEG CORE: Hardware accelerated video decoding
• FFMPEG CORE: Implement send/receive encoding API, will allow for hardware accelerated AMD video encoding
• FFMPEG CORE: The video FIFO can be removed, since we have a ring buffer in its place. This removes unneeded copy operations and as a positive side improves overall decoding speed. Makes 8k60p SW and 4k60p HW decoding feasible on many systems. For now the ring buffer is 32 images deep. This limitation will be removed, once audio and video decoder have their own packet handling.
• INPUT: Fix ‘Analog stick controls menu even if autoconfig disabled’
• INPUT/TURBO: Added alternate Turbo-Mode ‘Single Button’ – For systems supporting only a single button, the turbo-button will toggle firing that button without the need to hold it. When holding the button turbo will be suspended and resumed when the button is released. Holding the button may have a different function to just tapping it.
• IOS: Forcibly disable Threaded Video until UIWindow concurrency issues are fixed
• INPUT/ANALOG: Fix radial analog deadzone scaling
• INPUT/ANALOG: Implement proper analog button deadzone
• INPUT/MENU: Analog stick controls menu even if autoconfig disabled
• LOCALIZATION: Update Italian translation
• LOCALIZATION: Update French translation
• LOCALIZATION: Update Polish translation
• LOCALIZATION: Update Portuguese Brazilian Translation
• LOCALIZATION: Update Turkish translation
• LINUX/LOCALIZATION: Correct Droid Sans Fallback font path in Linux. This should fix Chinese/Korean font display issues on Fedora/RHEL/CentOS/openSUSE/SLE
• MENU/BUGFIX: When using a keyboard/gamepad/mouse wheel to navigate, the menu scroll position is always maintained and updated in a consistent (and expected) fashion
• MENU/BUGFIX: When resizing the window, or changing the orientation of a mobile device, the current scroll position is correctly preserved
• MENU/BUGFIX: All ‘normal’ pointer input is now inhibited when showing message boxes
• MENU/BUGFIX: The pointer actions ‘select’ and ‘cancel’ both now properly close a message box if it is currently being shown
• MENU/BUGFIX: Pointer ‘select’ and ‘cancel’ actions are now inhibited when an input bind dialog is active
• MENU/INPUT: Change ‘User’ terminology to ‘Port’ for input binding
• MENU/LINUX: Add proper drives to Load Content
• MENU/MATERIALUI: Halt scrolling when pointer is pressed/stationary
• MENU/MATERIALUI: Dual thumbnail view
• MENU/MATERIALUI: Fullscreen thumbnail viewer for boxart
• MENU/MATERIALUI: Scroll rapidly by press and holding the scrollbar
• MENU/RGUI: New theme ‘Flux’
• MENU/OZONE: Thumbnails now have a fade-in animation
• MENU/OZONE: Fullscreen thumbnail viewer for boxart and pictures
• MENU/QT/WIMP: Fix dock titles getting cut off
• MENU/XMB: Fullscreen thumbnail viewer for boxart and pictures
• MENU/USABILITY: Selectively hide ‘Disallow Non-Slave Mode Clients’ if ‘Allow Slave-Mode Clients’ is disabled
• MENU/USABILITY: Hide ‘Show desktop menu on startup’ if ‘Desktop menu’ setting itself is disabled
• MENU/USABILITY: Reimplement Quick Menu – > Shaders -> Watch shader files for changes – can now be turned on/off through touch
• MENU/USABILITY: Refactor Quick Menu – Controls – each port now has its own submenu
• MENU/USABILITY: Quick Menu – Cheats – Delete All no longer requires five right button presses – this should fix this functionality for mobile touch users too
• MENU/USABILITY: Hide Refresh Rate options when Threaded Video is enabled – these settings do nothing with Threaded Video
• MENU/USABILITY: Hide Logging Verbosity levels behind Logging Verbosity
• MENU/USABILITY: Get rid of ‘Port Number’ label for Port Binds screen
• MENU/USABILITY/MOBILE: Should no longer crash when clicking on a cheat entry
• MENU/USABILITY: Shader parameters now have a dropdown list
• MENU/USABILITY: Shader passes now has a dropdown list
• MENU/USABILITY: Video – Hide Windowed Mode settings selectively
• MENU/USABILITY: Video – Hide Fullscreen Mode settings if windowed mode is not supported by context driver
• MENU/USABILITY: Selectively hide Network Command Port
• MENU/USABILITY: Selectively hide Relay Server Location
• MENU/USABILITY: User Interface -> Appearance – Selectively hide XMB Horizontal Animation setting
• MENU/USABILITY: Playlists – more selective hiding
• MENU/USABILITY: Selectively hide Rewind Settings
• MENU/USABILITY: Selectively hide Overlay Settings
• MENU/USABILITY: Selectively hide FPS Update Interval based on Display Framerate being enabled
• MENU/USABILITY: Selectively hide Onscreen Notifications BG Color Settings
• MENU/USABILITY: Settings -> Logging – Hide ‘Log To File Timestamp’ if ‘Log To File’ is disabled
• MENU/USABILITY: Video -> Scaling – Hide Custom Viewport X/Y when Integer Scale is enabled as description indicates
• MENU/USABILITY: Achievement submenu – selectively hide
