Works really well. shadPS4 is pretty good

Was checking the news of its release and it got me curious. As a Steam release was linked, went to check the public information SteamDB compiles, and on the list of files, near the end, I see these two very suspiciously-named files on the screenshot I've attached.

Will get either of the PC versions when I can to check, but it seems promising already!

Hello i should probably ask this on GBATemp aswell but wanted to try my luck on here as well. I have a modded DSi running TwilightMenu++ this comes preinstalled with GBARunner2. GBARunner2 has the option to show a border and center the screen as the GBA had a smaller resolution than the DS, but this comes with an "frame of delay" I am now wondering as I always believed that GBARunner2 was no traditional Emulator and ran natively using the same hardware the DS/Lite Slot-2 used if this is actually true. I don't see much difference. Does anybody on here know a thing or two about GBARunner2 and DSi Hardware? Why is not utilising the same logic the DS Lite did?

The option im talking about Enable center and mask under Display Settings.

I just stumbled upon a computer on the garbage that has a GTX 970. Unsure of the cpu, but it's an MSI Z97 pc mate motherboard, so 4th or 5th gen intel. I also have a PC that my friend gave me when they moved that has an R9 290x graphics card and a gigabyte Z97x gaming motherboard. I need to plug them into see what the actual CPUs are, but they should be fairly similar, considering they both seem to be built for gaming.

Could any of this hardware be used to make a good emulation box? What do you think would be the best combo out of all of this? Just based on specs, I'm thinking the best would be the GTX 970 on the gigabyte motherboard, then just pick whichever of the two cpus are better out of the two, and max out the ram between whatever the two have. As far as software, I'm thinking I will go with batocera.

Any thoughts on this, or things I might be missing? What games could I expect to be able to emulate on this? I'm hoping for everything up to wii/xbox one/ps3. Is that a reasonable expectation?

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/20732706

One of the pre-order pages is for the game in GBC ROM format, as well as an instruction manual, the game cover (presumably in some digital format), desktop wallpapers and the OST as a Bandcamp album:
https://incube8games.com/products/infinity-gbc-digital-edition

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/37399128

A few days back I shared a post asking for suggestions on what PS2 games people here might recommend I play. Having not been one who played PS2 at any stage (it was a bit before my time), my experience with the systems and games is slightly limited.

What I did love though, was seeing how many here shared games they clearly loved, and who spent so long convincing me that what they recommended would be the perfect game. One thing I've learned...all of you in this community love the PS2!

Anyway, the only PS2 games I have played through have all been through PCSX2 - the ubiquitous and decades-old PlayStation 2 emulator. I've bumped the resolution, I've activated RetroAchievements, and I've applied HD texture packs. Each time I'm shocked at how amazing the games are, despite their age.

So, while I was setting my collection of games up I thought it might be nice to reach out to the PCSX2 team and ask if anyone wanted to chat about their experiences in creating and maintaining the emulator! Two of the devs (fobes and GovanifY) said they'd be more than happy to, and so I've got a little interview with them to share with you :)

If you're at all interested in reading it, the link is right here. The devs cover their history with the console, their history with developing the emulator, dev work in general, what the future will bring...and more besides. Hope you enjoy!!!

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/45926712

https://github.com/shadps4-emu/shadPS4/pull/3559

Also fixes some graphics in non-Unreal Engine games too. You can try it out now by compiling from source, downloading a prebuilt binary via Github actions or wait for the 0.11 release.

if you play NDS games on open source handhelds, there are good chances it's using one of the emulation solutions: a. retroarch as frontend + melonds/melondsds core b. android system with orginal drasticDS app c. linux version of drastic software(or its modified version)

when you trying to add cheat codes for DS games, the method may vary depends on which emulation solutions your handhelds is using.

for solution a, you can just add cheat code like any other emulators in Retroarch, just copy cheat codes in libretro cheat formats(.cht files) into retroarch cheats folder, and then import cheats file using retroarch's cheat menu.

