Standalone reicast - recent fix implemented in Retropie?

BJRetro

Hi - so I am very bad at reading github and not a coder. But in trying to help someone else with standalone reicast on retropie (I have an old version and haven’t updated) I came across this:

https://github.com/reicast/reicast-emulator/releases/tag/r19.07.4

This is the standalone reicast GitHub and the notes of the release indicates one of the changes with that recent version (roughly End of July 2019) is: Makefile/linux: Fix RPI3 build [13a0bf2, Stefanos Kornilios Mitsis Poiitidis]

Has this most recent change been implemented in retropie’s reciast (standalone not lr- package? If so, how do people get it and does it fix all the recent problems people have had with controller issues? If it has not been implemented into Retropie would someone be able to do so? Seems I have seen a lot of posts with issues about reicast and Lr-flycast since there was some sort of dust up about licensing with the reicast creators, but now they seem to be working on the core again.

Thanks for any assistance!

dankcushions

@BJRetro you can get the latest reicast by updating it from source.

BJRetro

So I can confirm as follows:

installing from source did install; I updated the retropie setup script and then updated from source.
there is no longer any sort of weird reicast GUI menu when starting up a game that I think some had reported at some point, so that’s a plus
I don’t know how to check if this really is the most recent version from reicast’s github so just assuming that it is from dankcushion’s post. If someone knows how to confirm the source install is really pointing to the most recent version of reicast I will check.
4)the controller configuration tool that is found in “manage packages”/tools & configuration in the retropie setup script menu does still appear to be broken as others have reported. I followed all steps as I originally did to configure my controller in the tool and the tool completed successfully but in game the controls were wonky, example: I mapped the start key to the start button of my controller but in game pressing the right analog stick in was the start button. I did confirm I was configuring the right input as well.
in any event, assuming that this really is the most recent version of reicast it’s not worth trying to get the controller working anyhow, however that might be done (by deleting previous config files or whatever) because now reicast standalone performance on the pi appears to be at best roughly equivalent to lr-reicast (although I did not try to update my Lr-reicast as I don’t want to completely lose Dreamcast functionality on my existing system if something goes wrong with that too). Whatever used to make the standalone version seem to run a few frames faster and look slightly “cleaner” I or better resolution than the Libretro version appears to have disappeared. This with testing on crazy taxi, marvel v capcom 2 and Daytona 500. Each of these used to look better and run faster on standalone reicast and now they do not. To be clear this is not about the improvements that have been made to the libretro version - those are great and finally made it playable on pi. It is that I actually see a downgrade of the standalone performance, which confirms a few other posts I had read previously.

Conclusion: I was hoping the most recent coding on the developers end of reicast would not show either the issues with the controller configuration or the performance regression others have reported but as of today (assuming again the source update in retropie is really pointing to the right code) that is not the case. Sorry to all for the bad news.

mitu

@BJRetro Can't say much about the controller issue part, however

Check that the dynarec option is on in the emu.cfg file from /opt/retropie/configs/dreamcast. There was an issue when someone installed a fresh 4.5 image and it was not - by default - enabled.
Installing from source will get you the latest version from the master branch of the Reicast repository, however the most recent development is taking place in an -'unstable' branch - alpha, which has a lot of restructuring and it's not always suitable for usage.

BJRetro

@mitu hi thanks I checked the dynarec is marked as “yes” for enabled.