RetroArch 1.7.8 is now available

After teasing some of their upcoming features, the Libretro team has just released their latest stable build of RetroArch: 1.7.8. This is a sizable update for the emulator frontend, offering many new changes and functions such as an "AI Service" which has a Speech Mode that can automatically parse text onscreen into speech, or an Image Mode that quickly pauses your game to overlay machine translated text from one language to another. Also new to this update is the RetroArch Disc Project, allowing for CD-ROM support so that players can experience their original game discs right through RetroArch's supported cores, or dump them into a bin/cue format.

Other, smaller additions, like touchscreen lightgun controls for mobile, on-demand thumbnail downloading, enhanced core options, and more, have been added as well.

A full changelog is available below:

1.7.8 (future)

3DS: Fix C-Stick y-axis inversion

3DS: Update all icon/banner images

AI: Add AI Service functionality (enabled for Windows/Mac/Linux/Android/iOS).

APPLE (MAC/IOS/TVOS): Fix autodetect for mFI controllers: properly call autodetect add on the connect notification, and add call to disconnect on GameController disconnect notification.

ANDROID: Implemented multi-touch touchscreen support

ANDROID: Now can be built with Gradle/Android Studio

AUDIO/WINDOWS: You can now select between audio devices for XAudio2/DirectSound/XAudio2 by pressing left/right on the Audio Device option.

AUDIO/WINDOWS: Setting the device by either index number or name string should work.

BLISS-BOX: Add 4 new pad types from firmware 3.0

BPS/UPS: Re-allocation target_data variable for target patch size (can now apply bigger patches without extra-bytes on memory)

CDROM: Added real CD-ROM functionality for Windows and Linux.

CDROM: Added disc dumping.

COMMON: Add separate frontend logging

COMMON: Ability to set FPS update interval (used in the window titlebar/FPS widget)

COMMON: Add 'Reset Frame Time Counter' functionality, enable it by default for resizing the window, loading/saving shader presets, fastforwarding, etc.

COMMON: Add optional 'on demand' thumbnail downloads

COMMON: Add new playlist-based thumbnail downloader. Hide the legacy thumbnail pack version by default

COMMON: Show license per core (if available) inside 'Load Core'

COMMON: Add option to load content from (and dump) CD-ROM discs

COMMON: Re-enable '--log-file' command line option

COMMON: Default playlist core association is now stored as metadata inside each playlist

COMMON: Fix playlist format detection

COMMON: Favorites playlist size can now be set independently of content history size. Values can be set from 0-999, or '-1' for unlimited (99999)

COMMON: Prevent adding new items to favorites when playlist is full (old entries are no longer overwritten)

COMMON: Prevent loading content with cores that require an incompatible graphics API version from the current one

COMMON: Saved shader presets are now portable across platforms and use relative paths

COMMON: Add '--set-shader' command line option which works like an override for automatic shader presets

COMMON: Add global shader presets

COMMON: Remove 'video_shader' setting, shaders are not saved automatically anymore

CORE OPTIONS: When saving core option overrides, only include settings for the current core

CORE OPTIONS: Add option to save core options per-core

CPU FILTERS: Add Scanline2x filter

DINPUT: Cleanup magic numbers mess surrounding hat code

GAMECUBE: Add default video/audio filter directories

GL/MALI400: Fix menu issues on Mali 400 series GPUs, should also fix 'RetroArch flickers black on ARM Mali GPUs (Android/ARM Linux)

GL/GLCORE: Use highest supported OpenGL Core version on Windows and X11

GL1: Ignore alpha in core video, fixes XRGB8888 rendering in some cores

GLCORE: Don't hardcode shader cross compilation target version but poll it. glcore would always only use the minimum target shader version, i.e. GLSL ES 3.00 for OpenGL ES 3.0+ or GLSL 1.50 for OpenGL 3.2+

D3D10/11/12/SLANG: Added "FrameDirection" slang semantic. Works fine with braid-rewind shader, not entirely perfect with D3D12 though

D3D10/11/12: Add option to select which GPU to render with

D3D10/11: Fix maintaining aspect ratio when resizing window

GLCORE/SLANG: Added "FrameDirection" slang semantic

HID: Add Retrode support. Should work on Wii/WiiU.

