Libretro Core Updates/Progress Report – April/May 2021

Libretro Team

PCSX2

* Added widescreen, speedhacks options and some userhacks, some code refactoring and cleanup
* Added core option to force widescreen
* Refactoring of core options based on libretro standard
Added option to set pcsx2 Accurancy/Speed presets
* Added bios list at runtime to libretro options
* Fixed speedhacks presets option
Added fallback to default safe preset if speedhack option is disabled
Code cleanup
* Added userhack options: Align Sprite and Merge Sprite
* Fixed a problem which prevented to select the correct HW renderer
Fixed null renderer problem that, if selected, freezed the frontend
* Fixed the rumble issue where it doesn’t stop when triggered
* Add CHD support
* Added option to disable gamepad rumble
* Added option to set rumble intensity
* Replace “Force Widescreen” option with “Aspect Ratio” option
* Add ‘Enable Widescreen Patches’ option
* Added option to set System Language per game
* Added support for scph39001 bios
* Added function for sending message notifications to frontend
* Added notification to frontent about widescreen patches found or not found for the loaded content
* Improved reliability of BIOS detection for language injection
* Added language support for all EU and NA BIOS
* Fixed a memory access violation during init
* CDVD: Adjust read speed depending on if in inner/outer edge. This fixes a number of CDVD timing issues, e.g. the missing sound in Klonoa 2.
* GameDB: Remove SkipmMPEG patch for Arctic Thunder. Removes a GameDB hack for Arctic Thunder as it’s no longer needed thanks to the above CDVD improvement.
* IPU: Return contents of the bottom of the FIFO in CMD except FDEC/VDEC. Fixes the FMVs in Shox.

Update policy for this core
This core is maintained by libretro.

SwanStation core

SwanStation is a PlayStation1 emulator core.

Some things that were added recently to this include software rendering upscaling support.

FCEUmm

FCEUmm is a Nintendo Entertainment System / Famicom emulator core.

Some update notes (from NewRisingSun):

A number of submappers have been assigned to mapper 176 (https://wiki.nesdev.com/w/index.php/INES_Mapper_176) based on real-hardware tests. This update rewrites the mapper 176 emulation accordingly and adds all affected ROM images knownst to me to the ines-correct.h database. I made sure that I have every mapper 176 ROM file that previously was in ines-correct.h.

UNIF files remain a problem, since the UNIF file loader does not use that database, and the four UNIF MAPRs (BMC-FK23C, BMC-FK23CA, BMC-Super24in1SC03, WAIXING-FS005) do not neatly correspond to the actual hardware variants. For example, several BMC-FK23C(A) are actually FS005. The heuristic that I used works for all UNIF files that I had in my possession.

Another issue is the DIP switch. Some carts act quite erratically when the address mask changes on every soft reset, and the old code to decide that did not work well for .NES files. (And “BMC-FK23CA”, previously described as explicitly denoting a DIP switch, is used for a few carts that do not like DIP switch changes between resets at all.) I introduced a new heuristic that worked for all files in the database. The problem remains that the code does not know up to which value the address mask should shift, so that “76 in 1 CHEER – TECH” acts strangely from the fourth to the eighth reset. I see no way of solving this short of creating a database of valid DIP switch positions for every known file hash. (I have done such a thing for NintendulatorNRS.)

Finally, a small number (I counted two) homebrew multicarts from nesbbs no longer work with the newer, more hardware-accurate emulation. “Homebrew multicarts” here refers existing multicart ROMs modified to replace one or two games, and make make changes to the menu code to work better in some other emulators.

* A Pixel Perfect (PAR 1:1, DAR 16:15) option was added.

* Should now handle paths with special characters when using Windows.

FreeIntv

FreeIntv is an Mattel Intellivision emulator core.

Several major improvements have been made to this core recently thanks to nanochess.

* Corrected bug in Overflow flag for SUB/CMP.
* Corrected scrolling visuals for several games (adding timing count for STIC).
* Corrected several instruction timings and interruption timing.
* Now the following games look and/or scroll correctly:
– Cloudy Mountain
– Tower of Doom
– Mountain Madness Skiing
– Super Pro Decathlon
– Stadium Mud Buggies
– Hover Force
* Solved bug in border color. Implemented STIC screen disable.
* Shows explanation if GROM and EXEC are missing.
* HALT and undefined instructions shows a message instead of exiting.
* Corrected position of messages for cartridge load.
* Solved bug in STIC border collision and optimized it

Update policy for this core
This core is maintained by libretro.

prboom

prboom is a Doom 1/2 game engine core.

