Homebrew RetroArch - A new multi-system emulator

[Toad King]

@libretroretroarch

Since my first post I wanted to report a bug that is very difficult to tell when it occurs. I couldn't make it happen intentionally so I just skipped any mention of it. It was there on 0.9.8, 0.9.8.1 and now on 0.9.8.2.

It happened again just a few minutes ago...

I turned on the wii, ran retroarch, used the snes9x core to load two games. I let each run in demo mode for a couple of hours, I didn't play at all. Then I wanted to play a game in FBA. I switched the core, went to change resolution from 640x576i to 320x240. The moment the resolution mode went below 640x448i the screen got garbled and it could only be fixed by selecting 640x448i or above.

From then on, the emulator became very slow. Exited the emulator to the homebrew channel and the homebrew channel was also slow. Exited the homebrew channel to the wii menu and the wii menu was slow. The only solution was to shutdown wii and turn it on again. Then everything worked as usual.

It has happened before with different cores so it can't be core related. I've tried in the past to repeat the error but I couldn't. I'll try again but the only thing that I didn't try in the past was to let a core play for hours before switching cores and messing with the resolution.

Now that I finished writing this, I wonder if I should post it ... oh well ...

If it only happens after running the Wii for a long time, it sounds like this could be general hardware failure than something RetroArch itself is doing.

EDIT: Do you have a launch Wii? I know some of the earlier ones had issues where the graphics chip ran too hot.

 

[solidhit]

It could be that it was simply not a wise decision to add those resolutions. Not sure if I should take it all out. Alternatively, we could simply take out some of the odd ones that don't make any sense anyway with how the GX scaler works.

Also, you're sure you just don't have rewinding on? Though if you say it affects HBC too it can't be that.

No, rewind is always OFF.

It affects the whole wii, you need to see it to believe it, everything runs, but slow!

I want to make clear that I don't have a problem with any of the provided resolutions with the exception of 640x576i as I have already mentioned on my first post.

It is only when a certain succession of events occurs (my previous post) that resolutions have this effect.

 

[solidhit]

If it only happens after running the Wii for a long time, it sounds like this could be general hardware failure than something RetroArch itself is doing.

EDIT: Do you have a launch Wii? I know some of the earlier ones had issues where the graphics chip ran too hot.

My wii is a 2009 model, and has never had wiiconnect24 on. I know this can cause problems.

Never had any instabilities with it. Me and my godchild are playing wii games every day for many hours straight and everything is working fine.

Retroarch works fine too, it is only when a certain succession of events occurs, that this problem surfaces.

 

[LibretroRetroArc]

My wii is a 2009 model, and has never had wiiconnect24 on. I know this can cause problems.

Never had any instabilities with it. Me and my godchild are playing wii games every day for many hours straight and everything is working fine.

Retroarch works fine too, it is only when a certain succession of events occurs, that this problem surfaces.

Best to not mess around too much with the resolutions then in your case.

 

[solidhit]

Best to not mess around too much with the resolutions then in your case.

Please understand, I really like retroarch, it offers wii a unique opportunity to become something it would have never been without it and for me to enjoy the games I grew up with on a machine that was made to play games.

But especially now, that retroarch is still very new, I believe it's beneficial to developers like yourself to have users pinpoint any possible issue they find no matter how silly or serious it may be.

It's up to you decide how to administer issues and requests.

I've absolutely nothing to ask of you and I'm really grateful for what I get, but I will continue to test the user interface and the various cores any way I can and report anything that doesn't seem right only in the hope that this may help you or others make retroarch a solid piece of software.

 

[LibretroRetroArc]

Please understand, I really like retroarch, it offers wii a unique opportunity to become something it would have never been without it and for me to enjoy the games I grew up with on a machine that was made to play games.

But especially now, that retroarch is still very new, I believe it's beneficial to developers like yourself to have users pinpoint any possible issue they find no matter how silly or serious it may be.

It's up to you decide how to administer issues and requests.

I've absolutely nothing to ask of you and I'm really grateful for what I get, but I will continue to test the user interface and the various cores any way I can and report anything that doesn't seem right only in the hope that this may help you or others make retroarch a solid piece of software.

I'm going to ask Eke-Eke to take a look at the video code since unfortunately both me and ToadKing don't seem to know enough about how GX video works and we really need some pointers from people that have shown they do like ekeeke.

 

[nintygaming]

Please understand, I really like retroarch, it offers wii a unique opportunity to become something it would have never been without it and for me to enjoy the games I grew up with on a machine that was made to play games.

But especially now, that retroarch is still very new, I believe it's beneficial to developers like yourself to have users pinpoint any possible issue they find no matter how silly or serious it may be.

It's up to you decide how to administer issues and requests.

I've absolutely nothing to ask of you and I'm really grateful for what I get, but I will continue to test the user interface and the various cores any way I can and report anything that doesn't seem right only in the hope that this may help you or others make retroarch a solid piece of software.

I agree and I too am very grateful for Retroarch regardless. Whether its finished or not, its still a job well done, heck even fantastically done when you consider all the hardwork that LibretroRetroarc has put into SNES9x Next. Thanks goes to him and Toad King for such an awesome emulator package.

 

[Gamecuber]

RetroArch Wii 0.9.8.2 released now -

https://anonfiles.com/file/f40e8dd45dc7ba68f03d2bab3546adfd

ToadKing will frontpage this as well. CHANGELOG inside -



For Gamecube you'll have to wait a day longer - a lot of badgering today and I still have yet to release an Xbox update - so you guys need to wait for a while.

