Flycast Progress Report – Dreamcast Mipmap D-Adjust implemented!

Libretro Team

One of the final pieces of the puzzle regarding Dreamcast mipmapping was finally solved! Dreamcast had a feature called “Mipmap D-Adjust” which in practice is nearly identical to mipmap LOD bias, with the only difference being that it works with a factor (* d-adjust) instead of a bias (+ lod bias).

Flyinghead came up with the implementation, it has been merged and should be in the nightlies later today.

We made two comparisons here – one with Daytona USA 2001, the other with V-Rally 2 –

Daytona USA 2001

Please check the link down below so you can see the difference –

http://www.framecompare.com/image-compare/screenshotcomparison/JCBBCNNU

The tree on the left is more detailed now in the far distance, same for the public next to it.

V-Rally 2

Here the difference is even more pronounced – please check the link down below so you can see the difference –

http://www.framecompare.com/image-compare/screenshotcomparison/DZLDLNNX

The road looks a bit blocky and low-detailed with mipmap D-Adjust off, while it looks normally with it turned on.

Mupen64Plus Next 2.0 – 64DD Support, Angrylion and GlideN64 in one build, Parallel RSP support, and Android!

Libretro Team



What a massive release we have for you today! M4xw has been really delivering the goods now and we’re pleased to release Mupen64plusNext 2.0 today. This release would not be as significant as it is today without the combined efforts of LuigiBlood, Gillou, Fzurita and Themaister.

The latest version is now available on Android, Linux, Windows, and Libnx (Switch)! Updating to the latest core is as easy as starting RetroArch, going to Online Updater, and selecting ‘Update Installed Cores’. If you have not installed the core yet, instead go to Online Updater and select ‘Mupen64 Plus Next’ or ‘Mupen64 Plus Next GLES3’ from the list.

64DD support


Previously, only Parallel N64 had 64 Disk Drive support, courtesy of LuigiBlood. Work on it was left rather incomplete though.

Mupen64Plus Next now has a new implementation that LuigiBlood feels more comfortable with. Currently the way that you load 64DD content with Mupen64 Plus Next is completely different from how you do it on Parallel N64.

First, you need a BIOS file. Make sure the file ‘IPL.n64’ is located in your /Mupen64plus directory.

You can either use the subsystem for 64DD, or you can name the disk image the same as the ROM including extension.

If you need to load a specific cart with the Disk image, that would be: “homebrew.n64” and “homebrew.n64.ndd” then Load Content “homebrew.n64”.

Zelda 64: Dawn & Dusk - unofficial 64DD expansion game to OOT
Zelda 64: Dawn & Dusk – unofficial 64DD expansion game to OOT
64DD had an exclusive Sim City version, called Sim City 64
64DD had an exclusive Sim City version, called Sim City 64

Angrylion and GlideN64 in same build!

Previously, Mupen64Plus Next only had GLiden64 as an RDP graphics option, and only ParaLLel N64 had Angrylion.

Now, Mupen64Plus Next has both, and allows you to choose between them. To do so, go to Quick Menu -> Options, and change RDP Mode. Angrylion is a low-level software-rendered accurate renderer, while Gliden64 is a high-level emulation OpenGL renderer.

Angrylion is the most accurate the graphics are going to get with an N64 emulator – and it can be made relatively fast now thanks to the multithreading capabilities of Angrylion RDP Plus, as well as the Parallel RSP dynarec. You cannot internally change the resolution with Angrylion beyond what the N64 was capable of.

Gliden64 on the other hand takes a more pragmatic approach and emulates the RDP with a high-level approach. It is an OpenGL renderer. You can upscale the graphics, and there is a wide array of settings to tweak.

Most regular people will probably be satisfied by Gliden64 and HLE RSP, and indeed, for many platforms, that might be the only feasible way of attaining fullspeed. But Angrylion definitely fulfills a niche for those that want a more accurate portrayal of N64 graphics – and combined with an upscaling shader, it can still look remarkably good.

Parallel RSP support

Parallel RSP saw its first debut in ParaLLel N64, and now we have it backported to Mupen64Plus Next as well! Read our articles here and here for more information on Parallel RSP.

Parallel RSP is a Low-Level RSP plugin that serves as a replacement for Cxd4. You can use it in combination with Gliden64 and/or Angrylion. With Angrylion you are pretty much required to use either Parallel RSP or Cxd4 as your RSP plugin, HLE RSP won’t work. Cxd4 is an interpreter RSP plugin while Parallel RSP is a dynarec RSP plugin. Parallel RSP should be noticeably faster across the board than Cxd4.

