Homebrew [RetroArch] Nightly builds here!

[Bubsy Bobcat]

We don't know

Welp, guess I'll have to hope Pleb releases a 3dsx build soon. #9.4SysnandProblems

 

[duwen]

We don't know

Wasn't it said a few pages back that the compiled 3dsx was being left out of the nightly archive because it didn't run yet?

 

[SLiV3R]

Wasn't it said a few pages back that the compiled 3dsx was being left out of the nightly archive because it didn't run yet?

Perhaps. But after a day or two the 3dsx folder was there. Aliaspider said that you can compile it yourself from the elf.

 

[duwen]

Perhaps. But after a day or two the 3dsx folder was there. Aliaspider said that you can compile it yourself from the elf.

But didn't Radius also state that it wouldn't run? Has anyone compiled it and got it to work? No one's mentioned that they have, so I'd go with what Aliaspider originally said; that the 3dsx doesn't work yet.

 

[intensje]

I would say that catsfc is fullspeed with a few exceptions. I have around 700 snes games. About 650 of them runs fullspeed and 50 don't. Hey, I think I have enough to play ^^

You are right, and i'm very happy with this, playing DKC (all 3) super mario world, etc at full speed.

exept 1 game: Yoshi's Island
from the moment we can play this game on full speed my life will be complete in means of SNES emulation on N3DS

 

[SLiV3R]

You are right, and i'm very happy with this, playing DKC (all 3) super mario world, etc at full speed.

exept 1 game: Yoshi's Island
from the moment we can play this game on full speed my life will be complete in means of SNES emulation on N3DS

I agree that Yoshi's Island is the big exception!

 

[Link_enfant]

Hi there,

I'm quite new to the 3DS homebrew and emulation, as I've tried it for the first time yesterday with CatSFC on a N3DS 10.1 with TubeHax, so I have some questions:

- Is there any way to access Homebrew without using the modified DNS with YouTube app? That'd help quite much so I can still access the eShop with the default DNS settings.
- Now I've launched homebrew even once, has it installed anything on the actual N3DS or can I delete everything on the SD Card so it can be considered as a clean, never hack N3DS?
- I only tried CatSFC (not the Plus version yet) with a few games and they played perfectly, except for the sound pitch which is a little bit too high. I've read that CatSFC Plus is more accurate but slower; how slower is it actually ? I won't be able to have full speed on any game at the moment even on N3DS?
- Is there any important setting that should be changed for CatSFC/Plus or are the default settings okay? I just want to play the games in the most accurate emulation possible.
- Which is the best aspect ratio for SNES games in your opinion? I've tried a few, but I'm looking for a good rendering on N3DS (XL) screen, quite accurate 4:3 (or close to) display like it's supposed to be.
- Should I update the retroarch builds everyday? It looks like a new file is made available each day so...

Enough questions for now

 

[xXDungeon_CrawlerXx]

I never thought that the N3DS is able to run PSX Games so smoothly
Trief to play Final Fantasy VII and it runs pretty well (sometimes I get some framedrops but they're not that bad).
Want to see a Emulator for N64

 

[sj33]

Hi there,
- Which is the best aspect ratio for SNES games in your opinion? I've tried a few, but I'm looking for a good rendering on N3DS (XL) screen, quite accurate 4:3 (or close to) display like it's supposed to be.

On the Aspect Ratio setting, scroll right until you find a setting tagged (1:1) - this is the correct one. Also enable integer scaling.

CATSFC Plus uses the more accurate sound core from Snes9x 1.53 but is slower as a result. There's a reason the standard CATSFC remains there!

 

[Radius4]

I agree that Yoshi's Island is the big exception!

No ambassador program? My brother has had that port forever

Hi there,

I'm quite new to the 3DS homebrew and emulation, as I've tried it for the first time yesterday with CatSFC on a N3DS 10.1 with TubeHax, so I have some questions:

- Is there any way to access Homebrew without using the modified DNS with YouTube app? That'd help quite much so I can still access the eShop with the default DNS settings.
- Now I've launched homebrew even once, has it installed anything on the actual N3DS or can I delete everything on the SD Card so it can be considered as a clean, never hack N3DS?
- I only tried CatSFC (not the Plus version yet) with a few games and they played perfectly, except for the sound pitch which is a little bit too high. I've read that CatSFC Plus is more accurate but slower; how slower is it actually ? I won't be able to have full speed on any game at the moment even on N3DS?
- Is there any important setting that should be changed for CatSFC/Plus or are the default settings okay? I just want to play the games in the most accurate emulation possible.
- Which is the best aspect ratio for SNES games in your opinion? I've tried a few, but I'm looking for a good rendering on N3DS (XL) screen, quite accurate 4:3 (or close to) display like it's supposed to be.
- Should I update the retroarch builds everyday? It looks like a new file is made available each day so...

Enough questions for now

- Not really, they said they may have a different DNS with access to the eshop later. In my case, I change the DNS in the DHCP settings of my router only for that host
- No, it's clean
- That's because there is no DRC yet it will be fixed when DRC is implemented
- Dunno
- In my opinion core-provided, 1:1 looks vertically squished in some games for me
- Your call

 

[Vague Rant]

- Which is the best aspect ratio for SNES games in your opinion? I've tried a few, but I'm looking for a good rendering on N3DS (XL) screen, quite accurate 4:3 (or close to) display like it's supposed to be.

