RetroArch Android releases (v1.0.0.2)

RetroArch Android devices
#21
  • the core-manual PDF mentions the “system directory” to put the MEGA-CD and PCE-CD BIOSes just like in the PC/console version but I can’t seem to find an option in the menu to set this directoy. Can it be created in an Android file explorer or is support just not implemented at the moment? It all works if the files are in the same directory with the ISO though, so no big deal.

The core manual PDF is made to be generic and to apply to all ports - unfortunately in this case, it’s a bit TOO GENERIC.

On Android we decided not to bother with a system directory because we can’t exactly ‘assume’ a default directory or make it easy for users to drag the files to it - instead, the required BIOS file(s) should be in the same directory as the game you’re trying to load.

  • is there a way to call the Quick Menu when overlay controls are disabled and using a pad? If not, maybe an overlay with a single Quick Menu button could do the trick? Having a “three dot context menu” in the Android task bar would be ideal but I can imagine that being a real headache to implement.

Can’t be done right now, but it’s definitely something I want to add - I am thinking of ‘binding’ this to the ‘Menu’ button of a gamepad - ie. the DualShock3’s ‘PS button’ or the 360 pad’s ‘360’ button.

  • is there a criteria for what USB controllers you want to add support for? I’ll gladly provide device IDs and mappings for quite a few USB adapters and USB gamepads but don’t want it to be too much work for you guys. In any case, maybe a thread could be dedicated to posting configurations requests?

Anything will go. I want as many devices reported to me as possible so we’ll throw in autodetection support for all of them. I want this to be as close to a ‘console port’ as possible in terms of ‘plug and play’ factor.

  • it seems the Saturn USB pad has no binding for “RetroPad Select”. This means no coins can be inserted in FBA games. Or that the original Zelda can’t be paused for example. Maybe consider Z or C?

This is definitely a glaring omission I made - part of it is that the Saturn lacks a ‘Select button’ so I wasn’t sure what to map it to. Z or C is fine according to you?

Would have to look if it suits our purposes.

Yeah we know. We also knew beforehand that we would get bitching about touchscreen overlays even though the big ‘plus point’ here is that it’s all user-customizable (might need a user-friendly WYSIWYG editor though before they’ll jump on it).

Finally, we have forums to report console bugs (GBATemp etc…), PC bugs (this very board)… Anywhere to report Android bugs and comments in particular? Maybe it’s time for new categories/subforums?

Unsure about this - I guess for now we’ll make a separate stickied thread for reporting new input keycodes.

Sorry for the length and as the.tall.man says: any way to send donations/gifts of appreciation?

I want to make RetroArch stretch across every architecture and every platform pretty much. However, up until now I’ve been taking money out of my own pocket to make this a reality, and now that you people can see that I delivered good on my promises, I would hope you guys could ‘support’ me getting RetroArch ported to as many new platforms as possible for free. You can help me in this by gifting me the hardware that is necessary to do this - for instance, I’m still on the lookout for an iPad 2 so that I can port RetroArch to that and put it up on Cydia for free.

Monetary donations I will never accept - and I hope the same applies for the other teammembers because as soon as money enters into the equation, it rapidly degenerates into sour grapes and envy and then the project falls apart. In a way, these ‘gifts’ could invite a whole lot of envy and greed as well - so I’m even unsure about that aspect -but one thing is for sure - it sure as hell beats going the cynical route of ‘Kickstarter projects’ - and there’s no way I’ll be able to get an Ouya or insert whatever ‘open device’ that is free that will get released down the line - something suitable for RetroArch.

So if the interest is there, we’ll be on other platforms from this point on as well that people would like to see.

#22

I have a ZTE Blade gen2 with Froyo and the play store says my device is not compatible.

If I change my ROM to a newest, the app should work or the problem is not that?

Thanks for all the help.

#23

Froyo is so old it can’t ever be supported because that was before native activity support was even introduced.

And yes, upgrading your ROM to a much more recent version (ICS/Honeycomb) would do the trick - but I’m not sure if the specs of your phone would be up to snuff for those newer OS versions.

EDIT:

http://forum.xda-developers.com/wiki/ZTE_Blade#Detailed_hardware_specifications

Looks like an ARMv6 CPU. That’s way too old for the RetroArch APK on the Play Store right now. Only way for it to work (that is - IF you upgrade the OS) is if somebody would compile it from source, leave the ARMv5-compatible binaries in and then distribute the APK.

