Homebrew Retroarch Emulation Thread (Nightly Builds Included)

[the_randomizer]

What's the best Snes core to use on N3DS/2DS XL systems? Tried 2005 and 2005 Plus and they seemed to struggle even on non special chip games like Final Fantasy VI and Chrono Trigger. Snes VC injection for FF6 has its own share of issues (frame drops when big spell animations are on screen). Snes9x 2002 uses Snes9x 1.36, which has odd audio quirks.

 

[Savior-X]

What's the best Snes core to use on N3DS/2DS XL systems? Tried 2005 and 2005 Plus and they seemed to struggle even on non special chip games like Final Fantasy VI and Chrono Trigger. Snes VC injection for FF6 has its own share of issues (frame drops when big spell animations are on screen). Snes9x 2002 uses Snes9x 1.36, which has odd audio quirks.

2ds is too slow for most retroarch cores. Use snes9x_3ds by bubble2k16. Runs most stuff fullspeed.

 

[FateForWindows]

2ds is too slow for most retroarch cores. Use snes9x_3ds by bubble2k16. Runs most stuff fullspeed.

He was implying N2DS, which has the same specs as the N3DS minus the 3D.

SNES9X 2005 is decent and has a few quirks in comparison to SNES9X for 3DS but overall the latter has better performance plus some extra settings.

Hello, I have a question~ I can't seem to find the frameskip or frame dupe options. They're supposed to be in the core settings but they're not there. What am I missing? Also, my menu looks different from everything I see online. What's the issue?

You're looking at the wrong settings menu. As stated earlier, you need to go into the quick menu while in-game. Also, this reason why the menu looks different is because of the limitations of the 3DS combined with the developer's need to ensure the XMB menu won't cause lag in-game.

 

[Poison_Nova]

@FateForWindows @xianx_mf Thank you! I finally found them~ FFT runs so much better now, even with sound.

 

[the_randomizer]

2ds is too slow for most retroarch cores. Use snes9x_3ds by bubble2k16. Runs most stuff fullspeed.

Sorry, my fault for not specifying, N2DS XL has the same 804 MHz ARM11 CPU, Genesis Plus GX, Nestopia, Gambatte, etc all run smooth as butter. Snes is the tricky one for the time being, but I firmly believe will get even better. S-SMP is the quirky portion for now. I can use BlargSnes also if need be.

 

[FateForWindows]

@FateForWindows @xianx_mf Thank you! I finally found them~ FFT runs so much better now, even with sound.

Audio Mute entirely doesn't actually affect framerate, Audio Sync does. It means the difference between 45 and 60 FPS in games like Final Fantasy Origins. Sadly it also causes some bad audio crackling and Final Fantasy 2 will still lag on the overworld.

 

[Poison_Nova]

Audio Mute entirely doesn't actually affect framerate, Audio Sync does. It means the difference between 45 and 60 FPS in games like Final Fantasy Origins. Sadly it also causes some bad audio crackling and Final Fantasy 2 will still lag on the overworld.

Final Fantasy Tactics is still lagging too sometimes, probably bc there's so much going on onscreen at all times. But with a frameskip of 1 or 2 one can play pretty smoothly. And if you enable the sound interpolation and maybe reverb, then the crackling isn't too bad, if it's not too loud ^^

 

[Kurt91]

Okay, so now that I've got the game working (I took a few days for the new Metroid game), I want to see if I can iron out the last bit for Grandia. For anyone who hasn't played it, it's an isometric RPG with simple 3D environments and sprite characters. It doesn't seem like it should be too difficult of a game for the emulator, but it seems to have some quirks.

First thing I did was the usual stuff. Turned off Audio Sync to try and get a bit better of a frame rate. It's playable at this point, but the cutscenes are a bit weird because of it. If the audio finishes before the text display does, it will restart the current audio clip. I think that if I can get the frame rate up just a touch more, then the problem shouldn't come up as often since the text is progressing faster.

Since the post above mine says that Audio Reverb and Sound Interpolation should help with crackling, I turned both of those on, with Interpolation set to simple. It doesn't seem to hurt speed, so why not? Another earlier post stated that EBOOT versions for the PSP will run slightly faster, so I turned my ISO into an EBOOT for that reason.

