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RetroArch just got a facelift, in a brand new 1.8.5 update. The latest version of the emulator frontend offers a new menu option, stylized after the Nintendo Switch's "ozone" menu. For those of you used to the looks of the XMB (PS3) style, fear not, as you can revert back to that in the options, under settings>drivers. A major bug has also been fixed in this update--users who were previously unable to boot RetroArch on certain Chromebooks should now be able to without issue. In addition, many smaller bugfixes were made, along with better performance on Linux via OpenGL. Feel free to check out the official changelog below, or grab the new version from the source below.

1.8.5

• 3DS: Keep the bottom screen hidden on sleep/wakeup. When the 3DS wakes back up after being closed, the bottom screen needs to be reinitialized. Adding the condition here will cause the screen to be turned on or off based on the state of ctr_bottom_screen_enabled, as you’d expect
• ANDROID/CHROMEBOOK/CRASH: Fix Chromebook crashes (on x86 x64) when touching the screen
• BUGFIX: Prevent double input when using ‘return’ key (hardware) to close on-screen keyboard
• BUGFIX: Fix mouse capture hotkey not working
• BUGFIX: Avoid overflow when calculating multiplying performance counter
• BUGFIX: Retroarch overlay displaying “Game remap file loaded.” on the overlay instead of “Core remap file loaded.” when only a core remap file is present
• CHEEVOS/BUGFIX: Achievement triggers could cause Retroarch to Crash
• CHEEVOS: Don’t block Sameboy core because it only exposes some memory
• CHEEVOS: Support for extended Sega CD memory
• CHEEVOS: Show RetroAchievements Hash in content information list
• CHEEVOS: If the core says it’s exposing SYSTEM_RAM, give it the benefit of the doubt
• CHEEVOS: RetroAchievements rich presence for RA.org website/Discord
• CHEEVOS: Reset token when username or password changes
• CHEEVOS: Display measured progress on locked achievements
• CHEEVOS: Queue multiple popups
• CHEEVOS: Add delay retries to leaderboard submits
• CHEEVOS: Prevent buffer overflow when encountering an unknown macro
• CORE UPDATER: Prevent hang when fetching core list if HTTP transfer fails
• DISK CONTROL: Add disk labels to ‘disk inserted’ notifications
• EMSCRIPTEN: Recreate input event listeners properly
• FFMPEG CORE: Fix crash on seeking when using HW decoding in some cases
• LIBRETRO: Add disk control interface API extension
• LINUX: Avoid possible crash when running retroarch at startup
• LINUX/GLX: Fix threaded video crashes/instability because of GLX OML sync callbacks
• LOCALIZATION: Update French translation
• LOCALIZATION: Update Korean translation
• LOCALIZATION: Update Polish translation
• LOCALIZATION: Update Spanish translation
• LOCALIZATION: Update Portuguese Brazilian translation
• MENU: Add Menu Scroll Acceleration option
• MENU: Automatically select currently checked item when opening drop-down lists
• MENU: Fix smooth (vertical) line ticker scroll speed
• MENU: Don’t flush on override/remap messages
• MENU/DATETIME: Adds some new timedate styles that follow the DD/MM/YYYY format, found in several European countries
• MENU/DATETIME: Modifies the existing translation files in order to accommodate the new options that are now available
• MENU/DATETIME: Reorders the timedate view options based on a decreasing order of the quantity of information displayed, so that they are more convenient to switch around and easily categorized
• MENU/BUGFIX: Fix bug – if you were in XMB and you would set menu driver to RGUI, you could no longer go to the left or right tab
• MENU/MATERIALUI: Add option to remove navigation bar
• MENU/OZONE: Add DPI-based scaling
• MENU/OZONE: Add rudimentary pointer support
• MENU/OZONE: Add ‘Nord’ and ‘Gruvbox Dark’ themes
• MENU/OZONE/POINTER: Pointer can be used to switch between sidebar and entries list
• MENU/OZONE/POINTER: Pointer can be used to select sidebar and entries list items
• MENU/OZONE/POINTER: Both sidebar and entries list can be scrolled by dragging
• MENU/OZONE/POINTER: Clicking/pressing the header or footer produces a ‘cancel’ action
• MENU/OZONE/POINTER: Cursor focus follows mouse pointer from sidebar to entries list (and vice versa)
• MENU/OZONE/POINTER: In entries list, item under cursor is automatically selected (with some fudging to ensure this doesn’t break mouse wheel scrolling)
• MENU/OZONE/POINTER: In sidebar, item under cursor is not automatically selected (this is too jarring)
• MENU/RGUI: Add ‘Flux’ theme
• MENU/XMB: New color themes ‘Cube Purple’, ‘Family Red’, etc
• NETPLAY/MENU/BUGFIX: Fix Netplay Stateless Mode doesn’t save. Affects other netplay settings which can be overridden by commandline option
• ODROID GO ADVANCE: Rotation support
• NETPLAY/ROOMS/BUGFIX: Prevent out-of-bounds array indexing when displaying/selecting netplay rooms in menus
• SCANNER: Add ‘Arcade DAT Filter’ Option
• SCANNER: Add scanning Korea and Asia PS1 discs
• SCANNER: Add support for scanning PSP Korean
• VIDEO: Set hardware ‘Bilinear filtering’ off by default
• VIDEO/WIDGETS: Widgets are now menu-independent
• VIDEO/WIDGETS: Allow notifications to use full screen width when not displaying menu
• VIDEO/WIDGETS: DPI-based scaling
• VIDEO/WIDGETS: Fix volume widget scaling
• VIDEO/WIDGETS: Add independent widget scale override settings for fullscreen/windowed modes
• VIDEO/WIDGETS/BUGFIX: Prevent improper display of (old style) OSD text when widgets are enabled
• VIDEO/WIDGETS/THREADED/BUGFIX: Fix issue – corruption of menu widgets when running some cores (e.g. VICE) with threaded video enabled
• WIFI/CONNMANCTL: Display more characters from SSID

