Software Update: Retroarch 1.9.2

Version 1.9.2 RetroArch has been released. RetroArch is an open source and cross platform api that uses so-called cores to emulate a variety of game consoles and game engines. Downloads are available for Windows, Linux, macOS, Android, and iOS, as well as PlayStation, Xbox, Switch, Wii, and GameCube, among others. The release notes for this release can be found below.

release notes

PlayStation Vita users will be happy to learn that the issues with gpSP (Game Boy Advance emulator) are now resolved, and it should work as reliably as it did before 1.9.1 (and perhaps even better now thanks to increased performance). We hope you get a lot of mileage out of this core as a lot of work and effort went into it to really optimize the performance of this core over the past few months!

Text To Speech support is now enabled for the macOS Universal build. You can access this by going to Settings -> Accessibility and enabling ‘Accessibility Enable’.

Some nice changes under the hood that are more technical in nature: config file loading performance has been improved immeasurably which should help out with initial startup times of RetroArch, loading config files as well as loading shader presets. Core info file loading itself has also seen many performance improvements. We are aware that despite all this, loading all the assets in the more feature-rich menus like MaterialUI/XMB/Ozone can still take a long time on systems encumbered by slow disk I/O, but we have some special things in store for future versions that should increase asset loading performance significantly.

Highlights Multi soft patching support

If an IPS/BPS/UPS patch is found, will replace the last character in the filename with a counter and loop until another patch is found (in any format).

Enhanced ‘Load Content’ file browser search functionality

1.9.2 adds the same search filter functionality that currently exists for playlists to the file browser when selecting Load Content. This means:

• When navigating the filesystem via the file browser, the user can press RetroPad X (or /, etc.), and enter a search term
• This becomes a filter – all matching entries will be displayed
• The user can then perform another search to further refine the results. Up to 8 filters may be stacked in this fashion
• Pressing ‘cancel’ clears the last entered filter

In order to support file browser navigation, the search filter implementation had to be rewritten. Instead of having a single menu-driver-level search filter, independent search terms are now stored for each menu list. This is a far more robust solution, and means that filters can be enabled for other menus far more easily (and without any hacks). To demonstrate this, 1.9.2 also enables search filters when selecting shader presets/passes via the file browser (I will try to add this in more places as time permits):

Finally, 1.9.2 makes the following changes to existing search functionality:

• Entering a search term consisting of a single Latin alphabet character will now always jump to the first entry whose first character matches – ie we no longer apply search filters in this case, since a single alphabet character filter is not useful. This means single character searches can be used for fast alphabet navigation
• When searching file browser lists, the ‘utility’ entries (eg Parent Directory) are ignored, since they have no bearing on the actual list content (ie searching for p will now jump to the first p file – previously, it would always jump to parent directory…)
• When performing non-filter searches, the entry labels used in each comparison now exactly match what is printed on screen by the menu driver. Previously, raw file_list values ​​were used, which are often the same, but not always (eg in a number of cases, this is the difference between searching against full file paths vs. path basenames, which can produce erroneous results)

In addition to all this, 1.9.2 also enables search filter support when using the file browser to select cheats and overlays.

Optional menu screensaver animations

At present, when using XMB/GLUI/Ozone, enabling the menu screensaver will cause the screen to be blanked when the screensaver timeout has elapsed. 1.9.2 adds three optional animations that may be displayed instead – these can be selected via the new Settings > User Interface > Menu Screensaver Animation entry; animation speed may be adjusted via Settings > User Interface > Menu Screensaver Animation Speed.

These effects are rendered using font glyphs; the performance overheads of all the animations are therefore low. This should also give you some indication as to how we are planning to reduce file I/O overhead across the board when it comes to asset loading, but that is something that we will be unveiling for a future release!

When using GLUI/Ozone, the screensaver will be tinted (somewhat) according to the current menu color theme (XMB uses a fixed screensaver colour, since it does not have a ‘proper’ color theme implementation).

OpenDingux beta: Add 50Hz support

All devices running OpenDingux Beta have native support for both 60 Hz and 50 Hz display modes. 1.9.2 enables 50 Hz functionality in RetroArch. The refresh rate can be toggled between 60 Hz and 50 Hz via the Settings > Video > Output > Vertical Refresh Rate menu entry; the value can be saved on a per-core/content directory/game basis via regular config overrides.

This makes OpenDingux devices (running the Beta OS) pretty much the only affordable/easily available handhelds that can run both NTSC and PAL content smoothly. The VICE core in particular benefits enormously from this addition.

OpenDingux beta: Fix IPU scaling when running GB/GBC/GG/NGP-resolution content

Further testing of the OpenDingux Beta port has revealed several more resolutions which are mishandled by the IPU hardware scaler. 1.9.2 updates the resolution blacklists accordingly, fixing scaling for the following content:

• Gameboy (+ Color)/Game Gear at native, x2 and x3 resolutions
• Neo Geo Pocket (+ Color) at x2 resolution