Homebrew RetroArch Switch

[the_randomizer]

problem with dolphin the the cpu speed not the gpu, since switch has a quadcore 1ghz cpu and dolphin needs more.

Yeah, given that the Gamecube is ridiculously complex with its hardware, a good CPU with a higher clock speed per core is what's needed. 3.0 GHz dual or quad core at least would be plenty. Never gonna happen on Switch AFAIK.

 

[notimp]

Just as an fyi: The current inofficial snes core build is very rough around the edges.

- It defaults to a square pixel aspect ratio - which is wrong.
- If you try to change the aspect ratio in menu, the menu bugs out and doest disappear from screen anymore.
- Also the aspect ratio wont change.
- If you load a game, exit the game, and try to load another one - the SD card will not be recognized anymore.
- If you resume a game twice, you will have a soft lock on your hands.
- If you try to change the aspect ratio without a game loaded, you get a hard crash once you try to load a game (not reproduced).
- As said before, saving is not implemented.
- Im now 2 for 2 on retroarch crashing to a blackscreen error upon exiting it.

Add that the usual convoluted menu navigation Retroarch brings to the table, and the usual 2-7 retries to get HBL working (*grml*) - and the experience is not very fun - currently.

I know that this is not an official release, but as usual - first impressions.

edit:

- The screenshot button doesnt work as intended.
- Hitting close content on an active rom crashes the emulator.
- Left analog stick to digi pad mapping doesnt work, which probably means, that button remapping doesnt work either.

This happens, if all that people really want is to have a youtube video go online, where they dont show any of this occurring - just to be able to proclaim "first". pFBA in comparison, even though it lacked sound emulation, was in a releasable prebeta state. This is not. If you want to impress your friends, or assist in testing - boot it up, but otherwise - this is unusable.

 

[Deleted User]

its pretty bugged i would wait for an libnx version.

 

[freakzilla5]

Played a couple titles last night and once the trial of getting it up and running is over it seemed to work fine. Of course it's still buggy, no control remapping , inaccurate scaling etc... but it is usable for a mess around while the developer works out the kinks.

 

[Deleted User]

the reason it wont map , its simply not ready and just a port from the libtransistor one

and @freakzilla5 do you know big poppa pump ?

 

[roblabla]

Just as an fyi: The current inofficial snes core build is very rough around the edges.

- It defaults to a square pixel aspect ratio - which is wrong.
- If you try to change the aspect ratio in menu, the menu bugs out and doest disappear from screen anymore.
- Also the aspect ratio wont change.
- If you load a game, exit the game, and try to load another one - the SD card will not be recognized anymore.
- If you resume a game twice, you will have a soft lock on your hands.
- If you try to change the aspect ratio without a game loaded, you get a hard crash once you try to load a game (not reproduced).
- As said before, saving is not implemented.
- Im now 2 for 2 on retroarch crashing to a blackscreen error upon exiting it.

Add that the usual convoluted menu navigation Retroarch brings to the table, and the usual 2-7 retries to get HBL working (*grml*) - and the experience is not very fun - currently.

I know that this is not an official release, but as usual - first impressions.

edit:

- The screenshot button doesnt work as intended.
- Hitting close content on an active rom crashes the emulator.
- Left analog stick to digi pad mapping doesnt work, which probably means, that button remapping doesnt work either.

This happens, if all that people really want is to have a youtube video go online, where they dont show any of this occurring - just to be able to proclaim "first". pFBA in comparison, even though it lacked sound emulation, was in a releasable prebeta state. This is not. If you want to impress your friends, or assist in testing - boot it up, but otherwise - this is unusable.

Thanks for this, actually. That list is going to be pretty convenient to tick things off as I work on things. And yes, the reason I just dropped an NRO randomly was mostly because people were spouting nonsense such as "we need to port retroarch to libnx for it to work in HBL", which is obviously untrue, and that NRO serves as proof. This is very much an in-dev thing that isn't actually ready for release.

A couple things here:

- Screenshot button *probably* depends on issue 118 (Although I'm not sure even that'll be enough: Does libnx support screenshots ? Given that HBL destroys the album, I wouldn't be surprised if it didn't).
- I'm working on adding FS write support to libtransistor right now, which is a prerequiste for save support in retroarch. You can follow the PR 109 for progress.
- JIT will come shortly after FS write to libtransistor. There's an issue tracking this is issue 119
- As for the crashes and various issues: those obviously have my priority. I'm aware of most of them (though you did notice a few things that I hadn't !).

Anyways, again thanks for reporting this, it's really useful.

(When will GBATemp give me the right to post links. It's a real pain in the ass to not be able to post links to the issues and PRs).

