DCEmu Homebrew Emulation & Theme Park News
wraggster
by Published on October 29th, 2019 22:01- Categories:
- PC News
- A full month hasn't even passed since the last update of RetroArch, 1.7.9, which released earlier this October, and added new touchscreen gestures for those using the mobile version of the program. Now, with the newly released version 1.8.0, even more improvements have been made to the UI in general, for mobile users. Some new improvements and additions include a new method of scaling menu sizes for a variety of different resolutions and DPI, animated transitions between menus, a navigation bar which makes changing settings more effortless, and other visual optimizations.
With version 1.7.9, we already improved the mobile UX significantly by adding touchscreen gestures and better touch responsiveness.PC and Linux users also get some nice new features, with two bounty requests having been fulfilled. Rinnegatamante has added "graceful switching" for video drivers, meaning that RetroArch has an easier time swapping cores with different
This however pales in comparison to what has been done for version 1.8.0 in this department. We will quickly go over the major highlights, most of the text here has been written by jdgleaver (the author of these changes) with only minimal edits by myself –
New menu scaling
At present, Material UI is scaled according to screen resolution and hard-coded magic numbers. This ‘kinda-sorta’ works on some mobile devices, but in general (and specifically on desktop computers and tablets) the interface is too large, and scaling is highly inconsistent when resizing windows. To combat these inadequacies, there existed a ‘DPI override’ feature which allowed the user to set a specific scale – but this didn’t work in real-time (so adjustments were blind), and it’s not user friendly (since the average user can’t be expected to know the correct DPI setting for their screen).
This new version modifies the scaling of Material UI such that it uses the hardware-reported DPI value of the display, with empirical adjustments to accommodate very large and very small screen sizes (where normal DPI scaling fails). This should ensure an appropriate default interface size regardless of hardware. Moreover, it removes the ‘DPI override’ and replaces it with a generic Menu Scale Factor under User Interface > Appearance, which is a simple fractional multiplier (much easier for the user to understand!). This Menu Scale Factor is now also used by XMB (instead of the previous XMB-specific scale factor) – it is intended that Ozone and menu widgets will obey this setting in the future.
- DPI Override Removed – Menu Scale Factor comes in its place – starts out at 1.00x and can be made smaller or higher than the default value
- Material UI now correctly readjusts its layout when screen orientation changes on mobile devices
- Material UI now resizes in real-time when the user manually sets the Menu Scale Factor (this never worked properly with the old DPI override)
- Material UI no longer leaks memory on ‘context reset’
Menu animations
A new ‘Menu Transition Animation’ option has been added under User Interface > Appearance. When this is enabled, menu transition events are animated.
All sorts of animations have been added – fade-in effects, slide effects, etc. If you dislike any of these, you can always turn the setting off completely to go back to the previous behavior.
System bar
A new Android-style ‘system bar’ has been added. This shows current core name, clock and battery level.
Navigation bar
The navigation bar is now shown at all times – i.e. it is an actual navigation tool, rather than a ‘top-level-menu’ curiosity.
Two new context-sensitive buttons have been added:
On the bottom left we have a ‘back’ button. This performs the same function as tapping the menu bar, but the button is in a more ergonomic/standard position. This should address most of the complaints Android users have about RetroArch ignoring the hardware back button.
On the bottom right we have a ‘resume content’ button. This means we can easily change/test runtime settings without performing finger gymnastics. e.g. we can change a core option or apply a shader and immediately toggle the menu off without having to hit back to get to the quick menu, and scroll up to the resume content entry.
Auto-Rotation
A new ‘Auto-Rotate Navigation Bar’ option has been added under User Interface > Appearance. When enabled (this is the default setting), the navigation bar is moved to the right hand side of the screen when using landscape screen orientations. It looks something like this:
If you don’t like this and you want it to always appear at the bottom of the screen, turn this option off.
Title bar
The title bar now uses a larger font, and the sublabel font has also been enlarged a little, to more closely align with Material Design standards.
Optimize Landscape Layout
A new Optimize Landscape Layout option has been added under User Interface > Appearance. This is intended to address the rather uncomfortable appearance of Materail UI in landscape orientation on wide displays (particularly on the desktop). The option is disabled by default on mobile platforms (like iOS/Android), and enabled by default everywhere else. When enabled, it looks something like this:
Click to expand...
by Published on October 29th, 2019 21:28- Categories:
- Gameboy News,
- Nes News
As of today, all of the NES and Game Boy Mega Man games have received a patch that makes weapon energy refill upon losing a life.
