With the GBA having a large fan following, emulator development is always welcome and mGBA is an emulator that has lots of fans always excited for the next release. In this article, we’ll be looking at the long-awaited release of mGBA 0.8.0 and a nifty plugin for the Switch called Fizeau which f.lux/Night Shift fans will surely want to install!

Emulation News: mGBA 0.8.0 coming with High-Resolution Renderer, BattleChip Gate support, Interframe Blending and more!

mGBA is a GameBoy Advance advance emulator by endrift which also does original GameBoy and GameBoy Colour emulation. One of its main goals is that to achieve good performance & accuracy even on lower-end hardware and it’s been pretty successful in this regard as it works pretty well on the PSVita which isn’t very high powered by today’s standards.

With mGBA 0.8.0, you can make some GBA games look better although it does require some more power

The emulator’s available on many platforms including the 3DS, Switch, Wii, PSVita, Windows, Linux and macOS although some features, like the newly-introduced OpenGL renderer, aren’t available on all ports.

Now, mGBA 0.8.0 has been released following Beta 1’s release in October of last year, from which most of its new features stem. As per its release post, this update comes with:

• A High-Resolution OpenGL renderer which renders 3D Sprites in GBA games like F-Zero Maximum Velocity at higher resolutions up to 3840×2560 (4K)
  • This feature may be a bit demanding so it may not work on the lowest-end of machines
  • It’s only available on the Windows, Linux, macOS and Switch ports.
• Support for BattleChip Gate together with the Progress Gate and Beast Link Gate
  • These are GBA peripherals that are intended to be used with MegaMan Battle Network 4-6 in order to play the Operation Battle minigame

    Feel like messing around with frames to get a perfect screenshot? Well, now you can thanks to mGBA’s frame inspector!

• Interframe Blending – This is a technique for frame flickering in every-other frame and it’s mostly used for subtle effects like temporal anti-aliasing in Golden Sun and transperancy of some on-screen elements in F-Zero: Maximum Velocity
  • This is supported on all official ports of the emulator
• The ability to inspect frames which lets you disable specific rendering layers or tweak sprites together
  • Right now, only GBA games are supported but support for original GameBoy and GameBoy Colour games will come in the future
• Discord Rich Presence has been added which lets you show off which game you’re playing on Discord
• An XQ audio feature which aims to improve audio quality although it’s still in a WIP state right now so it must be manually enabled
  • Not all games work well with this feature
• The ability to load more types of cheat code files and some debugging features

To read more about mGBA 0.8.0, check the release post linked above. You may download for the platform of your choice by following this link.

Switch Release: Fizeau – A sysmodule to modify your screen’s colour

Thanks to hacks, community members have the ability to develop software in order to modify every configurable aspect of the device’s hardware. A popular aspect is the screen, in particular the way it displays colours and now, the Switch has a sysmodule called Fizeau which allows you to take some more control over what your Switch’s screen emits. This sysmodule, by Averne, has many features namely:

• The ability to create a layer/overlay with a colour of your choosing

  Fizeau lets you add an overlay on your Switch’s screen for better colour/brightness management!

• Built-in values for colour temperature providing similar functionality to f.lux/Night Shift (iOS) and redshift in order to reduce the amount of blue light emitted from the screen which may help some people sleep
• The ability to keep track of dusk/dawn times and apply brightness settings automatically similar to functionality offered on mobile devices
• A GUI-based configuration application that lets you set
  • Screen Temperature
  • Dusk/Dawn times
  • Brightness
  • The colour of the overlay

You may read more about Fizeau by checking out its GitHub README. Alternatively, you can download it from its GitHub Release Page. It’s important to state that only Atmosphère 0.10.2 is supported by this sysmodule.

Conclusion

On a concluding note, the emulation scene has even more stuff to offer today including an article on SNES emulation by bsnes’ author and the release of WINE 5.0 even though it’s technically not an emulator which comes with Vulkan 1.1 support and a re-written XAudio2 implementation. A mod called Pokemon Ruined Ruby and Shattered Sapphire has also been released for the 3DS by Reddit user ‘AvatarMew’.

The post Emulation & Switch Releases: mGBA 0.8.0 with High-Resolution Renderer, BattleChip Gate support, Interframe Blending and more & Fizeau gets released for the Switch allowing you to change your screen colour for f.lux-like effects! appeared first on Wololo.net.

2 new Amazon listings have shown up for officially licensed, brand new wireless Nintendo Switch Controllers themed around Animal Crossing.

The first controller features a green design with both Nooklings, as well as Green Leaf icons all over the front of the controller.

The second controller features K.K Slider, as well as various Animal Crossing related icons around the front of the controller.

The back of both controllers feature remappable buttons.

The controllers will cost $49.99 each and will be released on the 10th of March 2020, 10 days before the official release of Animal Crossing: New Horizons for the Switch. They are made by PowerA and both controllers will feature Bluetooth 5.0, which will make them compatible with any other device that can connect with Bluetooth. It will feature LEDs on the bottom of the controller to show which player you are, as well as one between the Capture and Home Menu button to show low battery. It will have motion controls, but no NFC reader for Amiibo. Additionally, they come with 2 AA Batteries, which is always nice, as well as a 2-year warranty.

Sources: Nookling Controller | K.K Slider Controller

Note from Wololo: Amazon links in this article are affiliate links. If you purchase through these links, you don’t pay anything extra but we get a small commission.

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With the Chinese New Year upon us, the first shipments of Team Xecuter’s upcoming mod chip for non-Lite Switch consoles should be coming soon and the reasons for hacking the Switch keep on becoming more numerous thanks to recent releases. In this article, we’ll be looking at a major update to L4T Ubuntu & Reset Parental Controls NX!

L4T Ubuntu 2.0 released with many requested features

It’s no secret that the Nintendo Switch can run Linux and in fact, usable Linux environments were up and running as early as April 2018 when the ShofEL2 exploit, making use of the bug exploited by fusée gelée, was released.

With L4T Ubuntu, you can turn your Switch into a fully fledged mini PC and now, version 2.0 has landed to make it much better (Image by kbeflo_ of Reddit)

Moving on to last May, L4T Ubuntu was released which is a Ubuntu 18.04 LTS-based Linux distribution intended for general usage and now, it has received a massive update with many highly-requested features.

As per its changelog, Switchroot‘s L4T Ubuntu 2.0 comes with:

• Support for LP0 sleep mode (this should make things a bit lighter on your Switch’s power management)
• Improved Bluetooth Joycon support
• Numerous fixes in relation to the touchscreen, charging, SDCard, audio, docking and pin muxing
• Ambient Light Sensor support (this needs some further work in the user-mode)

You may read more about L4T Ubuntu and view its installation instructions from this link. The L4TUbuntu image download link may be accessed from this link (MEGA) and a Google Drive link is available a few replies down.

TotalJustice releases Reset Parental Controls NX allowing you to get rid of Parental Controls easily!

Like the PlayStation Vita and many modern video game consoles and portable devices, the Switch also comes with parental controls in order to restrict gaming time among other things.

With TotalJustice’s latest utility, you can wave parental controls good-bye

However, hacking communities always find ways to circumvent them and now, the Switch has joined the ‘parental control bypassing’ club thanks to Reset Parental Controls NX by TotalJustice.

As its name suggests, this homebrew utility allows you to change your parental control PIN to whatever you want without having to know the PIN currently imposed. This means that it could be used to remove any parental controls imposed on the system with just a few simple steps. Unlike TotalJustice’s previous offerings such as GameCard Installer NX, Reset Parental Controls doesn’t come with a GUI interface but a straight-to-the-point text-based interface which is enough considering the frequency with which the application will be used!

You may read more about it by following this link to its GitHub README. Downloads can be accessed from here.

Conclusion

Other than these releases, the emulation scene has just seen the public release of Cemu 1.17.0 which comes with new graphic pack features, Vulkan improvements and more (changelog / download link). The PSVita also received some love with NRedneck Vita 1.1 bringing massive performance boosts and TransparentImpose, a plugin to make the quick menu transparent.

