1.2 release feedback - Reznnate

RetroArch Android devices
#1

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR ALL THE EFFORT on this AMAZING software. THANK YOU!!!

I’ve been testing 1-2 nightly builds per week for the past 6 months. The mass-majority of my testing has been on Shield ATV (no touch, 64b cpu, Android TV 5.1 OS, etc.) GOOD NEWS – Good overall stability and performance once games are running. 4DO and Desume cores are quite a bit faster than I recall in prior nightly builds. This was a nice surprise. BAD NEWS – a few annoying GUI issues have popped up in the past month (or so) making recent builds ‘broken’ with my launcher app and arcade cabinet projects.

Almost all the cores worked beautifully when launched directly from retroarch. Here are a few ‘core’ issues I ran into on Android. My problems may be user error or misplaced or wrong files. I have no other ideas to test though.

– MESS, Prosystem, UME have never worked for me

– Odyssey2 may work but couldn’t figure out the GUI/keyboard settings to pass the 0000 display.

– Mednafen PSX didn’t work for me (I’m less familiar with it though)

[B]Here are the GUI issues I’ve found that may be regressions:

[/B]-- Default Shield game-controller defaults changed – cannot bring up the Retroarch menu (previously with START button).

– Can redefine ‘exit’ as back-button but binding a key to ‘Menu Toggle’ doesn’t work (from RA GUI). The setting for that function can be re-bound but new setting doesn’t stick/save.

– MAME GIT core fails/crashes with retroarch GUI but works fine when launched from the old Android GUI (?!)

– Launch intent code-paths broken :frowning: – when launching core+games from Hyperspin (or Gamesome or ADB), modified config settings ignored (overlays back on, controller bindings lost, can’t exit, STUCK!)

– In addition, with regard to launch intents, some cores won’t even launch and seem unstable as well (i.e. Handy). This odd issue has been around for awhile. Was hoping the 64b mupen threading fix would help this but it doesn’t.

– a wireless disconnect/connect of controller will crash retroarch GUI (I think)

Cheers, Rez

#2

Maybe something changed on our end. I’ll have to check.

At the same time, though, what is the benefit for us to keep supporting these closed-source launchers? I’m really very annoyed that stuff like Hyperspin and things like Gamesome are still these closed-source things made purposefully for building up userbases they can later monetize, and that they don’t even opensource their stuff so that I can actually see what is going on in cases like this where the way they handle intents suddenly breaks down. It just seems self-serving and dishonorable and I don’t see why we should really care if they can no longer hook into intents like that.

I did cater to other such closed-source launchers on PS3 before like Multiman, and at a certain point it just becomes tiring because you get irritated that you are prevented from even looking at the source to see how they are actually handling their ‘intents’. So at a certain point I just gave up supporting and maintaining the Multiman integration in that case.

I’m not saying I went out of my way to break the intents or anything, and it was certainly not intended, at the same time, you can’t expect me to be in support of such things as Gamesome/Hyperspin when they have shown time and time again that there is no community spirit there and they don’t believe in being a honorable citizen in the open source landscape.

#3

[QUOTE=Reznnate;24592]

– MESS, Prosystem, UME have never worked for me

– Odyssey2 may work but couldn’t figure out the GUI/keyboard settings to pass the 0000 display.

– Mednafen PSX didn’t work for me (I’m less familiar with it though)

Rez[/QUOTE]

I think Mednafen PSX would probably have dreadful performance anyway. You still need a Core i3-class system for something like that, and I don’t think Shield TV is up to that level yet (I’m willing to be proven wrong though). PCSX ReARMed is a very nice ARM-only core, the only thing Mednafen PSX has over it is that it is a lot more accurate, although I think you’d be hard-stressed to see the difference in most cases at this point. Still, it could matter for a few edge-case games I guess.

Same thing for MAME/MESS/UME, those continue to become slower with each new version so the goalpost in terms of performance keeps moving. MAME 2010 might be a better choice for your device and we might just have to feature-freeze MAME 2014 or something since even that was a lot faster than the current version.

#4

[QUOTE=Twinaphex;24616]Maybe something changed on our end.

At the same time, though, what is the benefit for us to keep supporting these closed-source, non-free launchers? I’m really very annoyed that stuff like Hyperspin and things like Gamesome are still these closed-source things made purposefully for building up userbases they can later monetize, and that they don’t even opensource their stuff. It just seems self-serving and dishonorable and I don’t see why we should really care if they can no longer hook into intents like that.

