Homebrew Official Retroarch WiiU (wip.)

[jacobsson]

I have to ask, has the WiiU version of RetroAarch always been this (for a lack of better word) underdeveloped?
Loading a core should not take 20 - 25s even if it has assets (and especially when already loaded!). I wonder if a salamander build would help with this problem?

I'm glad the build works. I'll make sure to make a PR to the repo during the week. Meanwhile I could try to build the compatible cores and share here for those who want to migrate. It's very important to understand that if my PR isn't getting merged, new official versions of RA for the WiiU won't have access to 'storage_usb' and needs to be rebuilt with my code changes.

I don't mind trying to help iron things out since RA is one of my favorite software!

 

[ploggy]

1.8.6 was released today and there was a few stand out features that I noticed could potentially help WiiU..
Savestate/SRM Compression.
Playlist Compression.
Only write config files to disk when parameters change.

From what I understand..
Savestate/SRM Compression reduces the file size of both Savestates and SRM saves which in turn should speed up loading of those Saves. (this option has to be enabled in Settings/Saving)

Playlist Compression does the same so it should make navigating Playlists faster too. (this option has to be enabled in Settings>Playlists)

Only write config files to disk when parameters change should make general UI speed faster since it now doesn't constantly write to the config file. I don't think this will helps us when it comes to the Core loading speed issue though but I haven't tested so who knows

Full writeups for each of the new features are in the RA 1.8.6 blog post here

 

[NinStar]

I'm pretty sure that compressing saves and playlists would make the process a little slower, since it would have to be decompressed again when loaded. but I may be wrong

 

[ploggy]

I'm pretty sure that compressing saves and playlists would make the process a little slower, since it would have to be decompressed again when loaded. but I may be wrong

I would have thought so too but according to tests they did.. Quote..

Given the small size of playlist files, these saving aren’t hugely significant – but of more interest is the fact that on one of our development machines (Linux + mechanical HDD), loading a compressed playlist takes ~20% less time than an uncompressed one (despite the extra zlib overheads). This produces noticeably smoother scrolling when switching playlists in XMB. This improvement is most likely platform-dependent, but on devices where storage speed is a real issue (e.g. 3DS, UWP) the difference in playlist loading times should be quite pronounced.

 

[Sonic Angel Knight]

Anyone else have problems running sega cd games? Is kinda slow, which is unexpected.

 

[jacobsson]

Hi guys. I cleaned up my code and made a pull request to the main repo, hopefully this will be a standard feature of WiiU retroarch soon.
https://github.com/libretro/RetroArch/pull/10577/commits/aab5dc9fda608e52d4f49f74b7a6b8243713d189

 

[Sonic Angel Knight]

Hi guys. I cleaned up my code and made a pull request to the main repo, hopefully this will be a standard feature of WiiU retroarch soon.
https://github.com/libretro/RetroArch/pull/10577/commits/aab5dc9fda608e52d4f49f74b7a6b8243713d189

So if I'm seeing this correctly... this lets me load roms from a wii u usb formatted HDD Correct? Not a regular Fat Format flash Drive or something similar?

If that's the case, then I think the only problem here is having a proper homebrew app that can browse the file system. I know FTPII U can do it, but I don't know if that's appealing enough to do considering the idea of sending files over FTP may not be ideal. (On top of having to swap to that FTPII U app from retroarch everytime you want to manage it.)

If it has to be FTP, maybe it would help to make Retroarch have a FTP function so we don't have to swap apps to manage files, and add a safety measure to prevent messing with important files on the system.

I'm not asking for anyone to do anything, but I appreciate what has been done. Just giving ideas.

 

[ChiefReginod]

Hi guys. I cleaned up my code and made a pull request to the main repo, hopefully this will be a standard feature of WiiU retroarch soon.
https://github.com/libretro/RetroArch/pull/10577/commits/aab5dc9fda608e52d4f49f74b7a6b8243713d189

Thanks for putting this together. Even if it turns out there are no speed differences it's nice to be able to consolidate files to one device or the other depending on what's needed.

