BananaOS 0.4.2 (alpha)

BananaOS 0.4.2 (alpha) for the Anbernic RG DS Plus and RG DS. Simplified Chinese, a faster boot and faster DS game starts, PortMaster ports start again, the microphone works in games, the Anbernic button always opens the in-game menu, the lid is the DS's lid, a new App Store, and fixes for most of your reports.

New: Simplified Chinese (简体中文), translated by Majirefy. Thank you, Majirefy! Settings > System > Language: the menu, Settings, the first-time setup and both DS emulators' in-game menus. Lines added since the translation was made still show in English; they are listed in /run/banana/lang-missing*.txt for the next round. Chinese characters are drawn with Fusion Pixel Font by TakWolf (SIL Open Font License).

File sharing now asks for a login: name banana, password linux (Settings > Network > Sharing name and password changes them, Sharing login can go back to Guest). Windows no longer needs its "insecure guest logons" setting.

Install or update

• From 0.4.0 or 0.4.1: put banana-rgds-plus-0.4.2.update.tar (RG DS Plus) or banana-rgds-0.4.2.update.tar (RG DS) in banana/updates on the card, then Settings > System > Update, A on the package and A again. It goes to the card's other system slot and runs from the next restart; the version you had stays one restart away (Settings > System > Previous version). Games, saves and settings stay.
• New card: write banana-rgds-plus.img.gz or banana-rgds.img.gz with balenaEtcher.
• If the update says a file "is damaged", the package got damaged on its way to the card: download it again and compare its SHA-256 with the SHA256SUMS file here (the message shows the start of it).

Faster

• Games start sooner and quit sooner in BananaDS: from the menu starting a game to its first picture ~995 → ~610 ms on the RG DS Plus and ~1000 → ~570 ms on the RG DS; quitting back to the menu ~1.1 s → ~0.25 s on the Plus. The emulator no longer rebuilds the DS's memory-protection tables 22 times at boot or zeroes ~80 MB it never uses, and a quit no longer waits for the speakers to switch off.
• The handheld boots faster (the boot animation itself is unchanged): from the kernel's start to the menu 7.75 → 5.87 s on the RG DS Plus, and 3.93 s on the RG DS (plus the boot loader's part before it, which now reads a kernel half the size). The boot runs at the CPU's top clock, the kernel is stored compressed on the card, and both panels light together. Coming back from a game and the cartridge animation after A are quicker.

Fixed

• The volume pill in SuperDrastic showed no level on BananaOS: it now follows the volume as you change it.
• PortMaster ports start again (Apotris, LÖVE games, any port): they went black for a few seconds and back to the menu. PortMaster didn't recognise the pad and put its whole 470 KB controller list into one environment variable, over Linux's 128 KB limit, so nothing in the port's script could start. BananaOS now gives PortMaster the pad (a mod_BananaOS.txt hook, kept across PortMaster's own updates).
• The microphone in games (#14): on the rk817 chip the volume control was also the microphone's recording level, so with the volume turned down the games heard next to nothing (a handheld at volume 0 recorded silence). The mic now stays at full level whatever the volume, and its preamp is raised (a voice now clears BananaDS's threshold). Nintendogs learns its puppy's name on BananaDS. (DraStic itself only has a "blow" key, not real sound: use BananaDS for voice games.)
• Volume below 100% far too quiet (#18): the volume now follows the ear's curve: 50% is about half as loud, on both handhelds.
• Wi-Fi off and on again found no networks until a restart (sometimes): switching Wi-Fi on and opening the network list straight away could start the Wi-Fi service twice, and the second one, failing, took the first one's bookkeeping with it, so every search after that failed at once. One Wi-Fi step at a time now, and a search finds a service that's running however it was started. A search right after Wi-Fi comes on also waits for its first results instead of showing an empty list.
• A saved Wi-Fi network asked for its password again (#40): A on a saved network joins it; if that fails, the next A asks for the password.
• No box art for games on the second SD card (#19): Box art now looks at the second card too and keeps that art on it.
• BananaDS's FPS counter showed 60 while the game was slower (#37): it now shows the game's own frame rate when that is lower, e.g. "19.6 FPS emu 59".
• BananaDS stutter when a game saves (#33): the save is now written off the emulator's thread and only the changed part is copied (before, a whole frame or more each time the game saved).
• The charging light in sleep (#8): any sleep on the charger (power button too, not only the lid) keeps the handheld dark and awake so the amber light stays on; the power button or the lid wakes it.
• Built-in apps in the App Store: Döda Kvarter and Bank & Trade, which come with BananaOS, now show under Installed and can be removed there (their tile is hidden, nothing is deleted; Install brings it back).
• The update and a damaged package (#36): a wrong checksum is unpacked once more, then explained (see above).

