Homebrew RetroArch - A new multi-system emulator

[Hielkenator]

I would love to dig into this for PrBOOM if anything, but when ever I set the core to PrBOOM and select DOOM2.wad I get a Core Dump.

I also tried setting this to the SNES core, but loading roms also gives me a core dump. Sighh... What could I be missing? There are a few emulators and homebrews that do this to my Wii.

Do you have ios58 installed?
maybe a incompatible sd/hdd?

 

[LibretroRetroArc]

I would love to dig into this for PrBOOM if anything, but when ever I set the core to PrBOOM and select DOOM2.wad I get a Core Dump.

I also tried setting this to the SNES core, but loading roms also gives me a core dump. Sighh... What could I be missing? There are a few emulators and homebrews that do this to my Wii.

You need prboom.wad to be in the same directory as your DOOM2.WAD (or whatever you want to load).

 

[the_randomizer]

Bug report, Final Fantasy VI suffers from slowdown/choppy performance in certain areas , more notably mountain dungeons (inside and outside areas). Framerate drops to around 55fps. Maybe theses issues weren't fixed....? I know there were hacks added to fix the menu layering issues but this one baffles me.

Core - Snes9x Next 1.52.2

Again, I recall performance hacks being added but broke certain layering window effects in the menu, so, some hacks were killed while others were added. Guess I wasn't smart enough to test it more thoroughly for you guys....

 

[Toad King]

Bug report, Final Fantasy VI suffers from slowdown/choppy performance in certain areas , more notably mountain dungeons (inside and outside areas). Framerate drops to around 55fps.  Maybe theses issues weren't fixed....? I know there were hacks added to fix the menu layering issues but this one baffles me.

Core - Snes9x Next 1.52.2

Again, I recall performance hacks being added but broke certain layering window effects in the menu, so, some hacks were killed while others were added. Guess I wasn't smart enough to test it more thoroughly for you guys....

Do you have a SRAM save that I can reproduce this with? That could help in finding and fixing the slowdown.

 

[FIX94]

Hey man, that emulator collection looks really nice, great work, I cant find the source somewhere for the wii port, you made it closed source or so? However, if you did or not, is there some support to autoboot roms? You know, I'm currently the developer of the usb loader wiiflow, may see the topic in the backup loader section, and there I've added support to boot homebrew programs with arguments a while, it would be awesome to have this emulator compatible with it, and the best thing would be if I would not need to modify the emulator but its added by the creator you know, thanks!

 

[LibretroRetroArc]

Bug report, Final Fantasy VI suffers from slowdown/choppy performance in certain areas , more notably mountain dungeons (inside and outside areas). Framerate drops to around 55fps.  Maybe theses issues weren't fixed....? I know there were hacks added to fix the menu layering issues but this one baffles me.

Core - Snes9x Next 1.52.2

Again, I recall performance hacks being added but broke certain layering window effects in the menu, so, some hacks were killed while others were added. Guess I wasn't smart enough to test it more thoroughly for you guys....

Wanted to preface this by saying something dipping below 60fps is not really a 'bug' - but anyways - on FF6 -after I released that last version of SNES9x Next for Wii, I figured out another speed hack that can boost FPS of field scenes by ~100fps conservatively or so. The only problem is that this speed hack causes the graphic windows to be badly discolored. The way to remedy that would be to find the RAM value in the memory map that tells us whether a 'window' is being shown onscreen or not. If I can find out that value, I can switch the speed hack off on the fly whenever a window appears and turn it on again when there is no window onscreen.I think an FPS boost of around ~100fps should take care of the ~5fps it currently seems to dip below the ideal FPS - but like I said, I need a ROM hacker to tell me what RAM value is used for 'windows on/off onscreen'.You would figure out the value by booting SNES9x (the Windows version), go to the GUI, use the 'Cheat Search' option - start playing and look for when something suddenly changes from 0 to 1 whenever a window appears and vice versa. It would be possible to eventually narrow down which RAM value it is that is in control of that.

 

[LibretroRetroArc]

Closed source? Hell no.

https://github.com/Themaister/RetroArch

I should add a repo to the libretro site I guess to make this more clear.

 

[the_randomizer]

Do you have a SRAM save that I can reproduce this with? That could help in finding and fixing the slowdown.

Funny thing is, I don't think the .sram saves are stored on my SD card, but maybe on my hard drive; I looked for the saves but I can't find them....weird. It also happens in large towns, whether I use the Japanese ROM or English ROM, the problem persists.

Trying to pinpoint the approximate hex offset and byte values is extremely difficult. There is a forum dedicated to FF6 ROM hacking, called www.ff6hacking.com. Someone there might know.

Can someone at least look into the raspy Konami loading screen sound? It's way off in Snes9x Next 1.52.2. The file below demonstrates how is should sound.
http://www.mediafire...0rkv9sbhkc9qxw4

 

[LibretroRetroArc]

Can someone at least look into the raspy Konami loading screen sound? It's way off in Snes9x Next 1.52.2.  The file below demonstrates how is should sound.
http://www.mediafire...0rkv9sbhkc9qxw4

It will be looked at but in the larger scheme of things (right now - have a lot of other stuff remaining to be done - and not just Wii-related), it's not really a huge priority. Not to mention that it will take some time pinpointing.As for the FF6 thing - I've already told you what the deal is and how it can be resolved - I don't see any real 'technical talk' on that FF6 hacking site and all I really need is the RAM value - that's more or less it.That being said, neither the SNES9x team nor byuu (that has gone around making alot of changes to SNES9x) care very much about more accurate emulation affecting emulation speed - so you can see what I have had to deal with trying to find speed hacks for emulators that (with each new release) get slower and slower. Can't really blame me for it when the main authors just don't care since their PCs are 'fast enough'.Anyway, either people can help me with finding the RAM value and that way a speed solution can be reached or people can keep complaining - I just think the former can get a lot more things done.