The goal of these patches are to make the game less frustrating (especially during final stages, where some weapons are required to pass the level), but also to create consistency with the later Mega Man/X games for Playstation 1 and PSP.
If you got sick of running out of Magnet Beam in Mega Man 1, or Rush Jet in Mega Man 3, or even the Carrier from Wily’s Revenge, be sure to try out these patches! They may save your sanity during these heinous final stages!
Get the patches here:
- Mega Man 1
- Mega Man 2
- Mega Man 3
- Mega Man 4
- Mega Man 5
- Mega Man 6
- Mega Man I
- Mega Man II
- Mega Man III
- Mega Man IV
- Mega Man V
https://www.romhacking.net/community/5312/ ...by Published on October 29th, 2019 21:26- Categories:
- GBA News
At last, the long-awaited English translation for Rockman EXE 4.5: Real Operation, also known as Mega Man Battle Network 4.5, is finished!
Released in mid 2004, Rockman EXE 4.5 is a quirky spin-off of the Mega Man Battle Network series, made to tie in with the real-life BattleChip Gate peripheral for the GBA. Instead of the player controlling MegaMan directly, he moves and attacks by himself, while the player sends commands and chips for him to use. A large number of other Navis from the series are also playable.
A few attempts to translate the game had been made before, with the first project starting all the way back in 2006. However, the vast amount of text in the game and lack of available translators marred efforts. It wasn’t until a few years ago that one project led by fan community The Rockman EXE Zone truly got off the ground, and produced the English patch that has been released now.
The translation for Rockman EXE 4.5 translates 100% of all text and images in the game, while also fixing bugs in the game and adding some new features to reduce the game’s reliance on the BattleChip Gate. The team has also translated the game’s manual and an interview with the game’s developers, which can be downloaded from the translators’ website.
https://www.therockmanexezone.com/ge...h-translation/
https://www.romhacking.net/translations/5114/ ...by Published on October 29th, 2019 21:03- Categories:
- Xbox News
Microsoft's smartphone-style subscription service will return, and this time will be available in the UK, US and Australia.
The way the service works is that gamers can pay a monthly fee for 24 months (prices start from $19.99/£17.99), receive Xbox One hardware (either an X, S or S All-Digital) and a subscription to Ultimate Game Pass - which includes Xbox Live Gold, plus a large selection of games for Xbox One and PC.
The offering was already trialled in the US and will now be coming to the US and Australia. It is available through Amazon in the US, GAME and Smyths Toys in the UK and Telstra in Australia. Microsoft says that more territories will follow.
For those that subscribe to All-Access this year, these customers will be given the opportunity to upgrade their subscription and receive Microsoft's next Xbox, currently named Project Scarlett, when it launches next year. More details and rules around the offer can be found on the Xbox blog.
All-Access is an attempt by Microsoft to offer a smartphone-style offering whereby customers can purchase the latest hardware without the upfront cost. Over this generation, both PlayStation and Xbox delivered upgrades to its hardware in the form of PlayStation 4 Pro and Xbox One X. This has drawn comparisons to how the smartphone market operates, which delivers regular improvements to hardware on an almost annual basis.
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articl...upgrade-option ...by Published on October 25th, 2019 21:27- Categories:
- PSP News,
- Playstation Vita News
Other than the Diablo I port, the PSVita and PSP have received an update to their only Nintendo 64 emulator which is DaedalusX64.
This emulator has been around for a pretty long time and it only exists because the PSP shares the same architecture as the Nintendo 64 (MIPS) and some developers had a tad too much on their hands. Up till mid-2018, the latest release was r1909 and it was thought that it would be the final version of the emulator but then z2442, with the help of others including TheMrIron2, decided to keep on updating and improving the emulator releasing multiple updated versions as a result.
Now, version 1.1.8 has been released and this brings along:
- Updates to the Asynchronous Audio function so that it now uses the PSP’s Media Engine to provide a more stable experience
- Performance improvements through a new speed hack and updates to the PSP’s Media Engine PRX
- Working PSVita detection
- The code now conforms to the C++ 11 standard
- Many other changes accumulated over the last 7 months which can be viewed in the commit history
...by Published on October 25th, 2019 21:25- Categories:
- Playstation Vita News
As many of us know, the PSVita didn’t get an entry in many major game series and the Diablo series is one of these. Up till now, the only way to play a Diablo game on the console was by emulating the PlayStation 1 port via Adrenaline but that’s just changed thanks to the work of developer ‘gokuhs‘ and his port of DevilutionX
Diablo I can now be played natively on the PSVita provided you can live with kinda awkward controls (Image Source)
DevilutionX is a open-source port of the Diablo I game engine that supports a wide variety of platforms including Windows, Linux, macOS and the Switch while also having some added features of its own such as upscaling and modding support.
