Hey,
will there be a GameCube core in the near future? Dolphin just released a bigger update and I thought this would be a good time to ask 
I do not know whatâs behind getting an emulator to work as a âcoreâ in retroarch. Is it necessary that the developers of the emulator are involved? Or is it more a configuration thing? How much work would it be to get Dolphin to run?
depends on your definition of ânear future.â Itâs something weâd like to do but there are some significant technical roadblocks in the way.
Porting a core to libretro is a pretty involved process even in the best/simplest cases (and Dolphin definitely isnât that) and it helps to have upstream support but many emudevs are defensive about it and we have to do it ourselves.
Ok that does not sound good. Is there a reason why developers are defensive about it? I mean⌠isnât it a good way to get their project run on many other systemsâŚ? I donât know how popular retroarch/libretro is and I donât know if there are similar technologies that have âbetterâ solutions, ideas or architectures. As a software developer I always wish to have one technology that most of the people agree with.
Does someone of the retroarch/libretro community has contacts to⌠letâs say the Dolphin devs? Is the scene connected or split into their own topic related communities? I know I am very inquisitive
Good night
The defensiveness usually comes down to two things: fear of losing control of the user experience and territoriality. Some emudevs are very proud of their UIs, even really crummy ones, and others are afraid that people will mistake RetroArch for the actual emulator and theyâll lose mindshare and potential contributions (either in the form of new dev blood or monetary donations, etc.).
Both are pretty silly, IMO, esp since we take great pains to ensure that users know which emulator theyâre actually using (that is, instead of renaming our forks as âlibretro-nesâ or whatever), and we donât accept donations.
However, there are some notable exceptions where the devs have welcomed libretro with open arms, including Nestopia, Genesis Plus GX, snes9x, FBA and mGBA, and even some that are libretro-only, such as leiradelâs fuse and maisterâs DinoThawr.
I wonder if I could help with the project. I am a software developer but have no professional experience in C++ nor am I good in system configuration of linux systems. Anyway⌠Is there a good source to get the development environment set up? Clone the repository would be a good start I guess but whats next?
Yeah, contributions are always welcome. Contributing directly to RetroArch right off the bat is tough because itâs a pretty large and complex codebase these days, but there are a lot of cores that are easier to get your feet wet with.
To start, I would probably recommend perusing the list of cores at https://github.com/libretro. The various reposâ issue trackers are a good place to start, and if there are any features from standalone versions that are missing from the libretro port, you can try to add it/them as core options (core options are implemented entirely through the libretro.c/pp file, so that minimizes the amount of legwork you need to do).
What happened to the development of the dolphin libretro core? Did the project get scrapped? I see that the github page has a committ from February of this year: https://github.com/libretro/dolphin/commits/master
It was started but only got far enough to reveal some showstopping issues that weâll need to work out before trying again.
It would be epic as FUDGE if you get doplhin to work as a core, my life will be complete after that. I have decided to learn C++, already got a book ordered. I just wish I knew how to help right now, when itâs needed the most.
Last commit being 24 days ago, it seems quite promising that a Dolphin core is coming. Iâm currently having troubles building, but am definitely looking forward to it. Then a good PS2 core and I can emulate every system I want with RetroArch!
Itâs barely even started, so no surprise it doesnât build for you 
Itâs been on hold while we try to polish up a new 1.4.0 release but youâll certainly hear about it when itâs ready for testing.
Ooh no problem, I can wait! Just excited to see people working on it 
I would love to see an original xbox core, but that seems to be impossible. Knights of the Old Republic on Lakka with a controller would be a dream come true, but thatâs a pie in the sky dream so I will just look forward to Gamecube core for now
Weâd have to have an XBOX emulator before we can get a core
My work around for this was to setup an XBOX section in my frontend, and just have it boot the PC version of KotoR lol.
But kotor on pc doesnât support a gamepad does it?
As a side-note, Iâve put together a libretro Dolphin Launcher that allows launching GameCube/Wii games from the RetroArch menu. Essentially just launches Dolphin from the menu⌠Would appreciate your testing it out!
whoa, shit! This is a big deal, RobLoach. Good work!
Is this for real, we can play gamecube in lakka now?
Dolphin-emu packages would have to be added to Lakka, as well, which may be difficult. All this allows is external launching of the dolphin-emu process (think: the way EmulationStation does it). Just to be clear, this doesnât mean you can use shaders on it or rewind or any other RetroArch features, just launching.
I havenât looked closely at the code, but I assume a find-and-replace could make a launcher core for Citra or SuperModel or whatever.
Thanks, so this is progress at least, sounds great! One step closer to GC/WII support!
