Keeping up with their new and more frequent release schedule, the libretro team has just made available a new stable version of RetroArch, their popular front-end for emulators, engines and everything else retrogaming-related! Version 1.8.2 introduces accessibility options for blind people by using your OS' integrated text-to-speech to read the game text out loud (supports Windows, macOS and Linux - you can find more about it here or check it out in the video below). Two long-requested features have also been finally included: an option to update all the installed cores with a single button press and manual content scanning (configurable content search based on file names, no database check - ideal for consoles and system with little RAM due to reduced resource usage). Talking about the latter, the scanner is now also able to check for available content files inside archives, a feature that can be turned on or off to your liking (if you don't compress your ROMs, it may be better to disable it as it will likely increase the time required to perform a scan).

A couple of platform-specific improvements have also been made: Android's Vulkan driver is now able to switch between portrait/landscape orientations and the Vita port now features a GL1 driver (however, it's recommended to keep using Vita2D for the time being, which has also seen some slight updates).

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There are also some other new features and enhancements, like automatic arcade content naming using DAT files, several UI improvements and a better, faster, multi-threaded ffmpeg core! Here is the full changelog for the more curious readers:

1.8.2

• BUG/CRASH/GLSLANG: Fix glslang crashing error – managed to reproduce an issue which has been plaguing users for a while, where glslang throws an assert after closing a game (and starting a new one). This would affect all video drivers that use Slang for shaders, such as D3D10/11/12/Vulkan/Metal
• CHEEVOS: Display Unofficial and Unsupported achievement states
• CHEEVOS: Pass RetroArch and core versions through User-Agent HTTP header
• CHEEVOS: Use PSX.EXE if SYSTEM.CNF cannot be found
• CHEEVOS: Prevent loading state while achievements are still being fetched from server
• CHEEVOS: Pause hardcore if core doesn’t support achievements
• CHEEVOS/CRASH: Fix AddressSanitizer + CHD cause hard crash when Cheevos are enabled
• CORE UPDATER: Only download when new core is available
• CORE UPDATER: Add option to update all installed cores
• DRM/KMS: Better detection for the current video mode
• DYNAMIC RATE CONTROL: Support DRC even when using a vsync swap interval higher than 1
• EMSCRIPTEN: Fix bug in Emscripten input code
• EMSCRIPTEN: Changes to support upgraded emscripten SDK
• FFMPEG CORE: Hardware accelerated video decoding
• FFMPEG CORE: Implement send/receive encoding API, will allow for hardware accelerated AMD video encoding
• FFMPEG CORE: The video FIFO can be removed, since we have a ring buffer in its place. This removes unneeded copy operations and as a positive side improves overall decoding speed. Makes 8k60p SW and 4k60p HW decoding feasible on many systems. For now the ring buffer is 32 images deep. This limitation will be removed, once audio and video decoder have their own packet handling.
• INPUT: Fix ‘Analog stick controls menu even if autoconfig disabled’
• INPUT/TURBO: Added alternate Turbo-Mode ‘Single Button’ – For systems supporting only a single button, the turbo-button will toggle firing that button without the need to hold it. When holding the button turbo will be suspended and resumed when the button is released. Holding the button may have a different function to just tapping it.
• IOS: Forcibly disable Threaded Video until UIWindow concurrency issues are fixed
• INPUT/ANALOG: Fix radial analog deadzone scaling
• INPUT/ANALOG: Implement proper analog button deadzone
• INPUT/MENU: Analog stick controls menu even if autoconfig disabled
• LOCALIZATION: Update Italian translation
• LOCALIZATION: Update French translation
• LOCALIZATION: Update Polish translation
• LOCALIZATION: Update Portuguese Brazilian Translation
• LOCALIZATION: Update Turkish translation
• LINUX/LOCALIZATION: Correct Droid Sans Fallback font path in Linux. This should fix Chinese/Korean font display issues on Fedora/RHEL/CentOS/openSUSE/SLE
• MENU/BUGFIX: When using a keyboard/gamepad/mouse wheel to navigate, the menu scroll position is always maintained and updated in a consistent (and expected) fashion
• MENU/BUGFIX: When resizing the window, or changing the orientation of a mobile device, the current scroll position is correctly preserved
• MENU/BUGFIX: All ‘normal’ pointer input is now inhibited when showing message boxes
• MENU/BUGFIX: The pointer actions ‘select’ and ‘cancel’ both now properly close a message box if it is currently being shown
• MENU/BUGFIX: Pointer ‘select’ and ‘cancel’ actions are now inhibited when an input bind dialog is active
• MENU/INPUT: Change ‘User’ terminology to ‘Port’ for input binding
• MENU/LINUX: Add proper drives to Load Content
• MENU/MATERIALUI: Halt scrolling when pointer is pressed/stationary
• MENU/MATERIALUI: Dual thumbnail view
• MENU/MATERIALUI: Fullscreen thumbnail viewer for boxart
• MENU/MATERIALUI: Scroll rapidly by press and holding the scrollbar
• MENU/RGUI: New theme ‘Flux’
• MENU/OZONE: Thumbnails now have a fade-in animation
• MENU/OZONE: Fullscreen thumbnail viewer for boxart and pictures
• MENU/QT/WIMP: Fix dock titles getting cut off
• MENU/XMB: Fullscreen thumbnail viewer for boxart and pictures
• MENU/USABILITY: Selectively hide ‘Disallow Non-Slave Mode Clients’ if ‘Allow Slave-Mode Clients’ is disabled
• MENU/USABILITY: Hide ‘Show desktop menu on startup’ if ‘Desktop menu’ setting itself is disabled
  MENU/USABILITY: Reimplement Quick Menu – > Shaders -> Watch shader files for changes – can now be turned on/off through touch
  