I'll do some speed comparisons in the test build you posted sometime soon.

 

[jacobsson]

So if I'm seeing this correctly... this lets me load roms from a wii u usb formatted HDD Correct? Not a regular Fat Format flash Drive or something similar?

If that's the case, then I think the only problem here is having a proper homebrew app that can browse the file system. I know FTPII U can do it, but I don't know if that's appealing enough to do considering the idea of sending files over FTP may not be ideal. (On top of having to swap to that FTPII U app from retroarch everytime you want to manage it.)

If it has to be FTP, maybe it would help to make Retroarch have a FTP function so we don't have to swap apps to manage files, and add a safety measure to prevent messing with important files on the system.

I'm not asking for anyone to do anything, but I appreciate what has been done. Just giving ideas.

Hi. As @Masana mentioned here is an app called WiiU-shell that acts like a filebrowser for the SD-card, if I managed to mod this to have access to the WiiU formatted USB drive we might be able to speed things up by using the SD-card as the middle man.
It's not ideal but probably a lot faster than the 120KB/s transfer speed using FTP to the WiiU USB-drive.

Anyway, this is on my ToDo list after ironing stuff for my pull request against RA.

@QuarkTheAwesome I appreciate you code reviewing me. I'll see if it can be done w/o virtualpath or not and come back to you. Remember I'm a total beginner when it comes to c-programming (but expertise in programming in general) so your notes are highly appreciated.

I've been a little bit curious about the salamander build, do you think theoretically it could be snappier to use rather than the super-slow loading of cores we're stuck with right now? Any idea why the assets make it so slow?

 

[depaul]

Hi everyone and thanks @jacobsson for your time.

Here is my test results. Maybe there is some issue somewhere:

Base rom : Street Fighter III 3rd Strike : sfiii3n:
Time measured from 'selecting' file to game launch:
-Load from SD card : 24 seconds
-Load from Wii U USB : 60 seconds

That's why I said maybe there is an issue somewhere, maybe the Wii U USB library isn't optimized enough. But no problem glad Wii U scene advanced to this point.

 

[jacobsson]

@depaul thanks for these figures! I experience the same load times using USB, something is definitely off.

I've started looking into modding the Wiiu-Shell but just setting up right tools and dependencies for it to build seems really complicated. If anyone has a clue on what steps needed I'm all ears.
The devil in me hopes that a certain leak will give us more control over a certain OS further down the road.

 

[maxpowersi]

Hi!, I am using the version from the wii u appstore Is the 1.85 version, and with the core inside, i am traying to run Spiderman the video game, i tried mame 2003 and it did not work, I tried mame 2009 and worked but very slow. With Mame 2000 all roms loaded crash and i got a memory dumped message. Anyone can run spiderman the video game¿? Wich core are using¿?

 

[n00bsaib0t]

Hi!, I am using the version from the wii u appstore Is the 1.85 version, and with the core inside, i am traying to run Spiderman the video game, i tried mame 2003 and it did not work, I tried mame 2009 and worked but very slow. With Mame 2000 all roms loaded crash and i got a memory dumped message. Anyone can run spiderman the video game¿? Wich core are using¿?

Mame is unique from other emulators in that you need the rom designed for that version of Mame. Your best bet is to find a good rom site for one particular version of Mame to use on WiiU, I use 2003 as its before their push for accuracy and is about speed. I have newer stuff on my PC for accuracy, but for my WiiU I just want to make sure it runs. So without knowing which rom set your Spiderman dump is from no one can really help you, but odds are if it loads in 2009 it's a 2009 rom and won't work in other versions of Mame.

 

[maxpowersi]

Mame is unique from other emulators in that you need the rom designed for that version of Mame. Your best bet is to find a good rom site for one particular version of Mame to use on WiiU, I use 2003 as its before their push for accuracy and is about speed. I have newer stuff on my PC for accuracy, but for my WiiU I just want to make sure it runs. So without knowing which rom set your Spiderman dump is from no one can really help you, but odds are if it loads in 2009 it's a 2009 rom and won't work in other versions of Mame.

