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The open source Nintendo Switch Emulator 'yuzu' now has a Vulkan renderer

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The emulation scene never ceases to amaze me. The Nintendo Switch Emulator, yuzu, now had a Vulkan renderer to hopefully boost performance.

Quite early-on for this emulator, with game compatibility not having progressed far yet but yuzu is a very active project being worked on to improve it all the time.

Part of that effort is the new Vulkan renderer, which is available for people who support their work on Patreon to get Early Access to features ($5 a month). They have a blog post up going over some of the details and it's really impressive what they've been able to achieve. Since it's still quite experimental, with plenty of missing features they said they will slowly roll it out for everyone across December.

Actually getting yuzu running is quite involved currently, if you're interested in trying it you can find their quick-start guide here. I think I'll personally be waiting until this is all made easier somehow…

Projects like this become essential when companies move onto their next hardware, emulation enables us to keep classics alive and so they're important to the history of gaming.

See more on the official site, the GitHub and their Patreon.

Hat tip to BrazilianGamer.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly came back to check on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. Find me on Mastodon.
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Ehvis Dec 4, 2019
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The blog post is quite interesting. They're basically saying that Vulkan is for AMD support because AMD OpenGL drivers are terrible. For NVIDIA OpenGL is the way to go because it matches better with how it is used by games.


Last edited by Ehvis on 4 December 2019 at 1:16 pm UTC
cere4l Dec 4, 2019
I'm a bit on the fence about this one, strangely enough I have no issues with emulation, or with paid games.. and yet it seems so odd to have to pay for what is effectively.. pure piracy in 99% of the usecases if not more.
Liam Dawe Dec 4, 2019
Quoting: cere4lI'm a bit on the fence about this one, strangely enough I have no issues with emulation, or with paid games.. and yet it seems so odd to have to pay for what is effectively.. pure piracy in 99% of the usecases if not more.
I get what you're saying, but the whole paying for Early Access to new features is really just a way of supporting the developers of the emulator a little more. It's tough work for sure and all the code ends up open source anyway.

I wouldn't conflate emulation with piracy like that though. There's tons of legitimate use cases of emulation.
Gobo Dec 4, 2019
I like their approach to fetch the needed keys and files from your own handheld. Cannot confirm how involved the process is actually. That is the way to go for these newer, more complex systems if you don't want to be sued. Especially regarding the cartridge dumping for getting games to play.

But the Quickstart guide video has to be a joke, right? Yeah, sure, show how to visit a web page, download and run an application on Windows without ever touching the really pressing issues of the information extraction process itself that is describe further down the written guide. And people speak of hitting a steep learning curve with vim...
x_wing Dec 4, 2019
Quoting: EhvisThe blog post is quite interesting. They're basically saying that Vulkan is for AMD support because AMD OpenGL drivers are terrible. For NVIDIA OpenGL is the way to go because it matches better with how it is used by games.

It's also fun to see that one of the workaround for AMD users was to use Linux instead of Windows
BrazilianGamer Dec 4, 2019
Thanks for posting it Liam
slaapliedje Dec 4, 2019
Quoting: Liam Dawe
Quoting: cere4lI'm a bit on the fence about this one, strangely enough I have no issues with emulation, or with paid games.. and yet it seems so odd to have to pay for what is effectively.. pure piracy in 99% of the usecases if not more.
I get what you're saying, but the whole paying for Early Access to new features is really just a way of supporting the developers of the emulator a little more. It's tough work for sure and all the code ends up open source anyway.

I wouldn't conflate emulation with piracy like that though. There's tons of legitimate use cases of emulation.
Development for games being a huge one. Shout out to the Stella developers, who I know visit this site. I am sure many Atari 2600 homebrews exist because of that emulator.
Desum Dec 4, 2019
Quoting: cere4lI'm a bit on the fence about this one, strangely enough I have no issues with emulation, or with paid games.. and yet it seems so odd to have to pay for what is effectively.. pure piracy in 99% of the usecases if not more.

Hundreds of years from now, it will be thanks to "pirates" that people will be able to play the games we have enjoyed in our lifetimes. NOT the large corporations who cannot even be trusted as custodians of their own source code. "Piracy" isn't even a necessary evil, it is an absolute good for humanity in the long run because of the oppressive copyright scheme we had foisted on us.


Last edited by Desum on 5 December 2019 at 12:00 am UTC
Purple Library Guy Dec 5, 2019
Quoting: Desum
Quoting: cere4lI'm a bit on the fence about this one, strangely enough I have no issues with emulation, or with paid games.. and yet it seems so odd to have to pay for what is effectively.. pure piracy in 99% of the usecases if not more.

Hundreds of years from now, it will be thanks to "pirates" that people will be able to play the games we have enjoyed in our lifetimes. NOT the large corporations who cannot even be trusted as custodians of their own source code. "Piracy" isn't even a necessary evil, it is an absolute good for humanity in the long run because of the oppressive copyright scheme we had foisted on us.
Hundreds of years from now, maybe half a dozen historians will be interested in playing the games we have enjoyed in our lifetimes. And that's assuming civilization survives the next 40 years. Mind you, I think scholarship is important, I'm just saying--in terms of ordinary people, in hundreds of years they'll want to play their games, with maybe a little vogue for playing those retro games from only (hundreds - 20) of years in the future.
(Well, maybe the Koreans will still be playing Starcraft, kind of the way we still play chess. In competitive matches they will ceremoniously have a drink of tea before the match, except for reasons nobody remembers they will have to chant "Do the Dew!" after the first sip)


Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 5 December 2019 at 12:30 am UTC
Desum Dec 5, 2019
Quoting: Purple Library Guy
Quoting: Desum
Quoting: cere4lI'm a bit on the fence about this one, strangely enough I have no issues with emulation, or with paid games.. and yet it seems so odd to have to pay for what is effectively.. pure piracy in 99% of the usecases if not more.

Hundreds of years from now, it will be thanks to "pirates" that people will be able to play the games we have enjoyed in our lifetimes. NOT the large corporations who cannot even be trusted as custodians of their own source code. "Piracy" isn't even a necessary evil, it is an absolute good for humanity in the long run because of the oppressive copyright scheme we had foisted on us.
Hundreds of years from now, maybe half a dozen historians will be interested in playing the games we have enjoyed in our lifetimes. And that's assuming civilization survives the next 40 years. Mind you, I think scholarship is important, I'm just saying--in terms of ordinary people, in hundreds of years they'll want to play their games, with maybe a little vogue for playing those retro games from only (hundreds - 20) of years in the future.
(Well, maybe the Koreans will still be playing Starcraft, kind of the way we still play chess. In competitive matches they will ceremoniously have a drink of tea before the match, except for reasons nobody remembers they will have to chant "Do the Dew!" after the first sip)

Yes, like those half dozen scholars interested in stories like Beowulf other ancient works. Or the pittance of people who care about more "recent" public domain works like Alice in Wonderland, A Princess of Mars or The Night Land. Never mind all the diverse pieces of music and art that are used and remixed to this day.

Perhaps YOU don't care about playing games from before your time (or preserving cultural artifacts in general), but more people than you seem to think do. And emulators and "piracy" are how that's going to happen with video games by and large. Most games will NEVER get source code either released or rewritten. Hell, in the case of SEGA, nearly their entire Saturn catalog's source code is gone.

I'm not in favor of abolishing copyright either, but what we have now is far past excessive and is going to cause a lot of works, not just games, to be lost.


Last edited by Desum on 5 December 2019 at 2:23 am UTC
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