INPUT: Menu toggle hotkey can now be bound to another keyboard key and it will toggle properly

IOS: Correctly centers screen on iPhone X landscape

IOS: Implemented multi-touch touchscreen support

IOS: Add in more Apple Model numbers for RetroRating Added in all current Apple Model numbers and set a base rating of 19

IOS: Remove pause indicator; show the native UI menu using 4-finger swipe down gesture

IOS: Support L3/R3 in iOS 12.1, Options buttons in MFi/PS4/XBox One controllers in iOS 13

LIBRETRO: Add new core options interface, allows for localization, sublabels and more

LIBRETRO: Add new bitmask input codepath, for RETRO_DEVICE_ID_JOYPAD only for now

LOCALIZATION: Update Korean translation

LOCALIZATION: Update Japanese translation

LOCALIZATION: Update Portuguese Brazilian Translation

LOCALIZATION: Update Polish translation

LOCALIZATION: Update Turkish translation

MENU: Add smooth ticker text

MENU: Ability to hide every settings submenu (User Interface -> Views -> Settings)

MENU: Ability to hide nearly every quick menu entry (User Interface -> Views -> Quick Menu)

MENU: Fix longstanding menu display issues on Mali400 GPUs (on ARM hardware, SBCs and mobile phones/tablets)

MENU: Fix Record -> Streaming Quality, and Record -> Recording Threads settings

MENU: Fix history playlist navigation after running content

NENU: Menu entry performance optimisations

MENU: Add option to show 'remove playlist entry' only on history/favourites

MENU: Overhaul content 'Information' menu display

MENU: Add new 'Playlist Management' submenu. Allows default core associations to be set (via dropdown list), and all existing associations to be reset

MENU: Add 'Set Core Association' option to Quick Menu

MENU: Add option to remain in menu after saving/loading states

MENU: Pressing the Start button on 'Load Core' will unload the core.

MENU: After a core is running, Load Core will be hidden from view until you select 'Close Content' from the Quick Menu.

MENU/WIDGETS: All widgets are now properly cleaned up, fixing the frozen widgets bug when loading / closing content

MENU/WIDGETS: Fix crash with tasks

MENU/WIDGETS: Widgets are now drawn above the overlay with OpenGL and Vulkan

MENU/WIDGETS: Fine tune progress bar colors

MENU/WIDGETS: Have the progression widget always resize

MENU/THUMBNAILS: Ensure that displayed thumbnails are always refreshed correctly after selecting 'Download Thumbnails' from Quick Menu

MENU/THUMBNAILS: Make PNG image loading/processing non-blocking on non-threaded systems

MENU/OZONE: Add it for PS3

MENU/OZONE: Fix regression in 1.7.7 - OSX/macOS - was unable to start it

MENU/OZONE: Fix sublabel spacing

MENU/OZONE: Add toggle to enable/disable playlist name truncation in Ozone

MENU/OZONE: (Ozone) Fix display of (semi-)transparent thumbnails

MENU/XMB: Add menu animation settings

MENU/XMB: Add optional thumbnail scaling

MENU/XMB: Fix display of long sublabels. Text that would exceed the display area now scrolls line-by-line

MENU/XMB/OZONE: Add optional thumbnail upscaling

MENU/QT/WIMP: Add core option sublabels as tooltips, add buttons to reset one/all core options

MENU/QT/WIMP: Word-wrap core option tooltips

MENU/QT/WIMP: Path selector fixes

MENU/RGUI: Enable playlist display on platforms without database support

MENU/RGUI: Make particle effects framerate independent + add animation speed setting

MIDI: correct pitch bend in ALSA driver - MIDI standard pitch bend center position is 0x2000 but ALSA's is 0

MIDI: Fix SysEx handling. We need to clear the event status after each message. Otherwise, after a SysEx message the first byte of the next event will incorrectly inherit its delta_time. This causes a delay of several seconds in nearly every MT-32 games which uses a lot of long SysEx.