for solution b, the orignal drastic use 「usrcheat.dat」file (Located in the /drastic/ folder) as Cheat Databases. which means when it read game rom files, it'll use the game ID in rom data to find a match in the cheat database, and show cheat codes options. so the easiest way of use cheats is replacing the original usrcheat.dat file(13MB+) with a larger one (like this 54MB+ one made by DeadSkullzJr https://gbatemp.net/threads/deadskullzjrs-nds-i-cheat-databases.488711/ )

for solution c, it's bascally the same with solution b(cause it still is drasticDS)

if you're playing an not-so-popular verson of roms (like an japanese distribution , an modified rom or fantranslated version), the Game ID may have no match in the cheat database and the drasticDS 「Configure Cheats」options respond nothing, then you may need to search cheat code for your rom version on internet and add it to usrcheat.dat manully. you can follow this guide https://www.drastic-ds.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=288 you'll need R4CCE.exe to edit usrcheat.dat. notice that r4cce can't work with non-english filenames, so rename the .dat file you want to edit or the rom file you want to read Game ID from to latin characters before use r4cce. as the picture in the guide shows, the Game ID on R4CCE ui has two parts, the 4 characters in the red box and the 8 characters in the green box. for my understanding, drastic will first try to match both parts for the rom file, and if failed, only the red box part matched will still show cheat code. the red box part is the real gameID, coded by nintendo and printed in the package box when distribution. the green box part is more of an 「unofficial rom-version ID」, came from doing some calculating to game rom's CRC checksum (i don't really understand https://forums.desmume.org/viewtopic.php?id=11156 ). the green box part may be changed for modified rom or fan-translating version rom files, but the red box part should stay the same. the two part Game ID can be read from rom files using r4cce following the guide.

Besides cheat database, Drastic also support 「custom cheat files」(.cht) after version2.3.0.0 (released in 2015). it's much easy to use than cheat database, so it's highly recommended for solution b&c. unlike cheat database, custom cheat files is based on filename matching. i.e. your game rom file is 「digimon.nds」,then use any text editor (like notepad++) to creat an txt file with same name(「digimon.txt」), and paste the cheat code you find into the txt file under this format:

[your cheat code description]+
〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇 〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇
〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇 〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇
〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇 〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇

The square brackets [ ] and plus mark + is important. text between [ ] will show as cheat title in drastic's「Configure Cheats」menu; the plus mark means this cheat will be active as default when game started(lose it if you don't want that). the 〇〇 represent actionreplay cheat codes. After editing and saving, change file name「digimon.txt」to 「digimon.cht」, and copy it to /drastic/cheats/ folder. when open roms in drastic, the cheats file will automatically loaded.

Notice that although drastic's custom cheat files use same filename extension with Retroarch(*.cht), the text formats are completely different. DO NOT copy retroarch cheat files without editing it into drastic format first. Also in different version of drastic, cheat code description may not support non-latin words. for more information and cheat code formats example, read「-- Cheat Codes --」section in 「drastic_readme.txt」under the same folder with 「usrcheat.dat」.

extra notes for cfw:

drastic folder in custom firmware may be buried quite deep(i.e. the /drastic/ folder is located at YOURSDCARD:\Emus\tg5040\NDS.pak\drastic in nextUI), you may want to read cfw documents to find out; custom firmware may redirecting drastic's cheats folder to its global cheats directory(i.e. in nextUI, NDS.apk after version0.6.0 redirecting YOURSDCARD:\Emus\tg5040\NDS.pak\drastic\cheats to YOURSDCARD:\cheats\NDS, so put drastic's custom cheat files there instead).

Firstly, I would like to begin with the way Duckstation was relicensed from GPL to CC-by-NonCommercial-Noderivatives (non-foss license).

I've seen a lot of people incorrectly claiming that this violates the GPL, but the way the duckstation developer did this was not a violation of the GPL. The duckstation developer gained prior contributors approval, and/or rewrote all GPL code for which they didn't.

source: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2024/09/playstation-1-emulator-duckstation-changes-license-for-no-commercial-use-and-no-derivatives/

I have the approval of prior contributors, and if I did somehow miss you, then please advise me so I can rewrite that code. I didn't spend several weekends rewriting various parts for no reason. I do not have, nor want a CLA, because I do not agree with taking away contributor's copyright.

It should be noted that the version the AUR package uses is the older, still GPL version of the program. There is a git version which uses the latest, and it seems to be okay, but I should note that part of the packaging process on many distros, is essentially forking the software and making a derivative — something incompatible with CC ND.

