Homebrew RetroArch - A new multi-system emulator

[sideskroll]

Let's make this thing perfectly clear - I don't need 'testers' so much, I need people who know how to code and contribute, and people who are willing to put up some raw numbers and measurements derived from their 'tests' instead of just saying 'I feel input lag' (that's as close to useless to me as somebody saying 'I can feel the force').. Nobody can have any influence on me (Squarepusher) because I don't take (monetary) donations and so I am under no obligations to get anything done for you or anyone else. If something gets done, it's entirely out of my own accord and because I feel like doing it.

For the record, my own take on this issue is - I have a Classic Controller myself and I never experienced much of a problem. That being said, I will look into trying to improve the input driver but I honestly don't see how it's going to greatly matter.

Only way you can expect a clear improvement to happen straight away is for some libogc dev to step forward and tell us what we're doing wrong (that is, IF we're doing anything wrong).

[quote='"Dogway"]
How many more people do you need to care about it? If all that happens is that you don't own a CC, then that's ok, just tell (won't fix), but don't assume 4 people bother themselves to come around and report without doing their homework (tests, etc).

You expect me to take everyone at his word that it's the fault of my/our pogram when it's almost certain that your particular brand of HDTV / wireless controller has a 90/80% impact on the severity of 'input lag'? This is why the modern HDTV era sucks - the TV manufacturers don't care the slightest about this issue, the public is so infatuated and in love with these TVs that they keep buying it, and then developers will have to deal with a lot of bitching about 'input lag', blablabla.

How many more people I need to care about it?

People who can do an ABX test. Look it up on Wikipedia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABX_test

Time to do something that resembles some 'real' science instead of gut feelings - 'oh I feel something is wrong'. I need measurements.

I'm sorry but your hostile response just rubs me the wrong way and it annoys me even more because all of those 'reports' you linked to are all just of the type 'oh I feel input lag' - just saying 'there is input lag' is not helpful in any way or shape at all - I need something quantifiable, not 'gut feelings'.

Tell me "how to code and contribute", and how "to put up some raw numbers and measurements derived from their 'tests' " and I will, gladly.
If you're expecting people to give you "numbers" maybe you should upload some kind of tool to measure the response time.
I'm not trying to be a pain in the ass and I'm MOST DEFINITELY not expecting you to fix it or anything. Cause I know it's not your job and/or you're not obligated to do so. I was just trying to find out if this is, in fact, a known issue (which apparently, it is).
You're free to tell me or anyone else having this problem "f*ck off, I don't give 2 sh*ts about it" and that's it. Trust me, we're not trying to bring you guys "down" or anything. And we're obviously not forced by anyone to keep using your emulator. I guess if I were to develop an emulator or any other app I'd like to get as much feedback as possible. Guess that's just me.
Please, excuse me if I "bothered" you with my posts. From now on I'll either wait for a fix (if there is ever one) or just refrain from using an emulator on the WII.

 

[Toad King]

Okay, this is just getting silly.

I will be willing to go out of my way and look more into these issues if the people reporting them can do the following things:

* Only use official Wiimotes and Classic Controllers. No ebay/dealextreme crap.
* Can test it on a CRT display. No LCD/Plasma/whatever.
* Can confirm it only has issues with RetroArch, not any other homebrew apps (HOMEBREW, NOT ACTUAL WII GAMES/WIIWARE/VIRTUAL CONSOLE).
* Get a video of it.

If you can do these things, then I will try to look into it. Otherwise, it's not worth the time searching it down since so many things could be the cause.

 

[sideskroll]

Okay, this is just getting silly.

I will be willing to go out of my way and look more into these issues if the people reporting them can do the following things:

* Only use official Wiimotes and Classic Controllers. No ebay/dealextreme crap.
* Can test it on a CRT display. No LCD/Plasma/whatever.
* Can confirm it only has issues with RetroArch, not any other homebrew apps (HOMEBREW, NOT ACTUAL WII GAMES/WIIWARE/VIRTUAL CONSOLE).
* Get a video of it.

If you can do these things, then I will try to look into it. Otherwise, it's not worth the time searching it down since so many things could be the cause.

* Already did, wiimotes (OEM or third party work as expected. NO issues whatsoever) CC (OEM or third party) input delay (sometimes it doesn't even register the pads being pressed)

* Sadly, I no longer own a CRT set. I'll do it whenever I get the chance.

* As I said before, at least in my particular case the issues occur from the time I access the Homebrew Channel onward. ie: the wiimote becomes unresponsive/jittery pointer if I'm in the HBC with the CC connected. As soon as I unplug the CC everything goes back to normal. I can play VC/WII/WIIWARE games perfectly fine with the CC. I think I said it before, I'm not putting the blame on your emu. The issue is with everything "homebrew" (at least for me)

* Posting a video of me playing SMB for example, will give you an idea of the delay how?

