Wii U emulator: Cemu 1.5.0 public release, Cemu 1.5.1 available on patreon

We recently mentioned Cemu 1.5.0, which was available to patreon supporters of the popular Wii U emulator. Version 1.5.0 has now been released publicly, and you can enjoy the performance improvement that comes with it.

Cemu 1.5.0 brings the following changes, according to the changelog:

• New enhanced controller configuration menu and emulation
  • Configure up to 8 players (assuming the game supports it)
  • Added Pro Controller and Classic Controller emulation
  • Compatible with the original Pro Controller (using mayflash adapter)
• Improved shader emulation and graphic bugfixes
• Improved sound emulation
• Reduced VRAM usage
• Small bugfixes and changes

The Cemu 1.5.0 Wii U emulator has been said to bring huge performance improvements and run some games at full speed on reasonable PC configurations, such as in this video running Mario Kart 8 below. Note that Cemu does not play all Wii U games yet, and is actively being developed.

Meanwhile, Cemu 1.5.1 is already available to the project’s patreon supporters. Cemu 1.5.1 is a minor bug fix release and brings the following changes:

Input: Fixed input for controllers with off-center axes
Input: Added axis range scaler (50% to 200%)

H264: Fixed a bug in H264DECMemoryRequirement() that could lead to a crash.

CPU: Added new instructions to recompiler: ps_mr, ps_sel, ps_l/ps_st type 6, stfdx
CPU: Recompiler will now utilize BMI and AVX instruction set to generate faster code (if supported by host CPU)
CPU: Fixed a bug in code generated by recompiler for FSUB & FSUBS where the result would incorrectly become -0.0 instead of 0.0

AX: Added API AXSetVoiceSrcRatio()
AX: Fixed a bug in voice volume update
AX: Increased audio volume
AX: Added logging for audio API

GX2: Fixed wrong colors for certain texture dump formats
GX2: Fixed vertex ordering for special cases when PRIMITIVE_RECTS is used
GX2: New implementation for tiling aperature. Still heavily work-in-progress.

Reddit have an interesting FAQ explaining, among other things, why Cemu is not open source. I felt it was an interesting read:

Q: Why is it closed source?
A: “I have a very strong vision on how the future of Cemu should look like. This includes potential contributors with whom I am already in talks with. I believe that for speedy progress, a small team of long-term, dedicated and skilled team members is better than a big team of temporary contributors. Why? Because every contributor first has to acquire the necessary knowledge about the emulated system. More knowledge means more effective emulator development since a lot of time can be saved by 1) fixing bugs faster 2) implementing features correctly on first attempt. For this approach open-source is simply not necessary. In fact, it is easier to get talented developers to join long-term when their name will have more meaning in the credits. I have also considered donation-driven development. It works very well for artists and comic authors, and I see it as a great incentive for emulator development too. But it would be problematic for a open-source project.

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But of course there are other concerns as well, like development suddenly focusing on a direction which is not favorable to the original intentions of the emulator. Example: Focus on hacky solutions to get games into playable state earlier. I can see this happen in a open-source environment more likely, because piracy can become the main source for development motivation. Another example: Splatoon is moving towards playability fast, but online features are of low priority to avoid people using the emulator to cheat in online-play and ruin the experience for everyone. With open-source code there is no easy way to steer the development focus away.

Needless to say there are personal reasons as well. Like not wanting to lose control over the project and being slightly reluctant to share the code with people who have no respect for the effort and time it took to get this far. Not to mention the 1000 messages I received along the lines of “This emulator is doomed when it doesn’t go open-source”. It makes me want to prove them otherwise. Oh and as I already stated, if development on Cemu gets stuck for a long period of time or if it is abandoned, the source code will be released anyway. I agree with the sentiment that the knowledge should not go to waste.”

Considering that the project is generating more than $2000 a month on patreon alone, I feel the authors are on good track to make it a full-time thing… How does the community feel about this?

Download Cemu 1.5.0 – Wii U emulator

You can download Cemu version 1.5.0 on their official site here.

Source: Cemu.info, via hackinformer

Wii U Emulator: Cemu 1.1.0 released

The Wii U emulator that became an instant success, Cemu, is out with update 1.1.0.

Wii U Emulator Cemu 1.1.0: What’s new?

