RetroArch 1.5.0 – Released!

Libretro Team

RetroArch 1.5.0 has just been released!

Where to get it?

You can get the latest version here.

On Android, you can expect version 1.5.0 to be downloadable on the Google Play Store later today. If you want to install the APK manually, you can do so by downloading it from the URL linked to above.

Changes since last version (1.4.1)

  • MOBILE: Single-tap for menu entry selection
  • MOBILE: Long-tap a setting to reset to default
  • ANDROID: Autoconf fallback
  • ANDROID: Mouse support / Emulated mouse support
  • AUTOCONF: Fix partial matches for pad name
  • CHEEVOS: Fix crashes in the cheevos description menu
  • CHEEVOS: WIP leaderboards support
  • COMMON: Threading fixes
  • COMMON: 9-slice texture drawing support
  • CORETEXT/APPLE: Ability to load menu display font drivers and loading of custom font.
  • DOS: Add keyboard driver
  • DOS: Improve color accuracy and scaling
  • GUI: Various settings are now only visible when advanced settings is enabled
  • GUI: Allow changing icon theme on the fly
  • GUI: Add a symbol page in the OSK (Onscreen Keyboard)
  • GUI: Better dialogs for XMB
  • LOCALIZATION: Add/update Korean translation
  • LOCALIZATION: Rewrite German translation
  • LOCALIZATION: Update several English sublabels
  • LOCALIZATION: Update several Japanese labels
  • NET: Allow manual netplay content loading
  • NET: Announcing network games to the public lobby is optional now
  • NET: Bake in miniupnpc
  • NET: Fix netplay join for contentless cores
  • NET: LAN games show next to lobbies with (LAN) and connect via the private IP address
  • NET: Use new lobby system with MITM (Man In The Middle) support
  • NET: Fix netplay rooms being pushed on the wrong tab
  • NUKLEAR: Update to current version
  • SCANNER: Always add 7z & zip to supported extensions
  • VULKAN: Find supported composite alpha in swapchain
  • VULKAN: Add snow/bokeh shader pipeline effects – at parity with GL now
  • WIIU: Keyboard support
  • WINDOWS: Logging to file no longer spawns an empty window
  • WINDOWS: Fix loading of core/content via file menu

We’ll go into some of the important features in more detail below.

UPNP support out of the box! (Windows/MacOS/Linux/Android/iOS)

Previously, in order for netplay to work, you as the hoster would need to manually port forward on your router. Starting with version 1.5.0, RetroArch now supports UPNP out of the box! If you have a home network router that supports UPNP, you should now be able to host netplay games without having to manually open ports on your router!

NOTE: The platforms that come with UPNP support out of the box as of this point includes: Android, MacOS, Linux, iOS, and Windows. If you have a version of RetroArch for any other platform, it’s likely it does not have UPNP support, and therefore you would still need to fallback on manual port forwarding if you want to host a game.

Menu improvements

An often-heard complaint was that touch navigation on mobile devices was not intuitive enough. You had to double tap in order to select an entry instead of being able to single tap which is the norm for most mobile programs out there.

We have changed this so that you now only have to single tap. Also, you can now ‘long-tap’ a setting in order to ‘reset’ it to default. This is useful in case you are tinkering with some setting using touch and you want to set it back to its default setting.

Other new features – changing the icon theme now works on-the-fly, so you no longer need to restart RetroArch for these changes to take effect.

Android controller detection improvements

If RetroArch cannot find a preconfigured entry for your gamepad on Android, it will now try to use the Android standard default controls for the gamepad instead. This should help with a bunch of gamepads that are lacking a current autoconfiguration file, and should prevent the user from having to manually setup the controls.

Vulkan improvements

Previously, the menu effects ‘Snow’ and ‘Bokeh’ were not available if you were running RetroArch with the Vulkan video driver enabled. Now you can use them with Vulkan as well!

In case you don’t know how to access these, go to Settings -> User Interface -> Menu -> Menu Shader Pipeline.

Happy New Year!

Libretro Team

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.

Continue reading “Happy New Year!” →

We are now on Patreon!

Libretro Team

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The Libretro Project (comprised of Libretro, Lakka, and RetroArch) is now on Patreon! We hope this Patreon will enable us to accelerate development and be able to serve users in lots of benevolent ways!