 

[LibretroRetroArc]

As for your second paragraph, you state:
"you have produced nothing, no measurements, no nothing - not even an estimate of how many 'frames' you 'perceive' it's lagging - what TV you have - what resolution and display mode this is happening on - nothing"
that shows how little you care for your userbase. You don't even bother to care. You have no respect.
28th August

I have no respect indeed for somebody injecting 'are you another Dutch punk' indeed - especially when injected into a conversation where it does not belong, but anyways - to address that post you made -

you're using an HDTV. You're on your own there. Take it up with your TV manufacturer -or try to turn off any or all postprocessing filters - or try to get it into its native display mode.

Simply put, it is not my fault that your TV is having a fit with your particular games console - HDTVs are notorious for this stuff and I won't take 'requests' from people saying it's laggy on a HDTV - try it out on a CRT or don't bother commenting - get a new HDTV because the one you're using is obviously not up to snuff or you wouldn't be having these issues.

I know that is not what you like to hear, but it's the truth.

I'll link this again for the hard of thinking -

http://www.edge-online.com/features/how-hdtv-killed-rhythm-action/

Playing content (in this case emulators that are emulating old consoles) that was meant to be played on a CRT TV) on a HDTV means you're on your own in terms of input lag - I can't 'make it better' for your TV or 'help you' - why do you think modern games all resort to lengthy QTEs and just like this article stated, they're no longer bothering with rhythm action games requiring split-second reaction time? Gaming has been dumbed down so that people like you don't get into a hissy fit bitching about 'terrible input lag' against developers who have to work with what they are given - and the TV industry doesn't care nor does the audience cares that get taken in by fancy hype about how good these new 'flat TV screens' are.

 

[Toad King]

* As I said before, at least in my particular case the issues occur from the time I access the Homebrew Channel onward. ie: the wiimote becomes unresponsive/jittery pointer if I'm in the HBC with the CC connected. As soon as I unplug the CC everything goes back to normal. I can play VC/WII/WIIWARE games perfectly fine with the CC. I think I said it before, I'm not putting the blame on your emu. The issue is with everything "homebrew" (at least for me)

Then this is an issue with libogc and you should report it to them.

 

[sideskroll]

Do you still get the lag in other Homebrew applications?

Do just the CC buttons lag, or do the Wiimote buttons also lag with it attached?

THIS is my case. Exactly like that.

 

[sideskroll]

I have no respect indeed for somebody injecting 'are you another Dutch punk' indeed - especially when injected into a conversation where it does not belong, but anyways - to address that post you made -

you're using an HDTV. You're on your own there. Take it up with your TV manufacturer -or try to turn off any or all postprocessing filters - or try to get it into its native display mode.

Simply put, it is not my fault that your TV is having a fit with your particular games console - HDTVs are notorious for this stuff and I won't take 'requests' from people saying it's laggy on a HDTV - try it out on a CRT or don't bother commenting - get a new HDTV because the one you're using is obviously not up to snuff or you wouldn't be having these issues.

I know that is not what you like to hear, but it's the truth.

I'll link this again for the hard of thinking -

http://www.edge-online.com/features/how-hdtv-killed-rhythm-action/

Playing content (in this case emulators that are emulating old consoles) that was meant to be played on a CRT TV) on a HDTV means you're on your own in terms of input lag - I can't 'make it better' for your TV or 'help you' - why do you think modern games all resort to lengthy QTEs and just like this article stated, they're no longer bothering with rhythm action games requiring split-second reaction time? Gaming has been dumbed down so that people like you don't get into a hissy fit bitching about 'terrible input lag' against developers who have to work with what they are given - and the TV industry doesn't care nor does the audience cares that get taken in by fancy hype about how good these new 'flat TV screens' are.

But if thats the case, how come there's no "input delay" or "presence of the force" as you put it, when playing with a GC controller? Wouldn't it be easier to blame it on the fact that most (if not all) emulators ported for the WII console are based on GAMECUBE ports? It would make sense in that case for the wiis native controllers to have some sort of lag...
Anyway, I'll test it with a CRT display as soon as I have the chance. Like I said, I'm not trying to be a dick, if anything, I'm trying to help you fix the problem (if there's one)

 

[sideskroll]

Then this is an issue with libogc and you should report it to them.

Thanks. Could you point me in the right direction then?

 

[LibretroRetroArc]

But if thats the case, how come there's no "input delay" or "presence of the force" as you put it, when playing with a GC controller? Wouldn't it be easier to blame it on the fact that most (if not all) emulators ported for the WII console are based on GAMECUBE ports? It would make sense in that case for the wiis native controllers to have some sort of lag...
Anyway, I'll test it with a CRT display as soon as I have the chance. Like I said, I'm not trying to be a dick, if anything, I'm trying to help you fix the problem (if there's one)

Like ToadKing said, it could be an issue related to libogc and the 'Wii' input driver in there if what you say is true and it affects every piece of homebrew developed with libogc. In which case it's entirely out of our hands and apparently the libogc guys don't much care about active development at this point - so it would be hard trying to attempt a 'fix'.