Now, here's the part that gets me. This game seems to tie the text display to the frames. If I turn on frame-skip at all to try and get a bit more speed out of the game, it completely screws up the text windows. Text doesn't display correctly, often missing letters or displaying the wrong ones. There doesn't seem to be a setting to adjust how the text is displayed (it goes by letter with no setting for by word or all at once), so if I want to be able to read anything at all, which is important for an RPG, I'm not going to be able to fiddle with the frame-skip option.

Are there any other speed-up settings that I can mess with to try and get that last little bit?

 

[FateForWindows]

You could turn VSync off, which causes some extra screen tearing.

 

[the_randomizer]

Snes9x 2005 Plus is broken in 1.6.7 and its nightly builds. They run less than full speed, I've reported this and even made video recordings of it, but it seems this is exclusive to only my end. The difference between 2005 and 2005 Plus is the latter of the two uses Snes9x 1.52's audio core, resulting in accurate sound. Maybe the N3DS can't handle Blargg's sound core. If that's the case, either something in the main Snes9x libretro needs to be looked at, to see where the regression lies.

 

[manxbox]

when the gpsp dynarec will be fixed in n3ds?

 

[Idaho]

Hello there, I've recently took care to update my n3DS with the latest hack and swtiched to b9s and I was wondering if the Neo-Geo emulation has improved since last year? Can we play Metal-Slug without having to use weird romhacks or is it still a hasle?

I'd be glad to have an answer, delving the topic doesn't seem very friendly and I don't know if the main post is still being updated :/

 

[MrHuu]

Hello there, I've recently took care to update my n3DS with the latest hack and swtiched to b9s and I was wondering if the Neo-Geo emulation has improved since last year? Can we play Metal-Slug without having to use weird romhacks or is it still a hasle?

I'd be glad to have an answer, delving the topic doesn't seem very friendly and I don't know if the main post is still being updated :/

I've been using the full set of Metal-Slug games from the FBA v0.2.97.39 romset for a while now without issues.
The FBA-Reference set can be found on the Internet Archive.

For best compatibility only use roms from this set (or newer, e.g. v0.2.97.42).

And no, the main post isn't updated for ages and is still aimed at v1.3.x and older.

 

[Walo]

Would you guys recommend the latest nightly or just to go with the latest stable build? I always hear that one should just go for the nightly but dunno.

 

[Amaljaa]

Would you guys recommend the latest nightly or just to go with the latest stable build? I always hear that one should just go for the nightly but dunno.

nightly

it really rarely, if ever, breaks anything. if it does just go back to stable but i've never had an issue
¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[FateForWindows]

Would you guys recommend the latest nightly or just to go with the latest stable build? I always hear that one should just go for the nightly but dunno.

Nightly, mostly because of pcsx-rearmed.

 

[the_randomizer]

Nightly, mostly because of pcsx-rearmed.

What about PCSX-reARMed?

 

[FateForWindows]

What about PCSX-reARMed?

It's working in the nightlies again (apparently the bug was due to aliaspider misinterpreting the meaning of a compile-time option).

 

[Kurt91]

So, anything on gpsp freezing? I never had it come up, and it turns out that I happened to be playing one of the only games that didn't have that problem by sheer coincidence all this time. Finally got around to playing Pokemon Emerald, and the emulator locked up so hard that it crashed the entire N3DS and I had to completely turn it off and back on.

I mean, holy hell, is this what you guys have been dealing with? Should have just stuck to playing Metroid Fusion. Can't get the new mGBA to work (locks up on "Loading...") and I've been wanting to play all of the Pokemon games in order, with the PC tools to transfer my collection between games.

 

[FateForWindows]

So, anything on gpsp freezing? I never had it come up, and it turns out that I happened to be playing one of the only games that didn't have that problem by sheer coincidence all this time. Finally got around to playing Pokemon Emerald, and the emulator locked up so hard that it crashed the entire N3DS and I had to completely turn it off and back on.

I mean, holy hell, is this what you guys have been dealing with? Should have just stuck to playing Metroid Fusion. Can't get the new mGBA to work (locks up on "Loading...") and I've been wanting to play all of the Pokemon games in order, with the PC tools to transfer my collection between games.

Use the latest dev build.