We’ve discussed a bit, and it’s time for the updater to go. It’s Windows only (bad) and noone seems to care about keeping it up to date because it’s a gigantic maintenance burden.
In addition, a much larger part of the userbase is now able to compile stuff for themselves and share builds which makes the updater almost negative in terms of usefulness as it only creates confusion.
I’ve compiled together a “megapack” of sorts which should make it far simpler to start using RetroArch. Ideally, you should be able to select core, Load Game, and done.
- Phoenix is removed and dead. Get over it. The updater aspect of it is gone, xinput binding is broken, and the few important features missing from RGUI were always covered by CLI for now.
- libretro cores are bundled. I added the cores which built successfully from libretro-super.
- Shaders from common-shaders are bundled.
- The default config file is set up to be more friendly. libretro cores, system dir, autoconfig dir etc is all preconfigured to respective folders.
- bSNES chip roms are bundled in system/ folder. (Place your BIOSes here).
- Built from configswap branch, so config swapping in RGUI is supported.
Win32 megapack (20130927): http://themaister.net/retroarch-dl/RetroArch-20130927-Win32-megapack.zip Win64 megapack (20130927): http://themaister.net/retroarch-dl/RetroArch-20130927-Win64-megapack.zip
Here’s the README.txt included.
===================================
RetroArch Windows megapack 20130927
Built from configswap branch
===================================
*Seriously* avoid these things:
- bSNES CPU filters (cannot be set from RGUI).
- XML shaders (cannot be set from RGUI).
- Phoenix GUI (deprecated, it should die).
If you absolutely *must* use these, you can set CPU filters and XML shaders in config.
They are very troublesome and ugly features.
They will not be supported in RGUI.
Phoenix GUI is not included. It is deprecated, breaks with xinput and should in general be avoided.
All config options are still available obviously. See retroarch.cfg. If retroarch.cfg gets overwritten, see retroarch.cfg.clean for the default skeleton config. All relevant config options are explained.
All Phoenix features have their equivalent in either command line or config. It's just a launcher, it doesn't to anything magical.
See retroarch.exe --help.
Some RetroArch features like special ROM loading, netplay and ffmpeg recording are all accessible from CLI.
These features will probably eventually be added to RGUI, but it's not top priority.
===============
libretro cores
===============
I've included all cores which built from libretro-super as of 20130927 with MinGW-w64 4.8.1 POSIX thread.
They're placed in libretro/ directory.
Note that many of these cores are WIP-quality.
=========
Shaders
=========
I've bundled all shaders from common-shaders/ repo.
=======
Input
=======
If you have an xinput-supported gamepad, you should not need to configure input at all. It should work as expected.
If you want to configure input for obscure systems which don't map well to the RetroPad,
it is recommended you create an autoconfig for your device.
retroarch-joyconfig.exe -a autoconfig/yourpad.cfg
Follow the instructions on-screen.
You can also configure input directly and update retroarch.cfg, but this is not recommended.
retroarch-joyconfig.exe -i retroarch.cfg -o retroarch.cfg
To configure some of the most relevant hotkeys (save state/load state/RGUI menu toggle), add --misc.
If you don't want to configure certain binds, there is no way to "skip" a config. A workaround for this is to use the --timeout option.
See retroarch-joyconfig.exe --help for more information.
=========
Logging
=========
To get logging in terminal:
retroarch.exe -v --menu
Dump log to a file:
retroarch.exe -v --menu 2>log.txt
================
Custom configs
================
The configswap branch has support for changing config within RGUI.
You can also create new configs for near-complete flexibility.
If you want to go completely nuts with custom input autoconfig dirs, history lists, etc per config, you'll have to hack in the config. As always, see retroarch.cfg.clean for reference.
=================
Notes on config
=================
I've set libretro config, system directory, shader directory and config directory.
Note that I've used ":/libretro/". The : prefix is a special prefix which means relative to the retroarch.exe.
Relative paths would normally work fine, but in case the working dir is ever changed, it would break this.
When the config is saved back, it'll probably have the actual full path, so beware of that.
config_save_on_exit = true
is also set, so the config will automatically be saved on exit by default.
==========================
System directory / BIOS
==========================
System directory is ./system/. I've put bSNES stuff in there. Provide your own BIOSes as needed.
but the question now is where did it save the config to? Would I need to change the CL to \retroarch-joyconfig -m -t 10 -o PATH? Tried to use that, didn’t save the config.
specially for input gamepad …