I have been following this drama for a while, specifically on the r/emulationonandroid reddit community, and there is even more context to be had.

Now, about the dropping of Linux support. The problem, goes a lot deeper than "Arch users annoying".

Firstly, I want to state that there is a running, widely believed theory that Stenzek, the developer of the AetherSX2 android emulator, Talred, are the same person. You see this manifest in comments/posts like this one, but it's all over the sub. (This comment states that Stenzek was never really harassed and I disagree, I will get to that later/)

The problem is that this developer has a pattern of insisting on having a discord community, but being unwilling/unable to moderate it properly, or appoint other/enough moderators to act as a shield between them in the community members.

Arch users are what is being complained about, but the android emulation community has some pretty bad members, due to the high prevalence of children. So they would go on the discord, troll, harass, and be annoying. For example, this instance here.

It culminated with a final update that added ads and decreased performance: https://www.reddit.com/r/EmulationOnAndroid/comments/11q726j/do_not_update_aethersx2_on_google_play_i_repeat/

Now, I do not condone harassment, and I think that the members of the community who are acting in bad faith are ultimately in the wrong here. But at the same time, you are not obligated to have a discord for your software project.

In my opinion, the real problem here is the flawed idea that every software needs to have a "community". I have watched around 3-4 projects die due to harassment on discord (not all of them related to emulation), and it's clear that moderating a community actually takes work that not everybody is willing/able to give, especially if you are interacting with children. And the r/emulationonandroid software is particularly forgetful about this, as they just repeat these patterns over and over again and it drives me nuts.

I'm currently watching the latest android switch emulator use a discord server for communications and do their releases on Github —after the previous iteration's discord server owner locked down the discord server (a lot of blame is placed on powertripping mods but this is the kinda thing that happens when people get fed up with dealing with children tbh). And before that, the Nintendo DMCA fiasco happened. But don't worry, I'm sure the latest switch emulators combination of discord + github will go well and nothing bad will happen at all.

In addition to that, right now I am in 100 discord servers (they don't let you join more without Nitro), because people treat discord as an issue tracker and distribution hub for their small software projects and it drives me nuts.

I would prefer small software projects to not create a community, and instead integrate into existing communities that already have established moderators, so that they protected from harassment and children being annoying.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/33735252

I've been lucky in my incessant poking at the developers of all kinds of gaming projects, programs and sites recently.

I'm sure by now you'll know that I've done this with plenty of devs: from Heroic and Lutris, to RomM and RetroDECK. With plenty others as well. My aim is to chat to the people who create the things you all know and love, and might use yourselves. I feel that it can be rare to hear from those devs. Rare that they get any of the spotlight, so my series of these interviews is my attempt to change that!

This time I've befriended and chatted to the dev who runs the site called EmuReady, which is a site dedicated to compatibility reports - what emulators, devices and settings work best for emulated games.

The developer, Producevity, was kind enough to agree, and I'll share the full little Q&A I did with him here, in its entirety and without me picking and choosing quotes from him.

However, if you're more interested in an article format, I wrote one up and shared it on Gardiner Bryant's site (which you can find here with this link! - he's been kind enough to let me submit lots of articles and interviews on his site, and posts them there)

---

THE BEGINNING:

---

Can you tell me about how the idea for EmuReady first came to you? What pushed you from "this should exist" to actually building it?

This might sound weird, but I have never been into gaming, this changed about a year or 2 ago when I tried the game Elden Ring. Maybe not the best game to start with, but it really showed me the art of games and storytelling. After discovering the world of gaming, I felt like I had missed out on so much, especially the games from my childhood that somehow never interested me back then.

Natually, I started looking into retro gaming and emulation. A lot of emulators not being as mature and stable, the compatibility Google Sheets were a decent solution the community came up with to share this information.

That said, Google sheets suck for information like this, allow me to list a few.

• They are not easily searchable
• Everyone and their dog has their own version of a sheet, for every emulator, every device, every configuration, etc.
• The same people (and their dog) are constantly updating these sheets. Having no archive meant that usefull information would get lost.
• There is no room for discussion and most importantly, no room for verification of the information.

So I started building EmuReady, being pretty new to this community I asked around and received a lot of useful feedback. In particular, Ryan Retro's community and Ryan himself has been very helpful.

