Reply To: RetroPie / OpenELEC (KODI) Dual Boot Disc Image

[smithers]

Right then. To answer a few questions – firstly, this is Raspberry Pi 2 only, I imagine it wont work at all on a Pi 1, however you could probably replace the various files needed for a Pi1 if needed? I would recommend buying a Pi2 instead though – its much better!

OK so a couple of notes on my build. I have disabled all boot text and all command line text etc. This gives a lovely clean look however it does mean that you cannot see the command prompt if you need to work on anything via terminal (command line). This means it is strictly SSH only unless you revert the cmdline.txt back to original settings. Another side-effect of this is that if you go into a menu (e.g. when you press ‘X’ whilst loading a game), when you make your changes and exit out you will notice that a static screen of the menu screen will appear every time you load / exit a game (instead of fading to black). This is resolved by a reboot. There is probably a way to enter a ‘clear’ command or something into the script to get around this, but I haven’t got that far and you shouldn’t need to really tweak too much in there anyways. Another point to note is that this also makes some of the RetroPie Setup items defunct as they need the command line visible. I normally remove the ‘Settings’ tab on my build as I don’t need them, but I kept it in for this build.

Over clocking – If you check my ‘Config.txt’ file you will see I have commented out my over clock settings. Those settings work great for me, however I do not want to be responsible for corrupting your SD card so please test your own over clock settings. I have not applied ‘Turbo’ mode though so will not invalidate your warranty (if that’s still a thing these days?).

Screen resolutions – I have a Samsung Smart TV and it can handle pretty much any resolution I throw at it. Your TV may be different, so if you get no image when stating a game you may want to use a different resolution via the RetroPie launch script.

So as to what I have actually done in my build – nothing revolutionary, more of a time-saver for you really, but here is a list off the top of my head of ‘non-standard’ things I have done to this setup:

Created dual boot between OpenELEC and RetroPie, with a script in RetroPie to launch KODI and an Add-on in KODI to launch RetroPie.
Created a boot video which transitions smoothly into the ES logo
Hidden all boot text, Pi splash screen, Pi logo
Hidden all RetroPie text so when selecting or exiting a game no text is displayed
Merged AdvMAME and MAME4ALL / lr-MAME4ALL under 1 system menu and assigned the best emulator for each rom (this means no static noise in Donkey Kong, better sound quality in System 16 games [aside from Altered Beast which doesn’t work properly in AdvMame], and the MK2 / 3 roms play in Lr-MAME and I have set the config to boost the volume to normal levels)
Assigned the correct emulator for every FBA rom, so every one works properly in the best emulator (PiFBA or lr-FBA)
Created KODI system / theme
Tweaked video resolutions and ratios on all systems (and individual games where needed), to get maximum screen size possible. *some people may not like this, but I prefer to have a full screen stretched image when running on my 16:9 TV, rather than huge black borders
Installed various extra systems, through the RetroPie setup script and otherwise (e.g. OpenBOR)
Amended all themes to add in frontend sounds and also so only a (large) screenshot is shown per game. Also added screenshots for every rom (in my collection), and re-sized all to 640×480 or less so no lag when scrolling through games
Created new system backgrounds for every system and hidden the Emulation Station help text for a cleaner look
Removed /etc/network/interfaces file due to it creating a start-up lag (in my experience)

That’s all I can think of from the top of my head. Like I say, nothing revolutionary, but all in all it has taken me around 7 months to get to the point where I can say I am happy with the full setup. It is more time consuming than anything. An understanding of Linux helps too (which I now have, but am no-where near skilled in it yet!).

Any questions or feedback just let me know.

Cheers.
Steve