The post Switch Releases: L4T Ubuntu 2.0 released for the Switch with LP0 Sleep Mode, Overclocking support, Better Bluetooth Joycon Support, Volume/Touch/Dock Handling Fixes & more; TotalJustice releases Reset Parental Controls NX to get rid of PIN! appeared first on Wololo.net.

Today, classic FPS games are on the menu in the homebrew scene with both the PSVita and Switch getting a slice of the cake. In this article, we’ll be looking at the release of vitaExhumed for the former and a significant update to the Chocolate DOOM port and launcher of the latter.

PSVita Release: Rinnegatamante ports PCExhumed to the console allowing you to play PowerSlave/Exhumed

As most of us know, the PlayStation Vita is a tad lucklustre in the commercial FPS games department but the homebrew community managed to rectify that with Rinnegatamante being on the forefront of such efforts. Thanks to this, the PSVita got ports of Quake I-III, Redneck Rampage, EDuke32 and other titles which have seen tens of thousands of downloads on VitaDB alone.

If you’re a fan of ancient Egypt then you should certainly give PowerSlave a try on your PSVita!

Now, Rinnegatamante has made another addition to the FPS homebrew game library for Sony’s current portable and this time, it’s vitaExhumed. As its name suggests, vitaExhumed is a port of PCExhumed by Duke4 Forum member ‘sirlemonhead’ which itself is a port of Exhumed/PowerSlave’s engine that’s based upon code from EDuke32. For those who never heard of the game, PowerSlave/Exhumed (Exhumed is the name used in Europe) is a first-person shooter based on the Build engine (i.e. Duke Nukem 3D’s engine) which is set in the ancient Egyptian city of Karnak. This city was seized by mysterious forces and your task is to find out what’s going on and potentially save the city; quite obviously, you’ll be roaming in ancient Egyptian temples and the enemies featured are from Egyptian mythology.

You may read more about vitaExhumed on its Wololo /talk page & download it via VitaDB; Rinnegatamante may be donated to via Patreon. It’s important to note that you need the data files for the full game to play it as the demo files aren’t compatible yet.

Switch Releases: Chocolate DOOM NX & Launcher 1.1.0 released with hardware acceleration, better mod support and more

Chocolate DOOM Launcher comes with a pretty nice interface which goes well with the rest of the Switch’s UI!

Moving onto another classic FPS title, the Nintendo Switch has just seen the release of two significant updates to its homebrew DOOM offerings by Nichole Mattera. Starting off with the update to Chocolate DOOM NX, the actual DOOM engine port based on MVG’s 2018 port, we have:

• The implementation of hardware-accelerated rendering for improved performance
• Naming save games can now be done with the Switch’s native OSK
• The menus and game can now be controlled by the d-pad if that’s your jam
• Mouse support was removed as it wasn’t working properly and an argument to go back to the launcher on exit has been added
• Two bugs were fixed, one having to do with the right analogue stick and menu sliders and another where setting windowed mode in the configuration file would cause the application to crash

The accompanying launcher, which was initially released a few days ago, also received some significant improvements which include:

• Improved mod support and categorisation

  Chocolate DOOM NX also supports family friendly DOOM engine action with Chex Quest and many other IWADs!

  • DEH files are to go in the ‘/dehs’ folder
  • WAD files are to go in the ‘/wads’ folder
  • INI files for configuration are to go inside the ‘mods’ folder
• The main screen now lists both base games (IWADS; i.e. DOOM, DOOM II, Chex Quest and others) and mods
• Each main menu (game) entry now has its own save game directory
• It’s now possible to update both the launcher and the game engine from within the launcher provided you’re connected to the internet
• Hacx (a DOOM II total conversion) is now detectable and Chocolate DOOM NX is no longer allowed to use the SD Card’s root as its working directory

You may grab Chocolate DOOM NX from this link and the launcher from here.

Conclusion

For more stuff to read, Parallel N64 has just received the Parallel RSP dynarec which brings along fast Low-Level Emulation of the Nintendo 64 resulting in playable performance in almost every title even on older CPUs like 3rd generation desktop Core i5 chips (LLE is much more demanding than HLE).

The post PSVita & Switch Releases: Rinnegatamante releases vitaExhumed letting you play PowerSlave/Exhumed thus granting more Build Engine fun & the Switch’s port of Chocolate DOOM gains hardware acceleration, better mod support and more! appeared first on Wololo.net.

It has been announced that Pokemon Home will be launching in February of 2020, and will cost $16 each year ($3 a month, $5 every 3 months.)

What is Pokemon Home?

Pokemon Home will be “a cloud service for Nintendo Switch and compatible mobile devices designed as a place where all Pokémon can gather.” This means that, on the Switch and Mobile versions, you will be able to access the same Pokemon. Additionally, you will be able to transfer Pokemon between games and trade them with other users.

Free subscription VS Paid subscription

Click the image to enlarge it.

With the free version of Pokemon Home, you will not be able to transfer Pokemon from Pokemon Bank to Pokemon Home. You will be able to store a maximum of 30 Pokemon, with a maximum of 3 being able to be placed in the Wonder Box (A place to allow Pokemon Trades with people around the world) at the same time. You will be able to place only a single Pokemon in the GTS (Global Trade System) at one time. You will be able to participate in Room Trades, but not be able to host them, and you will not have access to the Judge Function (which allows you to see your Pokemon’s EV’s and IV’s quickly).

With a paid subscription, you will be able to move Pokemon from Pokemon Bank to Pokemon Home. You will be allowed to store a maximum of 6,000 Pokemon. You will be able to place 10 Pokemon in the Wonder Box and 3 Pokemon in the GTS. You will be able to participate in Room Trades, as well as hosting them and you will have access to the Judge Function.

As you can see, the paid subscription is much better and more useful. If you are a big Pokemon fan and would like to have your Pokemon with you, wherever you go, you will most likely want the paid subscription. If you aren’t a big Pokemon fan or don’t need your Pokemon with you, the free subscription might just be enough (although, in my opinion, free users should get at least 100 slots, 30 is just not enough.)

Extra Info

To celebrate the launch of Pokemon Home, Nintendo will be making Pokemon Bank free for a month, which will allow people to move their Pokemon to the new service.

Mystery Gifts will be able to be obtained both online and locally through Pokemon Home as well.

Source: https://home.pokemon.com/en-us/premium/

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Across different hacked devices and consoles, one of the goals that some parts of the community always have is to get Linux up and running. Developers were successful in reaching this goal on the PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, PSP and now, even modern iDevices thanks to Luca Todesco’s latest revelation! In this article, we’ll also be looking at updates to 2 popular Switch homebrew offerings namely N-Xplorer and Sys-con.

iOS News: Luca Todesco (Qwertyoruiop) manages to boot Linux on the Apple A10 SoC

While things are still in early stages, the prospect of running Linux on your iPhone/iPad may not be too far fetched – only how well the hardware will be supported is a question mark at this point!

With Apple locking down iOS devices so much, getting any other OS to run on them is no trivial task and it requires a BootROM exploit like limera1n or checkm8. As a result, the newest iPhone that could boot some form of Linux is the iPhone 4 thanks to efforts of the now-defunct OpeniBoot/iDroid project but end-user distributions (in the form of Android and some others) are only available on the iPhone 2G, 3G and iPod Touch 1st generation as progress on A4 devices never got so far.

However, things may change in the ‘Linux on iDevices’ world because thanks to axi0mX‘s checkm8 BootROM exploit, developers are able to boot unsigned code at very low-levels with Luca Todesco and others using this opportunity to create the checkra1n jailbreak and now, for further research into what can be done with iOS devices. Yesterday, Qwertyoruiop tweeted out that he’d been able to boot Linux on the T8010 (Apple A10 SoC which is found in the iPhone 7(+), iPad 6/7 & iPod Touch 7) along with some pictures as evidence that the Linux kernel was able to reach the shell and accept commands!

