Confusing/missing documentation on bsnes cores

[romatthe]

For the longest time I've been pretty confused about the state of bsnes derived libretro cores available via RetroArch. But I think most of my confusion stems from the fact that the bsnes core (by which I mean bsnes-libretro), does not seem to have any documentation, and some of the cores seem to have their names changed now and this is not reflected in the docs.

The following bsnes/higan cores are listed in the documentation:

• Beetle bsnes
• bsnes Accurary
• bsnes Balanced
• bsnes Performance
• bsnes C++98 (v085)
• bsnes-mercury Accurary
• bsnes-mercury Balanced
• bsnes-mercury Performance
• higan Accuracy

The following bsnes/higan cores are listed in the online updater when firing up vanilla RetroArch 1.19.1:

• bsnes 2014 Accuracy
• bsnes 2014 Balanced
• bsnes 2014 Performance
• bsnes
• bsnes-hd-beta
• bsnes-mercury Accurary
• bsnes-mercury Balanced
• bsnes-mercury Performance

Now I can only assume that "bsnes Accuracy" etc have been renamed to "bsnes 2014 Accuracy" etc? And that "higan Accuracy" and "Beetle bsnes" have been removed? And the the plain "bsnes" core is now the most up to date wit upstream? I'm also confused about the standalone "bsnes-hd-beta" core since I thought DerKoun's work was upstreamed into mainline bsnes?

Either way, this is very confusing, and I can honestly barely figure out which core is based on which version of the upstream bsnes, and which features each and every one of them supports. I personally care a lot about those details when picking a core, so it's a bit frustrating the way it's laid out right now.

I'm fairly sure I just want the plain "bsnes" core, but I actually didn't know it existed because I never saw it listed in the documentation.

I think this could use some cleaning up and/or clarification. Thank you!

[hizzlekizzle]

Yes, the '2014' was added when the new bsnes core was made. That core also complete replaced the higan core (IIRC, this was at Near's request). beetle-bsnes was marked 'experimental' IIRC since there's essentially zero reason for a casual user to pick it over any of the other options, thus making it a n00b-trap.

Some of derkoun's work was upstreamed but not all of it. There's still some effects (like high-res windowing) that were deemed too unreliable to move upstream.

Most/all of this information (and more) is included in the description blurb you can view from the online updater by pressing right-shift or retropad-select while hovering over the cores.