RetroArch Emulator Frontend

[realbrucest]

I've posted the same on one of the xbmc threads, but probably this is one the proper one:

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?ti ... pid1252596

Some guy is integrating libretro cores into xbmc.

IMHO...

awesome news =)

[runs_through]

First of all, thank you for doing this!

I have played around with this for a couple of weeks now, and everything has been running smoothly until now.

Last time I was setting this up (using 2012-10-28-wheezy-raspbian) I had no problem getting sound to work using alsa.

I had a couple of lines with

Code: Select all

RetroArch [WARN] :: [ALSA]: poll() was signaled, but EAGAIN returned from write.
Your ALSA driver might be subtly broken.

in the console after shutting down emulationstation, but it didn't seem to affect the gameplay for nes or snes games.

I just made a clean install, using Retropie on 2012-12-16-wheezy-raspbian.

Now, however, the console is filled with this type of error, and even nes games are unplayable due to lagging.

Is anyone else having this problem?
What should I do?
Resort back to SDL?
I kinda liked Alsa when it was working.

[Casty]

First of all, thank you for doing this!

I have played around with this for a couple of weeks now, and everything has been running smoothly until now.

Last time I was setting this up (using 2012-10-28-wheezy-raspbian) I had no problem getting sound to work using alsa.

I had a couple of lines with

Code: Select all

RetroArch [WARN] :: [ALSA]: poll() was signaled, but EAGAIN returned from write.
Your ALSA driver might be subtly broken.

in the console after shutting down emulationstation, but it didn't seem to affect the gameplay for nes or snes games.

I just made a clean install, using Retropie on 2012-12-16-wheezy-raspbian.

Now, however, the console is filled with this type of error, and even nes games are unplayable due to lagging.

Is anyone else having this problem?
What should I do?
Resort back to SDL?
I kinda liked Alsa when it was working.

I noticed this too, sorry I have no solution. I think a Raspbian update broke it.

[Casey]

I have just rebuilt my pi due to overclocking killing my memory card. I can't get ASL audio to run. Everything works fine with ALSA but when I change to ASL in the config it says it can't find it. Guessing something has been killed in the Audio on the latest wheezy build.

[CPOKashue]

Code: Select all

RetroArch [WARN] :: [ALSA]: poll() was signaled, but EAGAIN returned from write.
Your ALSA driver might be subtly broken.

I've gotten this and a few other errors (TG16 games in particular seem to make Retroarch barf a fair bit). for me it always seemed to be a red herring associated with memory, fully shutting down and restarting emulation station generally made them go away.

If yours keeps coming up, I'd try re-git-ing the dependancy files for the retropie suite, and maybe checking your drivers in general. MIND YOU, I went to SDL and never looked back, SO.

[Toad King]

Attention everyone with audio issues (probably most of you):

If you want, you can try an experimental branch of RetroArch with a threaded ALSA audio system. On my Pi, I've found it eliminates all of the horrible buzzing effects when a game does not run full speed. And unlike SDL audio, it has no performance penalties (at least none I can measure). You still get popping if the game runs too slow, but if the game is close to fullspeed (like Neo-Geo games on my 950Mhz overclock) it's not that bad, and makes the games playable with sound.

To get the experimental branch, just go to the local git clone of RetroArch, and run these commands:

Code: Select all

git pull
git checkout alsathread

Then you just ./configure and make from there. Please report back with results if you can.

Consider this my late Christmas present.

[remoheadder]

Gotta say thank you guys so much; not for just making it, but also giving so much help to the community as well. I have been using this and love it. I have almost no skill in Linux, but you guys have helped me through.

As with all posts complementing you guys, there is one problem. I am trying to customize the keyboard layout before I get some adapters to use snes controllers only. I am trying to change a key in the emulationstation. I want to change f2 to a button on the controller ;In my case X. I have been looking at some readme files in the supplementary/emulationstation and it points me to go to a

Code: Select all

~/.emulationstation/es_systems.cfg:

, and also a file called

Code: Select all

src/InputManager.cpp

I couldnt find the first one, and the second one I went in and thought I changed it, but when I opened up the emulationstation, nothing change.

[Aloshi]

Hey there!

As I never added a nice config file for keyboard remapping, I suggest in the readme to modify the source code; I should elaborate a bit more on what that entails.

After changing that file, you need to rebuild ES. You can do that by just running "make" from the ES folder (if you get "no Makefile found" errors, you're in the wrong folder). After that, you probably want to copy the new executable into your system path so it'll run from anywhere (and replace the old one): "sudo cp ./emulationstation /usr/bin". Then you should be good to go.

[runs_through]

Attention everyone with audio issues (probably most of you):

If you want, you can try an experimental branch of RetroArch with a threaded ALSA audio system. On my Pi, I've found it eliminates all of the horrible buzzing effects when a game does not run full speed. And unlike SDL audio, it has no performance penalties (at least none I can measure). You still get popping if the game runs too slow, but if the game is close to fullspeed (like Neo-Geo games on my 950Mhz overclock) it's not that bad, and makes the games playable with sound.

