Retroarch on Ouya

[pete_uk]

Neagix gifted an Odroid U2 - something like that in fact running ARM Linux/Ubuntu COULD make for a good RetroArch console provided audio/video drivers will be up to scratch.

Looks interesting. It could be a good upgrade for my UG802

[steev]

Neagix gifted an Odroid U2 - something like that in fact running ARM Linux/Ubuntu COULD make for a good RetroArch console provided audio/video drivers will be up to scratch.

That’ll be great if you can get it running. My MK808 uses the same GPU/drivers I believe.

I didn’t have much luck getting RetroArch to run (maybe it was my fault), but PCSX-reARMed standalone works at least.

edit: Nevermind my device uses a different xorg driver it seems

[Awakened]

[quote=Melon Bread][quote=Squarepusher]Nothing really that doesnt have its own pitfalls.

Its looking more and more like we need our own console/handheld. But I sure as hell dont have the funds to make that happen.

Best thing we can do for now is try to be on as many platforms as possible.

http://www.gcw-zero.com/[/quote]

Not really. There are a lot of things wrong with it that wouldnt make it an appealing host for a true RetroArch console.[/quote] Justin did a kickstarter update recently saying he’s replacing the d-pad and facebuttons with smaller ones for the Kickstarter and retail units which should fix the stiff and sticking problems the early special editions have. We’ll see. That’s not the only problem the Zero has, but at least it’s something.

Lately I’ve been checking out videos and info on the NVidia Shield, which seems like it could be a great piece of hardware for emulation despite android and being a bit too big for most pockets.

[system]

Well, the screen will still need fixing (a 320x240 resolution is just way too small in this day and age - a lot of PS1/SNES games will look badly distorted/stretched on that - its closest competitor OpenPandora has an 800x480 screen and even that looks small compared to an iPad Mini screen).

Aside from that, no tried and proven (and tested) OpenGL ES 2 driver is a big turn-off. We are certainly not going to do ‘bare metal coding’ for some SoC on a GPU as was suggested - OpenGL ES 2 or bust. it’s the bare minimum of what should be accepted on handheld devices these days.

Other than that, I believe the MIPS CPU is also a problem - it would have been better instead of building on OpenDingux to start with a totally clean slate and start out with an ARM CPU and an ARM Linux-based distro. I don’t think MIPS is going to have much of a future in the handheld stakes and that to base your first ‘reboot’ of the Dingoo around that means you carry around too much legacy baggage around with you for the next GCW Zero (part II or whatever).

So those are the three central problems that I see.

As for RetroArch ‘console’ - I think the best we could try to do so far is to make some kind of ‘mini-Linux’ distro that users could boot from a flash drive on - say - their ODroid U2 or some other ARM Linux thingie on a stick. It would then boot into RetroArch and you could just load ROMs from there. We could make it as plug-and-play as we can realistically hope to achieve.

I think this is a pretty good idea overall, especially if we could really cut down on the bootup times - it’d pretty much be like turning on a modernday console (which also takes at least 10 or 15 seconds before the user really gets full joypad control - sometimes it takes even longer).

[jmckutchin]

How lovely - Ouya has no Start/Select buttons.

Somebody should tell these ‘startups’ to start making sensible controllers and that, no, a ‘Start/select’ button is NOT a luxury that can be sacrificed.

I’ll just try mapping ‘Center’ to Start then.

I’ve heard other developers are mapping start/select to L3/R3. Certainly not ideal, but I suppose it’s works.

[system]

I would think L3 & R3 can work just fine since the PSX never really used those buttons for their games anyways, It can also be used for coin and start for FBA.

I would love to see this end up being the endgame emulation app for OUYA considering how much compatibility it attains.

[system]

Well all I know is that I configure it correctly and that it works correctly for regular Android devices. It might be that the Ouya does some of its own button remapping (I sure hope not).

What I also need to know there is the ‘device name’ it reports at the beginning when you first press a button on the pad in RetroArch.

This is certainly strange. I can confirm that it used to be configured correctly for Android, but it has recently become swapped in one of the updates (not sure which, I never looked at the mappings when it was working). With the current buid 0.9.9.3 - PCSX ReARMed r19, the behavior of the Cross / Square and Circle / Triangle buttons are swapped and the mappings I get on a Samsung Galaxy S2 for those buttons are different from the one posted here for the Ouya. This is what I currently see when connected with a USB cable (with the button behavior swapped). Note that I cannot see the src value on this screen, I assume due to the resolution. I’m guessing that if a fix went in for the Ouya it broke the standard Android mapping?

Square------------Pad 0 : 96, ac = 0, src = Cross--------------Pad 0 : 99, ac = 0, src = Circle---------------Pad 0 : 100, ac = 0, src = Triangle------------Pad 0 : 97, ac = 0, src = D-pad up-----------Pad 0 : 19, ac = 0, src = D-pad down-------Pad 0 : 20, ac = 0, src = D-pad right---------Pad 0 : 22, ac = 0, src = D-pad left-----------Pad 0 : 21, ac = 0, src = Rt Shoulder--------Pad 0 : 103, ac = 0, src = Rt Trigger-----------Pad 0 : 105, ac = 0, src = Lt Shoulder---------Pad 0 : 102, ac = 0, src = Lt Trigger------------Pad 0 : 104, ac = 0, src = Rt analog Button–Pad 0 : 107, ac = 0, src = Lt analog Button–Pad 0 : 106, ac = 0, src = Start------------------Pad 0 : 108, ac = 0, src = Select----------------Pad 0 : 109, ac = 0, src = PS Button-----------Pad 0 : 188, ac = 0, src =

BTW, THANK YOU FOR THE AWESOME INCREDIBLY FABULOUS WORK ON THIS STUFF!