Developer Exzap announced on GBATemp yesterday that he has rewritten the graphics backend, which has the side effect of fixing a bunch of graphic bugs, and should make bug fixing and improvements easier in the future. He mentions Shovel Knight is now working and playable.

This is a welcome update from most users, although there is still no support for AMD GPUs.

The full changelog:

• New future-proof GPU7 shader assembly to GLSL decompiler (work-in-progress)
• Fixed a few bugs in color and depth buffer emulation.
• Added more system functions, leading to higher compatibility.
• Added hacky support for DRC rotation. Right click on the render window & drag to change the orientation
• Implemented some background logic for audio emulation. No audio output yet.

Wii U Emulator Download – Cemu 1.1.0

You can download Cemu 1.1.0 on the official site here

Source GBATemp, via Hackinformer

Emulator on PS4: Gameboy emulator running on the PS4, source code released

After a stream of releases, developer CTurt just announced he ported Cinoop, his very own gameboy emulator, to the PS4.

Not so long ago, CTurt announced he had gained code execution on the PS4. He then released a simple pong game for the PS4, and also announced he was working on a homebrew loader. With a gameboy emulator released just a few days after these statements, he’s making progress fast, it seems.

CTurt had initially announced he would reverse engineer the graphics library on the PS4 in order to run his homebrew loader. It seems he has taken a shortcut as this is running through a HTML canvas. In other words, the PS4 does the processing job, and the rendering goes through webkit, which means the graphics lib was not used. Impressive nonetheless.

Just like for the Pong game, CTurt is controlling the homebrew through a Nintendo DS, as hackers do not have access to the Dulashock controllers through the hack yet.

Before you all get super excited, keep in mind that this is running through theWebkit exploit on PS4 firmware 1.76. Are you on firmware 1.76 or below? Yeah, I didn’t think so. This is some exciting news, but nothing that directly benefits the end user at this point, or that leads us to some full PS4 Jailbreak. It’s still awesome to see some progress.

Download Cinoop GameBoy PS4 emulator

Download Gameboy PS4 emulator Cinoop (source code) – on CTurt’s github

Source: CTurt

RetroArch 1.2 PSP/3DS

The last time we spoke of RetroArch was quite a while ago, where it was confirmed working on the PS-Vita’s TN-V around last year December. Libretro’s now getting back to releasing yet another great update from the multi-system emulator, RetroArch 1.2. Although the 3DS version is still under development, we can expect this update for the PSP in the coming weeks. This new update brings a lot of new goodies such as:

– Brand new ‘eye candy’ menus

RetroArch now lets you select between three menu display modes:

* RGUI – a very classic, low-resolution menu

* GLUI – a more advanced GL-based menu that lends itself well to touch-based devices

* XMB (a horizontal crossbar menu that is the most eyecandy-rich of all three right now. Similar to the PS3’s and PSP’s menu.

– Scanning files/directories and adding them to the system collections

With this you no longer have to browse your file system all the time looking for a ROM to play. If RetroArch finds a match with a known game on a given system/emulator, it will then add this game to a collection based on the system/emulator of that game.

– Downloading cores online

You can now download cores from RetroArch’s buildbot within the program. Go to Online Updater -> Core Updater and select any of the cores you’d like to have updated/installed.

– Built-in input mapping

To access this option Go to Settings -> Input Settings and select ‘Bind All’ to bind each and every button one at a time, or bind the actions individual.

– Ability to remap controls

Similar to what we saw on a recent PS4 update.  To access this option, go to the ‘Quick Menu’ and select ‘Core Input Remapping Options’. From there you can change the controls for each core, which are then saved into a config file.

– Multi-language support

This is self explanatory.

– Box Arts!

And a bunch of other cool stuff with more details. You can check them all out here!

I’ll conclude by quoting what Libretro had to say about their PSP/3DS updates:

Some other notes (3DS / PSP version)

We could maybe push out a PSP version of RetroArch 1.2 in the upcoming weeks. I’m hoping to get back with the main contributor (aliaspider) who worked on these ports so that we can be assured that we can at least push out the PSP version in a more or less stable and decent state.

Regarding RetroArch 3DS: it’s still very much a work-in-progress and I don’t think either me or aliaspider would feel comfortable to ship anything right now in terms of official release at this stage, and we need a lot of work done on the cores before we can render some of them playable on the slow 3DS (it’s even slower than the PSP it seems).

If all goes well, maybe we can expect a Vita port sometime? 

Download

You can download Retroarch here