You might see better performance with Mupen64plus Next and Angrylion/Parallel RSP vs. ParaLLEl N4, because Mupen64Plus Next uses the New_dynarec CPU core. ParaLLEl N64 instead uses the Hacktarux dynarec CPU core, which can be a tad bit slower.

NOTE: You can also use Parallel RSP in combination with Gliden64. While HLE RSP has made significant strides in emulating the vast majority of known RSP microcodes, there might still be some microcodes that have either not been reversed at all or were not accurately reversed. In this case, an LLE RSP plugin is always an option, and Parallel RSP ought to be the faster one of the two options.

Angrylion + Parallel RSP on Android – approaching fullspeed on high end phones?

50fps with Super Mario 64 on a Galaxy S10+ - RetroArch Mupen64Plus - Angrylion - Parallel RSP
50fps with Super Mario 64 on a Galaxy S10+ – RetroArch Mupen64Plus – Angrylion – Parallel RSP

Angrylion is now available as an option for both Parallel N64 and Mupen64plus Next on Android.

Mupen64plus Next definitely has a performance advantage over Parallel N64 when it comes to Angrylion. Tests have shown that the first area in Mario 64 gets about 50-51fps on a Samsung Galaxy S10+ American Snapdragon version and 40/45fps on a Samsung Galaxy S10+ European Exynos version.

Will the next generation of phones be capable of pulling off Angrylion at fullspeed? It’s certainly a tantalizing prospect!

NOTE: There might be several ways you have to ‘nudge’ your Android device to get the best performance out of Angrylion/Parallel RSP. Some things you can try:

– Enable ‘Sustained Performance Mode’. If you find it helps with the framerate, leave it on. If not, disable it.
– Enable ‘Disable Expansion Pak’. It might result in a small performance boost for games that don’t support the Expansion Pak.
– Go to Quick Menu -> Options. VI Overlay can have an additional performance impact on the framerate. ‘Filtered’ is the most demanding option while ‘Unfiltered’ should be fastest.
– Go to Quick Menu -> Options. ‘(AL) Multi threading)’ is set to ‘all threads’ by default, but in case for whatever reason the software does not make the right core determination, you might want to set the amount of cores manually here. Base this number on the amount of CPU cores that your Android device has.

Angrylion + Cxd4
Performance results – LG G8X and Samsung Galaxy S10+ (Snapdragon)

Angrylion + Parallel RSP
Performance results – LG G8X and Samsung Galaxy S10+ (Snapdragon)

HLE RSP improvements – HVQM support

The HVQM RSP microcode has now been implemented for HLE RSP (thanks to the combined efforts of CrashOveride and Gillou). In the past, the FMVs for Pokemon Puzzle League would only show up if you used Angrylion and an LLE RSP plugin. Now the graphics glitches in Pokemon Puzzle League and Yakouchuu II should be gone! This means that you can now use the GlideN64 renderer for these games as well.

Difference between ParaLLel N64 and Mupen64Plus Next

Available plugins Mupen64Plus Next: Gliden64, Angrylion

Available plugins Parallel N64: Glide64, Parallel RDP, Rice, GLN64, Angrylion

In Mupen64Plus Next’s favor – it is based on a much more recent mupen64plus-core version than Parallel N64, and thus has benefited from years of fixes and architectural improvements. It also uses the New_dynarec CPU core on Windows/Linux/Mac. It is a bit faster than the Hacktarux dynarec from Parallel N64.

There are also currently some disadvantages. The sound is currently crackly with some games like Doom 64 and Quake 64. There are currently some experiments being explored to deal with these issues.

64DD support right now is implemented completely differently in both cores.

Changelog

  • 64DD support (works through the subsystem menu)
  • Angrylion and GlideN64 are now inside the same build – you can switch inbetween them
  • HLE and LLE RSP support – with LLE your choices are between cxd4 [Interpreter] and Parallel RSP [Lightning/Lightrec dynarec]
  • Parallel RSP support for the first time in Mupen64 Plus Next
  • Available on Android with all of the above!
  • The latest HLE RSP improvements – HVQM support – Pokemon Puzzle League FMV support works now with HLE RDP renderers like GlideN64
  • Mitigation for SPECIAL_INT on downcounter flip – fixes freezes in Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask
  • Killer Instinct Gold now works with Angrylion + LLE RSP

Flycast Progress Report – Mip-mapping properly implemented now on both Vulkan and OpenGL

Libretro Team



Some significant improvements have been made to the Dreamcast emulator core Flycast by flyinghead that serve to increase the graphics accuracy.

