New core: OpenLara (Windows/Linux)

Libretro Team

OpenLara is now available as a libretro core! This is a new work-in-progress Tomb Raider game engine by developer XProger and is already progressing rapidly.

If you’d like to know more about the project, please visit its site here. There’s even a cool web demo you can check out here.

Available for

The OpenLara core is currently available for:

  • Windows (32bit/64bit)
  • Linux (32bit/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 ‘Tomb Raider (OpenLara)’ from the list.

Important!

  • This core requires that you use OpenGL as the video driver. Go to Settings -> Driver. If ‘video driver’ is set to ‘vulkan’, switch it back to ‘gl’, and then restart.

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 single texture on the screen, like this –

If you see this, then 'Enable Shared Hardware Context' should be turned on!
If you see this, then ‘Enable Shared Hardware Context’ should be turned on! Read below on how to do that!

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 it

Convincing self-shadowing effects which the original games didn't have.
Convincing self-shadowing effects which the original games didn’t have.

Right now, OpenLara is more of a tech demo. You have to load separate levels into the program in order to play them. You cannot currently play Tomb Raider from beginning to end using this core. We hope that it will book major progress so that one day we can replay the old Tomb Raider games entirely with these enhanced graphics and enhanced framerates. To this end, we intend to support the project.

For demonstration purposes, we provide you with the Tomb Raider 1 demo levels so that you can test it out. It is also possible to use levels from the PC/PSX version and load this into the game engine core, so try that out at your own discretion.

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 ‘Tomb Raider’, and select the file ‘tombraider1-demo.zip’.

  • Go back to the main menu, and now select ‘Load Content’. Select ‘Downloads’. Go to the folder ‘Tomb Raider’, and select LEVEL2.PSX. If all went well, OpenLara should now start at Level 2 of Tomb Raider 1.

 

Be aware that certain gameplay elements are simply not implemented as of yet, such as health bars, taking damage, etc. You can ‘complete’ the stage technically but you also cannot die or continue to the next level.

Controls

The controls on the RetroPad are set up to mirror those of the PSX Tomb Raider games.

L2 – Sidestep left

R2 – Sidestep right

R1 – Hold to walk

Y button – Jump

B button – Action button. Can be used to flick switches/toggles, etc, or to grab a ledge.

X button – Draw weapon. Press B button to shoot, and press X again to withdraw.

A button – Do a roll. This works a bit different from regular Tomb Raider mechanics in that it will perform a back dash if you press the A button without moving.

Start button – This will toggle a fullscreen mode that is very much like what Mirror’s Edge would have looked like with a PS1-era game engine.  Note that toggling this right now is very finicky, and will be improved in the future.

There is currently no way to toggle the inventory or to select weapons on the RetroPad other than the default guns. The reason for there being no inventory is because OpenLara itself doesn’t have that yet.

Enhancements

The MIrror's Edge-style first person mode along with Lara's shadow projected onto the wall
The MIrror’s Edge-style first person mode along with Lara’s shadow projected onto the wall

The nice thing about OpenLara is that, while staying true to the original look and feel of the original, it also adds some graphical enhancements to it that manages to make the boxy old-school Tomb Raider games look a bit less archaic. Some examples include :

  • Self-shadowing on Lara, enemies, etc.
  • New water effects which replaces the simple vertex manipulation of the water surface on the PSX. The Saturn version actually was the only version that tried to do something a bit more sophisticated with the water. If you dislike these very nice graphical enhancements, I inserted a core option so you can turn these off (‘Enable water effects’ in Quick Menu -> options).
  • Shading effects – after Lara gets out of the water, her skin has a slightly wet shading effect.
  • A first-person mode that is more convincing and fun than what you’d expect. It behaves a bit like Mirror’s Edge in that the camera bobs up and down, and you can see Lara’s hands move in front of you. If you try to do a somersault – the camera will rotate along with it as well. What makes the firstperson mode a bit more convincing is the new self-shadowing effects that have been added.

