A follow-up to the last progress blog post where some bug-fixes and other minor progress will be noted. Think of this as a sneak peek of the upcoming changes. These fixes probably won’t be mentioned in the main blog-post.
PNGs now being used instead of JPGs for screenshots
Did you know you could go into SSH and take a screenshot at literally any time with batocera-screenshot? Well now you do, and in the past this would save a dirty, lossy, low quality JPG to the /userdata/screenshots/ folder:
Now it’ll use nice, clean PNGs instead. Huzzah!
You can restore the old behaviour back by editing the /usr/bin/batocera-screenshot file to use the .jpg extension instead of the .png extension and then running batocera-save-overlay, but who would want to do that?
C64 default mapping fixed
The infamous Giana Sisters used “Up” as Jump, so logically the default controls for C64 had left/right assigned to the stick and up assigned to 
. However, the Giana Sisters’ control scheme is the exception, not the rule! Most games opted to use the spacebar or fire button for in-game actions, so the default binding is now to have fire on and space on 
.
Image renames
The following images have been internally reorganised:
Amiga PUAE mapping fixes
The PUAE core in Libretro (what we use to emulate Amiga500/1200/CD32 by default) controls its mapping in a “unique” way, compared to most other cores. Instead of using the Controls submenu in the Quick Menu, it instead has all the virtual Retropad buttons mapping settings as core options. This is bad for Batocera as it means controller mapping is not compatible with the traditional controller generator script, so the controls had to be statically assigned. This would obviously fail to work if/when the user decided to use a CD32 pad instead of the regular pad, as they would have to reassign the mapping themselves.
However! Batocera now has automatic core option changes to the core mapping options when the user has either the CD32 pad selected or are playing an Amiga CD32 game. Now, you’ll no longer have to remove the invalid mapping options yourself and save the override (although, given the nature of computer/videogame console hybrids, there will always be exceptions).
For those who prefer to manually set up their controls, core option overrides can still be saved.
Lightgun double-button press
This specifically fixes the bug on libretro: MAME where the lightgun button was being activated along with the main button, causing two button presses to be sent to the game at once. The configuration has now been properly separated such that they won’t intefere with each other anymore.
Blacklist BT devices
Since v32 had dramatically increased the types of devices Batocera can connect to, a lot of people have been finding that it’s automatically connecting to unintended devices. So, a blacklist feature has been added to prevent Batocera from attempting to connect to devices with particular MAC addresses.
To add a device to the blacklist, open SSH and run batocera-bluetooth blacklist <MAC address> <device name>
Extra translation strings
Remember all those settings in PER SYSTEM ADVANCED SETTINGS and how they were untranslatable? Well now they are! All of those strings have been added to the list of translatable strings such that translators can now translate them into all available languages! But, this list is very large, so it may take a while for all those translations to be completed (people work on Batocera as a hobby in their spare time, thank you for your understanding).
Background music shuffle
Batocera-EmulationStation now employs psuedo-randomness for its shuffle arithmetic! To be a bit less wordy, this means that it will now be impossible for the same song to play ten times in a row. True randomness is usually undesirable for music players featuring shuffle modes.
Other things
Here’s a bunch of stuff that doesn’t need a whole paragraph to explain:
- RetroArch FSUAE options are now functional in Amiga 500, Amiga 1200, AtariST and Sharp X68000 systems.
- 3DS games that required use of the
fdk-aac codec now no longer encounter the related audio bugs.
- PSP games that required use of the
ffmpeg codec now no longer crash when attempting to play video.
- The Bezel Project now supports Channelf, Pico8, Supervision and 3DS systems (libretro, of course)
- Audio crackling on the RPi3 has been worked around by increasing the default audio buffer, true fix currently TBA.
- Duplicate pads using the same name now no longer act as surrogate controllers for only player 1.
- Kodi has been re-enabled on RPi2.
- libretro/MelonDS now has RetroAchievements fixed.
- PSP achievements can now be seen in EmulationStation.
- SGB and Satellaview retroachievements added.
- There is now a
roms/ports/ subfolders on fresh installations.
- The
amlogic/s905gen3/tvbox image is now titled amlogic/s905gen3/tvbox-gen3.
- ECWolf now actually works.
- Steam can now be closed with Hotkey + South.
- Fixed ResizeFS sometimes silently failing on certain devices.
- Rick Dangerous core enabled by default.
- It is now possible to exit DevilutionX with Hotkey + South.
-fastboot is no longer a default parameter for Singe games.- SNES-MSU1 is now in the SNES group proper.
- Adwaita light theme now properly compiled and cleaned.
- RetroArch Threaded Video option now changeable within Libretro core advanced system configuration. By default, unless specified for the specific platform, it is off.
- RetroArch incremental savestate option added.
- PCSX2 no longer has a white border for games played in 4:3 aspect ratio.
- Enabled Libretro/Picodrive for GameGear on the RPi1.
- Vulkan support added to the s922x build.
- Daphne/Singe advanced system options added.
- Fixed model2 emulator crashing in the beta.
- Fixed pcsx2-config failing to open.
- Base splash screens are now specific to their platform.
- Docker is now configurable to be able to use any docker-compatible container for building instead
- Cheats have been enabled for MAME
- libretro cores now use “core provided” as the default aspect ratio when no aspect ratio is set by the user
- Text cursor no longer disappears when moving left/right through characters.
- Added
smartmontools for monitor disk drive health.