Source

 

[Issac]

• CHEEVOS: RetroAchievements rich presence for RA.org website/Discord
• CHEEVOS: Display measured progress on locked achievements

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Nice! There are something I've been interested in. And progress on locked achievements? I guess they've developed the achievement system some more then! It wasn't possible to have progress last time I was developing achievements

 

[Pipistrele]

Kinda neat, but I still wish they stuck to something more original and designed specifically with Retroarch quirks in mind, rather than jumping from one knock-off UI to another.

 

[the_randomizer]

probably because on most systems the retroarch cores perform worse than the alternatives unless the retroarch core is a near-exact port of the LATEST version of a good emulator- none of that snes9x 2010 bullcrap

So don't fucking use Snes9x 2010, it has Snes9x regular on it. Cry me a river and use standalone emulators or program one yourself. Sheesh. People sure love to bitch about RetroArch this when they're not being held at gunpoint to use it.


What cores run "worse"?

There's no Mupen64 Plus standalone
There's no Beetle PSX standalone
There's no DraStic standalone for non Android devices
There's no Genesis Plus GX standalone

And they run worse? Gee, maybe don't use the outdated cores or a crappy PC, I can run all of these fine.

People are ingrates and love to bitch about something people provide for free

 

[MikaDubbz]

Is something user-hostile if it doesn't hold your hand for literally everything now?

I can work my way around Retroarch, but it is not the easiest thing to initially figure out, and there are still features in there that I don't have a solid grasp on what it is that they truly even do. There are plenty of other little issues I've had with Retroarch or can recognize getting in the way of other and new users. It doesn't need to hold your hand, but Retroarch certainly could be considerably more user friendly than it is. Compared to the individual GX emulators you can play on a Wii or Wii U (Snes9x GX, FCEU GX, VBA GX, Genplus GX) where I have next to no questions about what options do what or where specific options would be located, there is definitely room for Retroarch to step up its game in terms of being more user friendly while still being as feature heavy as it is.

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

There's no Genesis Plus GX standalone

Yes there is, it's for the Gamecube and Wii (and by extension Wii U). I prefer to use it for all my retro Sega gaming on the Wii U (as well as most individual GX emulators), and then only use Retroarch for the emulators that don't have individual emulators on the Wii U with the features I would also like (Pro Controller and Gamepad support mostly), so I'll use Retroarch only for stuff like Atari, MAME, Turbografx, Virtual Boy, etc. I'd use it for the other systems (NES, SNES, Genesis, GBA), if I felt that Retroarch was all around better than the individual emulators of those systems, but frankly, I stick to the individual emulators as they have all the features I need, brilliant compatability, and load indidvidual roms quicker. Not to mention I just love that the home screen on my Wii U has channels for each system emulator (with Retroarch in the bottom right):

To anyone interested, the DS channel is actually just Loadiine, but loaded with only DS games and injects, I thought this to be a clever way to essentially give the Wii U a DS emulator when it doesn't exactly have a true one.

 

[Plasmaster09]

So don't fucking use Snes9x 2010, it has Snes9x regular on it. Cry me a river and use standalone emulators or program one yourself. Sheesh. People sure love to bitch about RetroArch this when they're not being held at gunpoint to use it.