I dunno - perhaps we could provide a separate APK - ARMv5 compatible - but it would turn into a big mess to maintain. Not sure if that’s worth pursuing since these phones are on their way out anyway.

#24

Thanks for this great release! Maybe I’m not taking the right approach here, but I’m trying to set the aspect ratio to the same one as the original system, and can’t figure out how to do it… (kind of a “fit to screen while keeping the original aspect ratio” approach) As an alternative, I set the screen to 4:3 to play some SFIII3rdStrike (or should it be 5:4?) but it stays 4:3 instead of going 3:4 when I want to play a Tate/vertical shmup.

Also, is there a simple way to switch keys? I’d like to set HP and HK like they are in SFIV. (HP>R1, HK>R2)

Android version on a Samsung Galaxy note2. Thanks in advance for the help :slight_smile:

#25

Pushed a new version - check the OP - it has a new APK as well - Google as usual takes a long time for it to update your page.

I want to know from the guys who reported the gamepad keycodes if those pads now work for them.

#26

On Android we decided not to bother with a system directory because we can’t exactly ‘assume’ a default directory or make it easy for users to drag the files to it - instead, the required BIOS file(s) should be in the same directory as the game you’re trying to load.

Sounds good, and I don’t suppose many people will have 50+ ISOs each in their own subfolders on their Android devices anyways.

Anything will go. I want as many devices reported to me as possible so we’ll throw in autodetection support for all of them. I want this to be as close to a ‘console port’ as possible in terms of ‘plug and play’ factor.

Excellent! Will go through all my adapters today and post the keycodes.

This is definitely a glaring omission I made - pat of it is that the Saturn lacks a ‘Select button’ so I wasn’t sure what to map it to. Z or C is fine according to you?

I always set it up to Z on the PC version but it’s nothing more than a personal preference.

I want to make RetroArch stretch across every architecture and every platform pretty much. However, up until now I’ve been taking money out of my own pocket to make this a reality, and now that you people can see that I delivered good on my promises, I would hope you guys could ‘support’ me getting RetroArch ported to as many new platforms as possible for free. You can help me in this by gifting me the hardware that is necessary to do this - for instance, I’m still on the lookout for an iPad 2 so that I can port RetroArch to that and put it up on Cydia for free.

Monetary donations I will never accept - and I hope the same applies for the other teammembers because as soon as money enters into the equation, it rapidly degenerates into sour grapes and envy and then the project falls apart. In a way, these ‘gifts’ could invite a whole lot of envy and greed as well - so I’m even unsure about that aspect -but one thing is for sure - it sure as hell beats going the cynical route of ‘Kickstarter projects’ - and there’s no way I’ll be able to get an Ouya or insert whatever ‘open device’ that is free that will get released down the line - something suitable for RetroArch.

<Slow clap> Wise beyond your years.</Slow clap>

I don’t have an iPad2 at the moment but as an alternative couldn’t a “one time money pool” be created and stopped once it reaches its goal? A bit like what byuu did when he needed funds to decap the SNES DSP-x chips? Or do you think this would degenerate too?

#27

Thank you for this excellent release. It is getting better with every version.

PS3 bug report.

I noticed after restarting a game once in the Snes core than I could no longer access the rom list menu. L3 and R3 simply did not direct me to the main screen; only R3 performed its main function. Further restarts lead to a crash and ps3 needed to be rebooted.

Feature Request(s):

Would it be possible to use the on-screen keyboard to browse the rom list? Cheats - mainly for NES

#28

Hi, Can you add support for my “Thrust Predator” game pad? The emulator reports it as “USB Gamepad (unbound)”

START=197 , SELECT=196

DPAD = X & Y +/- values shown

TRIANGLE = 188 X = 190 SQUAR = 191 CIRCLE = 189

L1=194 ----- R1=195 L2=192 ----- R2=193

Thanks Jim

#29

Keymapping for the JXd 5110 is working great, awesome turnaround guys :slight_smile:

#30

I feel very bad about releasing the PS3 version in that condition and rest assured - a bugfixed version is coming up.

#31

Hi everyone!

I only registered here to shout a big thank you for everyone involved in this project, keeping the emulation scene alive in every platform. Its good to hear that is free, and better reading how you guys thinks about it being always free.

Only a few things about this version, when connecting a hdmi cable the performance slows a lot (not happening in other emus such as mame4droid or snes9x when the performance is the same when connecting the cable) and the touch controls are not working very good at all. If you guys are capable of having the same performance with hdmi we will have the perfect console emulation app on our tablets/smartphones connecting it on the big screen.

