RetroArch 1.8.9 has just been released.

Grab it here.

A Libretro Cores Progress Report will follow later.

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Highlights

AI Service – Custom accessibility service support

The AI service feature has included new changes to allow closer integration between the service selected and the game being played, allowing the service to read and press gamepad buttons along with the current screen image. The example video above shows a custom service (still in development) designed to make Final Fantasy 1 accessible and playable by blind users.

When started, the AI service will continually parse the screen and describe what’s being shown. When in a town or overworld view, it will describe what’s around the player to the west, north, east, and south, as well as any new things of interest that have appeared on screen (eg: a townsperson, a weapon shop, treasure chest, etc.). When the emulator is paused, it will give a more detailed description of what’s on the screen, including how far the player can walk in all directions and all things of interest along with their coordinates relative to the player. If the player holds the select button at this time, then the AI service will read out the list of things of interest on the screen and allow the player to scroll through them and select one. When selected, the AI service will unpause the game and move the player to that thing and interact with it.

When on a menu or battle screen, the service will read out the text on the screen and the currently selected menu option.

We will have more information on this for you soon after the initial testing and feedback is over.

Core Management Options

• The software license of each core is now shown in the ‘Core Downloader’ and ‘Load Core’ screen.
• Pressing RetroPad Select on a Core Updater entry will now display any text in the description field of its info file
• Installed cores are now highlighted via a [#] symbol
• Pressing RetroPad Start on a selected, installed entry opens the Core Information menu (when using Material UI, swiping left or right triggers the same action). This means we can now view bios info etc. – and more importantly delete cores – without jumping through all the hoops of loading a core first and navigating all over the place
• It’s now possible to hide ‘Experimental Cores’ from being shown in the ‘Core Downloader’ menu screen.

Backup cores when updating

By default now, a backup of the current Libretro core will be made when you upgrade a core from RetroArch’s builtin Updater service. In addition, you can also ‘freeze’ a core. ‘Freeze’ in this context means that the Updater service will not be able to overwrite your current core with the latest version from the Updater service.

Vulkan WSI improvements

There were some problem platforms with WSI (Window System Interface) currently, which version 1.8.9 partly addresses. This should theoretically reduce stalls on integrated GPUs.

• Intel Mesa was broken when using Fences, we have to use Semaphores to acquire the swapchain or the entire GPU stalls.
• Add support for either using fences or semaphores when syncing.
• Prefer using semaphores for integrated GPUs (such as Intel HD) as it promotes better throughput over fences.
• Do not use mailbox emulation on Android.
• Also, to make this work, decouple frame index from swapchain index with regards to CPU-side synchronization. Before, swapchain index would be coupled with frame context, which is somewhat naive.

Changelog

What you’ve read above is just a small sampling of what 1.8.8 has to offer. There might be things that we forgot to list in the changelog listed below, but here it is for your perusal regardless.

1.8.9

• AUTO SAVESTATES: Ensure save states are correctly flushed to disk when quitting RetroArch (fixes broken save states when exiting RetroArch – without first closing content – with ‘Auto Save State’ enabled)
  BUILTIN CORES: Builtin cores like ffmpeg and imageviewer would previously try to erroneously load a dynamic core named ‘builtin’ – this would fail and would just be a wasteful operation – this now skips dylib loading in libretro_get_system_info for builtin cores
• CHEEVOS: Report API errors when unlocking achievements or submitting leaderboards
• CHEEVOS: Support less common file extensions
• CHEEVOS: Disable hardcore mode when playing BSV file
• CHEEVOS: Correctly report unlocked non-hardcore achievements when hardcore is paused
• CHEEVOS/M3U: Bugfix – did not handle absolute/relative paths in M3U files correctly before
• CHEEVOS/M3U: Bugfix – it didn’t handle comments/directives
• CHEEVOS/M3U: Bugfix – it doesn’t handle trailing whitespace
• CHEEVOS/M3U: Bugfix – failed when loading M3U files with certain line endings
• CORE MANAGEMENT: Add ‘core management’ menu (Settings -> Core)
• CORE MANAGEMENT: Add option to backup/restore installed cores
• CORE MANAGEMENT: Improved core selection logic
• CORE INFO: Search search optimisations
• CORE DOWNLOADER: Rename ‘Core Updater’ to ‘Core Downloader’
• CORE DOWNLOADER: Add ‘Show Experimental Cores’ setting under Settings > Network > Updater
• CORE DOWNLOADER: Core licenses are now shown for all entries in the Core Updater menu
• CORE DOWNLOADER: Pressing RetroPad select on a Core Updater entry will now display any text in the description field of its info file
• CORE DOWNLOADER: Installed cores are now highlighted via a [#] symbol
• CORE DOWNLOADER: Pressing RetroPad start on a selected, installed entry opens the Core Information menu (when using Material UI, swiping left or right triggers the same action). This means we can now view bios info etc. – and more importantly delete cores – without jumping through all the hoops of loading a core first and navigating all over the place
• CORE DOWNLOADER/UPDATER: Add option to automatically backup cores when updating
• DISK CONTROL: Enable ‘Load New Disc’ while disk tray is open
• INPUT: Added a hotkey delay option to allow hotkey input to work properly when it is assigned to another action
• INPUT: Remove ‘All Users Control Menu’ setting, was buggy and will be properly reintroduced after input overhaul
• LINUX: Set default saves/save states/system paths
• LOCALIZATION: Add Persian language
• LOCALIZATION: Add Hebrew language
• LOCALIZATION: Add Asturian language
• MENU: Proper line wrapping for message dialog boxes
• MENU/HOTKEYS: Add sublabels to all hotkey bind entries
• MENU/QUICK MENU: Suppress the display of ’empty’ quick menu listings when closing content
• MENU/OZONE: Performance improvements
• MENU/SDL: Add mouse controls
• OPENGL1/VITA: Initial changes for HW context without FBO
• OVERLAYS: Add options for moving the on-screen overlay
• PLAYLISTS/WINDOWS: Fix core path entries in image/video/music history playlists
• PS2: Add back CDFS support
• SDL/GL: Advertise GLSL support
• VIDEO/WIDGETS: Fix heap-use-after-free errors, leading to memory corruption
• VITA: Added custom bubbles support
• VITA: VitaGL update
• VULKAN/WSI: Better frame pacing
• VULKAN/WSI: Fix Intel Mesa being broken when using Fences, we have to use Semaphores to acquire the swapchain or the entire GPU stalls
• VULKAN/WSI: Add support for either using fences or semaphores when syncing
• VULKAN/WSI: Prefer using semaphores for integrated GPUs as it promotes better throughput over fences
• VULKAN/WSI/ANDROID: Do not use mailbox emulation on Android
• UWP/XBOX: Potentially improve performance by enabling ‘Game Mode’

