Homebrew Official Retroarch WiiU (wip.)

ploggy

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I think it's safe to say that they no longer want to work on the Wii U, no thanks in part to their focusing on the Switch port. Why? Because I'm cynical and they hate us. :hateit:

They don't hate us :P

look at the part I quoted from the blog post:

We are aware that despite all this, loading all the assets in the more feature-rich menus like MaterialUI/XMB/Ozone can still take a long time on systems encumbered by slow disk I/O, but we have some special things in store for future versions that should increase asset loading performance significantly.

That is pretty much aimed at us WiiU guys :)

It's being worked on now, it just wasn't done by the time 1.9.2 was released.. things are coming. I've told the devs about "The List" :P
Balls in their court now :)
 

the_randomizer

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They don't hate us :P

look at the part I quoted from the blog post:



That is pretty much aimed at us WiiU guys :)

It's being worked on now, it just wasn't done by the time 1.9.2 was released.. things are coming. I've told the devs about "The List" :P
Balls in their court now :)

I just wished dynarec would happen once and for all, I can't think of any reason not to at this point. Full speed N64 and PSX emulation on Wii U would be a dream come true, no? I mean asset loading
is all well and good, but I'd want to see it less prone to DSI error crashing >.>
 

ploggy

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I just wished dynarec would happen once and for all, I can't think of any reason not to at this point. Full speed N64 and PSX emulation on Wii U would be a dream come true, no? I mean asset loading
is all well and good, but I'd want to see it less prone to DSI error crashing >.>
TBH I'd rather have Retroarch be re-ported to Aroma. but that's not likely. But hopefully it gets done.
 
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I guess I've been out of the loop, what's Aroma?


That is the new Homebrew-environment for WiiU. Coming Soon. It´s based on using the Fail_ST exploit.

And this allows...well a ton more of possiblities. It enables read/write-permissions.

And yes. It will also allow full Dynarec (if you wrote it before).

And dude? If my theory is correct, that will also allow me to make WiiU´s OS tremendously faster.

I know how it works now. It´s pretty simple.

Some small changes have to be done to certain game-files and it will load those game-pictures tremendously faster.

Which results in a huge speedup of the general OS itself. no more "hickups".

But it´s still not finished yet. We are waiting patiently for it´s release.
 

ploggy

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I guess I've been out of the loop, what's Aroma?
Pretty much what @Chosen said, it will make Jits easier to implement which is a big plus.

https://wiidatabase.de/einblick-in-aroma-die-neue-homebrew-umgebung-fuer-die-wii-u/ (use google translate)

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

Another big thing, Homebrew will be displayed on the WiiU Menu automatically from the SD Card, no need to make/install Channels anymore! (as long as its the correct format):toot:
 

ber71

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What wiiu really needs is a stabilized retroarch fork, with all relevant bugs fixed, where everything work out of the box. Something like the RA-Hexaeco fork which exists for the Wii.
As the time passes, there will be less and less retroarch developers who care about wiiu, so the bug count keeps increasing.
 
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the_randomizer

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Pretty much what @Chosen said, it will make Jits easier to implement which is a big plus.

https://wiidatabase.de/einblick-in-aroma-die-neue-homebrew-umgebung-fuer-die-wii-u/ (use google translate)

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

Another big thing, Homebrew will be displayed on the WiiU Menu automatically from the SD Card, no need to make/install Channels anymore! (as long as its the correct format):toot:

Will it be more stable, i.e. less DSI exception errors? That was one of the things that annoyed the hell out of me on Wii U, the app would crash or memory leaks etc. Even on the Wii, RetroArch was way more stable.

What wiiu really needs is a stabilized retroarch fork, with all relevant bugs fixed, where everything work out of the box. Something like the RA-Hexaeco fork which exists for the Wii.
As the time passes, there will be less and less retroarch developers who care about wiiu, so the bug count keeps increasing.

I mean I've been told they "care" but obviously not enough to give a damn about the Wii U port. I'd ask on the Discord channel, but I won't, my cynicism will only piss them off lol
 
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ploggy

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Will it be more stable, i.e. less DSI exception errors? That was one of the things that annoyed the hell out of me on Wii U, the app would crash or memory leaks etc. Even on the Wii, RetroArch was way more stable.
Couldn't tell you since it hasn't been done yet :P but Quarky has said himself WiiU Retroarch is a hacky mess in parts.
But the new Homebrew Environment is much better than the old one apparently :)
 

the_randomizer

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Couldn't tell you since it hasn't been done yet :P but Quarky has said himself WiiU Retroarch is a hacky mess in parts.
But the new Homebrew Environment is much better than the old one apparently :)

Yeah, is there a reason for that? Was it simply originally conceived to shut Wii U owners up and for the sake of just having a port? Some days I honestly feel the Wii U port was half-assed in 2013/2014 just for us to have something so we'd stop pestering the devs :unsure:
 

ploggy

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Yeah, is there a reason for that? Was it simply originally conceived to shut Wii U owners up and for the sake of just having a port? Some days I honestly feel the Wii U port was half-assed in 2013/2014 just for us to have something so we'd stop pestering the devs :unsure:
You have to remember the WiiU port was originally made what 4 plus years ago?
The devs now have much better knowledge and much better tools and a shiny new DS VC-less boot exploit :P ??which gives more low level access to the WiiU hardware??
 

