LibRetro: RetroArch's PS2 Experience on Xbox Series X

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LibRetro

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Published on May 2, 2022 7:51:58 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Aqgp5_x3X0

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RetroArch (2022)

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As a general baseline, Libretro strives to make sure that the cores we self-maintain are fairly portable and work out of box.

Other under the hood changes: all the internal GS shaders are now embedded as strings into the GS renderer instead of being loaded in as resource files. We have also spent a lot of time reducing WxWidgets UI dependencies, although we are not quite there yet all the way. The core should also be way smaller as a result. It used to be as big as 10MB but now clocks in as low as 7MB or less.

The core now also uses an internal game database (see https://github.com/libretro/pcsx2/blob/main/resources/GameIndex.yaml). This is converted at compilation time into a header file and baked into the core. This way, we once again do not require the user to have this game database file inside his/her system folder. Instead, the core comes with nearly everything that the user would need to get started.

Built-in widescreen patches

The core now has an embedded widescreen patch database. We are going to try and keep this database updated as time goes along. Many thanks to the members of the PCSX2 Forums for posting all these wonderful patches.

Built-in no-interlacing patches

Many PS2 games render in interlaced resolutions. While this might have looked fine on a CRT TV, this can lead to bad image quality when running these games on a modern LCD or OLED display.

Many no-interlacing patches have been written for PS2 games running in PCSX2. These usually come in the form of .pnach patches. However, what we’re attempting to do here is apply these automagically. We want to give the user a seamless experience where they can just insert the game and we try to apply the right no-interlacing patch behind the scenes to make it look as users would expect without having to fiddle with deinterlacing settings.

With a no-interlacing patch, Tekken Tag Tournament on PS2 looks visually indistinguishable from the PS3 version that was released years laterWith a no-interlacing patch, Tekken Tag Tournament on PS2 looks visually indistinguishable from the PS3 version that was released years later
So, what we have done is implement a ‘No-interlacing patch’ option to the ‘Deinterlacing’ setting. You don’t need to manually source together a bunch of .pnach patches – simply make sure you set ‘Deinterlacing’ to ‘No-interlacing patch’, and start up the game. If the internal database has an entry for the game, a popup message will show up saying that a no-interlacing patch has been applied. NOTE: The no-interlacing patch is only applied once at startup. If you change it mid-game, you will have to restart PCSX2 in order for these changes to take effect.

In some cases, a game might have a built-in option to remove interlacing. This is what was commonly known as the Progressive Scan option, and it was enabled in many games in the US by press and holding Square and Triangle at startup. For games like Soulcalibur 2/3 and Tekken 4/5, it will then ask you to boot to this progressive mode.

We hope that we can find patches to automate this procedure as well, so that the user doesn’t have to do this manually. In some cases like Tekken 4, people are returning empty handed, for the Gran Turismo games it’s been reported that with the proper patch, it can be changed into always loading in progressive mode.

NOTE: If it can’t find a non-interlacing patch inside the database for the game, it will have the same effect as if the setting were 0 – no deinterlacing will be applied.

IMPORTANT PERFORMANCE HINT: No-interlacing patches (when applied) can be significantly lighter on your GPU’s resources vs. deinterlacing. We can skip several rendering pipelines when we render a non-interlaced image vs. an interlaced one, because the odd and even lines need blending, which is done with separate shader passes.

Many thanks to the members of the PCSX2 Forums for posting all these wonderful patches. If you have new no-interlacing patches you’d love to add to the PCSX2 libretro core, please do not hesitate to contact us. We’d love your contributions.

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