Was it something you made for yourself at first, or did you always imagine it as a public tool? And are you still running it solo...or have others joined you behind the scenes now?

I never intended to use it myself, which may sound weird, but I personally enjoy the tinkering process and it may even be more fun than playing the games themselves. But since Reddit is filled with people asking for help regarding emulation, it's clear that not everyone enjoys the tinkering process and just want to enjoy their games. I like making things, and emulation quickly turned into a passion. So I might not be the target audience, but I do understand the target audience and this was my way of giving back to the community.

Currently, the development side is mostly done by me, there has been a couple PR's from the community, which is a way developers can contribute code to the project.

However, there is a lot of moderation work that needs to be done, and I am very grateful for the help I get from the community in this regard. A user by the name of Drackool has been a great help in moderating the site, since every single report needs to be verified by a human before it can be added to the site to ensure the quality of the information.

Then of course, there is the community itself. Once a report is approved, it's up to the community to verify the information. EmuReady has a voting/verification system in place, where users can vote on the accuracy of the information. If a report gets enough votes, of gets verified by one of the developers of the emulator the report is for, it will be marked as verified and show up higher in the search results.

The community contributions seem to be growing fast lately, with more reports coming in every day. That must be exciting to watch those numbers grow!

Yes, it absolutely is! I did not expect the site to grow this fast, it almost started to stress me out since this hobby project started to cost me 50-60 euros a month in server costs. It's very exciting to see that we get 10k to 20k unique visitors a day, and as long as I can afford it, I will keep the site running and improving it.

---

COMMUNITY:

---

Have there been any standout moments or bits of feedback in your short site-life so far that stuck with you?

Yes, there have been a few, but one in particular. A user on Reddit suggested something like a "trust system".

This is probably the most complex part of EmuReady and I won't go into too much detail here, but there are essentially a lot of systems in place that work together to ensure the quality of the information on the site. Voting is a big part of this, but also the amount of contributions, and what information a user has contributed.

A benefit of this sytem is that it slowly allows EmuReady to become self-sustaining, since the more trusted a user is, the more permissions they gain. Being able to edit reports for typos, and having their reports automatically verified, are just 2 examples of this.

Do you feel like the people using EmuReady “get” the vision you had when building it, or has the community helped shape that vision in unexpected ways?

There are a lot of people that do, and use it exactly as I intended it to be used. There are also users who fail to see the benefit of this over the 7392468 different Google Sheets that are out there.

A lot of these users changed there mind, but EmuReady is an alternative, and in my opinion, a better alternative to Google Sheets. People can just use what they prefer, and I am happy that EmuReady is an option for them.

By all means, for anyone unaware on what EmuReady is, tell them how they can help!

EmuReady is a community-driven platform that allows people to find, share, vote/verify and discuss game compatibility for their specific device and emulator. If you are a developer, the project is Open Source and the community is doing a great job of submitting GitHub issues, so if you see something that you think you can implement or fix, you are more than welcome to do so!

As for other people, simply using the platform helps a lot, but the most valuable thing you can do is vote/verify reports to let other know if the information is accurate or not. If you find a report that is incorrect, you can downvote it and if a report matches your experience you can upvote it. This way EmuReady can prioritize the most accurate reports and show them higher in the search results.

---

THE FUTURE:

---

I noticed you recently added support for PC games, which seems like a nice move, to really be an all-in-one site.

That's a funny story, haha. I was personally arguing against this, but the community was very vocal about it. I was worried that it wouldn't provide enough value because of the sheer amount of different PC configurations, it just isn't as reliable as a report for a specific device with the exact same hardware.

That said, I don't see EmuReady as my platform anymore, it's a community platform and with the amount of people asking for it, I decided to give it a try. Unfortuately, about 2% of all the searches and submitted reports are for PC, the other 98% is still for handheld devices, which still contain PC handhelds like the Steam Deck, GPD Win, ROG Ally, etc.

Maybe it needs a bit more time to grow, but I am happy that we have it now and I am sure it will be useful for some people.

What are your current goals for the site? And what are the wild, dream features you’d love to build one day?