If you want to be really anal about this, you could use a custom ratio and set it to 54, 8 : 292x 224. This should give you the aspect ratio as it would look on a correctly calibrated TV. Technically, 293 would be even more accurate but will mean the image is (very slightly) off-center which might bug you if you're insane. It's basically "292 and a half" that you're looking for, so either is off by roughly the same amount. Either way, be sure to also turn on HW Bilinear Filtering.

Keep in mind that per-core configs don't work currently, so any aspect ratio you set will be used by all the various RetroArch cores, so it's probably inconvenient to do it this way.

EDIT:

- Is there any way to access Homebrew without using the modified DNS with YouTube app? That'd help quite much so I can still access the eShop with the default DNS settings.

Check the various threads about Browserhax currently on the front page. These allow you to start the Homebrew Launcher by visiting a specific web page in the 3DS browser. Don't use Themehax, which currently has trouble launching some homebrew, including the RetroArch cores.

 

[SLiV3R]

No ambassador program? My brother has had that port forever

Yeah, me too! But the snes version is superior!

 

[Rj.MoG]

I agree that Yoshi's Island is the big exception!

Yoshi's island GBA runs fullspeed and has extra content just fyi.

 

[RaMon90]

Some games of snes doesnt work or almost all 4 that i tried are very slow. Do i need a good settings? Super mario world actually works very well on blarg but not on this.

 

[Cornholio309]

Been playing Sonic 3 & Knuckles and Sonic 2 on the Genesis Plus GX core. Excellent work! Didn't think perfect Genesis emulation would reach the 3DS. The other emulators work wonderfully well too. FCEUMM is already better than any official NES VC release simply because of the screen resolution options and multiple save states.

CatSFC also blew my mind too. Didn't think I'd see DKC1 on my 3DS running at full speed! It's so impressive that I can pretty much easily ignore the slightly higher pitched instruments. Amazing stuff so far. My biggest wet dream is that the Virtual Boy emulation gets a nice speed up sometime soon so I can play Virtual Boy Wario Land at full speed, perhaps with 3D effects, but the Genesis and SNES side of things already have me sold and make me very happy for the 3DS homebrew scene.

Now, in addition to these cores, what are the chances that we can see the GW core ported to Retroarch 3DS? That's something I'd love to see.

Also @RaMon90, it might be lagging because you have an Original 3DS. The cores still need some optimization on those models.

 

[Suwazo]

Weird thing about NXengine. Initially it runs at 60fps, but if the Retroarch menu is ever opened, it drops to about 45fps. Noticed this when I had to keep resetting to make the jump to skip the Booster v0.8.
As well as that, using QuickNES, in Megaman 3, loading a savestate can cause a freeze. Only noticed it in this game, though I guess it could be a coincidence.
Also, out of curiosity, does Retroarch work in that each core is programmed in some scripting language or something, and the frontend translates it to something the platform understands? So the only thing actually getting ported is the frontend? Does every build on the platform use the same frontend, so any improvements affect every emulator?

 

[sj33]

Are we any closer to knowing what on earth causes the controls to break in Mario Bros 3 using CATSFC? It works fine in Snes 9x Next and of course blargSnes.

 

[Jacobeian]

Also, out of curiosity, does Retroarch work in that each core is programmed in some scripting language or something, and the frontend translates it to something the platform understands? So the only thing actually getting ported is the frontend? Does every build on the platform use the same frontend, so any improvements affect every emulator?

No, cores are not reprogrammed: technically, porting to libretro just means adding a small layer of code that interfaces the code already developped by the emulator authors with Retroarch, through a specific API. So Retroarch (the frontend) handles anything that is platform specific (file reading and writing, controllers inputs, audio & video outputs, etc) and let the core doing the emulation work.

You ate right though that all that need to be ported to any new platform is the frontend (aka Retroarch) because the libretro API and the core itself are (usually) written in portable code (means the code can be compiled withput modification for any platform).

 

[Radius4]

Now, in addition to these cores, what are the chances that we can see the GW core ported to Retroarch 3DS? That's something I'd love to see.

Totally feasible, I'll ask the guy who made the core

Also, out of curiosity, does Retroarch work in that each core is programmed in some scripting language or something, and the frontend translates it to something the platform understands? So the only thing actually getting ported is the frontend? Does every build on the platform use the same frontend, so any improvements affect every emulator?

It depends on the core, many of the cores are very shallow forks that only discard the frontend code (frontend code meaning audio, video and input). The emulation code is usually intact on those.

On some other cases the forks are more invasive because some things just can't work with libretro, for instance, I don't think adapting dolphin to libretro would be trivial, it's not gonna be a shallow fork for sure. Another example is MUPEN64, it's quite different from the original.

Cores are not exclusive to retroarch, anyone can implement a libretro frontend and use the cores. I think some early 3ds ports were based on libretro cores since it was easy to use them (they are already stripped of most platform specific code)

Are we any closer to knowing what on earth causes the controls to break in Mario Bros 3 using CATSFC? It works fine in Snes 9x Next and of course blargSnes.

I don't think it has been looked at yet.

 

[~Rainbow Mika]

Was playing with PCE Fast on a 3DS, most of my games runs at 40-45fps (New Adventure Island, 1943 Kai, Pac-Land, etc..) but isn't much of a problem overall, is enjoyable.
How's the PCE-CD emulation? Need anything else besides the cue+iso files? I wanna play some cotton.