[NEWS] RetroArch (24-08-2012)

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RETROARCH XBOX 1 - 0.9.7
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RetroConsole Level: 1
Author: Themaister, Squarepusher/Twin Aphex, Freakdave
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HOW TO INSTALL THIS
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Copy the entire folder ('RetroArch-XB1') to your harddrive.

ROMs go into the 'roms' directory, or some subdirectory in the 'RetroArch-XB1'
directory.

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HOW TO USE THIS
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On first startup, RetroArch will select one of the dozen or so
emulator/game cores. The name of the core currently loaded will be
shown at the bottom side of the screen.

You can now select a ROM that this core supports and load it in the Filebrowser.

There are two ways of selecting a different core:

1) 'Change Libretro core' in the Main Menu

Go to the Settings menu by pressing [Select], go forwards two pages by pressing
he [R Trigger] until you come across 'Default libretro core'. Press A to go to
a filebrowser where you can select a different core. Press [A button] to switch
to the emulator/game core.

2) From the Ingame Menu

While playing a game, press the [Right Thumb] button. Select 'Change libretro core'
with the [A button] and select a different core.

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INGAME CONTROLS
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During ingame operation you can do some extra actions:

Right Thumb Stick - Down - Fast-forwards the game
Right Thumb Stick - Up - Rewinds the game in real-time
('Rewind' has to be enabled in the 'Settings'
screen - warning - comes at a slight
performance decrease but will be worth it
if you love this feature)
RStick Left + RT - Decrease save state slot
Rtick Right + RT - Increase save state slot
RStick Up + RT - Load selected save state slot
RStick Down + RT - Save selected save state slot
Right Thumb + Left Thumb - Go back to 'Menu'/'Quick Menu'

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FILE BROWSER EXTRA CONTROLS
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Left Trigger - Go to previous drive mapping
Right Trigger - Go to next drive mapping

White - Scroll list up
Black - Scroll list down

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WHAT IS RETROARCH?
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RetroArch is a modular multi-system emulator system that is designed to
be fast, lightweight and portable. It has features few other emulator
frontends have, such as real-time rewinding and game-aware shading.

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WHAT IS LIBRETRO?
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Libretro is the API that RetroArch uses. It makes it easy to port games
and emulators to a single core backend, such as RetroArch.

For the user, this means - more ports to play with, more crossplatform
portability, less worrying about developers having to reinvent the wheel
writing boilerplate UI/port code - so that they can get busy with writing
the emulator/porting the emulator/game.

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WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL?
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Right now it's unique in that it runs the same emulator cores on
multiple systems (such as Xbox 360, Xbox 1, PS3, PC, Wii, etc).

For each emulator 'core', RetroArch makes use of a library API that we
like to call 'libretro'.

Think of libretro as an interface for emulator and game ports. You can
make a libretro port once and expect the same code to run on all the
platforms that RetroArch supports. It's designed with simplicity and
ease of use in mind so that the porter can worry about the port at hand
instead of having to wrestle with an obfuscatory API.

The purpose of libretro is to help ease the work of the emulator/game
porter by giving him an API that allows him to target multiple platforms
at once without having to redo any code. He doesn't have to worry about
writing input/video/audio drivers - all of that is supplied to him by
RetroArch. All he has to do is to have the emulator port hook into the
libretro API and that's it - we take care of the rest.

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XBOX 1 PORT
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The Xbox 1 port of RetroArch has the following features:

- Real-time rewinding (though most emus will not likely run fast
enough on Xbox 1 to handle this at fullspeed)
- Switching between emulator cores seamlessly, and ability to install
new libretro cores

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EMULATOR/GAME CORES BUNDLED WITH XBOX 1 PORT
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The following emulators/games have been ported to RetroArch and are included in
the Xbox 1 release of RetroArch.

For more information about them, see the included
'retroarch-libretro-README.txt' file.

