iOS installation guide

RetroArch Apple devices
#1

Hey guys!

I’m following this forum for about a year now because I want to play N64 games on my unjailbroaken iPad mini 2 on iOS 8.3. I have a developer account and everything up to date.

I tried everything to get it to work, over and over again, without success. From this guide: http://www.jiaxh.com/retroarch/2015/04/16/build-retroarch-nightly-for-ios/ to the one on the github page and all the tips given in these threads, nothing works.

I can compile it, install it, launch it - but when I try to load a core it still says “no core” and when I load a game file, and I tried different formats, it crashes.

What the hell am I missing?

I mean, there’s obviously a lot of people putting a lot of work in this but at the time, even with some hacking skills, it is unusable.

Would one of you pros out there mind to put a little effort in an good step by step guide to get things up and running?

Thanks a lot for your work anyway

amifrank

#2

I can tell you that the n64 core is working well on my iPhone 6 plus stock iOS 8.3 but it is not prefect yet. A lot games (note: if iPhone is jailbroken games run even better on Dynarec) work well on CPU Core: Cached_Interpreter… (Since we’re not jailbroken we can’t use Dynarec or RA will crash) The ones I’ve tried are Banjo Kazooie, Banjo Tooie, Donkey Kong 64, Diddy Kong Racing, Goldeneye 007, The Legen Of Zelda (both Majora’s Mask and Ocarina Of Time) and few others. The GFX plugins have improved. Some roms are faster and it’s most noticeable on Goldeneye 007; now it runs full speed :).When I have time I’ll post a video on how I did it… Hopefully soon. Stay tuned…

#3

You need to be jailbroken, if not it will be pretty difficult and slow that it won’t worth the effort. Also, as Zero said the emulation on iOS for N64 is not perfect and you will enconter a lot of issues. Try other cores they are cool, but N64 is the worst!!

#4

@zero: That would be really cool! If I understand that right, I would need access to the config files to change the from dynarec to chached_interpreter. But since file system access is impossible since 8.3 I do not really know how to do that. Especially since the paths are all messed up. @netux: Am I wrong or is there no 8.3 jailbreak yet?

#5

[QUOTE=amifrank;22598] @netux: Am I wrong or is there no 8.3 jailbreak yet?[/QUOTE]

Unfortunately there is no jailbreak available for 8.3 :frowning: I’m currently using iOS 7.1.2 and I’m not thinking on upgrading because of the same issue. Hopefully it gets released soon.

#6

[QUOTE=amifrank;22553]Hey guys!

I’m following this forum for about a year now because I want to play N64 games on my unjailbroaken iPad mini 2 on iOS 8.3. I have a developer account and everything up to date.

I tried everything to get it to work, over and over again, without success. From this guide: http://www.jiaxh.com/retroarch/2015/04/16/build-retroarch-nightly-for-ios/ to the one on the github page and all the tips given in these threads, nothing works.

I can compile it, install it, launch it - but when I try to load a core it still says “no core” and when I load a game file, and I tried different formats, it crashes.

What the hell am I missing?

I mean, there’s obviously a lot of people putting a lot of work in this but at the time, even with some hacking skills, it is unusable.

Would one of you pros out there mind to put a little effort in an good step by step guide to get things up and running?

Thanks a lot for your work anyway

amifrank[/QUOTE]

very easy, take a look here https://github.com/libretro/RetroArch/issues/1486#event-260537741

#7

@amifrank: You can use notepad from windows. Do this: you can try manually modifying your retroarch-core-options.cfg to add: mupen64-cpucore = “cached_interpreter” or mupen64-cpucore = “pure_interpreter”

What you want is to change it to cached_interpreter. Once you modified the core-options.cfg just drag it to the .Retroarch folder using ifunbox. After that open RetroArch on your iPhone and you will be able to play n64 roms!

#8

Hey guys, thank you ver much for your replies, but still no success.

What I tried:

  1. downloaded latest nightly (RetroArch_2015-5-17_ios.zip
  2. downloaded latest mupen64plus_libretro_ios.dylib.zip
  3. unzipped everything
  4. copied mupen64plus_libretro_ios.dylib.zip into /RetroArch.app/modules folder
  5. created a Payload folder
  6. copied RetroArch.app into it
  7. zipped Payload folder and renamed it to RetroArch.ipa
  8. codesigned RetroArch.ipa with Airsign
  9. installed RetroArch via iTunes
  10. Launched it once, so it creates all the folders mentioned here: https://github.com/libretro/RetroArch/issues/1486#event-260537741
  11. Copied the folders from original RetroArch.app to the ones mentioned above via iExplorer (iTools don’t have files system access on 8.3 at the moment)
  12. Didn’t find a retroarch-core-options.cfg or core-options.cfg how Zero said, so I created them.
  13. Wrote the line mupen64-cpucore = “cached_interpreter” in them.
  14. Copied them via iExplorer to the .RetroArch folder
  15. Took a N64-Rom and copied it to the /Documents folder
  16. Launched RetroArch
  17. Chose “Core Selection” -> /Documents/modules/mupen64plus_libretro_ios.dylib Back to the menu it still says “1.1 - No core”
  18. Chose “Load Content” -> /Documents/ And the rom file wasn’t there. It was in *.z64 format. Also tried a *.v64 without luck. When I rename them to *.zip or put them in another folder and zip it RetroArch crashes.

So I guess I still miss something. Hints anyone?