I've never dabbled in dedicated emulation consoles before the AYN Thor but I'm glad I took the plunge. It captures the feel of a 3DS XL quite nicely. The dual screens and form factor capture that crucial missing element for the DS and 3DS that was missing from PCs and most other emulation hardware.

Having to set up the software can be tedious but once it's done and you finally get the chance to just play, it becomes a transformative experience. So far it's been a blast playing Nostalgia with upscaled resolution, it really shows just how much detail the developers put in but was lost due to the original limitations of DS screens. Being able to fast forward, apply cheats, and use save states vastly improved my experience from the first time I played it.

I bought the 16GB version on the hopes of emulating the PS3 and Switch and maybe PC titles one day if I get the itch to go that route. For now it's just such a pleasure using this as my daily driver.

Amber Folio is an emulator of just the hardware SSI's Gold Box games touch: an 8086, EGA, the 8253 timer, the PC speaker and the Tandy 1000's sound chip, plus the handful of DOS calls the games make. It's C++ compiled to WebAssembly (about 250 KB), and it also builds natively for Windows, macOS and Linux from source (no installers yet). Pool of Radiance (1988) runs on it unchanged, overlay manager and all.

A few details this crowd might like:

• CPU conformance: checked against the SingleStepTests 8088 vectors, recorded from a real chip. 323 files, flags compared bit for bit, undefined flags included, no masks.
• Virtual time: nothing reads the host clock, so a run is keys, ticks and state hashes. Recorded sessions hold no game content and are checked against each other in CI on every push.
• Enhancements as breakpoints: the extras (an automap, the printed journal on the game's own screen, a heal-in-camp command) hang off CS:IP addresses qualified by which overlay is resident, with native handlers. With every one switched off, a run's state hash must equal a build with no enhancement engine at all. That's a CI test, not a promise.
• Screen text: the core reads its own screen back as characters by matching 8×8 cells against the game's font, read out of its memory, so no font is shipped. The site uses it for screen-reader support: menus, lists and messages, not pictures, so the game can't be played without sight through it.

No game files, anywhere. The repo holds only facts (addresses, offsets, lengths, SHA-256s), with a content guard in CI. To play, you bring your own GOG or Steam copy (Forgotten Realms: The Archives – Collection Two); in the browser the files stay in local storage and are never uploaded. It runs in desktop browsers and on iPhone, iPad and Android, by keyboard or with a controller the browser recognises as standard (no remapping yet).

I built it with heavy use of AI coding tools, which is much of why the checking is tests rather than trust. Happy to go into any of it, and I'd like to hear how others here test timing-sensitive code without a wall clock.

• Source (AGPL-3.0): https://github.com/amberfolio/amberfolio
• Player: https://amberfolio.org/

Not affiliated with the rights holders of Pool of Radiance or the Gold Box games.

I recently bought a R4 cartridge so that I could use my original Nintendo DS to dump all of my GBA cartriges. Overall the goal is to have backups of all of my old saves and use them in emulators on other devices.

The dumps worked successfully from what I can tell, and I have all the .gba and .sav files backed up in a couple of locations. I'm also currently using RetroArch with the mGBA core for GBA emulation. I tried loading up save files for a couple of games, but RetroArch didn't recognize any of the saves.

I'm aware that RetroArch uses .srm files for GBA saves, not .sav, so I did rename the extensions. I have a couple of old mGBA .sav files for ROMs I got... elsewhere a few years back and that had worked for those saves. But unfortunately that method doesn't seem to work with original .sav files. RetroArch just starts up as if there was no preexisting save file and overwrites what's there.

I've searched online and tested for a couple of hours now and I don't know what I'm doing wrong. I'm hoping at least one of you knows off the bat and is willing to explain. Any help is appreciated.

EDIT: After some more testing I figured out the problem. It turns out to be a limitation of whatever file system is used in Android, which doesn't easily allow you to overwrite files when moving or saving into a new folder. I didn't spot this due to doing the testing on an AYN Thor. Here's the workaround that should work in this case on Android:

1. Install/setup RetroArch on both the device you want to play with (presumably an Android device) and a PC running Windows or Linux.
2. Install SyncThing on both systems (there's guides online) and sync up your RetroArch save folders. You may need to try step 3 if the save folders don't already exist, since the folders will be auto-generated once you try that step. If you go that route, you may need to delete the save file on at least one of the devices to avoid sync errors.
3. Run the ROM without a save file to generate a new .srm save file with all the needed connections. You'll overwrite this in a later step
4. Get your old GBA save file however you get it (dumping a cartridge, old .sav off mGBA, etc.). Do backups and make sure you have a copy of the save in .srm format. If you weren't aware, you can just rename the .sav to a .srm and it'll work 99% of the time.
5. On the PC, grab the name of the .srm file in the RetroArch save folder (it will match the ROM name), and rename the old save file you want to use to match it. Copy/paste this renamed file back into the RetroArch save folder and tell it to overwrite the file.
6. At this point, SyncThing should automatically update the file on the Android device so that both installs of RetroArch will now be using the older save data. Boot the game via RetroArch on both systems (NOT AT THE SAME TIME!!! IT WILL CAUSE SYNC ERRORS!) to test.

SyncThing is great for syncing files between 2 devices as long as you're not using the file on multiple devices at the same time. I don't see why you'd need to run the exact same save file on 2 separate instances at the same time, but it can pop up by mistake. That being said, resolving conflicts isn't too bad since you just have to go into SyncThing and pick a version to win the conflict, and there's settings for making backups that last up to a month.

melonDualDS has been around for a while (the first release, 0.0.1, was released back in June of last year) and is described as a Nintendo DS and DSi emulator for Android, built on top of melonDS and the melonDS Android port by rafaelvcaetano. Developed by Sapphire Rhodonite, it was recently updated to version 0.7.0 over the weekend, introducing major changes you should know about if you're interested in the DS emulation space.

