We at Libretro wish you all a happy New Year! 2016 has been quite the year for Libretro as a project, so let’s briefly recap where we stand at the end of this year and what we managed to do in 2016 –
First with Vulkan
We were one of the first programs to ride the Vulkan wave, and we managed to add Vulkan support to RetroArch since Day One of the new graphics API’s release.
First with Vulkan renderers for N64/PSX game consoles
On top of that, we were the first to introduce to the world a full-fledged Vulkan graphics renderer for N64 and PlayStation emulators! The sources to these renderers have been opened so everybody can learn from them and extend them in their own way.
And not only this, but simias wrote and added the first modern open-source OpenGL renderer for PlayStation specifically for use with Beetle PSX. Then later on, iCatButler contributed PGXP support to Beetle PSX, further enhancing Beetle PSX’s graphics capabilities!
Read our previous blog posts here –
Nintendo 64 Vulkan Low-Level emulator – paraLLel – pre-alpha release
RetroArch Web Player (and other platform ports of RetroArch)
After years of development, our RetroArch Web Player (powered by Emscripten) finally went live this year!
On top of that, we successfully ported RetroArch to Nintendo WiiU, Nintendo 3DS, and PlayStation Vita!
Crowdfunding
After so many years of refusing to even take a single donation, we were finally coming to the brutal realization that the walls were closing in on us, the servers kept getting more expensive, more elaborate, and more and more time and money had to be dedicated towards keeping the project alive. So it was with some trepidation that we finally belatedly tried using Patreon in order to get ourselves out of this ditch we had digged for ourselves.
We started this Patreon maybe a month ago, and as of this moment, we are at $740 – just $10 shy of the $750 goal that we never thought we’d achieve so quickly! I can’t stress enough how grateful we are that people believe in us to this extent that it has allowed us to go from nearly $0 to this in such a short while!
What’s to come for 2017?
A promise is a promise – so 2017 is going to be a big year for libretro, RetroArch. We are going to make sure that this money allows us to accelerate development of RetroArch, Lakka and all related subprojects.
Bounty system
Starting as of January, we are going to start our monthly bounty system. Details will be forthcoming but we are going to be dropping $150 into the bounty bucket each month. We are going to come up with a system that is fair to everybody involved and that also at the same time allows us to reach our goals quicker.
Netplay matchmaking
This was one of our Patreon goals, and we are going to make this happen! No ETA yet but already in 1.4.0 you will see that netplay has received a lot of love over the past few months! Cross-platform netplay in an easy and intuitive manner is not that far removed anymore soon!
The new RetroArch 1.4.0 release
We have been working frantically on the next major stable release, RetroArch 1.4.0. As ever, we have to cover such a large amount of work that sometimes the release dates we set in stone can’t be hit, but suffice to say this won’t take much longer! We definitely want this to be out somewhere in the beginning or middle of January! We have made numerous improvements to the UI, features, etc. and we really hope this is going to be a standout release for RetroArch!
I apologize to everybody who expected RetroArch 1.4.0 sooner, but rest assured that these delays are to make the stable even better! It’s not going to take too much longer!