Again, really, thanks to everyone making this a reality, now on android, retro emulation everywhere with a phone, hdmi cable and a pad everywhere i go :smiley:

Cheers from spain!!

#32

Hi, can anybody please comment on the issues I posted in the last page? Read the PDFs, couldn’t find anything there either. Thanks a lot in advance :slight_smile:

#33

@Shin It doesn’t look like manual button assignment is implemented at the moment. For the aspect ratio question: ‘auto’ should display the aspect ratio reported by the libretro core, I think. If that’s not looking right to you, you might try the ‘square pixels’ setting.

@JJaVMeTaL Can you explain your issue with the touch controls? They seem fine on my end.

#34

I have an HDMI cable too -use it on an el-cheapo Allwinner Cortex A8 tablet and I just found that it runs like crap - even the ‘official’ Sonic CD game has terrible lag with HDMI-out. I’m not sure what is to blame for that - could be just the higher resolution it needs to output to that causes it to really take a nosedive.

I’m not sure how to even rectify that situation - there seems to be no real control you have over these display modes in either native or Android SDK.

Also - RetroArch Android uses no frameskipping - so any ‘lag’ you see will be even more pronounced than some other emu where you’re always having frameskipping on.

#35

Your diligence is most appreciated :slight_smile:

#36

Is that with any shaders on? If so, have you tried setting a low FBO scale (like 2) and then let it bilinearly scale the rest? I have to do this on my HTPC due to its crappy GPU.

#37

Is that with any shaders on? If so, have you tried setting a low FBO scale (like 2) and then let it bilinearly scale the rest? I have to do this on my HTPC due to its crappy GPU.[/quote]

It’s bad just with stock shaders alone. Cyanogenmod 9 seems to give you some more control over HDMI modes than the stock firmware did but no matter what I choose (1080p 60hz/50hz, 720p 60hz/50hz) - it still remains pretty bad in terms of lag. It might be that you need far better hardware to do this justice instead of an el-cheapo tablet.

#38

Its just that its not accurate, needs to have a better response :slight_smile:

About the hdmi stuff, i can say on my tablet (BQ Ediston, A9 with Mali 400) i can run without any lag games on mame4droid and Snes9x without any frameskip, dont know why the lag with this emulator, but its the only thing in my opinion that this need to be even more masterpiece than it is right now.

Maybe there should be an option that when pluggin in the hdmi it only generates the graphics on the tv (in my tablet shows on both sides, theres also an app to disable the tablet when hdmi is plugged in but the emulator just works with the same lag).

Really hoping this gets fixed sometime. Taking my tablet everywhere with a hdmi and 2 snes usb pads with an app that emulates almost everything is a dream really damn close :smiley:

If i can do some tests and help with the hdmi stuff just let me know :slight_smile:

Cheers!!

#39

Its just that its not accurate, needs to have a better response :slight_smile:

About the hdmi stuff, i can say on my tablet (BQ Ediston, A9 with Mali 400) i can run without any lag games on mame4droid and Snes9x without any frameskip, dont know why the lag with this emulator, but its the only thing in my opinion that this need to be even more masterpiece than it is right now.

Maybe there should be an option that when pluggin in the hdmi it only generates the graphics on the tv (in my tablet shows on both sides, theres also an app to disable the tablet when hdmi is plugged in but the emulator just works with the same lag).

Really hoping this gets fixed sometime. Taking my tablet everywhere with a hdmi and 2 snes usb pads with an app that emulates almost everything is a dream really damn close :smiley:

If i can do some tests and help with the hdmi stuff just let me know :slight_smile:

Cheers!![/quote]

One thing that might be ‘screwing’ it up is the ‘Sync refresh rate to screen’ option in the Settings menu - it might be trying to sync the refreshrate of RetroArch to your ‘tablet/phone’ screen instead of the HDTV. Have you tried turning that off and ‘forcing’ a refresh rate instead? Let’s say you set it at 1080p 60hz with HDMI TV-Out. You should set ‘Forced refresh rate’ to 60.00 then and disable ‘Sync refreshrate to screen’. If that still gives bad results, then try 59.95 instead. I think tweaking this long enough might eventually give you something that works out for your HDTV/monitor.

#40

Tried what you said, nothing changes. The thing is that the same game -Aero Fighters- runs perfect on Snes9x without tweaking anything. Will continue testing tomorrow and i will try maybe on another tv.

Thanks for the quick responses!

Cheers!!