• MENU/USABILITY: Settings -> Video -> Aspect ratio – selectively hide/show values based on whether you have Custom or Config selected
• MENU/USABILITY: Settings -> Video -> Selectively hide Hard Sync
• MENU/USABILITY: Settings -> Video -> Implement selective hiding for VSync and Hard Sync
• MENU/USABILITY: Selective hiding of Runahead settings based on global setting
• MENU/USABILITY: Add Input -> Haptic Feedback submenu
• MENU/USABILITY: Add Input -> Menu Controls submenu
• MENU/USABILITY: Settings -> Video -> Max Swapchain Images – Add OK action
• MENU/USABILITY: Input – Implement OK action for Bind Hold, Turbo Period and Duty Cycle
• MENU/USABILITY: Input – Hotkey Binds refactor
• MENU/USABILITY: Move ‘Press Quit Twice’ and ‘Menu Toggle Gamepad Combo’ to Input -> Hotkey Binds
• MENU/USABILITY: Video – Add sublabel for Video Output submenu
• MENU/USABILITY: If ‘Favorites Tab’ is disabled, don’t show ‘Add To Favorites’ option in Quick Menu/Playlist menu
• MENU/USABILITY: If On-Demand Thumbnail Downloader is enabled, hide ‘Download Thumbnails’ from playlist menu screen
• MENU/USABILITY: Add Audio Driver setting to Audio -> Output
• MENU/USABILITY: Add Audio -> Resampler settings
• MENU/USABILITY: Add Audio -> Output and Audio -> Synchronization
• OPENGL: Shaders are now working properly (only in OpenGL) when rotating both from Core API rotation and from menu video rotation. The fix is clearly visible with crt-royale for example
• OPENGL: 1:1 PAR is now correct when rotating (both from Core API rotation and from menu video rotation, as you said, in the latter case you currently have to change Aspect Ratio after menu video rotation for it to work)
• OPENGL: When using Custom Aspect Ratio and rotation (both from Core API rotation and from menu video rotation), Integer Scaling is now working properly (correct multiples of internal resolution). Even when Integer Scaling is not activated, the Custom AR width / height are now correctly labeled using (1x), (2x), … suffixes. You also have to activate Integer Scaling after menu video rotation for it to work
• OPENGL: For all other Aspect Ratio options, Integer Scaling and rotation (both from Core API rotation and from menu video rotation) are now working properly together (correct multiples of internal resolution). You also have to activate Integer Scaling after menu video rotation for it to work
• OPENBSD/POWERPC: Should build now on OpenBSD PowerPC
• PLAYLISTS: Pressing ‘Start’ or long touching a playlist will bring you to a Playlist submenu where you can set a default core, setup thumbnail view, delete the playlist, etc
• OSX: Forcibly disable Threaded Video until NSWindow concurrency issues are fixed
• PSP: Solving issue exiting RetroArch by HOME button
• SCANNER: Manual scanner, not dependent on database files
• SCANNER/MANUAL: Add option to scan inside archives
• SCANNER/MANUAL: Enable automatic naming of arcade content via DAT files. This is compatible with DAT files in either Logiqx XML or MAME List XML format.
• VIDEO: Do not reinit video driver on SET_SYSTEM_AV_INFO unless needed
• VIDEO: Support DRC even when using a vsync swap interval higher than 1
• VIDEO LAYOUT: Fixed XML parsing of attributes with spaces, should fix issues with several video layouts
• VITA: GL1 driver support
• VITA/VITA2D: Several improvements to Vita 2D driver – menu widgets implemented
• VITA/VITA2D: Fix clipping and reduce number of calls
• VULKAN/ANDROID: Workaround weird WSI return codes in landscape mode – Android WSI wants you to use preTransform, and if it is not used correctly, Android 10 will return VK_SUBOPTIMAL_KHR, and we would create a new swapchain every frame. This workaround just ignores this error, since it’s not really an error. A more “proper” fix is to use prerotate and modify the MVP matrices, which might help certain devices with crummy display processors
• VULKAN/ANDROID: Recreate swapchain on orientation change. ANativeWindow getWidth/Height does not detect any changes when using Vulkan, so use the old onContentRectChanged callback to get notified when size changed. Use those values instead when figuring out how large swapchain to create
• WINDOWS/XINPUT: Get rid of 128 byte device name limit for XInput device discover – when device name was too long, it would not be picked up by the XInput driver and would instead fallback to DirectInput
• WINDOWS: ANGLE OpenGL ES 2 support
• UWP: Fix crashes on startup / prompt for folder permissions when trying to load custom.ini
• UWP: Fix – Mouse input is offset on high DPI monitors
• UWP: Fix – Keyboard input hangs sometimes
• UWP: Fix – Multi-touch support
• UWP: Fix – Enable menu touch input by default
• UWP: Fix – Get user language
• UWP: Fix – Get CPU model name
• UWP: Fix – Use GLUI instead of XMB on Windows Mobile 10
• UWP: ANGLE OpenGL ES 2 support

