RetroArch 1.6.7 -Released!

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)

  1. Picodrive should hopefully work now again on Android after notaz‘ updates.
  2. 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.
  3. Beetle PSX – Fixed bugs (geometry updates had max width and height unset, other ones) (by albertofustinoni).
  4. Beetle Saturn – Unloading game leaves core unusable fix (by albertofustinoni).
  5. Beetle Supergrafx – add turbo on/off for 2-button controller mode (by retrowertz).
  6. 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.
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.

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.
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 1.6.6 – Released!

Libretro Team

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.
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.

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.
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.

New core: Dolphin (Windows/Linux) (Alpha release!)

Libretro Team


Dolphin is now available as a libretro core! Dolphin is a popular Gamecube/Wii emulator. Keep in mind that the current version of this libretro core is considered an alpha release. Lots of work still remains but we intend to get it done, and hopefully receive some help along the way as well.

If you’d like to know more about the project, please visit its site here. We would like to ask you to not bother them with issues yet that happen in this libretro core, as things are not quite finished yet and it might take up their time unnecessarily.

Available for

The Dolphin core is currently available for:

  • Windows (64bit)
  • Linux (64bit)

Further requirements: This core requires that you turn on ‘Enable Shared Hardware Context’, otherwise you will only see a single texture being displayed onscreen instead of the game screen.

Note for macOS users: There is currently no ‘working’ macOS version available because of the aforementioned reason. Please be patient and keep the faith, we have not forgotten about macOS users and we have not relegated them to second-class citizen either. Just going to take a little bit of time before we sort this out.

How to get it

  1. Start RetroArch.
  2. Go to Online Updater -> Update Cores.
  3. Download ‘Gamecube/Wii (Dolphin)’ from the list.

Important! How to turn on shared hardware context (required)

This core also requires that you turn on ‘Enable Shared Hardware Context’. If you don’t do this, you will only see a black screen.

First, you need to ensure that ‘Show Advanced Settings’ is turned on. Go to Settings -> User Interface and turn ‘Show Advanced Settings’ on.

Now, go back, and go to Settings -> Core.

Once inside the ‘Core’ settings, set ‘Enable Shared Hardware Context’ to ON.

The upcoming version of RetroArch (version 1.6.1) might make it unnecessary to toggle this, saving you the hassle of having to do this.

How to use the demo

We assume you have already followed the steps in ‘How to get it’, and that the core is already installed.

  • Go to Online Updater -> Content Downloader.

  • Go to ‘Dolphin’, and select the file ‘dolphin-data.zip’.

  • You should now have the required game INI settings placed in the proper directory. Dolphin will look inside this directory for game-specific recommended settings.

 

NOTE: You can also place the system files inside your System directory, or even the game’s save directory. It looks for a directory called either ‘Dolphin’ or ‘dolphin-emu’ inside those directories.

Controls

Right now, the main input device implemented is a GameCube controller. We have laid this out on the RetroPad as follows –

B button – B button

Y button – Y button

Start button – Start button

D-pad – D-pad

A button – A button

X button – X button

L1 – L button/trigger

R1 – R button/trigger

R2 – Z trigger

Left analog stick – Control Stick Left

Right analog Stick – C-Stick

You can reconfigure these controls at your discretion by going to Quick Menu -> Controls while in-game.

Extra features

To access these settings, while the game is running, go to the RetroArch menu, and select 'Quick Menu -> Options'.
To access these settings, while the game is running, go to the RetroArch menu, and select ‘Quick Menu -> Options’.
  • Renderer: Hardware or Software. If you start this core in RetroArch with “Renderer” set to Hardware, it will default to OpenGL or Vulkan depending on which video driver you have selected inside RetroArch. If you choose “Software”, it will use the software renderer instead. It will be dogslow though..
  • Fastmem: Fastmem configures a 4GB range of memory to match the Wii’s address space, and PPC memory accesses are translated directly to x86 memory accesses into this region. Might be faster.
  • PAL60: Turn on PAL60 mode. This was a TV output mode used by Gamecube/Wii games so the game could run at 60Hz instead of 50Hz. Certain games like Metroid Prime 2 would even require this.
  • DSP mode: Can be set to either HLE (High-Level Emulation) or LLE (Low-Level Emulation). HLE is much faster while LLE is much more accurate but tends to be slower. Certain games will require LLE audio, but not the majority.
  • Internal resolution (restart): You can change the internal resolution here. In order for the changes to take effect, you need to restart the core.
  • Skip EFB Access From CPU: This can kill the speed of Dolphin (for those without a top CPU), but it’s necessary for some features.
  • Store EFB Copies To Texture Only: This is a hack. By unchecking it, you’re allowing the emulator to go the more accurate path of storing EFB Copies to RAM (and allowing the emulator to more or less fully emulate what the Wii can do with EFB Copies) which is required for Pokemon Snap to work.
  • Scaled EFB Copy: Prevent overpixeled textures by upscaling them (some games need this option).