In a nutshell, this means that development on getting a useable Linux distribution on modern iOS devices is currently on-going in some form or another although it doesn’t directly imply an end-user release any time soon. It’s important to note that drivers may need to be written for various hardware devices so even if a Linux distribution is released, some features like graphics acceleration may not be available as it’s extremely difficult to write drivers from scratch. That being said, Luca Todesco’s revelation about getting Linux up and running is undoubtedly exciting especially for iPad users as the device could be turned into a fully fledged hybrid tablet with a desktop Linux distribution and perhaps, we’ll also see Android some day!

Switch Releases: N-Xplorer 0.6.4 & Sys-con 0.5.3 released

Moving over to the Switch front, which very recently saw a significant update to its Ubuntu distribution L4TUbuntu, we have updates to CompSciOrBust’s N-Xplorer and Cathery’s Sys-con. Starting off with N-Xplorer, a VitaShell-inspired file manager for the Switch that’s seeing active development, it received an update to version 0.6.4 which brings along:

• The addition of parental controls when accessing the NAND

  While N-Xplorer isn’t as feature-packed as Joel16’s NX-Shell, its developer is hard at work at making it even better and perhaps, we’ll even see compatibility with VitaShell themes some day as it’s inspired from it!

• The text editor gained GUI-based options for Save (and exit), Save As (and exit) and Exit without saving
  • As a result of this, the shortcuts with the ‘-‘ button in the text editor have been removed
• A bug was fixed which mounted the user partition to both user:/ and sys:/

You may grab N-Xplorer 0.6.4 from this link. Its developer plans to add the ability to sort files by size/name in the next version together with improving sub-menu text.

Changing subject over to Cathery’s offerings, sys-con, a sysmodule letting you use DualShock 3/4, XBOX One X/S and 360 controllers on your Switch, has been updated to version 0.5.3. This minor update brings along:

• The maximum and minimum stick values generated by the sysmodule have been fixed and games like Xenoblade Chronicles 2 and Resident Evil 4 no longer crash
• When swapping the left analogue stick with the d-pad, the analogue values generated by the d-pad are clamped to a circle radius
• You can now manually enable/disable sys-con from Kosmos Toolbox’s toolbox menu provided you have the latest version

You may grab the latest version of sys-con from this link. Cathery may be donated to via Ko-fi.

Conclusion

There’s also some more stuff to be excited when it comes to the Switch as Hydr8gon plans to release a WIP version 0.1 build of NooDS for the console and Kirikiri will be seeing some substantial updates in the next version while sys-screenuploader 0.0.7 is out. On the iOS front, the Apple TV 3rd generation jailbreak, etasonATV gained support for AppleTV3,1 units.

The post News: Luca Todesco (Qwertyoruiop) manages to get Linux booting on Apple A10 devices & the Switch sees updates for N-Xplorer (VitaShell-inspired file manager) & Cathery’s sys-con appeared first on Wololo.net.

With the Switch’s library expanding by the day, an active homebrew scene and every model currently on the market supposedly being hackable with Team Xecuter’s hacking solution, the appeal of getting a Switch right now keeps increasing by the day. Now, you can be certain that you won’t regret getting a Mariko (Neon Blue) Switch as Nintendo has confirmed that we won’t be seeing a new Switch model this year!

Nintendo not planning on releasing a new Switch model this year

Earlier this year, the reliable-at-times Taiwanese industry news website DigiTimes reported that Nintendo planned on introducing a brand new Switch model in the middle of 2020.

If you were excited for a Switch Pro, your wait will be extended for quite a while

As a result, many speculated that Nintendo was thinking about releasing an upgraded version of the Switch similar to the PlayStation 4 Pro and XBOX ONE X hardware refreshes but now, these rumours have been dispelled through a Corporate Management Policy Briefing.

In this recently-held briefing which described financial results for the fiscal year ending March 2020 for which slides were published (below), the folks at Nintendo clearly stated that they “have no plans to launch a new Switch model during 2020” meaning that the rumoured Switch Pro won’t be coming any time in the immediate future. With this in mind, the two Switch models available till the end of this year will be Mariko Switch units and the Switch Lite, both of which are said to be vulnerable to Team Xecuter’s upcoming hacking solution.

Should I go grab a Switch now then?

With Team Xecuter’s hacking solution supposedly on the horizon, getting a Mariko Switch now is a pretty good idea if you like the game library since no Pro will be coming this year

As things stand, you won’t be regretting a Mariko Switch purchase due to the immediate release of a Switch Pro unit.

Furthermore, current Mariko units on the market are supposedly vulnerable to Team Xecuter’s solution which further adds to their appeal. That being said, it’s important to give the Switch’s library a hard look since many titles are also available on PS4, XBOX One or PC so while it may be appealing, it’s possible that most games you want to play are playable elsewhere.

On the other hand, current Switch models aren’t able to output 60FPS in numerous titles like Witcher 3 so if living with 30FPS isn’t your jam, you might be better off waiting for a Switch Pro since it may contain hardware that’s powerful enough to push much more FPS. That being said, it’s unlikely that the Switch Pro will be hackable immediately since Team Xecuter’s hacking solution will probably be patched as soon as it’s released.

Conclusion

In other news, Mikage’s (emerging 3DS emulator for Android) developer published a progress report detailing what’s been going in the last 5 months of 2019.

Slides of Nintendo’s Corporate Management Policy Briefing: https://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/pdf/2020/200131_2e.pdf

The post Switch News: Nintendo won’t be releasing a new Switch model this year – You can go buy a Mariko Switch for hacking without regrets! appeared first on Wololo.net.

Lately, things have got pretty interesting on the Nintendo front, first with them stating that there’ll be no new Switch model this year and now, with the release of Tesla for the Switch which will surely be used to create some interesting stuff. In this article, we’ll also be looking at how hacker RyanRocks landed himself into hot water by hacking into Nintendo’s servers and possessing child pornography.

Switch News: WerWolv releases Tesla – a comprehensive in-game overlay solution allowing for mod menus to be shown while playing games!

Ever since the Switch got hacked, developers have been hard at work creating sysmodules in order to add functionality like DualShock 3/4 controller support, f.lux-like screen overlays and much more but until now, there’s been no elegant solution to display on-screen menus within games similar to what the PSVita can achieve. However, that has now changed since developer WerWolv has just released Tesla which is a 3-part solution letting developers display temporary menus while a game is running!

Tesla allows for pretty nice in-game screen front-ends so we’ll probably be getting some interesting stuff making use of it!

According to its GBATemp release thread, Tesla consists of 3 parts namely:

• NX-ovlloader which is nx-hbloader in sysmodule form
  • It runs in background and has the ability to load OVL files (NRO overlays)
• Tesla Menu which is a piece of software similar to hbmenu
  • Its main use is that of letting you choose which overlays to run
• Libtesla which is a development library allowing for the easy creation of in-game menus
  • This library takes care of layer creation, UI drawing and the general user experience

With the above software, developers can now create in-game overlays which allow on-the-fly changing of sysmodule settings, applying cheats, playing music in background, outputting rendering statistics (FPS) and much much more. Without a doubt, this is something that will allow developers to reach into other aspects of Switch homebrew creation so it may become an integral part of the Switch scene going forward!

You may read more about Tesla and how it works by checking out its GBATemp Thread.

Nintendo News: Ryan Hernandez, RyanRocks, pleads guilty to hacking Nintendo’s servers and child pornography possession

Shifting focus over to other news related to Nintendo, Ryan Hernandez who’s known as RyanRocks online, ended up in hot water because he hacked into Nintendo’s servers multiple times while also being in possession of child pornography.