• MENU/USABILITY: Refactor Quick Menu – Controls – each port now has its own submenu
• MENU/USABILITY: Quick Menu – Cheats – Delete All no longer requires five right button presses – this should fix this functionality for mobile touch users too
• MENU/USABILITY: Hide Refresh Rate options when Threaded Video is enabled – these settings do nothing with Threaded Video
• MENU/USABILITY: Hide Logging Verbosity levels behind Logging Verbosity
• MENU/USABILITY: Get rid of ‘Port Number’ label for Port Binds screen
• MENU/USABILITY/MOBILE: Should no longer crash when clicking on a cheat entry
• MENU/USABILITY: Shader parameters now have a dropdown list
• MENU/USABILITY: Shader passes now has a dropdown list
• MENU/USABILITY: Video – Hide Windowed Mode settings selectively
• MENU/USABILITY: Video – Hide Fullscreen Mode settings if windowed mode is not supported by context driver
• MENU/USABILITY: Selectively hide Network Command Port
• MENU/USABILITY: Selectively hide Relay Server Location
• MENU/USABILITY: User Interface -> Appearance – Selectively hide XMB Horizontal Animation setting
• MENU/USABILITY: Playlists – more selective hiding
• MENU/USABILITY: Selectively hide Rewind Settings
• MENU/USABILITY: Selectively hide Overlay Settings
• MENU/USABILITY: Selectively hide FPS Update Interval based on Display Framerate being enabled
• MENU/USABILITY: Selectively hide Onscreen Notifications BG Color Settings
• MENU/USABILITY: Settings -> Logging – Hide ‘Log To File Timestamp’ if ‘Log To File’ is disabled
• MENU/USABILITY: Video -> Scaling – Hide Custom Viewport X/Y when Integer Scale is enabled as description indicates
• MENU/USABILITY: Achievement submenu – selectively hide
• MENU/USABILITY: Settings -> Video -> Aspect ratio – selectively hide/show values based on whether you have Custom or Config selected
• MENU/USABILITY: Settings -> Video -> Selectively hide Hard Sync
• MENU/USABILITY: Settings -> Video -> Implement selective hiding for VSync and Hard Sync
• MENU/USABILITY: Selective hiding of Runahead settings based on global setting
• MENU/USABILITY: Add Input -> Haptic Feedback submenu
• MENU/USABILITY: Add Input -> Menu Controls submenu
• MENU/USABILITY: Settings -> Video -> Max Swapchain Images – Add OK action
• MENU/USABILITY: Input – Implement OK action for Bind Hold, Turbo Period and Duty Cycle
• MENU/USABILITY: Input – Hotkey Binds refactor
• MENU/USABILITY: Move ‘Press Quit Twice’ and ‘Menu Toggle Gamepad Combo’ to Input -> Hotkey Binds
• MENU/USABILITY: Video – Add sublabel for Video Output submenu
• MENU/USABILITY: If ‘Favorites Tab’ is disabled, don’t show ‘Add To Favorites’ option in Quick Menu/Playlist menu
• MENU/USABILITY: If On-Demand Thumbnail Downloader is enabled, hide ‘Download Thumbnails’ from playlist menu screen
• MENU/USABILITY: Add Audio Driver setting to Audio -> Output
• MENU/USABILITY: Add Audio -> Resampler settings
• MENU/USABILITY: Add Audio -> Output and Audio -> Synchronization
• OPENGL: Shaders are now working properly (only in OpenGL) when rotating both from Core API rotation and from menu video rotation. The fix is clearly visible with crt-royale for example
• OPENGL: 1:1 PAR is now correct when rotating (both from Core API rotation and from menu video rotation, as you said, in the latter case you currently have to change Aspect Ratio after menu video rotation for it to work)
