gminustwo/msr2ds v2.0.8

msr2ds 2.0.8

on GitHub

Windows, Linux (x86_64 and ARM64), macOS (Apple Silicon) and Android (arm64).

What changed since 2.0.7

• New menus. The settings menu (F1 or Select) and the launcher have a new look: a dark glass panel, a tab strip you switch with LB and RB, and on/off switches in place of checkboxes. Every option is where it was. The Controls tab is now one page that scrolls as a whole, with headings. Before, its bindings scrolled in a box two rows tall.
• Quick save and Quick load on a controller. Hold Back and press LB to quick save, or Back + RB to quick load. F5 and F8 still work. To use other buttons, choose the button beside Quick save or Quick load (Game tab or Controls tab), then hold the buttons you want until its 5-second count ends. A combo needs two buttons or more, and the triggers count. Because Back is in these combos, Back on its own now opens the menu when you let go of it, not when you press it.
• Dump game textures works (#64). Turn it on on the Textures tab and play. Each texture the game draws is saved once as a PNG named the way Azahar names it, in dump/textures/00040000001BB200/ in the user folder, along with the pack.json a pack needs. The tab counts them and has a button to open the folder. Packs made from a dump also work in Azahar.
• The minimap stays on Samus. It found her marker by its red on the bottom screen, so a Missile Reload Station's red icon could pull it away. It now reads where the game itself draws her marker.
• The Grapple Beam and Ice Beam slots show only once Samus has those beams. Before that, the game's dim placeholder showed in the HUD as a circle.
• Screens the game shows during play, such as an elevator's or a Teleport Station's map, now show over the view the way the pause menu does, instead of beside it. After one of the game's messages, such as the Aeion abilities screen after picking one up, they now appear right away instead of a few seconds later.
• The DNA scanner's map. When an area's last Metroid dies, Samus's scanner shows the way on the bottom screen's map. That map now shows over the view, see-through, so Samus stays visible behind it.
• Map brightness (HUD tab, under Map opacity) brightens the minimap's colors, up to twice as bright. On HDR displays the map could look dim beside the game's highlights.
• Two flashes gone. After a file's Continue, the ship's cockpit picture flashed over the view for a moment. In fullscreen, the game's window flashed at its windowed size when it started.
• Effects no longer go missing after long play (#62). The saved shader caches kept every effect, up to 4096. Once that was full, every effect not seen before was drawn with a slow general-purpose shader, or not drawn at all, until the caches were cleared. On a Mac this was the severe slowdown in #62. The caches now keep the most recently used effects, and there is room for four times as many.
• AMD graphics on Windows in a window, and RivaTuner's frame cap (#49, #61). In both cases presenting a frame can hold up the GPU's queue for most of the frame, and the game's graphics thread waited for it. With AMD in a window that meant about 38 of 60 FPS with uneven frames. With a RivaTuner cap at 120, the game made only 27 new frames a second while the screen still showed 120. The graphics thread no longer waits. On PCs where presenting is quick, nothing changes. The game's own Frame rate setting already caps it, so a separate cap isn't needed. If the game still judders for you, please attach msr-native.log to #49.
• OpenGL: every model tinted yellow on older Intel graphics (#57). The HD 4600's driver claims to support a depth setting the game uses but doesn't apply it, which made the fog thickest on the nearest models. The game now tests that setting at start and does without it where it doesn't work. This isn't confirmed on an HD 4600 yet: please try it.
• Android: "could not open its window" on the app's next start (#63, #58). Closing the launcher left the app's process running, and the next start ran inside it on top of the last run. The app now closes completely with the launcher. The launcher also notices a recomp-android folder copied in while it's open.
• Linux on ARM64 (#60, thanks to @cerroverb). The native code and the AppImage can now be built on 64-bit ARM Linux. On ARM64, the launcher's updater looks for an -aarch64.AppImage.
• If the picture freezes while the sound goes on, the graphics driver has lost the GPU. On NVIDIA graphics, the log now says what the GPU was doing at that moment and includes the driver's own report. If it happens to you, copy msr-native.log from the user folder before starting the game again, since each start replaces it, and attach it to an issue.

Still planned

The phone graphics work planned for this release (lighting worked out per material, clears done by the pass that follows, the 24-bit depth format, and Mali's descriptor reuse) didn't make it into 2.0.8. It's next.

Getting it

• Already have 2.0 or later: open msr-native. The Game tab offers 2.0.8: click Update now.
• Windows (x64): download msr2ds-2.0.8-windows-x64.zip, unzip it anywhere you can write to, and start msr-native.exe. msr-native-direct.exe starts the game without the launcher, for a shortcut, Steam or a frontend.
• Linux / Steam Deck (x86_64): download msr2ds-2.0.8-x86_64.AppImage, make it executable (chmod +x) and start it.
• Linux (ARM64): download msr2ds-2.0.8-aarch64.AppImage and start it the same way. The native code is built on the device itself.
• macOS (Apple Silicon): download msr2ds-2.0.8-macos-arm64.zip, unzip it, move msr-native.app to Applications (or anywhere) and open it. The app is not notarized, so the first time, macOS refuses to open it: choose Open Anyway in System Settings → Privacy & Security, or run xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine msr-native.app.

Native code you already built with 2.0 to 2.0.7 stays valid, including the Android app's, so you don't need to rebuild it. New players: choose your game file on the Game tab, click Build the native code, then Play.

Android (experimental)

msr2ds-2.0.8-android-arm64.apk installs over 2.0.7 and keeps its user folder (your game file, native code and saves). Everything in 2.0.2's notes still applies: you need Android 10 or newer on 64-bit ARM with Vulkan 1.1 or newer, and the native code is built on a PC with Build for Android. The app is signed with a debug key and has no in-app update. If it runs slowly or not at all on your device, please attach msr-native.log (and launcher.log, and any -crashed.log) from the app's user folder to an issue.

Requirements for PC and Mac are as in 2.0 (on a Mac, Apple Silicon and macOS 13 or newer). Since 2.0.5, a PC with OpenGL 3.3 graphics also runs the game. You need your own decrypted dump of Metroid: Samus Returns (USA).