With RyanRocks pleading guilty, he’s now likely to face around 3 years in prison, a hefty fine and registration as a sex offender

According to a recent article by the US Department Of Justice, RyanRocks has been playing with fire for quite a while on the hacking front and the following points summarise the important parts of the case:

• In 2016, while he was still 17, RyanRocks used phishing techniques in order to get credentials of a Nintendo employee which allowed him to download secret files from Nintendo’s servers
  • These files, which were subsequently leaked online, included information about the then-upcoming Nintendo Switch
  • In October 2017, the FBI warned him against hacking into Nintendo’s servers any longer but these warnings were ignored
• Between at least June 2018 to June 2019, RyanRocks continued hacking into Nintendo’s servers and obtaining confidential information while also bragging about exploits he found in Nintendo’s servers
  • He also created a forum called ‘Ryan’s Underground Hideout’ which contained information about weaknesses in Nintendo’s servers and some of the information he illegally obtained from their servers
• Moving on to June 2019, the FBI searched RyanRock’s home and searched numerous computers and hard drives.
  • On these, they found lots of confidential files from Nintendo and a lot of child pornography
• Now, RyanRocks has pleaded guilty to the charges brought against him having to do with computer fraud & abuse and possession of child pornography, both of which carry hefty prison terms
  • He’s also agreed to pay close to $260,000 to Nintendo due to the damage caused by his hacking
  • Under the plea agreement, prosecutors and defense attorneys have recommended a 3 year prison term

To read more about RyanRock’s case, you can check out this link on the United States’ DOJ website.

Conclusion

In other news, Mesen 0.9.9 and MAME 0.218 have been released together with bsnes-hd beta 10.2. On the PSVita-front, the console received AM2R 1.4.3 thanks to tijesef; it contains improvements over its pre-existing AM2R port alongside some fixes from the Switch port.

The post News: WerWolv releases Tesla, an in-game overlay solution for the Switch allowing for cheat menus, stat viewers and more & hacker RyanRocks, who leaked Switch-related material from Nintendo’s servers, risks spending years in jail for hacking and child pornography possesion appeared first on Wololo.net.

Today’s one of those days in which exciting news stretches far and wide as there’s something in store having to do with Sony & Nintendo’s latest consoles and iOS devices. In this article, we’ll be looking at Yuzu’s Vulkan Renderer becoming available in public builds, GPCS4 running a commercial game with some success and checkra1n finally being ported to Linux!

Emulation News: Yuzu’s Vulkan Renderer no longer Early Access-exclusive & ‘We Are Doomed’ gets in-game in GPCS4

Yuzu’s Vulkan Renderer is finally available in Mainline builds, a little later than the initially promised ‘sometime in December’ ETA (Tweet)

In the beginning of December, the folks behind Yuzu delivered one of the most-requested features for the emulator which was Vulkan rendering but kept it exclusive to Early Access (Patreon) builds to iron out larger issues and incentivise more people into donating. Now, the Vulkan graphics renderer has been merged into Yuzu’s main branch meaning that public builds of the emulator now include it; this primarily results in notable performance boosts for AMD GPU users and moderate ones for Intel GPU users since Vulkan support on these platforms is better than that of OpenGL. As usual, it must be noted that you still need a relatively powerful computer to be able to play even simpler Switch titles and Vulkan rendering won’t do any miracles if you’re using a PC that’s not up to scratch!

You may read more about Vulkan rendering in Yuzu by checking out this blog post on the matter. Mainline (public) builds containing the Vulkan rendering backend can be found here. You may donate to Yuzu via Patreon.

Moving onto Sony’s current home console, efforts to emulate it have been going on for quite a while and in June of last year, a closed-source emulator called Spine managed to load and run ‘Megaman Legacy’ and ‘We Are Doomed’ pretty well.

GPCS4 can now run ‘We Are Doomed’ and with some optimisations, it may actually become playable!

However, its development seems to have slowed down and no more builds have been released since mid-2019 meaning that we might not be hearing much about it since nobody else can pick up the work since its source code isn’t available.

Now, another PlayStation 4 emulator is in the spotlight and this time, it’s Inori’s GPCS4 which has been in development for quite a while. Thanks to recent developments, its developer Inori updated its README to inform us that ‘We Are Doomed‘, a commercial title also runnable in Spine, is now in-game, can display graphics and is able to be played. However, it’s important to note that the frame rate is too low for the game to be considered playable as there are no graphical optimisations present but there are plans to implement these together with improved controller input handling.

You may read more about developments relating to GPCS4’s by checking out its README. A Discord Server is also available.

iOS Jailbreak News: Checkra1n 0.9.8 released with Linux port, iOS 13.3.1 support, a new CLI and more!

Ever since checkra1n’s release in November, iOS devices with an A11 or older SoC became hackable on the latest firmware since the checkm8 exploit it uses is hardware-based and unpatchable. However, the community has had one major gripe with checkra1n which was its exclusivity to macOS but that has just changed since its long-awaited Linux port is finally here!

You can finally jailbreak your iOS 13 device without owning a Mac or running Hackintosh on your PC which is more difficult than it sounds on certain hardware!

Earlier today, checkra1n 0.9.8 was released and this includes:

• Support for Linux on 32/64-bit x86 and ARM platforms meaning that it can even run on your Raspberry Pi!
  • Instructions on how to use it can be found here
• Support for iOS 13.3.1 which is the current version of iOS
• An option has been added which lets you jailbreak iOS versions that checkra1n isn’t officially compatible with
  • This option is usually needed when Apple releases a new version of iOS and checkra1n isn’t updated yet. It’s also useful for those on beta versions of iOS
• A new CLI has been introduced with support for fast DFU, the ability to set custom boot-args and a –version flag
• Low-Level patching is now done by pongoOS
  • PongoOS is a low-level OS that’s able to directly interface with the hardware and even boot other OSes like Linux
• Many bug fixes & webra1n (web-based GUI for headless solutions)

You can grab checkra1n from its official website by selecting the platform of your choice.

Conclusion

Staying on the topic of iOS jailbreaking, Brandon Azad of Project Zero plans to release a kernel exploit which provides R/W access to kernel. This exploit, which can be used to make a jailbreak according to pwn20wnd, supports all iOS devices including the iPhone 11 and is compatible with iOS 13.3 and below. The PSVita received Noboru, a manga reader by Creckeryop.

The post News: Yuzu’s Vulkan Renderer is now in public builds, ‘We Are Doomed’ can get in-game on GPCS4 (PS4 emulator) & checkra1n 0.9.8 released with Linux and iOS 13.3.1 support! appeared first on Wololo.net.

PlayStation 4 homebrew/hacking releases are few and far apart between but today, PS4HEN received an important update that’ll surely please many! In this article, we’ll also be looking at NXController for the Switch which lets it be controlled via a keyboard.

PlayStation 4: PS4HEN 2.1.2 released with FW 7.02 spoofing support, support for external HDDs with 7.xx format and more!

PS4HEN 2.1.2 is now out so if you’re an FW 5.05 PS4 owner, you should probably look into updating provided you use PS4HEN

PS4HEN is a homebrew enabler for FW 5.05 by SiSTR0 that offers a decent deal of functionality over just letting you run homebrew. Among this functionality, we find Rest Mode Support, Debug Settings, VR Support, Remote Package Install and some more which are pretty useful to many PlayStation 4 owners looking to get the most out of their console.

Recently, it was updated to version 2.1.2 and this version brings along:

• Support for external HDDs with firmware 7.xx format
• The spoofed firmware version is now 7.02 which is the latest firmware
• Support for Debug Trophies
• A patch for sys_dynlib_dlsym
• Together with version 2.1.2 Beta – some more games were fixed, Rest Mode now works better and Printf to UART has been removed

To learn more about PS4HEN and download it, follow this link to its thread on PSXHAX.

Switch: NXController 1.0.1 released allowing you to play games on your Switch with a keyboard via a computer

While many console owners are ready to argue that gamepads are the best way to play any type of game, those who grew up gaming on a PC may disagree and still prefer to play some titles like FPS games with a keyboard and mouse. A few days ago, NXController was released in order to bring Switch owning keyboard-lovers some joy since it allows you to play games on your Switch with a keyboard albeit without a mouse for now.

NX-Controller, by wwwwwwzx, is composed of a sysmodule and application that let you connect to your hacked Switch via WiFi and transmit keyboard inputs to it.

Ever wanted to play games on your Switch with a keyboard? Now, you can and there’s even a CFW-less solution!

These inputs are in turn read as controller presses mapped to a Nintendo Switch Pro Controller so you can effectively play any title you want with it although not all will work well as FPS games are probably unplayable for most until mouse support gets added. However, some RPG titles may work just fine especially if they’re 2D because you needn’t bother with changing the camera’s angle.