* PS2 support has been added.

Update policy for this core
This core is maintained by libretro.

FUSE

FUSE is a ZX Spectrum Emulator core.

* Fix ‘Some +3 .dsk don’t load if they use more than 40 tracks’ issue – fixes Sword of Ianna.
* Do not autoload tapes on Scorpion – fix for the issue of autoloading tapes freezing the Scorpion 256 machine type.

It basically disables autoload when loading a tape image (TAP or TZX) with a Scorpion machine. The tape has to be loaded manually by entering the BASIC interpreter and typing load “”

Update policy for this core
This core is maintained by libretro.

Beetle PSX

Beetle PSX is a PlayStation1 emulator core.

* Dynarec updates

Update policy for this core
This core is maintained by libretro.

O2EM

O2EM is a Magnavox Odyssey 2 emulator core.

Standalone O2EM can emulate The Voice expansion module using wav sound samples that the user must place in a specific folder, similarly to what happens with the bios. The libretro port, however, didn’t include The Voice support, as the corresponding code was simply disabled.

The Voice emulation has now been ported to work in a libretro context, using libretro-common’s own audio mixer to load and play the sound samples, which should be placed in a voice folder under the usual System folder.

NOTE: This feature has not been enabled for every platform, but most non-memory constrained platforms should incorporate it now.

External RAM is now exposed through RETRO_MEMORY_SYSTEM_RAM, right after the internal RAM. This memory map is virtual, as the console itself accesses the two RAMs using specific instructions instead of mapping them to a single address space.

Update policy for this core
This core is maintained by libretro.

PokeMini

Before, the core has a Turbo A button with a fixed rate of four presses per second. Now, the turbo period is configurable via a new Turbo Button Period core option. Increasing the period to 0.5-0.75 seconds makes it much easier to speed through rounds of Pokémon Zany Cards without accidentally triggering unwanted input.

Update policy for this core
This core is maintained by libretro.

DOSbox Pure

DOSbox Pure is an MS-DOS/Windows 9x emulator core.

General updates along with a PS Vita port now.

Dolphin

Dolphin is a GameCube/Wii emulator core.

* Add Fast Depth Calculation option

This option is useful for certain games for which having Fast Depth Calculation enabled causes texture issues. For example, disabling Fast Depth Calculation restores the missing text in Def Jam: Fight for NY.

Update policy for this core
This core is maintained by libretro.

gpSP

gpSP is a Game Boy Advance emulator core.

Tons of updates:

* Fix palette writes in MIPS –

Was not writing to the right address (but decoded memory was working).
Most game worked well except those that depend on modifying the existing
palette bits (instead of copying from ROM/RAM). Fixes several games.

* Fix RTC support for MIPS

* Fix Vita port and likely some Linux/Android hidden issues –

Using an invalid SP makes Vita crash (for an unkown reason) and makes
things like C signal handlers crash (luckily Retroarch doesn’t use
them). It is also a violation of the ABI and not a great idea.
Recycled some little used registers to free SP. Perf should be roughly
the same.

* Fix invalid memory map entries

* Adding Code Breaker cheat support –

This works on both interpreter and dynarec.
Tested in MIPS, ARM and x86, still needs some more testing, some edge
cases can be buggy.

* Fix aligned32 reads in interpreter mode –

An address check was missing to read aligned 32 (stm/ldm) data from
high mem areas (0xX0000000). This fixes SM4 EU that for some reason has
some weird memory access (perhaps a bug?)

* Small optimization (~2-4%) and whitespace cleanup! –

Cleans up a ton of whitespace in cpu.c (like 100KB!) and improves
readability of some massive decode statements.

Added an optimization for PC-relative loads (pool load) in ROM (since
it’s read only and cannot possibily change) that directly emits an
immediate load. This is way faster, specially in MIPS/x86, ARM can be
even faster if we rewrite the immediate load macros to also use a pool.

* Add dedicated RetroPad fast-forward button

* Fix ARM dynarec unaligned 32 bit loads –

This might make a handful games slightly slower (but on the upper side
they work now instead of crashing or restarting).
Also while at it, fix some minor stuff in arm stubs for speed.

* Add ROM mirroring and fix mult. cycle count –

This should correct some minor issues in some games.

* Add turbo A/B buttons

Update policy for this core
This core is maintained by libretro.

Beetle Saturn

Beetle Saturn is a Sega Saturn emulator core.

