RetroArch 1.6.7 -Released!

August 18, 2017February 11, 2018 Libretro Team

NOTE: This is a bugfixed and spit-and-polish update. The initial release notes below are still from the 1.6.6 release.

RetroArch 1.6.7 has just been released! Grab it here.

This latest version has also been uploaded to the Google Play Store.

General changelog

– SCANNER: Fix directory scanning.
– SCANNER: Fix file scanning.
– COMMON: Fix ‘Disk Image Append’ option.
– FREEBSD: Compatibility fixes for Video4Linux2 camera driver.
– GUI: (MaterialUI) Add disk image append icons.
– GUI: (MaterialUI) Improve word wrapping when menu icons are enabled.
– GUI: (MaterialUI) Add User Interface -> Appearance -> Menu Icons Enable. You can turn on/off the icons on the lefthand side of the menu entries.
– GUI: Performance optimizations for XMB menu driver – only calculates visible items.
– LOCALIZATION: Update Italian translation.

Core updates since previous version (1.6.6)

Picodrive should hopefully work now again on Android after notaz‘ updates.
Beetle PSX’s OpenGL renderer should now work on various AMD GPUs thanks to rz5‘s efforts. There were previously some black screen issues on certain non-Polaris AMD GPUs.
Beetle PSX – Fixed bugs (geometry updates had max width and height unset, other ones) (by albertofustinoni).
Beetle Saturn – Unloading game leaves core unusable fix (by albertofustinoni).
Beetle Supergrafx – add turbo on/off for 2-button controller mode (by retrowertz).
Prosystem – NTSC Color Palette updates and DB updates (by underball).

RetroArch 1.6.6 has just been released! Grab it here.

This latest version has also been uploaded to the Google Play Store.

General changelog

– 3DS: Fixes serious performance regression that affected every core; rewind was always implicitly enabled.
– AUDIO: MOD/S3M/XM sound should now be properly mixed in with the core’s sound.
– GUI: Visual makeover of MaterialUI.
– GUI: Added ‘Music’, ‘Images’ and ‘Video’ collection options to RGUI/MaterialUI.
– GUI: Allow the user to add ‘Favorites’.
– GUI: Allow the user to rename entries.
– GUI: Performance optimizations for XMB menu driver.
– LOCALIZATION: Update Italian translation
– INPUT: Overlay controller response – when we press buttons on the gamepad or keyboard, the corresponding buttons on the overlay will be highlighted as well.
– NETBSD: Silence some compilation warnings.
– COMMON: Fixed bug ‘Deleting an entry from a playlist would not update the list view inside XMB’.
– COMMON: Fix inet_ntop_compat on *nix

If you want to read about the latest bounty and core updates, read this post instead here.

Complete overhaul of the mobile User Interface! (MaterialUI)

On mobile devices, RetroArch uses the mobile UI, MaterialUI, by default. This interface is designed around touchscreen and pointer devices like a mouse/trackball.

We have given this menu interface a significant overhaul now for version 1.6.6! We are aware that there is a significant percentage of people that to date have been completely unsatisfied with the current state of the menu system on mobile devices like Android and iOS. Our menu UI improvements in version 1.6.6 is our first step to try to remedy this. In later releases, we might follow it up with more elaborate animations, more advanced widgets, etc.

The menu should look less monotonous now due to the usage of context-specific icons. We have also made some other UX improvements:

– The opacity of the game’s image clashed quite badly with the ingame menu before. This has been rectified.
– We have added ‘Music’, ‘Image’ and ‘Video’ playlists to the ‘Favorites’ tab.

Music, Video and Images which have previously been loaded in RetroArch can be easily accessed from the Playlists tab now.

– The file browser is easier to read now because files show up with specific icons to indicate what they are. For instance, music files have a music icon, a directory has a folder icon, selectable content files show up as a plain file, etc.

Usability tips

You can customize the color theme of the menu in MaterialUI at any time.

1 – Go to User Interface.
2 – Go to Views.
3 – Go to ‘Menu Color Theme’ and set it to the color theme you want.

General menu improvements

Favorites

You can now add a game to a ‘Favorites’ list for easy access! This has been an often-requested feature for years, and in the past we always felt that ‘Load Recent’ was good enough. However, if you load a lot of content, that can easily get cluttered over time.

To add a game to the Favorites list, do the following:
1 – Once a game is running, go to ‘Quick Menu’.
2 – Select ‘Add To Favorites’.
3 – Once added, you can now start the game at any time from the Favorites list.