I’m not saying I went out of my way to break the intents or anything, at the same time, you can’t expect me to be in support of such things as Gamesome/Hyperspin when they have shown time and time again that there is no community spirit there and they don’t believe in being a honorable citizen in the open source landscape. If they would open their source I might be willing to change my stance, and only then.[/QUOTE]

There is definitely a NEW regression with config-files and there are some longer-standing stability differences (when compared to launching games directly from within retroarch… mainly with the handy core (I think)).

Using an external frontend and launching roms on Android has nothing to do with open-source. The same issue can be seen when launching from any app such as XBMC, adb cmd-line, etc.

#5

[QUOTE=Reznnate;24627]There is definitely a NEW regression with config-files and there are some longer-standing stability differences (when compared to launching games directly from within retroarch… mainly with the handy core (I think)).

Using an external frontend and launching roms on Android has nothing to do with open-source. The same issue can be seen when launching from any app such as XBMC, adb cmd-line, etc.[/QUOTE]

Enygmata changed some things in terms of how commandline options are handled, could be that those launchers you talk about would have to update the params they sent over.

Anyway, we’d have to look into this, we didn’t expect things to be broken and we never tested those external frontends ourselves either because we don’t use them. Updates should be continuous from this point on so I guess if it’s important to some it can be looked at. Doesn’t change the fact though that we could come to definite conclusions about what ‘broke down’ if the source was available to us.

#6

[QUOTE=Twinaphex;24630]Enygmata changed some things in terms of how commandline options are handled, could be that those launchers you talk about would have to update the params they sent over.

Anyway, we’d have to look into this, we didn’t expect things to be broken and we never tested those external frontends ourselves either because we don’t use them. Updates should be continuous from this point on so I guess if it’s important to some it can be looked at. Doesn’t change the fact though that we could come to definite conclusions about what ‘broke down’ if the source was available to us.[/QUOTE]

I don’t believe new parameters are required. For some reason, when games are launched directly from a command-line, it only loads the original-default config (and doesn’t load modified config).

For testing sake, you can use ADB command-line or you can use XBMC (seems to be the most popular launcher used with retroarch). I’m sorry I mentioned other launchers. :slight_smile:

#7

Interesting. Some months ago some guy made a patch to the JNI side of things that changes the path where the config is saved depending on whether external storage is present That isn’t being pushed back to the native side of things and that might be what’s causing this

#9

Audio CD for MegaCD in GenesisPlusGX core sounds bad… like a “white noise”.

I see in the git repository and: https://github.com/libretro/Genesis-Plus-GX/tree/master/core

[Core/CD] added CD-AUDIO & CD+G support

Maybe any change break this.

In other side the Select Button in Wikipad7 always go to the main menu…

Thanks!

#10

The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask doesn’t work. When I select it - Unfortunately Retroarch Has Stopped. Same problem will all nighbuilds. Last stable version worked fine.

Thanks

#11

[QUOTE=sf1;24790]The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask doesn’t work. When I select it - Unfortunately Retroarch Has Stopped. Same problem will all nighbuilds. Last stable version worked fine.

Thanks[/QUOTE]

It’s working for me on Shield ATV. Which device are you testing?

#12

Shield Portable. Tegra 4.

#13

First off, thanks! Been waiting to upgrade retroarch on my Shield until it came from the app store. I love retroarch!

I also noticed that when I tried to bind all the inputs on my Nvidia Shield portable under /settings/ input settings / user 1 bind all … that I am unable to bind R2 because the trigger for L1 is still sending data when the UI starts looking for an R2 input. Thus, it binds L2 and R2 to L2…

also, I never really checked before, but in / settings / directory settings / , I new see data going to the directory /data/data/com.retroarch/downloads even though I have a system dir and browser dir set to my SD card. I would have the option to set a default on my sd card and keep as much stuff off of the internal storage as possible.

#14

[QUOTE=rcampbel3;24816]First off, thanks! Been waiting to upgrade retroarch on my Shield until it came from the app store. I love retroarch!

I also noticed that when I tried to bind all the inputs on my Nvidia Shield portable under /settings/ input settings / user 1 bind all … that I am unable to bind R2 because the trigger for L1 is still sending data when the UI starts looking for an R2 input. Thus, it binds L2 and R2 to L2…

also, I never really checked before, but in / settings / directory settings / , I new see data going to the directory /data/data/com.retroarch/downloads even though I have a system dir and browser dir set to my SD card. I would have the option to set a default on my sd card and keep as much stuff off of the internal storage as possible.[/QUOTE]

Actually downloads will now go to the androids download folder by default, and screenshots to pictures folder, that’s on the latest nightly. We’re tweaking stuff as we go.

Yo can change downloads dir to whatever you like btw.

