Progress Report 2018 Q2

site/content/entry/citra-progress-report-2018-q2.md

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+date = "2018-09-10T12:21:53-05:00"
+title = "Citra Progress Report - 2018 Q2"
+tags = [ "progress-report" ]
+author = "anodium"
+coauthor = "CaptV0rt3x"
+forum = 49673
++++
+
+Hello everyone to the summer (or winter, for those on the southern half of this
+Earth) edition of Citra's progress reports. Although not very many large changes
+have been made, many fixes have focused on accuracy improvements and implementing
+some of the sorely needed user experience features.
+
+Before we go further into this, our [Patreon](https://www.patreon.com/citraemu/posts)
+poll results are out.
+We asked our patrons, which feature they would like to see us work on next and
+they delivered. Here are the results and as you will see, some of these have
+been considered and already implemented.
+
+{{< figure src="/images/entry/citra-progress-report-2018-q2/patreon.png"
+    title="Patreon Poll Results" >}}
+
+To get access to such exclusives in the future and to support this project,
+consider becoming a patron. Now, enough appetizing, have your entr&eacute;e:
+
+## [Add pause, speed limit hotkeys](https://github.com/citra-emu/citra/pull/3594) by [valentinvanelslande](https://github.com/valentinvanelslande)
+
+Let's start with a simple but sweet one &mdash; you can now assign hotkeys to
+pausing, unpausing, and toggling speed limiting. By default, you can pause with
+<kbd>F4</kbd> and toggle speed limiting with <kbd><kbd>Ctrl</kbd>+<kbd>Z</kbd></kbd>.
+But, of course, you can bind these actions to other keys in Citra's `qt-config.ini`.
+The property for pausing is `Shortcuts\Main%20Window\Continue\Pause\KeySeq` and
+for speed toggling it is `Shortcuts\Main%20Window\Toggle%20Speed%20Limit\KeySeq`.
+
+## [Add support for multiple game directories](https://github.com/citra-emu/citra/pull/3617) by [BreadFish64](https://github.com/BreadFish64)
+
+You can now configure Citra to search multiple directories for games and apps!
+This allow you to keep titles across different folders, and if you have any
+launchable titles installed into Citra's virtual SD card or NAND, they'll also
+show up in their own section so you can boot them from the game list.
+
+{{< figure src="/images/entry/citra-progress-report-2018-q2/multiple_gamedirs.png"
+    title="Multiple Game Directories" >}}
+
+## [Add support for stereoscopic 3D](https://github.com/citra-emu/citra/pull/3632) by [N00byKing](https://github.com/N00byKing)
+
+If you are one of the lucky few with a 3D TV or monitor attached to your
+computer, stereoscopic 3D support has just been added to Citra! You can enable
+it by heading to <kbd><samp>Emulation</samp> &rarr; <samp>Configure...</samp> &rarr; <samp>Graphics</samp> &rarr; <samp>Layout</samp></kbd>,
+ticking the <samp>Enable Stereoscopic 3D</samp> checkbox, and changing the
+screen layout to <samp>Side by Side</samp>.
+
+{{< figure src="/images/entry/citra-progress-report-2018-q2/3d-sxs.png"
+    title="Although you can't see this in 3D, try crossing your eyes or using a mirror!" >}}
+
+## [Software Keyboard Implementation](https://github.com/citra-emu/citra/pull/3850) by [zhaowenlan1779](https://github.com/zhaowenlan1779) and [jroweboy](https://github.com/jroweboy)
+
+For the longest time, many games were unplayable or needed workarounds on Citra
+due to them needing the software keyboard applet. The reason being that whenever
+they would try to open it, Citra didn't implement it, and so would simply tell
+the game that the user entered "Citra" and tapped OK, without actually prompting.
+But now, thanks to zhaowenlan1779 and jroweboy, it now has fully functional
+software keyboard emulation!
+
+Whenever a game requests it, Citra will pause the game and pull up a text box that
+you can fill in like any other prompt.
+
+{{< gifv src="/images/entry/citra-progress-report-2018-q2/swkbd.mp4"
+    title="Now you can change your name to anything!" >}}
+
+## Open Source System Archives ([#3977](https://github.com/citra-emu/citra/pull/3977), [#3881](https://github.com/citra-emu/citra/pull/3881)) by [B3n30](https://github.com/B3n30)
+
+Many Nintendo 3DS games require the use of system archives, which contain things
+like fonts, a bad word list, and assets for Miis. Because these are copyrighted,
+Citra could not include them, and users had to dump a copy from their consoles,
+which was a generally tedious and error-prone process.
