Lakka Switch, L4T edition
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I am proud to finally release the L4T version of Lakka Switch!
New kernel, new logo, new drivers, audio... everything is fresh and clean.

Did I mention Rayman 3 was full speed on Dolphin? ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

General system updates

• New Linux kernel and underlying operating system, based on Linux4Tegra and Jetson Nano drivers
  • mainline kernel has been deprecated
  • system features should now be on par with the L4T Ubuntu distribution, except for dock support
  • Bluetooth was lost in the battle and needs some rest to come back stronger
• aarch64 is now the default and mainly supported architecture
  • arm has been deprecated since L4T doesn't support it
• New logo made with the help of jaames and the R:S community

New features and improvements

• Audio now works through the internal speakers and headphones
• The new GPU driver supports both Vulkan and OpenGL
• RAM is now locked at full speed (1600Mhz), was 800MHz before
• The system is now way more stable and should boot for everyone with a decent SD card (no more black screen of death)
• RetroArch has been updated to add menu widgets (fancy onscreen notifications)
• Overclock profiles have been updated :
  • Renamed all profiles
  • Added more overclock profiles
  • Added underclock profiles

New cores

• mupen64plus-next (N64 emulator)
  • The core is full speed, even on aarch64 thanks to the new dynarec
  • Includes the updated version of the GlideN renderer
• picodrive (various Sega consoles)
  • The core replaces Genesis Plus GX (Game Gear support has been dropped)
• Beetle PSX HW (PSX emulator with OpenGL and Vulkan renderer)
  • The core performs worse than PCSX ReARMed for now, even with Vulkan
• reicast (Dreamcast emulator)
  • The core is full speed on all commercial games, no visual glitches
  • The OIT renderer works (better accuracy), speed is still good on 1x resolution
  • The core needs the Dreamcast BIOS files to be placed in /lakka/storage/system/DC
  • WinCE games are currently not supported - there is a WinCE version of the reicast core in the works but the aarch64 dynarec is too slow for the games to be playable (for now)
• Yaba Sanshiro (Saturn emulator)
  • The core is full speed on all commercial games
  • Yabause and Kronos were also added but both perform worse than Yaba Sanshiro
• theodore (Thomson MO/TO emulator)

Updated cores

• Dolphin : Vulkan support
  • With Vulkan, Dolphin runs decently - some games are playable, some are full speed... see for yourself, try it and experiment with different games and settings!
• PCSX ReARMed : Switch optimizations and CHD support
• PPSSPP : doesn't crash anymore when closing content

Removed cores

• mupen64plus
• parallel-n64
• Genesis Plus GX
• Ishiiruka
  • It might come back once the core is updated with the (beta) Vulkan renderer

Credits

• Kernel and drivers work: NVIDIA, switchroot team (especially ByLaws and langerhans)
• Lakka Switch work: natinusala and plaidman
• RetroArch, original Lakka distribution: libretro team
• mupen64plus-next: Gillou and m4xw
• PCSX ReARMed: Switch optimizations by m4xw, CHD support by aliaspider
• Dolphin core: aliaspider
• reicast core: flyinghead

Download link

The Lakka Switch website has been updated with the new version: https://lakka-switch.github.io/documentation/

Please note that you can't dual boot Ubuntu and Lakka Switch for now (it will always boot Ubuntu).

 

[enderer]

Ok, got it. I've actually been able to get a lot of N64 games running well, but the two games I want to get working(Mario Golf and Tennis) are not working well at all, even on the previous Lakka builds. What settings should I try to increase performance on those games?

Have you tried the european (PAL) Mario Tennis? My OG Xbox struggled to run the USA and Japan, but the european Mario Tennis ran very smoothly.

 

[Fenderbendr]

Have you tried the european (PAL) Mario Tennis? My OG Xbox struggled to run the USA and Japan, but the european Mario Tennis ran very smoothly.

Yeah, I’m using the PAL versions. It’s still slow. To get better performance, should the CPU clock be a higher or a lower percentage?

 

[Turnbl]

I've been having a problem where all games on all cores crash out to the Retroarch menu after about 2-2.5 minutes of play. This was on the previous May version and now the new July version after a full re-install.

This includes MAME2010 and Dreamcast games.

