Update Binary for lr-pcsx-rearmed.

MajorDangerNine

lr-pcsx-rearmed had a major improvement done with the following commit and I wanted to make sure you were aware of it so you could update the binary sometime soon.

https://github.com/libretro/pcsx_rearmed/commit/40c380a8e8080ecb38159ee5aad1ce149e9889fc

What this does is eliminate all Virtual CPU Slowdown. There is still slowdown from other problems in the emulator, but overall this improves PSX emulation greatly across the entire library.

Forgive me if you've already done this (backlight went out on my TV so I haven't been able to use my RPi3B lately) or have valid reasons for not updating the binary yet.

pjft

@eckaji Hi, and thanks for sharing!

I was excited to try this specific change out, but as I ran two side-by-side instances of the emulator - one with the old binary and one with the new version, I can confirm that the latest one exhibits some stuttering and audio cutoff issues in at least the game I tested (LiberoGrande, from Namco) compared to the previous binary from 4.4. This is a game I play often, so I know there's some slowdown in the current emulation and was hoping it would address it.

I can't say that it's related to that specific commit, as I didn't bisect it, though anything that just out of the blue changes the CPU value to something different and nothing more might be the cause for that.

Also, it claims to have added an option to restore the previous behavior in the "Advanced Speedhacks" menu, but I can't seem to find it.

Restoring the previous binary to the Pi that had been updated does indeed correct that behavior again.

So I'm reverting for now, and may end up bisecting it just for the sake of it.

Thanks.

pjft

Update (cross-posted in the other thread):

Bisecting didn't yield any meaningful results at first as the commit that seemed to be faulty was one that was about improving region detection.

After a bit more investigation what turned out to be was that that commit broke people's configs if they had selected "Auto", as that option was turned into "auto". As such, all were defaulting to NTSC which broke PAL games' sync and timing.

Opening the core options and manually changing the option back to "auto" fixed it. Hope this is useful to others who may go through the upgrade and find that games are behaving weirdly.

mitu

That might turn out to be a problem, since the default core options have the Auto option (and not auto). I've seen your github issue, maybe they'll fix it in the libretro-core, or at least make the comparison case insensitive.

MajorDangerNine

@pjft Does this mean that, once the issue with "Auto" being changed to "auto" is fixed (I treasure the fact I can fix that quickly with Notepad++ and my loose backup of the game overrides), the binary will be updated?

I would really like to be able to update my RetroPie install without needing to do a source update of lr-pcsx-rearmed anymore. That, and to stop having to tell people to update from source as those source updates certainly aren't good for the life of the SD card.

pjft

@eckaji I did not in any way suggest or imply that - I have no say on the binary being updated or not.

I was just cautioning at the time that I would not be supportive of updating the binary at this stage because of that issue. Rather have an outdated but working binary, than an up-to-date but problematic binary, just that.

pjft

@mitu Interesting.

In my defaults file, it seems to have

pcsx_rearmed_region = "auto"

I suspect it was never really used and was saved the first time someone went and played with their settings.

EDIT: Either that or my defaults were already overwritten by today's change :)

MajorDangerNine

@pjft Sorry. I mistook your ability to diagnose the issue so quickly to be an indicator of familiarity with the conditions for a binary to be updated and that you might even know the proper procedures to get the binary updated.

pjft

@eckaji No worries, not at all. We're all here to help :) Thanks for the heads up on this change, though - it looks promising and if it works as intended it'll be great to have PSX games running even a bit more smoothly than before. Even though, as mentioned in the other thread, unfortunately the PSX does have quite a bit of native slowdown, so it will never get as good as we imagined it could be! :)

BuZz

I rebuilt the binaries earlier, but need to trigger the upload. Will do when I'm next on my machine.

mitu

@pjft Is this the retroarch-core-options.cfg that @mediamogul mentioned earlier ? This is where I looked over the defaults, but I can't remember if I started a PS1 game ever on the new 4.4 image, so it could be that a correct value is added on 1st play.

BuZz

The binaries should be up to date now.

rsn8887

Nice, but so where is this advanced speed hacks menu then?

Looking at the menu source at https://github.com/libretro/pcsx_rearmed/blob/40c380a8e8080ecb38159ee5aad1ce149e9889fc/frontend/menu.c , there seem to be a ton of options missing, such as plugin selection, memory card options, advanced speed hacks etc.

It looks like these options were part of a native menu system of the standalone emulator which is disabled/unsupported in Retroarch. I made an issue here: https://github.com/libretro/pcsx_rearmed/issues/176
You can see on this blog how the menu options in the original emulator looked. They appeared on a press of ESC.
https://retroresolution.com/2016/01/01/playstation-emulation-on-the-pi-enhancing-the-experience-with-the-options-menu-part-one-basic-features-and-save-states/

Since the native menu system is based on a menu rendering library not available in Retroarch (libpicofe), the solution is to map all the missing options into the Retroarch Quickmenu. Currently, only some of the options are mapped to the Quickmenu.