Development Suggestions

[aorin1]

CD Image/CHD cache are great options for reducing stutters from random access, specially since external storage media are often turned off/slowed down in order to save power. While caching keeps the entire game image in the RAM during gameplay. With that, a few systems I noticed that are missing this feature are:

Flycast
Opera (3DO)
NEOCD
LRPS2
PCSX ReARMed
DOSBOX Pure (not sure if this would work, maybe caching the whole Zip, or is it already done?)
MAME (CHD games)
MelonDS
Citra
Dolphin

Is it viable to implement this option for the above cores? Also, I’m not sure how NDS and 3DS games are loaded.

I was surprised to see that PC-Engine CD games and Sega CD games now (and probably for quite some time) have the caching option, a bit hidden, but they’re there!

[Sylver]

Hello, I’d like to tell you that I’ve done 2 PR :

• The first one in pokemini (Pokémon mini emulator) https://github.com/libretro/PokeMini/pull/63 it aims to solve some problems with savestates, it’s still a minor fix and most of the time the consequences of the errors I’ve fixed are not visible/hearable
• The second one is in tgbdual GB/GBC emulator https://github.com/libretro/tgbdual-libretro/pull/36 it aims to fix emulation issue with Shantae (and maybe some other games) by solving an error in the emulation of the VBK register

[Yudjin]

Hi! I don’t know who to ask (I’m not a programmer myself) - But the Wii core is really missing two features: “mod loading” and “Emulated USB devices \ Skylanders portal”. I would really like to see these features in RetroArch. The Dolphin emulator has them! Can someone implement this or write to the developers somehow?

More on the topic at the link: Launch mods for Wii?

[hunterk]

Hey, sorry for the delay on these PRs. Let me see if I can get some action going with them.

[p3st]

https://github.com/libretro/dolphin that would be a way to contact the guys if you wrote your problem under issues BUT also you can see on github when it got the last update …i am not sure if anyone is active working on the dolphin core nowadays

[throwaway]

I mainly play with a keyboard and I would like to use shift+wasd for the left analog stick and wasd for for the dpad. Unfortunately, RetroArch does not differentiate between lower case and upper case inputs. Is this something that could be implemented?

How I imagine it in the .cfg file:

input_player1_down = "s"
input_player1_l_x_minus = "A"
input_player1_l_x_plus = "D"
input_player1_l_y_minus = "W"
input_player1_l_y_plus = "S"
input_player1_left = "a"
input_player1_right = "d"
input_player1_up = "w"

[Elessar84]

Unfortunately Dolphin is a completely dead core that no one is working on. Posting an issue on github is a waste of time.

[p3st]

thats kinda sad i didn’t knew the exact state of it , but yeah after all those years without an update …it has to be dead

[hunterk]

anything is dead until someone works on it.

There is an updated dolphin-libretro fork (I forget who maintains it) but we don’t use it (yet) because only OpenGL is hooked up. No Vulkan or D3D11 (yet).

[Elessar84]

I try to follow every report about Dolphin core and I saw that several people wanted to work on it but everyone gave up, or preferred to focus on other things.

If the core you mentioned would work properly, I don’t see a problem if it only used opengl. Unfortunately, there are a lot of problems with the current core. Apart from the fact that it is old and lacks options, even such a basic function as save game setting does not work properly (which I reported on the dolphin/libretro page - but nobody looks there).

While we are on the subject of cores, is there a chance that someone will fix the LRPS2 core? I mean the problem with the “close content” option - it is an extremely annoying problem because the option randomly freezes the entire Retroarch (also a problem reported without an answer).

[LGN-76]

Hello. I didn’t know where to put this, but: I like the Dot_Matrix_3x_GB_DMG_Grid filter and how it looks on my Powkiddy V90 using the Miyoo build of RetroArch. Unfortunately it makes PicoDrive too slow to play and turning Picodrive’s Frameskip on makes the screen flashy. Thus if anyone here could maybe make a copy of the filter so it’s only 1x instead of 3x so it has less chance of lagging, that’d be greatly appreciated.

[p3st]

? the LRPS2 core works like a charm on my end .

i also wish someone would update the dolphin core , but i don’t see any hope for it … but with another frontend its not such a huge problem to deal with

[Elessar84]

Are you using Windows 11? On this system with LRPS2 I have always had a problem with “closing content”. Even more often the core hangs RA if I change an option in core settings. It even happened that the core crashed the entire RA while loading the game.

[GemaH]

Could you share a link please?

[hunterk]

i don’t remember whose fork it is.

[p3st]

somehow i didn’t read your answer … so that sounds awesome …hope i can find it (when vulkan is added ) …i know there is also that strange core that allows launching the standalone dolphin from inside retroarch …but never knew about another fork

would like to know its features and to what standalone version it compares

[Yudjin]

@Elessar84

Unfortunately Dolphin is a completely dead core that no one is working on. Posting an issue on github is a waste of time.

Yes, this is sad news. But now at least there is an understanding of the situation.

@hunterk

anything is dead until someone works on it.

There is an updated dolphin-libretro fork (I forget who maintains it) but we don’t use it (yet) because only OpenGL is hooked up. No Vulkan or D3D11 (yet).

Oh, thanks for the info! That’s interesting! I hope maybe someone will have some development!

[Hari-82]

Some times ago I posted this:

Development Suggestions

Nested playlist. I’m am using retroarch without any frontend (having a frontend feels redundant to me and would add an extra layer to manage and configure that I don’t feel the need of ) and one thing I wish retroarch had is nested playlists, this will unclutter the main menu and also add the possibility to have more playlist at hand. [Capture] [Capture 2] [Capture 3] Sorry for the horrible mock-up! but I hope the concept is clear enough! What do you people think?

then I stumbled on this reddit post:

https://www.reddit.com/r/RetroArch/comments/1l6nlis/playlists_within_playlists_linux_build/

Not sure if anybody noticed it but it would be nice to implement it in the official release

[thingsiplay]

Interesting idea. But I think it would be simpler for the devs and for the end user if a simple scan through sub directories would be done. Each folder would be a sub category. So in the end not much changes for the playlist file format itself this way, and all RetroArch needs to do is scan sub dirs.

Another alternative would be the to treat the first part of a playlist filename like “Arcade - MAME” as “Arcade” / “MAME”.

While the nested playlists with import is a neat idea, it complicates it a bit for all parties in my opinion.

[Hari-82]

@thingsiplay

a simple scan through sub directories would be done. Each folder would be a sub category

I think I would keep the “scanning” out of it, what I will love to see is something like we have now with the option “add to playlist” but instead of a targeting files having that also for playlists:

select a playlist -> add to container playlist…

in this way the scanning process wont be affected and we will be free to “move” playlists around in different containers.