We have the bounty system up and rolling with Bountysource and have begun adding awards to a series of issues. The libretro organization has seeded $80 to issues so far, and another $100 has been offered by users. Current issues include adding low-latency input and audio drivers for Windows; extending the mouse axis for games like tyrquake that can be controlled by mouse; support for multiple mice simultaneously, which could enable 2-player light-gun games in several cores; and adding a host virtual filesystem layer, which could enable softpatching on all cores among other benefits. The VFS layer has had the most activity so far and currently sits at $70.
Bounty Updates
RetroArch 1.4.1 Open Beta – Released! Highlights
Half a year after RetroArch 1.3.6 was released, now comes the next big stable! Version 1.4.1 is by any yardstick a big massive advance on the previous version. There are about 5000 commits or more to sift through, so let’s focus on a few big main standout features that we want to emphasize for this release.
Where to get it
https://buildbot.libretro.com/stable/1.4.1/
We are calling this release an ‘Open Beta’ because we want people to put the massively improved Netplay features through its paces! All of your feedback and issues will be taken onboard so that 1.5.0 (which we intend to ship somewhere beginning of March) will deliver on all the promises we have made for netplay.
Netplay
Netplay has seen a big massive improvement since version 1.3.6.
To set up a netplay game, you have two options: Manual or automatic connection.
Naturally, the automatic way is easier:
To host, just load a core and launch some content as usual and, once the game is running, go back into the ‘quick menu’ (the default keyboard shortcut is F1) and scroll down to the ‘netplay’ submenu. From there, choose ‘Start netplay host’ and it will announce your game to the lobby server for other users to join. You can go ahead and start playing and new players can jump in at any time. That is, RetroArch no longer stalls out until clients join.
Joining an existing session is just as easy. From the main menu, navigate over to the netplay tab (the icon looks like a wifi symbol), scroll down to ‘Refresh Room List’ and hit the ‘accept’ key/button (the default keyboard shortcut is the ‘X’ key). RetroArch will fetch the current list of available hosts and display them right there in the netplay tab. From there, just pick the host you wish to join and RetroArch will cycle through your playlists searching for a content match. If it finds a match, you’ll jump right into the host’s game already in progress.
To use manual connection, the host does the exact same steps. The client must load the same core and game first, then choose the “connect to netplay host” option from the netplay menu. You will be prompted for the IP address of the host. Enter it to connect.
To keep your games private, the host may set a password, required to connect, in the network settings menu.
We want your feedback and input on netplay, and the aim is that we take your feedback into consideration for 1.5.0 (which we will launch early March) to put the final finishing touches on netplay in general. Things like chat, friend lists and so on will all need to be implemented still.
Multi-language support/Japanese language support
We have added UTF-8 support and we have added translations for several languages now. Of these, Japanese is probably second to English in terms of being the most complete translation.
In addition to this, the new onscreen keyboard also has multilingual support, and supports Japanese fully (Hiragana, Katakana).
Free homebrew Bomberman clone game – Mr.Boom
Mr.Boom is a Bomberman clone. It supports up to 8 players and features like pushing bombs, remote controls and kangaroo riding.
This was an old MS-DOS/Windows 9x homebrew game that https://github.com/frranck converted over to C with a self-made tool he calls asm2c.
Right now, this core works for Mac/Windows/Linux/ We are still working on Android support!
Mr. Boom currently requires at least a minimum of 2 players. There is no singleplayer mode (yet). It can not yet be used with netplay but that is our ultimate aim! Free 8-player easy Bomberman-like gameplay for everybody! We will make an announcement later when netplay support is fully working for this core!
New menu graphical effects
In addition to the ribbon effects, we have added some new menu effects : Bokeh, and Snow.
Check the accompanying video to see them in action. You can access these menu effects by going to
Settings -> User Interface -> Menu and setting “Menu Shader Pipeline” to any effect of your choosing.
NOTE: These two new menu effects are not yet available for Vulkan and Cg. Ports would have to be made first of these menu effects, since they are completely shader-based.
Quality-of-Life improvements to the menu
We have taken all the criticisms of the menu UI to heart and we really pushed ourselves to make the menu much more pleasant to deal with.
