Big RetroArch announcement

[Harrison]

The developer of RetroArch has announced they are going to be taking the project far more seriously now. Before it was just worked on in their spare time. Now it's going to be getting an update every 2 weeks!

Original announcement: https://www.pcgamesn.com/emulation/retroarch-roadmap

[Demon Cleaner]

Very good news. Latest update was quite long time ago. I mainly use it for LaunchBox, so I'm happy the cores get updated regularly to improve the compatibility and performance. The GUI needs definitely an overhaul, but as I have it running in the background as games launcher, it's not so important to me anymore.

Performance will have a major impact on handheld emulation though, I would like to see some improvements in that department.


(Static Platforms) Add option to not restart RetroArch when launching content with the currently loaded core

That's already interesting, whereas not so important on PC, very useful for a lower spec handheld device.

[J T]

Just occurred to me that the 'ch' at the end of RetroArch is probably pronounced as a hard 'k' sound (like archive, or Noah's boat) rather than what I had previously though - a soft 'ch' like the arch on a building (or archery)

[Harrison]

There have been discussions about that. Some thought it stands for Architecture, as in the framework to run retro emulators. Others thought it stands for Archive. In both cases this could suggest pronouncing it as RetroArK, with a hard K.

But then this was dismissed entirely because recent conversations on discord have confirmed the pronunciation is Arch as in “archway”. But without any reason given. Maybe an arch over every retro system emulation? Or a bridge to reach all systems?

[Demon Cleaner]

Or an arch enemy to Nintendo?

[J T]

I'm going to go with an overarching platform/framework for retro stuff.

Arch also makes me think of the Acorn Archimedes, we had quite a few of those in secondary school but I don't know really how much use they actually got.

[Harrison]

The Acorn Archimedes were brilliant. We had whole IT computer rooms full of them and they did get used a lot. Our IT class was given the shipment of the new Arch A3000 Amiga like systems to unpack and setup. Spent ages messing around with the bundled games.

The hardware was ahead of the Amiga at the time with a more powerful Risc cpu, full 32bit architecture. 256 colour screen mode support for games when the A500 was still 32 colours, and it had far superior multichannel audio and DSP. The Arthur OS, later to be renamed RiscOS was also a really nice operating system, if a little strange compared to most, with no menu systems at the top of windows or screens, instead context sensitive pop out menus via the middle mouse button.

In fact RiscOS is still in development and you can get it completely free for the Raspberry Pi.

[Demon Cleaner]

We had BBCs in school, with those amber monitors.

RetroArch should also implement an update for the program itself, instead of always having to manually download the newest version and overwrite.

[Harrison]

I agree. Maybe now they are working on it now this will happen. However consider the number of platforms using it. Many have very different ways of upgrading ot updating. A RPi or Anbernic builds are a complete new release, whereas on PC is just the program files.