BeetleDC Libretro now supports the keyboard as an input peripheral!

Libretro Team

Keyboard support has now been implemented by flyinghead! In this video you see us testing the game Typing Of The Dead, which relies on a keyboard as its primary input device..

In order to play this game, make sure the keyboard is set to Port A of the Dreamcast. You can see us doing this in the video by going to the Quick Menu, selecting ‘Controls’, and setting the first port to ‘Keyboard’. Now restart the core and the game. You should now be able to play the game.

Game focus toggle

Quick tip: RetroArch by default binds a lot of keyboard keys to hotkeys. In order to be able to use the keyboard in full, try to bind ‘Game focus toggle’ to a key. You can do this by going to Settings – Input Hotkeys, and binding ‘Game focus toggle’ to any key you want.

How this will work is as follows: if you press the game focus toggle, you will be in ‘game focus’ mode. In this mode, none of the hotkeys will work, and you can use every key of the keyboard. When you want to go back to the RetroArch hotkey mode, you press the ‘game focus toggle’ key again in order to deactivate game focus mode.

Flycast Libretro now supports online multiplayer! Zero-configuration online Dreamcast gaming for the first time ever!

Libretro Team

Flycast Libretro has now gained modem and PPP support. It leverages dreamcastlive.net which makes it possible to still play these games while their original servers are down.

Grab the latest core from the buildbot in order to use this! It should work on Windows, Linux, Android, and potentially even macOS seamlessly without having to input an IP address, thanks to true zero-configuration multiplayer! To our knowledge, this is the first time a Dreamcast emulator offers true zero-configuration multiplayer support like this. Demul requires a complicated TAP driver/OpenVPN configuration, and modem support was not implemented yet since the last time we checked.

How to configure online

In this video, I will boot up one of the games that allows you to set your ISP network information. You will need to do this before online multiplayer will work in Dreamcast games such as Phantasy Star Online.

One of the games that lets you do this is Quake III Arena. Other games that allow you to do this include (but are not limited to) Ooga-Booga and Toy Racer.

Input any username and password combo you want, and only input a local phone number. It can be completely bogus, it can be 666 or 888, whatever you want.

After that, you press Dial. These details will now be saved to your NVRAM, and from there, this same ISP info will be used for every subsequent multiplayer game onwards, such as Phantasy Star Online.

BTW – if you are on Windows, you might get a warning at some point from Windows Firewall if you want to allow a connection – select ‘Yes’.

Phantasy Star Online gameplay footage

In this session, you see me and flyinghead meeting up in a lobby in Phantasy Star Online and doing some hunts together! We are both using the same version of Flycast Libretro inside RetroArch.

As you can see, online works surprisingly well! All kudos to flyinghead for implementing the code necessary to be able to emulate this!

Hopefully in the near future we will have keyboard and mouse support to complement all this! It is already in flyinghead’s own branch of flycast right now.

BeetleDC Libretro Progress Report

Libretro Team

Display VMU screens ingame!

NOTE: This feature currently works properly in BeetleDC Libretro non-OIT. BeetleDC Libretro OIT will require some more work before this feature will start rendering properly.

Thanks to RetroSven, here is another major new feature!

It is now possible to display the VMU screen ingame! You can also specify the exact positioning of each VMU, whether it should be positioned at the top left, top right, bottom left, or bottom right corner of the screen. You can also specify the opacity of each screen and the exact size of the screen. You can display all 4 attached VMU screens at the same time onscreen!

For those that don’t know, the VMU was the Dreamcast’s memory card which also could be used as a standalone device. It was powered by a ring battery, had a D-pad and some face buttons, and it was even possible to play some minigames on the VMU.Games could download VMU minigames onto the system and you could then play these minigames when used as a standalone device.

Samurai Shodown VI (NAOMI) renders properly now with Extra Depth Scaling option!

Reicast Libretro now has a new feature – Extra Depth Scaling. By enabling this, the graphics in Samurai Shodown VI (Naomi arcade game) will render properly.

Note that even with this enabled, BeetleDC OIT Libretro will currently have some display bugs that the non-OIT core won’t have. Hopefully the two can become just as good later on.

BeetleDC Libretro – Updates 26-7-2018

Libretro Team

BeetleDC Libretro and BeetleDC OIT Libretro have recently been updated.