What cores run "worse"?

There's no Mupen64 Plus standalone
There's no Beetle PSX standalone
There's no DraStic standalone for non Android devices
There's no Genesis Plus GX standalone

And they run worse? Gee, maybe don't use the outdated cores or a crappy PC, I can run all of these fine.

People are ingrates and love to bitch about something people provide for free

As I've said, I'm not using Snes9x 2010. Retroarch 3DS doesn't have the latest by default, so I just said screw it and replaced it with the bubble2k option since all I had to do was essentially lie to Retroarch about what core it was.
Snes9x and PicoDrive are just worse than the bubble2k ports, the nes emulators lag, Gambatte lags like hell on o3ds (I don't even know HOW) and mgba doesn't solve that problem, so yeah. Good thing there are standalones.

 

[wonkeytonk]

Why?

It practically defeats the whole purpose of an emulator, being so inconvenient and making you have to be on top of so much yourself.

 

[the_randomizer]

As I've said, I'm not using Snes9x 2010. Retroarch 3DS doesn't have the latest by default, so I just said screw it and replaced it with the bubble2k option since all I had to do was essentially lie to Retroarch about what core it was.
Snes9x and PicoDrive are just worse than the bubble2k ports, the nes emulators lag, Gambatte lags like hell on o3ds (I don't even know HOW) and mgba doesn't solve that problem, so yeah. Good thing there are standalones.

How the hell was I supposed to know you were referring to the 3DS? The 3DS is weak hardware, what did you expect? That's no reason to shit on the RetroArch devs, maybe someone else can do better?

If you don't like it, DON'T F*CKING USE RETROARCH. How hard is that to understand?

The 3DS hardware is from 2011, it's old, use something else.

I can work my way around Retroarch, but it is not the easiest thing to initially figure out, and there are still features in there that I don't have a solid grasp on what it is that they truly even do. There are plenty of other little issues I've had with Retroarch or can recognize getting in the way of other and new users. It doesn't need to hold your hand, but Retroarch certainly could be considerably more user friendly than it is. Compared to the individual GX emulators you can play on a Wii or Wii U (Snes9x GX, FCEU GX, VBA GX, Genplus GX) where I have next to no questions about what options do what or where specific options would be located, there is definitely room for Retroarch to step up its game in terms of being more user friendly while still being as feature heavy as it is.


Yes there is, it's for the Gamecube and Wii (and by extension Wii U). I prefer to use it for all my retro Sega gaming on the Wii U (as well as most individual GX emulators), and then only use Retroarch for the emulators that don't have individual emulators on the Wii U with the features I would also like (Pro Controller and Gamepad support mostly), so I'll use Retroarch only for stuff like Atari, MAME, Turbografx, Virtual Boy, etc. I'd use it for the other systems (NES, SNES, Genesis, GBA), if I felt that Retroarch was all around better than the individual emulators of those systems, but frankly, I stick to the individual emulators as they have all the features I need, brilliant compatability, and load indidvidual roms quicker. Not to mention I just love that the home screen on my Wii U has channels for each system emulator (with Retroarch in the bottom right):

To anyone interested, the DS channel is actually just Loadiine, but loaded with only DS games and injects, I thought this to be a clever way to essentially give the Wii U a DS emulator when it doesn't exactly have a true one.

Oh, is there one on PC? No, there's no standalone Genesis Plus GX on PC.

I never mentioned Wii U, I only talked about PC. Is bashing RetroArch developers a fetish on this board or what?

It's not their fault the 3DS is weak

 

[Reynardine]

Perfect timing, haha. I was just thinking I could update my retroarch setup again when I saw this news!

I love retroarch, having all my classic game systems under one roof is super awesome!

 

[vincentx77]

The 3DS hardware is from 2011, it's old, use something else.

And it's hardware hasn't been modern since around 2005. I know most people are running this on the N3DS, but come on, it's about as fast, for emulation, as a 2010 smart phone.
You guys also need to stop blaming retroarch for you not knowing how to manage your files and paths properly. Most problems get resolved if you read the friggin' documentation.

 

[the_randomizer]

And it's hardware hasn't been modern since around 2005. I know most people are running this on the N3DS, but come on, it's about as fast, for emulation, as a 2010 smart phone.
You guys also need to stop blaming retroarch for you not knowing how to manage your files and paths properly. Most problems get resolved if you read the friggin' documentation.

Well, in all fairness, the N3DS has an 800 MHz ARM CPU at its disposal, as oppose the O3DS having only a 268 MHz ARM CPU, and Snes emulation just doesn't do well without serious sacrifices to accuracy. Snes9x 2010 is also based off of a really old version of Snes9x, so it has to use a lot of speed hacks to get running right. N3DS would be a the better one to go *shrug*. I think people just hate on RetroArch because they have nothing better to do to get their jollies.