+
+Now, [B3n30](https://github.com/B3n30) has created open source alternative fonts
+and a bad word list that can be used in games instead of the official archives.
+And, because these are open source, they are now included with Citra. If a game
+requires either archive, and you haven't dumped them yet, it'll automatically give
+the game the alternative archives. This is a step forward to Citra becoming
+a full-fledged HLE 3DS emulator.
+
+## [Implement shadow map](https://github.com/citra-emu/citra/pull/3778) by [wwylele](https://github.com/wwylele)
+
+Shadow mapping is a way to quickly apply shadows to 3D scenes. It first renders
+the scene without any lighting, texture, or colour information, with a virtual
+camera from where the light source begins. Then, from that rendering the depth
+map is extracted. That is then applied as a texture to the darkened scene, making
+areas of it directly visible from the light source appear more brightly lit.
+
+The PICA200 (the GPU inside the 3DS) and OpenGL both implement this in different
+ways, particularly in two important areas:
+
+ * The first is that PICA200 supports a variant called "soft shadows", where the
+depth map is blurred before being applied to the scene. This results in shadows
+that seem less jagged and sharp, making the light source feel more diffuse and
+evenly spread out throughout the scene. OpenGL doesn't support this at all.
+
+ * The second is that the PICA200 stores depth maps intended for shadow mapping as
+plain textures in the RGBA8 format. A lot of games exploit this in order to quickly
+convert other types of textures from an internal format to RGBA8. But, OpenGL
+stores these maps in a format internal to that graphics card, like any other map.
+(RGBA8 or 8bit RGBA  is a texture format, which is the combination of an RGB
+(red green blue) color model with an extra 4th alpha channel.)
+
+The first point isn't as significant, since the softness can be ignored on OpenGL,
+resulting in a very fast (but inaccurate) shadow mapping. Because games rarely
+use soft shadows, this can be ignored relatively safely.
+
+The second point though, because games use it very often, it has to be implemented
+accurately. The naïve way would be to simply convert internal textures to RGBA8
+manually, but this would slow rendering down to a crawl. The smart way would be
+to try and trick the graphics card driver into performing a similar conversion,
+but such an attempt exposed a lot of issues, leading to instability.
+
+After some very hard work by [wwylele](https://github.com/wwylele), both problems
+were solved with a single solution. OpenGL supports an extension called
+Image Load/Store, which allows shaders to read and write to any texture
+directly. Using this, he created a shader that could accurately implement both
+soft shadows, and convert the depth map from its internal format to RGBA8 very
+quickly.
+
+{{< sidebyside "image" "/images/entry/citra-progress-report-2018-q2/"
+    "shadow_map_before.png=Before Shadow Mapping"
+    "shadow_map_after.png=After Shadow Mapping" >}}
+
+Unfortunately, because Image Load/Store is an optional extension, not every
+OpenGL 3.3 graphics card will support it. In these cases, Citra will simply ignore
+shadow maps, making the rendering inaccurate but usable. Image Load/Store became
+a mandatory part of OpenGL in version 4.2, so every graphics card that complies
+with OpenGL 4.2 is guaranteed to work correctly.
+**Citra only requires a minimum
+compliance to OpenGL 3.3, but OpenGL 4.2 compliance may lead to more accurate
+rendering.**
+
+## [Implement cubeb audio backend](https://github.com/citra-emu/citra/pull/3776) by [darkf](https://github.com/darkf)
+
+[`cubeb`](https://github.com/kinetiknz/cubeb/) is an audio library (developed by
+the Mozilla Foundation) that's cross-platform, and most importantly ***fast***.
+Reports from [Dolphin's blog](https://dolphin-emu.org/blog/2017/06/03/dolphin-progress-report-may-2017/#50-3937-add-cubeb-audio-backend-by-ligfx)
+showed that it ran at a *third* of the latency of their OpenAL backend. And now,
+thanks to the work done by [darkf](https://github.com/darkf) and some fixes
+from [MerryMage](https://github.com/MerryMage), Citra can now benefit from that
+same low latency audio that Dolphin and Mozilla Firefox have. This will lead to
+significantly less distortion and stuttering in your games. Just remember to
+enable it in the configuration menu by setting `Output Engine` as `cubeb`.
