RetroArch 1.13.0 has just been released. Read the full article on our website here.

Overlay / onscreen gamepad controls improvements

Android/iOS users in particular are going to benefit a lot in this release and upcoming versions from various improvements being made to neil4 to overhaul and improve touch controls. Several gamepad overlays have already been updated to take advantage of these new features. These are as follows:

• gamepads/neoretropad
• gamepads/neoretropad-clear

There are also new lite overlays that take advantage of all the new features described below. In particular, the lite overlays rely heavily on exclusive hitboxes. Lets go into what has been added so far to this release:

Add eightway area types

• New descriptors: dpad_area and abxy_area
• Each has a diagonal sensitivity setting, 100% being 8-way symmetry
• Buttons can be redefined in the cfg file

E.g. This would create a d-pad area, then redefine it to use analog directions: overlay0_desc0 = dpad_area,0.85,0.57,rect,0.166228,0.295516 overlay0_desc0_up = r_y_minus overlay0_desc0_down = r_y_plus overlay0_desc0_left = r_x_minus overlay0_desc0_right = r_x_plus Note: If Hide Overlay in Menu is enabled and the menu is up, the overlay preset will be read (loaded & unloaded without being shown) to know which overlay types are in the preset, i.e. whether to show eightway settings or not.

Add reach and exclusive for hitboxes

These allow stretching (or shrinking) hitboxes and handling their overlap. Does not affect image, analog range, or analog/eightway center.

Hitbox Reach

reach_up, reach_down, reach_left, reach_right:

• Stretches hitbox in one direction:

reach_x, reach_y

• Stretches hitbox symmetrically

E.g. In the overlay cfg, this creates a D-Pad area and extends its hitbox left & right 50%, up 15%, and down 30%: overlay0_desc0 = dpad_area,0.15,0.57,rect,0.166228,0.295516 overlay0_desc0_reach_x = 1.5 overlay0_desc0_reach_up = 1.15 overlay0_desc0_reach_down = 1.3

Exclusive Hitboxes

exclusive: If true, blocks input from overlapped hitboxes range_mod_exclusive: Similar, but only applies when this hitbox is extended by range_mod After range_mod takes effect, has priority over exclusive E.g. overlay0_desc0_exclusive = true overlay0_desc1_range_mod_exclusive = true Expected use cases:

• A range_mod_exclusive hitbox placed close enough to other hitboxes that its range_mod value would otherwise cause unwanted overlap.
• A smaller exclusive hitbox placed inside (or partially inside) a larger one; the smaller hitbox would carve out space for itself.
• A combination of the two: A smaller exclusive hitbox carves out space for itself, but the larger hitbox has range_mod_exclusive. Whichever is hit first effectively has priority.
• Ignore hitboxes with zero area

I.e. Set reach_x or reach_y to zero to ensure no hitbox math is done. This simplifies designating animation-only descriptors (e.g. for eightway areas) or obsolete descriptors.

Content scanning

PS1 and PS2 content scanning has been improved significantly in RetroArch. All PS2 discs should now be able to be scanned. Previously, only CD-based PS2 games could be scanned and not DVD-based ones. PS1 content scanning has also been improved. More content should be able to be recognized now that the system is also able to scan PSX.EXE files on a disc. For instance, it was not possible to scan Street Fighter: Real Battle on Film before because of this. Also, all LSP- titles were previously ignored, which has also been fixed.

Menu QoL improvements

Various improvements made to the menu system in terms of usability and UX thanks to sonninos.

• Quick Menu entries were pretty random in regards of doing scrolling with left & right, so its been cleaned up a bit, and we made sure all submenus behave in unison.
• Ozone Show metadata helper in footer only with second thumbnail. Removed metadata toggle helper from footer when second thumbnail is not enabled which is the default because the button wont do anything without second thumbnail enabled.
• We made the background image selector usage more comfortable by starting from assets directory or current selection instead of drive letter root, and showing image previews while browsing.
• File selector globally removes file from selection path, uses path instead and sets file as selection
• File selector title corrected to have : separator
• Its possible to control the menu now with the right analog stick, or both at the same time if you want to do so.
• Cursor memory for most menu screens
• (Applicable to Ozone) Footer improvements show metadata helper in footer only with second thumbnail, add Cycle thumbnails helper when suitable, show Search helper only when search function is enabled, fix Thumbnails available helper for save states, tighten padding between icon and title, and widen between helpers

For a more exhaustive list of all changes made to the menu, consult the Changelog.