The PSVita port is still in beta stage and from user reports on Reddit + its changelog, it’s at the current state:
- Overall, performance is pretty decent with the game hovering around the 40FPS mark in the city and the 20FPS mark in dungeons
- Controlling the game is a tad awkward because it uses the rear touchpad and most buttons are unassigned
- Hopefully, gokuhs can take some cues in the controls department from Diablo NX which is a DevilutionX port for the Switch by MVG
- There are a few minor issues such as tapping on the rear touchpad not working all the time and the mouse in menus being mapped incorrectly
To play some Diablo I natively on your PSVita, check out this link to grab DevilutionX’s VPK; viewing the README is also important to get the game running. You must provide Diablo I’s game files [diabdat.mpq] in ux0:/data/DVLX00001/data so you must own the game to play it legally; it can be bought for a few bucks off GOG (not affiliated)....
http://wololo.net/2019/10/24/psvita-...ulator-is-out/by Published on October 25th, 2019 21:15- Categories:
- DCEmu
60% of European gamers surveyed in a recent study say they're unlikely to buy a games console that does not play physical discs.
The data comes from the latest research conducted by ISFE and Ipsos MORI's GameTrack survey, on behalf of GamesIndustry.biz. The data covers UK, France, Germany, Spain and Italy.
Gamers have been increasingly downloading major releases over buying them in boxes. In June, digital games data tracker GSD revealed to us that (during Q1 this year) some markets are now more than 50% digital for AAA releases such as Assassin's Creed, Battlefield, Star Wars, Call of Duty, Tom Clancy and Red Dead Redemption.
The UK was 56% digital for these titles, France was 47% digital, Germany (including Switzerland and Austria) was 50% digital, Spain (plus Portugal) was 35% and Italy was 33%.
Interestingly, the data loosely matches up with the interest in a digital-only games console. According to Ipsos MORI's survey results, 17% of UK gamers would be likely to buy a digital-only machine, French players are 12% likely, German fans are 11% likely, while Spain and Italy are both 6% likely to buy a device like Microsoft's Xbox One S All-Digital.
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articl...games-consoles ...by Published on October 25th, 2019 21:09- Categories:
- PC News
If you've been running out to buy a black mourning outfit every time the Death of Games Consoles, PCs or any other gaming platform has been proclaimed, bad news; it's another one for the mothballs, it seems. Having drawn gasps from bystanders and mild panic from shareholders when it was originally unveiled, Google's Stadia -- the game streaming service that's meant to be a nail in the coffin of the quaint idea of just running a game on a cheap piece of consumer hardware you bought in a shop -- is arriving in less than four weeks.
Yet for all the hoopla around its unveiling, Stadia's launch is a strangely muted affair. The chorus of the doom prophets is nowhere to be heard. The inexorable approach of the streaming black hole that will swallow gaming within its event horizon appears to make scarcely a sound."For all the hoopla around its unveiling, Stadia's launch is a strangely muted affair"Alright, I'm over-egging it slightly, but it is honestly peculiar that with less than a month to go before the supposed entry of one of the world's biggest tech firms (indeed, one of the world's biggest companies full stop) into the games business, the launch is making hardly a ripple on the water. It feels like an inordinate amount of the anticipation for Stadia is contained within the rather rarefied bounds of the investor community, many of whom are seeing this as a landscape-altering event on a par with Microsoft's market entry all those years ago. On the consumer front though, and even among developers, the response to Stadia is far more measured -- "wait and see" appears to be the order of the day.
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articl...idence-opinion ...by Published on October 23rd, 2019 17:34- Categories:
- Nes News
Final Fantasy IV - Ultima version 5.12f is finally out! It has been quite a journey creating and updating this hack, however, it has finally arrived at the end in its final form.