This solution is composed of main two parts, which all need to be downloaded and installed, namely:

• Sys-botbase, a sys-module by olliz0r, letting you read/write to the Switch’s main memory and run scripts
• The NXController application which is a client for Windows, Linux and Mac with which you connect to your Switch
• You may need to install ldm_mitm if you want to use it with games such Pokemon Sword & Shield which use local WiFi.

To learn more about NX-Controller which was initially released on Sunday and received an update on Monday, follow this link to its GBATemp Thread which also contains installation instructions.

Conclusion

In other news, the folks over at RetroArch published a core progress report which contains some significant news for Dreamcast, Saturn and Nintendo 64 cores among others. NX-Cord 0.2, an unofficial Switch Discord client, has been released with audio improvements, less crashes and more!

The post PS4 & Switch Releases: PS4HEN 2.1.2 released with FW 7.02 spoof, support for external HDDs w/ 7.xx and Debug Trophies Support; Switch gets NXController 1.0.1 letting you play games with a keyboard! appeared first on Wololo.net.

It’s a fact that the PlayStation Vita had an extremely good run when it comes to homebrew scene releases with some very nice plugins like Electry’s PSVshell being released just 2 months ago. Now, a long-standing request seems to be in the process of being fulfilled as TheFlow is in the process of creating a save state plugin for the Vita! In this article, we’ll also be looking at the release of SysDVR 3.0 for the Switch which brings some cool stuff to the table.

PSVita News: TheFlow announces he’s been working on a save state plugin and is currently looking for names

While he’s taken a bit of a back seat for a while, TheFlow still seems interested in the Vita and we’ll be getting a save state plugin for it sometime! – Tweet

Without a doubt, one of the most iconic PSVita developers is TheFlow as his software, which includes VitaShell and Adrenaline, is installed on practically any hacked Vita or PSTV console not to mention the hacking solutions such as h-encore & h-encore2 he’s released. While his activity on the Vita front has slowed down a bit, he’s still a disciple of the homebrew scene and yesterday, he tweeted out that he’s been working on a save state plugin in his spare time.

Save states are similar to taking a snapshot of a game in a specific moment in time from which you can continue the game at a later time; they are available in a wide variety of emulators and even in Adrenaline for the PSVita.

You may be able to weigh in on the decision about the name for the plugin if you read this article in time (I picked Chronos as I love Chrono Trigger ;)) – Poll

While they’re considered cheating by some in the online community, they’re particularly useful for less hardcore gamers who don’t want to waste time by starting a level from the beginning after they fail to make a tricky jump or aren’t successful in defeating a difficult boss.

As of right now, not much information is known about the plugin but TheFlow is currently holding a Twitter poll letting the community choose a name from DejaVu, Chronos, Omoide and Vitality. Currently, no ETA has been given so it may take weeks/months before we see a relase and anyone asking TheFlow for an estimate on Twitter might end up being banned by him

To follow the latest developments from TheFlow himself, you can check out his Twitter account. You may donate to him via Patreon.

Switch Release: Exelix11 releases SysDVR 3.0 with proper audio / video sychronisation

As we all know, the regular Switch allows you to play games both in handheld mode and on the big screen by docking it next to a TV/monitor. However, Nintendo doesn’t allow you to stream its screen over a local network so if you wish to play Switch games on your laptop or capture live gameplay footage without a capture card, you’re out of luck but thankfully, the homebrew scene has had a solution for a while.

With SysDVR 3.0, you can directly use the Switch stream in OBS without any form of middleware! (Image)

This solution, which goes by the name SysDVR, is a sysmodule by Exelix11 which lets you stream Switch games that support video recording over USB or a local network thus letting you play them on a larger screen without the dock. Furthermore, the sysmodule may see some interest by Switch Lite owners when Team Xecuter releases their hacking solution for the console since it doesn’t support output to a larger screen as it lacks dock support although it’s important to note that there’s the sysmodule comes with a 1 second delay so you’ll see the results of your controller input quite a while later.

Now, SysDVR 3.0 has been released and this comes with:

• RTSP Streaming which means that audio/video are now properly sychronised when using the network streaming mode of the sysmodule
  • This also fixes lag issues although they may still happen due to an unstable connection
  • It’s now possible to use software such as OBS with SysDVR
  • Latency may be slightly higher than previous solutions and it’s recommended to use mpv rather than VLC
• 3 streaming modes have been added and one’s been removed
  • +: Direct RTSP from SysDVR (you don’t need SysDVR-client for this)
  • +: TCP Bridge
  • +: RTSP mode in UsbStream
  • -: TCP Streaming Mode (this has been replaced by a TCP bridge mode)
• The USB Streaming client has been renamed to SysDVR-Client

You may grab SysDVR 3.0 from this link. It’s important to check out the README as the setup guide has been changed significantly with this release. You may donate to Exelix11 on Patreon to get earlier access to new updates.

Conclusion

In the Switch scene, there have been some other releases including sys-clk-Overlay which uses Tesla in order to provide an on-screen overlay for changing overclocking settings. The emulation scene has also seen some stuff including byuu 0.8 and the publishing of an interesting read about the GBA Infrared Adapter on Shonumi’s Page.

The post News: TheFlow working on a save state plugin for PSVita with a name poll going on & SysDVR 3.0 released for the Switch allowing for screen streaming over network with properly sychronised audio/video! appeared first on Wololo.net.

For a little over a month, Team Xecuter have been mostly silent about their upcoming solution for the Switch but now, they’ve finally broken the silence. Thankfully, the news they brought is pretty good as their hacking solution is now in the testing phase and its name has been revealed!

Team Xecuter initiates testing phase by opening it up to 300 modders & reveals name of hacking solution

Team Xecuter’s hacking solution seems to be in advanced stages so we may see a March/April/May release!

Following the trend with news about Team Xecuter’s hacking solution for the Switch, the latest report on its progress comes from ub3r1337, a member of MaxConsole’s writing staff. This report, which emits some pretty good news, states that Team Xecuter have been hard at work during the Chinese New Year holidays to improve their hacking solution even though they haven’t been too vocal about it and it’s now in a pretty advanced stage as they’ve initiated a public testing phase.

According to a communication they’ve made with MaxConsole, the public testing phase isn’t for the lighthearted and before one applies, they have to meet the following prerequisites:

• Basic soldering skills are absolutely required

  Team Xecuter’s hacking solution can be tested by up to 300 known modders to find out hidden issues! (Image from previous leak)

  • It’s important to note that the main aim of the testing phase is to help Team Xecuter find bugs so units that are sent out may not be perfect
• Some time to report back to them with concerns and how the process went is required
• You must have references from trusted scene members or some form of reputation online
• Obviously, you need to own an ipatched Switch, Mariko Switch or a Switch Lite in order to apply for a pre-production test unit
• If you think that you fit the criteria above, you may send an email to ‘wholesale@xecuter.com’ and hope that you’re one of the lucky 300 testers chosen

Other than announcing the beginning of the testing phase, Team Xecuter has also revealed the names of their hacking solutions which are SX Core presumably for the fusee-gelee vulnerable/ipatched/mariko units and SX Lite presumably for the Switch Lite.

Is it safe to get a Switch for hacking now?

All Switch units on the market right now are said to be compatible with Team Xecuter’s hacking solution although this may change after it’s publicly released since Nintendo may patch it with a new hardware revision

As things stand, all Switch units including the Switch Lite are said to be vulnerable to Team Xecuter’s hacking solution. However, after the public release of the hacking solution, it’s likely that Nintendo will create a new hardware revision for both mariko units and the Switch Lite to patch the hardware-backed vulnerability that’s being used although it’s anyone’s guess how long they’ll take.

As a result, it’s probably a good idea to grab yourself a mariko Switch or a Switch Lite soon if you’ve been thinking about doing so since Team Xecuter’s hacking solution seems to be in pretty advanced stages. Furthermore, Nintendo has announced that they don’t intend to release a new Switch model (such as a Switch Pro) in 2020 so you needn’t worry about not having the latest and greatest for a while. That being said, this claim should be taken with a pinch of salt as they weren’t too forthcoming about their plans to release the DS Lite and 3DS XL some years back [thanks @MrFwibbles for the link!].

