RetroArch Android releases (v1.0.0.2)

RetroArch Android devices
#120

I’ve been getting e-mails like this -

How do us noobs use this? There isnt any description on how to use this. youtube videos suck just as bad when it come to a simple explanation on how to play games with this. How do you expect noobs to utilize this application!!!

And honestly, the more responses I get like this (and 1 stars like this), the more I feel tempted NOT to do ANYTHING as far as making it ‘more noob-friendly’. I know that it being free makes them feel entitled to this or that but really - PC and console emulators have ALWAYS expected of the user that users have a basic frame of reference as to what they need to do with this thing - it isn’t hard - I know that we’re dealing with Generation Idiocracy these days but honestly - if you can’t figure out the procedure of how to play a game with these cores, then said person is not exactly the sharpest nail in the box.

They don’t want to read a PDF? Then that confirms what I’ve said before. I didn’t even have to go to the length of providing a link to a PDF with most of the information they would need - it was a lot of work writing all that and most other people wouldn’t have even felt like doing that all for free in the first place. I don’t see Broglia doing this - I don’t see any of the guys doing this - yet because I’m free and they’re not, I apparently have to spoonfeed these people.

I don’t feel like spoonfeeding them just because these users think they can somehow ‘persuade’ the author/developer to do certain things because they think this irrelevant ‘stars rating system’ on a Play Store gives them bargaining power.

I also got requests to build in a ‘ROM search utility’ with the caveat ‘It may be a little illegal’ - seriously, the moment you start appealing to this kind of stupid stuff, it will never end and it will just get more and more ridiculous. Best not to go there entirely.

#121

@squarepusher…

Who’s arguing dude? Im merely informing that the roms work fine in 3-4 different emulators including full burn alpha 1.6 but they do not work on full burn alpha on retroarch…?

Does that sound like arguing or just someone giving feedback so the devs can sort out the problem??

In future, if you’e got nothing worthwhile to say, then I suggest you keep quiet.

#122

Squarepusher is one of the devs, so anything he has to say regarding this is worthwhile, even if what he says is “no.”

#123

Im gonna test today again this mother of all emulation applications, trying to get working my arcade stick on a hdmi connected tablet. Retro console everywhere ftw!!

Just a few questions for being curious:

-Is there any plan on adding any more cores to the Android port?

-Any more customization options general/per core in the future?

-How many people is involved in this project?

Again, thanks for your hard work, few years ago this was unbelievable, having all this emus on a handled device.

Cheers!!

#124

Squarepusher, I’m really sorry to hear about all the idiots and I hope you don’t think I’m one of them. I just really like this project, I want it to be even better, and I try to contribute the only way I can by reporting bugs/issues and suggesting improvements.

I think having some way of verifying an image could be a good idea, but personally it’s mainly so that I can avoid giving false bug reports, and I fully understand if you don’t want to bother with it.

#125

Can you post a link to a site for roms which work on retroarch??

No. You have enough information in this thread and in the FAQ to get started. Show me you are willing to do a bit of work by yourself and maybe I’ll help. And lose the attitude. Seriously.

could you please release a .DAT file that has the XML data for the correct ROMs / CRCs etc. using a tool like CLRMAME, Romulus, DatUtil, RomVault etc.?

There is no need to release anything. The DATs in question are already out there. The FBA Core in RetroArch is Final Burn Alpha (made into a library that is “talked to” by RetroArch). As we speak, the FBA Core is Final Burn Alpha 0.2.97.28. Thus, all you need to do is generate the Arcade DAT from the “real” Final Burn Alpha (from the Misc Menu IIRC) and import it in ClrMAME.

For cartridge based console, no-intro is usually better and for CD-based systems images from the Redump project are almost guaranteed to work. EDIT: There are DATs for that too =)

I would volunteer to write a quick tutorial about sane ROM management when the wiki is up but then again, Squarepusher pretty much underlined where the problem lies… I guess that was to be expected going into Android and its wide-reaching user base.

#126

Thanks for this port.

One thing I noticed on my Nexus 7 is that the joystick on my MOGA controller does not work in analog mode. The manual says to make sure ’Enable left analog input’ is checked, but I found that it only works when this option is unchecked.

It’s not really a big deal to me, just thought I’d report it.

edit: I checked and there are no keycodes reported from the sticks in analog mode, not sure if that’s normal or not.

#127

Haven’t gotten around to that yet.

Proper ‘joystick support’ is another of these borked ‘halfway there’ things of the NDK - AFAIK you have to do dlopen hacks to ‘check’ if joystick support is there on your OS and then ‘grab’ function pointers to it.

We’ll have to try to sort out that stuff. Suffice it to say it isn’t exactly fun.

#128

Ah, ok.

#129

We really screwed up with the Wonderswan core (or rather, me) - the same problems happen on Wii too.

Let me get that fixed up pronto.[/quote]

Wonderswan runs fine now.

Thank you.

#130

Yeah, I also tested it on the Wii port and it looks fine, except for the tearing.

#131

One thing i miss here is a direct mame4droid core, because of the games not supported by the fba core (years ago fba was just about cps1-2 and neogeo, got surprised when i saw they increased the compatibility with more arcade games)

Anyway everything perfect right now since i updated my device to android 4.1.1 (hdmi slowdowns and stuff), now im gonna test 2 controllers and hdmi…

Would be nice if people with arcade sticks would help with the auto-detection inputs, its amazing just plug-in and play, no mapping every time you load up a game :smiley:

Waiting for that new version coming to test!

Cheers!!

#132

Tearing or jerkiness is unavoidable. Wonderswan runs at a strange 75 fps.

#133

It seems that ‘quick menu’ is only available through onscreen controls and can’t be mapped to any hardware button, so it’s impossible to quick save/load without touch :frowning: Can you fix that please? Make it so pressing ‘menu’ button during gameplay would show up quick menu. Thanks!

#134

The problem is that ‘overlays’ slow down emulation speed so it’s beneficial to disable them if you don’t need them (which is the case if you’re using a gamepad - the preferred method to play these games in the first place) - so I’m unsure if it would be a wise idea to let you toggle them from a gamepad like that. Still, we need to come up with something I guess - so something like that would perhaps have to be implemented.

#135

Squarepusher are you guys gonna update today? Will test if you add the arcade stick i put o the other thread, because today i´ve been trying to play with 2 joysticks on a tablet binding manually the inputs but 30 seconds or so after i load the game the app does not respond (not even any of both pads)

Im gonna look again this with other usb hub and joysticks, not sure what happened today, maybe with 2 usb pads automatically configured this would not happen.

I dont get tired of saying thank you to all of you making this possible, keep the hard work :slight_smile:

Cheers!!

#136

I’m busy right now trying to debug with a guy with an Xperia Play and trying to get the gamepad to work there. It’s a lot of work.

Not sure if we can make it today - if not today, then tomorrow.

EDIT: OK, added the Madcatz fighting stick. Should be in the next release.

#137

Ok, I just thought we can use hardware “Menu” button for showing quick menu as it’s unused by RetroArch while core’s running…

#138

Yes, it has a bug with XP gamepad. When RetroArch loads games, it assign the input devices order by which keys pressed first. It takes first pressed key’s gamepad as 1P gamepad. This makes XP’s game pad not working properly. For XP, direction keys, X, triangle, square, menu and serach key are of same device code:HID 163310: keypad-zeus Start, Select and Volume keys are of another same device code: HID 0: Keypad-game-zeus Touch screen is HID 65541: cy8ctma300_touch Touch pad is HID 65539: synaptics_touchp

So if we want it to work, We have to follow following steps. 1.RetroArch Settings—>Input Settings–>Configuration Autodetect ,disable 2.RetroArch Settings—>Input Settings–>Player 1 Custom Binds Direction keys and ABXY,L1,R1 are mapped here. Start is mapped to Menu, while Select mapped to Search. 3.Touchscreen Overlay Enable

When game is loaded, NEVER press Start or Select and NEVER use touch pad or touch screen. Make sure that any button among Direction keys and ABXY,L1,R1 is firstly pressed.

If you do above steps, you can use XP game pad properly. But, you can not quit game with Return. To quit game, press Home to back to desktop, launch RetroArch, and press press Start or Select ,or use touch pad or touch screen. This makes direction keys disabled, and you can quit game now.

#139

Yes, it has a bug with XP gamepad. When RetroArch loads games, it assign the input devices order by which keys pressed first. It takes first pressed key’s gamepad as 1P gamepad. This makes XP’s game pad not working properly. For XP, direction keys, X, triangle, square, menu and serach key are of same device code:HID 163310: keypad-zeus Start, Select and Volume keys are of another same device code: HID 0: Keypad-game-zeus Touch screen is HID 65541: cy8ctma300_touch Touch pad is HID 65539: synaptics_touchp

So if we want it to work, We have to follow following steps. 1.RetroArch Settings—>Input Settings–>Configuration Autodetect ,disable 2.RetroArch Settings—>Input Settings–>Player 1 Custom Binds Direction keys and ABXY,L1,R1 are mapped here. Start is mapped to Menu, while Select mapped to Search. 3.Touchscreen Overlay Enable

When game is loaded, NEVER press Start or Select and NEVER use touch pad or touch screen. Make sure that any button among Direction keys and ABXY,L1,R1 is firstly pressed.

If you do below steps, you can sue XP game pad properly. But, you can not quit game with Return. To quit game, press Home to back to desktop, launch RetroArch, and press press Start or Select ,or use touch pad or touch screen. This makes direction keys disabled, and you can quit game now.[/quote]

Thanks to a user called kiri87, we managed to fix this today.

So the next update (r9) will have fully working Xperia Play controls (except for the Synaptics touchpad ‘touch analog’ thingies - but there is no real analog stick support in RetroArch Android anyway so we’ll return to that later).