* Backport VDP2 render thread ‘busy wait’ performance fix
* Fix hang on boot when rewind or runahead is enabled
* Prevent hang when launching Blast Wind

Update policy for this core
This core is maintained by libretro.

bsnes

bsnes is a Super Nintendo/Super Famicom emulator core.

* Refactor and upgrade Core Options (version 1.3) with sublabels and translation support

Update policy for this core
This core is maintained by libretro.

SMS Plus GX

SMSPlus GX is a Sega Master System/Game Gear emulator core.

* SMS: Center the image when remove border option is enabled
* Merge recent changes from upstream

Update policy for this core
This core is maintained by libretro.

LRMAME 2000

LRMAME2000 is an arcade emulator based on an old version of MAME circa 2000.

* Changed /samples dir to be in the system directory (parity with other MAME cores)

LRMAME 2003

LRMAME2003 is an arcade emulator core based on the original MAME 0.78 source code base .

Contra protection improvements –

furrtek Added Konami 007452 multiplier/divider fixes rolling mines trajectories in contra

Rather than add a whole new device im just hooking it directly into the Contra driver for this core. Combat School Flak Attack and WACLeMans also use this but for now im focusing on Contra as the game improvements are known

Whereas with the others the benefits over the original simulations are not as yet known if indeed there are any.

Update policy for this core
This core is maintained by the LRMAME2003 Plus team.

Mesen

Mesen is a Nintendo Entertainment System/Famicom emulator core.

* Fix Twin Dragons support. Also fixes Mystic Origins.

Update policy for this core
This core is maintained by the Libretro team.

Stella 2014

Stella is an Atari 2600 emulator core.

Before, the core supported analog paddle input when using gamepads (#71), with relative paddle motion corresponding to analog stick displacement.

Unfortunately, this is incompatible with real, physical paddles (Stelladaptor, iCode, etc.) , which require absolute positioning to function correctly.

Now, it enables support for these devices by adding a new virtual controller type. In Quick Menu > Controls > Port x Controls, Device Type can be set to Gamepad for regular input, or Paddles (Stelladaptor) for real paddle input.

When Paddles (Stelladaptor) is selected, inputs are mapped as follows (this is the normal convention for Atari controller adaptors):

Port 1:

P1 Fire: RetroPad A
P1 Wheel: RetroPad Left Analog X
P2 Fire: RetroPad B
P2 Wheel: RetroPad Left Analog Y
Port 2:

P3 Fire: RetroPad A
P3 Wheel: RetroPad Left Analog X
P4 Fire: RetroPad B
P4 Wheel: RetroPad Left Analog Y

Note that 4-player games are now supported.

Update policy for this core
This core is maintained by the Libretro team.

FBAlpha 2012 CPS3

This is a cut-down version of FBAlpha 2012. Only CPS3 emulation support has been kept in this core. It is mainly meant to be used with Capcom Play System III games.

* (3DS) Use custom memory allocator

Re-implement custom memory allocator initially from FBAlpha 2012 Neogeo.

Update policy for this core
This core is maintained by the Libretro team.

Other updates

* Atari800 (Update strategy: Maintained by Libretro)
* bsnes HD (Update strategy: Upstream)
* DOSbox Core (Update strategy: Maintained by RealNC)
* EasyRPG (Update strategy: Upstream)
* FBNeo (Update strategy: Upstream)
* LRMAME (Update strategy: Maintained by Libretro – updated to 0.330)
* LRMAME2003 Plus (Update Strategy: Maintained by LRMAME2003 Plus team)
* Mupen64Plus Next (Update Strategy: Maintained by m4xw)
* Picodrive (Update strategy: Maintained by Libretro)
* PPSSPP (Update strategy: Upstream)
* PX68K (Update strategy: Maintained by Libretro/NegativeExponent)
* Kronos (Update strategy: Upstream)
* Stella (Update strategy: Upstream)
* UAE (Update strategy: Maintained by Libretro)
* VICE
* VBA-M (Update Strategy: Maintained by Libretro/NegativeExponent)

If we forgot any updates to any core during this period, let us know and we will update this article. Thanks.

RetroArch 1.9.3 released!

Libretro Team


RetroArch 1.9.3 has just been released.

Grab it here.

Remember that this project exists for the benefit of our users, and that we wouldn’t keep doing this were it not for spreading the love with our users. This project exists because of your support and belief in us to keep going doing great things. If you’d like to show your support, consider donating to us. Check here in order to learn more. In addition to being able to support us on Patreon, there is now also the option to sponsor us on Github Sponsors! You can also help us out by buying some of our merch on our Teespring store!