RetroArch 1.8.2 – Usability Improvements – Libretro

www.libretro.com

What’s next?
We’re going to be figuring out a solution soon so we can add ANGLE support for both the regular Windows desktop versions as well as the UWP version (the version used on platforms like Xbox One for instance). If you don’t know what all this is about, check our article here.

For people annoyed about the lack of communication regarding the Steam version, we get you, but if you take even a cursory glance at steamdb, you can see that we are hard at work on that front as well. We will update you later on this front as we have been told it’s best to only make further statements on this when things have become more concrete in terms of release. We learned our lesson with the initial announcement. We apologize for the radio silence, we are just cautious about how we present this to the outside world. We hope we have some positive news for you there soon. In the meantime, please appreciate all the effort and hard work that went into this current version as a consolation. After nearly a decade in development, we feel as strongly as ever to have RetroArch be all it can be. We hope you will join us in that endeavor in the upcoming decade to come.

There were other great improvements recently too, like the updated flycast (Dreamcast) core with vulkan support.

Flycast world’s first Dreamcast emulator to receive Vulkan renderer – available later today on RetroArch with nightly core! – Libretro

www.libretro.com

 

[Durante]

Updating all installed cores easily is a great QoL improvement.

 

[Ge0force]

Great to see the Vita version getting more love. It's becoming my main emulation platform for SNES and Gameboy games.

 

[Durante]

One of these days when I have time (haha funny joke) I really need to set up my Vita for emulation. It should be such a wonderful HW platform for that, fantastic d-pad and screen.

 

[Knurek]

One of these days when I have time (haha funny joke) I really need to set up my Vita for emulation. It should be such a wonderful HW platform for that, fantastic d-pad and screen.

It's not, due to how underclocked the CPU/GPU is. (yes, you can unlock that using homebrew, but then you say goodbye to battery life and thermals)
(Works great as a portable PS1/PSP though, due to smart choices Son y made when making a HLE emulator).

 

[Li Kao]

Last I checked the Vita wasn’t powerful enough to faithfully emulate the SNES. And there were no scanlines filters either. Did the emulation progress in a good way ?

 

[Durante]

It's not, due to how underclocked the CPU/GPU is. (yes, you can unlock that using homebrew, but then you say goodbye to battery life and thermals)
(Works great as a portable PS1/PSP though, due to smart choices Son y made when making a HLE emulator).

Shouldn't SNES work without issues? (Except for maybe the games using obscure chips)
Obviously you're not going to run an accuracy-focused BSNES build on it, but surely SNES9x should work?