I have a 400GB Sandisk card formatted using guiformat.exe

It's odd as games do work for a couple of minutes so I'm not sure if I've missed something or maybe it's a permissions thing or Retroarch is trying to write to a folder that doesn't exist after a certain time? All of the issues I've read in here with cards relate to Lakka not booting at all. I'm opening the games by load content then selecting the core.

 

[EmulateLife]

I was hoping Saturn emulation was fixed in the new version of Lakka without being mentioned, but just had a freeze on Panzer Dragoon Saga. I turned threaded video on.

 

[EmulateLife]

Nevermind, was going to say it was because I changed resolution to 2x, but changed it back to original and it froze again.

 

[EmulateLife]

I turned off threaded video and overclocked CPU and GPU and haven't had any freezes, but I haven't played for like hours and hours so I can't say 100% for sure that will make it work completely.

 

[Shaneus]

Does anyone know if there's a way to tell Retroarch to restrict the mouse tracking (as a lightgun) to the viewport of the game?

For example, arcade lightgun games (Revolution X, T2) display at their proper aspect ratio (4:3ish), but use the whole touchscreen (via mouse input) for the lightgun input. So the aiming is off because the corner of the touchscreen (at 16:9) corresponds with the boundaries where the 4:3 screen area is.

Note: Other cores seem okay, at least when testing Mad Dog McCree with the Dolphin core.

Edit: As much as I'm a stickler for proper aspect ratios, I think my only option is just to stretch the video for those games to fit the screen, so then it matches the mouse tracking. Sucks, but better than nothing!

 

[Basketto]

If you find the main L4T thread, there's a link in the main post about compiling certain apps for it. One of those is for Retroarch, so create an SD card with L4T on it and compile Retroarch as per those instructions.

Backup whatever cores you want, then copy them to the empty cores folder on your Lakka SD card.

Note that I only did this with a core that has been omitted, so I don't know how it works with ones that are already in there.

I have been trying to do this but can’t for the life of me figure how to make this work. Can you explain how you located the genesis core? I would like to see if i can possibly use the older N64 core in the new build. Ive used the sudo apt-get install commands, but how to find individual core folders in files? Is their a file path you can remember?

 

[MusicallyInspired]

Does anyone know if there's a way to tell Retroarch to restrict the mouse tracking (as a lightgun) to the viewport of the game?

For example, arcade lightgun games (Revolution X, T2) display at their proper aspect ratio (4:3ish), but use the whole touchscreen (via mouse input) for the lightgun input. So the aiming is off because the corner of the touchscreen (at 16:9) corresponds with the boundaries where the 4:3 screen area is.

Note: Other cores seem okay, at least when testing Mad Dog McCree with the Dolphin core.

Edit: As much as I'm a stickler for proper aspect ratios, I think my only option is just to stretch the video for those games to fit the screen, so then it matches the mouse tracking. Sucks, but better than nothing!

I brought this same issue up a few times in this thread (unanswered) for the ScummVM core and its tap/mouse interface, so I echo your concerns.

 

[Shaneus]

I have been trying to do this but can’t for the life of me figure how to make this work. Can you explain how you located the genesis core? I would like to see if i can possibly use the older N64 core in the new build. Ive used the sudo apt-get install commands, but how to find individual core folders in files? Is their a file path you can remember?

I know you copy it to /lakka/storage/cores, but pretty sure it does only work with this method if the core doesn't already exist. So Flycast from the new build will work with the old version, but when I tried to transplant the version of GPGX I compiled to the new one, I think it got confused because it already existed.

Sorry I can't be of more help

I brought this same issue up a few times in this thread (unanswered) for the ScummVM core and its tap/mouse interface, so I echo your concerns.

Ah man, that sucks to hear. But at least that kind of reassuring/interesting to know that if it's happening across multiple cores, then it's a Lakka OS/UI problem that should be fixable.

Also explains why there's different behaviour again in Retroarch for Horizon, because it only works like a laptop touchpad and nothing like Lakka.

The only kind of fix I found was to stretch the image to 16:9. I know it ruins the scaling but at least the touch will be aligned with the display.

