Testers for new image with emulator selection

[petrockblog]

I have been working on a branch of RetroPie (which is planned to be merged when ready), that makes some changes to the way emulators are launched.

Currently, there are multiple rom folders for some systems, as we have multiple emulators for them. The new code finally sorts this, and has a single dir per platform (perhaps excluding mame, due to the differences in romsets).

then when launching an emulator you will be able to configure which is the default emulator for the system, and also set an emulator to be used per rom. I will also make it configurable from a retropie menu from emulationstation.

I’d be interested if anyone would be willing to give the new code a good testing, and I can make an image available here soon if people are interested. Ideally I would like feedback from those that are also comfortable with linux in the console, in case I need to get debugging info off them, but the image will be public for those that want to try.

Here’s some screenshots to give an idea

http://malus.exotica.org.uk/~buzz/def1.png
http://malus.exotica.org.uk/~buzz/def2.png

[chdez77076]

That would be amazing!
Especially in the N64 part of the project!
Its a great feature!

[dddaaannnhhh]

I don’t think I’m savvy enough to contribute, but this is beyond awesome. I’ll definitely give the image a go!

[cacophony555]

Sounds like some useful enhancements. I’d be interested in giving it a try and providing feedback.

Where can I download it?

[pattaboy]

would love to see these options for the n64!!!!

[petrockblog]

great – thanks. I shall post a link when I’ve done a little more testing myself. Still fixing some bits here and there.

[cortex]

That’s awesome buzz!
I’d also test this and give you some feedback for the Image and of course about my settings on a per-game-Basis.

[herbfargus]

sounds like a really good idea to me! It will definitely help eliminate a lot of confusion for newer users. I’ll give the image a go when I can find some time.

Thanks for all the hard work Buzz!

[smatticus]

Count me in

[Anonymous]

id be interested in trying this out

[petrockblog]

you can grab the image from here

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_knGioK16E6bXlQMC0wTEZ6YlU&authuser=0

note it is a rpi1 optimised image – will work on the rpi2. You can do a full binary install on it on a rpi2 to get rpi2 optimised binaries.

the installed RetroPie-Setup is tracking my branch

lr_module_and_emulator_rework

so once that branch is gone, if you want to continue using it, you will need to switch back to master (git checkout master)

updating it currently will get any new fixes I apply to my branch

new configfiles for those that like digging around:

/opt/retropie/configs/SYSTEM/emulators.cfg – contains the list of choices for emulators – only some systems have this when they have multiple emulators

~/RetroPie-Setup/supplementary/platforms.cfg – has a list of names and file extensions for platforms. if you wanted to add a file extension you can copy this to /opt/retropie/configs/all and add new ones (you will need to re-run the configure stage for the emulator in question with “retropie_packages.sh id configure” or via the gui menu 5 to reinstall / configure)

to switch emulator for a system or specific rom, you need to access the menu after launching a rom (when the screen is black). by pressing “x” or “m”.

[Anonymous]

shame its not a RPi2 image

[herbfargus]

First impressions- I really like this idea much better than having separate rom folders for each emulator.

from my preliminary testing on my raspberry pi B+- this is the list of emulators I tested.:

MEGADRIVE
DGEN: functions
LR_Genesis_plus_gx: functions
LR_Picodrive: functions

C64
VICE: functions

GBA
gpsp: functions

GameGear:
Osmose: functions
lr_Genesis-plus-gx functions

FBA
pifba: functions
lr_fba: functions

SNES:
pisnes: functions
snes9x: functions
lr_pocketsnes: BROKEN!
threw an error:

dylib_load dylib_load() failed: opt/retropie/libretrocores/lr-pocketsnes/libpocketsnes.so: cannot open shared object file: no such file or directory".
load_symbols:: failed to open dynamic library; "opt/retropie/libretrocores/lr-pocketsnes/lrpocketsnes.so 
rarch_main_init :: fatal error received in: "load_dynamic()"

NES:
lr-fceu-next: functions

GB:
lr-gambatte: functions

GBC:
lr-gambatte: functions

Positives:
-I really liked that all of the libretro core emulators were preceded by “lr” to indicate their integration with the retroarch configs
-All but one emulator I tested worked (granted some were laggy due to my B+ lack of processing power)

Some Suggestions/Issues:

-As noted above, pocketsnes threw an error and didn’t run.
-My dpad wasn’t working on the libretro core emulators (but it works in emulationstation and non libretro emulators)
-perhaps this is the wrong place to suggest this, but is it possible to add another option along with the emulators to link directly into their controller configurations? (or at the very least have one option for each of the libretro core emulators to run something like retroarch-joyconfig specific to that emulator?)
-could the megadrive rom folder be possibly renamed to megadrive/genesis as many newcomers from the United States get confused on where to place their genesis games

[petrockblog]

great feedback – thanks! I’m really happy that most stuff has worked – and that you like the functionality.

re ppocketsnes – Looks like I may have a bad path in there or something else – will test/get back to you about that.

regarding your other points – one of the problems I have in controller testing, is I never have the controllers – but this is not specific to this build or ? the core system is the same, mostly just reworked launch scripts etc.