Conclusion

Moving away from the Switch scene, pwn20wnd has announced that he will release an iOS 13.3 jailbreak for Apple A12 & A13 devices (iPhone Xs/11/Pro 3rd gen/Air 3/Mini 5) in the coming hours provided that those currently testing it find no major bugs. Unlike previous jailbreaks, this one will be installable through AltStore or AltDeploy as Cydia Impactor hasn’t been updated yet.

Source: https://www.maxconsole.com/threads/team-xecuter-announces-testing-phase-for-sx-core-and-sx-lite-mods.55380/

Featured image is from MaxConsole.

The post Switch News: Team Xecuter begin the testing phase for upcoming Switch hacking solution & up to 300 modders can sign up to receive a pre-production unit – Names revealed to be SX Core and SX Lite! appeared first on Wololo.net.

With the amount of coronavirus infections having reached over 67,000 and the death toll surpassing 1.5 thousand, it’s no surprise that various parts of the industry have been affected and this also includes the production of Team Xecuter’s upcoming modchips. In this article, we’ll be looking at the potential delay in the start of public testing of TX’s new hacking solution due to the virus.

Team Xecuter’s testing phase may start later due to coronavirus

Earlier this week, Team Xecuter announced the start of the testing phase for their upcoming SX Core and SX Lite hacking solutions for ipatched/mariko units and Switch Lite units respectively.

Team Xecuter’s SX Core and SX Lite have generated a huge deal of interest but due to the Coronavirus, things may have to be delayed a bit

This testing phase allows up to 300 known scene modders who have soldering skills and qualifying hardware to apply to receive a pre-production modchip in order to give feedback which will ultimately help Team Xecuter create a more robust final product. In the days following the announcement, numerous modders applied to be part of the testing effort but then, Team Xecuter gave them some unfortunate news which was shared to us by a trusted scene member.

This unfortunate news consists of Team Xecuter potentially having to delay the start of their testing phase since ‘it might take another 2 weeks’ before they’ll be able to ship modchips due to the Coronavirus. This is because the factory where the modchips are being produced is closed presumably due to concerns about the Coronavirus as Chinese authorities are imposing various measures in order to stop the spread of the virus.

What may be the result of the delay?

It’ll probably be taking a bit longer before you can run SX OS 3.0 on your Switch Lite so patience is key now!

If the 2 week delay takes place, activities related to the SX Core/Lite modchips will be shifted quite a bit and perhaps, we’ll be seeing a release closer to the middle of this year (maybe April-June) rather than early this year. On the bright side, it means that Nintendo will take longer to get its hands on the modchips and start creating new hardware revisions to patch the hardware issue so this may just give you more time to decide on buying a Switch console for hacking.

However, things still seem promising when it comes to Team Xecuter delivering but a public release may take a bit longer due to the coronavirus. Furthermore, the Chinese government may opt to introduce further restrictions if infection rates keep on rising so there may be some issues with production even when the units for the testing phase are eventually produced.

Conclusion

If your currently unhackable Switch is there collecting dust, you may be interested in some recent homebrew scene releases for other platforms like RetroArch r3 for the PS4 and an English translation patch for Catherine: Full Body on the PSVita!

The post Switch News: Team Xecuter’s testing phase ‘might take another 2 weeks’ to kick off due to Coronavirus according to emails sent out to accepted testers appeared first on Wololo.net.

Until the PlayStation 5 and XBOX Series X are released, the gaming world is still lingering on with the 8th generation of consoles as the Switch makes part of it. In this article, we’ll be looking at the release of mGBA 0.8.1 for which there’s a Switch port, more 60FPS mods for the console and a report that there may be unit shortages in April in the West.

Emulation News: mGBA 0.8.1 released with fixes relating to stability, accuracy, the Qt front-end and the SDL version

Despite not being around for too long compared other GBA emulators as it was initially released in 2014, endrift‘s mGBA managed to attract a good number of users and fans.

This happened thanks to the fact that it officially supports multiple platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux, PSVita, 3DS, Wii and Switch), has some unique features like the ability to upscale 3D graphics and comes with pretty good game compatibility while maintaining good performance even on lower-end hardware.

Thanks to a good degree of compatibility and many features, mGBA has become a major player in the GameBoy emulation scene!

Now, version 0.8.1 has been released and this somewhat minor update brings along:

• Fixes to various areas of GBA emulation including Memory access, Video and the BIOS
  • A race condition and integer overflow issue were fixed in the Core as well
• Many fixes to the Qt front-end that’s used in the desktop version
  • This includes stuff like fixing missing OSD messages, the window title not updating after shutting down a game, color selection in asset view and more
• The Switch port now lets you adjust the OpenGL scale while it’s running
• DirectSound is used as the default audio driver on Windows
• The non-SDL build was fixed and some other minor fixes/updates

You may grab mGBA 0.8.1 from this link and make sure you choose the platform of your choice.

Switch News: 10 more 60FPS mods drop since December & shortages in Europe/NA may occur in April

For quite some time, masagrator and Kirby567Fan have been creating 60FPS for the Switch since the console has more power than Nintendo allows it to use mostly due to battery and longevity concerns.

Ever fancied playing DOOM in 60FPS on your Switch as it should be played in the first place? Well, now you can provided you don’t mind overclocking it to the max!

However, some people don’t mind overclocking their console for the best gaming experience and as a result, 60FPS mods came about which almost always require some degree of overclocking.

As per a Reddit thread posted yesterday, the last 2.5 months have brought 60FPS mods for the following 10 games:

1. Assassin’s Creed: The Rebel Collection
2. Call Of Juarez: Gunslinger
3. Darksiders 2
4. Darksiders: Genesis
5. DOOM (2016)
6. Pawarumi
7. Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales
8. Dark Souls
9. Luigi’s Mansion 3
10. Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch

Staying on the subject of the Switch, Bloomberg reported earlier today that it’s likely that there’ll be shortages of Switch consoles in Europe and North America starting from April when current stock is sold. As expected, this is a direct result of the coronavirus outbreak in China which also might also affect the beginning of the testing phase for Team Xecuter’s upcoming SX Core and SX Lite hacking solutions as some factories are closed due to fears of the virus spreading. With this in mind, it may be a good idea to think about grabbing a Switch now if you’re planning to gift it to someone during the Easter season or if you’re still wondering whether or not to get a Switch for hacking since Bloomberg reports that it’s already difficult to find a Switch console in Japan!

Conclusion

In other news, Julius, a Caesar 3 game engine which supports the Vita and Switch, has been updated to version 1.3.0. Cemu 1.17.2, which comes with some Vulkan fixes and CPU emulation improvements, was released to Patreon backers a few days back with a public release expected on the 21st of February.

The post News: mGBA 0.8.1 released with many fixes, 10 more 60FPS mods for the Switch including for DOOM 2016 & Switch shortages expected in April in Europe/NA appeared first on Wololo.net.

With the Nintendo Switch seeing good sales figures and the Switch Lite selling over 5 million units in its first 3.5 months, Nintendo’s decided to add a new colour to the line-up and now, it’s possible to pre-order that colour even in North America! In this article, we’ll also be looking at PlayStation’s absence from both PAX East and GDC.

Switch News: Coral Switch Lite will also be available in North America with pre-orders already being taken

A few days ago, Nintendo announced that they were going to add a new Coral colour to the Switch Lite line-up together with the yellow, grey and turquoise colours already available.

If you really like the new Coral colour, then you’ll be able to get a Switch Lite in that colour starting from April 3rd if you’re in NA! (Source)

However, initial reports hinted that it was only going to be available in Japan for now but then the ‘Nintendo Of America’ Twitter account tweeted out that the console will also be available in North America starting from the 3rd Of April. That being said, there’s currently still no word on when/if the Coral colour will be make it to markets in Europe, Australia and South Korea so if you really want the new colour, you’ll probably have to wait longer or deal with importing a console from abroad.