What I can do is try and see how hard it is to get the Wii port to compile with the Revolution SDK (I can already hear the 'noooo - it's illegal!!!' cries) and see if it's any better with that.

 

[sideskroll]

Like ToadKing said, it ould be an issue related to libogc and the 'Wii' input driver in there. In which case it's entirely out of our hands and apparently the libogc guys don't much care about active development at this point - so it would be hard trying to attempt a 'fix'.

What I can do is try and see how hard it is to get the Wii port to compile with the Revolution SKD (I can already hear the 'noooo - it's illegal!!!' cries) and see if it's any better with that.

Thank you. That would mean a lot.
You see, us coming here and posting about these things has nothing to do with our lack of knowledge or a need to bug you. I'm not a dev, I know that. But I like to think that I'm, AT LEAST, intelligent enough to test it with different configurations before reporting a problem.

 

[AngryGeek416]

Got Neogeo roms up and running! Thanks! Any chance of running Neogeo roms bigger then 23mb in the future?

 

[DJPlace]

ok i'm going post my image of the error of TMNT turtles in time FBA arcade rom problem.

soon after i have beaten the train boss and got to this stage it looked blank. also i not playing not on a HD tv. so yeah...

 

[LibretroRetroArc]

ok i'm going post my image of the error of TMNT turtles in time FBA arcade rom problem.

soon after i have beaten the train boss and got to this stage it looked blank. also i not playing not on a HD tv. so yeah...

Looks like a big-endian bug that has not yet been fixed. I'll try to mention it to somebody who's affluent at tracking those down.

 

[DJPlace]

Looks like a big-endian bug that has not yet been fixed. I'll try to mention it to somebody who's affluent at tracking those down.

thanks. i was hoping to go through and kick some shell but i could not so yeah and if i run into anymore bugs i'll let you guys know. and if i have to play this or the other old konami classics i can allways go back to mame 0.2

 

[Dogway]

@LibreRetroArch: I subscribe everything I said in my post, I wouldn't mind if you re-quoted it any number of times because I'm so true to myself!

I also wouldn't mind if you read my posts, yes, those you ignored from the very beginning, August, do you remember? that hostile attitude of "I come here from the PS3 scene's hell, so I'm gonna rock'round here like if it was nothing".
Only then you will find that I run an official CC Pro, a samsung 32" TV from 2006, and all PP turned OFF, with wii through component. Playing Darkstalkers in turbo mode. That I played on the same HDTV bittrip runner (rythm game), a game the defies input lag like nothing else with the wiimote and had no problems. I also play 3rd Strike OE Demo on xbox360 and it's smooth as silk.

I'm not going to deny there might be some kind of screen LAG due to the LCD, just that it's not noticeable (annoying) at least on my side. From that point on is where I value the input lag. It's as easy as playing a game like a fast fighting game or shooter, etc with a GC controller, then CC controller, play against a friend, switch controllers, and now come and tell me if it's ok, if after dedicating even less than an hour you tell me you saw no difference against the GC controller then I can assume it's as so and live with it.
But you are taking the TV argument over and over, and that has no meaning when what you are testing are different controllers ON THE SAME HDTV. The lag difference between controllers is the same on a HDTV than on a CRT TV. Please listen to sideskroll, we are not saying that there's not input lag with the GC controller, we are saying that there MUCH MORE LAG with a CC controller than with the GC controller, you know how to code and you don't understand this? c'mon!!

 

[CobraStr1ke]

Just wanted to say Thank you to the dev for this! I can play Yoshis Island fullspeed off my Samsung CRT and it looks great. Also able to play Seiken Densetsu 3 (Secret of Mana) with English patch (= ---------> One huge question though....Does Simpsons, Donpachi, Wrestlefest etc need to be loaded with the FBA 1 core???? I have not been able to get a single Mame game, or FBA game loaded. They are all zips and I just get the error when I try to launch it.....an error flashes and it just sits at the game list no matter what game I try. Thank you again its very much appreciated as I am now rockn this off my Wii and CRT and those 2 games I mentioned under the SNES core work great ! If anyone knows how to launch the games I am having issues with PLEASE help....Thank you again!!!!!


Nevermind after looking through the whole thread again I realized I was missing the full core on the first page.....Anyone able to get Wrestlefest working as all I see are graphical glitches....Also looking to see why Donpachi doesnt seem to load? Thank you again LibretroRetroArc!!!!!