• OPENGL: When using Custom Aspect Ratio and rotation (both from Core API rotation and from menu video rotation), Integer Scaling is now working properly (correct multiples of internal resolution). Even when Integer Scaling is not activated, the Custom AR width / height are now correctly labeled using (1x), (2x), … suffixes. You also have to activate Integer Scaling after menu video rotation for it to work
• OPENGL: For all other Aspect Ratio options, Integer Scaling and rotation (both from Core API rotation and from menu video rotation) are now working properly together (correct multiples of internal resolution). You also have to activate Integer Scaling after menu video rotation for it to work
• OPENBSD/POWERPC: Should build now on OpenBSD PowerPC
• PLAYLISTS: Pressing ‘Start’ or long touching a playlist will bring you to a Playlist submenu where you can set a default core, setup thumbnail view, delete the playlist, etc
• OSX: Forcibly disable Threaded Video until NSWindow concurrency issues are fixed
• PSP: Solving issue exiting RetroArch by HOME button
• SCANNER: Manual scanner, not dependent on database files
• SCANNER/MANUAL: Add option to scan inside archives
• SCANNER/MANUAL: Enable automatic naming of arcade content via DAT files. This is compatible with DAT files in either Logiqx XML or MAME List XML format.
• VIDEO: Do not reinit video driver on SET_SYSTEM_AV_INFO unless needed
• VIDEO: Support DRC even when using a vsync swap interval higher than 1
• VIDEO LAYOUT: Fixed XML parsing of attributes with spaces, should fix issues with several video layouts
• VITA: GL1 driver support
• VITA/VITA2D: Several improvements to Vita 2D driver – menu widgets implemented
• VITA/VITA2D: Fix clipping and reduce number of calls
• VULKAN/ANDROID: Workaround weird WSI return codes in landscape mode – Android WSI wants you to use preTransform, and if it is not used correctly, Android 10 will return VK_SUBOPTIMAL_KHR, and we would create a new swapchain every frame. This workaround just ignores this error, since it’s not really an error. A more “proper” fix is to use prerotate and modify the MVP matrices, which might help certain devices with crummy display processors
• VULKAN/ANDROID: Recreate swapchain on orientation change. ANativeWindow getWidth/Height does not detect any changes when using Vulkan, so use the old onContentRectChanged callback to get notified when size changed. Use those values instead when figuring out how large swapchain to create
• WINDOWS/XINPUT: Get rid of 128 byte device name limit for XInput device discover – when device name was too long, it would not be picked up by the XInput driver and would instead fallback to DirectInput
• WINDOWS: ANGLE OpenGL ES 2 support
• UWP: Fix crashes on startup / prompt for folder permissions when trying to load custom.ini
• UWP: Fix – Mouse input is offset on high DPI monitors
• UWP: Fix – Keyboard input hangs sometimes
• UWP: Fix – Multi-touch support
• UWP: Fix – Enable menu touch input by default
• UWP: Fix – Get user language
• UWP: Fix – Get CPU model name
• UWP: Fix – Use GLUI instead of XMB on Windows Mobile 10
• UWP: ANGLE OpenGL ES 2 support

