Tag: emulation

Reicast Libretro: Updates 26-7-2018

Again news from the Libretro team for Reicast. See their blog for details.

 

Here is a listing of all the changes/fixes/improvements:

  • (Dreamcast/Compatibility) Eldorado Gate – Broken opening FMV fixed (link)
  • (Dreamcast/Compatibility) Demolition Racer now works (link)
  • (Dreamcast/Compatibility) Redline Racer – Graphics bugs fixed (link)
  • (Dreamcast/Compatibility) Fixed rendering issues with Tokyo Xtreme Racer games (link)
  • (Dreamcast/Compatibility) Conflict Zone – Modern War Strategy now works
  • (NAOMI/Compatibility) Metal Slug 6 now works without graphics bugs

 

Reicast OIT – Increased compatibility with AMD/Intel GPU drivers

AMD GPU owners on Windows/Linux and Intel HD users on Linux/Mesa should probably be able to use the Reicast OIT core now, as several GLSL compliance bugs have been fixed by now.

Note that Reicast OIT can still be very buggy for Intel HD users on Windows, and slow to boot. The renderer really lends itself better to discrete GPUs from AMD/NVidia.

 

Render to texture upscaling!

Previously, games which rendered to texture (such as Dead or Alive 2 or Crazy Taxi) would always output at 1 x native resolution. Now, you can set the upscaling factor. Games which render the screen to a texture should look much better as a result, provided your GPU is up to the task.

xBRZ Texture upscaling

This new setting allows you to upscale all the textures in a game up to 6 x their original resolution using the xBRZ texture filtering algorithm! See it in action with Shenmue in this video below:

Source

RPCS3 introduces high resolution rendering

RPCS3, the promising Playstation 3 (PS3) emulator, introduces high resolution rendering. What does that mean? That RPCS3 is producing a much nicer picture then the original PS3 could handle. This is achieved by using a much higher resolution which brings many more details of the texture and assets of the games to the light. Have a look at the below video to see the difference:

 

 

Check out their blog posts for further details on this exciting feature the RPCS3 team developed.

RetroArch 1.6.4 got just released

Wow, feels like RetroArch 1.6.3 was  just released the other day, the team behind it released today the next version 1.6.4 with quite a few interesting highlights:

  • Windows 98 SE/2000/Millennium Edition version – now with 29 cores (I will test this it out pretty soon and provide feedback on it)
  • RetroArch PlayStation3 version is getting nightlies
  • Citra/OpenLara/Dolphin cores can now be easily used
  • Deleting cores
  • Configuration changes

Also the cores got many updates; here was has changed since the last version:

  • r-type fixed Beetle NGP‘s longstanding bugs with big-endian architecture, which should allow that core to control properly on those architectures. He also fixed compilation of the atari800 and Hatari cores on Wii U and fixed some issues with the cap32 core on that platform.
  • Twinaphex and r5 continued overhauling Beetle PSX HW‘s OpenGL renderer, doing much behind-the-scenes work that isn’t particularly visible to end-users but should improve stability and lay the groundwork for future improvements.
  • Twinaphex also added MSVC2005 solutions for many cores, making them compatible with our Win98 port of RetroArch.
  • bparker fixed some memory and GL issues with the Craft Minecraft clone core, which should correct an issue where the core was crashing at launch for some people.
  • markwkidd backported C-based MIPS3 support to MAME2003, which gets Killer Instinct and Killer Instinct 2 working with this core. Without a MIPS dynarec, they’re too demanding for most ARM devices, unfortunately (Killer Instinct 1 is not quite full speed on my Shield ATV, while Killer Instinct 2 is pretty far from full speed; Raspberry Pi is, of course, not even close), but they should work fine on x86 and x86_64 devices.
  • Bounty hunter rtissera added CHD support to Beetle Saturn and Beetle PC Engine Fast – with plans to add support for this format to several other disc-based cores in the near future–and hooked up support for the Saturn’s 3D pad. He also fixed an issue with MAME 2003 with Midway DCS games that would lead to audio issues at set intervals. This should fix the sound in Mortal Kombat 1/2/3/Ultimate, NBA Jam, Total Carnage, etc. other games.
  • casdevel, another active bounty hunter, fixed mouse input in Desmume libretro.
  • albertofustinoni submitted changes for a variety of cores to make them compatible with his RetriX UWP libretro frontend, which is compatible with Windows 10, Windows Phone and Xbox One developer mode.
  • orbea committed some buildfixes for the early work-in-progress Basilisk2 core.
  • yoshisuga continued adding build targets for iOS ARM64 in various cores.
  • hunterk did the mind-numbing work of bisecting and correcting a regression in Snes9x Libretro that apparently broke the game Phalanx back in May.
  • psyke83 fixed a crash with Tyrquake that could happpen on Raspberry Pi-based devices (e..g. Retropie).
  • Citra / OpenLara / Dolphin will now work without having to explicitly enable ‘Shared Hardware Context’ in RetroArch.

Read their blog post here and grab the latest version from here.

 

Retroarch – How to add or play games?

Even though Retroarch is a really great frontend for emulators using libretro API, it can be a bit confusing for beginners to get started and play a game as it is not a simple File->Open as most people are used to from other (standalone) emulators. At least it was for me, until I figured it out. Hence a very quick tutorial on how to

Play a game instantly with Retroarch

Once you got Retroarch installed on your system (this might be worth another article) and started it up, you look at its frontend. By default this is XMB which looks similar to the Playstation 3 (PS3) interface with horizontal and vertical aligned menus. To load a game from your device, which needs to be supported by Retroarch obviously, go to

  • Main Menu
  • Load Content
  • / (3rd item, depends on the Operating system you are using (eg. Windows, Linux, OS X, …..)
  • Then browse to the directory where your game is located and select it
  • if the game is zipped, select Load Archive
  • If the filetype is not yet associated with a core, the you can select the core here. Give it a try, which one works best on your system. (If a core is already associated, the game starts immediately.)
  • Now the game should start

Load and scan your game library

Probably the preferred option of everyone is to scan the whole library and then easy select the games from each of the systems available. Including a nice boxart.

How to do this? Lets have a look.

Preparation: In my experience it works best, if you store all your roms within folders separate by systems: So have a SNES, NES, Gameboy, … folders with each of the games in it.

Steps to scan a folder:

  • Go to “Import content” (the + sign)
  • Scan Directory
  • Browse to the folder you like to scan.
  • Once in the folder, select “Scan This directory”
  • Depending on the number of roms within the directory to scan this can take quite some time…. Retroarch shows the progress in the bottom left corner.

Once finished, a new icon with the system(s) scanned shows up on the right hand side on the horizontal menu axis. Go there and select the game you like to play. Have fun.

Hope this helps some newcomer. Questions, comments or any feedback in general is very welcome.

 

Welcome to ClassicGaming@Home

A warm welcome to everybody finding this website about classic games.

Why another one? Good question: I enjoyed some hours playing Mario and various arcade games with my kids on various systems. Even showed them some older titles using Lakka.tv. I am collecting old consoles and got many of them. But with Lakka, I have to connect only a single computer instead of several consoles, so was playing around with it (and no original item can get damaged).

As I had some troubles with hardware recongnization I thought writing a tutorial helping others might help. Perhaps also a possibility to discuss other topics and learn something further. So here we go. Enjoy.

Regards,
Joe

PS. Migrating over from phpBB to WordPress which offers much more possibilities.