New

• The Anbernic button (HOME) always opens the in-game menu in DraStic and BananaDS, whatever DraStic's buttons are set to, so a button setup gone wrong can't lock you out.
• Reset rows in Settings > Nintendo DS: Reset buttons and Reset DraStic (SuperDrastic chosen), Reset BananaDS. Saves, states, cheats and the DS's name stay.
• The lid is the DS's lid: closing it in a DS game closes the DS's lid (the game's own sleep mode, lid sounds and easter eggs, close-the-DS puzzles), and opening it opens it again; the handheld sleeps 1.5 s after so the game sees it.
• RetroArch: Reset RetroArch (back to BananaOS's settings, your old ones kept in retroarch/backup-) and RetroArch hotkeys: Off (only F+X menu and F+Start quit stay), in Settings > Other systems.
• App Store (from rocknixDS): a Store tile and an Apps shelf. eReaderDS (RG DS Plus) can be installed from it today.
• Settings > Nintendo DS: DS language (both emulators, #22), Threaded 3D for DraStic (#26), DS name for both, also asked in the first-time setup (#30). Per game (X on a DS game): Threaded 3D and Microphone besides Emulator and Shader (#27).
• A game's name and sort title (#29): X on any game > Name / Sort title; kept across re-scrapes; ROCKNIX's <sortname> is read too.
• Box art by name (#28): X on a game > Box art: type a title and pick the right match; later scrapes keep it.
• File sharing: a login (above, #24), and the second card as \\<address>\sd2 (#25).
• ROCKNIX saves: a roms/nds/<game>.dsv next to a game is taken as its save the first time, when BananaOS has none (#25).
• Time zones (#21): 49 instead of 30, Latin America among them (Bogota/Lima, Caracas, Santo Domingo, Havana, Mexico City, Buenos Aires/Sao Paulo...).
• SSH moved to Settings > Network (#23).
• Charging bolt on the battery icon (#35).
• Faster LÖVE apps on both panels (#39): casualducko's zero-copy patch for SDL_BANANA_PANELS (eReaderDS: ~125 ms → ~15 ms a frame). Thank you!
• banana/logs/battery-while-off.txt: the battery at shutdown and at the next power-on (for #34).

Known issues

• In Chinese, lines added since the translation was made still show in English, among them Recently played, Search, Options, Starting..., some Settings rows (brightness, screen colours, DS name and language) and a few rows in the emulators' Quick settings (Cheats, 3D effects, FPS counter, Fast-forward). They are for Majirefy's next round; the handheld lists the ones it showed in /run/banana/lang-missing*.txt.
• #34 (charging while turned off on the RG DS Plus) isn't solved yet: please send banana/logs/battery-while-off.txt after charging it while off.
• #41 (some Settings rows slow to change) couldn't be reproduced; more details welcome.
• After a few App Store runs on the Plus, look at the menu for black lines (seen once on ROCKNIX); a restart clears them.

Tested

• This build, on both handhelds: installed with the update over the earlier 0.4.2 build (to the other slot, restarted into it), then the boot timed, a DS game started and quit in BananaDS and in SuperDrastic, the menu switched to Chinese and back, both emulators' in-game menus checked in Chinese on the panels. The full device test plan below ran on the earlier 0.4.2 build, before the speed work and Chinese.

• Code review of every change by five reviewers (bananad and scripts, the menu, both emulators, launchers/SMB/Store/RetroArch, screen colours); every confirmed finding fixed before the build.

• Both packages installed through Settings > System > Update over 0.4.1 (to the other slot, restarted into it, 0.4.1 one restart away), settings and saves unchanged.