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’.
  • You can increase the resolution all the way up to 2560×1440. Higher resolution modes might become available as time goes on.
  • The OpenLara core is framerate-independent. Go to Quick Menu -> Options, change ‘Framerate’ to the value you desire, and then restart the core. You can run OpenLara at 30fps / 60fps / 90fps / 120fps / 144fps. The default framerate is 60fps.
  • You can turn the advanced water effects off if you so desire. Go to Quick Menu -> Options, change ‘Water effects’ to ON/OFF, and then restart the core. You can also turn on/off bilinear filtering similarly.

Unimplemented

There are still some things which are not fully implemented in this version.  Some examples include:

  • Save states are not implemented. And savestates don’t seem to be implemented in upstream either, so not much that can be done about it at this stage.
  • As mentioned before, this is still more of a tech demo project. You cannot complete any Tomb Raider game right now from beginning to end; you can only play individual levels.
  • The analog sticks are currently unbound. It might be a good idea to bind camera manipulation to the second analog stick.
  • There are no mouse controls. The standalone version does have this. We will try to hook this up as well later.

Still coming up!

Still yet to be released shortly (in the next few days) is:

  • Dolphin (Gamecube/Wii emulator, with Gamecube-only controls at first)

This will probably coincide with a new version of RetroArch, version 1.6.1. Stay tuned!

More new cores: MelonDS, SameBoy, ARM Linux cores!

Libretro Team

This week will be all about a dripfeed of new cores along with a version bump of RetroArch, which will be needed for some of the new cores that will be arriving this week.

MelonDS

This is an up-and-coming Nintendo DS emulator by StapleButter, and it now has a libretro port. Some of the things that are still not properly implemented is touchscreen/mouse support and multithreading for the software 3D rasterizer, but we will take care of that soon. This emulator might not yet be a replacement for DesMuMe, but it’s quickly progressing so definitely keep your eyes on it, as DesMuMe certainly needs some competition.

You can get this new core on our buildbot. Start up RetroArch, go to ‘Online Updater’, and check for ‘MelonDS’.

For more information on MelonDS, check out its official homepage here.

Available for

The MelonDS core is currently available for:

  • Windows (64bit/32bit)
  • Linux (32bit/64bit)
  • macOS
  • iOS
  • Android

BIOS instructions, etc. (required)

MelonDS requires a real BIOS file in order to work. These need to be placed inside your System directory. If you don’t know where your System directory is, inside RetroArch, go to Settings -> Directories and read where your System Directory is located.

The following three files are all required:

  • bios7.bin
  • bios9.bin
  • firmware.bin

 

SameBoy

SameBoy is an accuracy-focused Game Boy/Game Boy Color emulator in the vein of Gambatte. We now have a libretro core of it and its author has also helped us earlier with some implementation details, so that is very much appreciated!

Some features that are still missing is savestate support, but we intend to get that done soon.

For more information on SameBoy, check out its official homepage here.

Available for

The SameBoy core is currently available for:

  • Windows (64bit/32bit)
  • Linux (32bit/64bit)
  • macOS
  • iOS
  • Android

BIOS instructions, etc. (optional)

Here is a tiny convenience feature you added – normally SameBoy relies on reverse engineered Game Boy/Game Boy Color boot ROMs in order to load. You can load these instead of the real BIOS file. For this libretro core, instead of requiring you to put these homebrew boot roms somewhere so that the emulator can read them, we have baked these into the core itself. So you don’t even need to put them somewhere in your system directory.

However, if you’d like to override these, you can do that too. Go to your system directory (if you don’t know what this is, inside RetroArch, go to Settings -> Directories and read where your System Directory is located) and put these files there:

Game Boy boot ROM – ‘dmg_boot.bin’

Game Boy Color boot ROM – ‘cgb_boot.bin’

ARM Linux cores!