Vulkan fix for HDR mode

After RetroArch 1.11.1, an unexpected side effect caused many shaders (e.g. crt-easymode-halation or newpixie.crt) to render an oversaturated and dark image when using Vulkan and HDR on Windows 10/11. To fix this now with the Vulkan driver, we only skip the tonemapper if HDR10 is explicitly enabled by the last shader pass. Otherwise, we are simply just inheriting the bit-depth of the swapchain.

Changelog

• CHEEVOS: Upgrade to rcheevos 10.5
• COMPILATION: Fixed compiling with disable-menu
• CONFIG: Dont show override notification with appendconfig alone
• DATABASE/PLAYLISTS: Playlist + database changes Cleanup entry_slot, fallback label + logging
• FRONTEND: Fix default remaps folder for various cores: remap should be nested in config folder
• HOTKEYS: Fix shader toggle and add hotkey + sublabel
• HOTKEYS: Cleanups and corrections Keep hotkey pause and menu pause separate in order to not trigger unwanted pause when toggling menu regardless if menu will pause or not
• HOTKEYS: Cleanups and corrections Allow unpausing with Start (makes resuming more convenient after controller disconnect if menu does not pause)
• INPUT: Fixed the way devices were previously indexed. Input devices were only being indexed in order and would stop at the first time an input has no device connected to it. The problem is when a device gets disconnected, that input will have no devices connected to it, but the next input may still have a device connected. So, that makes changing the port of the currently connected devices impossible.
• INPUT/AUTOCONFIG: Add option for pause on controller disconnect
• INPUT/AUTOCONFIG: Driver independent disconnection notification. Should show disconnect notification now properly on Windows with XInput and/or DirectInput pads
• INPUT/HID: Added usb hid controllers for the famous ZeroDelay encoder and also for Kade: Kick Ass Dynamic Encoder to be able to use some custom arcade sticks.
• INPUT/OVERLAY: Add eightway area types.
• INPUT/OVERLAY: Fix overlay next_index for unnamed targets
• INPUT/OVERLAY: Ignore hitboxes with zero area. I.e. Set reach_x or reach_y to zero to ensure no hitbox math is done. This simplifies designating animation-only descriptors (e.g. for eightway areas) or obsolete descriptors.
• INPUT/OVERLAY: Add reach and exclusive for hitboxes. Allows stretching hitboxes and handling their overlap.
• INPUT/MENU: Addition to analog stick menu navigation
• INPUT/MENU: Enable menu navigation also with right analog stick
• INPUT/MENU: Add option for swapping menu scrolling buttons
• LOCALIZATION: Updates
• LOCALIZATION: Add Hungarian language option
• MENU: Thumbnail fullscreen toggle behavior correction
• MENU: Consistent left-right scrolling for Quick Menu items
• MENU: Remove useless sublabel from System Information
• MENU: Improve widget appearance with missing assets
• MENU/QT/WIMP: Remove SSL/TLS check at startup
• MENU/OZONE: Show metadata helper in footer only with second thumbnail
• MENU/OZONE: Footer improvements Add Cycle thumbnails helper when suitable
• MENU/OZONE: Footer improvements Show Search helper only when search function is enabled
• MENU/OZONE: Footer improvements Fix Thumbnails available helper for save states
• MENU/OZONE: Footer improvements Tighten padding between icon and title, and widen between helpers
• MENU/OZONE: Launching anything from a View no longer throws Quick Menu off the screen
• MENU/OZONE: Save state thumbnails in slot dropdown obeys fullscreen toggle properly when content launched via CLI
• MENU/OZONE: Save state thumbnail dropdown wont allow fullscreen toggle when it shouldnt
• MENU/OZONE: Selection position remembering in non-playlists wont flash the first entry
• MENU/OZONE: Remember selection per main tabs
• MENU/OZONE: Remove incomplete assets warning
• MENU/OZONE: Add option to adjust cursor memory when changing menu tabs
• MENU/OZONE: Further extend texture support for Core Option categories
• MENU/XMB: Remove incomplete assets warning
• MENU/XMB: Add truncate playlist name option
• MENU/XMB: Improve background image selector
• MENU/XMB: Add option to adjust cursor memory when changing menu tabs
• MENU/XMB: Further extend texture support for Core Option categories
• MENU/MATERIALUI: Remove incomplete assets warning
• SCANNER/PS1: Improved scanning of PS1 discs
• SCANNER/PS2: Added serial scanning of PS2 discs should now scan DVDs and other discs which were previously missed
• THREADED VIDEO/GLCORE: Fix regression Shader presets dont load, when video driver is set to glcore
• VULKAN: Fix HDR inverse tonemapping. Only skip tonemapper if HDR10 is explicitly enabled by last shader pass. Otherwise, we are simply just inheriting the bit-depth of the swapchain.