 

[Knurek]

Shouldn't SNES work without issues? (Except for maybe the games using obscure chips)
Obviously you're not going to run an accuracy-focused BSNES build on it, but surely SNES9x should work?

Vita is kinda-sorta between 3DS and N3DS, power-wise, so no, SNES emulation isn't all that great on it.
I guess some games might work well with sound off or frameskip, but generally the experience will be subpar.
Plus there's the issue with screen resolution and non-integer scaling/borders..

 

[Alextended]

Dreamcast looks pretty interesting in high res (I know, it's not news). Certain games/scenes fare better than others naturally, some impress, others not so much...

Overall I prefer playing at native quality with the smudge-o-filter of the mattias crt shader to hide flaws and homogenize asset quality even if details are hidden.

Maybe with exceptions, Metropolis Street Racer is so aliased by default it's hard to see the track. Maybe a mix of high resolution and the shader can work there.

I like other shaders too but I feel the mattias crt shader is kind of a catch-all and pretty convincing if not a bit overdone. It makes Virtua Fighter 2 Saturn look deinterlaced yet it doesn't have the wobble effect of other shaders, it makes 2D games look pretty decent but works for 3D as well, etc., I can deal with its flaws.

 

[Li Kao]

There is something fascinating in the last shot, for me. I suppose it achieves the CRT effect nicely. It makes me... nostalgic ?

 

[Theswweet]

Vita really is a great emulation machine. Besides essentially native PS1/PSP support, stuff like GBA, Genesis, and even a surprising number of SNES games work fine. There's also a practically perfect PC-Engine emulator on the PSP side, I believe - assuming RetroArch doesn't work well enough for that!

 

[Alextended]

Again new SSF version.

Edit: not sure if the issue was introduced in this version but Samurai Shodown IV is glitchy with missing sprites/frames. Capcom fighters seem fine. I tried different options like gpu/vulkan/transparency/deinterlacing in case one of those was messing it up to no avail. Edit: this is the same in older versions.

Also, sometimes the controller ceases to work but going back to the input mapping and doing it again it's fine so idk what's up with that. I'd stick with the previous version for now (or it's a fluke and those also happen in that, but I never noticed any of it before this one).

 

[Knurek]

Theswweet I keep hearing about Adrenaline on Vita adding a few frames of input lag. Is this true? Would certainly make few genres completely unplayable (DJMax ).
Any good tools for making something similar to forwarders on 3DS? Also, do you know of a taihen plugin/official solution that gives Vita something akin to 3DS Activity Log?

 

[Theswweet]

I certainly haven't noticed any extra input lag on Adrenaline myself, but I'll have to look into it. Same goes for looking into a plug in for game activity - I do know that most Vita games actually list their playtime in their savedata info, however.

Edit: Yeah Adrenaline input lag is only a problem if you're using a Bluetooth controller on PSTV or with a plugin for Vita.

 

[Alextended]

It looks like some people made a PS4 port, for those dabbling into homebrew stuff on that. Though it's the previous version, I'm sure more will come.

And even more other platform stuff.

 

[d00d3n]

I decided to check back in on Playstation emulation during the Christmas holiday. It is pretty amazing how much better the games with prerendered backgrounds can look when using Retroarch/Beetle PSX HW core. The PGXP setting takes care of the wobbly transformations of 3d objects that the Playstation is infamous for. Internal rendering of 3d objects at x16 resolution massively improves graphical fidelity, and by using the downsampling setting you can hide undesirable clarity of low resolution textures and make the 3d objects mesh with 2d backgrounds like they never did back in the day. After having played Parasite Eve for an hour, the 3d objects seemed almost indistinguishable from 2d backgrounds. Integer scaling combined with a good CRT shader also improve the experience quite a lot.

I generally like emulator accuracy in comparison with original platforms, but after having seen what the Beetle PSX HW core can do I feel less excited about the upcoming Mister FPGA core that will faithfully reproduce the low internal resolution and lack of z buffer that the Playstation has to offer.

 

[Alextended]

Sometimes stuff not blending is good for the player, some of those chests (er, boxes?) are hard to see in Parasite Eve as it is.

My stupid phone keeps auto lowering the brightness making it harder lol, I'll have to move my save to the PC.

 

[d00d3n]

Sometimes stuff not blending is good for the player, some of those chests (er, boxes?) are hard to see in Parasite Eve as it is.