Our buildbot is now providing fresh new ARM Linux cores for hardfloat configurations! These cores could be used for instance on Lakka-based devices as well as the NES Mini!

You can grab them here:

https://buildbot.libretro.com/nightly/linux/armhf/latest/

Miscellaneous updates

  • Mednafen/Beetle Saturn has been updated to the latest version.
  • Updates to ParaLLEl N64 core.

What’s still coming up this week?

In no particular order:

  • Redream (new Sega Dreamcast emulator made by inolen)
  • OpenLara (Tomb Raider 1 game engine, in early alpha development stages but already promising)
  • Dolphin (will have Gamecube controls only at first, will work for both GL and Vulkan)
  • Citra

New Core: PX68k (Android/iOS/Windows/Linux/Mac)

hizzk

Disclaimer: This article was written by Tatsuya79, who has also contributed many improvements to the X-68K core. Developer r-type is the one who made the port

The Sharp X68000 was a home computer released exclusively in Japan in 1987. It was a powerful machine for its time and saw a great number of arcade ports, exclusive titles and doujin (indie) games developed for it, even years after the last model was launched in 1993.

Until now the only way to run Sharp X68000 games in RetroArch was with MAME. Its driver isn’t really the most advanced one and it is quite demanding, excluding many platforms such as smartphones.

Outside Retroarch, PX68k was aimed to be fast enough for that usage. Based on Winx68k, targeting the PSP and ported to iOS and Android by its Japanese developer Hissorii, it was possibly the only X68000 emulator on those platforms. As its development stopped some years ago, compatibility issues due to OS upgrades made its usage rather complicated.

Developer R-Type decided to port it to RetroArch, replacing its old 32 bits based CPU emulation by a 64 bits one from Yabause core. There is also a back end for the cyclone cpu on arm/android but surprisingly it didn’t give any speed enhancement and had more problems than the previously mentioned c68k.

After a common effort to fix various issues resulting from this change (thanks Retro-Wertz), it should now be at the same level of compatibility as the original emulator.

Running some tests on an old Samsung Galaxy S3, where we could barely emulate a 16MHz CPU before with PX68k stand-alone, we now achieve smooth results with a 66MHz setting. This makes it 4 to 5 times faster than before, and the libretro port is probably now the best performing Sharp X68000 emulator you can get for various cheap or old devices.

Testing on an i5-3570K@4GHz with “Akazukin Cha Cha Cha” achieved upwards of 1000fps on the default 10MHz emulated CPU. The same test gives 136fps in RetroArch using the Mame core.

The PX68k-libretro core still keeps the same main limitation of the original: no MIDI emulation. We also need to bring a virtual keyboard back, you can only use real ones at the moment. However, we did make some improvements:

1.) You don’t need to load a particular utility to define the amount of RAM the machine uses any more, there’s now a core option for that.

2.) You can change the CPU speed in real time.

If, like some old DOS games behaved, you encounter one that runs too fast (ex. Arkanoid), you can directly slow down your CPU from a fast 25MHz to the 10MHz clock speed it was programmed for.

We also added some overclock steps as high as 200MHz. High frequencies have the side effect of speeding up the floppy loading time, which is a much welcomed accident on this machine. (100MHz is already a lot faster for that.)

-We made some 8 buttons gamepad profiles which weren’t used that much on the system, but are great for the various Street Fighters II iterations.

You’ll need the bios files, which have been made publicly available by Sharp. Place them in your system/BIOS directory, in a subdirectory named “keropi”. The iplrom.dat and cgrom.dat are necessary, but you do not need the sram.dat. See the core information for a complete list.

L2 button or F12 key brings up the original px68k menu where you can change the inserted disks. They have to be unzipped to be accessible from this menu but can be zipped/archived when launching directly from RetroArch.