METAL/SLANG: Added "FrameDirection" slang semantic

NETBSD: Audioio is now the default audio driver

NETBSD: Fix a segfault when starting RetroArch with an empty configuration file and LANG unset in the environment

OSD: OSD is now drawn above the overlay with Vulkan

OSX: Fix regression with Cocoa GL - shader / preset loading was getting stuck in an infinite loop

OSX: Add improved menu resizing for window resizing

PLAYLISTS: Add history/favourites to 'Playlist Management' menu

RECORD: Fix Twitch streaming

REMOTE RETROPAD: Fix for Remote RetroPad input - fixes processing of Remote RetroPad input. None of the remote inputs are being executed both in menu and in game. This is due to the way current key binds are being detected which block processing of any remote input. It's been tested using Remote RetroPad core on Android including digital dpad and analog control input.

RUNAHEAD/MSVC2010: Build in runahead support for MSVC2010 and up

RUNAHEAD/VITA: Build in runahead support for Vita version

SAVESTATES: Allow auto save states also in cores that support no content as long as some content is loaded

SCALER: Fix SSE2 path for ARGB/BGRA -> BGR24 - should fix screenshots being taken for XRGB888 (viewport)

SCANNER: Skip all databases with incompatible file extensions, whether content is inside an archive or not

SCANNER: Fix hang on empty files inside archives

SHADERS: Add proper shader compatibility checks

SHADERS: Enable Cg shaders for D3D9

SHADERS: Remove 'video_shader' setting, replace it with global presets that make more sense

SHADERS: #reference directive for shaders. Presets can point to other existing presets if they are unchanged

SHADERS: Will attempt to cache the shader/preset into memory before loading to avoid costly getline/gets/getc operations

SHADERS: New --set-shader commandline option

SHADERS/MENU: Prevent undefined behaviour when failing to load shaders

SHADERS/MENU: Pressing the Start button on 'Load Shader Preset' will reset all shader passes and apply changes, effectively disabling the shaders

SHADERS/MENU: New menu options for removing shader presets (global/core/parent/etc).

SWITCH :Add Audren audio driver.

SWITCH: Fix splitting and joining of joycon controllers. Before this fix, splitting and joining of joycons only ever worked sporadically

SWITCH: Proper x/y scaling for pointer devices, fixes touch lightgun

THUMBNAILS: Add optional On-Demand Thumbnails.

UDEV: Fix wrong udev devices order

UDEV/X11: Mouse pointer should work now in X11 environment with no Display

VITA: Update Vita2D

VULKAN/SLANG: Added "FrameDirection" slang semantic

VULKAN: Add option to select which GPU to render with

VULKAN: Validate non-causal filter chain for texture inputs. We only validated for UBO inputs apparently.

WINDOWS: Menubar should no longer be disabled when threaded video is enabled

WINDOWS: Add improved menu resizing for window resizing

WINDOWS: Properly set initial directory for menubar 'Load Core' option

WII: Add default video/audio filter directories

WII: Fix RGUI display corruption

WII: Fix HID joypad drivers

WII: Add optional overscan correction

WII: Fix recursive path_mkdir() operations

WII: Add widescreen RGUI support

WIIU: Scale menu to viewport size; respect filtering settings for menu

WIIU/RGUI: RGUI does its own transparency effects in the texture, so we don't have to add another 50% on that

WIIU/RGUI: Use correct pixelformat ordering for menu texture

WIIU/SLANG: Added "FrameDirection" slang semantic

X11: Add improved menu resizing for window resizing

X11: Add non-evdev keycodes to fix keyboard input on non-Linux systems with X11