EverSD for Evercade Firmware 1.3.1 - Now with Retroarch Support!

[HtheB]

Thanks. One more thing, if I had already patched my evercade to 1.3.1 with the previous method, do I need to use the everpatcher?

To have the ability to use retroarch, yes. Otherwise it's not necessarily needed.

 

[esmith13]

To have the ability to use retroarch, yes. Otherwise it's not necessarily needed.

Are you able to share if there are any user-facing differences between everpatcher 2.2 and 2.1?
I know 2.0->2.1 corrected an issue with successfully patching the system, but does 2.2 do anything that would make someone who used any prior patcher version want to re-patch with 2.2?

 

[Valenhir]

If you apply the everpatch to use retroarch, can you still use your sd with the games patched with the previous method?

 

[Only_39_999_95]

Silly question - to get from 1.2.0, would I do the official v1.3.1 upgrade first - then the everpatcher v2.2 process?
(Also wondering if can do this and just keep using my existing sd card of files + pngs, per Valenhir's question?)

 

[HtheB]

Are you able to share if there are any user-facing differences between everpatcher 2.2 and 2.1?
I know 2.0->2.1 corrected an issue with successfully patching the system, but does 2.2 do anything that would make someone who used any prior patcher version want to re-patch with 2.2?

Probably some small corrections I guess

If you apply the everpatch to use retroarch, can you still use your sd with the games patched with the previous method?

Yes, it works for me

Silly question - to get from 1.2.0, would I do the official v1.3.1 upgrade first - then the everpatcher v2.2 process?
(Also wondering if can do this and just keep using my existing sd card of files + pngs, per Valenhir's question?)

You don't need to upgrade to 1.3.1 to patch the firmware

 

[Only_39_999_95]

I upgraded to v1.3.1 and patched... Got EverSD boot, and menu works with the old style SD setup (12 emulators + games dirs with launch.sh)

But when I run games, the colours and button mapping are all wrong.

Do I need to use RetroArch if I upgraded to v1.3.1?
Or is there a new legal_support.png I need?

 

[Valenhir]

I've installed retroarch but there are no cores. Are we supposed to download them?

 

[FreePlayFlorida]

I've installed retroarch but there are no cores. Are we supposed to download them?

I got the same thing, can i copy cores from another device (switch) to this?#

 

[HtheB]

I upgraded to v1.3.1 and patched... Got EverSD boot, and menu works with the old style SD setup (12 emulators + games dirs with launch.sh)

But when I run games, the colours and button mapping are all wrong.

Do I need to use RetroArch if I upgraded to v1.3.1?
Or is there a new legal_support.png I need?

From my experience, if you're on 1.3.1 and still want to use the old method of loading games, delete the legal_support.png file inside the game directory.
If it doesn't work, test out another cartridge first to see if it works, and try EverSD again.
It worked for me.

I've installed retroarch but there are no cores. Are we supposed to download them?

I got the same thing, can i copy cores from another device (switch) to this?#

You can get the cores from http://buildbot.libretro.com/nightly/linux/armv7-neon-hf/latest/ and extract it in the retroarch/cores directory

 

[Valenhir]

Is there a reason to not include the cores?

 

[Only_39_999_95]

Thanks @HtheB I got it working with an old png from an earlier patch download.

Only issue I have now, is mame2003 ran great on 1.2.0, but runs super slow on 1.3.1 (1 frame every 5s maybe?!).. once mame launches the whole evercade slows down (system menu takes ages to open). Other systems look ok.

I will give retroarch a try but hoped that avoid that as have all my games set up with old method

 

[Valenhir]

The best thing about the retroarch option is not having the bilinear filtering that made all the games look blurry. But I miss the UI from the older method. It made it look like an official cartridge (if you put the wok).

One thing I don't like at all is having the eversd loading screen even when running official cartridges. Is there a way to remove it?

 

[esmith13]

The best thing about the retroarch option is not having the bilinear filtering that made all the games look blurry. But I miss the UI from the older method. It made it look like an official cartridge (if you put the wok).

Not that I have bothered to try this myself, but have you ever thought to try making a custom retroarch.cfg file containing only video_smooth = "false" and using that with the old SD card setup? You would make a file and name it whatever you want using .cfg as the extension (for example customsettings.cfg) and only put in it that one option for bilinear filtering and drop it on the sd card root. Then edit "launch.sh" to use the --appendconfig /sdcard/customsettings.cfg command in the middle of the existing command, placing it after "$2" and before -L

Theoretically that should work. The command appends additional settings to the existing "retroarch.cfg" file in use. Assuming the built-in retroarch accepts all standard command line options you should be good to go. At the very least you can't damage anything trying it. If it doesn't work at all just remove the appendconfig part you added to launch.sh and you'll be back the way it was.
Don't have my Evercade with me at work or i'd try it myself for you...

 

[Valenhir]

Not that I have bothered to try this myself, but have you ever thought to try making a custom retroarch.cfg file containing only video_smooth = "false" and using that with the old SD card setup? You would make a file and name it whatever you want using .cfg as the extension (for example customsettings.cfg) and only put in it that one option for bilinear filtering and drop it on the sd card root. Then edit "launch.sh" to use the --appendconfig /sdcard/customsettings.cfg command in the middle of the existing command, placing it after "$2" and before -L

Theoretically that should work. The command appends additional settings to the existing "retroarch.cfg" file in use. Assuming the built-in retroarch accepts all standard command line options you should be good to go. At the very least you can't damage anything trying it. If it doesn't work at all just remove the appendconfig part you added to launch.sh and you'll be back the way it was.
Don't have my Evercade with me at work or i'd try it myself for you...

It would be great if that worked. I'll maybe give it a try tonight. Thanks!

 

[Valenhir]

I find it odd that games seem to perform better with the older method than on full retroarch. Specifically, Snes games with FX chip like Yoshi's Island struggle on retroarch -no matter the core- whereas on the previous method they run smooth. Same goes for a bunch of GBA games I've tried. So, compatibility is definitely way better with retroarch but performance-wise I'd stick to my older sd.

 

[esmith13]

I find it odd that games seem to perform better with the older method than on full retroarch. Specifically, Snes games with FX chip like Yoshi's Island struggle on retroarch -no matter the core- whereas on the previous method they run smooth. Same goes for a bunch of GBA games I've tried. So, compatibility is definitely way better with retroarch but performance-wise I'd stick to my older sd.

Well, I see two possibilities which you could test yourself.
Considering all three scenarios use libretro cores (stock, old EverSD method & new EverSD method) I would assume the issue is one of two things. Either the cores supplied in the old method were lighter weight and/or better tuned to the hardware constraints or the use of the retroarch GUI wastes additional processor power and/or RAM that is avoided by launching games directly from the command line in the stock retroarch which likely has the GUI assets removed or disabled.

Best way to test is to try two scenarios.
1) Old SD card setup but replace "0.so", "1.so"... "12.so" in the emulator folder on the SD with the same cores from the new method (renamed to the old method names of course) and see if it's still slow (meaning cores are the issue) or runs better (meaning full retroarch executable in new SD method eats CPU or RAM)
2) New SD method and only add to the retroarch/cores folder the cores from the old SD method ("0.so", "21.so"... "12.so") and then running the retroarch GUI and using those older cores to see if you get back the former performance levels.

This is not an exacting test since the retroarch.cfg options could also change the results, but since the stock retroarch config can't really be edited (perhaps appended to - based on my earlier post) I think it's a good start.


EDIT: It's possible I may have some time tomorrow to test these scenarios myself if you want the help but I would need at least one core and ROM recommendation to use for testing with that clearly shows performance differences - preferably without having to play the game for more that a minute or two to notice it.

 

[Valenhir]

I'd suggest Snes Yoshi's Island. I've tried it with both snes9xcurrent and snes9x2010 cores and it runs slow. You can see it from the menu screen and the opening animation. On my older sd card it runs perfect.

Btw, do you know if it's possible to remove the eversd loading screen? I don't mind watching it when using the eversd but it annoys me to have it on the official cartridges too.

 

[esmith13]

I'd suggest Snes Yoshi's Island. I've tried it with both snes9xcurrent and snes9x2010 cores and it runs slow. You can see it from the menu screen and the opening animation. On my older sd card it runs perfect.

Btw, do you know if it's possible to remove the eversd loading screen? I don't mind watching it when using the eversd but it annoys me to have it on the official cartridges too.

"EverSD" video appears to be a replacement for the Evercade boot video. I have to assume EverPatcher overwrote the original video (or renamed it to disable it) and replaced it with their own "boot logo".
Doubt there is anything anyone can do about it without having access to the ability to rebuild everpatcher without it - short of flashing back to factory FW of course...

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

So it appears the core(s) included with the "old" EverSD card files were different. I added the SNES emulator from the old setup to the new retroarch setup and it fixed snes performance to 95-98% of what it was on the old setup (when choosing that old/custom core, of course).

The new setup calls for the arm neon cores while the old ones (only investigated SNES so far) appear to be custom built cores that are likely optomized for old/slow/weak systems on the same architecture. The embedded name of the snes core from the old setup (filename is "4.so") is "Supa Nobueno Enjoyment Fausten" which I'm guessing is based on the mednafen-faust snes core, which in turn is based on a very old bsnes build.

Going to test out the idea of appending configs on the old setup now. If that works out well, an ideal setup may be the new patch so you can run on FW 1.3.1 but using the "OLD" folder structure and old retroarch app & cores with an appended configuration to change settings you don't like in the stock config (like bilinear filtering).

 

[esmith13]

OK, so bottom line - you can't append configs to the "stock" retroarch. It must have been compiled without that command. Also can use the command to force displaying the GUI so I could save a copy of the original config to the cart.

That said, I have been successful at using the "new" retroarch 1.9.0 supplied with the new patch for FW 1.3.1 and getting what appears to be identical performance to the stock setup (using Yoshi's Island for testing). I was even able to do this using the stock UI to choose the game you launch instead of the retroarch GUI.
That said, you loose the stock in game menu and must use the retroarch GUI or hotkeys to save/load states and quit back to the stock game menu.

I have currently got my EverSD setup as follows:

• Boot to stock UI for game selection (I removed the entry for retroarch GUI so you only see the games w/ art)
• Choose game and it launches directly to the game (using the new retroarch with stock libretro cores and my custom retroarch.cfg)
• You can enter retroarch GUI with a hotkey OR just use hotkeys to save/load state, change state slot & quit back to stock UI to pick another game.
• If you want to use roms from a system Evercade doesn't natively support, you would need to either load a supported game first and switch via retroarch GUI (dumb way) or sacrifice mame swap that core (0.so) for another one - but that other core must support loading it's roms from zip files.

I think there may be a better way to handle this but I need to find time to play with it more...
Also, in addition to using the stock core to fix SuperFX, you need to enable threaded video in retroarch's settings or you only get 75% of the way there compared to stock evercade performance.

 

[Valenhir]

Could you share your setup? I think that should be the default considering how poorly some systems run with the setup provided by the dev.