Homebrew RetroArch Wii - Issue with versions later then 1.5.0

ShadowtearX

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Hey.

I've been updating RetroArch here and there and one day noticed that cores started having issue running games, mainly audio related.
The last properly version i found was v1.5.0, any version past that (1.6.0 and up) seems to cause lag for me in SNES/mgba ect cores.

Is this just me or does everyone has this issue?

PS. i did try out a few weeks back, and using older cores of MGBA from 1.5.0 in 1.6.x ect does solve the problem, so i would assume the issue is in the cores.
 
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Gizametalman

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I've updated my Retroarch wii to its latest version and it loads a black screen, soon after it returns me to the Homebrew Channel.
Also, I've noticed sound issues with CPS2 cores.
CPS2 Games sounds as if you were trying to output Stereo Sound in a Mono Stereo. It just sounds... bad.
 

ZeroLives

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I know it's been a few months since the last post in this thread, but I think I (kinda) know why retroarch wii has audio stuttering and lags ever since 1.5.0.

I've been having the same problem for a while now, ever since I tried to make my Wii into an emulation system. When I fist downloaded retroarch wii, it lagged and stuttered, so I tried to get to the root of the problem. I changed all of the video and audio settings but it didn't solve anything, so I gave up. Recently I decided to try again but once again I had no luck. Searching on the internet I found this thread which confirmed that I wasn't the only one who was having issues with this, however also found proof that not everyone had this problem. So thinking about it I started to wonder whether this had something to do with the fact that I have a PAL Wii but use NTSC roms for emulation, as in the retroarch settings the screen refresh rate was stuck at 50Hz every time I restarted retroarch. I also saw that enabling threaded video while the content was running (not before as it would cause retroarch to crash upon loading a rom) would help with tgis issue but would also cause it to crash at times as threaded video implementation on retroarch wii is unstable. I knew threaded video also had something to do with the refresh rate, so my suspicions increased.

To confirm my suspicions I loaded the Snes9x core on retroarch 1.7.1 (stable build) and loaded my only PAL SNES rom: Parodius - Non Sense Fantasy, which only came out in Japan and Europe. And, sure enough, it worked perfectly; no audio stuttering or slowdown. So I proceeded to change the settings of my wii under the option "TV Type" to 60Hz (480i). This caused it all to be slightly blurrier an some artifacts (such as the letters in the retroarch menu having some blue and yellow flashes sometimes) and also caused retroarch with the resolution set to 640x480 to be slightly cut off vertically in my TV (although this may be due to my tv being PAL). However it also made retroarch run perfectly.

From my experiments with the display fps setting ebabled in retroarch, I think that retroarch detects the mode your Wii is running in and caps the framerate at that. So if you have a Wii running in PAL 50Hz mode, the framerate will be capped at 50 fps which will make NTSC games which run at 60 fps unplayable but PAL games which run at 50 fps will run perfectly.

So to solve your issue, CoolKill3r, and supposing your wii is in PAL 50Hz (576i) mode, try changing it to NTSC 60Hz (480i). This is by no means a permanent solution, as we know from retroarch wii 1.5.x that retroarch can run perfectly independently of your Wii's settings. So the questions here are: Can this be reverted to how it worked in retroarch wii 1.5.x? Am I doing something wrong? Will this ever be fixed?

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

By the way, I don't have the component cables so I haven't tried the EDTV/HDTV (480p) mode
 

ShadowtearX

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I know it's been a few months since the last post in this thread, but I think I (kinda) know why retroarch wii has audio stuttering and lags ever since 1.5.0.

I've been having the same problem for a while now, ever since I tried to make my Wii into an emulation system. When I fist downloaded retroarch wii, it lagged and stuttered, so I tried to get to the root of the problem. I changed all of the video and audio settings but it didn't solve anything, so I gave up. Recently I decided to try again but once again I had no luck. Searching on the internet I found this thread which confirmed that I wasn't the only one who was having issues with this, however also found proof that not everyone had this problem. So thinking about it I started to wonder whether this had something to do with the fact that I have a PAL Wii but use NTSC roms for emulation, as in the retroarch settings the screen refresh rate was stuck at 50Hz every time I restarted retroarch. I also saw that enabling threaded video while the content was running (not before as it would cause retroarch to crash upon loading a rom) would help with tgis issue but would also cause it to crash at times as threaded video implementation on retroarch wii is unstable. I knew threaded video also had something to do with the refresh rate, so my suspicions increased.

