5.2 Update makes PSP and Saturn work on XU4 ____

Redfield

Wow, I'm very impressed with the update (v5.2) for the Odroid XU4, great job!
I didn't expect the Saturn core to run but it does 🙂 At low performance though,
but it managed to run Shining Force 3 - Scenario 1.
PSP games aren't crashing anymore, too.
Keep up the good work, really looking forward to future updates!

nadenislamarre

thanks for the feedback.
i think i will disable the saturn for the xu4. have you managed to play at least one game correctly on this platform ?

Redfield

Hi,

please don't remove Saturn support from the XU4, it's the only SOC I've been able to start Saturn games on.
Only downside is performance, meaning games are emulated very slowly but I hope this improves with further Yabause updates. If you want I can compile a compatibility list of the games I have for you?
If yes, which information would be important for you? Game name, Playability, Sound Glitches, Graphic Glitches, Overall speed (FPS), ...?

I think Yabause is the only open source Saturn emulator, right?
SSF runs perfectly on x86/amd64 architectures, it would be so cool if it was portable to SOCs... (Probably won't happen, I know, as it's closed source anyway.)

I thought (and am still hoping) this video would give Saturn emulation a boost:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOyfZex7B3E

Still looking forward to the day we can properly emulate Saturn games on a SOC 😃

Redfield

Tried the following Games:

Cyber Speedway
Daytona USA
Deep Fear
Digital Pinball
Dragon Force
F-1 Challenge
HangOn GP 96
House of Dead
Magic Knight Rayearth
Mystaria
Panzer Dragoon
Shining Force 3 - Sceario 1 to 3 and Premium Disc
Shining the Holy Ark
Shining Wisdom
Shinobi X
Virtua Fighter 2
Virtual Hydlide

and I was able to start all of them.
However, none of them were really playable because they were emulated horribly slow and sound seemed
to be missing completely in most cases... Nevertheless I enjoyed seeing those games emulated and running on the big screen 🙂

I understand now why you are thinking about removing the Saturn core, it cleary doesn't fit the 'plug & play' approach of Recalbox / Batocera...
But I honestly hope that Saturn games will be playable on Odroids/Raspberries in the future!

alabtrosMyster

They could work - or at least be pretty close to full speed in some games - if there was a way to use the same version of the Yabause core as uoYabause on the Android side, I tried it on the xu4 and it did let me play Darius Gaiden at mostly 60fps, definitely playable!

Redfield

So you installed Android and uoYabause on XU4?

Not sure if the uoYabause code can be implemented in Batocera that easily as it probably would have to be forked, ported and integrated into libretro/retroarch first but there's also another Saturn core that's already available in the libretro repos called lr-beetle-saturn and which is supposed to perform much better than Yabause. I'm hoping @nadenislamarre will soon find the time to integrate it in Batocera.

alabtrosMyster

Redfield Yes I saw the other conversation, I have to find time to figure out how that other person did it.

nadenislamarre

i kept yabause on xu4 because i was asked to let it in case one day it becomes optimized. not sure about it, but it cost nothing to keep it, and slow or back to es, what's the worst.

nadenislamarre

lr-beetle-saturn is crashing at startup, i don't know why. it looks very young.
i will not include it while it's not working, of course.

Redfield

nadenislamarre Does it crash on XU4 only or also on other platforms? My first guess why it crashes would be missing/incorrectly named/wrong/corrupt bios files or a config pointing to a wrong path..
Going to give it a try via RetroArch on x86 soon to see if it works there.

nadenislamarre

i've tried on x86_64 only for the moment.
first try, it tells me that the bios has the wrong checksum.
it crashes with the good bios.
i've run it with an empty retroarch config dir so that it takes the default values.
@Redfield i've however commited the files. If you build a batocera image, it's easy to add them inside.