After the first boot a “config” file will be generated in the “keropi” folder. You can enter your rom folder into the “StartDir” line to make it accessible from the PX68k-libretro core’s in-game menu.

RetroArch 1.6.0 – Released!

Libretro Team

RetroArch 1.6.0 has just been released!

Get it here.

PS3 port

Sony might have just ended production of the PlayStation3 in Japan as of two days ago, but we are still supporting it for RetroArch regardless! The last stable release for RA PS3 was back in 1.3.6 days, so the remaining diehard PS3 jailbroken users will be glad to hear that 1.6.0 is available for PS3 right now!

We are only supplying the DEX version. We will assume PS3 repackers will be able to make a CEX version out of this.

PowerPC OSX port

It’s also been a long time since we released a new build of the PowerPC OSX port. We have bundled the cores that have been ported to PowerPC inside the main app bundle. To use this version, you need at least MacOS X version 10.5 (Leopard) and a PowerPC Mac.

Wii port

The Wii port has received stability fixes amongst other things.

WiiU port

Each and every RetroArch release is always a community effort. FIX94 and aliaspider have made numerous improvements to the WiiU version of RetroArch. For one, it has HID controller support now, which means you can use gamepads other than the default Wii U gamepads on it. There is also support for the XMB and MaterialUI menu drivers. There are some graphical touches missing from it such as shader effects though, so don’t expect to see the fancy ribbon animating on the WiiU yet.

Overall, it is a big improvement on what went before. Netplay should also start to work on WiiU.

PS Vita port

Frangarcj has provided patches which fixes the slow file I/O speeds for the Vita port, an issue which afflicts a lot of homebrew on the Vita actually. Menu performance regressions should also be fixed. For instance, the menu was previously erroneously running at 30fps.

Windows version improvements

Windows users now can use the WASAPI audio driver for the first time, which should allow for lower-latency audio. And if that isn’t enough, there is another successfully completed bounty, a RawInput input driver, which should allow for lower-latency low-level input.

Vulkan renderer

The Vulkan renderer has received some improvements. It should now support Unicode font rendering and render certain accented French characters correctly.

Localization

There have been several localization improvements. The German and Japanese translations have been updated, and Korean text should finally display properly.

Audio mixer

Now here is a real standout feature courtesy of leiradel we are excited to tell you about! RetroArch now has a built-in audio mixer which allows you to mix up to 8 separate audio streams and splice them together with the game’s audio. To put it more simply, this means custom soundtrack support from inside RetroArch!

Currently, there are a couple of limitations here –

1 – The only supported audio files so far are Ogg Vorbis files (.ogg) and regular Wave files (.wav). Over time, there will be more audio codecs supported.

2 – The audio mixer tracks will only play when the game is running. They will not play while inside the menu, unless you turn off ‘Pause when menu activated’ (Settings -> User Interface -> Menu).

3 – You can only mix up to 8 simultaneous audio streams so far. Looping is not yet available, neither is pausing an audio stream or changing a stream’s volume. All of these might be added in later versions of RetroArch though.

Here is a quick demonstration of how you use it:

While the game is running, go to Load Content, and select a supported audio file (either an Ogg Vorbis .ogg file or a .wav file)
While the game is running, go to Load Content, and select a supported audio file (either an Ogg Vorbis .ogg file or a .wav file)
Select ‘Add to MIxer’. If the game is already running, this should start playing the music immediately and also add it to your music collection.
You can easily access this music track at any point in time from this point on by going to your Music tab inside the XMB. You can then start mixing the audio again by selecting it again and choosing ‘Add to mixer’.