To confirm my suspicions I loaded the Snes9x core on retroarch 1.7.1 (stable build) and loaded my only PAL SNES rom: Parodius - Non Sense Fantasy, which only came out in Japan and Europe. And, sure enough, it worked perfectly; no audio stuttering or slowdown. So I proceeded to change the settings of my wii under the option "TV Type" to 60Hz (480i). This caused it all to be slightly blurrier an some artifacts (such as the letters in the retroarch menu having some blue and yellow flashes sometimes) and also caused retroarch with the resolution set to 640x480 to be slightly cut off vertically in my TV (although this may be due to my tv being PAL). However it also made retroarch run perfectly.

From my experiments with the display fps setting ebabled in retroarch, I think that retroarch detects the mode your Wii is running in and caps the framerate at that. So if you have a Wii running in PAL 50Hz mode, the framerate will be capped at 50 fps which will make NTSC games which run at 60 fps unplayable but PAL games which run at 50 fps will run perfectly.

So to solve your issue, CoolKill3r, and supposing your wii is in PAL 50Hz (576i) mode, try changing it to NTSC 60Hz (480i). This is by no means a permanent solution, as we know from retroarch wii 1.5.x that retroarch can run perfectly independently of your Wii's settings. So the questions here are: Can this be reverted to how it worked in retroarch wii 1.5.x? Am I doing something wrong? Will this ever be fixed?

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

By the way, I don't have the component cables so I haven't tried the EDTV/HDTV (480p) mode

Hey, sorry for the late reply, i've been off from the site.

I'm quite inpressed by your findings and testings, because i indeed use a PAL system and am running NTSC games on it.
The only issue with my tv is that it does not support 60hz (as i got a old ass fat tv, #cheapass) so i am not sure if it'll show colors when selected.

Regardless, i will try it later on and confirm what you said.
As for the issue, this would indeed be a good thing to mention to one of the devs that are working on RetroArch, since out of earlier versions we can see its possible.

Thanks for your well explained message on this issue!
 

ZeroLives

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Hey, sorry for the late reply, i've been off from the site.
Don't worry about it. To be honest I tried the next couple of Retroarch Wii releases to see if it was fixed (up to 1.7.2 I think) but then I gave up on it for a while and started to do other stuff, and eventually I kinda forgot about this issue until I saw your post.

I'm quite inpressed by your findings and testings, because i indeed use a PAL system and am running NTSC games on it.
Well, it was really only a coincidence that I happened to have a PAL rom and tried it out, but at least it told me more or less what the issue could be. Before that I was completely stumped because it seemed like no one was having this issue with retroarch but me. It was somewhat of a relief to find this thread and know I wasn't the only one. I think that there's not a whole lot of people out there trying to emulate NTSC roms on a PAL Wii and that's why I found practically nothing on the matter.

The only issue with my tv is that it does not support 60hz (as i got a old ass fat tv, #cheapass) so i am not sure if it'll show colors when selected.
Yeah well I don't really understand that much about 60Hz and 50Hz and TVs, but as I said in my previous post, setting my Wii to 60Hz mode made evrything blurrier (and that's saying something because composite imput and modern TVs don't get along very well and all's blurry as well in 50Hz mode) and caused some artifacts to appear. It's because of this that I don't want to set my Wii to 60Hz mode, nor do I want to use PAL roms not every game was released in PAL territories. The point is that one shouldn't need to set their Wii to 60Hz mode to emulate the roms they want to emulate, and previous versions of retroarch Wii are the proof of it.

Regardless, i will try it later on and confirm what you said.
As for the issue, this would indeed be a good thing to mention to one of the devs that are working on RetroArch, since out of earlier versions we can see its possible.
I'm going to test the latest version of retroarch just in case. I did think about telling the devs but as I said before I ended up forgetting about it.

Edit:
As expected the issue persists in both retroarch Wii 1.7.3 stable and today's nightly.
 
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