Visit us here: https://www.patreon.com/libretro

This Patreon covers the Libretro, Lakka, RetroArch projects. And another, soon to be disclosed project as well.

Right now we are at $230 as of this minute. We thank every Patron so far that has helped us get to this stage in such short time, suffice to say you won’t be let down! Let’s go over some of the goals as they stand!

$150 – Bounty for core work every month! Reached!

Already the $150 goal has been reached which will allow us to place bounties for core work to be done! We allocate a total of $50 / month that will go towards bounties.

$200 – ProjectFuture Greenlight! Reached!

I will be revealing soon what this project is about. Let’s just state it’s going to be an even bigger and more expansive project than RetroArch has been so far, and it’s one of the main reasons why we finally went ‘why not?’ with regards to the Patreon. Stay tuned!

This is going to take months and months of work, and will take other considerable resources in order for us to be able to see it to completion, and it’s definitely one of those ‘flying very close to the sun’-type endeavors, but as with everything with this project, ‘dreaming big’ and ‘foolhardy’ are comfortable bedfellows.

$400 – Netplay/matchmaking server!

We want RetroArch users to be able to play online multiplayer games with each other through the RetroArch interface. We are going to allow for PSN/XBLA-like features, except free of charge! The prospect of true crossplatform free netplay from an easy and console UI-style interface is soon to be within reach once we hit this target!

The aim is that every user will be able to quickly and easily setup a netplay game from within RetroArch without the need of a keyboard/mouse! We want console-style netplay ease of use !

$500 – Stability checks, Quality Assurance, etc!.

It’s no secret that for years we have relied on volunteer work in order to get where we are. This entire project entails a maddening amount of work that we have to put in on a daily basis to keep the entire show up and running, and the amount of work keeps growing every time we add another platform port or add a new core.

Once we hit our $500 target, we are going to be paying a couple of developers whom have been loyal towards the project to keep tabs and checkups on RetroArch and various libretro-related cores on a bi-monthly basis. This way, bugs and regressions are easily spotted and we can instantly fix them.

$600 – Development bounties!

We are going to be posting bounties for various remaining issues (whether it be RetroArch or cores), and any developer will be able to fix these issues and claim the reward!

Finally we can start claiming bounties for some of the things that RetroArch and Lakka might still be missing! Good developers don’t grow on trees, neither do contributors. We hope that through these bounties we will be able to significantly improve the software and get to our goals much quicker!

NOTE: The amount of money that will be allocated for this is variable and decided at our own discretion.

Mednafen/Beetle PSX HW – Alpha test version

Libretro Team
Parasite Eve with the experimental GL renderer. Note the screen residue glitches at the bottom.
Parasite Eve with the experimental GL renderer. Note the screen residue glitches at the bottom.

Here is the first release of Mednafen/Beetle PSX HW. You can download this core right now for Windows, Linux, and OSX.

NOTE: THIS IS AN ALPHA VERSION AND IT IS NOT REPRESENTATIVE OF THE UPCOMING BETA VERSION. PERFORMANCE RIGHT NOW IS A LOT LOWER THAN WHAT IT WILL BE FOR THE BETA VERSION. EXPECT BUGS TOO.

See a complete screenshot gallery here.

Where to get it?

Rage Racer using experimental GL renderer
Rage Racer using experimental GL renderer
Final Fantasy VII using experimental GL renderer
Final Fantasy VII using experimental GL renderer

Go to RetroArch, go to Online Updater, go to ‘Update Cores’, and download ‘PlayStation (Mednafen PSX HW)’. You might need to update your core info files first before this will show up properly. To do this, go to ‘Online Updater’, and select Update Core Info Files’.

Continue reading “Mednafen/Beetle PSX HW – Alpha test version” →

RetroArch 1.3.2 released

Libretro Team

From now on, there will be more frequent rolling updates.

We are close to automating releases on the buildbot so that we can have weekly releases for the most prominent platforms.

Version 1.3.2 is available here:

http://buildbot.libretro.com/stable/1.3.2/

I will add OSX 32bit and PowerPC releases to this later on. PS3 will be back at some later undisclosed time, same with original Xbox and 360.

Regarding the releases from this point on: give us as much feedback as possible, and with each week we can try to address some of this feedback and make RetroArch better. A ‘Release early, release often’ approach instead of the drought of stable releases that was the norm before will hopefully result in more sustained progress.