For one, the OpenGL renderer has mip-mapping support now for the first time. Second, all texture mipmap levels are now uploaded to the GPU. The Vulkan renderer no longer auto-generates mip-maps and instead uses the proper mipmap levels. What happened before is that these auto-generated mipmaps would ‘bleed’, whereas the ones provided by the game do not.

This caused issues with games like Railroad Tycoon 2 where the beach texture was not properly displayed.

Before the fix, you’d have weird magenta colors on the beaches with the Vulkan renderer. This has now been resolved.

To learn more about texture bleeding, you can read this StackExchange article here.

Another example of what texture bleeding looks like can be seen down below (and note that this is now also fixed) – previously texture bleeding would regularly occur at upscaled resolutions –

NFL 2K2 - texture bleeding issue when upscaling - how it looked before
NFL 2K2 – texture bleeding issue when upscaling – how it looked before

Many of these issues have now been fixed. See the picture down below how the title screen above for instance looks like now –

NFL 2K2 - texture bleeding issues fixed
NFL 2K2 – texture bleeding issues fixed

How mip-mapping looks like on Dreamcast

To best illustrate the effect mip-mapping has on the video output quality, let us show some comparison pictures at the Dreamcast’s native 640×480 resolution.

The picture down below shows Soul Calibur running with mip-mapping disabled:

Soul Calibur on Dreamcast with mip-mapping disabled
Soul Calibur on Dreamcast with mip-mapping disabled

The picture down below shows Soul Calibur running with mip-mapping enabled:

Soul Calibur on Dreamcast with mip-mapping enabled
Soul Calibur on Dreamcast with mip-mapping enabled

At higher resolutions you will notice the blurriness starting to gradually disappear.

Combining mip-mapping with anisotropic filtering

The Vulkan renderer allows you to apply Anisotropic filtering (AF) to the textures (to learn more about it, read the Wikipedia page here).

Soul Calibur on Dreamcast with mip-mapping enabled and 16 x AF filtering
Soul Calibur on Dreamcast with mip-mapping enabled and 16 x AF filtering

While you can still make out some of the far textures in the distance being slightly blurry as a result of the mip-mapping, overall the blurriness factor is significantly reduced as a result of the agressive 16x AF filtering being applied here, even at a very low resolution of 640×480.

Even further tweaking possible with PowerVR postprocessing filter

You don’t have to stop at mipmapping and AF filtering of course. You can also take advantage of leilei’s PowerVR post processing filters on top to further enhance the authenticity of the picture.

NOTE: For now, the PowerVR postprocessing filters only work with OpenGL. Vulkan support will arrive later.

Soul Calibur on Dreamcast with mip-mapping enabled and PowerVR postprocessing filter
Soul Calibur on Dreamcast with mip-mapping enabled and PowerVR postprocessing filter

Here we have mip-mapping enabled and PowerVR 2 Postprocessing filter enabled. NOTE: Because this is the OpenGL renderer, anisotropic filtering right now is not available, so we cannot show you a picture of how the PVR2 postprocessing looks like in conjunction with 16x AF. Neither can we show a similar picture on Vulkan right now because the aforementioned PVR2 postprocessing filters are not available there. Hopefully both renderers can be at feature parity soon in these departments.

How to get it

There are two ways to update your Flycast core. Start up RetroArch first –

a – If you have already installed the core before, you can go to Online Updater and select ‘Update Installed Cores’.

b – If you haven’t installed the core yet, go to Online Updater, ‘Core Updater’, and select ‘Flycast’ from the list. It will then download and install this core.

PCSX ReARMed now has dynarec support across multiple platforms!

Libretro Team


If you can recall, a few days ago, Beetle PSX gained a dynamic recompiler based on Lightrec/GNU Lightning. We are happy to inform you that the latest version of PCSX ReARMed now available on the buildbot also has Lightrec support enabled for x86 (32bit and 64bit) and Aarch64 (64bit ARM).

How to get it

There are two ways to update your PCSX ReARMed core:

a – If you have already installed the core before, you can go to Online Updater and select ‘Update Installed Cores’.

b – If you haven’t installed the core yet, go to Online Updater, ‘Core Updater’, and select ‘PCSX ReARMed’ from the list. It will then download and install this core.