To get the experimental branch, just go to the local git clone of RetroArch, and run these commands:

Code: Select all

git pull
git checkout alsathread

Then you just ./configure and make from there. Please report back with results if you can.

Consider this my late Christmas present.

I switched to the alsathread branch and did ./configure and make, but I still get the same type of error saying that my driver is subtly broken. I never looked at the logs when I ran RetroArch on my first install, so I guess this could be another type of error than the one that is fixed with this branch.

Or are you running the experimental branch on the newest build of wheezy-raspian?

[Toad King]

Attention everyone with audio issues (probably most of you):

If you want, you can try an experimental branch of RetroArch with a threaded ALSA audio system. On my Pi, I've found it eliminates all of the horrible buzzing effects when a game does not run full speed. And unlike SDL audio, it has no performance penalties (at least none I can measure). You still get popping if the game runs too slow, but if the game is close to fullspeed (like Neo-Geo games on my 950Mhz overclock) it's not that bad, and makes the games playable with sound.

To get the experimental branch, just go to the local git clone of RetroArch, and run these commands:

Code: Select all

git pull
git checkout alsathread

Then you just ./configure and make from there. Please report back with results if you can.

Consider this my late Christmas present.

I switched to the alsathread branch and did ./configure and make, but I still get the same type of error saying that my driver is subtly broken. I never looked at the logs when I ran RetroArch on my first install, so I guess this could be another type of error than the one that is fixed with this branch.

Or are you running the experimental branch on the newest build of wheezy-raspian?

How does the audio sound on it though? Specifically games where audio was horribly broken before?

[runs_through]

Attention everyone with audio issues (probably most of you):

If you want, you can try an experimental branch of RetroArch with a threaded ALSA audio system. On my Pi, I've found it eliminates all of the horrible buzzing effects when a game does not run full speed. And unlike SDL audio, it has no performance penalties (at least none I can measure). You still get popping if the game runs too slow, but if the game is close to fullspeed (like Neo-Geo games on my 950Mhz overclock) it's not that bad, and makes the games playable with sound.

To get the experimental branch, just go to the local git clone of RetroArch, and run these commands:

Code: Select all

git pull
git checkout alsathread

Then you just ./configure and make from there. Please report back with results if you can.

Consider this my late Christmas present.

I switched to the alsathread branch and did ./configure and make, but I still get the same type of error saying that my driver is subtly broken. I never looked at the logs when I ran RetroArch on my first install, so I guess this could be another type of error than the one that is fixed with this branch.

Or are you running the experimental branch on the newest build of wheezy-raspian?

How does the audio sound on it though? Specifically games where audio was horribly broken before?

I get this type of error constantly when I try to run a game, so even nes games are unplayable unless I change the audio driver to sdl.

Maybe I'm getting this problem because I missed something when doing the setup for playing roms?

This is how I have configured the raspberry pi:
Installed Wheezy 2012-12-16
Installed RetroPie (step by step from the readme)
Reinstalled RetroArch using the experimental branch. (pull, checkout branch and running make)

After these steps I still get (hundreds of) errors telling me that alsa is subtly broken when I launch any game from emulationstation.

[Cyberg]

Hello everyone,

I've gone through a lot of pain and suffering when it comes to sound and alsa in the different emulators, trying lots of different configurations and finally found a fix which fixed most of my problems and wanted to share it with you because frankly, noone should have to go through this again.

I finally found this discussion:

http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewt ... =66&t=7107

What I did was take the example there and changed /etc/asound.conf to this:

pcm.!default {
type hw
card 0
}

ctl.!default {
type hw
card 0
}

After which everything worked perfectly. The only changes I use in my /etc/retroarch.cfg-file is to change the audio_out_rate to 48000. Another change I found useful was to force a specific HDMI-mode with these options in /boot/config.txt:

hdmi_group=1
hdmi_mode=1

This is to force VGA-mode.

Hope this helps someone else, I finally got even SNES-games to run perfectly with these changes. I also run the Medium overclock, not sure if that helps but might be the missing piece for someone

Cheers!

[Toad King]

I switched to the alsathread branch and did ./configure and make, but I still get the same type of error saying that my driver is subtly broken. I never looked at the logs when I ran RetroArch on my first install, so I guess this could be another type of error than the one that is fixed with this branch.

Or are you running the experimental branch on the newest build of wheezy-raspian?

How does the audio sound on it though? Specifically games where audio was horribly broken before?

I get this type of error constantly when I try to run a game, so even nes games are unplayable unless I change the audio driver to sdl.

Maybe I'm getting this problem because I missed something when doing the setup for playing roms?

This is how I have configured the raspberry pi:
Installed Wheezy 2012-12-16
Installed RetroPie (step by step from the readme)
Reinstalled RetroArch using the experimental branch. (pull, checkout branch and running make)

After these steps I still get (hundreds of) errors telling me that alsa is subtly broken when I launch any game from emulationstation.