• The device test plan on both handhelds: RG DS Plus 74 tests passed; RG DS 62 passed, none failed. Three problems the tests found were fixed before this build (a display self-heal, DraStic's brightness after Quit, file sharing changes hanging), plus two from the RG DS run (the Screen colours row after a reset; built-in apps in the Store).

BananaOS 0.4.1 (alpha)

BananaOS 0.4.1 (alpha) for the Anbernic RG DS Plus and RG DS. A BananaDS update: DS games stutter much less at the heavy moments, and a slow game's sound keeps its pitch.

Install or update

• From 0.4.0: put banana-rgds-plus-0.4.1.update.tar (RG DS Plus) or banana-rgds-0.4.1.update.tar (RG DS) in banana/updates on the card (file sharing, or the card in a computer), then Settings > System > Update, A on the package and A again to confirm. It is written to the card's other system slot and runs from the next restart; the version you had stays one restart away (Settings > System > Previous version). Your games, saves and settings stay.
• New card: write banana-rgds-plus.img.gz (RG DS Plus) or banana-rgds.img.gz (RG DS) to a microSD card with balenaEtcher.

Fixed

• BananaDS: far less stutter at a game's heaviest moments. Mario Kart DS's race intro and countdown, which dropped to 48-56 fps for about twelve seconds in 0.4.0 on the RG DS Plus, now hold 60 apart from one short hitch as the track loads (measured on the panels: about 16 frames late per race start instead of about 95 on the Plus, 16 instead of 55 on the RG DS; the panels repeat a frame 11 times per race start instead of 84-126). The work, all of it checked to produce the same pictures and sound: the emulator's thread does about 20% less work per frame (the 3D geometry engine's command loop, its polygon sort, the GX FIFO DMA, the JIT's slow paths and code regions, the SPU's sample loops, huge pages for the JIT's code), and the threads no longer spin while they wait for each other on the four cores (the emulator's thread spent 5% of its time spinning for the 2D thread).

• BananaDS: a slow game's sound keeps its pitch. When a game runs below full speed the sound is now stretched in time (a time stretch) instead of played lower, with a calmer rate servo and a 60 ms buffer, so a dip no longer bends the music. Measured on the Plus at Mario Kart's race start: 16-57 short sound chunks per run against 82-101 with 0.4.0's servo at the same scene (and 0 after the first ten seconds in every game of the test pass).

• BananaDS: the clock comes back down after a heavy moment. The clock governor banned a clock for half an hour after a single late frame at it and never tried it again while the game ran above it, so one heavy scene (Mario Kart DS's countdown) kept the game at the top clock for the whole session: a full race ran at 1992 MHz and the RG DS Plus reached 66 °C. Now the clock just below is tried again after two minutes of clean play (four, six... after a failed try), so the race settles at 1800 MHz or lower: cooler, and longer on a charge.

Changed

• BananaDS settings: render.geom_thread (a geometry worker thread) is off: on the handhelds' four cores it made things worse. render.2d_fence_wait is block. New A/B settings sched.emu_nice, sched.emu_cpu, sched.2d_nice, sched.gengis_nice (all off).

Known issues

• Golden Sun: Dark Dawn's title flyover is still slow (37-51 fps on both handhelds while it plays; the game itself holds 60 in its fields and towns at 2x).
• Pokémon Black 2's 3D towns can still drop a few frames a minute on the RG DS Plus at 2x with the LCD grid shader; a per-game shader of None (X on the game in the library) gives the GPU the room.
• The first second of every game (the boot, while the JIT compiles) runs under 60: that is unchanged.
• Measured in this release's test pass (every game on both handhelds, 50 s of play each through the real launcher): Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker, Golden Sun: Dark Dawn, Mario Kart DS, Metroid Prime Hunters, Pokémon HeartGold, Pokémon Black 2 and Pokémon Platinum on the RG DS Plus; Golden Sun, Mario Kart, Metroid Prime Hunters and Platinum on the RG DS. All ran, drew and quit cleanly.