- We have gone to the painstaking effort of making sure that nearly every menu entry now has a small description below it.
- Loading content has been massively streamlined. There is no longer a separate ‘Load Content’ and ‘Load Content (Detect Core)’ option. You simply select a starting point directory, you then select your game and you decide which core to use.
- There is a new onscreen keyboard made for the menu which is compatible with touch and the mouse. It not only supports traditional western characters but thanks to improved multilingual support it will also support Japanese (Kanji, Hiragana, Katakana and Romaji).
- In fullscreen mode, the mouse cursor inside the menu will only show for about 5 seconds. If there is no mouse activity it will disappear from the screen until you move the mouse again.
Improved error handling
Cores should now report an error message back to RetroArch in most instances where a ROM/content fails to load. We went over most cores and we are reasonably comfortable in that we took care of most of the trouble spots.
Vulkan N64 and PSX now works on Android!
To read more about these projects, read our past articles here –
Nintendo 64 Vulkan Low-Level emulator – paraLLel – pre-alpha release
ParaLLel (Nintendo 64 core with Vulkan renderer) and Mednafen PSX HW should now work on Android devices that support Vulkan!
Unfortunately, GPU is currently not the bottleneck here. In the case of both of these emulators, more work is required before they will start to run at fullspeed on Android devices. We need to get the LLVM dynarec working on ARM devices.
In the case of Mednafen PSX HW, the interpreter CPU core is the main bottleneck which prevents the emulator from reaching playable speeds right now. An experimental dynarec was written a year ago but it still needs a lot of work before it could be considered ‘usable’.
Lots of other miscellaneous stuff
- Improved performance
- (Linux) DRM/KMS context driver should be more compatible now
- (Linux) The GLX context driver now uses GLX_OML_sync_control when available, leading to much improved swap control. Potential video tearing and frame time deviation will be way lower in general.
- (Linux) Attaching a PS4 gamepad will allow you to use the audio headphone jack to route sound to your headphones if you use the ALSA audio driver. It will now query the available audio output sampling rates that an audio device supports, and if the recommended output sampling rate that we use in RetroArch doesn’t match, we will use a sampling rate that the audio device DOES support instead. The PS4 pad only works with 32Khz audio, hence why we need to switch to it on the fly in order to get sound working with it.
- (Android) Should fix a longstanding touch input bug that might have prevented touch from working altogether on certain devices.
- (Android) GLES3/3.1 support, the fancy ribbon effect and Snow/Bokeh should also be available on Android now.
- (Linux/Wayland) Full input support, keyboard and mouse.
- Too much stuff to mention
Also read our companion article for more information here –
And even more!
Improved documentation
From now on, all documentation for RetroArch (both development and user-facing info) will be posted here –
RetroArch 1.4.1 Progress report – DOS/Windows 9x/Windows 2K
RetroArch has now been ported to Windows 98SE/2000 as well as DOS. These are very early work-in-progress ports but in their current state do allow you to start up RetroArch and load a core/game.
Windows
For Windows, the current releases and nightly builds do not support XP or below due to changes in the msys2/mingw toolchain. While older Windows versions are indeed supported by the RetroArch codebase, they need to be manually compiled with Visual Studio (Express or Pro) to run properly. For XP and above, Visual Studio 2010 is supported. The solution/project file is located in the pkg/msvc folder of the source along with older msvc solutions. For Windows 98/2000, we support Visual Studio 2005. A DirectX 9.0c SDK is also required, and in order to target 98, a version no newer than December 2006 must be used.
The Windows 98/2000 port may work with our existing OpenGL driver if your graphics card supports a high enough version of OpenGL, but this has not yet been tested. So far 98/2000 has only been tested against a new experimental GDI video driver which does not require hardware acceleration like OpenGL or DirectX (the GDI driver works on newer Windows versions as well). With the GDI driver, the RGUI menu is fully supported and there is also preliminary support for XMB with minimal (text-only) rendering.
For input/joypad and audio support on 98/2000, the DirectX 9.0c runtime should continue to work as it does with newer Windows versions. Windows 98SE requires a DirectX runtime no newer than December 2006, and Windows 2000 can go up to February 2010.