On RGUI – go to Load Content -> Favorites.
On MaterialUI – go to the Playlists tab -> Favorites.
On XMB – go to the Favorites tab.

To add a game to the 'favorites' list, inside Quick Menu, select 'Add To Favorites'. It should now be added to the Favorites list. You can access the 'Favorites' list inside MaterialUI by going to the Playlists tab. On RGUI, you go to Load Content -> Favorites. On XMB, you go to the Favorites tab instead. — To add a game to the ‘favorites’ list, inside Quick Menu, select ‘Add To Favorites’. It should now be added to the Favorites list. You can access the ‘Favorites’ list inside MaterialUI by going to the Playlists tab. On RGUI, you go to Load Content -> Favorites. On XMB, you go to the Favorites tab instead.

Renaming entries inside playlists

You can now rename an entry from any playlist!

To do this, do the following:

1 – Go to a playlist of any type (it can be the history list, a system playlist, favorites, music/video/images playlists, etc).
2 – There should be an option called “Rename”. Select it. If you are using MaterialUI and/or XMB, an onscreen keyboard will now pop up. Input the new title for the entry and then hit either the Enter key on your keyboard ,the Start button on your gamepad or press the ‘Enter’ key on the onscreen overlay in order to confirm the changes.

You can now rename any entry! Say for instance you loaded a Quake data file. Instead of the playlist showing 'PAK0.PAK', you can rename it to Quake 1 instead. — You can now rename any entry! Say for instance you loaded a Quake data file. Instead of the playlist showing ‘PAK0.PAK’, you can rename it to Quake 1 instead.

Overlays show button presses

Previously, overlays would only show button presses if they were actually being clicked on by either the touchscreen or the mouse.

A user submitted a bounty to make onscreen reactions possible through the gamepad and/or keyboard. A bounty hunter has now successfully completed this bounty and has been paid out. We have enabled this feature by default. If you want to turn it off, you can do so by doing the following:

1 – Go to Onscreen Display -> Onscreen Overlay.
2 – Go to ‘Show Inputs on Overlay’. Set this to off if you don’t want the overlay to react to keyboard/gamepad input, turn it on if you want this to happen (turned on by default).

Nintendo 3DS regression fix – all cores were running slower

A serious issue has been fixed in the Nintendo 3DS RetroArch port which compelled us to push this release sooner rather than later.

It appears that by mistake, rewind was always forcibly enabled in the 3DS port, which led to a halving of performance. This should now be fixed.

What’s next?

The new cores

We are still determined to get the promised cores like PPSSPP into your hands before the end of the month. We just felt it very important to get this release out of the door so that people can see that we are determined to improve the menu on mobile, and also so that the 3DS RetroArch port is repaired again.

Wii input fix

Finally, after years of struggling with this very pesky issue, it seems we are on the verge of a breaktrhough here that could lead to this random input issue finally being fixed –

https://github.com/SuperrSonic/RA-SS/commit/29d6467d28a835136b8ab87e209feb34421983ff

it seems there was a regression in libogc at some point which lead to this input regression. Superssonic reports that going back to an older version of Wiiuse fixes the issue. What we are probably going to do is make a custom baked-in libogc version for the Wii port for the next release.

RetroArch 1.3 released

January 18, 2016July 13, 2019 Libretro Team

RetroArch 1.3 was just released for iOS, OSX, Windows, Linux, Android, Wii, Gamecube, PS3, PSP, PlayStation Vita and 3DS.

You can get them from this page:

http://buildbot.libretro.com/stable/1.3.0/

Once again the changelist is huge but we will run down some of the more important things we should mention:

Continue reading “RetroArch 1.3 released” →

RetroArch 1.2.2 released – for Android/Windows/OSX/Wii/Gamecube/PSP

July 19, 2015December 23, 2015 Libretro Team

Time for another update. Let’s get right to it.

Download it here!

OSX version

NOTE: If the OSX version doesn’t work for you, you might have to install the Cg framework first. To do that, download this and install it:

http://developer.download.nvidia.com/cg/Cg_3.1/Cg-3.1_April2012.dmg

The OSX version is back! We have two versions because we care about backwards compatibility, one for 32-bit Intel Macs (OSX 10.6 Snow Leopard and up), and one for 64-bit Intel Macs (OSX 10.7 and up). Later on we’ll go even an extra mile beyond this by releasing the PowerPC version too, which should be compatible from OSX 10.5 and up. It would be nice to push the OSX requirements down even further in time.