Numerous websites are already taking Pre-Orders for the Coral Switch Lite for the usual $199.99 price which include:

• Amazon
• BestBuy
• Walmart
• Target

PlayStation News: PlayStation won’t be present at PAX East and GDC due to coronavirus concerns

With there being over 74,000 cases of coronavirus in China and more than 2000 deaths, the virus, which is now being referred to as COVID-19, has disrupted manufacturing, flights, shipping and much more.

If you were excited to play some The Last Of Us Part II at PAX East, prepare to be disappointed…

Obviously, the gaming industry has also been affected as it’s being expected that Nintendo will be facing shortages in Switch supply in Europe & North America this April despite them releasing a new Switch Lite colour and Team Xecuter’s SX Core and SX Lite hacking solutions may experience some delay before they start their testing phase.

Now, concern due to the coronavirus has affected Sony’s plans to be present at both PAX East & GDC which are still going to be held in the coming weeks with the former starting on February 27. Other than Sony, OculusVR/Facebook games have also announced their withdrawal from GDC over similar concerns. With this in mind, those who were going to attend PAX East for the PlayStation booths will be sorely disappointed as they’ve now lost their chance to play some upcoming titles including:

• The Last Of Us Part II
• Marvel’s Iron Man VR
• Nioh 2
• Doom Eternal
• Spelunky 2

Conclusion

On a concluding note, Mupen64Plus Next 2.0 has been released with N64DD support, Angrylion/GlideN64 in a single build, Parallel NSP support and an Android port. NX Activity Log 1.2.0 was also released for hacked Switch consoles if you like keeping track of how many hours you sunk into specific games!

The post News: Pre-Orders for the new Coral Switch Lite open in North America despite initial reports of being Japan-exclusive & PlayStation won’t be present at PAX East or GDC due to coronavirus concerns appeared first on Wololo.net.

Over the weekend, console homebrew scenes have seen quite a few interesting releases with stuff being released for the PSVita, Switch and 3DS with the latter’s homebrew scene seeing a bit of a revival recently. In this article, we’ll be looking at BGFTP, Status Monitor Overlay and uae3DS.

PSVita and Switch Releases: BGFTP and Status Monitor Overlay

With BGFTP, you can copy stuff via FTP while playing games meaning that you don’t need to have VitaShell as your only open user application!

Starting off with the PlayStation Vita, GrapheneCt has released yet another plugin for the console following the release of MusicNonStop, LowMemMode and others.

This time around, the plugin is called BGFTP and as its name hints, it’s a homebrew utility letting you run an FTP server in background on your hacked PlayStation Vita or PlayStation TV.

Through this, you can copy ROMs and other types of files to your console while playing games or using your favourite homebew without having to be stuck in VitaShell all the time. Other than simply being pretty convenient, BGFTP also comes with the ability to send you notifications relating to the status of your file transfers so that you can keep an eye of what’s going on.

You may read more about BGFTP in its GitHub README and download it from its GitHub Release Page.

Masagrator’s Status Monitor Overlay lets you see how your Switch is doing if that’s your thing!

Moving over to the Switch, masagrator, who’s released numerous 60FPS mods for commercial games, has released Status Monitor Overlay. This overlay homebrew, which makes use of the recently released Tesla environment, lets you see some statistics about the functioning of your system including:

• CPU usage
• CPU, GPU & RAM frequency
• RAM usage categorised into Total, Application, Applet, System and System Unsafe
• SoC, PCB & Skin temperatures
• Fan Rotation Speed

Status Monitor Overlay updates on-screen information every second and you may exit it by holding the left and right stick simultaneously. In the future, masagrator plans to add statistics about GPU usage and the ability to reduce window size.

You may read more about it and download it from its GBATemp Thread.

3DS Release: uae3DS emulator letting you emulate the Amiga 500

Recently, things in the 3DS’ homebrew scene have started looking up again with quite a few releases with the release of 3DSync, Twilight Menu++ 12, 3DStris, Universal Updater 2.3.0 and more.

Fancy playing some Amiga 500 titles like Lemmings on your 3DS? Well, now you can!

Now, the 3DS has just received a new piece of homebrew called uae3DS which is a port of uae4all letting you emulate the Amiga 500.

This port, which was released by Badda this weekend, is currently work in progress but performance is said to be pretty good on both the Old and New 3DS which allows many titles to be playable according to the developer. In the future, there are plans to add quite a few features including:

• A CIA version
• Some form of auto-updater presumably making use of an internet connection
• Keyboard and mouse functionality on the bottom screen
• Key mapping with the ability to save combos to SDCard
• Autofire functionality
• An option to get rid of black borders and do screen scaling/zooming
• Other stuff like moving the status bar to the bottom and attaching/mounting a directory on the SDCard as an emulated hard drive

You may read more about uae3DS and find its download links on its GBATemp thread.

Conclusion

Other than these releases, Cemu 1.17.2, a Wii U emulator, was publicly released as Cemu 1.17.2b after its Patreon exclusivity period ended. This update brings some fixes related to Vulkan and improves multi-core support with some reporting improvements in TLZ: The Wind Waker (changelog).

The post Vita, Switch & 3DS Releases: Background FTP server for the PSVita that can run while playing games, Status Monitor Overlay for the Switch for viewing hardware stats and an Amiga 500 emulator for the 3DS! appeared first on Wololo.net.

Nintendo recently announced on their twitter that they will be holding a playable demo of Animal Crossing: New Horizons, for the first time. They will also have an “immersive” booth which I assume will have things like statues of characters and such in the area. Additionally, you will be able to purchase a “Warp Pipe Pass” which will allow you to essentially skip the queue and play the demo earlier.

Click or tap on the image to enlarge it.

PAX East is an event in Boston that will be held between the 27th of February and the 1st of March. It is an extremely popular gaming event that attracts crowds from all over the world. Companies often come to these events to hold their own special booths to showcase demo’s and such that they will soon release for everyone. I am a huge Animal Crossing fan, so I’m really excited to see some footage of the demo (since I can’t go myself). Considering the amount of info we have on the game (although the Nintendo Direct gave us lots of good stuff), this is going to be so good for the game. I’m sure that a lot of you are also going to be extremely excited for the game, and the demo that will be at PAX East.

The post Animal Crossing: New Horizons will be playable at PAX East appeared first on Wololo.net.

While the PlayStation Vita is already more than 8 years old, community interest in it still hasn’t faltered and following the well-received release of an English translation for Catherine: Full Body, it has now received a PC voices mod for Trails of Cold Steel I and II. The Switch front has also been pretty active as the console finally received an FPS counting solution!

PSVita Release: Dasutein releases PC voices mod for The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel I and II

As the PlayStation Vita is more or less an open book when it come to modding commercial games, numerous individuals have taken a jab at creating their own mods and now, Reddit user ‘Dasutein‘ has released a PC voices mod for Trails Of Cold Steel I and II.

The Trails of Cold Steel titles received pretty good reviews when they were released and the series has quite a good fan base! (Image Source)

These pretty popular games, which form part of the JRPG genre, were originally released in 2013 and 2014 respectively in Japan and 2 years later in Europe for the PS3/Vita with later releases for Windows PCs and the PlayStation 4. This means that the PlayStation Vita is the only way to play these titles natively in a portable manner unless you have some form of Windows hybrid device with physical controls and now, Dasutein mod has made the Vita port even better.

From comments left by Dasutein on Reddit, this mod brings about 5000 extra English voice clips to both titles from the PC version. This results in the main character, Rean, speaking in many more scenes as the PC version has more voiced scenes than the PSVita and PS3 ports when it comes to the English version. Some of the scenes that received voices in the PC version can be found in this YouTube video.

To read more about the mod and grab it for yourself, follow this link to its Reddit Thread (MEGA and Magnet Links available). Installation instructions are included in the README.txt file included with the mod.

Switch Release: Masagrator releases on-screen FPS Counter for Status Monitor Overlay with NX-FPS

Due to the fact that there was no lightweight API to display on-screen overlays until the release of Tesla last month, no usable FPS counter solution was available for the Switch even though it may not sound like much work.

Want an FPS counter for your Switch? Now, you can have it although the overlay itself takes a good chunk of the screen for now! (Image from this video)

Now, the prayers of those who want to know how well their Switch is performing have been answered as masagrator, who’s been behind many 60FPS mods for commercial games, has released NX-FPS letting you see FPS in real-time without external hardware like a capture card.

