Topic: Latest Updates - DuckStation, NEStopia, Sameboy officially unsupported.

SlashTangent

Developer

Joined Oct 1, 2020

OP

December 5 2021, 7:15pm, last edited December 6 2021, 12:28am

These three cores have been officially deemed as unsupported. Due to several issues with all three of these cores developers have been given permissions to close out tickets for these three cores as long as there doesn't appear to be any real issues with the achievement.

Although these cores are not officially supported you can still earn achievements with them and are considered play at your own risk.

Duckstation - The Duckstation Core in RALibretro while a popular core for players playing PS1 sets has been officially sunsetted by the LibRetro team. They are replacing this core with swanstation which the creators are continuing to release updates and bug fixes for. Since developers cannot properly troubleshoot issues with duckstation it has been deemed unsupported.

A full write up written by televandalist can be found below:

For the past several months, there have been tickets opened by players using DuckStation and a lot of them have been closed due to the dev not being able to reproduce the issue. 

Since we're in the middle of a dev event in which the primary focus is getting the ticket count cut down, a lot of us have been able to narrow down issues with multiple sets. It's also allowed us to confirm that there is something wrong with the achievement processing in DuckStation.

We don't know what the issue is because we currently don't have a way to monitor the behavior of the RAM/achievement processing in DuckStation. However, a lot of the reports have been similar: the achievement didn't work, the player reset or tried again later, and then the achievement worked.

Some examples:

https://retroachievements.org/ticketmanager.php?i=43728 -

this is what got wilhitewarrior talking about it on 12/4/2021.

https://retroachievements.org/ticketmanager.php?i=43741 -

This is from earlier and the player had provided the most info we've had on the issue. He even says that he got an error in the emulator regarding achievements. 

and here's a few random tickets that all point to this issue:

https://retroachievements.org/ticketmanager.php?i=42759
https://retroachievements.org/ticketmanager.php?i=40684
https://retroachievements.org/ticketmanager.php?i=43558
https://retroachievements.org/ticketmanager.php?i=43067
https://retroachievements.org/ticketmanager.php?i=43035
https://retroachievements.org/ticketmanager.php?i=42943

Total mysteries from a troubleshooting standpoint. Deeming it as not officially supported was the right call. If this issue is resolved, then the story will change.

NEStopia: Sram is not exposed.

Sameboy: The core is very unstable and at times can cause memory addresses to become jumbled causing achievements to not pop properly.
Some examples of issues:
https://retroachievements.org/ticketmanager.php?i=42881
https://retroachievements.org/ticketmanager.php?i=42880

~~MagusPC~~

December 5 2021, 7:34pm

Curious to know if its only the Libretro Core that is affected by this issue or the Standalone as well. Anyway, thanks for the info.

xcommander

Joined Aug 5, 2020

December 5 2021, 9:19pm

@MagusPC: Well, according to this ticket, the standalone is affected (I have no idea about the libretro core).

~~bimmy~~

December 5 2021, 9:27pm

Well, without Duckstation, there's no more reason to play Psone games with RA.

surfgirlgamer15

Joined Jan 4, 2017

December 5 2021, 9:27pm, last edited December 5 2021, 10:11pm

[Spam removed by admin]

~~MagusPC~~

December 5 2021, 9:35pm

@xcommander: Interesting, thanks! hmm maybe it could be related to some options DuckStation comes with like Overclocking or CPU Emulation. I remember Resident Evil DC 1 had a false opcode execution when entering the first red room on the right where you can find the Ink Ribbon and a Zombie lays on the floor. Overclocking can also cause a game to crash or creating bugs.

It would be good to know if any of these functions were active when attempting the Achievement.

Soulsderfuchs

Developer

Joined Oct 4, 2020

December 5 2021, 9:39pm

Beetle HW still the best

zxmega

Developer

Joined Jun 24, 2015

December 5 2021, 9:58pm, last edited December 5 2021, 9:58pm

It would be good to know if any of these functions were active when attempting the Achievement.

Yes, CPU overclocking is a big issue, and I only have seen issues with Duckstation core when I was overclocking. What happened is that a memory address was 1-frame forward what it was supposed to be on regular 100% CPU clock, so an achievement didn't triggered because the conditions were expecting that address to be in sync with the others, but maybe that was a very specific case of inacurracy.

~~Freakservo~~

December 5 2021, 10:33pm, last edited December 5 2021, 11:15pm

Shame about Duckstation. It was the only emulator that seemed to function with the Ridge Racer 60FPS demo. =(

I mean, Swanstation works too, but I get odd screen resolutions with it. Peculiar thing.

Blazekickn

Joined Jun 7, 2019

December 5 2021, 11:14pm, last edited March 16 2023, 8:27pm

I've exclusively used duckstation standalone for ps1 achievements and it's worked perfectly fine. Should still be fine to play on, just some tickets may get closed for emulator is/was unstable.

~~Freakservo~~

December 5 2021, 11:18pm

That's good for games like Incredible Crisis, which needs Duckstation to get through one of the minigames.

SlashTangent

Developer

Joined Oct 1, 2020

OP

December 5 2021, 11:21pm

As I said in my post you are free to keep using these cores. They are just play at your own risk.

~~Freakservo~~

December 5 2021, 11:22pm

Sure. Sometimes I misinterpret 'unsupported' with 'being totally removed'. XD My bad.

Crims0nScorpion

Joined Feb 28, 2021

December 6 2021, 2:00am

I only ever used PCSx rearmed myself, never had any problems really

soundogg

Joined Nov 16, 2019

December 6 2021, 7:02am

i use duckstation to play my ps1 games. so am i still ok to keep using duckstation to unlock achevements? im a little confused. what you mean by play at your own risk? sorry for being dumb but i have no idea what tickets mean.