 

[LibretroRetroArc]

@LibreRetroArch: I subscribe everything I said in my post, I wouldn't mind if you re-quoted it any number of times because I'm so true to myself!

I also wouldn't mind if you read my posts, yes, those you ignored from the very beginning, August, do you remember? that hostile attitude of "I come here from the PS3 scene's hell, so I'm gonna rock'round here like if it was nothing".
Only then you will find that I run an official CC Pro, a samsung 32" TV from 2006, and all PP turned OFF, with wii through component. Playing Darkstalkers in turbo mode. That I played on the same HDTV bittrip runner (rythm game), a game the defies input lag like nothing else with the wiimote and had no problems. I also play 3rd Strike OE Demo on xbox360 and it's smooth as silk.

OK - hold on - let me get this straight - you're talking about a HDTV you bought in 2006 - and you have the gall to complain to me about lag? Are you serious? You do know that anything above 2ms response time is a piece of crap right and that no 2006 HDTV has any hope in hell of even matching that, right? It would be like expecting the NES to be able to render N64 graphics -it's that incredulous.

Anyway, in case you didn't mean that - let me talk about 'native resolutions' since it might be the crux of the problem -

Every HDTV has a 'native' display resolution - for some it's 720p, for others it's 1080p.

When you have something like the Wii that drops you back into 480p mode (if at that), it could well be the case that your TV does not natively support this display resolution and therefore a lot of postprocessing has to be applied to convert this on the fly by the TV's CPU - hence leading to lag.

Go ahead and read this entire article - there are some 'solutions' there you can try - but there is no such thing as a magic bullet - because it's the deficiency of your hardware.

http://www.lg.com/ph/support/product-help/doc-2122921-en-LGEPH

It also explains something about this native resolution issue that I am talking about -

Here's the meat of the native resolution issue: While just about any HDTV can accept any other signal, like a 1366x768 native resolution HD-LCD accepting a 1080i signal from an HD-DVD player, the incoming signal must be scaled to match the native resolution of the TV, in this case down from 1920x1080 to 1366x768. This sort of processing takes real work to accomplish, which is handled by the internal scaling circuitry of the HDTV. The heaviest load usually occurs when an HDTV must up-scale a 480i signal to native resolution, which requires both enlarging the image and converting the signal from interlaced (the 'i' in 480i) to progressive-scan (the 'p' in 480p, 720p etc.).

Again - really - this is not my problem - it's yours - you bought the TV, not me. Take it up with them. Any gamer that doesn't have a HDTV with at least 2 ms response time or less has no right to complain about input lag - you get what you pay for. And if you still want to complain - make sure that certain person isn't me, because I have nothing to do with your purchasing decisions.

And also, quoting 'Bittrip Runner' (whatever - you say it's a 'rhythm game' - I say it's not the same kind of fast-paced rhythm game as Parappa - and seriously, that article I linked you to was written by the original dev) runs smoothly or 3rd Strike demo - it's MEANINGLESS - don't you get this by now? These games were 'altered' in ways so that it will more or less run acceptably on every shitty HDTV out there - we can't exactly do that with an emulator now can we? It's not like I have the source code to each game and I can tweak a few knobs and have them run at a different refresh rate or do some tricks.

Sorry, but I'm not going to be a counsellor for people who buy HDTVs and expect zero-lag nirvanas. Read that article, and accept the fact that this is not my problem - it's as simple as that. You're being incredibly harrassing over something that is not even my fault - take it up with your TV manufacturer if you're so passionate about it - they sold you the thing and promised you nirvana, not me. Or you should have just held onto your old CRT TV instead of throwing it away.

 

[s8n]

i can play CPS1/CPS2/NeoGeo but im wondering how to load TMNT Arcade/TMNT Turtles in Time etc..........?

ive tried multiple Cores and cant get them to run

 

[CobraStr1ke]

i can play CPS1/CPS2/NeoGeo but im wondering how to load TMNT Arcade/TMNT Turtles in Time etc..........?

ive tried multiple Cores and cant get them to run

Try the core on the first page, theres a link to it....Leave it named CORE.dol and just drop it in the retroarch folder with the others, it will rename itself to fb_alpha or something like that....You need to run it off that one. It took a bit for me as well to realize it today, hope that helps.

Also anyone mind telling me what SNES games you can run off this that are worth getting which are not injectable.....such as Yoshis Island and Secret of Mana 2 etc.....I want to use the SNES on this to make up for those that you cant make into a channel, thanks in advance!

One last thing, I have got Sega CD to load and I read a old thread saying there is no possibility for music, is that still the case right now? Thanks again

 

[s8n]

hi Cobra i just tried what you mentioned and it now works !

Also would you mind telling me what the neogeo bios has to be names, does it have to be in zip format or bin? Thanks

im not 100% sure what you mean here but my Neo Geo Bios is zipped and in the same directory as the Neo Geo roms