Release notes

We have a roadmap now (see here), and you can expect more frequent releases from this point on. We are aiming for a new version every two weeks. We were initially aiming to have the Lakka version ready to be released concurrently with this version, but had to postpone it. We are definitely aiming to have a new Lakka version ready with future releases of RetroArch though.

We have implemented core info file caching and enabled this by default for the console platforms. This should lead to significantly reduced startup times and content loading after the first initial startup. The first time RetroArch starts up (and/or new core info files are added), it will need to build/rebuild the cache. After that though, it only has one cached file it has to load at startup instead of having to sequentially read every single core info file. This used to take a very long time on platforms with slow disk I/O (such as game consoles). PSP/Vita and 3DS users in particular will definitely notice these improvements.

WiiU users get a couple of new cores, such as bk (the Oberon RISC emu), xRick (the Rick Dangerous game engine reimplementation), and REminiscence (the Flashback game engine reimplementation).

Highlights

Core info file caching

It seems that on platforms with slow disk I/O (mostly all game consoles), it takes the same amount of time to load a file no matter how large it is (within reason) – so ~300 ms to load one info file, and the same ~300 ms to load everything stored in one cache file. Loading ~80 info files takes forever – and basically constitutes almost all the startup time on these systems. This reality is what has led to a new feature called ‘core info file cache’. An anecdotal report from the person who implemented this – previously without core info file caching t took 29 seconds just to boot XMB. With the core info file cache, it only takes 12 seconds. On RGUI, it boots in 3 seconds or less. Significant reductions to be sure.

Things you should know about the core info file caching

  • Core info cache can now be enabled/disabled on all platforms via a new Settings > Core > Cache Core Info Files option
  • Core info cache file are stored as core_info.cache
  • The core info cache file is compressed (rzip) to further reduce disk I/O
  • The presence of a core_info.refresh file in the core info directory will force a one-time refresh of the info cache. This file is generated automatically when toggling on the Cache Core Info Files option, and we will also add it to core info file packaging such that updating info files (either manually or via the online updater) will force a refresh
  • The core info cache no longer contains ‘core is locked’ and ‘firmware missing’ data fields; these are ‘dynamic’ properties that must be determined at runtime
  • The ‘core is locked’ status is now determined on core info initialisation by parsing the core directory listing, rather than by performing individual ‘lock file exists’ checks. This minimises file I/O, and greatly improves performance on devices with slow storage
  • While parsing the core info cache file, we now avoid unnecessary strdup()s when adding entries to the resultant cache list

(Static Platforms) Add option to not restart RetroArch when launching content with the currently loaded core

Before, whenever content was loaded using a static build of RetroArch (i.e. most of the console ports), a new process is forked. This basically means that RetroArch in it’s entirety is reloaded, which can be quite slow.

This kind of ‘reload’ is required when changing cores (since each is a stand-alone application) – but if the core we want to launch is already loaded, then it’s wasted effort.

1.9.3 adds a new Always Reload Core on Run Content option under Settings > Cores on statically built platforms. When enabled (by default on consoles), the current existing behaviour is maintained. When disabled, launching content with a core that is already loaded will skip the process fork/reinitialisation and just load the content directly.

On an o3DS testing setup, this reduces content load times by 60%-70%, depending upon the core.

Important caveats:

  • There is a significant annoyance in the way that static builds work. If you run the ‘top level’ RetroArch app, then everything works as you would expect – but if you run a core directly (e.g. a specific core cia on 3DS), RetroArch doesn’t actually have any way of knowing which core is currently loaded. It ‘assumes’ you are running the last loaded core – which may not be the case. If it isn’t, the first ‘run content’ operation with Always Reload Core on Run Content disabled will cause an unnecessary fork (but the next ‘run content’ will behave correctly). Unfortunately there is nothing we can do about this…

