Issue with certain games and vba core

RetroArch General
#1

Hi,

I came across this issue on a playbook and an android device. I think it’s related to the core and possibly how retroarch handles warning/error messages from the vba emulator.

I’ve been trying to emulate Boktai with VBA which uses a real time clock to keep time in the game. On my PC (desktop arch linux) VBA-M will open and play the rom correctly but give me a couple of error messages about the RTC soon after the game starts. The errors don’t seem to affect the game. Setting the internal VBA-M “Real-time Clock” option to on or off doesn’t seem to affect the game.

However on both the BlackBerry and Android versions of RetroArch, the point where I get the error messages on my desktop crash RetroArch. So just a couple of thoughts;

  • It would be cool if the RTC option was exposed in Core Options when the VBA core is selected (as a side note – I’m unable to even access Core Options in the Android app, how am I supposed to get to that screen on Android?). There are no options at all available for the VBA core.

  • It would be awesome if RetroArch gracefully handled error messages from the VBA core by displaying an error/warning through a dialog and letting the user hit OK or whatever.

Thanks!

phob

#2

Wrong, you can access Core Options (RGUI) on the Android port. There are multiple ways to do so.

#3

To elaborate: with the default overlay, hit the little button that looks like the RetroArch logo and it should bring up RGUI where you can set the core options.

#4

There aren’t any options in Core Options for VBA-Next. It just says “No options available”. And regardless of whether or not you set the RTC option with VBA you get the little message pop up (on PC) which I thinks is causing RetroArch to shut down.

#5

Yes, I’m going to be doing a different strategy for VBA Next -

for the systems that are speed-handicapped (like consoles/mobile etc) - there will be VBA Next - same as always.

For everything else - we’ll have something using VBA Next as a base, but with a backend based on current-day VBA-M (except with most of the libretro improvements in there).

So - a performance-focused core and a bleeding edge core. This should increase compatibility.