Some caveats right now: the guy who did our buildbot releases (IKarith – TJCarter) – I don’t know what fate befell him and whether or not he is still doing fine (I hope he is), but these builds seem to be no longer being pushed out to our buildbot, the last update was somewhere around the end of June. So we will have to be looking fast for a solution for this on our buildbot so that we can have 0-day updated cores again for iOS and OSX (the iOS version is not yet released but will be coming up next hopefully).

Continue reading “RetroArch 1.2.2 released – for Android/Windows/OSX/Wii/Gamecube/PSP” →

RetroArch v1.1 – What to expect

August 5, 2014October 18, 2015 Libretro Team

Here’s a rundown on what you can expect from RetroArch v1.1, the next version of RetroArch to be released. Please bear with us that it has taken us so long since v1.0.0.2 to come up with a new official release. This v1.1 version has been long in the making to ensure that this new version will be a big major milestone for RetroArch in general.

So, here’s what the release will comprise of –

Going all PSP – PPSSPP core

We have ported the popular PlayStation Portable emulator, PPSSPP, over to the libretro API. This marks the second big libretro implementation to be using libretro GL after Mupen64 Plus.

It is shaping up to be a very stunning release. Linux users will especially appreciate the changes we’ve made which makes it possible to run PPSSPP in DRM/KMS mode (something which wasn’t possible in standalone since glew has X11 dependencies).

We’re aiming for two modes of operation. One mode will be in which the PPSSPP core functions much like standalone – where it saves everything inside a main PPSSPP assets directory and you install games from PPSSPP’s GUI. The other mode is more like a headless mode – the way every libretro core has functioned up until now. Saves will be saved in .srm form and it will be possible to directly boot ISOs/PBPs/.BINs without having to install them first from a GUI. There’s something to be said for both modes of operation.

We of course take no credit for any of the real emulation work in PPSSPP – the only thing we take credit for is porting it to the libretro API. We take nothing away of the accomplishments made by this team and we hope that the libretro port can be pushed upstream once it’s done. Please pay them a visit at http://www.ppsspp.org/ and support their efforts to improve PSP emulation – they’ve already come a long way in the two years it has been public.

We’ve made some screenshots of the core in action which you can check out here and on Twitter. We’re striving to expose as many of PPSSPP’s features as possible through core options for headless mode operation.

Needless to be said, we think this will be one of the main standout features of RetroArch v1.1. Hopefully it will open up people’s minds about how RetroArch and libretro doesn’t necessarily mean retro-grade graphics – some of these games like Tekken 6 and Soul Calibur Broken Destiny don’t look far removed from their PS3 versions when upscaled to 2x or 3x. And to see it running as fluidly as it does in RetroArch without any audio breakup whatsoever or any frames dropped is a sight to behold.

The PPSSPP core will be available for PC (we’re aiming for Linux/OSX and Windows), and mobile (iOS/Android/Blackberry). After version 1.1 is released, we will research an Xbox 360 port.

Going all PSP – RetroArch PSP

Just having a PSP core would be one thing, but RetroArch v1.1 is going to go one extra mile by also simultaneously appearing on the PSP itself.

Nearly all of the credit for this port should go towards aliaspider- I played only a minor but crucial part in the proceedings. He has really done a bang-up job porting over a great many new cores over that are useful for the PSP, as well as improving the performance of existing cores so that they run well on the PSP.

Right now we have greatly improved the performance of FCEUmm, NXEngine, Gambatte, Mednafen PC Engine (and others) so that they run fullspeed at PSP. Please keep in mind that a PSP for general purpose code is about two times as slow as a Raspberry Pi. So you’re dealing with a very weak CPU here, and so it necessitates specific PSP-specific code to really get the most out of its performance. And thankfully the libretro API allows for this – the libretro API doesn’t prevent you from taking advantage of PSP-specific hardware features in order to speed up performance inside a core.

Aliaspider also made a port of TempGBA over to the PSP. This is a Game Boy Advance emulator based on gpSP Kai (itself based on gpSP – a now defunct emulator by Exophase). There’s also a preliminary port of the popular CPS2/Neogeo emulator, but it isn’t yet done. No idea yet if this core will make it for the v1.1 release.

Like hunterk’s previous blog post indicated, the portability of RetroArch is really coming into its own now. With the PPSSPP core, it will be possible to run RetroArch PSP itself. So essentially what you have is that RetroArch PSP can be made to run inside a PSP emulator which itself is being run inside a native platform version of RetroArch. How much farther can we go from here? The future only knows.