So what has changed?

Before, PCSX ReARMed only had a dynamic recompiler for 32bit ARM-based systems. Every other CPU architecture would instead have to revert to a CPU interpreter core. This mean that for every other achitecture, it would be far slower than the optimized 32bit ARM versions.

What has changed now is that x86 (32bit and 64bit) and Aarch64 (64bit ARM) now use the Lightrec dynamic recompiler. ARM 32bit will still use the Ari64 dynamic recompiler because it just happens to be much faster than Lightrec.

Other things important of note – the 32bit ARM version uses a different renderer, NEON GPU renderer. All the other versions use P.E.Op.S. Soft GPU. NEON GPU Plugin has an enhanced resolution which gives you a 4x upscaling, while P.E.Op.S. Soft GPU doesn’t have any such feature. We’d like to bring the NEON GPU Renderer over to the other platforms but right now, the C codepaths are pretty bad compared to the optimized 32bit ARM NEON codepaths. It would require a lot of work to bring it up to par and get rid of the graphics glitches, so Pete’s Soft it is for now.

Current limitations

  • Right now it won’t work with the HLE BIOS feature. The dynamic recompiler only works right now with a real BIOS.
  • Runahead won’t work reliably right now.
  • Right now, Lightrec in PCSX ReARMed uses the Cycle Timing Check mode. If you can recall from our earlier article on Beetle PSX, this is a dynarec mode with additional cycle timing checks, which makes it significantly slower than the ‘Max performance’ mode. Hopefully PCSX ReARMed can eventually use the ‘Max Performance’ mode soon, giving us an additional speed boost.

We hope these issues can be resolved soon.

Performance tests

Test hardware: Desktop PC – Core i7 7700k, Windows 10

Game Interpreter (No Dithering) Interpreter (With Dithering) Dynarec (No Dithering) Dynarec (With Dithering)
Final Doom 246fps 245fps 621fps 616fps
Resident Evil 250fps 248fps 642fps 639fps
Tekken 3 190fps 175fps 279fps 250fps

Libretro Cores Progress Report – February 5, 2020 (Big updates for N64, Dreamcast, PlayStation1, Saturn and 3DO emulator cores!)

Libretro Team

Our last core progress report was on January 9, 2019. Below we detail the most significant changes to all the Libretro cores we and/or upstream partners maintain. We are listing changes that have happened since then.

How to update your cores in RetroArch

There are two ways to update your cores:

a – If you have already installed the core before, you can go to Online Updater and select ‘Update Installed Cores’.

b – If you haven’t installed the core yet, go to Online Updater, ‘Core Updater’, and select the core from the list that you want to install.

Parallel N64


Description: Nintendo 64 emulator core

Parallel RSP has been completely rewritten to use GNU Lighting instead of LLVM.

Advantages:
* LLVM was a big dependency. When statically linking this in, the core could become as big as 80MB non-stripped and 60MB stripped. Contrast this to GNU Lightning where we are sitting at 3.6MB non-stripped. LLVM also was not trivial to port to other platforms as easily as GNU Lightning. This means that Parallel RSP will make its way to Android and Switch (there is already an Aarch64 backend being written by m4xw)

* There are no more micro stutters and stalls that plagued the LLVM implementation. For instance – bringing up the auto-map in Doom 64, or the first menu screen transitions in F-Zero X, or firing your gun for the first time in Quake 64 – all of these would add temporary 1 second or more stalls the first time a code block was being compiled. With GNU Lightning, there are no such issues.

Disadvantages:
* Code generation is quite naive compared to LLVM’s, so there is somewhat of a performance tradeoff compared to the LLVM implementation. We estimate we lose about 5 to 8fps compared to the LLVM implementation. However, no microstutters/stalls and no more LLVM dependency makes it worth it, and there are ways to win this performance back and go further beyond in departments other than parallel RSP anyway.

  • Remove old parallel RSP implementation based on LLVM, replaced with Lightning-based parallel RSP. Takes care of microstutters/stalls
  • Angrylion: Option to select number of threads
  • Parallel RSP now available on Mac

Flycast


Description: Sega Dreamcast emulator core

Important updates

Flycast – Better saturate colors when converting textures to higher precision

Flycast – fix texture bleeding case when upscaling

Increased NAOMI Arcade game compatibility

Flyinghead has been busy improving arcade emulation support.

