RetroArch Emulator Frontend

[dom]

If someone wants to take a shot at making a OpenMAX IL driver for RetroArch, they can feel free too. All it has to do is play streaming PCM audio and implement audio blocking (for sync purposes).

Should be pretty trivial using the hello_audio as a base.
But, I think most of the audio problem is because it's not quite keeping up.
If the framerate is dipping below what it should be, then it seems inevitable that the audio will also stutter.

[SQLEinstein]

I think it's because the other drivers are slower. Which drivers RetoArch has available are decided at compile time I believe, you can check what is available by running retroarch --features or something (check the command-line help text).

When I tried playing with sound, I found that ALSA worked the best with the fceumm core. I had Mega Man 2 working almost perfect on keyboard - but for some reason, when I use my 360 controller and move the analog sticks, audio starts to cut out, and if I keep moving them, disappears completely (nearly permanently). The pocketsnes core never had even close to perfect sound with the drivers I tried (OSS, ALSA, PulseAudio, and SDL I think - this was a while ago).

Also, a lot of my sound problems got better when I overclocked to 800MHz.

Wow thanks! I just overclocked to 800MHz and the sound is significantly better! Is there also a better memory split other than default 50/50 for running RetroArch?

[kalehrl]

What button do I have to press on my keyboard to add credit?
I tried all buttons but neither seems to work.

[ajberry]

Nothing happens I'm afraid.
Keyboard is completely dead.
I've tried running a mame game, and on the "press left then right" screen, the keyboard is also dead.

I'll try and hunt down a new powersupply, as then one I have might be a tad in the low end.

The thing is everything works great with advancemame, even with my joypad, so I've got my doubts the problem is power.

Hmmm. The escape button always worked for me (on every emulator I tried so far).

Did you get anywhere with this? I'm getting the exact same issue. None of my keypresses work, but they do work with AdvanceMAME (but that is running slow at the moment...)

It could be because i'm doing it in x terminal...will try in a new terminal tonight

[ajberry]

So, my issue was starring it in start x. When I play mame games though they seem to lag, I have tried to film it. Watch how slow the time goes when doing the 100M. There is also no audio but that's to do with the drivers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZV0xqJ ... ata_player

Any thoughts?

[ajberry]

Ok, so the speed issues seem to be mame as using the snes emulator is running smooth with super Mario and donkeyKong country. I still have no sound. When running hello audio the sound works but when doing sudo aplay /usr/share/sounds/alsa/Front_Center.wav I get no sound output.

Apologies for the multiple posts but am new to this...

[SQLEinstein]

Hi All,

I'm currently running RetroArch using a 128/128 memory split. Does anyone know if it would run better using the 224 or 192 memory splits? I tried running RetroArch after switching to 224 but it wouldn't run, do I need to recompile before attempting to run it usin a different memory split?

Thanks!

[mats]

Does anyone have the same problem with a very slow emulation (independence on the emulator, gameboy, snes, sega, ...) when having bluetooth running? I tried to use a ps3 wireless controller and a mini bluetooth keyboard for gaming but with both devices it's not playable. When i stop the bluetooth service, everything is running fine. Also tried overclocking the pi to 900 Mhz and different splits but nothing helped.

[forenbenutzer]

Ok, so the speed issues seem to be mame as using the snes emulator is running smooth with super Mario and donkeyKong country. I still have no sound. When running hello audio the sound works but when doing sudo aplay /usr/share/sounds/alsa/Front_Center.wav I get no sound output.

Apologies for the multiple posts but am new to this...

I assume you connected a monitor on the HDMI port, so maybe the pi sends sound over this port, but you connected speakers on the 3,5mm jack.
Please use this wiki article for the correct settings: http://elinux.org/RPi_config.txt

[Toad King]

If someone wants to take a shot at making a OpenMAX IL driver for RetroArch, they can feel free too. All it has to do is play streaming PCM audio and implement audio blocking (for sync purposes).