Source
Download

 

[SugoiEndeavor]

Does anyone know if there has been any word on the steam release?

 

[the_randomizer]

Those are crazy changes, I love it

 

[ChiefReginod]

The ability to use DATs with manual scanning will make custom playlist generation super easy. I was actually getting ready to write a script to automate the Arcade ROM naming thing for my own playlists when this release dropped, so I couldn't be happier.

 

[Deleted User]

Kudos to them for adding support for blind people!

 

[naxil]

Ps3 version?

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Kudos to them for adding support for blind people!

Good feature ok... But blind people can play videogame?

 

[Deleted User]

Ps3 version?

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Good feature ok... But blind people can play videogame?

Bit Generations - Sound Voyager for the GBA comes to mind. You can play the game with your hearing alone.
https://www.t3.com/features/lost-in-sound-gaming-for-the-visually-impaired

 

[naxil]

Bit Generations - Sound Voyager for the GBA comes to mind. You can play the game with your hearing alone.
https://www.t3.com/features/lost-in-sound-gaming-for-the-visually-impaired

Wow. Yes is possible. Text game can be played also with voice support.

 

[matpower]

Have they updated the GPSP core for the Vita on this release?

 

[ChiefReginod]

Ps3 version?

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Good feature ok... But blind people can play videogame?

People who were into videogames before they went blind might want to try it. Granted, only certain types of games will be playable but I bet it will make some people happy.

 

[Flame]

Have they updated the GPSP core for the Vita on this release?

what update? you mean dynarec on gpsp?

 

[matpower]

what update? you mean dynarec on gpsp?

Yeah. I didn't want to load a nightly so I have been holding up for a stable release.
If it is not done, I guess I will just pull the trigger and get the nightlies.

 

[Elwyndas]

Kudos to them for adding support for blind people!

There are all kinds of ways. Sound, vibrations. Also the player might only be somewhat blind. Etc.
Here is an example of a totally blind player messing with a seeing player.

 

[XDel]

Good news for me, I'm blind but having been dying to complete the Japanese original of Super Mario Bros. 2... now I can!!!!

 

[Smoker1]

Why does the Vita Build not play as good as it used to?
Example - FBA Neo - SFA or HSF2 - Running Slower that it used to. Was working great before. Now it is crap.

 

[LibretroRetroArc]

Why does the Vita Build not play as good as it used to?
Example - FBA Neo - SFA or HSF2 - Running Slower that it used to. Was working great before. Now it is crap.

In theory it should not be going slower, but it could always be the case that as code changes in current projects, performance deficits pile up. But usually it's the best policy to point this out to the devs (barbudreadmon and FB Neo devs in this case) in order to learn what is going on. There could all be sorts of reasons for this being the case.

Also, in case it wasn't apparent already - do NOT use the GL1 video driver unless you absolutely have to. Vita2D will still be faster for all software rendered cores.

In the meantime, you could try if the FB Alpha cores have the same issue - the CPS2/CPS1 based ones. On average though I would always recommend using FB Neo at this point as it's an actually active project.

 

[barbudreadmon]

Example - FBA Neo - SFA or HSF2 - Running Slower that it used to. Was working great before. Now it is crap.

If FBNeo (not FBA, our CPS emulation module was upgraded just before we changed name) was previously running cps at full speed on your vita, that should still be the case. Core options might be the problem here, what values do you currently have for "Frameskip", "CPU clock" and "Enable cyclone" ?
- "Enable cyclone", while i don't recommend it because it breaks compatibility with some games (we won't fix), might be required on slow devices like the vita
- "CPU clock" affects CPS emulation, the higher you set it, the higher the hardware requirements will be, furthermore it's now working properly (previously it wasn't working as it should due to wrong value conversion, ending up in a much lower clock than what was set), in some cases you might even consider setting it to values lower than 100% (it's now possible) to lower the hardware requirements because the game never made full use of the original hardware in the first place.
- "Frameskip" set to 1 might help a lot on slow devices

 

[Bravestarr]

Still SoulCalibur ob Switch is not playable because of massive graphic glitches. :/

 

[Whole lotta love]

Ps3 version?

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Good feature ok... But blind people can play videogame?

I had a friend in school who was blind... Used a cane, read and typed in brail, but had some vision and used to play some games on his computer. I imagine this would help him a lot.

 

[Deleted User]

Is this for the 3ds?