Homebrew RetroArch Switch

[kevinbrew]

Because runahead was never considered to begin with on Switch?

Shame coz its a good feature to have. but it does work on some cores

 

[notimp]

There are reports that pi4 runs dreamcast games fullspeed. I highly doubt that as well.

Most likely cause currently - people who have no idea what they are talking about, talk about stuff.

(Maybe the feature was disabled in a certain build, someone flipped a switch that did nothing and championed themselves for it. Just as one possibility.)

The other possibility would be, that porting cores to the PI was done by people making sure all featuresets work - but I dont really believe that the Pi 4 would run run ahead for gba titles at a reasonable speed. I could be wrong. How sure are you, that it actually does.

 

[SeongGino]

There are reports that pi4 runs dreamcast games fullspeed. I highly doubt that as well.

Most likely cause currently - people who have no idea what they are talking about, talk about stuff.

(Maybe the feature was disabled in a certain build, someone flipped a switch that did nothing and championed themselves for it. Just as one possibility.)

The other possibility would be, that porting cores to the PI was done by people making sure all featuresets work - but I dont really believe that the Pi 4 would run run ahead for gba titles at a reasonable speed. I could be wrong.

I realize this is getting off-topic so bear with me, and I can't speak for Dreamcast on the platform, but the Pi 4's CPU is at least in the ballpark of the Tegra X1's cores at base (2ghz) clocks. And GBA cores are super light on resources (the most accurate of which is made to run on a N3DS and PS Vita for frick's sake). Also consider that the RPi family has full official support from a dedicated team(s, when considering other devs like in the case of RetroPie) to maintain otherwise-upstream-compliant Linux cores for whatever the Pi is able to run. Therefore, it's far from unreasonable to say that it's capable of runahead on something like mGBA.

A reminder that even the Xbox is capable of runahead.

Compared to Switch anyways, where we don't even have the benefits of a stable filesystem in some cases (coughExFATcough) let alone fleshed out SDKs to make RetroArch work to its fullest potential - all you need to look at is Mupen and PPSSPP to see what I'm talking about (which work, but not without Switch-exclusive hitches where other platforms don't have these issues).

In my personal and completely unprofessional opinion though, runahead ruins the authenticity of games so I'd rather not deal with the added overhead on a mobile device for the sake of chopping off single frames of perceived input latency.

 

[kevinbrew]

There are reports that pi4 runs dreamcast games fullspeed. I highly doubt that as well.

Most likely cause currently - people who have no idea what they are talking about, talk about stuff.

(Maybe the feature was disabled in a certain build, someone flipped a switch that did nothing and championed themselves for it. Just as one possibility.)

The other possibility would be, that porting cores to the PI was done by people making sure all featuresets work - but I dont really believe that the Pi 4 would run run ahead for gba titles at a reasonable speed. I could be wrong. How sure are you, that it actually does.

i have just tried my pi 3 and run ahead works on gba. there is a setting that gets rid of the glitched up sound and its called "run ahead use second instance". and this is not an a available option on the switch. if it had this setting gba would work

 

[notimp]

Interesting. Thank you for testing.

Runahead on other systems in RA usually was very performance heavy - as in not a thing for ARM based platforms at all. I wonder what changed...

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

I realize this is getting off-topic so bear with me, and I can't speak for Dreamcast on the platform, but the Pi 4's CPU is at least in the ballpark of the Tegra X1's cores at base (2ghz) clocks. And GBA cores are super light on resources (the most accurate of which is made to run on a N3DS and PS Vita for frick's sake). Also consider that the RPi family has full official support from a dedicated team(s, when considering other devs like in the case of RetroPie) to maintain otherwise-upstream-compliant Linux cores for whatever the Pi is able to run. Therefore, it's far from unreasonable to say that it's capable of runahead on something like mGBA.

A reminder that even the Xbox is capable of runahead.

Compared to Switch anyways, where we don't even have the benefits of a stable filesystem in some cases (coughExFATcough) let alone fleshed out SDKs to make RetroArch work to its fullest potential - all you need to look at is Mupen and PPSSPP to see what I'm talking about (which work, but not without Switch-exclusive hitches where other platforms don't have these issues).

In my personal and completely unprofessional opinion though, runahead ruins the authenticity of games so I'd rather not deal with the added overhead on a mobile device for the sake of chopping off single frames of perceived input latency.