Changelog

1.9.3

  • 3DS: Disable menu screensaver animations in XMB/GLUI
  • COMMAND: Initialize netcmd->cmd_source_len before recvfrom()
  • CONTENT LOADING/STATICALLY LINKED: Ensure ‘Always Reload Core on Run Content’ setting is applied when loading content via the file browser
  • CONTENT LOADING/EMSCRIPTEN: Fix content loading via file browser on platforms with ‘broken’ core handling (i.e. emscripten)
  • CORE INFO: Skip whitespace when writing compressed core info cache files
  • CORE INFO/FILE IO: Core Info cache; significant file I/O performance improvements on systems with slow disk file I/O
  • CORE INFO/FILE IO: Enable core info cache by default on all ‘console’ platforms
  • FREEBSD: FreeBSD build fix
  • LAKKA: Support for tweaking CPU governors/scaling policies
  • LAKKA: This adds managed policies and settings to store them and reload them at startup
  • LIBRETRO API: Add API extension for cores to override frontend fast-forward state
  • MENU/RGUI: Fix saving of config files/overrides when ‘Lock Menu Aspect Ratio’ is enabled
  • SHADERS: Fix ‘Auto-Shader Delay’ functionality
  • UWP/D3D11: Disable mipmap generation
  • UWP/XBOX: Add ‘Force 4K resolution’ option (Force the resolution to the fullscreen size on Xbox, if set to 0, a fixed value of 3840 x 2160 will be used)

Final Burn Neo 1.0.0.02 release

BarbuDreadMon

Final Burn Neo (FBN/FBNeo) is the follow-up of Final Burn Alpha (FBA/FBAlpha), an alternative to MAME for arcade emulation. It’s more focused on playability than on accuracy/preservation. The team is composed of dink, iq_132, JacKc, kev and me. It supports most libretro features (netplay, runahead, retroachievements, …).

Some words about accuracy & FBNeo

Regularly, I see misunderstandings about our playability focus. It doesn’t actually mean we don’t care about accuracy, when we add a new system we usually make it as accurate as possible, and we also revisit old systems for accuracy improvement purpose. In some edge cases we even end up being more accurate than MAME, it’s always a bit funny when someone comes reporting that “something is different from MAME, so that must be a bug”, and after investigating about the actual cabinet, we learn that FBNeo is actually the one emulating the game properly (in those cases, we let the MAMEdevs know, so I believe the inaccuracies are fixed shortly after on their side).

I can only remember of a few occurrences where we are intentionally inaccurate:

  • Samples vs Netlist emulation : we prefer keeping samples for now, netlist is a nice feature, but ultimately we don’t think samples sound bad (we even have some systems where we offer alternative sound emulation through samples while the actual sound device is also emulated), so enforcing the emulation to be twice slower for this didn’t seem right to us. From time to time I see people saying “yeah but I’m missing sounds because of those samples” : that shouldn’t be the case, most likely they are just using the wrong samples pack.
  • CPS3 emulation : Around 2 years ago, we noticed a frame on SF3-1’s VS screen had wrong colors, after more investigation & tests we learnt that the fix would involve making the emulation twice slower on every CPS3 games, so since there was no evidence that fixing this single frame would improve anything else on CPS3, we decided to leave things like this for now.
  • ZX Spectrum emulation : We didn’t like the original sound from the buzzer, so we re-made it to our liking.
  • Garbage noise : Sometimes, we notice garbage noise that actually happens on real hardware, since we consider this noise as an unpleasant game bug, we filter it out, i remember “Burger Time” and “Narc” being in that list.

New supported games and other emulation improvements

Midway

Our tms340x0 cpu core got rewritten, which allowed to add support for pretty much any midway game that was missing and not running on 3D hardware, the more recent additions include “2 on 2 Open Ice Challenge”, “Judge Dredd”, “NBA Hangtime”, “NBA Jam”, “NBA Jam TE”, “NBA Maximum HT”, “WWF: Wrestlemania”, “High Impact Football”, “Super High Impact”, “Narc”, “Smash TV”, “Strike Force”, “Terminator 2 – Judgment Day”, “Total Carnage”, “Trog”, “Revolution X”, and the recently dumped “Power-up baseball”.

Sega

Support for Sega System 32 was added : “Air Rescue”,  “Arabian Fight”, “Golden Axe: The Revenge of Death Adder”, “Dark Edge”, “Spider-Man: The Videogame”, “Dragon Ball Z V.R.V.S.”, “Holosseum”, “SegaSonic The Hedgehog”, “Alien3: The Gun”, “Burning Rival”, “F1 Super Lap”, “F1 Exhaust Note”, “Jurassic Park”, “Rad Mobile”, “Rad Rally”, “Slip Stream”, “Super Visual Football: European Sega Cup”, “Soreike Kokology”, “Soreike Kokology Vol. 2 – Kokoro no Tanteikyoku”, “Hard Dunk”, “OutRunners”, “Stadium Cross” and “Title Fight”. One of the hightlights of our emulation is the controls on racing games like “Rad Mobile”, they are very playable (apparently, the controls are a bit tricky on MAME).