#15

back button doesn’t exit any more for me and I notice that I can press the “Home” button on the shield, exit retroarch, then re-enter retroarch… and THEN, I can use the back button to get into the menu and exit from the menu.

-Ross

#17

Is the android menu slowly going to be replaced by the new available UIs? I noticed some options missing now (I miss the Load Content from History). I’ve also had a lot of freezes and crashes with the xmb UI. Not sure if those are exclusive to that UI, will do some more testing later (Shield Portable user here)

#18

Hi, I’ve tested the 1.2 release from Play Store. I have to admit that my initial reaction was just like the bunch of one-star ratings that popped on the store feedback! Wow, it’s kind of rough at first, even for a developer like me! Once I figured things out I was able to get things to work, and definitey 1.2 is so much more feature-packed than previous release, it’s a huge improvement. But honestly, especially on a mobile port, the complexity of setting up RetroArch and the horrible (sorry to say that but it really is terrible) touchscreen operation is definitely off-putting for the vast majority of users. I don’t mind personally, as I said I crunch tech stuff everyday as part of my job so I have a lot of patience and taste for tinkering. A matter of choice regarding your user base, I suppose, but that’s kind of an elitist approach!

I run RetroArch on the Snail W01 (a.k.a 78Dian 78P01), a chinese phone/console hybrid with integrated gaming controls base on the Mediatek Mt6592 octacore chipset.

First some questions:

  • I selected “android” as the input and gamepad driver, but I can’t get any of my physical buttons to register in input settings. I went with the touch overlay and Tincore Keymapper, but I’d much prefer physical buttons mapping. Setting “hid” as gamepad driver made RetroArch go bonkers (it exits XMB/RGUI if I press a direction on an analog stick…). Physical mapping worked very well on 1.1 with this device, I’m probably doing something wrong?

  • Is there any way to delete a core from XMB/RGUI? I couldn’t find one and had to manually delete the core library using a root file explorer…

  • the GLSL shaders folder is empty, are there Android compatible shaders, and if so where can I get them?

  • if I want to change the default XMB wallpaper, what are the requirements for the image?

  • I’ve seen something about dynamic wallpaper in the settings, what is it? New feature?

Next a suggestion. By default, all cores, configuration files, BIOS, etc are stored under /data/data/com.retroarch. That’s quite a wrong choice, as you need to have a rooted device to access this path! I am rooted so this is not a real issue for me, however imagine the average user trying to put his/her PSX bios, they will have to modify path settings, create a foler on the sd card, that’s quite overwhelming! I think a better default path should be on the internal SD, /sorage/sdcard0/Android/data/com.retroarch which at least is in user space and can be accessed without being rooted!

#19

[QUOTE=Nikojiro;24840]

  • I selected “android” as the input and gamepad driver, but I can’t get any of my physical buttons to register in input settings. I went with the touch overlay and Tincore Keymapper, but I’d much prefer physical buttons mapping. Setting “hid” as gamepad driver made RetroArch go bonkers (it exits XMB/RGUI if I press a direction on an analog stick…). Physical mapping worked very well on 1.1[/QUOTE]

Launch the app then launch retroarch. Go to settings, input settings and turn on the auto detection. Go back to settings and go to user1 bind. Try to remap your controller there. I had to do that since there is no ipega controllers in the list. Also, I believe it saves your settings when you properly exit the app using the menu. Don’t turn off the overlay or you might not be able to open the menu. Once you’ve exited the app, open it again and check if your controls are still maped then you can get rid of the overlay but you might need to use auto save states since the play store version seems to have a problem. You might want to use one of the nightlies since it seems they’ve fixed the ‘back’ button issue.

#21

Should I add the fact that configuring and getting the Wii remote and classic controller to work is a farce?

#22

Wiimotes are only supported on rather old android versions anyway. All that is missing is an autoconf profile I guess but we do not have devices to test.

#23

[QUOTE=Radius;24899]Wiimotes are only supported on rather old android versions anyway. All that is missing is an autoconf profile I guess but we do not have devices to test.[/QUOTE]

And that’s a good enough reason to just flat out drop it for those who still use them and can’t get new controllers? Well that’s awfully discouraging and disappointing. Guess I can’t use RetroArch on Android ever again, and there’s no way in hell I’m spending money for a new controller, nor am I going to use touchscreen controls. So that’s it then? No hope, no way to ever use Bluetooth controllers, forced to touchscreen controls forever? Bloody amazing. That’s just BS, there’s no reason there shouldn’t be BT support, that’s all I’ve to say on the matter, not that my opinions make any difference.

That’s what I get for hoping to being able to use this, touchscreen controls be damned.

What a joke.