Originally, about a year ago, this project began as an addendum to the vanilla game: FF2SNES. The idea was to make a few polish here and there, and reuse some of the empty space and dummied out contents in the rom to create some meaningful and new weapons/spells/gears to spice up the core FF4 experience. However, as time went by, with the combination of new ideas that kept popping up and suggestions from many players of this hack, more and more goodies was added to the hack to a point where Final Fantasy IV - Ultima had become its own personality. In its final form, not only has the hack been treated with new goodies and a few extra endgame additions as it did back in v1.0, but it is now loaded with a ton of extra content such as new side-quests, new scenarios, new weapons and much much more throughout the entire game from start to finish…plus a fairly good sized endgame adventure in addition as well. Here are a few notable features of this hack:
- 32 New Weapons! 21 New Spells! 20 New Bosses!!
- Fully Detailed Equipment Screen!
- New Attack Animation that scales to your Power!
- Dual-Wielding Dark Knight Cecil!
- New Side-Quests! New Events! New Endgame Scenarios!!
Barring any bug fixes or polish updates, this should be the FINAL VERSION of Final Fantasy IV - Ultima. So if you haven’t already, do give it a download and check it out! Hope you’ll all enjoy this hack immensely and feel free to reach out if you have any questions and/or comments! Cheers!!
http://8bitfan.info/
http://www.romhacking.net/forum/index.php?topic=29481 ...by Published on October 22nd, 2019 19:54- Categories:
- Nintendo DS News
melonDSi beta is released. melonDSi is able to boot DS-mode games from the DSi menu. They currently run with the DS-mode BIOSes and backwards-compatible touchscreen mode, but at the 133MHz clock speed and with 16MB of RAM. melonDS is an open source Nintendo DS(NDS) emulator. melonDS is part of a second wave of DS emulators. There are a few other emulator projects that are part of it, which you might have already heard of. Either way, check them out!
How to use melonDSi
BE SURE TO READ THIS BEFORE USING MELONDSI. You are using a beta release, provided with zero polishing and with a debug console. I expect that you know what you are doing to atleast some extent.
melonDSi will require several files to be dumped from a DSi. It's a bit messy right now, but we hope to come up with more user-friendly solutions in the future.
So, if you have a DSi, you might want to install unlaunch on it.
A quick rundown of the files melonDSi requires:
* bios9.bin / bios7.bin: DS-mode BIOS images. Those are the same as the ones from a DS. They shouldn't be required to get DSi software running, but melonDSi will refuse to start if they aren't present.
* bios9i.bin / bios7i.bin: DSi-mode BIOS images. Those can be dumped from your DSi using the good ol' dsbf_dump.nds.
* firmware.bin: SPI FLASH image. See above. dsbf_dump.bin yields a 'FWxxxxxx.bin' file which you need to rename. It should be 128K.
* dsikeys.bin: AES keys at boot time, dumpable using dsidumper.
* initmem9.bin / initmem7.bin: Boot-time contents of ARM9 ITCM and ARM7 WRAM, containing several other useful keys. See above.
* nand.bin: DSi NAND image, ideally dumped with fwTool. This should be dumped from the same console as dsikeys.bin and initmem9/7.bin.
BEFORE STARTING
Make sure that your DSi-mode ARM7 BIOS is good. Open bios7i.bin in a hex editor. Ensure that the first 32 bytes are the following:
06 00 00 EA 06 00 00 EA 1F 00 00 EA 04 00 00 EA
03 00 00 EA FE FF FF EA 13 00 00 EA 00 00 00 EA
Make sure that your NAND dump has the 'nocash footer' at the end. Open it in a hex editor and check that it has the string 'DSi eMMC CID/CPU' at offset 0xF000000. This is the beginning of the 64-byte 'nocash footer', which holds the eMMC CID and console ID.
Ideally make sure that direct boot is disabled.
Using melonDSi
As with regular melonDS, System->Run will boot the firmware, which should land you into the DSi menu if you did everything right.
You will need to recalibrate the touchscreen through the system settings app to have it work correctly.
melonDSi can boot some DSi-mode apps, but they currently don't work that well.
Booting games
melonDSi is able to boot DS-mode games from the DSi menu. They currently run with the DS-mode BIOSes and backwards-compatible touchscreen mode, but at the 133MHz clock speed and with 16MB of RAM.
DSi-enhanced games do not boot yet.
Direct boot is likely to break things as it hasn't been updated yet.
Other issues
Do not attempt using savestates, they can and will go wrong.
melonDSi is based on melonDS 0.8.1, so it will have the bugs present in that version.
http://melonds.kuribo64.net/
https://www.emucr.com/2019/10/melondsi-beta.html ...- Search DCEmu
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Catherine: Full Body’s English translation for the Vita