While most emulators didn't receive many major updates last month, we still had a solid amount happen with some of the biggest ones! Switch emulators have been hard at work getting games running well, while PPSSPP had a major update that brought in RetroAchievements support and a JIT compiler to help with performance! Here are the major updates we found for last month:
Don't have any emulators, but curious about how to get them? Check out our EmuDeck Guide, where we go over the best way to install and auto-configure all these emulators and more. We also do not endorse piracy in any shape or form. We do support emulation and preservation, but not for illegally obtained games.
Ryujinx (Switch)
On our second Switch emulator, we had some individual improvements for specific games. For Super Mario Sunshine, which is part of the 3D-All Stars Collection, the team device mapped the converted vertex buffers and allowed conversion shaders to scale the work-group size. This helped significantly with some buffer formats that would cause major slowdowns.
Mortal Kombat 1's performance was also fixed up a bit once the team figured out that the buffer cache was checking for something impossible, which wasted time and energy. Once this was corrected, MK1 saw a 46% performance increase, which meant it was able to hit that framerate cap.
Notice the framerate in the bottom left corner.
An issue with the texture lookup array being resized on every lookup return was corrected, which helped in some UE4 titles and improved frame time stability in Mortal Kombat 11. It also helped R-TYPE FINAL 2 with a 750% increase, making it go from the below 10 FPS all the way to its 60 FPS cap.
Crysis Remastered can now run well thanks to stubbing the remaining unsupported BSD socket options, and small audio inaccuracies were fixed up to make Ys X: Nordics sound like it should. Stubbing some of the unusable services that can't be utilized without an internet connection also made Super Bomberman R 2 playable.
Finally, there has also been some major headway in getting local wireless functionalities working. Everything is currently getting organized and ready for a major release for better stability and usability. The end result should bring a better experience that can be utilized locally and over the internet, giving a better online multiplayer experience.
Yuzu (Switch)
Update 10/20/23 - Yuzu's progress report is now live. You can check it out for some extra details in the link above.
Yuzu had a solid amount of updates to both its mainline and early access programs, but there has been no progress report written out for the last month yet. So, I did a little digging on their discord and looked through the updates that were brought last month, and there were definitely some great ones.
There were a lot of individual fixes for specific games like Bayonetta 3, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Xenoblade Chronicles 2, Pikmin 4, and many more, but there seems to be a big improvement for more general use: the new Query/GPU Counter Cache.
The new Query/GPU Counter Cache, which was added in Mainline 1569, is fantastic and will improve visuals in a lot of games that make use of the Query cache more often than usual, like Super Mario Odyssey. It also helps with smaller details like the shadows in Metroid Prime Remastered and Xenoblade Chronicles 3. We will also see a lot of performance increases in lower-end or limited hardware, like the Steam Deck, for Koei Tecmo titles, Luigi's Mansion 3, Pokemon Scarlet and Violet, and more.
The old method Yuzu had was a bit flawed and had a hard time handling thousands of queries that could appear in a single frame. It also couldn't hold queries except for pixel counts and failed to write to memory in the correct order, so with this new method, these issues should be fixed!
Mii functionality has been worked on as well, and now, you can use the LLE Mii applet to create them and use them correctly in games with functionality. There were also newly implemented MSAA image copies for Vulkan, which helps with rendering for Mortal Kombat 1, Fate Extella, and Pinball FX3. There are also some slightly reduced CPU bottlenecks, and the team is emulating D24 using Depth Bias Control. This is specific for AMD GPUs and will fix z-lighting in games like Pokemon Sword.
Vita3K (PS Vita)
Last month, two new features were implemented into the emulator: Gyroscope and Touchpad support. This is great for games like Gravity Rush and will need compatible controllers. There isn't much more information given about these features, but they are awesome to have available to us now.
PPSSPP (PSP)
At the beginning of last month, version 1.16 was released and brings some important new fixes for different games and Android, but the biggest addition is official RetroAchievements support. This will allow you to get achievements for games and have them stored in your account. For those who love the Xbox achievements or PlayStation trophy system you will love this. It also adds achievements for exceptionally old games that never had them before! It isn't available for all games yet, and you can see which games are supported on their website.
As for the fixes, we have an Android 13 fix so people can install the emulator correctly, and there have been some bug fixes around texture replacement (which fixes Tactics Ogre's fonts). There have also been multiple input event handling fixes and a ton of performance improvements and glitch fixes, like the shadows in Motorstorm.
On top of these performance fixes, there have also been some implementations of new IR-based JIT compiler backends. Utilizing an Intermediate Representation (IR) method will speed up compilation and significantly help produce fast native code. This will help with the performance overall in the long term.
There were also some minor updates or experimental ones, without changelogs for:
- Cemu
- Retroarch
- Xemu
- Duckstation
- Xenia
Overall, there have been some solid updates so far, and we can't wait to see what will come this month! We will be watching out for any updates that come and check back again at the end of the month to see what has been worked on.
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