My stupid phone keeps auto lowering the brightness making it harder lol, I'll have to move my save to the PC.

I suppose that can be an issue if you have to get absolutely every chest, although there is also plenty of loot hidden in parts of the 2d background, for example the plentiful lockers in the first area, or the hidden area that gets unmasked when you interact with the 2d environment in one place. Personally I found it fun to be challenged in my pursuit to find every little thing!

 

[Alextended]

Hori Fighting Commander arrived, been playing these (and more) Saturn gems a bit.

 

[Alextended]

Some more.

 

[Deleted member 113]

Awesome screenshots, Alextended!
I really need to build a machine, just to play emulated console games and mame games.

 

[arcadepc]

Awesome screenshots, Alextended!
I really need to build a machine, just to play emulated console games and mame games.

for this any second hand cheap WIndows XP/7/Linux machine with VGA output for old CRT monitors would be ideal. Groovymame would be the best option

GroovyMAME - Emulation General Wiki

emulation.gametechwiki.com

GroovyMAME, also known as GroovyUME, is a multi-platform fork of MAME/UME with greater emphasis on CRT monitor support, in order to provide smoother gameplay with less input lag than using regular MAME on an LCD screen. It is available as both a downloadable emulator and as a GNU/Linux live CD, as Linux is the preferred platform for using it. To use it in Windows with a similar amount of fluidity, Windows XP (deprecated; not recommended) and a modified ATI Catalyst named CRT_Emudriver must be used, based on either Catalyst 6.5 or 9.3. It will work best on the ATI Radeon 9250 (AGP), ATI Radeon X300-X600 (PCIe) and the ATI Radeon HD 4350 (PCIe), but should work on other cards supported by these versions. There is a Windows 7 version of the driver undergoing beta testing.

 

[Hellmetal789]

I really like the crt effect you have Alextended .

 

[Alextended]

And some Dreamcast stuff, I think in high-ish 2560 x whatever res but with the same mattias low res crt smudge-o-shader.

 

[Theswweet]

I can't believe I missed this development - it's looking like folks got 60FPS working for Lost Odyssey on Xenia!


I own a copy... hmm. Don't have a 360 to dump the disc, however. I'll figure it out!

 

[Li Kao]

 

[arcadepc]

I can't believe I missed this development - it's looking like folks got 60FPS working for Lost Odyssey on Xenia!


I own a copy... hmm. Don't have a 360 to dump the disc, however. I'll figure it out!

I am more interested in Death Smiles iix but game has black screen, yet it is fully playable with sound, controls and menus responding. But by the time they fix it, Cave will have released a Steam translated version probably

 

[Deleted member 113]

But by the time they fix it, Cave will have released a Steam translated version probably

Sadly, I'm not sure they will.

We are now 3 years+ since the last Cave game was released on PC, which makes me think they "abandoned" the idea of further ports.

 

[Alextended]

Some more Gungriffon fun and preparations for the coming (please) Princess Crown fan translation. Yeah, witch bitch killed me soon after that last screenshot...

And some Street Fighter Zero 3 cuz it's too good. A different shader used here for a change, crt-yo6-KV-M1420B-sharp. Zangief got my poor R. Mika, bastard

 

[Alextended]

X-Men vs. Street Fighter

Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter

Nifty game but I think I dislike mech-gouki and his shit looks enough to sour the whole thing, haha. Nah, it's not cos he beat me after that Apocalypse fight

 

[Alextended]

Some stuff with the mame 2003 plus core and the crt-yo6-KV-M1420B-sharp shader preset, my usual mattias didn't have good results on these. Garou - Mark of the Wolves, KoF '98, Metal Slug, Marvel Vs. Capcom, Samurai Shodown V Special, Samurai Shodown II, Sengoku 3. I cba to set up mame stuff though, figure out newer cores, romsets. settings, dip switches, button configurations, I'll probably keep very few games for this core and otherwise play console ports as long as they're not very handicapped, hence no Samurai Shodown IV or Fatal Fury Special or Street Fighter Alpha 3 which I'll play on the Saturn core.

 

[Alextended]

Libretro Cores Progress Report – January 9, 2020 – Libretro

www.libretro.com

 

[Theswweet]

Alextended do you have any recommended CRT filters for SNES emulation on RetroArch @ 1440p?