Hi All,
I've made a fork of beetle-psx-libreto and attempted to implement a pre-caching system for texture replacements, similar to what exists in Duckstation. So far in my testing the results are looking very positive.
I have released a windows version on my Github page at https://github.com/Tarrantx/beetle-psx-libretro/releases
I have been testing it on the Nov 2025 stable release of RetroArch 1.22.2 (git 69a4f0e, build date Nov 20 2025, Compiler: MinGW 10.2.0 64-bit) on Windows.
To install, download the DLL, then make a backup of your mednafen_psx_hw_libretro.dll file in your Retroarch "cores" folder, then replace with my mednafen_psx_hw_libretro.dll version.
After loading, you will see 3 new options in the Beetle core video options, under "Replace Textures":
1. HD Texture Caching Method (Eager or Lazy - on demand)
2. HD Texture VRAM Cache Budget (256MB up to 8GB in increments)
3. HD Texture RAM Cache Budget (256MB up to 8GB in increments)
The lazy texture caching method is a significant, as it massively reduces the amount of palettes that are precached by instead caching hashes that share the same palettes, rather than palettes that share the same hash. The one drawback is a single frame pop-in at the beginning of a frame cycle, but this is much less noticeable than waiting sometimes 10-30 seconds for HD textures to load, and sometimes never at all as they've already been released from VRAM.
I'm hoping there will be some of you out there with experience with Beetle texture packs that would be interested in giving this version a test run. If you have ever lamented at HD textures being slow to display or popping in late on every scene change, then I'm hoping you will see a significant improvement with this build. Even with VRAM caching set to 256MB, I am still seeing an improvement.
There are some games that seem to dump better on Beetle than on Duckstation, but the lack of precaching to VRAM makes doing very large texture packs on Beetle very difficult. My hope is that this will allow us to just upscale everything (all palettes) and not have to worry about trimming the pack down just to get textures to load.
Any feedback will be appreciated.
I've made a fork of beetle-psx-libreto and attempted to implement a pre-caching system for texture replacements, similar to what exists in Duckstation. So far in my testing the results are looking very positive.
I have released a windows version on my Github page at https://github.com/Tarrantx/beetle-psx-libretro/releases
I have been testing it on the Nov 2025 stable release of RetroArch 1.22.2 (git 69a4f0e, build date Nov 20 2025, Compiler: MinGW 10.2.0 64-bit) on Windows.
To install, download the DLL, then make a backup of your mednafen_psx_hw_libretro.dll file in your Retroarch "cores" folder, then replace with my mednafen_psx_hw_libretro.dll version.
After loading, you will see 3 new options in the Beetle core video options, under "Replace Textures":
1. HD Texture Caching Method (Eager or Lazy - on demand)
2. HD Texture VRAM Cache Budget (256MB up to 8GB in increments)
3. HD Texture RAM Cache Budget (256MB up to 8GB in increments)
The lazy texture caching method is a significant, as it massively reduces the amount of palettes that are precached by instead caching hashes that share the same palettes, rather than palettes that share the same hash. The one drawback is a single frame pop-in at the beginning of a frame cycle, but this is much less noticeable than waiting sometimes 10-30 seconds for HD textures to load, and sometimes never at all as they've already been released from VRAM.
I'm hoping there will be some of you out there with experience with Beetle texture packs that would be interested in giving this version a test run. If you have ever lamented at HD textures being slow to display or popping in late on every scene change, then I'm hoping you will see a significant improvement with this build. Even with VRAM caching set to 256MB, I am still seeing an improvement.
There are some games that seem to dump better on Beetle than on Duckstation, but the lack of precaching to VRAM makes doing very large texture packs on Beetle very difficult. My hope is that this will allow us to just upscale everything (all palettes) and not have to worry about trimming the pack down just to get textures to load.
Any feedback will be appreciated.
