RetroArch 1.6.6 – Released!

Libretro Team

RetroArch 1.6.6 has just been released! Grab it here.

This latest version has also been uploaded to the Google Play Store.

General changelog

– 3DS: Fixes serious performance regression that affected every core; rewind was always implicitly enabled.
– AUDIO: MOD/S3M/XM sound should now be properly mixed in with the core’s sound.
– GUI: Visual makeover of MaterialUI.
– GUI: Added ‘Music’, ‘Images’ and ‘Video’ collection options to RGUI/MaterialUI.
– GUI: Allow the user to add ‘Favorites’.
– GUI: Allow the user to rename entries.
– GUI: Performance optimizations for XMB menu driver.
– LOCALIZATION: Update Italian translation
– INPUT: Overlay controller response – when we press buttons on the gamepad or keyboard, the corresponding buttons on the overlay will be highlighted as well.
– NETBSD: Silence some compilation warnings.
– COMMON: Fixed bug ‘Deleting an entry from a playlist would not update the list view inside XMB’.
– COMMON: Fix inet_ntop_compat on *nix

If you want to read about the latest bounty and core updates, read this post instead here.

Complete overhaul of the mobile User Interface! (MaterialUI)

On mobile devices, RetroArch uses the mobile UI, MaterialUI, by default. This interface is designed around touchscreen and pointer devices like a mouse/trackball.

We have given this menu interface a significant overhaul now for version 1.6.6! We are aware that there is a significant percentage of people that to date have been completely unsatisfied with the current state of the menu system on mobile devices like Android and iOS. Our menu UI improvements in version 1.6.6 is our first step to try to remedy this. In later releases, we might follow it up with more elaborate animations, more advanced widgets, etc.

The menu should look less monotonous now due to the usage of context-specific icons. We have also made some other UX improvements:

– The opacity of the game’s image clashed quite badly with the ingame menu before. This has been rectified.
– We have added ‘Music’, ‘Image’ and ‘Video’ playlists to the ‘Favorites’ tab.

Music, Video and Images which have previously been loaded in RetroArch can be easily accessed from the Playlists tab now.
Music, Video and Images which have previously been loaded in RetroArch can be easily accessed from the Playlists tab now.

– The file browser is easier to read now because files show up with specific icons to indicate what they are. For instance, music files have a music icon, a directory has a folder icon, selectable content files show up as a plain file, etc.

The file browser is easier to read now because files show up with specific icons to indicate what they are. For instance, music files have a music icon, a directory has a folder icon, selectable content files show up as a plain file, etc.
The file browser is easier to read now because files show up with specific icons to indicate what they are. For instance, music files have a music icon, a directory has a folder icon, selectable content files show up as a plain file, etc.

Usability tips

You can customize the color theme of the menu in MaterialUI at any time.

1 – Go to User Interface.
2 – Go to Views.
3 – Go to ‘Menu Color Theme’ and set it to the color theme you want.

General menu improvements

Favorites

You can now add a game to a ‘Favorites’ list for easy access! This has been an often-requested feature for years, and in the past we always felt that ‘Load Recent’ was good enough. However, if you load a lot of content, that can easily get cluttered over time.

To add a game to the Favorites list, do the following:
1 – Once a game is running, go to ‘Quick Menu’.
2 – Select ‘Add To Favorites’.
3 – Once added, you can now start the game at any time from the Favorites list.

On RGUI – go to Load Content -> Favorites.
On MaterialUI – go to the Playlists tab -> Favorites.
On XMB – go to the Favorites tab.

To add a game to the 'favorites' list, inside Quick Menu, select 'Add To Favorites'. It should now be added to the Favorites list. You can access the 'Favorites' list inside MaterialUI by going to the Playlists tab. On RGUI, you go to Load Content -> Favorites. On XMB, you go to the Favorites tab instead.
To add a game to the ‘favorites’ list, inside Quick Menu, select ‘Add To Favorites’. It should now be added to the Favorites list. You can access the ‘Favorites’ list inside MaterialUI by going to the Playlists tab. On RGUI, you go to Load Content -> Favorites. On XMB, you go to the Favorites tab instead.

Renaming entries inside playlists

You can now rename an entry from any playlist!

To do this, do the following:

1 – Go to a playlist of any type (it can be the history list, a system playlist, favorites, music/video/images playlists, etc).
2 – There should be an option called “Rename”. Select it. If you are using MaterialUI and/or XMB, an onscreen keyboard will now pop up. Input the new title for the entry and then hit either the Enter key on your keyboard ,the Start button on your gamepad or press the ‘Enter’ key on the onscreen overlay in order to confirm the changes.

You can now rename any entry! Say for instance you loaded a Quake data file. Instead of the playlist showing 'PAK0.PAK', you can rename it to Quake 1 instead.
You can now rename any entry! Say for instance you loaded a Quake data file. Instead of the playlist showing ‘PAK0.PAK’, you can rename it to Quake 1 instead.

Overlays show button presses

Previously, overlays would only show button presses if they were actually being clicked on by either the touchscreen or the mouse.