Tested

• The RG DS update package was installed on an RG DS running 0.4.0 through the update mechanism (written to the other slot, restarted into it, 0.4.0 one restart away), and Mario Kart DS raced on the installed system: clean, with the clock stepping down to 1104 MHz.
• Every game on both handhelds ran 50 s of play through the real launcher (see Known issues for the list); Mario Kart DS a full race on each, Golden Sun three minutes in its field on the RG DS Plus.

Versions

• BananaDS 79b6e43 (SuperDrastic branch bananads-0.4.1, = bananads-perf/mk4), SuperDrastic unchanged (7ffcaa8), everything else as 0.4.0.

BananaOS 0.4.0 (alpha)

BananaOS 0.4.0 (alpha) for the Anbernic RG DS Plus and RG DS. Search, an emulator per DS game, a faster RetroArch fast-forward, shaders out of the box, mGBA, cheats and an FPS counter in BananaDS, games from a second SD card, and fixes for headphones, PortMaster and DS sound clicks.

First release for the original RG DS too. Both handhelds get an SD card image and an update package.

Install or update

• New card: write banana-rgds-plus.img.gz (RG DS Plus) or banana-rgds.img.gz (RG DS) to a microSD card with balenaEtcher. The first boot makes the data partition from the rest of the card.
• RG DS Plus, from 0.3.0 or 0.2.0: put banana-rgds-plus-0.4.0.update.tar in banana/updates on the card (file sharing, or the card in a computer), then Settings > System > Update, A on the package and A again to confirm. It is written to the card's other system slot and runs from the next restart; the version you had stays one restart away (Settings > System > Previous version). Your games, saves and settings stay.

Fixed

• Headphones: with earphones in, the sound now comes out of them everywhere: in the menu, and when you plug them in or pull them out in the middle of a game (SuperDrastic, BananaDS and RetroArch). On the RG DS the speakers now go quiet while headphones are in (they played along before). Each program only looked at where sound plays when it started; now each follows the jack while it runs.
• PortMaster starts and shows its menu: on a new card it showed a black screen and quit; after that it quit within a second. BananaOS's Python had no XML module and couldn't find SDL2, pgrep was missing, and PortMaster's menu couldn't get the screen while its own splash still held it; all fixed, plus the library its LÖVE runtime needs (many ports use it). Quitting a port from the menu now stops everything it started.
• Nintendo DS sound without clicks (SuperDrastic): the clicks and crackle in busy games are gone (Mario Kart DS racing: 40-66 gaps every 10 s before, 0 after). The ROCKNIXDS 1.6.4 audio fix is in, and a BananaOS-only cause is fixed with it: SuperDrastic took DraStic's sound slightly faster than DraStic made it (which also made it a little sharp).
• Big DS games no longer run out of memory in BananaDS: a game is read from the card as it plays instead of being loaded into memory whole (Golden Sun: Dark Dawn, 256 MB: about 240 MB in total instead of about 490 MB). On 1 GB this left too little for the system, and the handheld could stop responding.
• RetroArch fast-forward goes fast: the Fast tile (and F + R2) speeds the game up instead of only showing "Fast-Forward" (Aladdin on gpSP: 33% to 98% CPU). RetroArch waited for every screen refresh even while fast-forwarding.
• RetroAchievements default to Softcore: save states, rewind and cheats work out of the box; existing cards are switched once.
• New game folders show up straight away: a folder of games copied in while the menu runs appears without a restart (the next time the home screen shows).
• BananaDS no longer crashes when you quit a game: about one quit in three ended in a crash after your save was written (the emulator logged into a file that was already closed). 10 quits in a row are clean now, and a screenshot taken just before quitting is saved in full.
• BananaDS sound without crackle when a game slows down (#12): the sound is stretched to the game's speed instead of being held, about 5 to 20 times less crackle in a slow stretch (the sound plays a little lower while the game is slow).
• BananaDS's microphone is more sensitive by default (#14): the gate that keeps game sound out is three times lower (Settings > Nintendo DS > Microphone: Medium), so speech-controlled games should hear you; your setting keeps its label (moved once).
• Your passwords stay off the network: file sharing no longer serves the Wi-Fi passwords, the RetroAchievements account and login tokens, or the handheld's SSH key (a card in a computer still has them), and RetroArch's RetroAchievements password is no longer kept in retroarch.cfg.
• Settings files on the card can't run commands: a DS shader of your own with a name like x;command.frag ran that command when SuperDrastic started, and file sharing can write the card. The settings files are now read, never run, and a shader of your own is listed only when its name has letters, digits and . _ + -.
• Smaller fixes: a game started from a script or the network starts at once (no key press needed); Home says X Start on a system you haven't played yet; the search field shows how many games match; X > As in Settings no longer leaves an empty file behind; the first-time setup tells you when the time zone is still UTC; RetroArch's tiles on the RG DS's top touchscreen work when they're shown there; every card gets a banana/updates folder.

