Tag: core

Core Type R – New favorite emulation front-end

I used Lakka.tv for many years to play my retro games, when the original hardware was not connected to my TV. A couple of weeks/months ago I discovered a new emulation front-end build which blew me away: Core Type R.

What is Core Type R?

Core Type R is an emulation front-end for all kind of consoles, computer or arcade machines based on RetroFE. It runs (to my knowledge) only on Windows. It supports all kind of systems; starting from you normal Windows PC Games, Gameboy, Super Nintendo, PlayStation 1,2 and 3, Xbox and Xbox 360 and Wii U.

The outstanding feature of Core Type R is its artwork. You probably never saw such a beautiful emulation front end in your entire life so far. This includes box art, screenshots, in-game video and more. It is really a great pleasure to browse through the library. Even without playing then.

Check out some pictures in this article to get an impression. It is even more impressive if you got it on your TV.

Computer section (Core Type R)

Add-on Pack releases

Another advantage of the system is the constant delivery of releases by the team. (Almost) every week there is an update adding one or the other system. Or a theme update. Or artwork. For the elder systems (meaning less space hungry) there are the so called 1G1R sets. 1 Game in 1 Rom (or file). You will get all the mostly English games for a specific system in the pack including all the great artwork. For modern systems, ISO based, there is usually a base pack, mostly with the best games, and additional add-packs will be released separately.

PlayStation 3 (Core Type R)

Besides the official Core-Team packs, there are also many community released packs. Mostly focused on PC Games given less complexity involved here as much as I understood.

There are also great Arcade PC releases based on Teknoparrot for Core Type R. Remember all the more modern games on the arcades? They will come alive again with these releases. Fancy shooting some aliens with a lightgun? Connect your for example your Sinden Lightgun or your Wii remote and you set for the alien hunt. Lots of fun.

Arcade Section (Core Type R)

Input device

Core Type R is optimized to be played with a game pad. The Xbox controllers (Amazon) are probably the ones the system is optimized for. You can use Xbox 360 controllers like I do, or use the Xbox One or Series S/X controllers.

There are very few titles not being optimized for a game controller, but sometimes it is just not feasible to map all the keys required to play the game. Think Far Cry (1) is one of these rare exceptions.

Halo 3 Preview Movie (Core Type R)

Hardware

I built a separate machine just for Core Type R. That’s how much I enjoyed it. I tried to build a small computer fitting into an IKEA Kallax shelf using components being strong enough to play also PS3 and Xbox 360. Although, for Xbox360 I probably have to buy a dedicated GPU, which I tried to avoid due to temperature and space. But Xenia seems to work better with a dedicated GPU currently. Lets see. Here is what I bought for the moment:

  • Case: Cooler Master NR200 SFF Small Form Factor Mini-ITX Case (Amazon)
  • Motherboard: ASUS ROG STRIX B550-I GAMING (AM4, AMD B550, Mini ITX) (Amazon)
  • CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 5700G (Amazon)
  • Cooler: NZXT Kraken X63 RGB (Amazon)
  • RAM: Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro SL (2 x 16GB, 3600 MHz, DDR4-RAM, DIMM) (Amazon)
  • SSD: Samsung SSD 980 (1000 GB, M.2 2280) (Amazon)
  • Power supply: Corsair SF750 Platinum (750 W) (Amazon)

Where to get Core Type R?

There is no dedicated website for Core Type R, hence I cannot give you any direct links. You can find the team only on Discord using this link. Make sure to start in #start-here where all the beginner questions are handled.

Conclusion

Alright, thought it is about time for a little update. Hope this gave a short introduction to Core Type R. More to come. As there is also the Drive collection and the Assassin Light Gun add-on I have to play around with. An article will follow.

Have you tried Core Type R? Comments welcome.

For those new to the build: Would any installation tutorial be helpful?

RetroArch: Mr. Boom released

One of my favorite games of the 90s was just released in a new version: Mr. Boom is a Bomberman clon, integrated into RetroArch as a dedicated core.

The core supports multiplayer with up to 8 players including netplay.

Worth giving it a try.  See animations below.

And these are the steps required too install (or update) and play Mr. Boom:

  • Select “Online Updater”
  • Select “Core Updater”
  • Select “Mr. Boom (Bomberman)
  • wait until the core got downloaded and installed by Retroarch
  • Go back to the root menu
  • Select “Load Core”
  • Select “Mr. Boom (Bomberman)”
  • Select “Start Core” and play

Have fun.

libretro: Recent Core Updates


And another big update from the libretro corner: This time they give an inside on what progress was achieved on their cores (emulators).