Should be pretty trivial using the hello_audio as a base.
But, I think most of the audio problem is because it's not quite keeping up.
If the framerate is dipping below what it should be, then it seems inevitable that the audio will also stutter.

The issue is that the horrible audio corruption on the Raspberry Pi when this happens does not appear on other platforms. I even get it sometimes in omxplayer if I skip ahead in a video.

[mongrol]

Has anyone figured out how to insert coins in imame4all yet?

[Toad King]

Has anyone figured out how to insert coins in imame4all yet?

It's the Select button in RetroArch. By default, it's right shift.

[mongrol]

Hahaha. That explains it. My Mini-Rii keyboard doesn't have a right shift. Only a left shift. I'll do some remapping. Thanks.

Btw, what about the TAB menu?

[SQLEinstein]

How do I configure a joystick with less buttons and controls then prompted by the retroarch-joyconfig tool? Is there a file that I can simply edit to add specific mappings? Also is it possible to setup different joysticks configurations for different emulators?

Thanks!

[SQLEinstein]

How do I configure a joystick with less buttons and controls then prompted by the retroarch-joyconfig tool? Is there a file that I can simply edit to add specific mappings? Also is it possible to setup different joysticks configurations for different emulators?

Thanks!

Also how to I set up a second joystick?

[SQLEinstein]

How do I configure a joystick with less buttons and controls then prompted by the retroarch-joyconfig tool? Is there a file that I can simply edit to add specific mappings? Also is it possible to setup different joysticks configurations for different emulators?

Thanks!

Also how to I set up a second joystick?

I was able to figure out all my questions my reading the default retroarch.cfg. Thanks anyway!

[outsider]

Does anyone have the same problem with a very slow emulation (independence on the emulator, gameboy, snes, sega, ...) when having bluetooth running? I tried to use a ps3 wireless controller and a mini bluetooth keyboard for gaming but with both devices it's not playable. When i stop the bluetooth service, everything is running fine. Also tried overclocking the pi to 900 Mhz and different splits but nothing helped.

I've just noticed this! Seems to affect the CPU. Not sure why it happens.

[puncrathod]

I managed to get perfect sound with retroarch+pocketsnes core by defining sdl as the audio backend with 44100 samplerate. However I never managed to get the thing run faster than 70% speed during actual gameplay.
I tested it with lostvikings and when you pause the game the game runs fullspeed and the sound is perfect. But while playing the speed goes below 80% and the sound and music gets this echoing sound. I'll see if I can make it run at full speed by a little overclock and some addinational video settings.

[forenbenutzer]

I managed to get perfect sound with retroarch+pocketsnes core by defining sdl as the audio backend with 44100 samplerate. However I never managed to get the thing run faster than 70% speed during actual gameplay.
I tested it with lostvikings and when you pause the game the game runs fullspeed and the sound is perfect. But while playing the speed goes below 80% and the sound and music gets this echoing sound. I'll see if I can make it run at full speed by a little overclock and some addinational video settings.

Please inform us about further improvements. I still try to get my "Pitendo" working in a playable way.

[petrockblog]

I managed to get perfect sound with retroarch+pocketsnes core by defining sdl as the audio backend with 44100 samplerate. However I never managed to get the thing run faster than 70% speed during actual gameplay.
I tested it with lostvikings and when you pause the game the game runs fullspeed and the sound is perfect. But while playing the speed goes below 80% and the sound and music gets this echoing sound. I'll see if I can make it run at full speed by a little overclock and some addinational video settings.

That sounds interesting!
Are you using the HDMI or analog output? Did you make any changes to the /boot/config.txt?
Which clock frequencies are you using?

Feel free to provide your settings at https://github.com/petrockblog/RetroPie ... und-Issues!

[puncrathod]

That sounds interesting!
Are you using the HDMI or analog output? Did you make any changes to the /boot/config.txt?
Which clock frequencies are you using?

Feel free to provide your settings at https://github.com/petrockblog/RetroPie ... und-Issues!