Changelog

Here is a changelog of most of the things that changed:

– AUTOSAVE/SRAM – Fix bug #3829 / #4820 (https://github.com/libretro/RetroArch/issues/3829)
– ENDIANNESS: Fixed database scanning. Should fix scanning on PS3/WiiU/Wii, etc.
– NET: Fix bug #4703 (https://github.com/libretro/RetroArch/issues/4703)
– ANDROID: Runtime permission checking
– ANDROID: Improve autoconf fallback
– ANDROID: Improve shield portable/gamepad device grouping workaround
– ANDROID: Allow remotes to retain OK/Cancel position when menu_swap_ok_cancel is enabled
– LOCALIZATION: Update/finish French translation
– LOCALIZATION: Update German translation
– LOCALIZATION: Update Japanese translation
– LOCALIZATION/GUI: Korean font should display properly now with XMB/MaterialUI’s default font
– MENU: Improved rendering for XMB ribbon; using additive blending (Vulkan/GL)
– OSX/MACOS: Fixes serious memory leak
– WINDOWS: Added WASAPI audio driver for low-latency audio. Both shared and exclusive mode.
– WINDOWS: Added RawInput input driver for low-latency, low-level input.
– WINDOWS: Core mouse input should be relative again in cores
– MISC: Various frontend optimizations.
– VIDEO: Fix threaded video regression; tickering of menu entries would no longer work.
– WII: Fix crashing issues which could occur with the dummy core
– WIIU: HID Controller support
– WIIU: XMB/MaterialUI menu driver support
– WIIU: Initial network/netplay support
– LOBBIES: Fallback to filename based matching if no CRC matches are found (for people making playlists by hand)
– LOBBIES: GUI refinement, show stop hosting when a host has been started, show disconnect when playing as client
– LOBBIES: if the game is already loaded it will try to connect directly instead of re-loading content (non-fullpath cores only)
– LOBBIES: unify both netplay menus
– THUMBNAILS: Thumbnails show up now in Load Content -> Collection, Information -> Database
– VITA: Fix slow I/O
– VITA: Fix 30fps menu (poke into input now instead of reading the entire input buffer which apparently is slow)
– VITA: Fix frame throttle
– VULKAN: Unicode font rendering support. Should fix bad character encoding for French characters, etc.
– VULKAN: Fix some crashes on loading some thumbnails
– AUDIO: Audio mixer support. Mix up to 8 streams with the game’s audio.

New Lakka 2.1 RC release!

A new release candidate of Lakka, our popular set-top box solution powered by RetroArch, was recently released!

Please read more about it here.

Important shader-related changes

Please read hunterk’s extensive article on some organizational changes we are making to our popular shaders collection.

Upcoming events

Stay tuned for our first official unveiling of the Dolphin libretro core in the upcoming days, as well as releases of OpenLara, PX-68K, Neko Project II, Redream and other new cores! There will also be a survey/poll which will let you decide which cores we are going to port next!

Shader Changes

hizzk

Abstract

GLSL shaders now preferred over Cg when possible
Update to latest RetroArch for compatibility with updated GLSL shaders

Cg shaders demoted, GLSL promoted to first-class

Portability and compatibility are major goals for RetroArch and libretro, so we invested heavily in Nvidia’s Cg shader language, which worked natively anywhere their Cg Toolkit framework was available (that is, Windows, Linux and Mac OS X), as well as on PS3 and Vita, and could be machine-compiled to messy-but-usable GLSL (lacking a few features, such as runtime parameters) for platforms that lacked the framework (primarily ARM / mobile platforms). Cg was also so close to Microsoft’s HLSL shader language that many Cg shaders will compile successfully with HLSL compilers, such as those available with Windows’ D3D driver and on Xbox 360.

This was great for us because we could write shaders once and have them work pretty much everywhere.
Sadly, Nvidia deprecated the Cg language in 2012, which left us in a bad spot. Since then, we’ve been limping along with the same strategy as before, but with the uneasy understanding that Nvidia could stop supplying their Cg Toolkit framework at any time. Rather than sit idly by, waiting for that other shoe to drop, we took it upon ourselves to hand-convert the vast majority of our Cg shaders to native GLSL with all of the bells and whistles. TroggleMonkey’s monstrous masterpiece, CRT-Royale, still has a couple of bugs but is mostly working, along with its popular BVM-styled variant from user Kurozumi. Additionally, before this conversion, many of our Cg shaders were flaky or completely unusable on libretro-gl cores, such as Beetle-PSX-HW’s OpenGL renderer, but these native GLSL conversions should work reliably and consistently with any core/context except for those that require Vulkan (namely, ParaLLEl-N64’s and Beetle-PSX-HW’s Vulkan renderers).

