RetroArch Android releases (v1.0.0.2)

Well I warned people that the ‘fancier’ overlays were going to come at a cost - really, performance considerations is why the overlays were previously 256x256 - but then people were outraged because the overlays didn’t look fancy enough, so now that we use 800x ones we get complaints that they are too slow again on weak CPUs (like Cortex A8s). Really, there is no pleasing people here and I wish kamui had that overlay maker ready so that we can silence all this bitching and get on with focusing on other stuff already because it’s seriously starting to piss me off - we have a far more flexible overlay system out there already than anybody else and it’s totally customizable. Why more people aren’t cranking out their own customized ones already is beyond me - it really isn’t all that hard - just whip out a text editor, an image editor and customize the files to suit your needs - you can even customize the hitboxes totally to your own liking.

Anyway - we could just drop in the old ‘bad’ 256x256 overlays again and just drop them into a folder like ‘Low-res’ or something. You are either going to have to put up with overlays that look less fancy but are much faster and fullspeed on Cortex A8s (like 256x ones) or fancy-looking ones that will have higher system requirements.

This is a known problem and will be rectified as soon as we figure out how to do it.

Can you try disabling soft keyboard and see how that works - just as a test?

For now you can just scroll down the list and manually assign them to keycodes that way.

RetroArch Android has really beaten all of my expectations, Thanks again Square and the rest of the team :slight_smile:

All of the cores except for VBA seem to run full speed on my UG802 :cool:

The only issue I have found is that I cannot seem to be able to get the analogue sticks on a DualShock 3, connected by USB, to function within the emulation. The left stick does work fine in the menu and rom browser though.

Yeah, VBA Next as you well know comes from the PS3/360 era so we already knew for certain it would only run fullspeed on high-end Android devices.

Anyway, gpSP should have drastically lower system requirements - I might look at porting notaz’ version of it to libretro if he doesn’t beat me to it himself.

I know about this - I think we might have to start supporting ‘joysticks’ directly - unfortunately that will involve a lot of dlopen hacks and might be incompatible on certain older Android versions. Not sure yet.

Hi, Thanks and cheers to all people that made this awesome emulator for Android.

I really love the idea but I gotta admit that I could need some help. Just tell me if I am wrong here to ask this questions! I searched for a wiki but I couldnt find one which helped me in my questions.

I read in the Guide that the Galaxy S3 seems to show a wrong framerate to the emulator and that makes the sound all stuttering on my device. So i unchecked “Sync Refreshrate to screen” and tried a forced refreshrate from 60 to 40. But the sound keeps stuttering.

Another question would be: What I would need for playing Doom-games. I have wad files for Doom1 and 2 but if I try to load them the emulator just exits.

I tried any version of RetroArch I could find (~4). And I am running 4.1.2 Any help is appreciated.

thanks again for the hard work!

Bumped to version 0.9.8.1 now. Check the OP. Will take a little while until it’s available on Google Play - you can get it early here until then.

There’s a guy who has been doing most of the tests so far (B6S) on devices and he said he will be playing with this phone over the weekend and finding out the ideal refresh rate/setting for it. Once we find a value that ‘just works’, we will push some device-specific hack for this thing so that these audio/video stutters won’t happen again on RetroArch Android with a Galaxy S3.

It’s unfortunate that the Galaxy S3 doesn’t report its refreshrate correctly - if it had a 58Hz refresh like the Note 2 and if it had just reported that, then things would be working fine right now.

Thank you :slight_smile:

New version pushed - 0.9.8.1 - check the OP. Now Android 2.3+ compatible among other things.

hi, problems with pcsx on android… Does not run metal gear solid. wipeout 2097 wasnt running but now with the recent update(0.9.8.1), is…!

also, problems with Final burn alpha too… Currently fails to run ANY metal slug game. Also Garou, Sengoku, Fatal Fury…Actually it fails to run ANY NEO GEO GAME inc ALL the KOFs… There is nothing wrong with my roms…They are running perfectly Mame4Droid and on aFBA 1.6(Full burn alpha)

This is very confusing!!!

[quote=“Squarepusher”]

This is a known problem and will be rectified as soon as we figure out how to do it.

Can you try disabling soft keyboard and see how that works - just as a test?