The only /boot/config.txt setting I had was sdtv_mode=2 "I have a pal tv that I use for the pi"
I did try increasing the cpu_freq to 900 and core_freq to 450 and that helped a little but still were not getting full speed.
Also to get any audio at all with any audio backend I had to

Code: Select all

modprobe snd_bcm2835

The only settings i changed in the retroarch.cfg was the

Code: Select all

audio_out_rate=44100

and

Code: Select all

audio_driver=sdl

(alsa works perfect too if the game is running at full speed but even with 1% drop in speed and starts making a static noise)

I'm running a fresh rasbian installed from http://archive.raspbian.org/installer/r ... -19-12.zip with nothing more extra installed than retroarch+pocketsnes+sdl and the libraries needed to run them. I don't have DE installed and run everything from the console

I realize that the sdl audio is a bit slower than alsa and makes the snes run even slower but atleast it doesn't turn the audio into a garbled mess when the emulator doesn't run at full speed.

Is there any way to optimize the emulator to make it run faster. As I think that would solve most of the audio issues.

Edit: forgot to add that I'm indeed using analog tv.

[Toad King]

That sounds interesting!
Are you using the HDMI or analog output? Did you make any changes to the /boot/config.txt?
Which clock frequencies are you using?

Feel free to provide your settings at https://github.com/petrockblog/RetroPie ... und-Issues!

The only /boot/config.txt setting I had was sdtv_mode=2 "I have a pal tv that I use for the pi"
I did try increasing the cpu_freq to 900 and core_freq to 450 and that helped a little but still were not getting full speed.
Also to get any audio at all with any audio backend I had to

Code: Select all

modprobe snd_bcm2835

The only settings i changed in the retroarch.cfg was the

Code: Select all

audio_out_rate=44100

and

Code: Select all

audio_driver=sdl

(alsa works perfect too if the game is running at full speed but even with 1% drop in speed and starts making a static noise)

I'm running a fresh rasbian installed from http://archive.raspbian.org/installer/r ... -19-12.zip with nothing more extra installed than retroarch+pocketsnes+sdl and the libraries needed to run them. I don't have DE installed and run everything from the console

I realize that the sdl audio is a bit slower than alsa and makes the snes run even slower but atleast it doesn't turn the audio into a garbled mess when the emulator doesn't run at full speed.

Is there any way to optimize the emulator to make it run faster. As I think that would solve most of the audio issues.

Edit: forgot to add that I'm indeed using analog tv.

The SNES core RetroArch uses is already a highly-optimized ARM port, originally used for GP2X handhelds. The only way to get it to run fullspeed all the time is to implement frameskipping, which I would not want to do if full speed can already be reached with ALSA audio. I'd much rather the ALSA drivers get fixed, since RetroArch has been tested on many Linux platforms, and only the Raspberry Pi gets horrible static sounds when not full speed.

[kohr]

I'm having bit of an issue. I'm only able to run this as root. If I run it as the pi user I get an error.

The error I get is: "pi@raspberrypi ~/RetroPie/EmulationStation $ ./emulationstation
Error - could not initialize SDL!
Unable to open a console terminal
Are you in the 'video' and 'input' groups? Are you running with X closed?
pi@raspberrypi ~/RetroPie/EmulationStation $"

I think I'm in the video, and input groups?
"pi@raspberrypi ~/RetroPie/EmulationStation $ id pi
uid=1000(pi) gid=1000(pi) groups=1000(pi),4(adm),20(dialout),24(cdrom),27(sudo),29(audio),44(video),46(plugdev),60(games),100(users),1001(input)"

Can someone please help?

[forenbenutzer]

try "startx <command>" instead

[kohr]

try "startx <command>" instead

That worked. Thanks. I have a new problem now though. I don't have a keyboard/mouse to use, so I've setup my PI via SSH from my laptop. When the frontend starts it detects my usb game pad, but after I map it on screen, it says to press a keyboard key. I don't have a keyboard, is there anyway I can get past that? Tried pressing all buttons on pad..