With the GLSL shaders brought up to speed, we can finally join Nvidia in deprecating Cg, though it will still remain as an option–that is, we’re not *removing* support for Cg shaders or contexts at this point–and we will continue to use it where there is no other choice; namely, Windows’ D3D driver and the Xbox 360, PS3 and Vita ports. Moving forward, our focus for shaders will be on native GLSL and our slang/Vulkan formats, though we will likely still port some to Cg from time to time.

RetroArch now correctly handles #version directives in GLSL shaders; GLSL shader repo updated to match

There have been a number of updates to the GLSL shader language/spec over its long life, and shader authors can use #version directives (that is, a line at the top of the shader that says #version 130 or whatever) to tell compilers which flavor/version of GLSL is required for that shader. However, RetroArch has long had a strange behavior whereby it injected a couple of lines at the beginning of all GLSL shader files at compile time, and this broke any shader that attempted to use a #version directive, since those directives must be on the first line of the shader. This meant that our shaders couldn’t use #version directives at all, and all of our shaders lacked #version directives until very recently for this reason. These #version-less GLSL shaders are still perfectly compliant GLSL because GLSL v1.10 didn’t support directives, either, but the necessity of leaving off the #version started to cause some problems as we whipped our GLSL shader library into shape.

The error caused by adding a #version directive under the old behavior.

On AMD and Nvidia GPUs, the compilers would just toss up a warning about the missing directive and still expose whatever GLSL features were available to the GPU, which worked out great. On Intel IGPs, however, the compiler tosses the error and then reverts to only exposing the features available in ancient GLSL v1.10 (released way back in 2004). As a stopgap, we gave many shaders fallback codepaths that would still work in these circumstances, but a number of other shaders were either impossible to make compatible or even the compatible result was imperfect.

So, as of this commit (courtesy of aliaspider), RetroArch will no longer reject shaders with explicit #version directives, and we have added those directives to any shaders that require them at the lowest version that still compiles/functions properly. That is, if the shader doesn’t use any features that require greater than #version 110, they will still have no #version specified, and any shader that requires #version 120 but not #version 130 will not have its requirements increased to the higher version for no reason. This should keep our GLSL shaders as compatible as possible with older hardware, and including the #versions explicitly when needed will also make it easier for other programs/developers to utilize our shaders without any unnecessary guesswork due to behind-the-scenes magic.

This change does require a clean break, insofar as older versions of RetroArch will choke on the new #version directives (that is, they’ll fail to compile with the “#version must occur before any other program statement” error pictured above), so users with Nvidia or AMD GPUs must update their RetroArch installation if they want to use the updated shaders. Users with Intel IGPs will be no worse off if they don’t update, since those shaders were already broken for them, but they’ll probably *want* to update to gain access to the many fancy shaders that now work properly on their machines.

Mobile GPUs using GLES had many of the same issues that Intel IGPs had, with many shaders refusing to work without #version directives, but GLES compatibility added in a further complication: GLES requires its own separate #version directives, either #version 100 es or #version 300 es, which are different from and incompatible with desktop GL’s #versions. To get around this, we added a trick in RetroArch to change any #version of 120 or below to #version 100, which is roughly comparable in features to 120, and any #version 130 or above to #version 300 es whenever a GLES context is used. This should get everything working as effectively and consistently as possible on mobile GPUs, but if anything slipped through the cracks, be sure to file an issue report at the GLSL shader repo.