Jaleco

Support for Jaleco Mega System 32 was added : “Tetris Plus”, “Tetris Plus 2”, “P-47 Aces”, “Best Bout Boxing”, “Desert War”, “The Game Paradise – Master of Shooting!”, “Gratia – Second Earth”, “World PK Soccer V2”, “Hayaoshi Quiz Grand Champion Taikai”, “Hayaoshi Quiz Nettou Namahousou”, “Idol Janshi Suchie-Pai II”, “Ryuusei Janshi Kirara Star”, “Mahjong Angel Kiss”, “Vs. Janshi Brandnew Stars”.

Namco

Support for Namco NA-1/NA-2/NB-1/NB-2 systems was added : “Bakuretsu Quiz Ma-Q Dai Bouken”, “Cosmo Gang the Puzzle”, “Emeraldia”, “Exvania”, “Fighter & Attacker”, “Super World Court”, “Tinkle Pit”, “Knuckle Heads”, “Numan Athletics”, “Nettou! Gekitou! Quiztou!!”, “X-Day 2”, “Nebulas Ray”, “Point Blank / Gun Bullet”, “Great Sluggers”, “Great Sluggers 94”, “Super World Stadium”, “Super World Stadium ’96”, “Super World Stadium ’97”, “J-League Soccer V-Shoot”, “The Outfoxies” and “Mach Breakers”

Seibu

Support for Seibu SPI system was added : “Senkyu / Battle Balls”, “E Jong High School”, “Viper Phase 1”, “Raiden Fighters”, “Raiden Fighters 2 – Operation Hell Dive”, “Raiden Fighters Jet” and “E-Jan Sakurasou”

Sinclair ZX Spectrum

While the driver had been there since 2018, because of how bad it was (a parting gift from a certain person…) it was basically rewritten from scratch, nowadays I believe it’s a very nice alternative to FUSE. Also, I mentioned it above, we intentionally decided to be inaccurate on buzzer emulation.

Fairchild ChannelF

Another home console gets emulated.

PGM

Thanks to the efforts of an external contributor (eziochiu), the last 2 unplayable pgm games (and their clones) finally became playable : “Dragon World 3” and “Photo Y2K 2 (3-in-1)”.

Taito

We now support “Gladiator”, “LSA Squad” and “Daikaiju no Gyakushu”

Electronic Arts / Rare

“Battletoads” is now supported, this game is actually the main reason our tms340x0 cpu core was rewritten.

Gottlieb

“Exterminator” is now supported, that’s yet another game using tms340x0 (actually, 2 of them !), this is an odd game to say the least.

Art & Magic

Yet another system using tms340x0, their games – “Cheese Chase”, “Stone Ball” and “Ultimate Tennis” – are actually pretty cool.

Improvements to the Libretro port

Some features that were left over from standalone until now got implemented in the Libretro port :

  • LowPass Filter : It’s available from the core options, I know something similar is available from RetroArch’s DSP plugins but you might want to check out this one too. Technically it’s a 2x resonant lowpass filter which is set-up to mimic the amp section found on most PCB’s. For a good 95% of games, it makes the sound a bit more rich/bassy, and for the remaining 5% let us know so that we can fix them. You’ll probably never want to turn this option off after getting used to how nice it sounds.
  • Cheats : They have been supported through the Libretro API for some time, but now you can also directly use a cheat.dat from MAME, more information about this here.
  • Macros : First, some words about macros, the reason macros from standalone aren’t supported is because there can be dozens of them for a single player on a single game, however you currently can’t map that many actions with the Libretro API (and this is not only a problem for macros, handling service menu when it involves several buttons can be tricky too) because all inputs need to be assigned to a button from the get go. In the past, there was some workaround for this through core options, but it had its own share of issues so it was removed later. I recently decided to re-implement support for a select few macros, for now it only includes 3xPunchs and 3xKicks on SF-like games but implementing a few more could be done if I can get some help sorting out the ones that’ll be the most useful so that they’ll fit within the RetroPad model.

 

And much more! This article is far from being exhaustive.
If you want to help FBNeo, keep sending us bug reports when you see something wrong.
Our forum : https://neo-source.com/
Our github : https://github.com/finalburnneo/FBNeo
Our discord : https://discord.gg/8EGVd9v

RetroArch 1.9.2 released!

Libretro Team


RetroArch 1.9.2 has just been released.

Grab it here.

