Setting Up RetroArch on iPad?

RetroArch Apple devices
#1

Ive heard quite a bit about this RetroArch thing for ages now, people saying its like the greatest thing ever, etc. So only recently I have wanted to try it out, I didnt want my main device to mess up or anything in case anything went wrong.

So I have an iPad 2 on iOS 7.1.1 and was wondering how do I actually use this RetroArch app?

I’ve seen a couple of YouTube videos showing the setup and everything, but I haven’t touched my device yet in regards to installing RetroArch. I mainly want to play PSX games so I’ve downloaded the 4 requied BIOS files (1001, 5550, 5502, 7502) I’ve also got a couple of games, they’re still in their .RARs at the moment, but I can see 2 files (1 .bin, 1 .cue). Do i need to know anything about ISO’s/CSO’s?

So basically what I think I know is…

  • in iFile Settings ‘Show Hidden Files’
  • Place .bin/.cue files in a folder called ROMs inside the Documents folder
  • Copy/Paste the PSX .BIOS files (all 4) into .RetroArch folder
  • Select the game through the RetroArch app

Is there anything im missing? Ive read around the forum a little and some people are saying the PSX emulating feature has stopped working on iOS 7.1, should I wait for an updated version of RetroArch?

#2

it’s having problems on A7 devices with the 7.x jailbreaks, but even that seems sporadic and maybe related to the jailbreak itself and how it handles permissions…?

I think you should be fine on an iPad 2. Everything else in your post sounds about right to me, but I don’t have a lot of experience with the iOS port.

#3

Yup just tried it with 1 game and it seems fine, thanks :slight_smile:

Just a few questions though… How do I set the layout of the PSX buttons to make use of the larger iPad screen? At the moment L1/L2/R1/R2 buttons are about half way on the screen, i’d like them right at the top corners.

Can you move individual buttons around freely?

Also how do I set the aspect ration the same for all games? So its not changing with every game

#4

You can’t move them around freely, but you can mess with the overlay scale in the overlay settings menu in the in-game RGUI menu. If that’s not enough, you can load some of the ipad-specific overlays that should be included. If you need even more customization than that, you can go into the overlay cfg file and change the x/y coords of the buttons’ centerpoints with a text editor.

The aspect ratio can be messed with in the video settings. You probably want to lock it to 4:3.