2024-04-06

Apple just added a few lines to their iOS App Store review guidelines, including this:

“Additionally, retro game console emulator apps can offer to download games,"

This seems to imply that retro game console emulators (the PSP is almost 20 years old, that's has to count as "retro") will be allowed in the iOS App Store - however, it's also mentioned later that "links must be provided to all downloadable software", which makes it unclear if it emulators will be allowed to let the user pick from their own files, and not just app-internal downloads.

Since we don't own the rights to PSP games, we can't offer them as in-app downloads, users must still obtain the games on their own (by dumping UMDs). So, for PPSSPP to be useful beyond running a small set of free homebrew games, it all depends on how Apple interprets their own rules.

If it turns out that the rules now allow emulators with ISO/ROM pickers, PPSSPP will come to the App Store later this year. If not, well, it won't!

(JIT permissions have also been debated, and don't look likely to be approved. However, PPSSPP doesn't need JIT to perform well on modern Apple CPUs.)

The current status of the iOS port

UPDATE (2024-04-29)

The successful release of the Delta multisystem emulator seems to confirm that proper emulators can now pass App Store review. In the near future, an attempt will be made to submit PPSSPP to the App Store.

UPDATE 2 (2024-05-10)

I'm doing final preparations for review now. Hopefully things go well.

UPDATE 3 (2024-05-11)

Waiting for review.

UPDATE 4 (2024-05-14)

The apps are being reviewed.

Just a quick note that the merge of the VR build into the general Android build has been reverted in new builds.

For now, we will keep a separate VR build, due to various issues on Quest 2 with the Android "scoped storage" feature, which we are forced to use in the main Android builds.

Support has been added to the buildbot to build the VR builds separately.

Due to a 3+ week downtime of Orphis' buildbot, I went ahead and set up my own.

The builds that it produces can be found here: Development builds.

Currently, it builds for Android, Windows and Windows for ARM64 processors. More platforms will be added in the future.

Due to using different signing keys, you can't directly upgrade from an Orphis-build to these, but you can upgrade from an official release APK downloaded from this website to a buildbot build.

But what's a buildbot?

A classic emulator buildbot makes new builds (emulator executables) for every single change to the emulator source code. This can be very useful when tracking down regressions, that is, finding out when specifically something that was working before now broke.

By using the halving or bisection method, you can often track down errors over huge ranges of commits in a small number of tries. Simply try two builds that you know work and don't, then try the one in the middle between them. Then if it's still broken, try the range from the first commit to the one you just tried, and if not try the second half. Repeat!

Android builds now include VR

From build v1.17.1-60, our Android builds are cross-compatible between phones and VR setups like the Quest 2. So there's no longer any need for a separate downloadable VR app.

Mac builds now also available on the buildbot

For now, only the most recent builds will be there, and due to logistical issues, this buildbot will be less reliable.

PPSSPP 1.17 - release announcement and progress report

PPSSPP 1.17 is now out! Get it on the download page! If you're on Android and already have it installed from Google Play, your update will arrive within a week (to catch crashes early).

For fine details, see the detailed changelog below.

Download now!

Read more »

Beta program

Android has a convenient way for people to opt-in to receive beta releases of apps. I'm finally making use of it, and already lots of people have signed up. Thanks to people installing the beta app, I get crash and hang reports that I can use to make the next release more stable than ever.

Join the Android PPSSPP Beta program!

New website

In other news, I've ripped out Docusaurus and React from the website and rebuilt the whole thing from scratch. I kept getting reports that the site was loading poorly on various devices, and integrations like Analytics had issues with it - plus, every time I wanted to make a change I had to re-learn a lot of stuff.

For long lived projects with small maintenance budgets, simplicity is key. I seem to have to re-learn this concept over and over...

So now, the site is statically generated HTML, all produced with a simple Rust program that stitches together the pages from markdown, Handlebars templates and raw CSS and Javascript. It's easier to manage, easier to change and easier to debug - plus, deploys in 3 seconds instead of 30. Win-win!

This time, I kept most of the visual design (but had to re-implement it, of course), and could re-use the work I previously did to merge the old "PPSSPP Central" with the main site. All the content is the same, too.

1.17 coming soon

Yes, version 1.17 is indeed coming soon, with many fixes and improvements - stay tuned.