Remember that this project exists for the benefit of our users, and that we wouldn’t keep doing this were it not for spreading the love with our users. This project exists because of your support and belief in us to keep going doing great things. If you’d like to show your support, consider donating to us. Check here in order to learn more. In addition to being able to support us on Patreon, there is now also the option to sponsor us on Github Sponsors! You can also help us out by buying some of our merch on our Teespring store!

Release notes

PlayStation Vita users will be happy to learn that the issues with gpSP (Game Boy Advance emulator) are now resolved, and it should work as reliably as it did before 1.9.1 (and perhaps even better now thanks to increased performance). We hope you get a lot of mileage out of this core as a lot of work and effort went into it to really optimize the performance of this core over the past few months!

Text To Speech support is now enabled for the macOS Universal build. You can access this by going to Settings -> Accessibility and enabling ‘Accessibility Enable’.

Some nice changes under the hood that are more technical in nature: config file loading performance has been improved immeasurably which should help out with initial startup times of RetroArch, loading config files as well as loading shader presets. Core info file loading itself has also seen many performance improvements. We are aware that despite all this, loading all the assets in the more feature-rich menus like MaterialUI/XMB/Ozone can still take a long time on systems encumbered by slow disk I/O, but we have some special things in store for future versions that should increase asset loading performance significantly.

There is now multi soft-patching file support. We will explain this in more detail below.

Highlights

Multi soft-patching support

If an IPS/BPS/UPS patch is found, will replace the last character in the filename with a counter and loop until another patch is found (in any format).

Example matching filenames:

Contra (Japan).nes
Contra (Japan).ips # Applied first
Contra (Japan).ips1 # Applied second
Contra (Japan).ups2 # Applied third
…

Notice that if one filename breaks the loop, the following patches won’t be applied too. e.g.:

Contra (Japan).nes
Contra (Japan).ips # applied
Contra (Japan) (Translation).ips1 # Partial name match, not applied
Contra (Japan).ups3 # Not applied either
…

Enhanced ‘Load Content’ file browser search functionality

1.9.2 adds the same search filter functionality that currently exists for playlists to the file browser when selecting Load Content. This means:

  • When navigating the filesystem via the file browser, the user can press RetroPad X (or /, etc.), and enter a search term
  • This becomes a filter – all matching entries will be displayed
  • The user can then perform another search to further refine the results. Up to 8 filters may be stacked in this fashion
  • Pressing ‘cancel’ clears the last entered filter

For example:

In order to support file browser navigation, the search filter implementation had to be rewritten. Instead of having a single menu-driver-level search filter, independent search terms are now stored for each menu list. This is a far more robust solution, and means that filters can be enabled for other menus far more easily (and without any hacks). To demonstrate this, 1.9.2 also enables search filters when selecting shader presets/passes via the file browser (I will try to add this in more places as time permits):

Finally, 1.9.2 makes the following changes to existing search functionality:

  • Entering a search term consisting of a single Latin alphabet character will now always jump to the first entry whose first character matches – i.e. we no longer apply search filters in this case, since a single alphabet character filter is not useful. This means single character searches can be used for fast alphabet navigation
  • When searching file browser lists, the ‘utility’ entries (e.g. Parent Directory) are ignored, since they have no bearing on the actual list content (i.e. searching for p will now jump to the first p file – previously, it would always jump to Parent Directory…)
  • When performing non-filter searches, the entry labels used in each comparison now exactly match what is printed on screen by the menu driver. Previously, raw file_list values were used, which are often the same, but not always (e.g. in a number of cases, this is the difference between searching against full file paths vs. path basenames, which can produce erroneous results)

In addition to all this, 1.9.2 also enables search filter support when using the file browser to select cheats and overlays.

Optional menu screensaver animations

At present, when using XMB/GLUI/Ozone, enabling the menu screensaver will cause the screen to be blanked when the screensaver timeout has elapsed. 1.9.2 adds three optional animations that may be displayed instead – these can be selected via the new Settings > User Interface > Menu Screensaver Animation entry; animation speed may be adjusted via Settings > User Interface > Menu Screensaver Animation Speed. The options are as follows:

OFF: Screen will be blanked

Snow:

Starfield:

Vortex:

These effects are rendered using font glyphs; the performance overheads of all the animations are therefore low. This should also give you some indication as to how we are planning to reduce file I/O overhead across the board when it comes to asset loading, but that is something that we will be unveiling for a future release!