Netlink support is being worked on for Gun Survivor 2 Biohazard Code: Veronica. This is an arcade game adaption of Resident Evil Code: Veronica. It was also later released on PlayStation2. It never made the transition to the home on Dreamcast.

Second is Mazan – Flash of The Blade. The controls were not emulated before. This game is actually fairly unique in that not only was it a custom Naomi hardware design by Namco (more capable GPUs that could operate in an array), but it also had an unique input device.


It used motion sensing technology to detect swings you would make with the sword. Yes, that’s right, a motion sensing sword is your primary input device in this game.

(Upcoming) Accurate video output simulation – PowerVR 2 Post-process filtering

Leilei and Flyinghead got together to add something that accuracy purists might love. This is an upcoming feature that will be available soon –

We’ve added a couple of video output postprocessing options. To be exact, it’s an internal 24->16-bit buffer post-dithering pipeline stage. Lei-lei did this reversal of the PowerVR effects with his PowerVR PCX2 card (which has the same exact post-dithering as the newer PVR GPUs) and observing lossless official press release screenshots and xjas’s VGA capture dump.

If you recall, during the PS2’s early launch, people would often remark that the Dreamcast’s video output appeared crisper and had anti-aliasing applied whereas PS2 launch games appeared heavily aliased. In truth, what was going on was not really full-scene anti-aliasing or anything to that effect. Instead, it was a simple vertical blur the PowerVR2 GPU in the Dreamcast did to combat interlace flicker on composite video output.
The GameCube did something similar with the copy filters on a few games. Some of Sonic Team’s games on GameCube for instance did a similar vertical blur for the same deflicker purpose.

There was also noticeable VGA signal loss included in the VGA output when connecting your Dreamcast to a monitor with a VGA cable. It gives the screen a green hue and adds a ton of feedback instead of it being a clean dithered 16bpp image. This is also an option in the frontend shader, and we hope to add this too to Flycast as an optional feature.

You can now enable this with the GL renderer. If you’d like to use this shader in other cores and apply it as a frontend shader, you can do that too – we added the shader to the GLSL and Slang shader packs (see gpu/powervr2).

Frame comparison at native resolution

Frame comparison at 5120×3840

Changelog

  • Init AICA int mask/level at HLE boot – fixes missing audio in KOS homebrews
  • Disable DIV matching for Aqua GT
  • Disable DIV matching for Rayman 2 (NTSC)
  • Disable DIV matching for Rayman 2 (PAL)
  • Disable DIV matching for Elysion
  • Disable DIV matching for Silent Scope (NTSC)
  • Disable DIV matching for Silent Scope (PAL)
  • Disable DIV matching for Power Stone (US)
  • Disable DIV matching for Power Stone (JP)
  • Disable DIV matching for Power Stone (PAL)
  • Disable DIV matching for Metropolis Street Racer (NTSC)
  • Disable DIV matching for Metropolis Street Racer (PAL)
  • Disable RGB Component for Vigilante 8: 2nd Offense, Gauntlet Legends, Street Fighter Alpha 3
  • Stop CDDA when reading sector. Fixes Hydro Thunder – Time records music bug
  • (GL/Vulkan) Ignore trilinear filtering if texture isn’t mipmapped. Fixes Shenmue snowflakes color
  • (GL/GL4) PowerVR2 post-processing filter from leilei
  • (GL4) Fix blending issue when autosort=0. Fixes Sturmwind menu
  • (GL4) Don’t use extra depth scale in fog calculation. Fixes fog density in Sega Rally 2
  • New widescreen cheats: Suzuki Racing, Nightmare Creatures, Rent a Hero
  • (Maple) Safely reconnect VMUs when changing per-game VMUs option, may lead to VMU corruption otherwise. Don’t create VMU files when running Naomi or AtomisWave games
  • (Naomi) Emulate World Kicks and World Kicks PCB inputs
  • (Naomi) Fix reboot (and exiting service menu) by disabling legacy DIMM board emulation
  • (Naomi) Add input config for Mazan, emulate inputs for Mazan
  • (Reios) Support disk eject/change. Tested with Skies of Arcadia and D2
  • (PVR) Better saturate colors when converting tex to higher precision. Fixes transparency Issues in RE: Code Veronica and Dead or Alive 2
  • (PVR) Fix simple texture bleeding case when upscaling
  • Add disk control interface v1 support [jdgleaver]

Beetle PSX


Description: Sony PlayStation1 emulator core

Some important updates for Beetle PSX too – Lightning/Lightrec (the new dynarec technology being used) has seen many updates and improvements. Aarch64 compatibility should be a lot better now. ARMv7 is still a Work-In-Progress and still has many issues.