Added

• BananaDS is much faster: Golden Sun: Dark Dawn at 2x on the RG DS Plus went from about 63 to about 85 frames a second of emulation headroom (measured without a frame cap), so it holds 60 in its towns and fields (on the RG DS Plus with a shader, see Known issues). The work: fewer recompiles of self-modifying game code, DMA in blocks, the 3D picture handed to the 2D thread instead of copied, and the emulator no longer waiting for the 2D and 3D threads. Every change keeps the same pictures.

• BananaDS's clock governor lowers the CPU clock only when even the heaviest frames still fit (cooler and longer battery in light games, no dropped frames in heavy ones).

• A faster LCD grid (ds-grid-2x): the same picture with 13% less GPU work.

• Themes of your own: a theme is a JSON file in banana/themes on the card, picked in Settings > Display & sound > Theme. It can set the colours (any of ~50, with transparency), the accent, pictures behind both screens, its own fonts, logo, system icons and menu sounds. theme-builder.html in that folder makes one in any web browser with a live preview (no internet needed). Four examples to start from: Ocean, Sakura, Terminal and Sunset.

• Search: Select in the menu, type part of a name on the keyboard, Start: the games found from every system open as a shelf of their own.

• An emulator and a shader per DS game: X on a DS game in the library opens its page: SuperDrastic or BananaDS, and a shader (or None) for that game only; the others follow Settings > Nintendo DS.

• BananaDS: FPS counter (L3 > Quick settings > FPS counter), fast-forward (hold R2, or F + X to toggle; a speed in L3 > Quick settings > Fast-forward: 2x, 3x or Max; the sound is muted while it runs) and screenshots (F + L2: both screens, in the screenshots folder).

• BananaDS: cheats in L3 > Quick settings > Cheats, for over 4,000 DS games, included (libretro's collection). Your own files on the card come first (a .mch in bananads/cheats/, or a RetroArch .cht). Some codes only work after Restart game.

• Shaders for RetroArch out of the box: Quick Menu > Shaders, switch Video Shaders on, then Load Preset lists libretro's GLSL presets (CRT, handheld LCD, sharp scaling...), read from the system, so they take no space on the card. RetroArch's Online Updater is shown again, with only the entries that work here.

• mGBA for the Game Boy Advance: Settings > Other systems > Game Boy Advance: gpSP (the fastest) or mGBA (the most accurate, and the one RetroAchievements recommends: gpSP isn't on its list of Hardcore-compliant cores). RetroAchievements mode (Softcore or Hardcore) is there too.

• A second box-art source: Settings > System > Box art from can add TwilightBoxart (boxart.kirovair.com), which recognises a game from the ROM itself, for covers libretro doesn't have. libretro stays the default.

• Games on a second SD card (RG DS Plus): a card with a roms folder (the same system folders, exFAT or FAT32) in the second slot adds its games to the library. Settings > System > Second SD card turns it off.

• Button hints: the bottom bar shows Select Search, and X Options on DS games.

• BananaDS: F opens the menu (the Anbernic button on its own, as in SuperDrastic; L3 still works), and the left stick plays the d-pad.

• Sharp DS pixels: Settings > Nintendo DS > Shader > Sharp pixels (integer): every DS pixel an exact square, a true 4x on the RG DS Plus.

• Your own DS shaders: put .frag files in banana/shaders on the card, named with letters, digits and . _ + - (no spaces); they show up in the Shader list (its README.txt has the format).

