RetroArch Initial Thoughts/Questions

RetroArch General
#1

First off, awesome work on this system!! I first heard about RetroArch/Libretro when the port for the original XBOX was created. But I finally took the plunge now that it is out for Android, and I have only good things to say. It just works! Lots of systems supported out of the box, and little to no confusing configuration. I love the rewind feature too. This is the first emulator I have used that has the ability to do that. The idea of using a library for developing emulator cores is seriously genius. Now there is a stable platform for nearly every mainstream OS that an emu can be developed for without the devs needing to worry about messing with OS specifics. Awesome. No fuss lol. Hopefully people continue to take notice. I find it hard to see much reason to develop platform specific emulators anymore. If emus are developed for Libretro, a wider audience can be reached and more awesome stuff can happen with developer collaboration.

Anyway, on to the questions. I think the save state options are pretty cool to autosave and autoload. My question is this, are these save states platform specific? Basically, I would like to be able to play a game on my Android tablet for a while, and later, take that saved state and play the same game on my raspberry pi. Are the saves compatible? If so, it would be awesome if I could host the ROM and save state files on a network share (SMB/NFS/etc) and load them from there. Different users could have their own folders for saves, and could just load a profile and start playing their games. Are there any plans to add network support like this?

My second question is in regards to the Android controller overlays. I see an overlay for each system (and different rotations, portrait and landscape), but the SNES overlay is always the one that is used. Are the overlays supposed to automatically switch based on which core is running? If they don’t yet, it would be really awesome if they did.

Third, if I am using an external controller for my games and the touchscreen overlay is disabled, is there a way to bring up the “Quick Menu” (in-game menu) with a button on the controller? It would also be sweet to have dedicated buttons for the in-game menu commands like fast forward and rewind, that could be configured by the user. Also, in regards to the in-game menu, is there a way to make it pause the game while this menu is active?

Sorry for the long post, I am just excited about everything this new emulator has to offer! Hopefully, this is not just a TLDR post lol. Thanks for the answers/tips!

#2

I also use an external control pad, i wanted the in game menu, but not the control pad layouts, so i edited on of the layouts, here it is if you want it, backup your original layout first:

http://www.mediafire.com/view/?8847ojyocrx18y7

#3

@mwaterbu Savestates are generally not portable. Use in-game SRAM saves instead.

I think manual button assignment is in the pipeline (or maybe already out? I can’t keep up with all of the features/fixes Squarepusher and Toadking have been pushing out)

#4

Welcome to the wonderful world of libretro/RetroArch!

I’m sure Squarepusher/Themaister will swoop in to address your questions but here is what I can tell you from what I asked earlier:

Regarding your second question, I asked Squarepusher about it and here is what he had to say:

As for your third:

#5

Can already be done.

#6

Thanks for all the answers guys! Looking forward to everything the future holds :slight_smile: For now though, back to the games lol!

BTW, are you guys on board with the XBMC integration project for libretro? I know that this will be handled on the XBMC side of things, but am just wondering what your thoughts on this are.

#7

I’m checking its progress from time to time - I’m happy to help whenever they need my help.

As far I heard maister was prepared to help them out with the audio latency issues they’ve been having.

#8

Do you know which cores are portable? Is there any reason why they might not be?

I have tested with my PC and Android phone and found the Snes9X Next core allows save states to be portable. I used SugarSync to keep my Save directories in sync and it worked!

So impressed with your work.

#9

@waster It’s all very fragile, as far as savestates are concerned. Since they are essentially a snapshot of the interior workings of the console, any changes to what it expects can lead to incompatibilities. Depending on the core, there could be endianness issues, as well. I’m pleasantly surprised that your Snes9x Next savestates worked across platforms, but I still wouldn’t recommend relying too heavily on them since the slightest change could render them unusable.

Others may chime in and say it’s not a big deal, but I’ve been burned by savestates several times over the years, so I’m particularly cautious of relying on them :slight_smile:

#10

Hi,

I was wondering if its possible to change the resolution of retroarch on xbox 1? If it is possible how do you do so because I’ve looked through the emulators menu and I don’t see any options for doing so.

Other than that thanks for porting this to the original xbox it runs great.

#11

As far as I know you can’t change the resolution of an Xbox 1/360 app on-the-fly - you have to do it from outside.