New cores

Several new cores will be appearing. We made a port of fMSX and BlueMSX to the libretro API. This was a home computer released in the mid-1980s that was backed up by a consortium of companies (among them a little company called Microsoft and another small fish called Sony). Oddly enough, while it couldn’t really be considered a major worldwide success, it was relatively popular in Japan and (of all countries) The Netherlands. This home computer is also noteworthy for receiving some of the first games Hideo Kojima made in his career, such as Penguin Adventure (one of the first games I ever played BTW) and Metal Gear 1/2.

There will be RetroKeyboard support for these cores to sweeten the deal, but we will also try to have some sane default configs for the RetroPad per-game for some of the more popular games.

There will also be a Vectrex core, Vecx. This was another ’80s game console, and the main notability of this game console is that it wasn’t using sprite rasterization but rather vector-based. For all practical purposes it could be considered the first real home console capable of ‘3D graphics’.

Lakka – a new GUI beginning

Lakka will appear inside RetroArch starting as of version 1.1. So far, users have been using a very low-fi menu called RGUI. It is perfectly scalable from low-resolution displays to high-definition TVs, but there’s no denying it looks very much like something you would expect from a DOS program.

Lakka will be a more full-featured eyecandy UI. It will require OpenGL support inside the RetroArch version, so expect this to be usable on RetroArch PC and Android/iOS/Blackberry (PS3 maybe if it makes it for v1.1).

In terms of features and appearance, Lakka looks a lot like the PSP’s XMB frontend.

In the future, more menu drivers can be added, each being tailored towards a specific enduser preference. We have made the menu code far more generic to allow for different implementations which doesn’t require the coder to rewrite all the settings logic again and again.

You can watch a video of a prototype in action here – keep in mind that this is still a prototype and that the final version will look a lot more refined. In case you wonder, the guy showcasing it here is one of the authors responsible for the Lakka GUI – Jean-Andre Santoni (known also as kivutar).

Audio DSPs / Software Video Filters

We already touched upon this in the previous blog post about RetroArch v1.0.0.3 (which has now morphed into version 1.1). This feature has been implemented and it makes it possible to apply audio DSP filters and video software fitlters to RetroArch’s audio/video output.

Blackberry 10

We received a Blackberry Z10 phone from Blackberry sometime ago. In return, we will fully support Blackberry 10 starting as of v1.1. A new audio driver has been written, ALSA QNX, which should be far more optimal than the OpenAL driver we had before. We also intend on writing a nice Qt UI which wraps around RetroArch itself.

I know there has been a lot of discontent among Blackberry users that there have been so few releases, but rest be assured, we’re working on it.

Revamped iOS / OSX ports

I finally bought a Macbook Pro, and so I’ve been spending a lot of work on the OSX / iOS ports of RetroArch as of late. We’ve revamped nearly all of the settings so that it is possible for settings to be exposed to WIMP menus. This will be put to good use in the OSX / iOS ports of RetroArch.

The iOS version will be totally revamped as well. Cjori was working with me sometime ago on Controllers For All support. Hopefully I will be able to approach him a week before release time or so that we can do some final beta testing before we put the final polished version out.

X-Arcade Tankstick support

I received an X-Arcade Tankstick courtesy of Xgaming, and in return this device will be fully supported. Android support will be added, and I will also look into making it possible to bind it in RetroArch as two separate game controllers instead of it being recognized as a keyboard.

After v1.1, I will look into adding USB input drivers for the PlayStation3, Wii and Xbox 360 ports so that we will be able to use the X-Arcade Tankstick on thosee consoles as well without using their proprietary gamepad converter (which costs an additional $30).

Revamped Android port

Lots of work still remaining on the Android Port. The input code has been totally revamped and it should be possible to map a new gamepad directly from the menu. New input overlays have also been made (such as a a default RetroPad overlay) which works quite well.

Maybe if we make it in time we can revamp a lot of the UI code as well using our new generalized settings code which should prevent code duplication issues in the future.

Improvements to existing cores

Lots of improvements have been made to Mupen64Plus since the last new release, as well as a lot of other cores. We will also try to bring over the MAME/MESS 2014 cor e to Android – this might not appear on the Google Play Store since this will increase the APK size by about 150MB or so – instead a more fully featured version might be available on our new website.