It’s now possible to set DMA/GPU Event Cycles to values as high as 1024. 1024 can offer a significant speed boost, but some games might not boot with this setting enabled. Test it yourself with a game of your choosing and see if it works reliably before you decide. You can always go for a lower value and see if that works better, while you don’t lose too much performance in the process.

So, to address the previous limitations of the dynarec – the two big ones were that runahead did not work, and that PGXP did not work with the dynarec enabled. Runahead is now working for software rendering mode, so that part is fulfilled (since hardware rendering not working reliably is not a core issue). As for PGXP, it now works with dynarec, but you will see a steep decline in performance, bringing you to performance levels just a little bit better than interpreter mode. However, there are plans to make PGXP part of the dynarec as well, which could take care of this issue.

Some performance tips for people that want to get the most out of their device:
* Set Dynarec Code Invalidation to ‘DMA Only (Slightly Faster)’. If it causes no issues in a game, this should give you a not-insignificant performance boost in some games.
* Set Dynarec DMA/GPU Event Cycles to a higher value than the default 128 if you can get away with it. If a game starts crashing or no longer boots from the BIOS screen, then you know you set it too high. Setting DMA Cycles to 1024 can have a big impact on maximum framerate.
* Software Framebuffer can be disabled for games that don’t make use of framebuffer readback. Try to turn this off if you are using the Vulkan hardware renderer. If you find certain graphics artefacts all of a sudden that were previously not there, you might have to turn this setting back on to get rid of the glitches.
* The Vulkan renderer right now might be a bit slower than the Software renderer. Some things you can try to bring the performance more in line would be to disable things like ‘Adaptive smoothing’, but if there is still a big performance gulf, you should resort to the Software renderer.
* PGXP right now will have a massive impact on performance with the dynarec. Turn it off if you care about getting the best performance possible.

  • Don’t call PGXP functions in gpu when PGXP is disabled
  • Add PGXP support in dynarec. Not much faster than interpreter, due to calling PGXP functions on every load/store opcode. Might become faster later
  • Add more DMA/GPU Event Cycles options. All multiples of 128 (default) should be fine. 1024 should be significantly faster but also the least compatible
  • Increase CPU overclock limit to 750%
  • Fix loading save states from pre-dynarec, need to use SFARRAYN with old name
  • Update Lightning
  • Add disk control interface v1 support [jdgleaver]

4DO


Description: 3DO emulator core

To learn more about some of the recent developments surrounding 4DO, be sure to read our dedicated article on this.

Beetle Saturn

Description: Sega Saturn emulator core

  • Add disk control interface v1 support [jdgleaver]

Beetle Wswan

Description: Bandai WonderSwan/WonderSwan Color emulator core

  • Backport 1.24.0 fixes
  • Backport variable color depth

Beetle Supergrafx

Description: Supergrafx emulator core

  • Move 2/6 button mode toggle to frontend

NeoCD

Description: SNK Neo Geo CD emulator core

  • Initial implementation of memory maps (untested) [fabrice-martinez]

Mupen64plus Next

Description: Nintendo 64 emulator core

  • Hotfix for Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask freeze due to special interrupt
  • Hotfix for Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (+randomizer), this also fixes Rat Attack (only for dynarec, not interpreter) due to wrong handling of TLB exceptions for titles that don’t use TLB
  • Both hotfixes don’t fix the root cause and will be revised later on
  • Updated mupen64plus-rsp-hle, thanks to Gillou68310 the HVQM µcode is now implemented for HLE, fixing Pokemon Puzzle League and Yakouchuu II.