Thank you, I see that individual cores were specifically improved for use with runahead. Have to retest on a few arm based systems.

 

[kevinbrew]

Interesting. Thank you for testing.

Runahead on other systems in RA usually was very performance heavy - as in not a thing for ARM based platforms at all. I wonder what changed...

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


Thank you, I see that individual cores were specifically improved for use with runahead. Have to retest on a few arm based systems.

let me know how you get on

 

[notimp]

i have just tried my pi 3 and run ahead works on gba. there is a setting that gets rid of the glitched up sound and its called "run ahead use second instance". and this is not an a available option on the switch. if it had this setting gba would work

If you havent played with it - try Hard GPU sync and Frame delay first.
see: https://forums.launchbox-app.com/topic/42744-how-do-i-fix-input-lag-on-controller/

Just played with it on Retroarch on a PS Classic - and it worked wonders.

(Less demanding PSX games -7(ms), more demanding PSX games -5(ms).)

Just dont forget that you have it enabled.

PS: You dont need vsync to be enabled for it to work (subjectively speaking).

edit: Run ahead on PCSXRearmed on a PS Classic crashes as well. (Probably to be expected... Have to try GBA and less demanding cores next (probably tomorrow)).

edit2: Runahead still would be more beneficial.

Math:
60 fps -> 1 frame = 16 ms
30 fps -> 1 frame = 33 ms
-

Lag testing on PCSXRearmed on a PS Classic shows 2 frames of lag (on Final Fantasy 8. )
Lag testing according to the folks at libretro. Use a keyboard. Press P (which pauses the game), press and hold a direction button (f.e. in a menu), advance frame by frame with the k key. Stop on the first frame the direction input takes.

Times k key pressed minus 1 = lag in frames.
-

edit: See also:

(read video description, video not made by me)

 

[kevinbrew]

If you havent played with it - try Hard GPU sync and Frame delay first.
see: https://forums.launchbox-app.com/topic/42744-how-do-i-fix-input-lag-on-controller/

Just played with it on Retroarch on a PS Classic - and it worked wonders.

(Less demanding PSX games -7(ms), more demanding PSX games -5(ms).)

Just dont forget that you have it enabled.

PS: You dont need vsync to be enabled for it to work (subjectively speaking).

edit: Run ahead on PCSXRearmed on a PS Classic crashes as well. (Probably to be expected... Have to try GBA and less demanding cores next (probably tomorrow)).

edit2: Runahead still would be more beneficial.

Math:
60 fps -> 1 frame = 16 ms
30 fps -> 1 frame = 33 ms
-

Lag testing on PCSXRearmed on a PS Classic shows 2 frames of lag (on Final Fantasy 8. )
Lag testing according to the folks at libretro. Use a keyboard. Press P (which pauses the game), press and hold a direction button (f.e. in a menu), advance frame by frame with the k key. Stop on the first frame the direction input takes.

Times k key pressed minus 1 = lag in frames.
-

edit: See also:

(read video description, video not made by me)

Thanks for the follow up. am playing with the hard GPU Sync but i cant get rid of the two frames of lag no matter what the frame delay number is. Tested on switch

 

[Josshy0125]

Disable both of the DRAM options. Restart RA and test it.

Can someone help me find this option? I've looked for days and cant find it.

Or does anyone else have any ideas on how to make the snow area on Majoras mask not stutter and slow down?

 

[stick267]

Can someone help me find this option? I've looked for days and cant find it.

Or does anyone else have any ideas on how to make the snow area on Majoras mask not stutter and slow down?

It’ll be full speed if you turn framebuffer emulation off. But the Lens of Truth won’t work.

 

[Josshy0125]

It’ll be full speed if you turn framebuffer emulation off. But the Lens of Truth won’t work.

Thanks! I actually just found rhe settings other guy was talking about and not only does it run full speed now, but the lens of truth works also. Thank you though!

 

[notimp]

Thanks for the follow up. am playing with the hard GPU Sync but i cant get rid of the two frames of lag no matter what the frame delay number is. Tested on switch

Yes me too (on a different system) if you look above, one frame is more than 15ms (the most you get out of the frame delay setting (theoretically)), so runahead would still be more beneficial.

Nevertheless, the setting reduces lag.
--

Doing the pause, and k thing to look at frame delay - removes the display lag from the occasion. In reality its still there though and might be the biggest source of latency, So if you are playing docked - use game mode, stuff like that.

