RetroForge 0.8.2 beta: PS5 library, free games, sharper PS1 and N64

RetroForge 0.8.2 beta

PS5 games in your library, free games for a new library, sharper PS1 and N64, and a smaller, faster app.

HELP WANTED: TESTERS FOR THE GOOGLE PLAY VERSION

RetroForge is coming to Google Play, and Google needs at least 12 people to test it for 14 days before it can go public. If you have an Android phone or tablet and a Google account, you can help. The links to join will be added here very soon:

1. Join the testers group (link coming soon).
2. Then open the test link on your Android device and tap "Become a tester" (link coming soon).
3. Install RetroForge from Play, open it now and then, and keep it installed for the 14 days.

The Play version installs next to this GitHub one, so you can keep both. Your email stays private: only the developer sees the group's members, and RetroForge itself collects nothing (privacy policy: https://retroforgefrontend.github.io/RetroForge/privacy/).

UPDATING

• 0.8.2 updates over 0.8.1 as usual: your library, history and settings stay.
• From this version, RetroForge is signed with its own key instead of a development one. The update carries Android's record that the new key replaces the old one, so you don't need to uninstall. (If your phone ever says the app can't be updated, uninstall and install 0.8.2 once; that's the only fix, and it loses RetroForge's own settings.)
• RetroForge is now a proper release build: 40 MB to download instead of 75.

WHAT'S NEW

PlayStation 5

• PS5 games show up in your library: put your own dumped PS5 game folders in a ps5 folder, and each one shows by its title (from its param.json). Update, patch and mod folders next to a game are skipped.
• No PS5 emulator runs on phones and tablets yet, so the game page says so. Your PS5 games stay listed for when one does.

Free games

• No games yet? Home now offers 21 free games their makers let anyone share: homebrew such as Nova the Squirrel, Cave Story on Mega Drive and Celeste Classic, and shareware Doom, Wolfenstein 3D and Commander Keen. They're on the Retro tab too. Each one goes into your games folder and plays straight away.

Upscaling

• PS1 (PCSX ReARMed) gets a Resolution setting: native or double.
• PS1 and N64 restart the game to use a new resolution, since their emulators only read it at the start.
• Every system's resolution steps now go up from the console's own size.

Moves

• Golf swings from full power down to a 5% tap, each timed to land on the impact line: Mario Golf (Game Boy Color, Advance Tour, Nintendo 64 and Toadstool Tour on GameCube) and Hot Shots Golf: Open Tee (PSP). Aim and pick the club first; the move does the swing meter for you.
• Moves you've put on screen show filled orange with a tick in Moves and turbo.

Fixes

• Scrape all artwork no longer stalls for many minutes on a big system (a full NES set now takes seconds).
• The launch screen and round app icons show the whole RF sign instead of cutting off its sides.
• On a fresh install, the Retro tab's tiles start as game art + console.
• A game for a system RetroArch can't play no longer tells you to install RetroArch.
• Switch emulator and a new N64 resolution start the game again in a fresh emulator, so the restarted game no longer crashes.
• Netplay and the link cable say why a join or host didn't start, such as Android 17 asking for permission to reach devices on your Wi-Fi. Before, Join could look like it did nothing.
• Stream from Your PC can add and pair a PC again. In the smaller release build it failed with "no such algorithm: RSA". Steam sign-in, which uses the same kind of encryption, is fixed the same way.

You need your own games, BIOS, keys and firmware. Nothing of Sony's or Nintendo's is included.

Problems or ideas: https://github.com/RetroForgeFrontEnd/RetroForge/issues