A user submitted a bounty to make onscreen reactions possible through the gamepad and/or keyboard. A bounty hunter has now successfully completed this bounty and has been paid out. We have enabled this feature by default. If you want to turn it off, you can do so by doing the following:

1 – Go to Onscreen Display -> Onscreen Overlay.
2 – Go to ‘Show Inputs on Overlay’. Set this to off if you don’t want the overlay to react to keyboard/gamepad input, turn it on if you want this to happen (turned on by default).

Nintendo 3DS regression fix – all cores were running slower

A serious issue has been fixed in the Nintendo 3DS RetroArch port which compelled us to push this release sooner rather than later.

It appears that by mistake, rewind was always forcibly enabled in the 3DS port, which led to a halving of performance. This should now be fixed.

What’s next?

The new cores

We are still determined to get the promised cores like PPSSPP into your hands before the end of the month. We just felt it very important to get this release out of the door so that people can see that we are determined to improve the menu on mobile, and also so that the 3DS RetroArch port is repaired again.

Wii input fix

Finally, after years of struggling with this very pesky issue, it seems we are on the verge of a breaktrhough here that could lead to this random input issue finally being fixed –

https://github.com/SuperrSonic/RA-SS/commit/29d6467d28a835136b8ab87e209feb34421983ff

it seems there was a regression in libogc at some point which lead to this input regression. Superssonic reports that going back to an older version of Wiiuse fixes the issue. What we are probably going to do is make a custom baked-in libogc version for the Wii port for the next release.

RetroArch 1.5.0 – Released!

Libretro Team

RetroArch 1.5.0 has just been released!

Where to get it?

You can get the latest version here.

On Android, you can expect version 1.5.0 to be downloadable on the Google Play Store later today. If you want to install the APK manually, you can do so by downloading it from the URL linked to above.

Changes since last version (1.4.1)

  • MOBILE: Single-tap for menu entry selection
  • MOBILE: Long-tap a setting to reset to default
  • ANDROID: Autoconf fallback
  • ANDROID: Mouse support / Emulated mouse support
  • AUTOCONF: Fix partial matches for pad name
  • CHEEVOS: Fix crashes in the cheevos description menu
  • CHEEVOS: WIP leaderboards support
  • COMMON: Threading fixes
  • COMMON: 9-slice texture drawing support
  • CORETEXT/APPLE: Ability to load menu display font drivers and loading of custom font.
  • DOS: Add keyboard driver
  • DOS: Improve color accuracy and scaling
  • GUI: Various settings are now only visible when advanced settings is enabled
  • GUI: Allow changing icon theme on the fly
  • GUI: Add a symbol page in the OSK (Onscreen Keyboard)
  • GUI: Better dialogs for XMB
  • LOCALIZATION: Add/update Korean translation
  • LOCALIZATION: Rewrite German translation
  • LOCALIZATION: Update several English sublabels
  • LOCALIZATION: Update several Japanese labels
  • NET: Allow manual netplay content loading
  • NET: Announcing network games to the public lobby is optional now
  • NET: Bake in miniupnpc
  • NET: Fix netplay join for contentless cores
  • NET: LAN games show next to lobbies with (LAN) and connect via the private IP address
  • NET: Use new lobby system with MITM (Man In The Middle) support
  • NET: Fix netplay rooms being pushed on the wrong tab
  • NUKLEAR: Update to current version
  • SCANNER: Always add 7z & zip to supported extensions
  • VULKAN: Find supported composite alpha in swapchain
  • VULKAN: Add snow/bokeh shader pipeline effects – at parity with GL now
  • WIIU: Keyboard support
  • WINDOWS: Logging to file no longer spawns an empty window
  • WINDOWS: Fix loading of core/content via file menu

We’ll go into some of the important features in more detail below.

UPNP support out of the box! (Windows/MacOS/Linux/Android/iOS)

Previously, in order for netplay to work, you as the hoster would need to manually port forward on your router. Starting with version 1.5.0, RetroArch now supports UPNP out of the box! If you have a home network router that supports UPNP, you should now be able to host netplay games without having to manually open ports on your router!

NOTE: The platforms that come with UPNP support out of the box as of this point includes: Android, MacOS, Linux, iOS, and Windows. If you have a version of RetroArch for any other platform, it’s likely it does not have UPNP support, and therefore you would still need to fallback on manual port forwarding if you want to host a game.

Menu improvements

An often-heard complaint was that touch navigation on mobile devices was not intuitive enough. You had to double tap in order to select an entry instead of being able to single tap which is the norm for most mobile programs out there.

We have changed this so that you now only have to single tap. Also, you can now ‘long-tap’ a setting in order to ‘reset’ it to default. This is useful in case you are tinkering with some setting using touch and you want to set it back to its default setting.

Other new features – changing the icon theme now works on-the-fly, so you no longer need to restart RetroArch for these changes to take effect.

Android controller detection improvements

If RetroArch cannot find a preconfigured entry for your gamepad on Android, it will now try to use the Android standard default controls for the gamepad instead. This should help with a bunch of gamepads that are lacking a current autoconfiguration file, and should prevent the user from having to manually setup the controls.

Vulkan improvements

Previously, the menu effects ‘Snow’ and ‘Bokeh’ were not available if you were running RetroArch with the Vulkan video driver enabled. Now you can use them with Vulkan as well!

In case you don’t know how to access these, go to Settings -> User Interface -> Menu -> Menu Shader Pipeline.