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 –
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.
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.
An Emscripten port of RetroArch has existed for years, but until recently, we never had a good opportunity to launch it in a state we felt comfortable with. Well, until now that is.
Web Player
So what is RetroArch Web Player? It’s a port of RetroArch that runs inside your web browser, powered by emscripten and asm.js. Most modern browsers available today should be compatible. That being said, we strongly recommend you use Google Chrome right now for smooth v-synced gameplay with no audio crackling.
You can check it out right here!
We are going to be making Libretro (and RetroArch, by extension) more usable for content creators, and the first part in that endeavor is the official launch of Lutro.
Lutro is an in-development Love 2D reimplementation written in Lua and implemented as a libretro core. With Lutro, it is possible to easily create Lua games with no knowledge of C being necessary, or having to compile any code.
To demonstrate the flexibility and power of Lutro, we have assembled a few Lutro-based games which you can freely download from our server. They are purposefully kept simple so that the content creator can use them for their own attempts at creating a game.
LutroPong
A recreation of the game Pong for Lutro.
Sienna
This is a Love2D-based endless runner game that has been ported to Lutro.
Continue reading “Lutro – easy retro game creation powered by Libretro”
Craft
We have decided to port over a promising Minecraft clone to the libretro API. The original source repository can be found here, and the libretro repository can be found here.
Windows/Linux/OSX users can already download this core by going to the Core Updater and downloading ‘Craft’. You can directly start the core since it requires no content to be loaded, it can be started as-is without needing any ROM or content file.
The original Craft upstream repository was a bit barebones, so we have decided to expand this port: