Newbie help with Retroarch basic setup (LibreELEC / Kodi)

RetroArch Linux devices
#1

My wife and I have been using a Windows 10 laptop running SNES9x to play our favorite SNES games. We’re both seniors and I’m a retired computer tech. There was no place for our laptop so we placed it on the floor next to the 46" Sony (connected via hdmi). We have to boot the laptop and wait for windows to fully load before launching SNES9x. We currently use a wired SNES USB Controller with a really long cord and the cord doesn’t bother my wife but I want to use the 8BITDO Blutooth wireless controller which I use on another desktop computer.

Anyhoo, my HTPC is an Intel i5 NUC running LIbreELEC (8.0.2)(Kodi 17.3). Kodi has a few game projects in the works but they are WAY over my head with configuration, so I though I’d try a few addons that may work with Kodi. First was ROM Collection Browser which scans your ROMs and attaches meta-data - cool but not needed in my case. I also could not get an emulator to work with it. I tried SNES9x and it wouldn’t launch when a game was selected.

Last night I loaded Retroarch and configured the correct core to use with my collection of SNES (.smc) games. When I exit Retroarch and launch it again, there is no core and I must select it again. I started a game (Super Mario World) and most of the gamepad’s buttons work but I’ll need to reprogram a few. In the meantime I couldn’t for the life of me find a way to exit the game. I tried everything possible and had to reboot the Intel NUC with it’s power button. I normally use a Logitech Harmony 650 to control Kodi and after launching Retroarch, the game pad controls both Retroarch and the games. So how do I exit the games ? I can’t see assigning a game pad button to this function unless I’m missing something.

By the way, the picture quality from my laptop (connected to my 46" Sony TV) was much sharper than what I see running Retroarch. Maybe I chose the wrong core and need to experiment with others.

Any help would be appreciated.

#2

Hey, that’s great to hear that people of all ages are enjoying it :slight_smile:

For the sharpness, try going to settings > video > bilinear filtering OFF. That will use sharp “nearest neighbor” scaling instead of the blurrier bilinear. However, NN can cause some pixels to be larger than others, which can be weird, just FYI.

For exiting, it’s typically the “Esc” key on your keyboard, but you can go to settings > input > input hotkey binds and change the binding for “Quit RetroArch” to whatever you want. You can also set up a menu toggle from there, and you can quit RetroArch from the menu, as well. <- I think this is the more tedious but safer option, since you won’t have to worry about totally quitting out unexpectedly if you accidentally hit the button.

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#3

Have you tried out the RetroArch Lakka project? You might even just run it from its live USB mode, but it’s great permanently installed as well.

#4

Thanks for the quick response. I’ll try the video settings as you mentioned. As far as the exit issue, I don’t use a keyboard on my Kodi setup. I can assign keyboard strokes to my Logitech Harmony 650 remote but I think I used up all the spare keys for other options. As far as assigning a gamepad button to exit - only the 2 edge buttons don’t get used when we play games but our fingers rest on them while playing. If you hit one by accident, the game would end. How about a combo of 2 buttons pressed ?

#5

We don’t have any specific way to set a combo to exit, but there are a couple of ways to achieve something similar. We have a “hotkey enable” button, which, once mapped, makes RetroArch stop listening for any hotkey events unless it’s held. So, you could map that to one of the edge buttons and then map the quit button to the other and you would have to hit both for it to take effect.

We do have specific combos you can set up (for example, start+select) to bring up the menu and then you can safely quit from there.

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#6

I installed Retroarch-1.6.0-Full-git–97e3a9e.zip into Kodi yesterday. I’m guessing it was made as a addon for Kodi. How is RetroArch Lakka different and what benefits are there ?

When you install a Kodi addon, does it run under Kodi or the OS that runs Kodi ?

#7

Hey, the start & select combo sounds like a winner to me. Let’s hope I can find out how to set this up. Thanks

#8

Could you give me a quick step-by-step for setting up the start+select combo ? Thanks

#9

Sure. Just launch RetroArch (don’t need to open any games yet) and go to settings > input and you should see “menu toggle gamepad combo”, which you can cycle through with left/right to see the different possible hardcoded combos.

Note: this combo will take you to the menu, from which you’ll need to hit the ‘cancel’ button a couple of times to get back to the top-level menu if you go into it while playing a game, and then hit “quit RetroArch” to exit.

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#10

What differences should I expect when trying various SNES cores ? (ie: picture quality, coloring, sounds, etc)

#11

Cosmetically, they’re all the same. snes9x (no year after the name) is probably your best bet for just general purpose use. It’s fast (bsnes uses a lot of CPU for more accuracy, but it’s usually not noticeable) and reasonably accurate (the year-stamped snes9x versions can have issues with some games that use edge-case behavior [esp when it comes to audio]; the one without the years is usually pretty safe).

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#12

The sharpness setting worked but I don’t know how to “SAVE” the setting. Start+Select did not work. Maybe I have to map the gamepad keys first.

Also, there is no game sound at all.

#13

I think I know why the settings weren’t remembered. When start+select didn’t work for me, I had to press the NUC power button to exit, which caused Retroarch to shut down incorrectly, losing my settings. Time to map the buttons and tackle the no-sound issue.

#14

I’m lost trying to remap the buttons. It was super easy using SNES9x but I have no clue what to do with Retroarch. I have a GTron USB Retro Gamepad. I think either select or start need remapping plus A, B, X or Y may need the same.

I think Retroarch auto-detected the gamepad (says “Retro”) but it still needs remapping.

#15

I successfully remapped my game pad and got the start+select exit combo to work. I still have no audio. I disabled “keep audio alive” in Kodi as suggested in another thread. Next I’ll try changing audio drivers in Retroarch.

#16

I fixed the no audio problem. In settings / audio / device, I entered hw:0,3 I found this using google: https://sourceforge.net/p/retroarch-openelec/wiki/audio/ All my problems and issues are solved (for now). Picture quality is great too. Thanks everyone for the help.

#17

Glad you got it going. Have fun gaming :smiley:

#18

My entire SNES list has thumbnails (icons ?) but the History List doesn’t. Is this normal ?

#19

Yeah, I think so. The history playlist doesn’t know where to look for each thumbnail, since it’s a mishmash of whatever you’ve been playing.

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