"Book Style" Nintendo DS games not displaying rotated orientation properly

Hello! Thank you for the hard work and your help on the other topics I've posted

Currently my "project" is to get book style games on the DS to work correctly and I've gotten to the point where I'm stuck.

The example I'll use is Hotel Dusk, on first load the image is not displayed properly which was expected, I go to the retroarch menu and change the orientation from top/bottom to left/right. This works ... halfway, it rotates the displays position but not the content inside the displays. Next I go into the Advanced Options within Retrobat and see there is an image rotation solution there, which does work in a way, except the result leaves an image in the wrong ratio and all the controls have been rotated, making it hard to play. Here's an image with all 3 scenarios:



So, is there anything Im missing? Maybe its just the emulators themselves that need to offer better support for this? (I've used the MelonDS core for this test, but I also tried the other ones available to the same results) Thanks a lot!

Hi,
We will have a look, we might be missing an option to rotate...
I'll have a look tomorrow.

tartifless wrote:Hi,
We will have a look, we might be missing an option to rotate...
I'll have a look tomorrow.

Thank you! Its been driving me nuts, haha

Updating since I found a middle of the road solution. Found this post online:

I'm going to link a post from discord, since you may have questions.https://discord.com/channels/934078500552462346/955837767680655370/1026678528944640001

In the Steam shortcut for Hotel Dusk, change melonds_libretro.so to desmume_libretro.so

Open RetroArch (no game)

Settings > User Interface > Show Advanced Settings > On

Main Menu > Configuration File > Save Current Configuration

Exit RetroArch and re-open game

Settings > Video > Output > Video Rotation > 90 deg

Settings > Video > Scaling > Integer Scale > On

Settings > Video > Scaling > Aspect Ratio > Full

Main Menu > Quick Menu > Core Options > Manage Core Options > Save Game Options

Main Menu > Quick Menu > Core Options > Screen Layout > Top/Bottom

Main Menu > Quick Menu > Core Options > Pointer Type > touch

Main Menu > Quick Menu > Core Options > Pointer Rotation > 90

Main Menu > Quick Menu > Overrides > Save Game Overrides

So, changed the core to Desmume and followed the steps and it worked! The two key bits are Video Rotation (dont confuse it with Screen Orientation) and Pointer Rotation, those two alone will make it work properly.

However, theres still issues:
- Only Desmume seems to offer Pointer Rotation so MelonDS is out
- Video Rotation is part of the main Retroarch settings and gets applied to all DS games, so when loading a non book style DS game, the rotation was still set to 90. Id have to set it back to 0, quit Retroarch and reboot the game
- Each time I boot Retroarch I have to re-enable Advanced Settings

If Video Rotation could be added to the Retrobat settings, then I could have per-game settings and would probably solve the issue for good, I think?

Oh as an aside, Ive been using a Dual Shock 4 and neither DS emulator seems to recognize the trackpad. Not a deal breaker but bizarre regardless.