For now you can just scroll down the list and manually assign them to keycodes that way.[/quote]

I tried 0.9.8.1, and mapping bug has been fixed. Now it works great. Thank you for your hard work!

It’s either your image or you should use the real BIOS files.

But that game definitely works.

Currently fails to run ANY metal slug game. Also Garou, Sengoku, Fatal Fury…Actually it fails to run ANY NEO GEO GAME inc ALL the KOFs…

All those games should work fine.

There is nothing wrong with my roms…They are running perfectly Mame4Droid and on aFBA 1.6(Full burn alpha)

This is very confusing!!!

You’re probably missing neogeo.zip. Either that, or you have outdated FBA ROMsets.

It CAN be your ROMs, because FBA syncs with the very latest MAME romsets - and MAME4Droid can’t possibly be based on the very latest MAME version unless you want it to be a total slideshow on Android.

As I’ve already said my roms work fine with mame4droid and aFBA… That’s Full Burn Alpha 1.6…The standalone app and not the one in retroarch. I would love to know why that is… Also, the neogeo roms ran perfectly on neo.emu too. Mgs definitely works on epsxe. I had an older version of fpse a few months ago and it worked on that too.

Just to reiterate…My roms are as perfect as you’re gonna get…Ive tried every version of every rom that I’ve mentioned and spent countless hours downloading and testing so I know what I’m talking about. Thanks

@musanator, for Metal Gear Solid to work just put scph1001.bin in the same folder as the image

My roms are as perfect as you’re gonna get…Ive tried every version of every rom that I’ve mentioned and spent countless hours downloading and testing so I know what I’m talking about.

I’m sorry I’m not usually so blunt but clearly, you really don’t know what you are talking about.

MAME4Droid, assuming you are using the most widely used version, is a port of MAME 0.37b5 which dates back to … July, 28th 2000. Might as well say close to prehistoric times as far as emulation goes. The most recent version as we speak is MAME 0.148 released on January 11th of this year. And even if you are on MAME4Droid Reloaded, it is a port of MAME 0.139 released on July 30th 2009. 4 year and a half ago!

See, the world of emulation is constantly evolving. Emulator programmers and ROM dumpers keep discovering new information about the workings of the machines they seek to emulate and about the chips they dump. The goal, technical knowledge and processing power emulation authors and dumpers have at hand now are very different from what they used to be. The NeoGeo and CPS sets in particular underwent several redumps along the years to get rid of bad dumps (errors). Same thing with Playstation and countless other platforms.

Now you will understand why the 13 year old arcade dumps of MAME4Droid are not supported by RetroArch FBA Core which is based on MAME 0.147u4 (December 17th of this year). While MAME4Droid certainly served its purpose of running a few arcade games on older smartphones, it is also a huge disservice to emulation in general because it contributes to the anachronistic survival of entire rom sets full of rubbish.

Simply put: your roms and cd images are outdated. update them. educate yourself about emulation. The people behind RetroArch are amongst the most dedicated and gifted you will ever find when it comes to emulation. They are always ready to help and listen to feedback but if I were you I would avoid the “as I already said” and the “I know what I’m talking about” around here.

HI, i’m new here. i would like to say how awesome this emulator is. i have been playing Retroarch on my 360 rgl and it really works great. i just have one question. it will be possible to see in next versions of retroarch the pscx reamed core ported to the xbox and ps3 version or maybe on wii and xbox 1 as well ?? sorry my english :frowning: and thanks to developers

I have a question. Would it ever be possible to add a libretro core for 3DO? That system has some decent games on it.

http://code.google.com/p/freedo/ . Here is an emulator for the 3DO. I’m not tech-savvy enough to know how difficult it would be to implement one day but it is just a suggestion.

PCSX reARMed is an ARM-only emulator, so it won’t be appearing on Xbox 360 or PS3.

Hi, Thank you for support Android 2.3. Many PSX games from my collection run awesome on my JXD-S601 with android 2.3.6

Please add map Android menu button, for call Quick menu with DPAD navigate support, without overlay mode. If possible also add manual frameskipping mode (FS=1). This need for play via composite NTSC TV-OUT with minimal “lags” on CRT.

Thank you very much. :slight_smile: