303 lines
17 KiB
Markdown
303 lines
17 KiB
Markdown
+++
|
|
date = "2018-09-10T12:21:53-05:00"
|
|
title = "Citra Progress Report - 2018 Q2"
|
|
tags = [ "progress-report" ]
|
|
author = "anodium"
|
|
coauthor = "CaptV0rt3x"
|
|
forum = 49673
|
|
+++
|
|
|
|
Hello everyone to the summer (or winter, for those on the southern half of this
|
|
Earth) edition of Citra's progress reports. Although not very many large changes
|
|
have been made, many fixes have focused on accuracy improvements and implementing
|
|
some of the sorely needed user experience features.
|
|
|
|
Before we go further into this, our [Patreon](https://www.patreon.com/citraemu/posts)
|
|
poll results are out.
|
|
We asked our patrons, which feature they would like to see us work on next and
|
|
they delivered. Here are the results and as you will see, some of these have
|
|
been considered and already implemented.
|
|
|
|
{{< figure src="/images/entry/citra-progress-report-2018-q2/patreon.png"
|
|
title="Patreon Poll Results" >}}
|
|
|
|
To get access to such exclusives in the future and to support this project,
|
|
consider becoming a patron. Now, enough appetizing, have your entrée:
|
|
|
|
## [Add pause, speed limit hotkeys](https://github.com/citra-emu/citra/pull/3594) by [valentinvanelslande](https://github.com/valentinvanelslande)
|
|
|
|
Let's start with a simple but sweet one — you can now assign hotkeys to
|
|
pausing, unpausing, and toggling speed limiting. By default, you can pause with
|
|
<kbd>F4</kbd> and toggle speed limiting with <kbd><kbd>Ctrl</kbd>+<kbd>Z</kbd></kbd>.
|
|
But, of course, you can bind these actions to other keys in Citra's `qt-config.ini`.
|
|
The property for pausing is `Shortcuts\Main%20Window\Continue\Pause\KeySeq` and
|
|
for speed toggling it is `Shortcuts\Main%20Window\Toggle%20Speed%20Limit\KeySeq`.
|
|
|
|
## [Add support for multiple game directories](https://github.com/citra-emu/citra/pull/3617) by [BreadFish64](https://github.com/BreadFish64)
|
|
|
|
You can now configure Citra to search multiple directories for games and apps!
|
|
This allow you to keep titles across different folders, and if you have any
|
|
launchable titles installed into Citra's virtual SD card or NAND, they'll also
|
|
show up in their own section so you can boot them from the game list.
|
|
|
|
{{< figure src="/images/entry/citra-progress-report-2018-q2/multiple_gamedirs.png"
|
|
title="Multiple Game Directories" >}}
|
|
|
|
## [Add support for stereoscopic 3D](https://github.com/citra-emu/citra/pull/3632) by [N00byKing](https://github.com/N00byKing)
|
|
|
|
If you are one of the lucky few with a 3D TV or monitor attached to your
|
|
computer, stereoscopic 3D support has just been added to Citra! You can enable
|
|
it by heading to <kbd><samp>Emulation</samp> → <samp>Configure...</samp> → <samp>Graphics</samp> → <samp>Layout</samp></kbd>,
|
|
ticking the <samp>Enable Stereoscopic 3D</samp> checkbox, and changing the
|
|
screen layout to <samp>Side by Side</samp>.
|
|
|
|
{{< figure src="/images/entry/citra-progress-report-2018-q2/3d-sxs.png"
|
|
title="Although you can't see this in 3D, try crossing your eyes or using a mirror!" >}}
|
|
|
|
## [Software Keyboard Implementation](https://github.com/citra-emu/citra/pull/3850) by [zhaowenlan1779](https://github.com/zhaowenlan1779) and [jroweboy](https://github.com/jroweboy)
|
|
|
|
For the longest time, many games were unplayable or needed workarounds on Citra
|
|
due to them needing the software keyboard applet. The reason being that whenever
|
|
they would try to open it, Citra didn't implement it, and so would simply tell
|
|
the game that the user entered "Citra" and tapped OK, without actually prompting.
|
|
But now, thanks to zhaowenlan1779 and jroweboy, it now has fully functional
|
|
software keyboard emulation!
|
|
|
|
Whenever a game requests it, Citra will pause the game and pull up a text box that
|
|
you can fill in like any other prompt.
|
|
|
|
{{< gifv src="/images/entry/citra-progress-report-2018-q2/swkbd.mp4"
|
|
title="Now you can change your name to anything!" >}}
|
|
|
|
## Open Source System Archives ([#3977](https://github.com/citra-emu/citra/pull/3977), [#3881](https://github.com/citra-emu/citra/pull/3881)) by [B3n30](https://github.com/B3n30)
|
|
|
|
Many Nintendo 3DS games require the use of system archives, which contain things
|
|
like fonts, a bad word list, and assets for Miis. Because these are copyrighted,
|
|
Citra could not include them, and users had to dump a copy from their consoles,
|
|
which was a generally tedious and error-prone process.
|
|
|
|
Now, [B3n30](https://github.com/B3n30) has created open source alternative fonts
|
|
and a bad word list that can be used in games instead of the official archives.
|
|
And, because these are open source, they are now included with Citra. If a game
|
|
requires either archive, and you haven't dumped them yet, it'll automatically give
|
|
the game the alternative archives. This is a step forward to Citra becoming
|
|
a full-fledged HLE 3DS emulator.
|
|
|
|
## [Implement shadow map](https://github.com/citra-emu/citra/pull/3778) by [wwylele](https://github.com/wwylele)
|
|
|
|
Shadow mapping is a way to quickly apply shadows to 3D scenes. It first renders
|
|
the scene without any lighting, texture, or colour information, with a virtual
|
|
camera from where the light source begins. Then, from that rendering the depth
|
|
map is extracted. That is then applied as a texture to the darkened scene, making
|
|
areas of it directly visible from the light source appear more brightly lit.
|
|
|
|
The PICA200 (the GPU inside the 3DS) and OpenGL both implement this in different
|
|
ways, particularly in two important areas:
|
|
|
|
* The first is that PICA200 supports a variant called "soft shadows", where the
|
|
depth map is blurred before being applied to the scene. This results in shadows
|
|
that seem less jagged and sharp, making the light source feel more diffuse and
|
|
evenly spread out throughout the scene. OpenGL doesn't support this at all.
|
|
|
|
* The second is that the PICA200 stores depth maps intended for shadow mapping as
|
|
plain textures in the RGBA8 format. A lot of games exploit this in order to quickly
|
|
convert other types of textures from an internal format to RGBA8. But, OpenGL
|
|
stores these maps in a format internal to that graphics card, like any other map.
|
|
(RGBA8 or 8bit RGBA is a texture format, which is the combination of an RGB
|
|
(red green blue) color model with an extra 4th alpha channel.)
|
|
|
|
The first point isn't as significant, since the softness can be ignored on OpenGL,
|
|
resulting in a very fast (but inaccurate) shadow mapping. Because games rarely
|
|
use soft shadows, this can be ignored relatively safely.
|
|
|
|
The second point though, because games use it very often, it has to be implemented
|
|
accurately. The naïve way would be to simply convert internal textures to RGBA8
|
|
manually, but this would slow rendering down to a crawl. The smart way would be
|
|
to try and trick the graphics card driver into performing a similar conversion,
|
|
but such an attempt exposed a lot of issues, leading to instability.
|
|
|
|
After some very hard work by [wwylele](https://github.com/wwylele), both problems
|
|
were solved with a single solution. OpenGL supports an extension called
|
|
Image Load/Store, which allows shaders to read and write to any texture
|
|
directly. Using this, he created a shader that could accurately implement both
|
|
soft shadows, and convert the depth map from its internal format to RGBA8 very
|
|
quickly.
|
|
|
|
{{< sidebyside "image" "/images/entry/citra-progress-report-2018-q2/"
|
|
"shadow_map_before.png=Before Shadow Mapping"
|
|
"shadow_map_after.png=After Shadow Mapping" >}}
|
|
|
|
Unfortunately, because Image Load/Store is an optional extension, not every
|
|
OpenGL 3.3 graphics card will support it. In these cases, Citra will simply ignore
|
|
shadow maps, making the rendering inaccurate but usable. Image Load/Store became
|
|
a mandatory part of OpenGL in version 4.2, so every graphics card that complies
|
|
with OpenGL 4.2 is guaranteed to work correctly.
|
|
**Citra only requires a minimum
|
|
compliance to OpenGL 3.3, but OpenGL 4.2 compliance may lead to more accurate
|
|
rendering.**
|
|
|
|
## [Implement cubeb audio backend](https://github.com/citra-emu/citra/pull/3776) by [darkf](https://github.com/darkf)
|
|
|
|
[`cubeb`](https://github.com/kinetiknz/cubeb/) is an audio library (developed by
|
|
the Mozilla Foundation) that's cross-platform, and most importantly ***fast***.
|
|
Reports from [Dolphin's blog](https://dolphin-emu.org/blog/2017/06/03/dolphin-progress-report-may-2017/#50-3937-add-cubeb-audio-backend-by-ligfx)
|
|
showed that it ran at a *third* of the latency of their OpenAL backend. And now,
|
|
thanks to the work done by [darkf](https://github.com/darkf) and some fixes
|
|
from [MerryMage](https://github.com/MerryMage), Citra can now benefit from that
|
|
same low latency audio that Dolphin and Mozilla Firefox have. This will lead to
|
|
significantly less distortion and stuttering in your games. Just remember to
|
|
enable it in the configuration menu by setting `Output Engine` as `cubeb`.
|
|
|
|
## [Volume Slider](https://github.com/citra-emu/citra/pull/3831) by [Fearlesstobi](https://github.com/fearlesstobi)
|
|
|
|
You can now configure the volume level of Citra directly from the configuration
|
|
window. This allows you to set an individual volume level for Citra without
|
|
having to manually set it in your operating system settings.
|
|
|
|
{{< figure src="/images/entry/citra-progress-report-2018-q2/volume_slider.png"
|
|
title="Volume Slider" >}}
|
|
|
|
## [Discord Rich Presence](https://github.com/citra-emu/citra/pull/3883) by [CaptV0rt3x](https://github.com/CaptV0rt3x)
|
|
|
|
Rich Presence allows you to leverage the totally boring "Now Playing" section
|
|
in a Discord user's profile. This feature lets users show off when they are
|
|
playing their favorite games on Citra. This has been a common feature request
|
|
from many users, and since many other emulators have already implemented this,
|
|
it made sense to implement it here as well.
|
|
|
|
{{< figure src="/images/entry/citra-progress-report-2018-q2/rpc.png"
|
|
title="Discord Rich Presence" >}}
|
|
|
|
Discord Rich Presence works by creating a local connection with Citra and your
|
|
Discord App. It ***does not*** connect to (or) send any data to Discord servers.
|
|
This option is user configurable, so you can choose to show or not to show rich
|
|
presence in your discord status. Just head out to <kbd><samp>Emulation</samp>
|
|
→ <samp>Configure...</samp> → <samp>Web</samp> → <samp>Discord
|
|
Presence</samp></kbd> and check / uncheck "Show current game in your Discord
|
|
status".
|
|
|
|
## [Set Default values for settings](https://github.com/citra-emu/citra/pull/3924) by [zhaowenlan1779](https://github.com/zhaowenlan1779)
|
|
|
|
The majority of support requests we get are mostly due to users accidentally
|
|
enabling or disabling some settings. But now with this feature, we have
|
|
default values for all our settings. This ensures that in case of any new
|
|
settings changes, majority of the users (who haven't customized those settings)
|
|
will now have the new default value automatically.
|
|
|
|
## [Add support for encrypted games](https://github.com/citra-emu/citra/pull/4020) by [wwylele](https://github.com/wwylele)
|
|
|
|
You can now directly use your encrypted game dumps in Citra, without having to
|
|
decrypt them. This requires that the user provide their keys via a text file
|
|
in `sysdata/aes_keys.txt`.
|
|
|
|
Currently all known encryption methods are implemented except for the Seed
|
|
crypto. Seed crypto is used in newer eshop games, which essentially uses an
|
|
additional title-unique key that is stored outside of the ROM.
|
|
|
|
## [Scripting support](https://github.com/citra-emu/citra/pull/4016) by [EverOddish](https://github.com/EverOddish)
|
|
|
|
Scripting is an extremely useful feature which allows us to do things like
|
|
debugging emulator internals, reverse engineering 3DS game internals,
|
|
Tool-Assisted-Speedrunning (TAS), and the ability to manipulate memory in
|
|
games. A cheat-like interface could be implemented through this (though, not
|
|
specifically Gameshark / AR codes).
|
|
|
|
Users can make their own scripts or use publicly available scripts to gain
|
|
power over things like game screen display, inputs, and memory. Scripts can
|
|
also be used to read or modify the internal game state. EverOddish wrote some
|
|
scripts that can read internal stats of the Pokémon and automatically
|
|
update image files for your current party. This feature is very useful for
|
|
streamers who might want to display game information on their streams.
|
|
|
|
## Movie - game input recording and playback ([#2882](https://github.com/citra-emu/citra/pull/2882), [#3922](https://github.com/citra-emu/citra/pull/3922)) by [danzel](https://github.com/danzel) and [zhaowenlan1779](https://github.com/zhaowenlan1779)
|
|
|
|
This feature, not to be confused with video/audio recording, implements a way
|
|
to record game inputs and play them back. Every time the hardware reads an
|
|
input device (buttons, touch screen, accelerometer, gyroscope, c-stick) the
|
|
emulator copies (when recording) or replaces (when playing) the values. Once
|
|
playback has finished, we release control of inputs so that the user can take
|
|
control.
|
|
|
|
{{< figure src="/images/entry/citra-progress-report-2018-q2/movie.png"
|
|
title="UI options to record" >}}
|
|
|
|
For this, danzel heavily took inspiration from dolphin's system and zhaowenlan1779
|
|
wrote the UI for this feature. This method results in `.ctm` (Citra TAS movie)
|
|
files which are playble in Citra. To play a game's `.ctm` file you would need
|
|
to have the game and also manually set Citra's system time to the same starting
|
|
value as in the `.ctm`. This feature makes debugging bugs in games much easier,
|
|
as it doesn't require us to go through the whole process again.
|
|
|
|
## [Add system time configuration](https://github.com/citra-emu/citra/pull/4043) by [B3N30](https://github.com/b3n30)
|
|
|
|
Whenever a game requested time information, Citra always used your PC's system
|
|
time. This method had a couple of issues - for example, if you were playing a game
|
|
at 200% speed for 2 hours. As its running at twice the max speed, playing for
|
|
2 hours in real-time should reflect 4 hours simulated time. But, due to Citra
|
|
sending your PC's time to games, it wasn't happening.
|
|
|
|
{{< figure src="/images/entry/citra-progress-report-2018-q2/system-clock.png"
|
|
title="System Time setting (edited to show both options)" >}}
|
|
|
|
Also, players might want to set Citra's time to a specific value to ensure
|
|
consistency with TAS or with RNG(random number generator) or for getting
|
|
time specific game events. Earlier you had to modify your PC's system time
|
|
to achieve this but thanks to B3N30, you can now just set it in Citra's
|
|
configuration window.
|
|
|
|
## [Joystick Hot-plugging](https://github.com/citra-emu/citra/pull/4141) by [B3N30](https://github.com/b3n30)
|
|
|
|
For a long time, Citra didn't support controller hot plugging. This meant that
|
|
if by chance your controller disconnected Citra would fail to detect it after
|
|
re-connection, unless you restarted the emulator. This caused a lot of
|
|
frustration among users who preferred playing with controllers.
|
|
|
|
Hot plugging (also called hot swapping) is the ability to add and remove
|
|
devices to a computer system while the computer is running and have the
|
|
operating system automatically recognize the change.
|
|
|
|
Thanks to the efforts of B3N30 and [jroweboy](https://github.com/jroweboy)
|
|
(who researched SDL controller configuration), Citra now doesn't fail to detect
|
|
your controllers in case of a disconnection. However, due to heavy rework of
|
|
the existing input configuration code, this requires users to reconfigure their
|
|
controllers after updating Citra.
|
|
|
|
## UDP client to provide motion & touch controls ([#4049](https://github.com/citra-emu/citra/pull/4049), [#4059](https://github.com/citra-emu/citra/pull/4059)) by [jroweboy](https://github.com/jroweboy) and [zhaowenlan1779](https://github.com/zhaowenlan1779)
|
|
|
|
Citra's previous motion controls were a bit uncomfortable to use. You had to
|
|
use your mouse's right-click and drag to tilt the screen, but it was often
|
|
hard to figure out where to move the cursor to get the kind of tilt we want.
|
|
|
|
Using a real device for motion controls is simply much more intuitive and will
|
|
be an all around better experience for users. As such, jroweboy set out to
|
|
implement cemuhook motion/touch protocol which adds the ability for users to
|
|
connect several different devices to citra to send direct motion and touch
|
|
data to citra.
|
|
|
|
{{< figure src="/images/entry/citra-progress-report-2018-q2/cemuhookudp.png"
|
|
title="Motion/Touch Configuration Window" >}}
|
|
|
|
[Cemuhook](https://cemuhook.sshnuke.net/) is a very popular plugin developed by [rajkosto](https://github.com/rajkosto)
|
|
for Cemu - the Wii U emulator. This protocol was chosen simply because of the
|
|
fact that there aren't many alternatives and this already has good device
|
|
support. Moreover, as it uses UDP, it works on just about anything with a
|
|
network stack and allows the server to even be a remote network device (useful
|
|
for Android motion support). zhaowenlan1779 wrote the UI for this feature,
|
|
to make it easily accessible and configurable by all users.
|
|
|
|
## Et. al.
|
|
|
|
Apart from the above mentioned ones, we have also had a lot of minor optimizations
|
|
and bug fixes ported from yuzu. We've made changes to our authentication system
|
|
to use JWT (JSON web tokens), added a background color selector, made GDB stub
|
|
improvements, and many more.
|
|
|
|
Thank you to [everyone](https://github.com/citra-emu/citra/graphs/contributors?from=2018-05-20&to=2018-08-31&type=c)
|
|
for pouring your blood and sweat into this project. Citra needs contributors
|
|
like you to stay alive and become the best it can be.
|
|
|
|
|
|
<h4 style="text-align:center;">
|
|
<b>Please consider supporting us on [Patreon](https://www.patreon.com/citraemu)!<br>
|
|
If you would like to contribute to this project, checkout our [GitHub](https://github.com/citra-emu/citra)!</b>
|
|
</h4> |