Hacking Emulation RetroArch/Libretro Thread: PS Vita Edition! Nightlies Included

kristianity77

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Nice to see that GBA performance has been increased. GBA is pretty much perfect now!

I dont notice any improvements in SNES9x however, that still seems to be quite choppy on troublesome games I've played before.
 

VinceQ

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Nice to see that GBA performance has been increased. GBA is pretty much perfect now!

I dont notice any improvements in SNES9x however, that still seems to be quite choppy on troublesome games I've played before.

Not here. The performance in VBA Next is lower in 1.7.8 than in 1.7.7. For example in games like Zelda A Link to the Past and some others that I tried!!
 

Smoker1

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NOTE - Not sure what is wrong with the Cheat Search for the Vita, Switch and possibly the Android Builds, but when you Search for Cheats, you get stuck after your 2nd Updated Search. However, I found that the PC (x64) Builds seem to be working fine. So until it gets fixed, suggest using the PC Version to find Codes, then just copy them over once you have found them.
 

gnatydnac

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here is a cheat builder for RA, which can easily transform normal hex to oct and build a cht file. Only tested in core vba-next on vita RA

9556487adab44aed27bae2a9be1c8701a08bfb51.jpg
 

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VinceQ

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The performance of GBA in RetroArch 1.7.8 is very bad today. In 1.7.7 it is infinitely better. In other platforms such as PC Engine the same case is repeated, as well as in SNES and most PSX ISOS. The only platform that performs in a decent way is SEGA Megadrive. Even on the last nightly of this last night.
 
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dissipate

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Some advice based on my testing. This issue has been stressing me out for a very long time. No, the RetroArch update does not completely fix the issues. Yes it is a massive improvement though. VBA Next is near usable now. My own personal litmus test for this is Pokemon Fire Red. It's not the most graphically intense game in the GBA catalog but it causes issues fairly quickly in all native Vita emulators. With the latest nightly everything is fine until you make it past the rival and encounter a random battle in the grass. The audio will become choppy when the battle starts and also when your pokemon lets out it's cry. Extremely annoying since this is something that will happen over and over as you progress through the game. What I found does fix this is using lolicon to overclock it to 500mhz. I managed to do a few quick battles without any choppy sound issues and I am very happy with it. I'd be interested to hear about experiences with other games if anyone feels like testing them.

Some other advice... mGBA is pretty much useless as a GBA emulator on the Vita. Some have previously mentioned using it overclocked. Still a joke. Not to disrespect the developers of it because it is a good emulator, it's goal of accuracy is somewhat incompatible with such a low end device though. Where it does shine is emulation of GB/SGB/GBC. It blows everything else out of the water simply for the fact that it supports the SGB palettes and borders. I have yet to see this mentioned by anyone anywhere but it's very useful to know.

If you're unwilling to overclock running gpsp kai in Adrenaline is your best bet. I found these settings from a subreddit I'm not allowed to link to be most helpful:
If you want a game to look even better I suggest the following settings:

Display scaling : unscaled 3:2

Screen filtering : no

Then go into the Adrenaline menu and change the following in Settings:

Screen Scale X (PSP) 3.350

Screen Scale Y (PSP) 3.350

This looks better than the scaled 3:2 setting in the GPSP setting because it keeps the pixel ratio intact (rather than stretching some of them). It's a subtle difference but could benefit you if you're OCD like me. The only problem with this is when you access the GPSP menu, it's zoomed in and you have to go back into the adrenaline settings and change the screen scale X/Y back to default (2.000) but if you're playing a single game for a long period of time then it shouldn't be a problem.

Before trying that I was unhappy with how it looked in PSP mode but it's damn near perfect to me. Shame about needing to reset it every time though. I'm still holding out hope that one day GBA emulation will be flawless on the Vita. Seeing it get this close makes me very happy.
 
Last edited by dissipate,

VinceQ

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Some advice based on my testing. This issue has been stressing me out for a very long time. No, the RetroArch update does not completely fix the issues. Yes it is a massive improvement though. VBA Next is near usable now. My own personal litmus test for this is Pokemon Fire Red. It's not the most graphically intense game in the GBA catalog but it causes issues fairly quickly in all native Vita emulators. With the latest nightly everything is fine until you make it past the rival and encounter a random battle in the grass. The audio will become choppy when the battle starts and also when your pokemon lets out it's cry. Extremely annoying since this is something that will happen over and over as you progress through the game. What I found does fix this is using lolicon to overclock it to 500mhz. I managed to do a few quick battles without any choppy sound issues and I am very happy with it. I'd be interested to hear about experiences with other games if anyone feels like testing them.

Some other advice... mGBA is pretty much useless as a GBA emulator on the Vita. Some have previously mentioned using it overclocked. Still a joke. Not to disrespect the developers of it because it is a good emulator, it's goal of accuracy is somewhat incompatible with such a low end device though. Where it does shine is emulation of GB/SGB/GBC. It blows everything else out of the water simply for the fact that it supports the SGB palettes and borders. I have yet to see this mentioned by anyone anywhere but it's very useful to know.

If you're unwilling to overclock running gpsp kai in Adrenaline is your best bet. I found these settings from a subreddit I'm not allowed to link to be most helpful:


Before trying that I was unhappy with how it looked in PSP mode but it's damn near perfect to me. Shame about needing to reset it every time though. I'm still holding out hope that one day GBA emulation will be flawless on the Vita. Seeing it get this close makes me very happy.

Can you name the best cores for each system in your view?
 

AkitoUF

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I want to know too if there are any improvements or if I should just stick to the nightly that made GBA run fine.
 

FmT

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There was some change on vba last month https://github.com/libretro/vba-next/commits/master
I won't test gba emulators on vita because 3ds is better for that (perfect semi hardware emulation) and FF6A with music patch is nowhere to be playable on vita emulators.
But if you feel like a specific version of vba core is better than others, you can always tell me the commit (numbers next to core information) and I'll make a custom version of up to date retroarch like I'm already doing with fbalpha.
 
Last edited by FmT,

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