I really would like to make controller configuration better. Perhaps it’s worth seeing if we could come up with a viable way of people loaning controllers to me or other devs for testing ?

we could possibly do a symlink between genesis/megadrive, so either folder would suffice ?

[cacophony555]

Any chance of getting an image optimized for the Pi 2?

[herbfargus]

My controller is a cheap knockoff from china, cost all of £3. I’ll have to keep mucking about with the controls but they worked just fine with the libretro cores in the 2.6 image.

I think it would be interesting if aloshi were able to link retroarch-joyconfig with his controller configuration set up in emulationstation- that would minimise the amount of new users wondering why their controllers don’t work in games after they went through their controller configuration in emulationstation. Then for emulator specific controls (retroarch and non retroarch) another option could be added for controller configs in the “press x or m” menu.

As far as the megadrive/genesis thing- one folder with both names or a symlink between the two folders should suffice. I have no preference for one of the other.

I wish I knew more about programming so I could be more useful in the development process. But perhaps my ignorance may be useful as it gives me a noob’s perspective in testing things :p

[whywilson1]

Out of curiosity has N64 emulation changed much over the past two weeks in terms of compatibility with the RPI2?

I’ll probably give this img a test drive if so. For the most part I really haven’t had any luck getting many N64 games working well.

[cortex]

I’ll give the Image a go when I’m home buzz!

Regarding to the controller-configs of the Controllers you don’t have:
I could give you my working controller-config for “SPEEDLINK TORID”, so you could implement it in future releases. Just tell me how/where I can give it to you.

btw, wouldn’t a thread/an email-adress or something just for giving the developers working controller-configs with the corresponding controller-Name be useful to get a wide variety of Controllers to work out of the box?

And again, as I can’t thank you guys enough for this project:
Thanks for all the great work and development!

[petrockblog]

regarding rpi2 optimised image – as I said in my post – just do a full binary install on it and you will get rpi2 optimised binaries – the equivalent of an rpi2 image then.

[petrockblog]

I have fixed pocketsnes – to update – cd to RetroPie-Setup and do

git pull
sudo ./retropie_packages.sh lr-pocketsnes configure

[Anonymous]

[quote=90992]regarding rpi2 optimised image – as I said in my post – just do a full binary install on it and you will get rpi2 optimised binaries – the equivalent of an rpi2 image then.[/quote]

Only issue with doing that is it takes ages to complie the RPi2 image and if you want to do a fresh install at any point they you’d have to compile all over again. I’ll wait until there is a RPi2 image before testing i think

[cacophony555]

[quote=91027]

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>buzz wrote:</div>
regarding rpi2 optimised image – as I said in my post – just do a full binary install on it and you will get rpi2 optimised binaries – the equivalent of an rpi2 image then.

Only issue with doing that is it takes ages to complie the RPi2 image and if you want to do a fresh install at any point they you’d have to compile all over again. I’ll wait until there is a RPi2 image before testing i think
[/quote]

I think he means to just do the full binary install which I’m guessing is much quicker. I’m trying it right now…

edit: only took a few minutes to do the full binary install, so hopefully that does get me the pi 2 optimized binaries

[petrockblog]

[quote=91027]
Only issue with doing that is it takes ages to complie the RPi2 image and if you want to do a fresh install at any point they you’d have to compile all over again. I’ll wait until there is a RPi2 image before testing i think
[/quote]

It doesn’t take ages to do a binary install. Once that is done you have the equivalent of a rpi2 image. There won’t be a rpi2 image for testing.

You don’t actually need rpi2 optimised binaries to help me find any issues before the code gets merged – which is the point of this thread.

[cacophony555]

For me personally the reason for wanting Pi 2 optimized binaries is that I’m also testing/experimenting with cores to determine my ideal setup, and for that I really need optimized binaries.

Speaking of which :)

I added the experimental core for snes9x-next and did verify that it was using the Pi 2 appropriate compiler flags for the build, but when I did CATSFC it doesn’t seem to be using the Pi 2 flags:

http://pastebin.com/hg4UPgck

Any idea why?

[petrockblog]

the makefile overrides our CFLAGS, I have committed a fix to the dev branch to patch it. This is unrelated to any new functionality with the new branch.