It doesn't help that the Snes9x 3DS has been abandoned either, as the original dev stopped work on it. It was so close to being perfect, and even started getting a better audio core.

 

[godreborn]

I've been using this theme for the nes, snes, and genesis minis. it's been around for a while on that version.

 

[MikaDubbz]

Oh, is there one on PC? No, there's no standalone Genesis Plus GX on PC.

I never mentioned Wii U, I only talked about PC. Is bashing RetroArch developers a fetish on this board or what?

While this is true, your post beforehand did not specify you were only talking about the PC, and many here are definitely talking about system versions including the Wii U version. But all the same, people airing their issues with Retroarch should be understandable and expected, when the retroarch devs try to put it on as many devices as possible, with as many emulator cores as possible, with seemingly as many options as possible; issues were always going to be a certainty. It's an ambitious program/project, but due to its ambition, it understandably is going to be prone to criticism. No one wants to hate on Retroarch, and the bashings don't come from nowhere. As a PC user of retroarch, you probably will have the least issues with Retroarch, which makes your responses here all the more understandable. But for others using Retroarch in a modded system, they're going to have their own issues that you're not going to relate much with. So I think if you recognize that, you might then understand why people on a site like GBAtemp, that specializes in modding consoles, will be discussing their issues with Retroarch builds for their consoles.

 

[Silent_Gunner]

Nice, but I still only swear by the original Green overlay menu xD

I like the Hacking the Kernel color scheme combined with that starfield one moving real fast!

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

While this is true, your post beforehand did not specify you were only talking about the PC, and many here are definitely talking about system versions including the Wii U version. But all the same, people airing their issues with Retroarch should be understandable and expected, when the retroarch devs try to put it on as many devices as possible, with as many emulator cores as possible, with seemingly as many options as possible; issues were always going to be a certainty. It's an ambitious program/project, but due to its ambition, it understandably is going to be prone to criticism. No one wants to hate on Retroarch, and the bashings don't come from nowhere. As a PC user of retroarch, you probably will have the least issues with Retroarch, which makes your responses here all the more understandable. But for others using Retroarch in a modded system, they're going to have their own issues that you're not going to relate much with. So I think if you recognize that, you might then understand why people on a site like GBAtemp, that specializes in modding consoles, will be discussing their issues with Retroarch builds for their consoles.

*Flycast updates on hacked Switch intensifies*

Although, to be fair, I've been considering rooting my phone lately and possibly installing a better bluetooth driver, as that's apparently the reason why BT inputs can be so laggy on Android regardless of the controller you use?

 

[lordelan]

I don't use 2010 because I KNOW how much it sucks. However... it's the latest Retroarch 3DS has.

It's been years since I used RetroArch on the 3DS. Isn't there the main Snes9x core as well?
But since RetroArch was a bit strange to handle on the 3DS (back then) I prefered the Virtual Console afair.
The 3DS was never a system to contain my "full rom collection" to begin with so installing just a few VCs for the few games I played there was fine.

 

[Jokey_Carrot]

cool I use mednafen

 

[depaul]

Good news.. But I've been using Ozone theme for like months now without issues. I'm playing mainly on TV and not the gamepad.

The feature "Download thumbnail on demand" doesn't work no matter what I do.

 

[Ev1l0rd]

Ah neat. I've been using Ozone for a while now on the Switch. Neat to see it ported to upstream/other devices. It's a very nice UI, but a bit unintuitive here and there, which I mostly blame on RetroArchs UI in general being extremely unintuitive.

Looks and plays good tho.

 

[MadMakuFuuma]

Ah neat. I've been using Ozone for a while now on the Switch. Neat to see it ported to upstream/other devices. It's a very nice UI, but a bit unintuitive here and there, which I mostly blame on RetroArchs UI in general being extremely unintuitive.

Looks and plays good tho.

agreed. i think im going to stick with xmb UI for now. at least i fixed in my mind where every option are, after all those years XD

 

[the_randomizer]

It's been years since I used RetroArch on the 3DS. Isn't there the main Snes9x core as well?
But since RetroArch was a bit strange to handle on the 3DS (back then) I prefered the Virtual Console afair.
The 3DS was never a system to contain my "full rom collection" to begin with so installing just a few VCs for the few games I played there was fine.

3DS can't handle Snes9x mainline, it's too weak

 

[spotanjo3]

Ugh! I am fine with what I have. No thanks.