RetroArch Blackberry 10 release (upcoming)

I finally received a Blackberry Z10 from Blackberry itself, so I can now do an official Blackberry 10 release without relying on external people whom might or might not have the project’s best interests at heart.

Not to mention a lot of the code was outdated, input drivers need refactoring, ALSA QSA audio driver begs to be fixed, etc.

This new official version will coincide with version 1.0.0.3 hopefully. We’ll see.

Great news, glad you are supporting BB10 if you need any beta testing let me know.

Glad to see this project taking off. I’m a big fan of Retroarch and have been using it for several years now. Thanks for the work you do.

Is there a GitHub where we should post bugs and feature requests or is this forum the appropriate venue?

I’m curious about development concerning the BlackBerry devices other than the z10, will you be releasing versions compatible with the Q series of devices and the Z30 or just for the z10?

Well, I don’t see how the Z30 or Q would differ meaningfully from the Z10 other than maybe physical keyboards.

Anyway, my target device for BB10 is obviously a Z10 since that is the only one I have - and I think there’s already Q-10 keybindings in the code already. I’m open to any code contributions of course so anything that is missing, could be added.

Right now I’m focusing on improving the BB10//Playbook core code in general. I’ve noticed it is still very lacking - the OpenAL audio driver is still too slow for my liking (it’s especially bad on the Playbook), there is no auto rotation on BB10 as far as I see and there are some more niggles here and there that I want to flesh out. Also, multi-touch implementation seems to be pretty bad right now.

Also, BB10 was completely broken out of the box so I’ve went back and redid it all. Right now I have a headless version of RetroArch that works the same across both Playbook/BB10. I’ll make a new Cascades frontend later after I’ve improved the RetroArch core code for Blackberry first since that is where the main action is at anyway.

I definitely want to go all-out and make this a very nice port that makes full usage of the Blackberry platforms - and I think the previous versions were pretty lacking in that respect up to this point.

great to hear that you will continue the work on this great project!

I know you dont have a q5/10 for testing but i hope you will support the physical qwerty keyboard anyway, if you need help testing i would love to help. imo onscreen buttons are a bit useless on this devices because they will cover most a the game area. i tried the latest version from the crackberry boards (1_0_2_9) and atleast on my q5 i cant get the physical buttons to work, maybe the code is broken.

Hi there! (first post) I totally agree on the integration of the keyboard for the Q10/Q5. If this is not planned yet, I can help with coding, if this is appreciated. =D

I thought that by using the Custom Bindings, I can get the keyboard portion of the Blackberry Passport to work but still couldn’t get it to accept the commands. I hope the new version comes out soon as I would love to be able to play some of my old stuff on the Passport.

The unofficial version 1.2.8 has keybindings set for the q10 and they work on the passport. It is a poor substitute for an actual release but it is something for now…

Beta 1.0.0.3 builds for Win/Mac/Lin are coming out very soon, and I believe mobile (including BB, AFAIK) is the next wave, with consoles to follow after that. When everything is good for all platforms, the official 1.1 releases will roll out.

Did you mean 1.0.2.8? I can’t find version 1.2.8 anywhere. Are you able to provide a link or any more details about it?

Edit: Tried 1.0.2.8 but it wasn’t letting me set the keys. And the keys for the buttons on it was all over the place with some buttons on the left side mixed in with movement and others on the right side. Made it extremely difficult to play a game. So I’m just going to wait instead.

Yes I did, it has a cascades frontend that allows you to remap the keys that don’t work already. It was designed for the q10 but seems to work okay on the passport.

I’m having trouble getting it to work properly. I think I’ll just wait for the next release of it.

Any update as to the next build for BB10? I have a Passport and it is missing assignments for certain keys and when you set them it will not save them. For example the ‘a’ key is missing for SNES (or any other) systems and you can set it to say the ‘m’ key which will work until you close the emulator - then it resets when you relaunch. You can change it as well using the RetroArch config (accessed through the space bar) and save the new config - but it doesn’t use it by default (it continues to use the existing libretro.cfg) which of course doesn’t have the assignments.

There is no way to alter a cfg file directly outside of the application on BB10 so it needs to be rebuilt with either the assignments or the saving bug fixed. Or at least could someone point me to a compile guide for the BB10?

If anyone has time to answer I would like to know the following:

  1. Will the next version of RetroArch which is I believe 1.1 work with the Blackberry Playbook?
  2. Is the only current playbook build 0.9.9?

Any information would be appreciated as I’ve been reading through all sorts of forums and would like an official answer.

Thanks

Will there be any Blackberry nightly builds coming soon?

Any news on when the updated bb10 and playbook port of retroarch is going to be released? It has been 2 years…