One of the very few, and still active, Switch emulators, Citron, has seen a recent updates as of a few hours ago.

For those on the unknown, since Nintendo took down both Yuzu through a DMCA lawsuit, and Ryujinx by reaching an alleged agreement with the main developer, Switch emulation has been shaky, to say the least, jumping back and forth between many, many forks, and the few ones that did manage to achieve a decent amount of progress and further development, eventually reached a halt, be it due to the lack of interest from the developers that picked up the project, or due to online scene drama, which is a known occurrence in certain emulator scenes.

Since then, only three main ones have been growing steadily, Ryubing, a fork and continuation of Ryujinx, and both Citron and Eden, which are both based on Yuzu, with Eden being a separation of Citron devs due to some drama months ago to make their own Switch emulator.

Citron has certainly seen a frequent update schedule, and the developers that remained after the Citron/Eden separation have continued work to bring forth bugfixes, compatibility improvements as well as performance updates, and this latest v0.7 update aims to be an important one, with many rewrites and implementations.

Here's the main changelog for the updated v0.7 of Citron:

Major Implementations:​

• Complete Vulkan rendering pipeline overhaul
• Advanced ZBC table management with GPU memory integration
• Enhanced Nintendo SDK crash detection and recovery system
• Optimized descriptor update queue performance
• Adaptive timeout and auto-disable for Vulkan turbo mode Missing kernel event handle and service function implementations
• ISBERD instruction implementation in shader recompiler
• QueryPointerBufferSize service with proper IPC buffer calculation
• Network stability improvements for HDR multiplayer
• Cross-platform compilation fixes (Linux/Android/Windows)
• Authentication system integration for beta testing
• Complete rewrite of core emulation components

Important Notes:​

• FSR2 IMPLEMENTATION STATUS: The FSR2 (FidelityFX Super Resolution 2) implementation is currently HALF-BAKED and experimental. Users should expect:
• Visual artifacts and rendering glitches
• Inconsistent frame rate improvements
• Potential crashes or instability
• Memory management issues
• Compatibility problems with certain games

This feature is provided as-is for testing purposes only. Use at your own risk.

Expected Bugs:​

As this is a complete rewrite, users should anticipate:

• Game compatibility regressions
• Performance inconsistencies
• UI/UX issues
• Platform-specific bugs
• Memory leaks in certain scenarios
• Audio synchronization problems

People interested can download and test out this newest update, and see how well it fares compared to its v0.6, or even against other still developed Switch emulators as well.

Source
Citron's private Git repository

 

[Bladexdsl]

Tomorrow's news: Nintendo wins court case against citrons Android launch.

jokes aside it's only a matter of time

 

[fvig2001]

Cool that there's 3 main ones being updated. I do hope they end up supporting NSZ in the future as I like using that format for archiving my dumps.

 

[LightBeam]

Why does Ryubing also require people to verify in their discord if they want help ? I don't understand the requirement.

Even on the 3DS scene I've seen some drama, I don't remember the details but there was something about azahar not supporting .3ds files because they were for piracy or something ? Because everyone knows that people use emulators to only play games they own and dumped themselves

 

[console]

That's very nice to know!

I used Ryubing (Ryujinx) for a long time to get useful, and I heard about Citron and Eden are (Yuzu) and never try both. I will try both when I have free time.


Also never let Nintendo company take all 3 emulators down! Nintendo better let 3 emulators alone! Boo boo then give middle fingers to Nintendo! Everyone can give to Nintendo. Shame on Nintendo for take down Yuzu and Ryujinx! Time to move on and make very tough and stronger to ignore Nintendo threat actions permanent!

 

[XRTerra]

FSR2 support is really nice, though to be honest I don't see how many people it'll benefit besides mayybe handheld PC users? I think even then the Steam Deck can run a lot of Switch games above native res, it's more CPU bound anyway.

Now built in frame gen support, perhaps OptiFG from Optiscaler would be great for everyone.

 

[Noctosphere]

With emulation, torrent, and such, it is NOT a game of cat and mice. It is indeed a hydra game.

 

[Larsenv]

with Eden being a separation of Citron devs due to some drama months ago to make their own Switch emulator​

I hate fragmentation

 

[SonyUSA]

Still barely runs anything on Tab S10 Ultra/series

 

[Deleted member 535703]

There are other 3DS emulators anyway.

I have such an undying brand loyalty to emulators that the death of Citra had a similar effect on me as the cultural effect of closing every Toys Я Us

 

[HarveyHouston]

EMULATION WILL NOT DIE.

 

[lwiz]

To be frank Eden > Citron > Ryubing. Just because using language far removed from metal isn't that great idea for creating accurate emulator and the main reason why Ryu is so slow compared to Yuzu and derivatives.

 

[DeadSkullzJr]

Why does Ryubing also require people to verify in their discord if they want help ? I don't understand the requirement.