 

[the_randomizer]

Can someone at least look into the raspy Konami loading screen sound? It's way off in Snes9x Next 1.52.2. The file below demonstrates how is should sound.
http://www.mediafire...0rkv9sbhkc9qxw4

It will be looked at but in the larger scheme of things (right now - have a lot of other stuff remaining to be done - and not just Wii-related), it's not really a huge priority. Not to mention that it will take some time pinpointing.As for the FF6 thing - I've already told you what the deal is and how it can be resolved - I don't see any real 'technical talk' on that FF6 hacking site and all I really need is the RAM value - that's more or less it.That being said, neither the SNES9x team nor byuu (that has gone around making alot of changes to SNES9x) care very much about more accurate emulation affecting emulation speed - so you can see what I have had to deal with trying to find speed hacks for emulators that (with each new release) get slower and slower. Can't really blame me for it when the main authors just don't care since their PCs are 'fast enough'.Anyway, either people can help me with finding the RAM value and that way a speed solution can be reached or people can keep complaining - I just think the former can get a lot more things done.

Understood......I'll back off now and stop bugging you. You seem to be extremely busy.

Spoiler

What the f*** is wrong with me? Why can't I just keep my mouth shut?

 

[arquillos]

Thank you for this excellent project!

Any future posibilitie of runing Outrun in Mame?

 

[FIX94]

I should add a repo to the libretro site I guess to make this more clear.

Yea, thanks alot for the link, seems like autoboot works fine with the latest precompiled snes9x, but not with the other ones, but if I compile the other ones by myself it works just fine, it would be cool if you guys could upload some pack where it works with all emus so I dont need to upload stuff which may gets outdated you know.

 

[LibretroRetroArc]

The_randomizer - some ROM hacking guy yesterday gave me a RAM value that seems to more or less work - I could put up a build later today and have you test if it makes the Wii port fast enough so that there's no more slowdown with FF6 - it ought to.​

EDIT: Try this - SNES9x Next v1.52.3 -

https://anonfiles.com/file/573bfc6ddba9cd45fc066993bba28d9c

 

[the_randomizer]

The_randomizer - some ROM hacking guy yesterday gave me a RAM value that seems to more or less work - I could put up a build later today and have you test if it makes the Wii port fast enough so that there's no more slowdown with FF6 - it ought to.​

Alright, I can test it after I get back from work at 4:30PM MST (GMT -7)

 

[Toad King]

I should add a repo to the libretro site I guess to make this more clear.

Yea, thanks alot for the link, seems like autoboot works fine with the latest precompiled snes9x, but not with the other ones, but if I compile the other ones by myself it works just fine, it would be cool if you guys could upload some pack where it works with all emus so I dont need to upload stuff which may gets outdated you know.

The SNES9x Next build is using a newer version of the RetroArch codebase, which has preliminary loader support. Support for all the cores won't come until 0.9.8, which won't be coming until at least the Android port is ready. I'm glad to know it works well though, and you are free to compile newer cores before the official release.

 

[FIX94]

The SNES9x Next build is using a newer version of the RetroArch codebase, which has preliminary loader support. Support for all the cores won't come until 0.9.8, which won't be coming until at least the Android port is ready. I'm glad to know it works well though, and you are free to compile newer cores before the official release.

OK thanks, if that takes a while I'll just include my self compiled dols into the next plugin pack for wiiflow

 

[DoctorWhosThat]

@[member='LibretroRetroArch'] or @[member='Toad King']: is there anyway to free up the memory every time a new rom is loaded without restarting or exiting?

Also sometimes... when I try to load another core I get a weird flicking green screen. Is there any inside info into this and how it could possibly be resolved?

Edit: another thing... Is there or will be support in future to emulate the Snes Super Scope and the Nes Zapper?

other than that... keep up the good work!

 

[the_randomizer]

Just tested the recently posted Snes9x Next WIP, and I can safely say that Final Fantasy VI runs perfectly!

 

[Toad King]

@[member='LibretroRetroArch'] or @[member='Toad King']: is there anyway to free up the memory every time a new rom is loaded without restarting or exiting?

Also sometimes... when I try to load another core I get a weird flicking green screen. Is there any inside info into this and how it could possibly be resolved?

Edit: another thing... Is there or will be support in future to emulate the Snes Super Scope and the Nes Zapper?

other than that... keep up the good work!

A lot of the cores have issues with re-entrant ROM loading and don't completely clean up after unloading a game. Unfortunately fixing these leaks will be time consuming, but more work on it might be done in the future.

The green flickering when switching cores is the VI subsystem not cleaning up properly on exit. I thought I fixed this a while back, so I'll look at the code and see if I can find any lingering bugs.

Super-Scope/Zapper/other pointer devices are set for a future release. If not 0.9.8, then a later one.

 

[DoctorWhosThat]

@[member='Toad King']: Thank you for answering my queries...