From their blog post:

As always, there have been many updates to various libretro cores from a number of contributors, some of whom are regular contributors and some of whom have never contributed to libretro projects before. Here are some of the highlights, in no particular order:

  • Twinaphex and r5 did a deep-dive on the Beetle PSX HW OpenGL renderer to resolve a host of issues that would lead to crashes whenever users messed with internal resolution and/or toggled fullscreen. Those context changes should now be handled gracefully and without any major issues.
  • RobLoach updated MelonDS to match StapleButter’s upstream v0.4 release and added to the ScummVM libretro core the ability to launch *.scummvm files located inside game directories. He also merged a variety of updates from upstream EasyRPG to the libretro core and added FFMMidi for MIDI support.
  • bparker snatched up the $50 bounty to fix a longstanding issue with 3DO emulator 4DO Libretro, which caused saving to be broken. Prior to this fix, saves were just garbage data and the core would try to load *other* garbage data. Everything should work fine now.
  • Twinaphex backported a slew of per-game hacks/fixes from upstream Mupen64Plus to ParaLLEl-N64 to fix audio sync in Resident Evil 2 FMVs, fix Indiana Jones, fix missing sound in Episode 1 Pod Racer and to fix Perfect Dark when using the Angrylion or ParaLLEl renderers, among other fixes and cleanups. He also added a toggle for dithering with the Angrylion renderer, which can provide a cleaner image and also squeeze out a few more frames per second for users who were hovering around full speed with that highly accurate plugin. He also added a fix for Mario Kart 64 when using the Rice video plugin. Twinaphex also added very high internal resolution multipliers for cores that support it, including Dolphin Libretro,
    Beetle PSX HW, OpenLara Libretro, Craft libretro and Mupen64plus Libretro.
  • oxavelar added 4-player controller support to the still-nascent Dolphin Libretro core.
  • Meepingsnesroms improved rotation functionality in Beetle WonderSwan Libretro and fixed the Amiga emulator core, (P-)UAE Libretro core on Android x86.
  • frranck tweaked the AI in MrBoom Libretro to make playing against computer opponents a better experience.
  • danieljg backported to our FBA2012 core a turbo speedhack for Metal Slug 2.
  • r-type updated MAME Libretro to stay in lockstep with upstream MAME, as well as adding a bunch of new resolutions to the “alt renderer” core option, which should allow for clean, anti-aliased vector graphics, as well as clean use of MAME’s artwork feature. He also added more target systems to his libretro port of Vice, along with a core option to choose different models of C64 and/or VIC20.
  • yoshisuga has added iOS-ARM64 build targets for many cores to make them compatible with newer Apple iDevices. He also helped track down and squash a longstanding bug that was causing a handful of cores to display only a black screen on iOS devices.
  • Tatsuya79 added an option to crop overscan on the blueMSX libretro core, along with fixing a variety of mapper issues in that core. He also added a core option to Beetle PCE Fast to allow users to choose which CD-ROM BIOS to use, as well as adding a bunch of new functionality for Prboom Libretro, including keyboard and mouse support and savegame slots.
  • hunterk backported some minor fixes from upstream Higan to our bsnes and bsnes-mercury cores to fix an elusive hanging issue in Magical Drop and audio issues with several games using the performance core. He also added a fix for Nestopia-UE‘s libretro interface that was preventing autoselection of the Japanese 4-player adapter when using the NstDatabase. hunterk also added core options to increase the internal resolution of the Vectrex emulator core, Vecx Libretro, which greatly reduces the ugly jaggies caused by 1x rendering.
  • barbudreadmon updated FBAlpha Libretro to the upstream v0.2.97.42 and fixed a segfault that could occur with some pgm games.
  • radius fixed savestates in FBAlpha Libretro and re-applied a fix to Mupen64plus Libretro for stuttering that some users experienced with games that run at 30 fps.
  • sergiobenrocha2 and shakalakka provided more intuitive button layouts for the MAME2014-libretro and MAME2016-libretro cores. sergiobenrocha2 also merged in endrift’s upstream changes from mGBA v0.6.0.
  • kivutar made a lot of improvements to the lutro-platformer core, while RobLoach added Love support to it.
  • markwkidd did a variety of quality-of-life improvements for MAME2003-libretro, including adding a catver.ini file that helps with categories and fixing the Makefile to compile in the MIPS engine for x86, which should fix Killer Instinct on x86 (that is, KI is still broken on x86_64 and ARM) with this core. He also added DAT and catver.ini for MAME2000-libretro and submitted a fix from RetroPie user poi to MAME2010-libretro to fix Xevious and Bosconian.
  • TylerLoch (with some cleanup help from radius) added a SuperFX chip 20 MHz overclock option (i.e., instead of starting at 40 Mhz) for snes9x-libretro.
  • OpenLara has been updated to the latest version by twinaphex. It should now have an inventory screen and a working healthbar.
  • andwn fixed a silly issue with NXEngine libretro whereby during the last-boss fight with Misery, her sprite would change to that of a large block.
  • SpiralBrad backported from upstream the ability to automatically set the BIOS time in Beetle Saturn based on the host system’s clock, which is particularly useful for the real-time holiday functionality in Christmas NiGHTS.
  • j-selby continued improving the already impressively complete Citra Libretro port to include touchscreen emulation using the mouse and optional right analog stick among other improvements.

Source: libretro blog post