PS5_RetroArch/docs/ACTIVE.md

Active work

Updated: 2026-09-25

Now: Dolphin (GameCube) with Wind Waker

Goal: Wind Waker correct, full speed, with audio, input and saves, stable in long play; then the 6x/UberShader/EFB/MSAA torture profiles. Driver work it needs goes into ../PS5_Vulkan as general fixes with their own probes.

Where it is. The core (libretro/dolphin c6630001e0, Dolphin 2609) builds with tools/build-dolphin.sh and one patch, patches/dolphin/ps5-port.patch, and ships in the title. Wind Waker boots with JIT64 and fastmem, save states save and load, and from my save state on Outset Island the 3D scene, Link and the HUD draw correctly (evidence/dolphin-restart-strips): a ten-frame FIFO log of Link on the ship deck matches desktop Dolphin to resampling (mean difference 1.13-1.16, from 64-71).

What the bring-up needed, by layer (details in docs/PHASE_LOG.md):

• Platform (core patch): guest RAM as one direct-memory allocation mapped at every mirror, the fastmem arena away from the GPU window, JIT code at 0x3_0000_0000, the console's fault context, a 32 MiB code cache. Single-core FIFO playback (Core/Core.cpp) returns to retro_run like the CPU thread does; it hung before.
• Title and frontend: the *at directory family, direct-memory allocations, patches 0089 and 0090.
• Driver (../PS5_Vulkan): R57 border colours, R58 primitive restart, R59 inverted depth, R60 large stages, R62 uniform buffers as byte ranges (fog and matrices), R64 restart state behind SQ_NON_EVENT (the corrupt 3D scene), R65 restart off after a copy's split (stray triangles, minimap).

Test aids (never shipped; the title deletes their files on any launch that is not a test run): /app0/dolphin-options.txt overrides core options for one run; /app0/dolphin-debug.txt names a debug mode: fog, fifo or fifo N (records a FIFO log at frame 300, or N), dump, swloader, cmploader, or objects A B (plays only objects A to B of each FIFO frame, to bisect against desktop Dolphin). The core also copies its first 32 alerts to the trace (dolphin alert:). /app0/ps5-sampler.txt arms the CPU sampler (src/sampler_ps5.cpp); its stall-ms N line sets the late-frame threshold.

Next

The acceptance goal (2026-09-25): Resident Evil 4, Super Smash Bros. Melee and Wind Waker correct, full speed, with audio, input and states, then stable and measured through the profiles in tooling/dolphin-profiles/ (docs/PHASE_LOG.md).

1. Profiles 0, 1 and 2 (1x and 6x) pass on all three games: correct pictures, full speed, display-paced frames, five swapchain images at 120 Hz (docs/PHASE_LOG.md, 2026-09-25). Tolerated: a screenshot's 55 ms read-back leaves its audio window ~0.4% short.
2. The driver's copy throughput: the 55 ms read-back of the 4K output, a 218 ms copy in RE4's load, and Wind Waker's 40-90 read-backs a second, each done by the CPU after a wait for the GPU; Profile 5's EFB copies to RAM depend on it.
3. Profiles 3-10 pass on all three games; the maximum MSAA torture is correct and GPU-bound at 60-97% (uncompressed multisampled surfaces). Profile 9 leaves 2 small direct mappings a reload (unidentified); a state load stalls 250-400 ms while Dolphin recompiles its cleared JIT cache. Profile 11 passes: Melee, RE4 and Wind Waker for 30 minutes and Wind Waker for an hour, every window after boot at 99.5% or better, the mappings level and flexible memory flat.
4. The dual-core FIFO playback stall (single core plays).

Accepted baselines

• Native byte order on driver 8b311e3: I accepted the colours with the red/blue compensation gone (evidence/driver-1.0-native-byte-order/).
• XMB: large-list allocation failures fixed (601e575), crash-free navigation (docs/XMB_LIST_SAFETY.md, evidence/xmb-safe-list-run/).
• Gameplay: Genesis Plus GX colours, sound, controls and transitions accepted; FCEUmm, mGBA, Snes9x and FBNeo evidence in native-core-loading/, mgba-native/, snes9x-native/, fbneo-native/.
• Thumbnail and configuration-reset fixes (patches 0081/0082).
• PPSSPP (God of War: Ghost of Sparta, Yu-Gi-Oh! GX Tag Force at 10x): picture, full speed at 120 Hz, save states, fast-forward, close and reopen.

Named errors and remaining limits

• First frontend snapshot has five intentional missing-core recovery errors and two archive-extraction failures; I identified the content as Sega System 16 & 32, which belongs to FBNeo. No general archive fix is inferred.
• Console verification does not cover every supported system, BIOS/disc/CHD, NTSC and interlace options, SRAM/state round trips, long-run A/V or performance. Zero backend errors is not proof of uninterrupted audio across all workloads.
• Upstream compiler warnings (old zlib prototypes, Tremor's long-to-int abs conversion, an unused blip helper's missing return) are neither suppressed nor treated as acceptance.
• The loader still rejects TLS, legacy init/fini, nonempty preinit and unsupported relocations/dependencies; cores share the frontend process, so a rejected load is safe but an arbitrary core fault is not isolated.
• The withdrawn path has the console history; the native byte order does not yet. A colour regression would show as red and blue exchanged in the menu, in core frames or in thumbnails, and is the first thing to check on the next run.

Preserved platform and file locations

XMB stays default and RGUI selectable. Vulkan remains the presentation route; video_ps5 stays selectable as CPU fallback. Native audio/input/binding, config saving, FTP permissions and directory browsing remain. Deployments preserve live settings/games.

FTP base /data/homebrew/PPSA99169/ corresponds to in-title /app0. Use content/, system/, cores/, config/retroarch.cfg, savefiles/, savestates/. Genesis Plus GX Sega CD BIOS files use system/ root; FBNeo uses system/fbneo/. See docs/DEPLOYMENT.md.

Operating notes

Uploads are authorized; check console idle before deployment. A launch without args.txt needs my intervention. Start klog first, preserve old logs, and capture allocation, frontend and trace logs. Never interrupt another title. No new core or unrelated driver work is assigned by this file.