Note: Stay tuned for a lot of great updates coming out over the coming months, featuring threaded rendering as well as multi plugin support!

bsnes hd beta

Description: Super Nintendo emulator core

  • Update to latest version [DerKoun]

Boom3

Description: Doom 3 game engine core

  • Changed name from dhewm3 to boom3 at request of author

P-UAE

Description: Commodore Amiga emulator

  • Libco removed. 8-9% performance improvement
  • Enabled SERIAL_PORT, which fixes:
    All versions of Super Skidmarks, except that WHDLoad slave 1.1 with the ludicrous memory requirement
    Grand Prix Circuit
  • Ensure reset_drawing() is called whenever geometry changes (prevents out of bounds video buffer access)
  • D-Pad mouse acceleration + font fix
  • More statusbar options
  • VKBD glyph tuning
  • Add support for disk control interface v1 (disk display labels)
  • Remove savestate_initsave + better VKBD mouse control
  • Fix from WinUAE 4.1.0 for Chaos Engine 2 AGA crash
  • VKBD tuning
  • Audio via retro_audio_batch_cb + MDS fix + pregap fix
  • New default controls
  • Graph font & VKBD tweaks
  • HD LED writing color to red

Final Burn Neo

Description: Multi-system arcade emulator core

  • Latest updates

LRmame

Description: Multi-system arcade emulator core

  • Updated to latest version (0.218) – will be available later today [tcamargo]

NP2kai

Description: PC-9801 series emulator

  • Updated to latest version [AZO234]

Frodo

Description: Commodore 64 emulator

  • Now available on Android

Kronos

Description: Sega Saturn emulator core

  • OpenGLES preparation work
  • Fix window resize for VDP1 layer – Fix Winter Heat in resize
  • When OREG is read while status flag is clear, force command processing – avoid race – fix Rayman controls
  • Be more generic for the SMPC race issue
  • On intback continue write, status flag shall be 1 – Fix batman boot
  • Fix Batman window
  • Set the vdp1On when updating using write – Fix Sega Ages loading screen
  • If the VDP1 is cleared with a non transparent color, assume it shall
  • Introduce the development RAM Card used by Heart of Darkness
  • Display VDP1 layer cleared with non transparent color
  • (libretro) hook the dev cartridge
  • Fix two consecutive end code on core OpenGL – Fix Code R
  • fh is related to kx – shall fix some bad behavior on RBG CS

FCEUmm

Description: NES emulator core

NOTE: All changes courtesy of negativeexponent

  • Update mapper 213
  • Update mapper 319 (BMC-HP898F)
  • Update vrc2and4.c – support for big bank CHR (Contra 3) matched by hash
  • Added iNES 1.0/2.0 mappers
  • 134 – replaced Mapper134_init with Bs5652_Init
  • 391 – NC7000MM
  • 402 – 831019C J-2282
  • Added UNIF boards:
  • AB-G1L
  • BS-110
  • WELL-NO-DG450
  • KG256
  • Fix savestates – prevent possible issue on big-endian by adding mask
  • Fix savestates – specify correct variable size to state struct
  • Backport new FDS [Famicom Disk System] disk handling – fixes saving issue with some games (Bubble Bobble, Super Lode Runner II, …)
  • Add mapper 357
  • Add mapper 372
  • Add mapper 541
  • Add mapper 538
  • Add mapper 381
  • Add mapper 288
  • Update BMC-RESET-TXROM (m313)
  • Add mapper 374
  • Add mapper 390
  • Add mapper 267
  • m313: Fix incorrect bank sizes
  • Add mapper 294 (m134)
  • Add mapper 297

Genesis Plus GX

Description: Sega Genesis/Mega Drive/Master System/Game Gear emulator

  • Updated to latest version
  • Fixed runahead issues

SMS-Plus GX

Description: Sega Master System/Game Gear emulator

  • Add support for 2nd player port

Picodrive

Description: Sega Genesis/Mega Drive/Game Gear/Master System/Sega CD/32X emulator core

  • Allow access to Sega CD’s extra memory using retro_memory_map [negativeExponent]

mgba

Description: Game Boy Advance emulator core

  • Updated to latest version
  • Add Italian core options translation
  • Fixed runahead issues [endrift]
  • Add optional interframe blending

Mesen

Description: NES emulator core

  • Updated to latest version [Sour]
  • Fixed runahead issues [Sour]

PCSX ReARMed

Description: Sony PlayStation1 emulator core

  • Add input analog axis range modifier [stouken]
  • Add disk control interface v1 support [jdgleaver]

Snes9x 2005

Description: Super Nintendo emulator core

  • Should finally compile now for Raspberry Pi 4

TIC-80

Description: TIC-80 emulator core

  • Updated to latest version

PX68K Libretro

Description: NEC X68000 home computer emulator

  • Fix for M3U not registering Eject state
  • Implementation of new Disk Control interface (including custom labels)
  • px68k switch menu now accessable as core options