The site is mostly feature complete, but as with any project, done doesn't really mean done. I recently added a lot more quality of life features and some neccessary features to present EmuReady as a more mature platform. For example, it's very likely that there are also a lot of users that are minors, so I added a way to report inappropriate content and a NSFW filter to hide NSFW content. So only users that opt-in to see these games will see them, and the rest will be hidden by default.

Could you see something like an Android app, emulator integrations, or even personal game libraries happening? Basically, what does your “perfect future version” of EmuReady look like?

Absolutly! And this is the part I am most excited about. The Android app is already in the works and I have been closely working with the developers of "Eden" (Switch Emulator) and Winlator (x86_64/windows emulation on Android) to make an integration with EmuReady. This will allow users to find a compatibility report and with a single click, open the game in the emulator with the correct settings applied. This is a feature that I am very excited about and I think it will be a game changer for a lot of users. The goal is essentially to make emulation as easy and accessible as possible, so that anyone can enjoy their favorite games without having to worry about the technical details.

This will require a lot of work, and it is work that needs to be done on a per-emulator basis. I am currenlty making the implementation for Eden and Winlator, but I am also open to working with other emulator developers to make this a reality for their emulators as well.

---

YOU:

---

Tell us all about you! Is this your first project like this?

It's not my first project, I have been a software developer for about 15 years now and I love to build things.

This is however my first project relaled to gaming and emulation, and I am very happy that it has been so well received by the community.

(I HAVE to ask this one) – give us your fav games, maybe a top 5 or 10 retro game list?

Well, I don't have a huge library since I only started gaming about 2 years ago, but I can give you a list of games that I have enjoyed so far:

1. Elden Ring
2. Portal 1 & 2
3. Subnautica
4. Hollow Knight
5. Undertale
6. Cyberpunk 2077

As for retro (or older) games:

1. The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap (GBA)
2. GTA: San Andreas (PS2)
3. Soul Reaver: Legacy of Kain (PS1)
4. Gravity Rush (PS Vita)
5. Hotline Miami (PS Vita)
6. Super Mario Bros. 3 (NES)
7. Super Mario 65 (N64)

Are you an avid handheld SBC collector, like some are?

This feels like a self report, since I just mentioned that I only started gaming about 2 years ago. Don't tell my wife but I have a few handhelds, I currently own:

• Anbernic RG35XX-SP
• Anbernic RG35XX-H
• Anbernic RG40XX-H
• R63A
• Sony PlayStation Portable
• Sony PlayStation Vita
• Retroid Pocket 5
• Steam Deck OLED

And one final thing of note, which he told me in chat after the questions and answers were sent back and forth:

Something I should have mentioned: all money donated goes to server costs, everything above that gets donated to other emulator developers and people in the community like TheGamesDB

---

If you'd like to see more of EmuReady, and what it is and does:

• Here is their website

• And here is their GitHub

---

I know this one's rather short, but again, I'm sharing this to get the full answers from my questions when chatting to Producevity. If you're a gamer who loves SBC handhelds, then you might have some experience with what settings worked best on which devices. I know EmuReady would love you to contribute your findings to the site.

I do have more articles/interviews coming with other developers in the coming week or two, as well. So, I'll share here as they happen (if you'd like)

...and I'm curious, anyone use, or submitted info on here to EmuReady?

If you want to follow along with my gaming words, you can find me on Mastodon, too:

cross-posted from: https://reddthat.com/post/46825035

Commit.

cross-posted from: https://infosec.pub/post/30689546

So recently had a hankering for some Pokémon hacks so booted up my old Pokémon Storm Silver ROM (using retroarch with Desmume as emulator).

I spun up a new game and played a bit, but it wouldn't let me save a new game since the ROM had my old save data. I decided to just save the game state with the built in retro arch save state functionality. So beat the champion using save states as alternative save feature with 60 hours on game clock (probably MUCH less due to my abuse of ffw feature).

But when you beat the champion, it dumps you back to the title screen. From there, I can only load my old data (since my current play isn't properly saved in the game data). As such, I can't play any of the post elite four content.

Anyone aware of a workaround where I can erase the games data from a save state? Kinda feels like I'm just SOL.

If I am, let this stand as a warning to other Pokémon fans. Always take the time to clear your old data!

Original question by @ceiron@europe.pub