New to Android

RetroArch Android devices
#1

So I finally have a phone that doesn’t feel 15 years old and it’s playing Dreamcast games, so it’s time to setup some mobile RetroArch for the first time. However this is… different… from my Windows 10 PC

Are there any specific cores I need to be looking at using a separate version? For instance I can’t get Beetle_Saturn to run any of my games without getting “incorrectable Data at Sector 0” but it runs my .chd files just fine on desktop. I thought I remembered a PSX_Android core or something, but I didn’t see it on the updater.

What do you guys use for controls? While I’m really impressed with how well the overlays work here, it’s obviously not comparable. I know I can get a clip for my X1 controller, but that pad isn’t exactly one I’m just gonna carry around in my pocket lol.

Also the menu, are there specific touch gestures or something? Seems like sometimes I can alter a setting by swiping on it, but other times I can’t change anything.

The last thing I wonder is how closely related things are. For instance, if I take a shader I made on my PC and just port it over into the right spot on my phone, can I run that shader? What about save-states/save-files? Is there any way (please tell me yes) to quickly sync or copy saves from PC to Windows and vice-versa?

I’m really eager to play with RetroArch in this setting, but I’d appreciate any help y’all can give me here.

#2

Which device/model is it? I don’t know if any Android phones are fast enough for beetle-saturn… You should use Yaba Sanshiro on mobile instead.

There’s PCSX-ReARMed. Beetle-psx will run on very fast devices, but most people use ReARMed instead. It’s much, much faster (and more accurate) on 32-bit builds, so if you have trouble maintaining full speed, you might consider sideloading the 32-bit RA apk.

XMB has touch gestures now: https://www.libretro.com/index.php/retroarch-1-7-9-released/

but I believe the default menu on mobile is GLUI, so you would have to switch to XMB to use those. I’m not sure if GLUI has gesture support or not.

I think most people just use a regular bluetooth gamepad and presumably prop their phone up on something /shrug

Shaders will work for the most part. Slang shaders (with vulkan driver) are more consistent than GLSL. Some savestates will work, most/all in-game saves should. You can sync between the device and your PC using third party sync software, like google drive or syncthing.