When using GLUI/Ozone, the screensaver will be tinted (somewhat) according to the current menu colour theme (XMB uses a fixed screensaver colour, since it does not have a ‘proper’ colour theme implementation).

OpenDingux beta: Add 50Hz support

All devices running OpenDingux Beta have native support for both 60 Hz and 50 Hz display modes. 1.9.2 enables 50 Hz functionality in RetroArch. The refresh rate can be toggled between 60 Hz and 50 Hz via the Settings > Video > Output > Vertical Refresh Rate menu entry; the value can be saved on a per-core/content directory/game basis via regular config overrides.

This makes OpenDingux devices (running the Beta OS) pretty much the only affordable/easily available handhelds that can run both NTSC and PAL content smoothly. The VICE core in particular benefits enormously from this addition.

OpenDingux beta: Fix IPU scaling when running GB/GBC/GG/NGP-resolution content

Further testing of the OpenDingux Beta port has revealed several more resolutions which are mishandled by the IPU hardware scaler. 1.9.2 updates the resolution blacklists accordingly, fixing scaling for the following content:

  • Gameboy (+ Color)/Game Gear at native, x2 and x3 resolutions
  • Neo Geo Pocket (+ Color) at x2 resolution

Changelog

1.9.2

  • 3DS: Enable graphics widgets / overlays
  • 3DS: Load texture images as BGR colors
  • 3DS: Change default asset directory
  • CHEEVOS: Allow rcheevos_patch_address to be called on game without achievements
  • CHEEVOS: Update achievement memory maps (add Supervision)
  • CONFIG/FILE: Use hash map to optimise key/value lookups
  • CORE INFO: Performance optimisations + code clean-ups/refactors
  • CRT/SWITCHRES: Fixed CRTSwitchRes framebuffer bug
  • DISCORD/RPC: Fix regression
  • DRM: set the correct video mode
  • FASTFORWARD: Enforce minimum fastforward_ratio of 1.0
  • FONTS/FREETYPE/STB_UNICODE/BITMAPFONT: Prevent texture bleed when rendering text at non-integer scales
  • INPUT: Ensure that ‘retro_set_controller_port_device’ is called when updating ‘Max Users’
  • INPUT/XEGL/MOUSE: Fix xegl_ctx.c mouse activation
  • INPUT/SDL: Fix crash in SDL input driver when analogs are bound
  • INPUT/POINTER: Add scaling to pointer input
  • INPUT REMAPPING: Fix regression on loading file
  • INPUT REMAPPING: Fix regression where disabling input remapping would disable input
  • IOS: Disable system button gestures on iOS 14
  • IOS: Prevent potential crash on controller connect – randomly would get a crash when connecting a game controller while RA was running
  • LAKKA: Add menu for time zone setting
  • LOGGING: RARCH_LOG_V checking for verbosity level is not necessary and can cause issues; removed said check.
  • LOGGING: Silence inappropriate cheatfile logging
  • IOS/MAC: Add CPU VFP unit detection for Darwin
  • MAC: Swallow ‘escape’ key being pressed – would previously make the game toggle between fullscreen and windowed
  • MAC: Intel and ARM64 timer change proposal.
  • MAC/ARM64: run_fast_mode disabled for 64 bits invalid instructions.
  • MAC/OPENGL: Fix codesigning issue
  • MAC/UNIVERSAL: Add TTS translation service support.
  • MENU: Add optional menu screensaver
  • MENU: Add search filter support to cheats and overlays file browser menus
  • MENU/FILEBROWSER: Enhanced ‘Load Content’ file browser search functionality
  • MENU/INPUT: Block accidental diagonals in menu navigation
  • MENU/RGUI: Add option to disable menu transparency
  • MENU/RGUI: Fix display of ‘Video > Scaling’ menu when ‘Lock Menu Aspect Ratio’ is enabled
  • MENU/MATERIALUI: Add icon to ‘Turbo Fire’ menu entry
  • MENU/OZONE: Ozone Dracula theme
  • OPENDINGUX/BETA: Fix IPU scaling when running GBA-resolution content
  • OPENDINGUX/BETA: Add 50Hz support
  • OPENDINGUX: Enable ‘SaveRAM Autosave Interval’ by default
  • PATCHES: Added multi-softpatching support + OSD messages for patches
  • RHMAP: Track the complete string in rhmap
  • VITA: Align VM block size to 1MB – should fix one of the issues with gpSP
  • WINDOWS/GDI: Fix non-ASCII text rendering
  • XEGL: Fix mouse not working when using OpenGLES with X11