+
+## [Volume Slider](https://github.com/citra-emu/citra/pull/3831) by [Fearlesstobi](https://github.com/fearlesstobi)
+
+You can now configure the volume level of Citra directly from the configuration
+window. This allows you to set an individual volume level for Citra without
+having to manually set it in your operating system settings.
+
+{{< figure src="/images/entry/citra-progress-report-2018-q2/volume_slider.png"
+    title="Volume Slider" >}}
+
+## [Discord Rich Presence](https://github.com/citra-emu/citra/pull/3883) by [CaptV0rt3x](https://github.com/CaptV0rt3x)
+
+Rich Presence allows you to leverage the totally boring "Now Playing" section
+in a Discord user's profile. This feature lets users show off when they are
+playing their favorite games on Citra. This has been a common feature request
+from many users, and since many other emulators have already implemented this,
+it made sense to implement it here as well.
+
+{{< figure src="/images/entry/citra-progress-report-2018-q2/rpc.png"
+        title="Discord Rich Presence" >}}
+
+Discord Rich Presence works by creating a local connection with Citra and your
+Discord App. It ***does not*** connect to (or) send any data to Discord servers.
+This option is user configurable, so you can choose to show or not to show rich
+presence in your discord status. Just head out to <kbd><samp>Emulation</samp>
+&rarr; <samp>Configure...</samp> &rarr; <samp>Web</samp> &rarr; <samp>Discord
+Presence</samp></kbd> and check / uncheck "Show current game in your Discord
+status".
+
+## [Set Default values for settings](https://github.com/citra-emu/citra/pull/3924) by [zhaowenlan1779](https://github.com/zhaowenlan1779)
+
+The majority of support requests we get are mostly due to users accidentally
+enabling or disabling some settings. But now with this feature, we have
+default values for all our settings. This ensures that in case of any new
+settings changes, majority of the users (who haven't customized those settings)
+will now have the new default value automatically.
+
+## [Add support for encrypted games](https://github.com/citra-emu/citra/pull/4020) by [wwylele](https://github.com/wwylele)
+
+You can now directly use your encrypted game dumps in Citra, without having to
+decrypt them. This requires that the user provide their keys via a text file
+in `sysdata/aes_keys.txt`.
+
+Currently all known encryption methods are implemented except for the Seed
+crypto. Seed crypto is used in newer eshop games, which essentially uses an
+additional title-unique key that is stored outside of the ROM.
+
+## [Scripting support](https://github.com/citra-emu/citra/pull/4016) by [EverOddish](https://github.com/EverOddish)
+
+Scripting is an extremely useful feature which allows us to do things like
+debugging emulator internals, reverse engineering 3DS game internals,
+Tool-Assisted-Speedrunning (TAS), and the ability to manipulate memory in
+games. A cheat-like interface could be implemented through this (though, not
+specifically Gameshark / AR codes).
+
+Users can make their own scripts or use publicly available scripts to gain
+power over things like game screen display, inputs, and memory. Scripts can
+also be used to read or modify the internal game state. EverOddish wrote some
+scripts that can read internal stats of the Pok&eacute;mon and automatically
+update image files for your current party. This feature is very useful for
+streamers who might want to display game information on their streams.
+
+## Movie - game input recording and playback ([#2882](https://github.com/citra-emu/citra/pull/2882), [#3922](https://github.com/citra-emu/citra/pull/3922)) by [danzel](https://github.com/danzel) and [zhaowenlan1779](https://github.com/zhaowenlan1779)
+
+This feature, not to be confused with video/audio recording, implements a way
+to record game inputs and play them back. Every time the hardware reads an
+input device (buttons, touch screen, accelerometer, gyroscope, c-stick) the
+emulator copies (when recording) or replaces (when playing) the values. Once
+playback has finished, we release control of inputs so that the user can take
+control.
