Steam Launch lineup revealed

Libretro Team

So, it’s been a long time since we (prematurely) announced our intent to launch RetroArch on Steam. We’re nearing the finish line now however, so now is as good as any a time to start discussing how things are going to roll out.

Will launch on Windows first (Linux later)

We will be releasing on Windows first, with a release on Linux scheduled later (no ETA).

We are trying to limit our support burden at launch here since we are (understandably) concerned about the large amount of support requests and feedback we are bound to be receiving. Adding Linux right from the bat would further exacerbate that.

10 Cores Available On Launch Day

We are deciding to launch with 10 cores at launch. These cores have already been approved and uploaded on Steam. They are as follows:

There will be no ‘Core Downloader’ in RetroArch, or anything that is not hosted on Steam in fact. To obtain cores, you need to install cores separately that we provide as ‘DLC’. These are all free just like RetroArch itself.

NOTE: We need to stress – on its own, without installing any of the cores, the most you will be able to do with RetroArch is watch some movie files and playback music files through its builtin ffmpeg core. To make it do anything else, you will have to install cores.

Differences between regular RetroArch and Steam version

Apart from these aforementioned changes, there will be no substantial differences for now in the Steam version. We understand that even though we have consistently improved the User Experience and tried to make things more easily accessible that we will still be in for a lot of criticisms over the initial learning curve, so we’ve pretty much resigned to the fact that this will happen and will just brace for impact and try to do as much as what we can with the criticism that will inevitably be piling on. We will try to do our best to be as receptive to the feedback as possible with the thickest amount of skin possible, and try to suitably make some much needed UI changes.

This is also what helped inform our decision to go with 10 cores. We could have launched with over 60 cores, sure, but the ensuing fallout would have been a mess and it would have been near impossible to focus on bug reports and issues piling in. By focusing on 10 cores, we can do some much-needed Quality Control where issues inevitably get picked up, we can respond to it and in the process improve the quality of the core. This kind of isolated feedback time with a specific batch of cores is something we have found ourselves in the past always lacking, since it was always off to do the Next Big Thing as new features, cores, and other developments are made on an almost weekly basis. This gives us the much-needed time to focus on a specific batch of cores and polish them before we move on to the next batch of cores.

Beetle PSX HW – Experimental texture replacement now available!

Libretro Team

DISCLAIMER: Libretro as a group or entity has no affiliation or involvement in the creation of assets contained in any texture pack

So this has been a project that has been cooking in the oven for about a year in the form of a bounty. The goal is to come up with a way to not only dump all the textures of a PlayStation1 game, but also to replace them with user-supplied textures.

Doing this is hard with PlayStation renderers due to the general low level of abstraction of these renderers, which is why it’s not exactly a commonplace feature in many PS1 emulators.

So far we have let it cook slowly in the oven. However, the recent release of people preparing a Proof Of Concept demo in the form of a Chrono Cross texture pack and the circulation of a modified Beetle PSX HW core that adds support for custom texture injection has led us to make the decision to include this feature already in the buildbot cores rather than wait it out. We hope by doing this, that this feature can organically grow and that more people start taking an active interest in making their own texture packs this way for their own favorite content. Libretro is all about enabling people the power and freedom to do what they want with their legally bought content, after all.

Requirements/Availability

Should only require the Vulkan renderer and a graphics card that is compatible with the Vulkan API. Will not work with either OpenGL or software rendering.

Android, Linux and Windows are all supported targets.

How to get it

The usual. Either you have Beetle PSX HW already installed, in which case you would just go to RetroArch’s Online Updater and select ‘Update Cores’. In case you don’t have it already installed, go to ‘Online Updater’, select ‘Core Updater’ or ‘Core Downloader’ (depends on the version of RetroArch you’re using), and then download Beetle PSX HW.

Explanation of core options

Two new core options have been added.

Dump Textures

While the game is running, it will dump all current active textures it comes across to a directory. The name of this folder is [gamename]-texture-replacements, and it will dumped inside the same dir that your content (ISO or other image format) comes from.

Replace Textures

It will attempt to use all HD textures from the ‘texture-replacements’ directory. The name of this folder is [gamename]-texture-replacements, and it will try to read this directory from the same dir that your content (ISO or other image format) comes from.

NOTE: Later on, we might add another option that allows you to point the dumping and injection path to somewhere else. Right now this is a problem for instance when you have your content stored on a slow disk device like a HDD but you want your texture replacement files to be read from your much faster but smaller SSD instead. Right now, you are forced to move the image to your SSD as well, because otherwise it just dumps and/or reads these texture replacement files from the same dir as the image, in this case the mechanical harddrive.

How to make it work

Make sure you have the textures extracted already in your [ganename]texture-replacements dir, and make sure that the dir is in the same dir that your game content file (ISO or other image format) comes from.

Start Beetle PSX HW, make sure that you are using the Vulkan renderer (it won’t work with either the software renderer or GL renderer), and then make sure the ‘Replace Textures’ option is enabled.

If it works properly, you’ll start seeing low-resolution textures replaced by higher-resolution ones.

Screenshots

Future

We hope to provide you with an article in the near future that goes into how to create your own texture pack for a game.

Is the format set in stone? Is it complete? Probably no to both. It is a Work-In-Progress. However, we hope that by putting it out there already, the community can already start experimenting with the option, putting it through its paces, and see what its limitations are and how far it can be pushed.