New PCSX2 Core

No I don’t exit Retroarch and then Try Again without Exiting and it Crashes.

It worked when I got right out of RA and then Loaded it back up.

Can use other Cores without Exiting but just does it with PS2 Core

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I have the same issue with the Citra core also.

Knowing is half the battle. Thankfully the issue is irrelevant if you are using a third party front end.

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if it would only start and not crash when a shader presets is active ^^ both cores only load for me if none is active at launch

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Having just built the libretro branch of the linked repo on my own system, I can confirm a couple things:

  • Shader presets work beautifully (or at least the shader preset I used worked beautifully), both loading with an already open game as well as applying a core preset so games open with the shader preset
  • Every game I tried and closed out of closed cleanly and allowed for loading a new game without restarting RA. Simply “Close Content” and then loading a new game worked.
  • Vulkan renderer seems to have worked, and one of the games that I had had issues with before in RA (DDR SuperNOVA) no longer has the issues

It should be noted that I haven’t done any extensive testing, but from the quick glance I’ve taken, this core fixes every single major issue I’ve been having with PS2 emulation in RetroArch!

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Could you upload the core somewhere for us normies who can’t build it ourselves?

Sounds awesome… will it be available through the online updater?

For sure! I’m assuming the developers don’t mind, as it was mentioned that people could build it themselves. If, however, anyone involved with the project has a problem with me posting this, let me know and I’ll take it down (as well as delete the forked repo on my GitHub).

Also, to get ahead of anything: Since this is not a release build, I would like to take this opportunity to remind anyone who plans to use this built core that the developers have not yet deemed this ready for use, so there may be issues present that would not be present in an official released core. I would save any bug reports until the core gets officially released, especially considering I taught myself to build the project in like five hours last night, so some issues present may stem from me not really knowing what I’m doing, and not from the core development.

With the warning out of the way, here’s a link to the release on my GitHub, and all the built files are viewable in the “libretro” branch of the forked project for anyone who wants to take a look at the files I used.

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Do you just drag and drop the pcsx2_libretro.dll into the core folder, if so I only get a not responding screen whenever I try to launch a game.

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That’s what worked for me, but I had the currently released core working prior to doing so. If you did as well, I would try going into the opt file inside of the config directory of RetroArch, and try manually setting the render engine to Vulkan to see if that works.

If you didn’t have the released version of the PS2 core working already, you’ll want to make sure that you have all the prerequisites set up (BIOS and all that jazz).

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Thank you, i really appreciate it. I can finally test this thing.

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Unfortunately, it doesn’t work for me. It just freezes to a black screen when i try to load any game.

I really hope this isn’t because of my games being in CHD format. They did work with the previous core so i don’t think it’s the issue.

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This is the same for me as well, I also use chds.

Interesting. I don’t believe it’s specifically the CHD format. I personally use ISO format, but I created a CHD of one just to test the compatibility, and it seems to still work fine. It’s possible that either the specific CHD you’re using doesn’t work, or something else is going on. I’ll try a few things and see what I can get to break.

Things that may help diagnose issues:

  • PS2 BIOS version
  • RetroArch version
  • Computer specs
  • Operating System
  • Games causing issues
  • PCSX2 Renderer

Quick edit: Also, let me know what all is in your pcsx2 subdirectory within RetroArch’s “system” directory. I seem to have had a full install of the standalone pcsx2 in there for some reason, removing it seems to have broken the core, and replacing it seems to have fixed it.

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Well, i’m out of ideas. First of all, i use the same setup that worked with the previous PCSX2 core. All i did was to replace the core. Everything else, including the bios files, are the same.

  • RA version is 1.15.0
  • Specs: i5 4670, 16GB RAM, GTX 1060 6GB
  • Windows 10
  • I tried a bunch of different games that worked before
  • I tried both OpenGL and Vulkan in the drivers setting

I also didn’t touch my system pcsx2 sub directory. I use the same one like before. It’s only the bios folder that makes a difference anyway.

I re-tested the old core and all these games i tried load fine. The moment i replace the core with the new one i get a freeze or crash.

It’s possible this isn’t the case with this build of the core, it may be referencing something in the standalone pcsx2 file structure, as I left the bios folder alone when removing the full install of pcsx2. Try downloading the latest standalone version of pcsx2 and copying the contents of its folder into the RA directory.

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Yup, that worked. I wonder what files it’s looking for. I’ll try to delete one by one to see. Maybe some dll files because there weren’t any before.

logs are useful in this sort of situation

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Initial guess would be Qt6, as I had to install that to even build the core in the first place.

EDIT

That initial guess would be wrong, it seems to be either the resources directory or something inside of it. (As in, either all the contents, or something specific from that folder)

(Probably final) Edit

You know, that makes sense. It seems to be the shaders folder specifically.

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After some quick test i found that the “right” on the d-pad doesn’t seem to register. Dunno why, i tried fixing it in the controls but doesn’t work. Also it might be just me but is the deadzone for the analog a bit too much?

Other than that, it seems to behave fine. I’ll test more.

Unfortunately, as far as actual behavior, I have no idea how to help, I only dipped my toes in far enough to build out what the developers had already made. I didn’t have that problem with my own tests, but that could be down to any number of things, and I wouldn’t know how to help. Only suggestion I can think of is maybe, as the full install of PCSX2 seems to help, try configuring the controller in the standalone PCSX2, and seeing if that works. It could be that the bulk of the reason this hasn’t been released yet is a lot of features still depend on the standalone, and the developers haven’t yet ported those features to the libretro core. Maybe configurations made in the standalone, when present in the RA system folder, will persist to the core? No idea.

Again, this is all speculation, and so far outside of my wheelhouse that it might be more accurately referred to as a conspiracy theory, though.

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