+
+{{< figure src="/images/entry/citra-progress-report-2018-q2/movie.png"
+    title="UI options to record" >}}
+
+For this, danzel heavily took inspiration from dolphin's system and zhaowenlan1779
+wrote the UI for this feature. This method results in `.ctm` (Citra TAS movie)
+files which are playble in Citra. To play a game's `.ctm` file you would need
+to have the game and also manually set Citra's system time to the same starting
+value as in the `.ctm`. This feature makes debugging bugs in games much easier,
+as it doesn't require us to go through the whole process again.
+
+## [Add system time configuration](https://github.com/citra-emu/citra/pull/4043) by [B3N30](https://github.com/b3n30)
+
+Whenever a game requested time information, Citra always used your PC's system
+time. This method had a couple of issues - for example, if you were playing a game
+at 200% speed for 2 hours. As its running at twice the max speed, playing for
+2 hours in real-time should reflect 4 hours simulated time. But, due to Citra
+sending your PC's time to games, it wasn't happening.
+
+{{< figure src="/images/entry/citra-progress-report-2018-q2/system-clock.png"
+    title="System Time setting (edited to show both options)" >}}
+
+Also, players might want to set Citra's time to a specific value to ensure
+consistency with TAS or with RNG(random number generator) or for getting
+time specific game events. Earlier you had to modify your PC's system time
+to achieve this but thanks to B3N30, you can now just set it in Citra's
+configuration window.
+
+## [Joystick Hot-plugging](https://github.com/citra-emu/citra/pull/4141) by [B3N30](https://github.com/b3n30)
+
+For a long time, Citra didn't support controller hot plugging. This meant that
+if by chance your controller disconnected Citra would fail to detect it after
+re-connection, unless you restarted the emulator. This caused a lot of
+frustration among users who preferred playing with controllers.
+
+Hot plugging (also called hot swapping) is the ability to add and remove
+devices to a computer system while the computer is running and have the
+operating system automatically recognize the change.
+
+Thanks to the efforts of B3N30 and [jroweboy](https://github.com/jroweboy)
+(who researched SDL controller configuration), Citra now doesn't fail to detect
+your controllers in case of a disconnection. However, due to heavy rework of
+the existing input configuration code, this requires users to reconfigure their
+controllers after updating Citra.
+
+## UDP client to provide motion & touch controls ([#4049](https://github.com/citra-emu/citra/pull/4049), [#4059](https://github.com/citra-emu/citra/pull/4059)) by [jroweboy](https://github.com/jroweboy) and [zhaowenlan1779](https://github.com/zhaowenlan1779)
+
+Citra's previous motion controls were a bit uncomfortable to use. You had to
+use your mouse's right-click and drag to tilt the screen, but it was often
+hard to figure out where to move the cursor to get the kind of tilt we want.
+
+Using a real device for motion controls is simply much more intuitive and will
+be an all around better experience for users. As such, jroweboy set out to
+implement cemuhook motion/touch protocol which adds the ability for users to
+connect several different devices to citra to send direct motion and touch
+data to citra.
+
+{{< figure src="/images/entry/citra-progress-report-2018-q2/cemuhookudp.png"
+    title="Motion/Touch Configuration Window" >}}
+
+[Cemuhook](https://cemuhook.sshnuke.net/) is a very popular plugin developed by [rajkosto](https://github.com/rajkosto)
+for Cemu - the Wii U emulator. This protocol was chosen simply because of the
+fact that there aren't many alternatives and this already has good device
+support. Moreover, as it uses UDP, it works on just about anything with a
+network stack and allows the server to even be a remote network device (useful
+for Android motion support). zhaowenlan1779 wrote the UI for this feature,
+to make it easily accessible and configurable by all users.
+
+## Et. al.
+
+Apart from the above mentioned ones, we have also had a lot of minor optimizations
+and bug fixes ported from yuzu. We've made changes to our authentication system
+to use JWT (JSON web tokens), added a background color selector, made GDB stub
+improvements, and many more.
+
+Thank you to [everyone](https://github.com/citra-emu/citra/graphs/contributors?from=2018-05-20&to=2018-08-31&type=c)
+for pouring your blood and sweat into this project. Citra needs contributors
+like you to stay alive and become the best it can be.
+
+&nbsp;
+<h4 style="text-align:center;">
+<b>Please consider supporting us on [Patreon](https://www.patreon.com/citraemu)!<br>
+If you would like to contribute to this project, checkout our [GitHub](https://github.com/citra-emu/citra)!</b>
+</h4>

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