Cores for 98/2000 will also currently need to be compiled manually due to the mingw toolchain used by the buildbot. It’s possible that we may setup a new buildbot target for the older Windows ports at a later date.
DOS
The DOS port requires DJGPP to compile (we cross-compile from Linux), and also requires the CWSDPMI server included with that toolchain to access 32-bit protected mode. An experimental “Mode 13h” VGA driver is implemented to provide 320×200 video with 256 colors. Keyboard input support is currently very minimal, only the A/B/X/Y, Start/Select and arrow keys work. There is also no audio support yet.
Cores for DOS will need to be compiled manually, as well as statically linked with RetroArch itself, similar to how our console ports work. This means that a compiled RetroArch EXE file will correspond to just one specific built-in core. FCEUmm and Snes9x2010 are known to work, but due to the default timer tick in DOS being 18hz, gameplay is currently very slow. Work is ongoing to reprogram the interrupt timer which should allow full speed gameplay.
Release
No release yet! You have to compile from source, and things are still very much a Work-In-Progress!
Compilation instructions
Compilation instructions will be added at a certain point on our Documentation site.
RetroArch 1.4.1 Major Changes Detailed!
It’s been such a long time since we last released a stable (1.3.6), so let’s give some indication of just how much work we’ve poured into the entire ecosystem surrounding RetroArch and libretro since!
Scanning
RobLoach added scanning GoodNES and GoodN64 sets (i.e., instead of just No-Intro sets) and support for playlists using the ScummVM, NXEngine and Lutro cores. He also added a database of SNES translations, an oft-requested feature, and Super Mario World romhacks, so many of those hacks should show up in scans now.
bparker did a significant overhaul of the content-scanning backend to allow for recursive scanning–that is, the ability to scan inside subdirectories without going into each individual subdir manually. This was one of the most frequently requested scanning improvements. bparker also modified the scanning function to peek at the file extensions supported by the scan before comparing against a database, which speeds up the process substantially. In brief and nonscientific testing, scanning a full NES No-Intro set of 2,703 ROMs went from 4 minutes and 22 seconds down to just 53 seconds, representing a 491% speedup, while scanning an SNES No-Intro set of 3,442 ROMs went from 9 minutes and 37 seconds to 1 minute and 35 seconds, for a whopping 607% speedup.
7zip scanning
bparker also upgraded the 7zip support to a full first-class citizen (that is, right up there with standard zips), which means you can now scan/load/whatever content that has been compressed into a 7zip archive.
Configurations
Radius greatly improved and expanded the config override functionality, adding the ability to save overrides directly from the RetroArch menu, rather than having to create them manually with a text editor. He also added the ability to save per-core and per-game shader presets, which is the main thing users wanted to change from core to core (along with retropad mapping, which is already handled via the per-core/per-game remapping function). With all of this added functionality, we decided to completely remove the conflicting and often broken and unpredictable “per-core configs” option, which had already been deprecated but kept around for legacy/transition support.
Netplay
Meanwhile, GregorR has done the impressive and unenviable task of dusting off and overhauling RetroArch’s lag-hiding, peer-to-peer netplay implementation, which had been some of the least-touched, least-understood code in the entire codebase. He has already made great strides on the stability of connections, with a big reduction in (if not outright elimination of) out-of-the-blue desyncs, along with graceful recovery of synchronization following temporary losses of connectivity. Switching from UDP to TCP communication has made it so that only the host needs ports forwarded, which should help with playing games with less-technical friends, and the ability to search for hosts on the same LAN makes it easy to do Japanese arcade-style head-to-head matchups. GregorR also added support for 3+ player netplay, so you can throw down on party classics like Super Bomberman 5 with four of your closest friends. Pursuant to our Patreon goals, we’ll be starting on a netplay matchmaking server solution as one of our top priorities to take advantage of these exciting improvements.
