New Sega Saturn libretro core : Kronos

barbudreadmon

Before the stupid question is asked : NO RPI3 VERSION, SATURN EMULATION WILL NEVER HAPPEN ON RPI3 SO STOP BEING DUMB AND PISSING ME OFF BY ASKING !!!!

So this Sega Saturn libretro core is the first one to support OpenGL, it allows a few interesting things like upscaling and tesselation. The exact requirement should be either OpenGL 3.3+ (and 4.2+ if you want gpu tesselation) or OpenGLES 3.1
This is also the first Sega Saturn core to run the arcade system based on Sega Saturn (called ST-V), it supports direct loading of the mame stv roms.
The cpu frequency requirement should be lower than beetle saturn.
The core needs bioses (see https://github.com/libretro-mirrors/Kronos/tree/extui-align/libretro for more informations), for saturn emulation it should fallback to beetle saturn bioses if they are present.

The core is based on Kronos, which is itself based on YabaSanshiro. The main difference (besides a few added feature like the ST-V support) is the SH2 interpreter, afaik YabaSanshiro uses dynarecs only available for arm32 and x86_32, while Kronos uses a cached interpreter that should work on any architecture (it should be slightly slower than the dynarecs, but not that much).

I'm not sure support for boards like the odroid xu4 is likely, because i know a few people who tested standalone YabaSanshiro on this board and were disappointed, and libretro-kronos is most likely slower than YabaSanshiro on this kind of board. However i intend to buy one of those to do some tests.

thelostsoul

@barbudreadmon This can only be improved, maybe in the future we get Saturn emulation for Raspberry Pi. I don't expect it soon, but it is good to see some progress and hope. At least on the pc it will be playable without big problems. I always had big trouble with Saturn emulation.

barbudreadmon

@thelostsoul no, that won't happen for rpi3, it lacks the cpu power to emulate the 6+ cpus of the saturn and it lacks the gpu functionalities to offload calculs

thelostsoul

@barbudreadmon I know, i just meant for any RP version in the future. It does need so much power not only because of the architecture of Saturn itself, also the programming of an emulator for it is very complicated and isn't the most popular console. But maybe with advancements in emulation and with more horse power in future Raspberry Pi revisions it could be possible.

A Former User

The odroid xu4 has a awesome Sega Saturn emulator, at early stages, but it's looking great for a single board computer.

Thats one guy doing some testing, and it's looking pretty advanced for what it's emulating.
Would love a more modern Pi with similar specs, and CRT support - something the Xu4 doesn't do.

barbudreadmon

@John_RM_70 said in New Sega Saturn libretro core : Kronos:

The odroid xu4 has a awesome Sega Saturn emulator, at early stages, but it's looking great for a single board computer.

@barbudreadmon said in New Sega Saturn libretro core : Kronos:

I'm not sure support for boards like the odroid xu4 is likely, because i know a few people who tested standalone YabaSanshiro on this board and were disappointed, and libretro-kronos is most likely slower than YabaSanshiro on this kind of board. However i intend to buy one of those to do some tests.

Yeah, i know those videos, and i know people who tried the real thing too.