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

Yeah, given that the Gamecube is ridiculously complex with its hardware, a good CPU with a higher clock speed per core is what's needed. 3.0 GHz dual or quad core at least would be plenty. Never gonna happen on Switch AFAIK.

The nintendo switch is basically an NVidia Shield TV in terms of hardware, with a slightly underclocked CPU (but not by much). The NVidia Shield TV runs Dolphin without too much trouble. Google it up, there are youtube videos showing Dolphin on the Shield TV (I still can't send links...).

So Dolphin on the Switch is one of my main goals. It does, however, require working GPU drivers, which is the main missing thing.

 

[nmkd]

Yeah, given that the Gamecube is ridiculously complex with its hardware, a good CPU with a higher clock speed per core is what's needed. 3.0 GHz dual or quad core at least would be plenty. Never gonna happen on Switch AFAIK.

Lol, clock speeds don't matter. Do you think a 3 GHz chip from 2005 is faster than a 2 GHz from 2018?

Check out some videos of Dolphin on the GPD Win. A lot of games are playable (Zelda TP, Wind Waker, etc).
The Win is even weaker than portable Switch.

 

[notimp]

- Screenshot button *probably* depends on issue 118 (Although I'm not sure even that'll be enough: Does libnx support screenshots ? Given that HBL destroys the album, I wouldn't be surprised if it didn't).

Ah, the retroarch "everything that doesnt work, may not be needed" approach. *jk* (but then with a tiny bit of sarcasm pointing at an inkling of truth.. ).

- Having the screen shot button work is not a thing to be overlooked, imho. Its a dedicated button on the device. With a dedicated purpose. That serves a function the system is built to provide - independent of the software/app running. Putting all files in the same dedicated place for viewing, easy sharing - copying to a different location... Its no small feat. Its a major feature of the Switch. Its what Retroarch didn't manage to do in the 13 years after facebook came out - in terms of sharing your experiences, easily, with other people.

The feature has a dedicated face button on the front of the device. So before you pronounce that button "useless", because why not ignore it, if it doesnt work currently, lets take a pause. Look at the situation. Reevaluate.

Now back to answers.

- The button (/framework of stuff it does) does indeed seem to be supported by libnx - at least the button works as expected in pFBA, and that apparently is libnx based.

- HBL does indeed "destroy" the album function, but only if the exploit is loaded. If you reboot, screens you took in pFBA show up in the Switch' album, and can be viewed/manipulated from there.

- HBL also "destroys" the Switch' game launching function, if the exploit is loaded - btw, so expect people to restart their switches quite a bit to switch between "exploit loaded" and "not loaded" for quite a while.

- HBL highjacking the album icon is about the stupidest thing I've ever encountered in "system integration decision making". Idk if there are underlying issues - but the guy who thought it would be a good idea, to "destroy" the gallery function, to be able to launch homebrew, can collect a paragraph of verbal scolding, anytime he wants to.


We have had half inspired, half working, retroarch ports on different systems, that didn't care about a systems capabilities or a solid implementation to fill a freight shipping container with. How about we (I say we - without being able to actually code :/) make the Switch port not one of those?

The Switch is quite a popular system actually - thats portable, and very likely will be fully opened at some stage in its lifetime. That will serve as a callingcard for Retroarch for years to come. Treat the thing with respect. Think about its capabilities (Portable, 1 controller that can become 2 controllers, usable in vertical and horizontal mode, likely capable of up to Dreamcast level emulation, biggest screen for a popular portable gaming platform so far, screen shot feature built in, ...).

Thank you for the consideration.

(Not directed against you, but there is quite a bit of built up anger on how emulation became "more platform independent" because of retroarch in the past - and what this meant for its implementation on different systems built up here. (Retropie is a mess. No one cared about input lag, usability, interface design -- and yet its probably the most wide spread emulation experience most people have had today...).)

 

[DeslotlCL]

Lol, clock speeds don't matter. Do you think a 3 GHz chip from 2005 is faster than a 2 GHz from 2018?

Check out some videos of Dolphin on the GPD Win. A lot of games are playable (Zelda TP, Wind Waker, etc).
The Win is even weaker than portable Switch.

Some people does said that clockspeeds does matter for emulation, othet doesnt... im going the route of the verified users here that seems to know more about these kind of stuff. There were already two threads about the same and both threads ended on clarifing the switch could never get proper gamecube emulation support, and if it does, game compatibility could be relativy small.

 

[roblabla]

Ah, the retroarch "everything that doesnt work, may not be needed" approach. *jk* (but then with a tiny bit of sarcasm pointing at an inkling of truth.. ).

That is not what I said. I said it might (maybe) not work due to technical reason that cannot be overcome in a simple way. Thanks for checking it works on libnx though. That means we really should be fixing that libtransistor issue !

