I have something to say about Retroarch on Wii. I find that the Retroarch PC’s version GUI is much more graphically beautiful than the Retroarch Wii’s version’s GUI. Do you agree? (Would you want to get PC’s GUI on Wii or do you want to keep the Wii’s GUI?)
P.S.: Also, the Netplay would be great on Wii because there’s always the WiFi on Wii (even if some channels have been interrupted).
Wii doesn’t have enough RAM to run the XMB menu, RGUI is more lightweight to allow cores and games to load into RAM.
Consider picking up a Raspberry Pi 3. They’re rather cheap, more powerful than the Wii, and can run Lakka very well. You will loose out on running Wii games, but it’s always okay to have multiple devices hooked into your TV.
The Wii runs at 480p max, so on top of the compatibility issues, the text would probably be very hard to read if XMB was somehow ported. It would either be very large (creating a “zoomed in” effect, harder to navigate lists), or small and aliased like RGUI with less contrast.
The Wii is also commonly used in 240p mode with CRTs, so XMB would really fail to perform at that resolution. It makes things simpler to use RGUI, since it works at all kinds of weird/small resolutions.
You can change the colors of RGUI, I think, so maybe you can experiment and find a palette that’s more to your liking. The Wii isn’t suited to LCD TVs, though—never was—so I’d also recommend an RPi if you want RA on a modern TV. The digital output will look better and carry less latency, and the footprint is negligible.
The XMB menu is really what you make of it because it’s fully customizeable: I use wallpapers for both PC version and Android version. I just wish the XMB menu fully supports Direct3D. I also wish RGUI can display all relevant information on NetPlay lobbies and not just the nicknames/IPs; it would be the only valid reason for me to go back to RGUI, not that I hate XMB; I think it’s the coolest thing that ever happened to RetroArch.
I want to see XMB on the Wii U port, but I don’t see that ever happening, despite the fact the 3DS port has XMB support, so it’s not a hardware issue per se. In other words, don’t count on seeing that, shader support or filters in the Wii U anytime soon.
I’d love to see some design improvements on GUI then, within the bounds of the hardware that is forced to use it. I’d be willing to send a Wii to a developer as bounty. Is the GUI all in C++# or whatever?
XMB works on Wii U now.
Good to know. I looked into getting a Wii U to jailbreak but it didn’t seem very palatable. Now I’m trying to find a console to send to my old roommate so she can play the bugfixed romhack of Final Fantasy 1. She needs something she can just hook up and play like her NES. I’m not trying to spend more than $50.
I’m testing out RA 1.7.3 on my Wii at this very moment and it’s not good. Mike Tyson’s PO works but other games either show snow, black screen, crash gracefully, or lock up the Wii.
How’s the Xbox360 port?
if she’s just trying to play a single game, have you considered doing a VC injection? It doesn’t get much simpler to use than that.
On a Wii? Good suggestion. This is the first I’ve heard of it, though I thought something like that might be possible.
The game isn’t working in RA on my Wii though. None I’m trying are working except for the very first game I favorited (MTPO). Close content doesn’t work. Not trying to change the thread topic though. Do you think any developers would be interested in a Wii bounty in exchange for improving the port?
I think pretty much everyone has a Wii, actually. What’s missing is someone wanting to spend a lot of time working on it.
Would you say that they’re swamped with other things or just lack interest in the Wii? I’m similarly interested in the original Xbox port. I’d be willing to lay out some cash. Maybe what I really need to do is learn C++.
Thanks for being so active on the forums btw
really a combination of both. We have a very small number of regular contributors, so there’s always stuff that needs doing, and since we’re all volunteers, some of the platforms tend to fall through the cracks.
What really works best is when someone takes the initiative on a core or platform port and tests things, fixes bugs when possible and bisects to pinpoint when things break if it’s out of their area of expertise or risks breaking other things.
I found WiiFlow does what I was looking for. It’s a GUI that flips through game boxes, originally intended to load Wii and GameCube games off an SD card. It includes plugins where you can set up other systems and configure them to launch RetroArch wii cores (manually edit the .ini’s). I added the mgba wii port as well. You can put all your gx emulators in there for a consistent user experience, and front/back box cover art is available for just about every system, but you’ll need a fuzzy renamer to get the art file names matched exactly to your rom names (it even requires the rom extension ie “mygame.rom.png”).
It dumps all your plugin games into one big wheel by default. Not sure how to get them divided up by system. But you can flip through the boxes, view the front and back, and launch a game.
When you go to quit the game (hit the Home button), it drops into RGUI. If you hit “Close Content” you crash the Wii, but if you go to “Quit RetroArch” it exits back to WiiFlow elegantly. It’d be nice if something could be done about Close Content.