Nintendo Switch Homebrew and Emulation Thread of DO NOT USE HOMEBREW ON THE SWITCH, YOU WILL GET BANNED

It’s so slight an effect that you really can’t see it at all unless you go up close and look for it. Overall the picture is not quite as crisp as if you had nothing applied at all but its still way sharper than bilinear filtering. The screenshots that I took in the sega rally and the nights: into dreams high score threads all have it applied.

EDIT: To save you searching…

If you have a 120+Hz monitor, you can use Retroarch’s black frame insertion feature to get more CRT-esque motion clarity. It’s quite nice.

A gsync / freesync monitor like that would be nice but I can’t really justify the purchase until my current monitor bites the dust. I’m also very fond of playing games on a large 50" hdtv despite the obvious drawbacks, my current 27" monitor is permanently rotated and is only used for shmups.

Yea… I can’t see it :man_shrugging:t2:

But thanks for posting it. Looks very close to just a straight scaled image to my untrained eyes.

I’m just glad you aren’t doing bilinear. There’s few truly “wrong” ways to play. But that I think bilinear interpolation is one of them.

Yeah it’s fantastic. Bilinear just blurs between the pixels where as Pixellate creates an average colour to place between them so is a much more intelligent and effective solution. You see how it works if you really zoom in but in play or in motion the effect is pretty much imperceptible.

Bilinear filtering is in a category of filters alongside stuff like xbrz that I have genuine distain for, couldn’t agree more that it is absolutely wrong to use it with 240p content when there are so many superior methods available.

But unfortunately most people won’t even realise that it is enabled by default in Retroarch and so many other emulators, nor spend the time and effort to find shaders that will do a better job.

Horizontal interpolation looks really good on the Super NT and SNES Mini and will be absolutely critical when playing 8- and 16-bit 240p console games on the Switch’s 720p screen at 3x scale/fullscreen. That’s because a roughly accurate aspect ratio at 3x height (720p) results in non-integer horizontal resolutions (uneven pixels) and will cause that annoying shimmering/wavy effect during scrolling. Horiz interpolation completely fixes this with very minimal horizontal blurring.

So… worth getting a second Switch for homebrew? Does it need to be under a certain firmware at this point or will it not matter going forward?

@BeerMonkey was saying that everything run best on 3.0 and under I think.

Not for long though, that’s due to incompatibility with the existing libraries. Once updated there won’t be any difference and later firmwares will actually be at a benefit due to the possibility of dual booting.

Very cool!

That was before the scene exploded a few weeks ago. Everything being released is for current FW. I think I’ll update my spare switch that’s sitting on base FW. There doesn’t seem to be a need for it thanks to Nvdia.

So if I open my switch there’s no problem upgrading to latest f/w as far as all this is concerned? I mean this from a performance and compatibility standard.

So its like the hackers were holding back with this information until Nintendo said we aren’t doing VC. Probably not but the timing makes it seem like they were at least attempting to not show the world.

The ban hammer is out (I’m OK with this).

A couple of the homebrew developers were banned for making thousands of bogus server requests, likely trying to find a way to get into the online infrastructure to download digital games directly from Nintendo’s servers as happened with the Wii U.

Nintendo isn’t banning users with a hacked Switch.

Tested out Lakka/retroarch today on my switch! Oh man, it’s awesome. No sound support yet and it’s very early, but damn…

Crappy video I took playing one handed:

https://streamable.com/s/1ayz2/swnivl

PS1 runs full speed. As does N64 (N64 and SNES are actually too fast right now) and PSP runs full speed too. Yep, the Switch can be a PSP XL!

And this won’t result in any bans - booting lakka bypasses the switch OS entirely, with the tegra booting lakka instead. As an analogy, it’s like running Linux on a usb drive on a windows computer. Actual switch homebrew may be a bit risky, but who needs that when you can dual boot lakka?!

Yoooooooooooooo

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What PS1 core are you using? Would love to see how Mednafen runs if possible…

That’s pscx rearmed. Tried a few other titles and they all work great, minimal slowdown on fmvs.

The thing is, all of these cores are fully developed and ready to go. All that’s needed is the kinks in Linux on the switch to be ironed out and it’ll immediately become the best retro handheld ever made.

Anyhow…I can’t test any more. I’m off to Italy for a week!

Right, got back into homebrew on my switch. The new updates of SNES9X and VBA retroarch are fantastic - full speed, full sound, no issues. And sleep mode works now, so I can load the exploit once and not worry again.

On the other, darker side of things, piracy is in full swing. And it’s going to fuck things up for legit users as Nintendo are banning individual game carts. I made a post about it here: Reddit - Dive into anything

Right. Firstly, I’m going to state the obvious - don’t pirate.

Sadly, a fair few don’t share the same view and piracy has unfortunately become a steadily increasing problem for the system and Nintendo. What’s worse is that now it is going to affect legitimate users too.

Long story short, Nintendo have unique keys on every Switch gamecard. If the card is dumped (which any custom firmware user can do easily) and that copy is used online, Nintendo will ban it. SciresM has gone into detail on his twitter regarding this: https://twitter.com/SciresM/status/1009436235536871424

“Looks like we’ve got confirmation that Nintendo is banning gamecart certificates (I guess people aren’t taking my advice…). The relevant error for trying to use a gamecard with a banned cert is 0x1F727C – 2124-4025”

What does that mean? Well, that game card is now permanently barred from being used online. Chances are, this will become quite a severe issue with regards to pre-owned titles. And no, there’s no way around it.

From this point on, be especially wary about cheap pre-owned titles. If it’s a craigslist/gumtree sale, test it out first using an online connected console. If it’s on ebay, think twice - and this goes for selling, as you may end up being scammed this way as a seller too.

Hope that’s helpful at least. Fucking sucks though.

That’s a pretty effective but blunt way to handle piracy. It’s sad when piracy hits a still active platform like this.