• RetroArch looks in one setting: Settings > Other systems > Shader: LCD grid, CRT or sharp pixels for every RetroArch system.

• Quick resume for RetroArch systems (Settings > Other systems > Quick resume, off by default): quitting keeps your spot, and the game goes on from there next time.

• Recently played: a shelf with the last 12 games you played, from every system.

• Search finds genres and years too ("rpg", "racing", "2005").

• Unreleased work since 0.3.0 is in too: big libraries scroll without waiting for their pictures, favourites start with their own system's emulator, held volume keys repeat, no shutdown on the charger, and the Carts theme builds faster.

Changed

• BananaDS's Paused menu says F / L3 opens it.

• BananaDS: Settings > Nintendo DS > Timing defaults to Accurate; Fast is still there, with a warning (it broke Golden Sun: Dark Dawn's 3D). Cards that had Fast are moved to Accurate once.

• BananaDS's Quick settings: Edge marking and Fog are one row, 3D effects (Edge + fog, Edge only, Fog only, Off). Your settings are kept.

Known issues

• RG DS Plus, a DS shader in long sessions: a shader keeps the GPU busy on the Plus's large panels, and with the 3D at 2x the chip gets hot enough a...

BananaOS 0.3.0 (alpha)

BananaOS 0.3.0 (alpha) for the Anbernic RG DS Plus. Fixes for the menu's sound, SuperDrastic's audio and frame pacing and the menu's frame rate; a bottom screen for RetroArch games, separate settings per DS emulator, shared DS saves, a box-art download and an experimental Carts theme.

RG DS (non-Plus): 0.3.0 is not released for it yet. It has to be tested on real hardware first; until then the RG DS stays on 0.2.0.

Install or update

• New card: write banana-rgds-plus.img.gz to a microSD card with balenaEtcher. The first boot makes the data partition from the rest of the card.
• From 0.2.0: put banana-rgds-plus-0.3.0.update.tar in banana/updates on the card (file sharing, or the card in a computer), then Settings > System > Update, A on the package and A again to confirm. It is written to the card's other system slot and runs from the next restart; 0.2.0 stays one restart away (Settings > System > Previous version). Your games, saves and settings stay.

Fixed

• Menu sound: it no longer cuts out after a setting is changed, and both speakers play at the same volume. The speaker amplifiers failed to start on short clicks; the menu now keeps its sound stream running and closes it after 20 s of quiet.
• SuperDrastic audio: the crackling is gone. The speakers run at 48 kHz, and SuperDrastic now resamples to it (0 underruns, was about 2 a second).
• SuperDrastic smoothness: the game is paced to the panels' refresh with a two-frame queue (about one repeated frame a minute, no dropped ones).
• The menu runs at 60 fps (it fell to about 30): frames that change nothing no longer spin the loop, and the CPU clock is held up while something moves.
• BananaDS: RetroAchievements pop-ups are drawn on top of the shader instead of through it.
• SuperDrastic: RetroAchievements pop-ups show again (they found no font on BananaOS).
• RetroArch: A confirms in its menu, one press of Quit is enough, N64 renders on a thread, SNES runs at full speed.
• Touch: a tap at exactly the spot of the previous tap sometimes did nothing.

Added

• Bottom screen for RetroArch games: the game plays on one screen; the other shows its latest RetroAchievements and tiles for Save, Load, Menu, Fast-forward and Quit (tap, or hold F with the button shown). Settings > Other systems > Second screen.
• BananaDS's in-game menu (L3) shows the game's latest achievements on the top screen, also when it was opened before RetroAchievements had finished logging in.
• Settings per DS emulator (Settings > Nintendo DS): BananaDS has shader, 3D resolution, edge marking, fog, frame pacing, CPU clock, timing and microphone; SuperDrastic has shader, 3D resolution, CPU clock and frame pacing. The renderer option is gone: both use the Gengis Engine.
• Shared DS saves: BananaDS and SuperDrastic read each other's saves (the newer one is copied over, the older kept as a backup).
• Box art: covers, title screens, genres and years from libretro's free collections (no account), as the setup's third step and in Settings > System > Box art, with a progress bar.
• Achievement progress in the library ("12 / 72 achievements").
• Carts theme (experimental): the games as DS cards on a shelf, in a clean typeface. Settings > Display & sound > Theme.
• The iris transition plays when you leave a game, and the Settings lists scroll smoothly.