On 5ms lag reduction through frame delay I dont feel any difference, on 7ms I subjectively do.

That said, my OLED adds 22ms even in game mode (96ms in a non game mode), and 2 frames on a 60fps game is still 33ms. So minimal lag in that instance would still be 55ms. (88ms in case the game tested lagging 2 frames would be a 30fps game.)

Now - some of this comes from your controller. If you are using a wireless one - see: https://old.reddit.com/r/NintendoSw..._did_a_simple_input_lag_test_with_the_8bitdo/

so another 10-30 ms of the figure above might be uncombatable 'in emulation'. Same withe the display lag your TV adds.

Just to give you a frame of reference. Where the 5-15ms delay reduction of frame delay stands in comparison to the entire chain.

Turning off vsync helps as well. Theoretically and in subjective testing yesterday.

 

[kevinbrew]

Yes me too (on a different system) if you look above, one frame is more than 15ms (the most you get out of the frame delay setting (theoretically)), so runahead would still be more beneficial.

Nevertheless, the setting reduces lag.
--

Doing the pause, and k thing to look at frame delay - removes the display lag from the occasion. In reality its still there though and might be the biggest source of latency, So if you are playing docked - use game mode, stuff like that.

On 5ms lag reduction through frame delay I dont feel any difference, on 7ms I subjectively do.

That said, my OLED adds 22ms even in game mode (96ms in a non game mode), and 2 frames on a 60fps game is still 33ms. So minimal lag in that instance would still be 55ms. (88ms in case the game tested lagging 2 frames would be a 30fps game.)

Now - some of this comes from your controller. If you are using a wireless one - see: https://old.reddit.com/r/NintendoSw..._did_a_simple_input_lag_test_with_the_8bitdo/

so another 10-30 ms of the figure above might be uncombatable 'in emulation'. Same withe the display lag your TV adds.

Just to give you a frame of reference. Where the 5-15ms delay reduction of frame delay stands in comparison to the entire chain.

Turning off vsync helps as well. Theoretically and in subjective testing yesterday.

wow you really have gone deep into the matter, thankyou much apreciated.
ive taken what you said into consideration.
The runahead feature is not working as well as i thought on pi 3 but on pi 4 someone done a test https://www.libretro.com/index.php/retroarch-runahead-and-raspberry-pi-4-the-results-are-in/
so the run ahead is not that cpu heavy. but these are the less demanding cores.
note that the 2 instances is not an option on the switch as its not been implemented

 

[Dabman]

Hei. I can not run any Mame game.
I have zip archive (inside alot .bin files) after loading game RA kicked me to "gallery".

I try all Mame cores, same result.
My game library

 

[ShadowOne333]

Thanks! I actually just found rhe settings other guy was talking about and not only does it run full speed now, but the lens of truth works also. Thank you though!

Glad it's working great now

 

[Dichotomy754]

All this talk about the run ahead setting made me realize that was what's been making my n64 games run like garbage. Disabled and now I'm finally running full speed, I am a happy camper.

 

[Josshy0125]

Glad it's working great now

Thank you! You da man!

 

[ploggy]

Hmm, I dont know if I'm doing something wrong but I can get it to work :/
I patched the Rom, but cant seem to set p2 controls to p1.

Ok I was wrong it DOES work
You have set "User 2 Device index" in User 2 Binds to "Switch Controller (#1)" and make sure left/right on p2's left analog stick is set to left/right on p1's right analog stick.

 

[EmulateLife]

Hei. I can not run any Mame game.
I have zip archive (inside alot .bin files) after loading game RA kicked me to "gallery".

I try all Mame cores, same result.
My game library

Tekken Tag Tournament works on Switch?

Edit: No, it's doesn't. This is why you're having problems you need MAME 2003 (MAME 0.78) roms. You can't just use any roms you need them to match the version of MAME.

 

[Dichotomy754]

Ok I was wrong it DOES work
You have set "User 2 Device index" in User 2 Binds to "Switch Controller (#1)" and make sure left/right on p2's left analog stick is set to left/right on p1's right analog stick.

Yup, working here too. It's pretty cool. Don't forget to unmap the C keys and map C- to something else though (I went with X). That way it doesn't zoom when you tilt up or down and you can still zoom when you need to (flying cap etc.)