Atmosphère 0.8.7 released

Atmosphère 0.8.7 released

April 12th, 2019, 16:46 Posted By: wraggster

Don't let your calendars decieve you: it may not look like so, but today is actually June 15th! @SciresM and the rest of the team have just pushed yet another update to his Switch Custom Firmware, version 0.8.7, aka the fourteenth official release.

A good number of bugs were fixed, some related to the fatal sysmodule, others with the loader causing errors while launching specific games, but there are also new features and improvements too: SHA256 is now hardware accelerated (which should bring a performance improvement whenever it's used), a couple of extensions were implemented in smcGetInfo, additional instructions were added to dmnt:cht doubling the number of values that can be stored, better crash detection and reporting is now possible thanks to usermode exception handlers being enabled in Exosphère and, most importantly for end users, a save redirection feature is now available, allowing users to redirect savegames to the SD instead of the NAND.

This last highlight is completely optional and it needs to be enabled by setting atmosphere!fsmitm_redirect_saves_to_sd to 1 in system_settings.ini. Still, users should be advised that the feature is experimental and should be enabled at their own risk. It's a good idea to back up your saves if you do so!

On a last note, it should be underlined that save redirection is not emunand, but a separate feature that may work alongside it once the latter gets released.

As usual, you can read the full changelog below:

The following was changed since the last release:

A few bugs were fixed that could cause fatal to fail to show an error under certain circumstances.
A bug was fixed that caused an error when launching certain games (e.g. Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice).
- Loader had support added in ams-0.8.4 for a new (7.0.0+) flag bit in NPDMs during process creation, but forgot to allow this bit to be set when validating the NPDM.
dmnt's cheat virtual machine received new instructions.
- These allow for saving, restoring, or clearing registers to a secondary bank, effectively doubling the number of values that can be stored.
SHA256 code has been swapped from linux code to libnx's new hw-accelerated cryptography API.
Extensions were added to smcGetInfo:
- A ConfigItem was added to detect whether the current unit has the RCM bug patched.
- A ConfigItem was added to retrieve the current Atmosphère build hash.
Exosphère now tells the kernel to enable user-mode exception handlers, which should allow for better crash reporting/detection from Atmosphère's modules in the future.
Opt-in support was added for redirecting game save files to directories on the SD card.
- Please note, this feature is experimental, and may cause problems. Please use at your own risk (and back up your saves before enabling it), as it still needs testing.
- This can be enabled by setting atmosphere!fsmitm_redirect_saves_to_sd to 1 in system_settings.ini.
General system stability improvements to enhance the user's experience.