More new cores: MelonDS, SameBoy, ARM Linux cores!

Daniel De Matteis

This week will be all about a dripfeed of new cores along with a version bump of RetroArch, which will be needed for some of the new cores that will be arriving this week.

MelonDS

This is an up-and-coming Nintendo DS emulator by StapleButter, and it now has a libretro port. Some of the things that are still not properly implemented is touchscreen/mouse support and multithreading for the software 3D rasterizer, but we will take care of that soon. This emulator might not yet be a replacement for DesMuMe, but it’s quickly progressing so definitely keep your eyes on it, as DesMuMe certainly needs some competition.

You can get this new core on our buildbot. Start up RetroArch, go to ‘Online Updater’, and check for ‘MelonDS’.

For more information on MelonDS, check out its official homepage here.

Available for

The MelonDS core is currently available for:

  • Windows (64bit/32bit)
  • Linux (32bit/64bit)
  • macOS
  • iOS
  • Android

BIOS instructions, etc. (required)

MelonDS requires a real BIOS file in order to work. These need to be placed inside your System directory. If you don’t know where your System directory is, inside RetroArch, go to Settings -> Directories and read where your System Directory is located.

The following three files are all required:

  • bios7.bin
  • bios9.bin
  • firmware.bin

 

SameBoy

SameBoy is an accuracy-focused Game Boy/Game Boy Color emulator in the vein of Gambatte. We now have a libretro core of it and its author has also helped us earlier with some implementation details, so that is very much appreciated!

Some features that are still missing is savestate support, but we intend to get that done soon.

For more information on SameBoy, check out its official homepage here.

Available for

The SameBoy core is currently available for:

  • Windows (64bit/32bit)
  • Linux (32bit/64bit)
  • macOS
  • iOS
  • Android

BIOS instructions, etc. (optional)

Here is a tiny convenience feature you added – normally SameBoy relies on reverse engineered Game Boy/Game Boy Color boot ROMs in order to load. You can load these instead of the real BIOS file. For this libretro core, instead of requiring you to put these homebrew boot roms somewhere so that the emulator can read them, we have baked these into the core itself. So you don’t even need to put them somewhere in your system directory.

However, if you’d like to override these, you can do that too. Go to your system directory (if you don’t know what this is, inside RetroArch, go to Settings -> Directories and read where your System Directory is located) and put these files there:

Game Boy boot ROM – ‘dmg_boot.bin’

Game Boy Color boot ROM – ‘cgb_boot.bin’

ARM Linux cores!

Our buildbot is now providing fresh new ARM Linux cores for hardfloat configurations! These cores could be used for instance on Lakka-based devices as well as the NES Mini!

You can grab them here:

https://buildbot.libretro.com/nightly/linux/armhf/latest/

Miscellaneous updates

  • Mednafen/Beetle Saturn has been updated to the latest version.
  • Updates to ParaLLEl N64 core.

What’s still coming up this week?

In no particular order:

  • Redream (new Sega Dreamcast emulator made by inolen)
  • OpenLara (Tomb Raider 1 game engine, in early alpha development stages but already promising)
  • Dolphin (will have Gamecube controls only at first, will work for both GL and Vulkan)
  • Citra

Introducing the Bounty System

hizzk

One of our goals with getting on Patreon was to experiment with using a bounty system to encourage contributions from outside of the normal libretro/RetroArch/Lakka team, and we’re finally ready to take a stab at it. This is uncharted territory for us, so some of this framework is bound to change as we move forward, but here’s our initial plan:

  1.  The libretro team makes all final decisions on bounty allocations and disbursements. While we intend to listen closely to community input, ultimately we have to be able to make the final decisions.
  2. All contributions must follow coding guidelines and meet approval of the libretro team before disbursements will be awarded. We can’t pay out if the code isn’t usable and/or maintainable by us.
  3. Pursuant to #2, potential contributors should contact the libretro team prior to beginning work to make sure the final product will be acceptable. This is intended to avoid misunderstandings and other conflicts. We don’t want someone to work hard on a fix or feature only to find that it’s not going to be acceptable for whatever reason.
  4. We will try to do as much as we can through Bountysource, where we can link specific issues from our Github repos to bounty values. This is especially applicable to smaller tasks. However, it may not be appropriate for all tasks, and we’ll decide how to deal with those that don’t exactly fit on a task-by-task basis.
  5. Pursuant to #4, potential contributors should contact the libretro team and determine an actual disbursement value based on the magnitude and difficulty of the task. We may need to negotiate up or down to find a fair value, based on the contributors’ skillset, or the amount of tutoring needed to get contributors up to speed with the codebases/APIs involved, etc.
  6. Disbursements can be made in the form of cash payments, the purchase of hardware for development and/or testing, etc. We want to be able to help developers with whatever they need. Sometimes that will be in direct payments, other times it may be in specialized hardware for porting/maintaining or reverse-engineering or whatever.
Again, this framework is a work-in-progress, so if you have any questions or concerns, feel free to contact us, either on Github or in #retroarch on Freenode IRC.