[cacophony555]

[quote=91037]the makefile overrides our CFLAGS, I have committed a fix to the dev branch to patch it. This is unrelated to any new functionality with the new branch.
[/quote]

Yep, figured it was unrelated, but thanks for fixing it.

Ok, copying ROMs over and I’ll do some testing later today.

+1 on fixing the megadrive/genesis confusion

[cacophony555]

First, let me say that this new functionality is a HUGE improvement. It’s never fun to have to manually modify es_systems.cfg or move roms, and having an easy way to associate specific roms with a different emulator is fantastic. So thanks for doing this !!! :)

Pretty smooth sailing thus far with a couple observations:

1. I changed the default pceengine emulator to mednafen-pce-fast core, but it fails to launch because it can’t find the .so file

2. I think this configuration screen might benefit from some usability improvements: http://malus.exotica.org.uk/~buzz/def1.png (I realize this screenshot isn’t up to date with the current version, and my comments below apply to current version, not the screenshot)

If there was a way to indicate that a rom specific override was set that might be useful. Maybe append a “*” to line 2 or 3, or display the override value as part of line 2, or not have the “remove” lines if there is no current override.

In the summary launch config at the top why not include the video mode as well?

Also, I still have no idea how to pick among these video modes. Like many people I have a 1080p TV. I see four possible 1920×1080 CEA modes but I have no idea why I’d pick one over the other. So if there was some instruction text or default recommendations for common display types that would probably prevent a lot of confusion, especially given that with this new functionality I would expect this config screen to be much more heavily used.

That’s it for now but I’ll post more observations as I see them. Thanks again!

[petrockblog]

thanks

1. should be fixed now – please update with

git pull
sudo ./retropie_packages.sh lr-mednafen-pce-fast configure

2.

I like the ideas – Will make it clearer there is a specific rom/emulator override by hiding the remove. I’ll look into displaying the video mode.

in regards to what video mode to choose, this is something that depends on your system / monitor and the emulator. in many cases there is no need to change it at all. Not sure right now what useful info could be added – but maybe later something can be done via the wiki.

[cacophony555]

One more issue. It looks like mame4all is failing to launch. Here’s the tail of the es_log.txt if it helps:

lvl2:   Attempting to launch game...
lvl2:           /opt/retropie/supplementary/runcommand/runcommand.sh 0 _SYS_ mame4all /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/mame4all/outruna.zip
lvl2:   Creating surface...
lvl2:   Created window successfully.
lvl2:   Added known joystick Logitech Gamepad F310 (instance ID: 0, device index: 0)
lvl2:   Added known joystick Logitech Gamepad F310 (instance ID: 0, device index: 0)
lvl2:    req sound [basic.launch]
lvl2:      (missing)
lvl2:   Attempting to launch game...
lvl2:           /opt/retropie/supplementary/runcommand/runcommand.sh 0 _SYS_ mame4all /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/mame4all/outrun.zip
lvl2:   Creating surface...
lvl2:   Created window successfully.
lvl2:   Added known joystick Logitech Gamepad F310 (instance ID: 0, device index: 0)
lvl2:   Added known joystick Logitech Gamepad F310 (instance ID: 0, device index: 0)
lvl2:   EmulationStation cleanly shutting down.

Or maybe changing the default mame emulator isn’t supported at all yet? I do know my romset works with mame4all (which is what I typically use)

[petrockblog]

thanks.

I have hopefully fixed up the mame issue now, and have improved the launch menu.

update with

git pull
sudo xmlstarlet ed -L -P -d "/systemList/system[name='mame4all']" /etc/emulationstation/es_systems.cfg
rm /opt/retropie/configs/mame-mame4all/emulators.cfg
sudo ./retropie_packages.sh mame4all configure
sudo ./retropie_packages.sh lr-imame4all configure
sudo ./retropie_packages.sh runcommand install

note the rom location for mame4all/lr-imame4all is now ~/RetroPie/roms/mame-mame4all

[cacophony555]

buzz, I just verified that the issues with mednafen-pce-fast and mame4all are both fixed by your recent changes. I also saw your very nice improvements to the launch settings screen. Thanks! So at this point everything seems to be working very well. I haven’t tried all the systems but I have played with the biggies: mame, nes, mastersystem, pcengine, snes, and genesis

[petrockblog]

thanks for the feedback.

[petrockblog]

Just to let you all know that all the code is in the main retropie branch now. So if anyone does a binary install after updating the script they will get this functionality.

[herbfargus]

Great news Buzz! Thanks for all the hard work!

[proxycell]

this sounds freaking amazing… this totally blows my workaround away… i had setup on my own a theme that let you pick different emulators by basically being “different” systems

this is far more elegant and appropriate

Note: everyone should be testing this out asap

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