I really apreciate your answer, many thanks. I search in everywhere and tried all the roms from spiderman and nothing, i really do not understand why there are some videos of spiderman running in the wii u. Regards

 

[n00bsaib0t]

I really apreciate your answer, many thanks. I search in everywhere and tried all the roms from spiderman and nothing, i really do not understand why there are some videos of spiderman running in the wii u. Regards

Try the Mame 2003 rom. It's spidey.zip instead of the spidman.zip used for later versions of Mame. Look specifically for Mame 2003 rom sets and you should find it, and use the Mame 2003 core on your WiiU. With the rules around here I'm not sure if I'm allowed to say more than that about the exact rom.

 

[grozio]

good morning everyone...i nedd help. i'm not expert with retroarch.
i've found this build "Wii-U Retro Gaming Pack for Modified Wii-U from CRAZYMAC"
...but when i tried to start mame rom i've this error "file could not be loaded from playlist".
whtat means? i can solve it?
thanks.

 

[jacobsson]

good morning everyone...i nedd help. i'm not expert with retroarch.
i've found this build "Wii-U Retro Gaming Pack for Modified Wii-U from CRAZYMAC"
...but when i tried to start mame rom i've this error "file could not be loaded from playlist".
whtat means? i can solve it?
thanks.

Hi. you did put your roms in the right path? (SD:/roms)

 

[jacobsson]

By the way, our "storage_usb" -mod is now officially merged into RetroArch and can be used by downloading the latest Nightly built cores, I wanna thank everyone being supportive and testing!

Hopefully the write speeds (at least it's what I think is the problem) can be improved up on somehow!

EDIT: I started a thread here that hopefully (fingers crossed) could yield some better understand when it comes to read/write speeds of homebrew apps

 

[Masana]

By the way, our "storage_usb" -mod is now officially merged into RetroArch and can be used by downloading the latest Nightly built cores, I wanna thank everyone being supportive and testing!

Hopefully the write speeds (at least it's what I think is the problem) can be improved up on somehow!

Super, thank you very much for your work which benefits everyone. I am not a developer but I think that the hard drive goes anyway faster than the SD card, there is compare the launch of a wiiu games on loadiine and on hard drive, at least a few years ago because I do not l use more.
wiiu-shell is buggy and slow, maybe it should be improved in short there is work and not a lot of developer.

ps: google translate

 

[Sonic Angel Knight]

By the way, our "storage_usb" -mod is now officially merged into RetroArch and can be used by downloading the latest Nightly built cores, I wanna thank everyone being supportive and testing!

So I noticed this too. Apparently it access my wii u formatted HDD. So now I guess it's possible to load my roms from it which is nice to fill the extra space not used by the wii u game data.

If I have a suggestion, would be nice to add FTP function to retroarch so that it may be possible to make better use of this. I know FTPIIU exist already, but I doubt it be ideal for someone to rush back and forth between the two homebrew apps just to load roms for testing.

I don't know if that's possible or not but.

 

[Deleted User]

I told you guys: Retroarch first has to be patched by hand ("256" has to be deleted for every rpx you compile! "0"s have to be standing there instead. Some other line has to be modified as well) in order to gain full usb-speed.
Current Retroarch uses WiiU´s standard rpx-routines. Which includes AES-128 bit encryption for everything on USB, because WiiU encrypts everything by standard..
So there is some line in each WiiU-OS-library telling it to use the common key or private key in order to encrypt the data. This line has to be deleted/modified. WiiU uses using software-encryption which is slow.
No, i can´t tell more about it. Because a) this is dangerous. Nobody guarantees WiiU won´t malfunction. b and b) It´s hard to do. Who can compile their own rpx? Exactly. Not a beginner´s task.
c) You still couldn´t load @ max-speed when you only use a hdd. An SSD is required & strongly recommended (SSD with many iops & of a good brand).