QoL menu improvements for Lakka/RetroArch
Kivutar et al have recently pushed out a pair of major Lakka releases, which include the built-in RetroArch improvements, along with a number of Lakka-specific features/improvements. Users now have the ability to hide advanced settings in the XMB menu, which leads to a greatly simplified default menu in Lakka releases, as well as the ability to hide menu tabs such that only playlists are visible, which is ideal for appliance-style “kiosk” settings, where you don’t want children or other users to monkey around with your settings (these options are also available in non-Lakka RetroArch releases). Kivutar also added the ability to scan for and join wireless networks directly from the Lakka interface, as well as individual history tabs for RetroArch’s built-in multimedia cores, which include a video player, image viewer and audio visualizer (these cores have been built-in for a while but many people didn’t know about them; the history tabs should make them more accessible). You can read more about the Lakka releases here and here.
Fancy new menu graphics features
The XMB menu received some fancy new background shader effects, including an improved ribbon, a nice bokeh effect and a festive and nostalgic snow effect. We also rearranged and consolidated some menus to reduce clutter and hopefully make things easier and more intuitive for new users, and we merged ‘load content’ and ‘load content and detect core’ into a single unified function. We’ve also added secondary, explanatory sub-text to many menu items that should make them less mysterious, and a battery meter that should let mobile users avoid running out of juice unexpectedly.
Ports
Sony – PlayStation Vita
The Sony console ports have gotten some much-needed love, with frangarcj doing some really stellar work with the Vita henkaku port, which supports the fancy XMB menu, shaders, dynamic core loading, (mostly) full-speed PSX emulation via dynarecced PCSX-ReARMed and more.
Nintendo – Wii/WiiU/3DS
On Nintendo consoles, netux79 has been keeping up with the Wii port, adding support for USB gamepads and fixing some savestate issues with the snes9x-next core, while Twinaphex tracked down and fixed a black-screen bug that’s plagued the nightly builds since just after the 1.3.6 release. Aliaspider and Twinaphex have made a lot of improvements to the 3DS port, including fixing a persistent screen-tearing issue, and aliaspider has also made great progress with the nascent Wii U port.
Cores
On the core front, Twinaphex has greatly improved the error handling on many cores so that they are less prone to bringing the entire program down (i.e., segfault) when they choke. While this is certainly not as sexy or user-facing as many of the other improvements, it will lead to a more stable, user-friendly experience with fewer mysterious crashes that give no information as to their cause.
Twinaphex also ported Ryphecha’s unbelievably-awesome new Sega Saturn emulator to libretro (listed as “mednafen-saturn” in the online updater). Saturn has long been considered one of the most difficult and esoteric consoles to emulate, and Ryphecha deserves a virtual high-five for doing such a great job with it and generously releasing it under the GPL license. While it is currently only available on x86_64 platforms (i.e., no ARM, no 32-bit x86), its emulation quality and accuracy is already top-notch.
N64 emulation has had some exciting development, as well, with loganmc10‘s Glupen64-libretro port, which combines a shallow fork of mainline Mupen64plus (i.e., not the heavily modified fork that mupen64plus-libretro is based on) with gonetz’s crowdfunded GLideN64 RDP plugin. This core handles many hard-to-emulate effects as compared with the other HLE plugins and gets good performance on even modest hardware. As such, it has become the default core for N64 in the RPi3 spin of Lakka and also performs quite well in Android (and more stable there than regular mupen64plus-libretro, according to user reports). Meanwhile, Seru-kun added support for 64DD disks to Mupen64Plus-libretro, making it the second N64 emulator (after PJ64) to support the Japan-exclusive add-on.
Leiradel and meleu did a massive cleanup on the Retro Achievements/cheevos system, whereby all systems that RetroArch supports have at least one core that includes achievement support, and all systems supported by Retro Achievements is represented. Moreover, spurious achievements should no longer be awarded right when the game starts (a common problem, previously) and achievements will no longer be awarded in the event of a failure to actually meet the requirement(s).
Happy New Year!
We at Libretro wish you all a happy New Year! 2016 has been quite the year for Libretro as a project, so let’s briefly recap where we stand at the end of this year and what we managed to do in 2016 –
First with Vulkan
We were one of the first programs to ride the Vulkan wave, and we managed to add Vulkan support to RetroArch since Day One of the new graphics API’s release.