Let´s cross our fingers and hope you relese it as soon as you can to test it.

 

[MassiveRican]

I'm going to ask Eke-Eke to take a look at the video code since unfortunately both me and ToadKing don't seem to know enough about how GX video works and we really need some pointers from people that have shown they do like ekeeke.

Awesome! I'm really glad to hear that there is no bad blood amongst the RA team and other dev's, I get this warm and fuzzy feeling inside when I think of collaboration for better RA emulation

For NEStopia since I've read it has better NES emu accuracy with less resource hogging, would it be possible to add IR light gun support. Just a quick question, haven't heard any mention of IR support for a while. Indeed great work guys, too bad you don't take any monetary donations.. @libretroarch did you ever read my post about my iPhone, the screen is damaged but it works perfectly fine. If you have a friend that can hook you up with the LED screen & Touchscreen it'd be worth it. I can get it around here for about $70 cuz it's a 3GS screen but if you can get it cheaper I'll donate it to you and send you the cash to fix it. I don't know if the 3GS processor and ram is really worth it porting over too, probably an iPhone 4 would be much more worth the hassle.

Retroarch on iOS would make sack hang just a bit lower with pure gaming testosterone goodness lol!

 

[LibretroRetroArc]

Awesome! I'm really glad to hear that there is no bad blood amongst the RA team and other dev's, I get this warm and fuzzy feeling inside when I think of collaboration for better RA emulation

I have good relations with Eke-Eke, but the thing is that most authors either lack the time or just plain don't like having to go through other people's codebases. So it's unsure if he's going to take a look or not. I hope so, because I think both me and ToadKing have reached the point where we're unsure as to what could be wrong or not or whether we are even doing it right.

For NEStopia since I've read it has better NES emu accuracy with less resource hogging, would it be possible to add IR light gun support. Just a quick question, haven't heard any mention of IR support for a while. Indeed great work guys, too bad you don't take any monetary donations.. @libretroarch did you ever read my post about my iPhone, the screen is damaged but it works perfectly fine. If you have a friend that can hook you up with the LED screen & Touchscreen it'd be worth it. I can get it around here for about $70 cuz it's a 3GS screen but if you can get it cheaper I'll donate it to you and send you the cash to fix it. I don't know if the 3GS processor and ram is really worth it porting over too, probably an iPhone 4 would be much more worth the hassle.

Retroarch on iOS would make sack hang just a bit lower with pure gaming testosterone goodness lol!

I really need an iPad 2 to be able to do it justice - anything lower will either have too little RAM or (in the case of an Apple TV 2) it will be missing the crucial component which is touchscreen. Judging by the response (or lack of) that I have received so far, It seems people are more interested in thousand-dollar kickstarters where half of the money disappears in a big black money hole rather than going exactly towards the item I state I am needing for development. I don't like creating an obscure 'pool of money' that people can 'donate to' for ethical and legal reasons.

Another reason I want to get hold of the hardware is because I know that anybody else who has the hardware and would be inclined to do a port themselves has absolutely ZERO incentive to release it for free - the temptation is just too big to slap a price tag on it - so really, it's going to take a nut like me to do this non-selfishly AND for free - hence the request since while I am willing to do this for free, I am NOT willing to take anymore money out of my own pocket to do it - I already got burned before buying expensive devkits with no backing and I'm not going to go through that again - I'm not a millionaire, we're going through hard times here in Europe financially and the community will ultimately decide if there is going to be an iOS port or not in this case.

 

[MassiveRican]

K peeps, u heard it from the main man himself. Free iOS port is probably close to null and void for RA. Why not set up a fundraising pool just for an iPad2. I mean who wouldn't love to see RA on iOS. Anyone that has an iPad knows how beautiful it would b for retro gaming.

I'm sure an iPad2 can b found for a reasonable price on Ebay. If we all pitch in ANY amount the goal can be reached fairly easily based on our numbers. I'll set something up with PayPal and the RA crew, hopefully something can be arranged where we all feel comfortable donating and the RA crew feel comfortable accepting monetary donations for hardware.

Lets make an RA port to the iOS a reality.

 

[Disorarara]

Last I remember you also need to be running Mac OS X to develop for iOS, or maybe it's different now

 

[MassiveRican]

Really? Can anyone confirm, cuz I have no idea.

 

[LibretroRetroArc]

Last I remember you also need to be running Mac OS X to develop for iOS, or maybe it's different now

My Lenovo G580 laptop is supposed to be Hackintosh-friendly, so that is probably not a concern.

 

[MassiveRican]

Man I love Lenovo. Enterprise class meets the modern single end user.

 

[Disorarara]

Well I looked it up, from within xCode there's an iOS simulator so you should be able to test retroarch without owning any iOS devices, however to actually publish anything on the app store you have to open up an iTunes connect account which is 99 dollars a year. I guess that's the reason most iOS emulators have prices.

 

[MassiveRican]

That's what Cydia is for fuck the App Store lol.

 

[DAR CRO]

The issue with Cybots is still the same. I can't use the buttons except for the Dpad on the CC.
Fireshark also has the problem.

 

[Charco]

The issue with Cybots is still the same. I can't use the buttons except for the Dpad on the CC.
Fireshark also has the problem.

Just tested this and same here for both the CPS2 and FBA cores.

 

[strai]

any plans for a psx emulator port for the wii. It will be nice to run ff9 again