Regarding the upcoming Higan core

Libretro Cores
#1

I recently found out that Themaister is working on a Higan Libretro core which sounds great.

I’m currently using the bsnes v094 Accuracy core in RetroArch as of today and I had a couple of questions regarding this new core, if anyone have the answers of course.

First of all I have never used Higan, only bsnes standalone (v073) and the bsnes v094 Accuracy core so I don’t know if “profiles” is something that still exists today like Accuracy, Balanced and Performance.

Is Higan still using “profiles” and will you be able to choose which profile you would like to use? I’m only interested in Accuracy because accuracy for me is all that matters these days when it comes to emulation.

My other question will be what will happen to the old bsnes cores and is there going to be much of a difference regarding Super Nintendo/Super Famicom emulation?

Again I haven’t used Higan so I don’t really know if the SNES emulation have become more accurate since the bsnes days.

#2

Hey good news, thanks I wasn’t aware of that!
As far as I know, higan is Accuracy only.

On the official higan page you can see the change log: https://byuu.org/
v98 is the last version known as ‘bsnes’ with profiles, v99 was renamed to ‘higan’ and profiles were removed.
In the change log you will only see ‘higan’ name but v98 and earlier are still ‘bsnes’.

#3

As James-F said, there will be no other options than “accuracy” in the new core. We’ve backported most of the changes that have affected commercial games to bsnes-libretro and bsnes-mercury-libretro, but there’s a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff that couldn’t be easily backported, and the new version will have all of that folded in, of course.

We’ll probably get rid of the old bsnes-libretro but bsnes-mercury-libretro isn’t going anywhere, AFAIK. We may decide to rename it just to “mercury” (that is, drop the ‘bsnes’ part) to avoid confusion with the higan core.

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#4

Thanks guys, that’s all I wanted to hear!

Looking forward to this a lot.

#5

Is there a real improvement in this new Higan core, vs the “Mercury Accuracy”, in the Snes emulation?

#6

That really depends on your perspective. It’s not likely to be noticeable in casual use, but that’s also true for snes9x vs bsnes-balanced.

#7

Snes9x and Genesis Plus GX are not cycle-accurate but the emulation is so close that one would not notice the difference aside from very few not so popular games.
I keep both bsnes-(mercury)-accuracy and Snes9X cores in retroarch but use Snes9x for gaming because it seems to run smoother and smoothness is a big factor for me for accurate emulation.

I use Bsnes/Higan for testing and comparison, but Snes9x is more than good enough for playing practically all popular and less popular games.

Cycle accurate emulation is not necessary for gaming, but in my understanding it’s a case of: “If we can and have the power, then why not?”.
It is also important for future preservation because physical material deteriorates like it or not.

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#8

Here’s a WIP core for the courageous and brave!

Source

So there you have it folks, it’s really happening!

#9

Wait… so it’s gonna be SNES only? Or has the rest not been implemented yet?

higan is a multi-system emulator that began development on 2004-10-14. It currently supports the following systems:

Nintendo Famicom

Nintendo Super Famicom

Super Game Boy

BS-X Satellaview

Sufami Turbo

Nintendo Game Boy

Nintendo Game Boy Color

Nintendo Game Boy Advance

Sega Master System

Sega Game Gear

Sega Mega Drive

NEC PC Engine

NEC SuperGrafx

Bandai WonderSwan

Bandai WonderSwan Color

https://byuu.org/emulation/higan/

#10

it’s snes-only for now. Each core will have to be handled differently, so maister is getting SNES going first. The rest will be added later, probably by others.

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#11

Oh okay… is there an reason why “Performance”, “Balanced” and “Accuracy” aren’t core options in bsnes-mercury? It would really simplify things…

#12

They use entirely different codepaths that need to be hardcoded at compile time.

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#13

I have read most of the discussion here and from the looks of it I’ll definitely keep an eye out for when the bsnes v094 cores will be expired so I can grab one before it’s to late because I don’t really like what I’m reading at all.

I don’t like the way bsnes went to higan with all kind of cartridge folders and files and if it’s gonna be the same with the higan Libretro core then I don’t want anything to do with it.

I’ll be watching this but if this is going to be final then I stay with bsnes v094 Accuracy which is dead simple to use.

#14

It’ll still load regular ROMs. The manifest stuff all happens behind the scenes.

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#16

What’s the plan regarding nSides balanced profile? Is that going to be added at the sametime as the updated accuracy core as a separate core?

#17

i believe that’s the plan, yes.

#18

OK so I finally got the chance of trying out the released version of the higan (Super Famicom Accuracy) 105 core and it worked out perfectly.

And by perfectly I mean no need to use folders or put system files in the game folders etc. like standalone higan does.

Thank you all for a wonderful experience that ended happily, oh yeah and this guy wishes to say something also!

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#19

I can load regular ROMs even with the standalone Higan if i use any frontend like LaunchBox.

And SNES9x is inferior to BSNES balanced. I already bumped into some compatibility issues with it while BSNES is perfect so far except the one known issue that requires 100% accuracy (the Air Strike Patrol shadow).

#20

I haven’t used Snes9x for years except on RetroPie so basically my SNES experience have evolved like this:

ZSNES -> Snes9x -> bsnes (can’t remember which I started with) -> bsnes v073 -> bsnes v094 Accuracy core -> higan (Super Famicom Accuracy) 105 core

#21

I kind of hate how it puts higan and icarus folders in AppData/Local. I guess they can be used for MSU1 or ROM folder stuff going by some messages in the log, but I’d rather they go in the RetroArch system folder to keep things portable.

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