New server

Starting with the release of v1.1, there will be another big change – a new server (Virtual Private Server), and with it will come a buildbot. We will finally have the ability to do continuous integration tests and have daily builds for the cores and the RetroArch platform versions. The existing website will soon be moved over to the new host – the transition will be as seamless as possible to the user, so hopefully you guys won’t notice when we finally make the switch.

So when will it come?

The rest of this month will be spent by me and others feverishly working to get all of this stuff in a presentable state. We also want to do a fair bit of Quality Assurance so that this next big version will be very solid. The estimated release is somewhere in early September. A new release is contingent on all these different factors all coming together. In case some parts might take longer than expected, we might just drop a version of v1.1 with some of these features being added later. In any case, you shouldn’t have to wait longer than early September. Again, we’re sorry for some of the delays and announcements from before but we’re really trying to ensure here that this next RetroArch release will be a real big gamechanger and so the delays are justified from that perspective. Hopefully you’ll agree once it is dropped.

Also, I’m sure I neglected to mention a fair few new features as well in this writeup. In any case, there have been far too many changes since February of this year to sum up in one blog post. When v1.1 hits I will put up a more comprehensive overview of everything that has been added ,changed and improved.

RetroArch going all PSP – PSP Version for Next Next release?

March 9, 2014October 18, 2015 Libretro Team

RetroArch PSP

This one generated more interest than I had expected. The PSP code in the RetroArch codebase has been dormant for quite some time now, but I never felt like hooking it up until some weeks ago.

Aliaspider did most of the final touches on video/audio after the initial port was up and running. Implemented right now is video, audio, input, RGUI, and most of the features you’d expect from RetroArch. I’ve already been asked about whether or not RetroArch PSP will include shaders or filters, and the answer is ‘no’. PSP’s GPU is fixed function and it has no shader capabilities whatsoever. CPU filters on the other hand would be far too CPU intensive for what is already a pretty weak CPU.

So how is performance with cores? Right now, Gambatte, NXEngine, Doom and some others are running at fullspeed. Aliaspider wrote a custom resampler for Gambatte since even Themaister’s blipper turned out to be too slow for PSP. Nestopia turned out to be surprisingly slow on PSP (about half the framerate of the Raspberry Pi – around 30fps or so) and FBA is also ‘not there’ yet for performance (currently maxing out at 50fps or so for CPS2 games). The latest version of Picodrive seems to be around 50 to 55fps with Sonic 1 – so definitely still a bit slower than the last Picodrive PSP version that was released by notaz back in 2007. It deserves mentioning that most of these cores right now are pretty unoptimized – it is all just generic C code.

Anyway, given that we’re dealing with a very weak CPU here, the need for custom cores arises. My plan is to make libretro versions of NJEMU, gPSP and others so that we can have full-speed CPS1/CPS2/GBA emulation at least on PSP. Aliaspider and me are also looking at ways to improve the current core’s performance. Some of these ideas involve implementing the RETRO_RENDER_HW feature so that we can draw directly to the PSP’s framebuffer and use the raw GPU command buffer through the use of some inlined macros.

So when can you expect a first public release of RetroArch PSP? Not now at least – maybe somewhere in time for 1.0.0.3. We still believe that with a bit more work, we can release something special on PSP – which is why there will be no release right now. There will be little to no usage of the MediaEngine in cores, so if all goes well you can expect to run RetroArch PSP just fine on your Vita as well.

Remote Joy

Remember this? It was a PRX plugin for homebrew PSPs that allowed you to stream the PSP’s video/audio feed over WiFi to your computer. Well, about a year ago or so we made a very quick-and-dirty initial port to libretro. The main advantages of this libretro core is that you will be able to use all the advanced functionality of RetroArch, that it is cross-platform and that it embeds libusb into the main core library (the original RemoteJoy was Win32-only).

Right now this core is not yet releasable and there is still some way to go before it can compete with the standalone RemoteJoy Win32 client. Maybe it will be more finished in time for 1.0.0.3.

PPSSPP Libretro core

In case none of the aforementioned two things excited you, maybe this will. We will be looking at making a libretro port of PPSSPP soon. This will be the second non-tech demo libretro GL core after Mupen64. At first it will target Android, iOS, and PC. Xbox 360 support may be considered in the future if I can get my XDK box back – since developing and debugging on a Slim alone is quite painful.

PPSSPP’s GUI will probably be left in (similar to the MAME libretro cores), though it will also be possible to run games headless.