Recent Improvements & Upcoming Changes (Patreon)

Hey Patrons, it has been a while since you have heard from us, so today were giving you a quick update on some things we have recently released, as well as a peek at things we are currently working on.

As many of you know, we spent quite a few months working on Project Hades and since its release we have improved stability, performance and shader building times even further. In addition to this, we have added a new feature to yuzu, the ability to uncap the framerates of your games (Hotkey: CTRL+U), while at the same time setting a multiplier for how high those framerates can reach. 

This helps with both benchmarking games for performance, but also playing games with a dynamic framerate at much higher than switch native speeds. For a list of dynamic framerate games which benefit from this feature, see here (Thank you to discord member Law for compiling this list!).

Next up, and thanks to contributor spholz (Holz_DasEchte), we have also introduced the foundation for LAN support into yuzu. This allows you to connect yuzu to your switch, or to other computers on your Local Network for multiplayer games. This feature is still in its early stages, and while not every game is functional, we do plan to add support for more games moving forward (Splatoon 2 and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe are the most functional at this stage). Feel free to test your games and report any issues you find.

Further to this, and thanks to optimizations to our NVDEC emulation (credit: yzct12345 and epicboy), we have greatly improved the performance (up to 3x the performance in some cases) and playback quality of your games videos. Some of the best examples of this improvement can be seen in games like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, although almost every game should see improvements in this respect. Staying on the topic of videos issues, we are still aware of a few games still struggling with playback (e.g., Mario Golf and Alien Isolation), and are continuing to look into solutions to those problems. 

In addition to these improvements to in-game videos, we have also introduced GPU video decoding as an option to our users. This has the benefit of greatly improving video playback quality and speed for users with older CPUs. You can now find the option for "CPU Decoding" or "GPU decoding" in your graphics settings under NVDEC emulation.

We have also added the functionality to take native resolution screenshots of your games using the Vulkan API, while also fixing a bug which caused screenshots to be saves to the incorrect directory.

Moving on to improvements to the Vulkan API, developer epicboy has solved our issues with distorted/wireframe rendering on character models in Pokémon Sword and Shield on proprietary AMD drivers. This title is now rendering and running great for all AMD users thanks to this change. 

We have also redesigned the GPU Garbage Collector ("Reaper") to make use of an least recently used (LRU) cache (credit: Blinkhawk). This allows it to be less aggressive and resolve many bugs that were caused by this feature being enabled. As with all new changes, this still requires testing, so please report any issues you may encounter.

We also solved several issues where game presentation was flipped upside down. Examples of games which previously suffered this issue include Undertale, Streets of Rage 4, Katana Zero and Shantae.

Adding to these graphical fixes, we also greatly improved the frame presentation smoothness of several titles. These games include Monster Hunter Rise, Xenoblade Chronicles 2, Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition, and The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening. Check out the below videos to see the difference in Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition.

Before

https://streamable.com/ofy8cv 

After

https://streamable.com/oiiz9s

This change is likely to have improved many other games in addition to those we have noted.

Last but certainly not least, we have added some improvements to out controller and input support. Among these improvements, we added native controller support for the Amazon Luna and Google Stadia controllers, while also adding analog rumble support for Nintendo Switch Pro controllers and Joycons. These Nintendo controllers previously only supported ON/OFF vibrations, while analog provides a much more natural rumble response.

To end this post, we want to make you all aware that we are currently working on a new feature, that many of you have requested for a very long time, Resolution Scaling. This feature will allow you to run your favorite Nintendo Switch games at resolutions much higher than native. This upgrade to yuzu is currently in development, and while we do not have an estimate for when this feature will be released, here are a selection of games which are working great on the work-in-progress resolution scaler.

Once again, we want to thank you all for your continued support, without it none of this would be possible.

- The yuzu development team