 

[ShadowOne333]

(When will GBATemp give me the right to post links. It's a real pain in the ass to not be able to post links to the issues and PRs).

Here you have them:

• Issue #119: Implement JIT support
• Issue #118: Use am to get framebuffer when possible
• Pull Request #109: SD Card FS by roblabla

As for the video, I believe this is one clear example, a guy doing a playthrough of Twilight Princess on the Shield TV:


Let me know if you need anything else while you acquire your link-posting permissions

 

[Masterwin]

tutorial in Spanish, how to launch and use snes games through hbl

 

[the_randomizer]

Lol, clock speeds don't matter. Do you think a 3 GHz chip from 2005 is faster than a 2 GHz from 2018?

Check out some videos of Dolphin on the GPD Win. A lot of games are playable (Zelda TP, Wind Waker, etc).
The Win is even weaker than portable Switch.

No crap, Sherlock. Do you think a 1 GHz down-clocked X1 CPU is fast enough to run Dolphin decently on an ARM CPU? Clock speed and architecture, instruction sets, also play a role. Not gonna happen on Switch.

 

[Deleted User]

No crap, Sherlock. Do you think a 1 GHz down-clocked X1 CPU is fast enough to run Dolphin decently on an ARM CPU? Clock speed and architecture, instruction sets, also play a role. Not gonna happen on Switch.

I think it might happen, though not with the Dolphin emulator for reasons you've stated in previous posts. Dolphin is just simply too cpu intensive..

GameCube/Wii emulation could possibly work on the Switch with Nintendo's "official" emulator that they have apparently already developed for the Shield TV. This emulator is apparently upscaling GC/Wii titles to full HD with no problem on the fully clocked X1 and could be a testing ground for a later Switch release.
Rumours are that Nintendo will eventually release this emulator in the form of virtual console for the switch which seems entirely plausible at this point.

Could we possibly inject other ISOs into this hypothetical emulator? Who knows.. but there's always hope!

 

[DarkOrb]

Whoa, nice job. But are we able to change cores on this build?

 

[DeslotlCL]

I think it might happen, though not with the Dolphin emulator for reasons you've stated in previous posts. Dolphin is just simply too cpu intensive..

GameCube/Wii emulation could possibly work on the Switch with Nintendo's "official" emulator that they have apparently already developed for the Shield TV. This emulator is apparently upscaling GC/Wii titles to full HD with no problem on the fully clocked X1 and could be a testing ground for a later Switch release.
Rumours are that Nintendo will eventually release this emulator in the form of virtual console for the switch which seems entirely plausible at this point.

Could we possibly inject other ISOs into this hypothetical emulator? Who knows.. but there's always hope!

The problem is that the switch have the handheld factor, and a downclocked tegra x1 to 300mhz or something wouldnt help the "official emulator" at all, unless they make gc games only playable on docked mode. Saying this, the cpu, which is the most important thing for gamecube emulation, even if they are using a official one, a 1ghz clocked arm cpu wont do it much justice, the difference with the shield tv is that the cpu is not downclocked, and from what i have read from users here that seems to know about the matter, the shield tv only downclockes the gpu when it gets warm, so the cpu would still be functioning at its fullest for emulation.

 

[pedro702]

The problem is that the switch have the handheld factor, and a downclocked tegra x1 to 300mhz or something wouldnt help the "official emulator" at all, unless they make gc games only playable on docked mode. Saying this, the cpu, which is the most important thing for gamecube emulation, even if they are using a official one, a 1ghz clocked arm cpu wont do it much justice, the difference with the shield tv is that the cpu is not downclocked, and from what i have read from users here that seems to know about the matter, the shield tv only downclockes the gpu when it gets warm, so the cpu would still be functioning at its fullest for emulation.

dolphin is not gpu intensive, it needs a gpu but it doesnt need a good gpu, dolphin needs a good cpu, so 300mhz gpu is more than enoughh for what dolphin uses the gpu for.

 

[DeslotlCL]

dolphin is not gpu intensive, it needs a gpu but it doesnt need a good gpu, dolphin needs a good cpu, so 300mhz gpu is more than enoughh for what dolphin uses the gpu for.

Ye, if you are fine with games rendering at 480p on that screen, sure. It still need the cpu for the heavy stuff, so yee, the switch aint got the necesary for proper or full compatibility emulation.

Sheesh, even the ps4 strugles to run pikmin 2 at 50fps with dolphin, a console which is better in terms of power than the switch, so... how is going the switch to beat that?

 

[notimp]

In game Retroarch and the snes9x 2010 core are stable. I played an hour of Chrono Trigger without any issues.

 

[Deleted User]

In game Retroarch and the snes2010 core are stable. I played an hour of Chrono Trigger without any issues.

newest build ?