Status Update - June 2021

Hello! This status update is a bit delayed (apologies!) and not very lengthy, but brings a single nice release in form of deinterlacing codes for Gran Turismo 4.

DuckStation

• Hardcore Mode improvements - I spotted a few issues with how DuckStation handles Hardcore Mode, mainly "exploits" allowing the user to load save states even though they should be forbidden in this mode. Submitted fixes for those HERE and HERE. I also found and fixed a crash when enabling Hardcore Mode.
• Add an "Unofficial Test Mode" to allow unlocking non-core achievements - RetroAchievements have achievements split into "core" and "unofficial" sets. With this change, DuckStation can unlock achievements from unofficial sets, although their unlock state is not tracked (by design) so they unlock on every session.
• Leaderboards - a feature of RetroAchievements not supported by DuckStation until now. The initial PR was followed by a few other minor fixes and might see more improvements soon because RetroAchievements devs are interested in improving their web API further to e.g. allow DuckStation to list leaderboard entries near the user instead of just listing top X entries.
• Improved Discord Rich Presence - DuckStation supported RetroAchievement's rich presence and Discord Rich Presence, but they were not connected together. Now RA's presence info can be shown on Discord.
• Measured achievements -  another new addition to RetroAchievements are achievements that can show progress to the user (e.g. "X out of Y items collected"). DuckStation now can show progress in the UI for supported achievements.

PPSSPP

• UWP: Add missing bounds check from TextDrawerWin32::DrawStringBitmap - the UWP version of PPSSPP kept crashing when I tried to use it on Xbox One, but luckily it was an easy fix. A normal Windows version was not affected.

YAMP

• Keyboard mappings don't match the displayed controls scheme - a minor oversight in keyboard controls implementation, with this change bindings match what is shown in the Help screen.

Deinterlace codes for Gran Turismo 4 and Gran Turismo 4 Prologue

Annoyed by the fact that deinterlace codes for Gran Turismo 4 only existed for the NTSC version, I decided to look into porting or creating one for the PAL version. The end result is potentially better than the NTSC deinterlace code, as my cheat keeps menus at full framerate. In the case of Gran Turismo 4, the gameplay is fully progressive, while GT4 Prologue, First Preview, and Tourist Trophy all rely on "fake progressive" (i.e. interlaced output without line alternation).

All deinterlace codes have been posted on PCSX2 forums and mirrored on my GitHub - they will appear on the blog as soon as I get the required art and figure out how to list all these games without pages turning into an unmaintainable mess.