Several important things got fixed in the latest core updates for ParaLLEl N64.

Changes

– A new deinterlacing system has been implemented that should be significantly better than the old one. Especially noticeable in games like Resident Evil 2, Turok 2’s high-res mode, Daikatana’s high-res mode, Star Wars Episode 1 Racer’s high-res mode, and tons of other games.

It just blits with a linear filter with an Y offset based on field state. Very basic, but seems good enough. Avoids the worst aspects of bob and weave

Crop overscan added

A game rendered with Angrylion and/or ParaLLEl RDP usually retains the black borders of the screen that went unused. With the ‘Crop Overscan’ option, you can strip these away from the final output image.

See here a good example – Daikatana in high-res mode. By default, it has big borders.

ParaLLEl RDP this year has singlehandedly caused a breakthrough in N64 emulation. For the first time, the very CPU-intensive accurate Angrylion renderer was lifted from CPU to GPU thanks to the powerful low-level graphics API Vulkan. This combined with a dynarec-powered RSP plugin has made low-level N64 emulation finally possible for the masses at great speeds on modest hardware configurations.

ParaLLEl RDP will be coming to Mupen64Plus Next soon

ParaLLEl RDP has first seen its debut in ParaLLEl N64, but it will soon make its way into the upcoming new version of Mupen64Plus Next too. Expect increased compatibility over ParaLLEl N64 (especially on Android) and potentially better performance in many games.

ParaLLEl RDP Upscaling

But that’s not what this article is going to be dedicated to. It quickly became apparent after launching ParaLLEl RDP that users have grown accustomed to seeing upscaled N64 graphics over the past 20 years. So something rendering at native resolution, while obviously accurate, bit-exact and all, was seen as unpalatable to them. Many users indicated over the past few weeks that upscaling was desired.

Well, you won’t have to wait too long, and as a demonstration, today we premiere a 11-minute long YouTube video showcasing ParaLLEl RDP running at 4 times the native resolution. Given an input resolution of 256×224, that means the game is rendering internally at 1024×896.

Now, here comes the good stuff with LLE RDP emulation. Unlike so many HLE renderers, ParaLLEl RDP fully emulates the RCP’s VI Interface. As part of this interface’s postprocessing routines, it automatically applies the equivalent of 8x MSAA (Multi-Sampled Anti-Aliasing) to the image. This means that even though our internal resolution might be 1024×896, this will then be further smoothed out by this aggressive multisampling postprocessing step.

This results in even games that run at just 2x native resolution looking significantly better than the same resolution running on an HLE RDP renderer. Look for instance at this Mario 64 screenshot here with the game running at 2x internal upscale (512×448).

Screenshots

The screenshots below here show ParaLLEl RDP running at its maximum internal input resolution, 8x the original native image. This means that when your game is running at say 256×224, it would be running at 2048×1792. But if your game is running at say 640×480 (some interlaced games actually set the resolution that high, Indiana Jones IIRC correctly), then we’d be looking at 5120×3840. That’s bigger than 4K! Then bear in mind that on top of that you’re going to get the VI’s 8x MSAA on top of that, and you can probably begin to imagine just how demanding this is on your GPU given that it’s trying to run a custom software rasterizer on hardware. Suffice it to say, the demands for 2x and 4x will probably not be too steep, but if you’re thinking of using 8x, you better bring some serious GPU horsepower. You’ll need at least 5-6GB of VRAM for 8x internal resolution for starters.

Anyway, without much further ado, here are some glorious screenshots. GoldenEye 007 now looks dangerously close to the upscaled bullshot images on the back of the boxart!

So where is it?

No ETAs, but it’s coming to you soon and will be available on RetroArch shortly for Windows, Linux and Android platforms. Stay tuned!