Osakasan

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That is the new Homebrew-environment for WiiU. Coming Soon. It´s based on using the Fail_ST exploit.

And this allows...well a ton more of possiblities. It enables read/write-permissions.

And yes. It will also allow full Dynarec (if you wrote it before).

And dude? If my theory is correct, that will also allow me to make WiiU´s OS tremendously faster.

I know how it works now. It´s pretty simple.

Some small changes have to be done to certain game-files and it will load those game-pictures tremendously faster.

Which results in a huge speedup of the general OS itself. no more "hickups".

But it´s still not finished yet. We are waiting patiently for it´s release.

Seems like i'm unpacking my wii U again soon.
 

willianholtz

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You have to remember the WiiU port was originally made what 4 plus years ago?
The devs now have much better knowledge and much better tools and a shiny new DS VC-less boot exploit :P ??which gives more low level access to the WiiU hardware??
One of the most important things and also a leap, both in terms of emulation and the hardware itself, would be some homebrew that overclocked the console. I believe that only that would help and pretty much everything we use on our old wii U
 
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One of the most important things and also a leap, both in terms of emulation and the hardware itself, would be some homebrew that overclocked the console. I believe that only that would help and pretty much everything we use on our old wii U


Are you willing to destroy your machine? Since that would happen. The processor oe WiiU simply wasn´t made to be OC`ed since it allready runs at max speed.

Well, under the assumption you won´t give it 1.5 or 2 Volts or something like that. Another big problem would be the low power-delivery which is only able to handle 50 Watts on WiiU.

i even heard from a game´s developer of WiiU now, that whenever you use the Wii-shaders (aka the TEVs) in the WiiU-mode (yes this is possible guys), the processor seems to be limited to running at 729 Mhz too. He specifically said he had to downclock his processor in his notebook to 800 Mhz to do what the downclocked WiiU-processor does in this mode.
And i heard this seems to be because the Wii-GPU consumes a lot more energy then the AMD-Radeon programmable shaders and it gets very hot (hotter than today´s GPU get when you have the same amount of shaders). And when you use that Wii-GPU to use that in a WiiU-game (e.g. via Unity), your processor will simply not be running at full speed in order to not damage it and/or consume more than 50 Watts which the system can max. deliver.

You should know the WiiU´s Processor doesn´t even clock itself down like any other processors today do it to protect themselves from overheating or because they simply want to save on power. It allways runs at the same, full clock-mode it was adjusted to (GC-clock, Wii-clock or WiiU-clock). And the type of game/applications tells the processor at which given full speed it has to run. The whole time.

And even if you would get...let´s say a 10% more Mhz out of if (so instead of 1.25 Ghz you now gain 1.40 Ghz = 125 Mhz faster)...it´s still only 10% more speed. You wouldn´t even notice that difference...

Yet you consume a lot more energy by just getting 10% faster. Since those processors consume a lot more energy the higher you clock them.
 

GerbilSoft

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i even heard from a game´s developer of WiiU now, that whenever you use the Wii-shaders (aka the TEVs) in the WiiU-mode (yes this is possible guys), the processor seems to be limited to running at 729 Mhz too. He specifically said he had to downclock his processor in his notebook to 800 Mhz to do what the downclocked WiiU-processor does in this mode.
And i heard this seems to be because the Wii-GPU consumes a lot more energy then the AMD-Radeon programmable shaders and it gets very hot (hotter than today´s GPU get when you have the same amount of shaders). And when you use that Wii-GPU to use that in a WiiU-game (e.g. via Unity), your processor will simply not be running at full speed in order to not damage it and/or consume more than 50 Watts which the system can max. deliver.
You don't know any actual game developers. Everything you said in here is a lie.

To anyone else reading his posts: Assume everything he says is factually wrong, completely made up, or otherwise lying unless proven otherwise. Among other things, he's promised to release a mod for the Wii U OS that improves performance "5-10x", yet has yet to post a single Wii U homebrew program, period - not even a "Hello World" program.
 
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SapphireBulletBill

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There's a small problem I've encountered in version 1.9.2.

While RetroArch is running, controllers refuse to work when connected. The only exception is when a controller is turned on when either starting RetroArch or loading a game. When P1's controller turns off after inactivity, it will refuse to work and the Wii U would need a force shutdown.
 
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Maxbeta

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There's a small problem I've encountered in version 1.9.2.

While RetroArch is running, controllers refuse to work when connected. The only exception is when a controller is turned on when either starting RetroArch or loading a game. When P1's controller turns off after inactivity, it will refuse to work and the Wii U would need a force shutdown.
Stick to the Wii U gamepad for now. It’s an ongoing issue unfortunately and they are looking into it.
 

ploggy

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Looks like there was a new PR merged earlier that caches cores info files, may speed up loading. Check it out in the next buildbot cycle and post results if it's any faster :)

https://github.com/libretro/RetroArch/commit/87e248f4eb2f91beb02154c2f3c30efa4c76f008

https://github.com/libretro/RetroArch/pull/12397

This PR just enables the new core info cache feature ( #12350, #12363) by default on all 'console' platforms (-DRARCH_CONSOLE). These platforms should benefit the most from the reduced file I/O.
 
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