Can you get a log of the output with the -v flag in RetroArch? Just log it to a file and paste what it prints out when playing for a second or two.

[Toad King]

Also if you have PulseAudio make sure you either disable it or preferebly remove it altogether. You could also specify the hardware audio device in retroarch.cfg (audio_device = "hw:0")

[Aloshi]

This is how I have configured the raspberry pi:
Installed Wheezy 2012-12-16
Installed RetroPie (step by step from the readme)
Reinstalled RetroArch using the experimental branch. (pull, checkout branch and running make)

Did you also remember to copy the new executable into the system path, overwriting the old one? I think you can do that with "sudo make install".

[MrMonotone]

So just to clarify because I think some people are from the RetroPie thread too /etc/retroarch.cfg is used just for RetroArch setup NOT the RetroPie. If you did RetroPie and you want to edit the config for everything you should use ROOTDIR/configs/all/retroarch.cfg . Correct? Just wanting to know because there seems to be a lot of the same config files :$

[runs_through]

I did try "sudo make install" after running make, but it kept giving the same error.
Aloshi, did you do any additional changes to make sure the system paths was updated?
I also made sure that pulseaudio was removed.

Since I use a new version of RetroPie, retroarch.cfg is located in /configs/all, and I do the configuration changes (like switching from alsa to sdl and getting nes games to work) in this file.

It feels like I have missed something obvious when setting this up.

Maybe I should try to do this without using RetroPie?

[Casty]

Hello everyone,

I've gone through a lot of pain and suffering when it comes to sound and alsa in the different emulators, trying lots of different configurations and finally found a fix which fixed most of my problems and wanted to share it with you because frankly, noone should have to go through this again.

I finally found this discussion:

http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewt ... =66&t=7107

What I did was take the example there and changed /etc/asound.conf to this:

pcm.!default {
type hw
card 0
}

ctl.!default {
type hw
card 0
}

After which everything worked perfectly. The only changes I use in my /etc/retroarch.cfg-file is to change the audio_out_rate to 48000. Another change I found useful was to force a specific HDMI-mode with these options in /boot/config.txt:

hdmi_group=1
hdmi_mode=1

This is to force VGA-mode.

Hope this helps someone else, I finally got even SNES-games to run perfectly with these changes. I also run the Medium overclock, not sure if that helps but might be the missing piece for someone

Cheers!

Woohoo! Nice, this fixes the ALSA errors you mentioned above. I wanted to use ALSA for SNES since SDL slows it down a considerable bit, thanks much for your solution.

[Chief]

Does Final Burn Alpha work on the Pi via retro arch? Seems like that might improve the performance or arcade games.

[runs_through]

Hello everyone,

I've gone through a lot of pain and suffering when it comes to sound and alsa in the different emulators, trying lots of different configurations and finally found a fix which fixed most of my problems and wanted to share it with you because frankly, noone should have to go through this again.

I finally found this discussion:

http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewt ... =66&t=7107

What I did was take the example there and changed /etc/asound.conf to this:

pcm.!default {
type hw
card 0
}

ctl.!default {
type hw
card 0
}

After which everything worked perfectly. The only changes I use in my /etc/retroarch.cfg-file is to change the audio_out_rate to 48000. Another change I found useful was to force a specific HDMI-mode with these options in /boot/config.txt:

hdmi_group=1
hdmi_mode=1

This is to force VGA-mode.

Hope this helps someone else, I finally got even SNES-games to run perfectly with these changes. I also run the Medium overclock, not sure if that helps but might be the missing piece for someone

Cheers!

Woohoo! Nice, this fixes the ALSA errors you mentioned above. I wanted to use ALSA for SNES since SDL slows it down a considerable bit, thanks much for your solution.

This works for me as well! Thank you!

[Aldebaran]

Hi, this is a great program, it allowed me to discover Chrono Trigger. This is COOL.

But ... I applied your advice to the audio but I still have problems with sound. Sound crackles. And GBA emulator runs very slowly.
Snes emulator also undergoes slow but with Chrono Trigger it's good.
Note : Super Mario World run correctly and without crackling .

This is normal?

Oh, and a good year for all.

[Toad King]

The alsathread branch has been updated, and might get pulled into the master branch soon. The latest version has greatly increase audio quality on my end, and you won't get those poll() errors anymore (since we no longer poll for audio).

[abishur]

I think this might have been asked before, but I can't seem to remember, what's the recommended way to update retroarch?

[Toad King]

I think this might have been asked before, but I can't seem to remember, what's the recommended way to update retroarch?

Either build it yourself from the git repository or grab a binary somebody else compiled. We don't have a Debian .deb package for it, so any way that works is fine.

[abishur]

I think this might have been asked before, but I can't seem to remember, what's the recommended way to update retroarch?

Either build it yourself from the git repository or grab a binary somebody else compiled. We don't have a Debian .deb package for it, so any way that works is fine.

Thanks!