Here is a listing of all the changes/fixes/improvements:

  • (Dreamcast/Compatibility) Eldorado Gate – Broken opening FMV fixed (link)
  • (Dreamcast/Compatibility) Demolition Racer now works (link)
  • (Dreamcast/Compatibility) Redline Racer – Graphics bugs fixed (link)
  • (Dreamcast/Compatibility) Fixed rendering issues with Tokyo Xtreme Racer games (link)
  • (Dreamcast/Compatibility) Conflict Zone – Modern War Strategy now works
  • (NAOMI/Compatibility) Metal Slug 6 now works without graphics bugs

BeetleDC OIT – Increased compatibility with AMD/Intel GPU drivers

AMD GPU owners on Windows/Linux and Intel HD users on Linux/Mesa should probably be able to use the Reicast OIT core now, as several GLSL compliance bugs have been fixed by now.

Note that BeetleDC OIT can still be very buggy for Intel HD users on Windows, and slow to boot. The renderer really lends itself better to discrete GPUs from AMD/NVidia.

Render to texture upscaling!

Previously, games which rendered to texture (such as Dead or Alive 2 or Crazy Taxi) would always output at 1 x native resolution. Now, you can set the upscaling factor. Games which render the screen to a texture should look much better as a result, provided your GPU is up to the task.

An example – here is a comparison of the Crazy Taxi pause screen – left is 1x native resolution, right is 4x upscaled –

xBRZ Texture upscaling

This new setting allows you to upscale all the textures in a game up to 6 x their original resolution using the xBRZ texture filtering algorithm! See it in action with Shenmue in this video below –

BeetleDC Libretro – Updates!

Libretro Team

BeetleDC Libretro and BeetleDC OIT Libretro have recently been updated.

Here is a listing of all the changes/fixes/improvements:

  • (BeetleDC Libretro) – now requires OpenGL 3.0 core profile (and GLSL 1.30).
  • (BeetleDC Libretro OIT/OpenGL) – Increased compatibility with other GL 4.3 driver implementations.
  • (BeetleDC Libretro OIT) – Several performance improvements.
  • (BeetleDC Libretro OIT) – Fixed graphics issues in Resident Evil 3: Nemesis (link).
  • (Reicast Libretro OIT) – Fixed graphics issues in Dino Crisis (link).
  • (Dreamcast/PVR2) Bump mapping implemented (used in Rayman 2/Shenmue 2) (link).
  • (Dreamcast/PVR2) Trilinear filtering implemented (needed by NFL 2K2 in particular to display some ground textures correctly).
  • (Dreamcast) Bomberman Online – Fixed glitching title screen (link).
  • (Dreamcast/Compatibility) Shenmue 1 crashes fixed (thanks to x64 Dynarec CheckBlocks implementation)
  • (Dreamcast/Compatibility) Shenmue 2 crashes fixed (thanks to x64 Dynarec CheckBlocks implementation)
  • (Dreamcast/Compatibility) Alone In The Dark: New Nightmare – improvements to YUV / palette textures – no more downgraded colors in backgrounds (link).
  • (Dreamcast/Compatibility) Dead or Alive 2 LE (Japan) crashes fixed.
  • (Dreamcast/Compatibility) Draconus – Cult Of The Wyrm/Dragon’s Blood – fogging graphics glitch fixed (link).
  • (Dreamcast/Compatibility) Evolution: The World of Sacred Device (UK) now renders flat shaded polygons correctly (link).
  • (Dreamcast/Compatibility) Shadow Man works now. Set Cable Type to VGA or otherwise it will crash after the Dreamcast boot screen.
  • (Dreamcast/Compatibility) NBA 2K/2K1/2K2 now work.
  • (Dreamcast/Compatibility) Napple Tale crash no longer happens after leaving the circus.
  • (Dreamcast/Compatibility) Ooga Booga now goes ingame, some issues still remain though.
  • (Dreamcast/Compatibility) Soldier Of Fortune AI bugs fixed (link).
  • (Dreamcast/Compatibility) Test Drive Le Mans/Le Mans 24 Hours now works, still some audio glitches though.
  • (Dreamcast/Compatibility) Looney Tunes Space Race now works.
  • (Dreamcast/Compatibility) Wacky Races now works, still has some graphics glitches though.
  • (Dreamcast/Compatibility) San Francisco Rush 2049 – screen display issues fixed – Screen cropped at the top (link).
  • (Dreamcast/Compatibility) Fur Fighters now goes ingame, some issues still remain though.
  • (Dreamcast/Compatibility) Twinkle Star Sprites no longer unplayably slow due to excessive logging.
  • (Naomi) Analog input implemented for games like Monkey Ball/Virtua Tennis 2.
  • (Naomi) EEPROM saving/loading implemented.
  • (Naomi/Compatibility) Hokuto No Ken / Fist Of The North Star now works.
  • (Naomi/Compatibility) King of Fighters New Wave – no longer crashes during fights, there are still display glitches though.

Also be sure to check our Youtube channel, where you can view a lot of videos on recent BeetleDC Libretro developments and more!