Known issues

• BananaDS: the two screens can update slightly out of step. A kernel fix is written but not yet tested, so it is not in this release.
• The first menu click after 20 s of quiet can play on one speaker for a moment.
• With a slow DNS server, the bottom screen can show "no connection" for a few seconds before RetroAchievements answers; it recovers by itself.
• Some SuperDrastic pop-ups about the RetroAchievements account say "ES" (they come from ROCKNIX); on BananaOS the account is in Settings > System > First-time setup.

Tested on an RG DS Plus: updated from 0.2.0 with Settings > System > Update, then BananaDS, SuperDrastic and RetroArch with the bottom screen played and quit, and the themes and settings checked.

BananaOS 0.2.0 (pre-alpha)

BananaOS 0.2.0 (pre-alpha) for the Anbernic RG DS and RG DS Plus. A faster, calmer menu, Settings in groups, a new keyboard, RetroAchievements in BananaDS, notifications in ROCKNIXDS's look, and fixes for the RG DS Plus's volume, frame rate and charging light.

RG DS (non-Plus): its files are still building and will be added to this release shortly. The RG DS Plus files are here now.

Install or update

• New card: write banana-rgds.img.gz (RG DS) or banana-rgds-plus.img.gz (RG DS Plus) to a microSD card with balenaEtcher. The first boot makes the data partition from the rest of the card.
• From 0.1.0: put banana-<handheld>-0.2.0.update.tar in banana/updates on the card (file sharing, or the card in a computer), then Settings > System > Update. It is written to the card's other system slot and runs from the next restart; 0.1.0 stays one restart away (Previous version). Your games, saves and settings stay.

The menu

• Settings in groups: Start opens six tiles in the in-game menu's look (Display & sound, Sleep & power, Nintendo DS, Other systems, Network, System). A opens a group, B goes back, L and R go to the next group.
• A new keyboard for Wi-Fi passwords and accounts: what you type sits right above the keys, the selected key is yellow, the keys are bigger, and the buttons are labelled at the bottom (B delete, X capitals, L symbols, Y space, START done).
• Faster and lighter: the menu redraws only what changed. Idle on the home screen it uses about 0.4% of a CPU core (0.1.0: about 11%). The icon and covers no longer bob.
• Volume and brightness show on screen: a pill at the top of the top screen in ROCKNIXDS's look (speaker or sun, 10-segment bar, percent), in the menu and during DS games.
• The RetroAchievements account is checked in the setup: right after the password, a pop-up says "Logged in as … · points", or that the name or password is wrong, or that there is no connection.
• ScreenScraper is shown in the setup but greyed out: no scraper uses it yet.

Nintendo DS (BananaDS)

• RetroAchievements (softcore), with the setup's account: a "logged in" card, the game's card with its progress, and unlock pop-ups with badges, sliding in along the top as in ROCKNIXDS. The in-game menu (L3) shows the progress and the latest unlocks.
• 60 frames a second with a shader on the RG DS Plus (it showed about 40 with Dot (MiZai, RG DS+)): each frame is now shaded ahead of the panels' flip.
• SuperDrastic: a TERM stops DraStic cleanly when SuperDrastic can't take the display.

RG DS Plus

• Volume works: the volume keys and Settings > Volume now change both speaker amplifiers (they did nothing in 0.1.0).
• The charging light stays on for as long as the charger is plugged in, also with the lid closed: while charging, closing the lid turns the screens off and pauses the game but keeps the handheld awake (sleep would put the light out). Unplugged with the lid shut, it sleeps as before. The menu doesn't auto-sleep while charging.

Known issues

• The menu is drawn by the CPU; scrolling fast through a long list still keeps one core busy.
• No box-art scraper yet (planned: libretro thumbnails, no account needed).
• No Bluetooth. Each handheld has its own image.

Tested on an RG DS Plus as test builds before release. The RG DS ran the build just before these changes; this release is not yet tested on one.