Is VITA3K stuck in development hell?

[Deleted member 132407]

Update @

Release Automatic CI builds · Vita3K/Vita3K

Corresponding commit: 40d10b5 Vita3K Build: 3799

github.com

 

[Irritated-Monkey]

So... it really is an incredible POS now... which is sad. I had an old(er) and steadily dying CPU/GPU (5th gen intel w/ a GeForce Titan X)... and Vita3k would work on about half the games... and would randomly crash on others... weird error messages came up (kept logs and logs of them)...

Just got a new computer... trying to re-set everything up, so it's all fresh, clean, no chance of 'other stuff' interfering... I try Vita3k out NOW... and... it seems to changes its stability within 24 hours of running.
1st run:
Tried 2 different rhythm games (Hatsune Miku F2, Persona 4 Dancing all Night) - started fine, played the songs, played a few minutes each, all good. Graphics were as supposed to be.

2nd run 24-ish hours later: Same games... (had not done any upgrades or additions):
Both games crashed within seconds of starting, when tried starting again, the Persona 4 game's background became this strobe-lighty mess of what looked like stained-glass shrapnel (no, not what it's supposed to look like).

And now... only 2-3 games will run/start up at all.

I can understand the emulator staying stagnant/not improving... but how/why are these 'upgrades' actually making it *WORSE*?

 

[CheesyExplosive]

I only recently started to use Vita3k heavily. Since December 2024.
Exactly at "v0.2.0 Build 3691". It's been 3 and a half months and we are at "v0.2.0 Build 3743" at the time of writing this.
In these 3 months, all updates were minimal, 1 liners nothingburgers without any real impact on emulation or compatibility.
And if you actually go spend some time in the compatibility list you'll see many games that were playable on 0.1.5 or other older versions won't even boot now.
Like from fully playable to "nothing".
View attachment 49894
That's a massive red flag that should have been immediately addressed by the devs. If we have a big number of games that literally won't even run any more maybe the update wasn't good? Go back? That's what GIT is for.

And then when you report those issues, they go largely ignored by the 2-3 people that curate the compatibility list, even if tagged, even if they see it...they rarely admit it's a "regression" (as they call a game going from good to worse). Maybe on purpose or maybe not but It seems to me there's some pushback to admit regressions
IMO that's extremely freaking important. Cos if you don't see the regressions, then, it's all good, right? ... (*picture of monkey covering their eyes*)
If we release an update and it breaks more things than it fixes then it's not really much of an upgrade is it?

Compare that to DuckStation. Every time I launch that emu I'm bombarded with updates each one with shitton of fixes and improvements.
Maybe stenzek isn't human, I don't know, haven't asked.

My point is, this emu isn't getting better, all updates are underwhelming.
Nothing really seems to get fixed.

As an isolated example: 2 months ago the emu simply went from immediately starting to being stuck 5-7 seconds on launch.
I reported this. It got acknowledged. And nothing got done. LOL.
So now every time I restart the emu, which happens 50 times a day cos there's no "STOP EMULATION" button (God forbid!) I have to sit there and stare at it struggling to open. Why? It should have been an immediate regression.
And like that every bug accumulates, all the time moving forward with a worse version than before.

Rant over.

So... are you able to fork it, tweak it and create a brand new psvita emulator? you should take the opportunity to seize it since it's "open source". @moonbits is correct all emulators are just hobby projects (aka making virutal and digital consoles for the low price $0.00 since they were in the mood to make SOME campaigns or efforts to allow everyone to enjoy&relive the experience on how you want to play your crazy moments on game boy and such.) cause boyyyyy oh boyyyyyyyy what can i do without reicat or flycast!?

 

[Spike's iconSpike]

ofc not, I can't program.

 

[moonbits]

I'll give it a try, don't think it'll be easy to compile on my Mac but at least forking it lol