Even on the 3DS scene I've seen some drama, I don't remember the details but there was something about azahar not supporting .3ds files because they were for piracy or something ? Because everyone knows that people use emulators to only play games they own and dumped themselves

I'll be honest, the whole argument over the .3ds extension is stupid. By the same logic, literally every other game console with their respective software only has .nes, .sfc, .gba, etc. because of piracy. These extensions aren't even the problem. In the case of the 3DS, the only problem is encryption of the ROM image, since the only way to decrypt the ROM is by using the algorithm(s) Nintendo supplied with the systems. Obviously that leads to a legal issue if that kind of thing is baked into an emulator. What I don't get is why this entire time, nobody considered just decrypting the contents using original hardware, before they get executed in an emulator to begin with? That way the emulator(s) don't have to contain that sort of code. Unless the algorithm was legally clean room reverse engineered, this is the only other obvious workaround.

"Oh but that's an extra hassle on the user." Boo fucking hoo, if you planned to misuse the resources for piracy, then suck it up and deal with it, otherwise, screw right the hell off. Not anyone else's fault if one is too lazy to use a few brain cells to achieve a specific goal. Emulation was intended to keep some form of the original hardware alive in some capacity, as well as making it possible to run your own preserved backups. Most people who do things more so the intended way don't have an issue going through the steps, because to even get to the point of dumping ROM images and such, you need some level of knowledge about them, let alone knowledge on how to dump the software to begin with. So unless someone is a complete moron who has power trip issues mentally, wanting to reap all the rewards with zero effort, I don't see how it's a problem. In my opinion, this actually incentivizes being more involved with the systems, and the software you buy anyways.

The scene has basically shot itself in the foot so carelessly anymore, it's laughable.

 

[AkiraKurusu]

FSR2 IMPLEMENTATION STATUS: The FSR2 (FidelityFX Super Resolution 2) implementation is currently HALF-BAKED and experimental.

The heck does this mean? Never heard of whatever this is before.

 

[linuxares]

The heck does this mean? Never heard of whatever this is before.

Yuzu used fsr1. So they now try with fsr2

 

[Keylogger]

Ryubing > Eden > Citron

À lot of stuttering with Ryubing/Ryujinx for me
0 stuttering with all others

 

[retrospect]

Yeah they did a Discord purge for people that didn't verify their setup and console info with them.
Shady shit, dunno why DRM should be something in emulators in this day and age, but here we are, as if Nintendo's gonna care if they verify which user plays which games on an emulator that they didn't make.

Which team was this?

 

[SDA]

I have a feeling Nintendo's gonna take this one down too, not now, but later.

It can be confused to 3DS emulator, lol!

Citra doesn't exist anymore. We have Azahar now.

 

[LokeYourLord]

Cool that there's 3 main ones being updated. I do hope they end up supporting NSZ in the future as I like using that format for archiving my dumps.

I had requested this... over a year ago (even longer actually, I think, because it was for the original Yuzu and RyujiNX emulators). The responses were something along the lines of, and I kid you not, anything between simply "Fuck off" to outright hostility with instructions on how I should go hang myself.

The response hostility about NSZ was so strong, that I couldn't fathom these were the same people contributing to the Emulator I was using, I really thought these must've been some edgecase freaks. Turns out, the "edgecase freaks" basically were & are just the Emulator devs, pretty much all of them. This is more so evident now that you can see what kind of ideological crap they want to cram down our throats just beginning with the colouring of their logos (Ryubing is a prime example here).

Finally though, someone on the somewhat more sane Emulator team (Yuzu, if only by a bit), begrudingly explained that there's no point in implementing it because NSZ serves mainly as a means for compression, something that isn't really necessary on Rigs used for emulation. There was also some technical aspect to it, something along the lines of NSZ, the way it is compressed and thus read back into memory, being extremely inefficient on normal x86/x64 rigs due to the nature of the compression algorithm being made specifically for the Switch's chipset, and thus it would take a lot of time to decompress the file in real time and then load it into memory for the Emulator.

Point in case: Don't keep your hopes up, likely won't happen since you can easily convert between NSZ to NSP or XCI anyways.

 

[Chrisssj2]

I had requested this... over a year ago (even longer actually, I think, because it was for the original Yuzu and RyujiNX emulators). The responses were something along the lines of, and I kid you not, anything between simply "Fuck off" to outright hostility with instructions on how I should go hang myself.

The response hostility about NSZ was so strong, that I couldn't fathom these were the same people contributing to the Emulator I was using, I really thought these must've been some edgecase freaks. Turns out, the "edgecase freaks" basically were & are just the Emulator devs, pretty much all of them. This is more so evident now that you can see what kind of ideological crap they want to cram down our throats just beginning with the colouring of their logos (Ryubing is a prime example here).

Finally though, someone on the somewhat more sane Emulator team (Yuzu, if only by a bit), begrudingly explained that there's no point in implementing it because NSZ serves mainly as a means for compression, something that isn't really necessary on Rigs used for emulation. There was also some technical aspect to it, something along the lines of NSZ, the way it is compressed and thus read back into memory, being extremely inefficient on normal x86/x64 rigs due to the nature of the compression algorithm being made specifically for the Switch's chipset, and thus it would take a lot of time to decompress the file in real time and then load it into memory for the Emulator.

Point in case: Don't keep your hopes up, likely won't happen since you can easily convert between NSZ to NSP or XCI anyways.

I hope they add nsz too. i use nsz only too

 

[captainpringles]

Nice, hopefully they'll keep evading Nintendo's predatory lawyers.