NX-FPS is a SaltyNX plugin which collects FPS data from commercial Switch games and it currently supports the NVN and EGL APIs used in games. As of right now, it can log two types of data namely:

• PFPS – Pushed Frames Per Second (unsigned integer)
  • This counts how many frames were pushed to the display in the last second
• FPS – Frames Per Second (decimal value)
  • This is calculated from average frame time and gets refreshed with every new frame

Currently, data generated from this plugin can be used with masagrator’s own Status Monitor Overlay as long as you have version 0.4 or above installed and it lets you see FPS statistics in real time. Other developers can also use NX-FPS in their own homebrew overlay solutions as it functions separately from Status Monitor Overlay.

You may read more and download NX-FPS from this link and use it with Status Monitor Overlay. It’s important to state that NX-FPS may cause a kernel panic if you close a game less than 10 seconds after the Nintendo logo appears.

Conclusion

Other than these releases, the folks at RetroArch have posted a progress report on th status of cores which may be cool to check out. Playnite 7.1 has also been released on the emulation front. On the Switch front, the console received a good deal of stuff in the last few hours including a port of Flare, TextReaderOverlay and DrDriller which is a multiplayer Mr Driller clone.

The post PSVita & Switch Releases: Trails Of Cold Steel I & II for the Vita get PC voices mod bringing 5000 more voices & Switch earns on-screen FPS Counter with NX-FPS! appeared first on Wololo.net.

It’s been a while since Nintendo released an update for the Switch and now, they’ve released FW 9.2.0 on the same day when I got my own Switch console! As the update is relatively minor, Atmosphere required few changes and Atmosphere 0.10.3 was released a few hours ago which we’ll be looking at in this article.

Nintendo releases FW 9.2.0 – A pretty minor update by all accounts

The Switch has received yet another minor firmware update bringing its stability levels to groundbreaking levels!

Earlier today, or yesterday depending on where you live, Nintendo released Firmware 9.2.0 for the Switch & Switch Lite which is the first firmware update in 2020 as FW 9.1.0 was released in early December.

This update, which is relatively minor has a pretty short change log which simply states that it brings ‘General system stability improvements to enhance the user’s experience.’ meaning that it’s simply some fixes with no to little user-facing changes.

From a technical point-of-view, SciresM has stated that this update, which dropped on the 3rd anniversary of the console, is relatively minor with only one instruction change in the kernel and minor changes to power management. As a result, it’s probably safe to say that it won’t be breaking much although CFWs and certain tools/homebrew may still require a minor update which was the case with Atmosphere.

Atmosphère 0.10.3 released with FW 9.2.0 support, memory usage improvements and more!

Due to the fact that in FW 9.2.0, the kernel received a minor change, Atmosphere had to be updated and a couple of hours ago, version 0.10.3 was released to add support for the new firmware among other things.

As usual, it’s June 15th again and this time, we have FW 9.2.0 support and some minor yet welcome updates! (Tweet)

For those who aren’t aware, Atmosphere is one of the most popular CFW solutions for the Nintendo Switch and it comes with a good deal of features including emuMMC, the ability to use homebrew, add features to your Switch with sysmodules (and much more) together with active support through regular updates.

Going back to the latest release, the change log reveals that the update is more than just a compatibility update as it includes:

• Obviously, it adds FW 9.2.0 support
• Some improvements were made to memory usage as updates to ‘fatal’ and ‘sm’ shave off around 3MB of RAM usage allowing more RAM to be used for custom sysmodules
• The auto-migration feature that renamed ‘/atmosphere/titles/<program id>’ to ‘/atmosphere/contents/<program id>’ introduced with Atmosphere 0.10.0 has been removed
  • This means that you have to rename the directories yourself if updating from Atmosphere 0.9.4 or older
• It’s now possible to redirect manual HTML content for games, the sdmmc in fusee/sept now exhibits better compatibility with some microSD cards and ‘ro’ received was updated as per changes made in FW 9.1.0

You may grab Atmosphere 0.10.3 from its GitHub Release Page. To use Atmosphere, you need a fusee-gelee vulnerable Switch or an ipatched unit running FW 4.1.0 for now.

Conclusion

Other than Atmosphere being updated, Hekate CTCear Mod 5.1.2 and Nyx 0.8.5 were also released with FW 9.2.0 support and some other notable improvements. When it comes to the PSVita, an unofficial AM2R 1.4.5 release is out with some stuff, but not all, from AM2R 1.5.

The post Switch News: Nintendo releases FW 9.2.0 & Atmosphère 0.10.3 released with FW 9.2.0 support, improvements to memory usage and more! appeared first on Wololo.net.

The emulation scene is no stranger to surprises and today, we have one of these as the Ryujinx folks have demonstrated Mario Kart 8 Deluxe running very well on their emulator despite it being the underdog! In this article, we’ll also be looking at updates to byuu’s most notable offerings including higan, bsnes and byuu.

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe running pretty well in Ryujinx

In the last couple of months, Yuzu continued cementing its place as the de facto Switch emulator that every should resort to thanks to the addition of a Vulkan renderer, the ability to render games at higher resolutions, compatibility with some popular titles Pokemon Let’s Go and much more.

Ryujinx can now run Mario Kart 8 Deluxe pretty well provided you have a capable PC! (Tweet)

However, development on Ryujinx was still going on in the mean while and on Monday, they posted a video on Twitter demonstrating the emulator run the highly-popular Mario Kart 8 Deluxe pretty well although the sound is a tad messed up. Other than simply being a notable feat, the fact that Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is running in Ryujinx means that the emulator supports 32-bit ARM binaries which come bundled with some Wii U ports to the Switch. As of right now, Yuzu doesn’t allow 32-bit binaries to run but work is on-going to implement support for them meaning that titles such as Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, New Super Mario Bros U, Captain Toad and Monster Hunter XX will eventually be runnable in Yuzu.

It’s important to note that a PC with pretty beefy specs is required in order to run Mario Kart 8 Deluxe in Ryujinx with good results as the PC that the video was recorded on has the following specs:

• Ryzen 3900X
• 16GB DDR4 3400MHz RAM
• Geforce GTX 1070

You may download Ryujinx from this link and give your dumped copy of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe a go on your PC! Ryujinx have also published a January/February progress report but it’s Patreon-only which, in my opinion, only reduces the amount of hype/interest in the emulator from the community as the emulator is already an underdog.

Byuu v2, higan v108 and bsnes v115 released with performance improvements, fixes and more!

Last week, developer byuu released a 25-system emulator named ‘byuu’ which they consider to be their most important contribution to the emulation scene as evidenced by the words “I am hoping for this project to be what I’m remembered by after I’m gone one day” in the version 1.0 release post.

Byuu version 2.0 brings performance improvements, support for the FDS & Sega CD and more!

Moving forward a little over a week, byuu seems to have gone on a development spree and has updated their most popular contributions to the emulation scene.

These updates, which will be the last major releases for a while, include:

• Byuu version 2.0 – A multi-system emulator that aims to combine higan’s accuracy with bsnes’ simplicity
  • This comes with huge performance improvements,  run-ahead/rewind features promised in the version 1.0 release post & support for Famicom Disk System and Mega CD
• Higan version 108 – Another multi-system emulator that focuses on high accuracy
  • This release brings about some UI refinements and more accurate emulation
• Bsnes version 115 – A pretty popular SNES emulator that comes with unique features such as HD Mode 7 graphics & true Super Game Boy emulation
  • This update brings along bug fixes for numerous titles which are unmentioned and improvements to the run-ahead feature

Conclusion

Other than these releases, SX OS 2.9.4 Beta has been released with FW 9.2.0 support and L4T Ubuntu 3.0.0 is also out which fixes Moonlight and brings many bug fixes (changes post).

The post Emulation News: Ryujinx can now run Mario Kart 8 Deluxe pretty well thanks to 32-bit ARM binary support & byuu, higan, bsnes all receive notable improvements including massive performance boost in byuu! appeared first on Wololo.net.