 

[MusicallyInspired]

My only worry is that ScummVM doesn't have that functionality. At least not for all games. There is an aspect correction feature but it only works for 320x200 games I believe. For 640x480 games it won't work and that's a square aspect ratio. And even still I doubt an uncorrected 320x200 aspect ratio would stretch to the full width of the Switch's display. I'll have to experiment with this, though. I haven't tried it.

EDIT: Nope. Actually the aspect ratio correction and fullscreen functions do absolutely nothing. So the core or Lakka must be forcing its display output automatically to a corrected aspect ratio. Or those features are hardcoded instead.

 

[EmulateLife]

This got me thinking https://www.reddit.com/r/emulation/comments/9u5vlc/reicast_libretro_now_has_naomi_mame_rom_support/

Does Flycast on Lakka support Naomi games?

 

[NRamos]

Nevermind, was going to say it was because I changed resolution to 2x, but changed it back to original and it froze again.

Just in case if you knew, for resolutions to take effect, you need to restart (Similar to restarting retroarch) From 360p to 720p for example.

 

[Basketto]

I know you copy it to /lakka/storage/cores, but pretty sure it does only work with this method if the core doesn't already exist. So Flycast from the new build will work with the old version, but when I tried to transplant the version of GPGX I compiled to the new one, I think it got confused because it already existed.

Sorry I can't be of more help


Ah man, that sucks to hear. But at least that kind of reassuring/interesting to know that if it's happening across multiple cores, then it's a Lakka OS/UI problem that should be fixable.

Also explains why there's different behaviour again in Retroarch for Horizon, because it only works like a laptop touchpad and nothing like Lakka.

The only kind of fix I found was to stretch the image to 16:9. I know it ruins the scaling but at least the touch will be aligned with the display.

Nps, I managed to locate the cores from the prepackaged l4t noobs version niether n64 core works. One just gets a black screen and the other failed to load core.

 

[Shaneus]

This got me thinking https://www.reddit.com/r/emulation/comments/9u5vlc/reicast_libretro_now_has_naomi_mame_rom_support/

Does Flycast on Lakka support Naomi games?

I know Reicast on the older version does, I didn't test the new one because DC stuff crashed for me using Flycast.

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

My only worry is that ScummVM doesn't have that functionality. At least not for all games. There is an aspect correction feature but it only works for 320x200 games I believe. For 640x480 games it won't work and that's a square aspect ratio. And even still I doubt an uncorrected 320x200 aspect ratio would stretch to the full width of the Switch's display. I'll have to experiment with this, though. I haven't tried it.

EDIT: Nope. Actually the aspect ratio correction and fullscreen functions do absolutely nothing. So the core or Lakka must be forcing its display output automatically to a corrected aspect ratio. Or those features are hardcoded instead.

Damn then! I did message Natinusala on Twitter asking if there's something that can be done about mouse scaling or it's window, perhaps something might come of that. Even if it involves compiling something myself, I dunno.

 

[EmulateLife]

I know Reicast on the older version does, I didn't test the new one because DC stuff crashed for me using Flycast.

What? Are you sure? Do you know what I'm referring to when I say Naomi games? They're arcade games made by Sega, they come in .zip format. You're saying on the previous Lakka of Reicast they worked?

When I try on Flycast I get failed to load content.

 

[Basketto]

What? Are you sure? Do you know what I'm referring to when I say Naomi games? They're arcade games made by Sega, they come in .zip format. You're saying on the previous Lakka of Reicast they worked?

When I try on Flycast I get failed to load content.

Try and reset the directory for bios and if you havent, the retroarch.cfg file. Can confirm dc games work just as well as before.

 

[EmulateLife]

Try and reset the directory for bios and if you havent, the retroarch.cfg file. Can confirm dc games work just as well as before.

I appreciate it but I am trying to get Naomi games to work not Dreamcast. Are you saying Naomi games work? Or just Dreamcast? There's a huge difference. But it would be the same core Reicast/Flycast.

 

[Basketto]

Try and reset the directory for bios and if you havent, the retroarch.cfg file

I appreciate it but I am trying to get Naomi games to work not Dreamcast. Are you saying Naomi games work? Or just Dreamcast? There's a huge difference. But it would be the same core Reicast/Flycast.

I think they should, the core has only been renamed. I cant test atm sorry

 

[EmulateLife]

Ok so you're just guessing. There's one person saying it worked on Reicast, I'm still not sure if that's true or not.