Ymir 0.4.0 gives the Saturn emulator Direct3D 12 and Metal renderers and a stable Virtua Gun

The open-source Saturn emulator adds Direct3D 12 and Metal, with GPU-accelerated video on Direct3D 12, supports macOS 12, and its list rates it compatible with 94.4% of Saturn games.

AI-drafted from 3 sources. This story was written with AI from the outside reporting listed under Sources, and checked by automated tools before it went up. The originals have the full detail.

Ymir, the open-source Sega Saturn emulator led by StrikerX3, put out version 0.4.0 on 17 October. The headline change is graphics. Until now everything went through SDL's renderer; 0.4.0 adds Direct3D 12 on Windows and Metal on Macs, with Vulkan promised later. The team says the new backends are what will make shaders and resolution scaling possible down the line.

Direct3D 12 goes a step further and can hand the Saturn's two video chips, VDP1 and VDP2, to the graphics card. The release notes call it as accurate as the software renderer, "save for undiscovered bugs", and say the other backends will get the same acceleration in time. Separately, threading the SCSP sound chip makes 0.4.0 up to 10% faster than 0.3.3 before the GPU path is switched on.

More games, and a working light gun

The project's compatibility list now puts Ymir at 94.4% of the Saturn library. Most of the gain came from fixes to the CD Block and SMPC emulation, helped by test ROMs from contributor celeriyacon. Fist, Idol Mahjong Final Romance R, Madden NFL 97, Ten Pin Alley and UEFA Euro 96 England now boot, GunBlaze-S starts after a DMA fix, and crashes in Guardian Heroes and Virtual On's match replays are gone. A new contributor added OGG and MP3 audio tracks to the CUE loader, which homebrew discs often use.

The Virtua Gun is now a stable feature in every build. One game still does not register shots and three are unreliable on reloads, according to the notes. For Death Crimson, which the notes call particularly picky, Ymir now adds a little jitter to mimic the imperfect reads of a real gun. The mouse cursor can also be locked to the game window, so a stray shot no longer hits the close button.

Mac owners on older machines get some good news: the minimum is now macOS 12 Monterey, after the team found its builds had been quietly targeting much newer versions. Builds are up for Windows and Linux on x86-64 and ARM, plus Intel and Apple Silicon Macs. Windows users need the latest Visual C++ redistributable or the emulator crashes at start, and the Flatpak needs file system permission to load multi-file disc images.

Sources

Image: Ymir