PS2 emulator NetherSX2 gets a Switch port

Source: https://gbatemp.net/threads/ps2-emulator-nethersx2-gets-a-switch-port.683104/

#emulation #PS2 #Switch

It runs the binary/executable of the emulator from Android on a minimalist Android environment.

I haven't followed NetherSX2's development but iirc it is made by patching the now abandoned AetherSX2 emulator. Yet to confirm if that's how you get the needed binary though.

So I didn't follow Switch emulation too much during its prime... and saw enough near the end (blatantly updating code to support pre-release games) that I steered clear.

When the nintendo-ing happened, most "folk in the know" more or less speculated that everything would end for a few years and we would just see a lot of re-builds of the source with either slightly different input libraries or crypto miners.

Well, it has been a few years! Did that come to pass? Is it still a case where my best bet would be to check the commit hash against a known good and build Yuzu myself? Have any reputable-ish groups taken over with a "fork"? Or alternatives arisen?

Thanks.

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/61139005

The shadPS4 team is excited to announce the release of shadPS4 v0.16.0, our largest update to date. This release delivers major improvements across emulation accuracy, graphics, audio, input handling, user experience, platform support, and developer infrastructure.

With hundreds of changes from dozens of contributors, v0.16.0 represents another significant step toward broader game compatibility and a more complete PlayStation 4 emulation experience.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/48112183

This month we received the new SpacemiT K3 board. Since its inception, felix86 wasn’t able to run on any of the out-of-order execution hardware, such as the SiFive P550 or the SOPHON SG2042. The former has no vector support, the latter has XTheadVector support. While initially there was consideration for supporting hardware without RVV 1.0 or hardware with XTheadVector, ultimately the decision was that we should instead focus on the future of RISC-V consumer hardware which will have RVV 1.0 due to it being mandatory in the RVA23 profile.

If you watched the felix86 talk at the RISC-V NA summit you might’ve seen a video of gameplay on K1 hardware. You would notice the lack of modern 3D games running on the emulator, because a lot of them would run at less than 5 frames per second. Now that we have much faster hardware, there’s more to show!

TLDW: Huge performance improvements over the K1, and RISC-V performance will only go up from here.

It has come to our attention that from 6th May to today (12th May) the AppImage and Ubuntu zip assets of Cemu 2.6 on our github were compromised by a pro-Russian threat actor.
If you are a Windows or MacOS user you are not affected. If you are a flatpak user you are also not affected.

• Technical discovery Post by those who discovered it
• Cemu GitHub issue ticket

This means that downstream projects like EmuDeck, which downloads and installs Cemu directly from GitHub Releases was also affected.

All the pieces have finally been put together for the release of KNULLI Scarab. We, the KNULLI team, are happy and proud to invite you into this cave of wonders!

KNULLI Scarab is a major update which brings a ton of new features and quality-of-life improvements. Most notably,

KNULLI now fully supports the revised H700 devices of Anbernic's RG XX series Added support for BattleXP G350, GKD Pixel 2, Miyoo Flip, Powkiddy X55, Retroid Pocket 5, Flip 2, and many others RetroArch has been updated to 1.22.2 Standalone Yabasanshiro was added for better performance on SEGA Saturn emulation improved Syncthing integration allows you to trigger syncs manually or even automatically on game exit while notifications keep you posted about transfer progress our new BatteryPlus gives you more precise information about your current battery state new and improved RGB support via Silky RGB (thank you, doughn0!) PortMaster can now be installed directly from the Device Settings menu A ton of bugfixes and improvements to system stability, performance, and battery life

The Sega Saturn emulator Yaba Sanshiro has taken a big leap forward thanks to a new rendering technique that allows it to overcome one of the console's biggest quirks.

As you may (or may not) be aware, the Saturn's VDP1 chip draws sprites and polygons as quads, but modern-day GPUs are designed around drawing triangles.

"When you render a quad on a modern GPU, it is normally split into two triangles," explains Yaba Sanshiro developer devMiyax. "If you draw a sprite this way, a texture that should look natural across the whole quad can appear distorted across the seam between the two triangles."

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/63608721

Welcome all. I am personally using recalbox on a Raspberry Pi 400, overclocked to 2147/650. 1 Gbit network on the Raspberry is connected through cable.

The max I can get moonlight to stream games from the main PC (sunlight) is this: 1080p 60fps 12Mbit (higher than 13 causes stutter since the raspberry pi 400 can not cope anymore)

HOST/SUNSHINE settings for AMD 7900XT: FEC percentage=0 Quantization Parameter=0 Minimum Thread count=4 AMF Variance Based Adaptive Quantization (VBAQ)=1

This maxes 1 core on the Raspberry Pi 400 almost out completely during decoding. And since moonlight is a single core operation, there is no more headroom.

What is the hardware combination you are all using, and what is the maximum streaming settings that you are able to achieve?

Runs on following hardware:

Raspberry Pi 500/400 Raspberry Pi Zero 2 Raspberry Pi Zero Raspberry Pi 1 (B/B+) Raspberry Pi 2 Raspberry Pi 3 (B/B+) Raspberry Pi 4 (any version) Odroid XU4 PC (64bits) Odroid Go Advance Odroid Go Super

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/46122754

SUPER ZSNES released

• GPU-based SNES emulation

• proprietary Unity app

• Windows, Android, Linux, macOS, and soon iOS

• ~~no Linux/SteamOS~~ (Linux build has since been released)

I'm fairly new to handhelds and just bought one on a whim probably a year ago now but it has become one of my favourite things.

There are so many options that I'm hoping people here can post pictures and give me their opinions on some that I might have overlooked.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/45783851