- Final Burn Alpha Cores (CPS1 - CPS2 - NeoGeo) [version 0.2.97.26] (***)
- FCEUmm (Nintendo Entertainment System) [recent SVN version]
- Gambatte (Game Boy | Super Game Boy | Game Boy Color) [version 0.5.0 WIP]
- Genesis Plus GX (Sega SG-1000 | Master System | Game Gear | Genesis/Mega Drive |
Sega CD) [version 1.7.0]
- SNES9x Next (Super Nintendo/Super Famicom) (**)
- VBA Next (Game Boy Advance) (*)
- Prboom (for playing Doom 1/Doom 2/Ultimate Doom/Final Doom)
- Mednafen PCE Fast (PC Engine/PC Engine CD/Turbografx 16)
- Mednafen Wonderswan (WonderSwan/WonderSwan Color/WonderSwan Crystal)

All of the emulators listed above are the latest versions currently
available. Most of them have been specifically optimized so that
they will run better on Xbox 1 (some games would not reach fullspeed
without these optimizations).

* - VBA Next doesn't run at fullspeed on Wii (VBA Next is a RetroConsole
Level 2 emulator port). It will be replaced by a port of gpSP in the near
future.
** - SuperFX games will not run at fullspeed - a special version of SNES9x
will be developed for Retro Console Level 1 systems.
*** The biggest Neo-Geo ROMs that can be loaded are around 23+MB in
size, such as Real Bout Fatal Fury 1 and King of Fighters '96.

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WHAT EXTENSIONS ARE SUPPORTED BY EACH CORE
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- Prboom WAD|wad
- SNES9x Next smc|fig|sfc|gd3|gd7|dx2|bsx|swc|zip|SMC|FIG|SFC|BSX|GD3|
GD7|DX2|SWC
- Genesis Plus GX md|smd|bin|gen|zip|MD|SMD|bin|GEN|ZIP|sms|SMS|gg|GG|sg|SG|
cue|CUE
- VBA Next GBA|gba
- FCEUmm nes|NES|unif|UNIF
- Gambatte gb|gbc|dmg|zip|GB|GBC|DMG|ZIP
- Final Burn Alpha zip|ZIP
- Mednafen PCE pce|PCE|cue|CUE
- Mednafen Wonderswan ws|WS|wsc|WSC

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ZIP SUPPORT
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FOR EACH CORE (except for Final Burn Alpha)
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There are three modes -

EXTRACT ZIP TO CURRENT DIR: When you press 'X' on a ZIP file in the File Browser,
its contents will be extracted to the current directory. From there, you can
load the RMO and play.

EXTRACT ZIP TO CURRENT DIR AND LOAD FIRST FILE: When you press 'X' on a ZIP file
in the File Browser, its contents will be extracted to the current directory.
The first ROM that was extracted from the ZIP file that is a ROM will be loaded
automatically.

EXTRACT ZIP TO CACHE DIR: When you press 'X' on a ZIP file in the File Browser,
its contents will be extracted to the /dev_hdd1/ partition. From there,
you can load the ROM and play.

WARNING: Savestates and SRAM files that have been created by loading ROMs
from the cache dir this way will be removed after RetroArch has been closed.

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FOR FINAL BURN ALPHA
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Selecting a ZIP file from the Filebrowser will load that game directly.

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Troubleshooting
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If you find that RetroArch no longer works for whatever reason, there is
a way to get it back to work -

- Remove retroarch.cfg from the 'Retroarch-XB1' folder, then start up again.
The Libretro management service in RetroArch should automatically pick a
random libretro core and write this to the config file.

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What can you expect in the future?
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- An official Android port of RetroArch (no, no App Store 'fee' - 'free'
as in beer AND as in libre - will be the focal point of RetroArch 0.9.8)
- Port of NxEngine to libretro - runs Cave Story (PC version is already done,
runs on big-endian consoles but has too many bugs to be playable)
- Port of MAME 0.72 to libretro
- Port of VICE to libretro
- Port of ScummVM to libretro
- More emulators, more games that will run on RetroArch
- Lots of other crazy ideas that might or might not pan out

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Credits
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- Mudlord for his Waterpaint/Noise shaders.
- Hyllian for the xBR shader.
- Opium2k for the nice manual shaders (bundled with PS3 release).
- Deank for assistance with RetroArch Salamander on CFW PS3s and
Multiman interoperability.
- FBA devs for adopting the libretro port.
- Ekeeke for help with the Genesis Plus GX port.
- ToadKing for having done a lot of work on RetroArch Wii.
- Freakdave for helping out with the Xbox 1 port.

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Websites
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Twitter: http://twitter.com/libretro
Source: http://github.com/libretro
Homepage: http://www.libretro.org
IRC: #retroarch (freenode)

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