More core options will be added soon!

Implemented

Some of the features that are currently implemented:

  • Working OpenGL renderer. Requires core GL 3.3 context and requires ‘shared hardware context’ to be enabled (see above instructions).
  • Working Vulkan renderer. Might still have some ghosting/frame pacing issues.
  • Working software renderer.
  • Working dynamic recompiler for x86-x64.
  • Working Nintendo Gamecube/Wii Classic pad support.
  • Disabled analytics.
  • Savestates are working.
  • Internal resolution can be changed by going to Quick Menu -> Options and changing ‘Internal Resolution’. This currently requires a restart of the core.

Unimplemented

We are not calling this an alpha release for nothing. Although it took a lot of work to get to the state we are in right now, do consider this:

  • We have not implemented pass-through Gamecube/Wiimote support at all yet.
  • Right now we are not using the audio mixer, so games with streaming audio (like Super Monkey Ball/Ikaruga) might be missing their ingame music. We intend to implement this of course. The games affected can be found on this list here.
  • We are a few revisions behind upstream right now. The intent is there to update to the latest sources. Some changes were made by the initial porter of this core to support PIC inside the dynarec, and upstream has since done their own take on it. The initial porter disagreed with the implementation of this, but we will make a suitable enough decision later on as to whether to go with the initial porter’s take on it or upstream’s. Do consider that there are valid reasons sometimes for diverging from upstream for the sake of improving the quality of the port.

  • There are some games that currently display some issues which aren’t there in standalone. These seem to be renderer-related. For instance, Resident Evil only shows a black screen after the company logo screens with the OpenGL renderer, yet it renders and works fine with the Vulkan renderer. These issues will still need to be resolved..

  • There might be issues with more than one gamepad right now.

  • Savestates are not reliable right now. It’s technically hooked up but it’s bug/crash-prone.

  • We still intend to have built-in game setting defaults so that even the current step of having to download these Game Settings from our buildbot is unnecessary. A prime design goal of libretro cores is that not only should there be as little dynamic library dependencies as possible, but also as few external data file requirements. So in other words, for certain data files to exist in some random directory is often regarded as not being nearly portable enough for our tastes. We rather like that the entire program is encapsulated inside one dynamic library file and that is all there is to a working configuration.

Note on maintenance

We’d like to stress that porting Dolphin is a big endeavor and undertaking, and as such, Dolphin developers and users alike should consider this a code experiment laboratory right now. This is also why we’d really appreciate it if anybody DO NOT BUG the Dolphin project right now on any issues they might experience in this alpha core yet. We were pretty much left to our own devices porting this. The intent is for us to get to complete feature parity with the standalone version and once we have managed to do so, figure out a way to get this in a form so that it can be upstreamed again. If there is going to be a hard fork of Dolphin, it will be separate from a mainline, upstream-compatible Dolphin core so that people who always prefer to be in lockstep with upstream will get what they want, while people who would like to see the advantages of a hard fork could still go for that separate version as well. We are trying to appease both sides here, certain codebases lend themselves better to libretro core-ification vs. others and often developers and users alike are not fully cognizant of the different approach this requires. That all being said, we intend to get along better with emulator teams provided we are given a fair shake and cooperation can happen instead of antagonism. We do not intend to step on anybody’s toes, and we’d like to be able to work together with anybody. There is some interests at least amongst some Dolphin devs to help us finish up these remaining parts, which is very refreshing to see.