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Raspberry Pi Gaming thread - Cheap emulation and gaming projects

L

Lettuce

Member
sixteen-bit said:
superior convex/concave for life
Click to expand...

ParmaVioletSyrup2.jpg
Click to expand...
.
 
A

Azure Dream

Member
Rich! said:
As explained in this thread, I gutted a broken PAL SNES, cleaned it up, and installed a raspberry pi inside. Hooked it up to the power switch and LED, added support for the actual controller ports for real controllers and added HDMI/USB power sockets at the back.

Features:

- Bluetooth
- Wireless N support for remote control and file transfer
- 16GB storage
- Support for NES, SNES, GBA, PSX, Megadrive/Genesis, GB, GBC all at full speed, all navigated through the lovely emulationstation setup purely with a SNES pad.
- Support for two real SNES pads via the front ports, up to 4 controllers configured at once.

I set it so the wireless 8bitdo SNES30 pad shown above is registered as controller 1 and that the front ports act as players 2 and 3. Controller 4 is a PS3 pad or Wii U Pro controller. Had a test run of Super Mario Kart earlier and it was amazing. The SNES30 pad is configured to be detected and connected automatically when emulationstation boots.

so yeah pretty much the best thing I have ever made, apart from my daughter of course. well impressed with myself
Click to expand...

Wow, that looks great. Gives me the urge to take a crack at it once I've got some play money.
 
M

Mirk

Member
dock said:
This looks amazing.
Does the Wii U pick work with this too, or does it only work in Wii mode?
Click to expand...

Okay got to try this works on the Wii U menu and stuff but it doesn't seem to work with vc games. Will have to do some more testing this weekend.
 
D

Donuts

Member
Rich! said:
As explained in this thread, I gutted a broken PAL SNES, cleaned it up, and installed a raspberry pi inside. Hooked it up to the power switch and LED, added support for the actual controller ports for real controllers and added HDMI/USB power sockets at the back.
Click to expand...

Hot damn that's beautiful
 
C

Cranzor

Junior Member
I spent a long time setting things up today. Here are a few of the problems I still have to deal with:

- PS1 games aren't showing up at all, even after putting the BIOS on.
- SNES isn't following the controls that I set up. Does its emulator use RetroArch?
- SNES audio is buzzy.
- NES audio fluctuates between really quiet and really loud.

Anyone know how to fix any of these?
 
A

Andiie

Unconfirmed Member
Cranzor said:
I spent a long time setting things up today. Here are a few of the problems I still have to deal with:

- PS1 games aren't showing up at all, even after putting the BIOS on.
- SNES isn't following the controls that I set up. Does its emulator use RetroArch?
- SNES audio is buzzy.
- NES audio fluctuates between really quiet and really loud.

Anyone know how to fix any of these?
Click to expand...

Make sure the PS1 games are in one these formats:
Sony Playstation 1 .bin .BIN .cbn .CBN .img .IMG .mdf .MDF .pbp .PBP .toc .TOC .z .Z .znx .ZNX .iso .ISO
Click to expand...
I noticed when I had mine archived the games wouldn't show up.

I used this site to get my controls working.
https://supernintendopi.wordpress.com/
It seems to work well across a few of the systems.

Not sure about the audio problems as I haven't been able to actually listen to mine yet.
 
E

erotic grandpa

Member
Hopefully not a dumb question here, but how does the Pi 2 perform compared to the Ouya?

I like the way Nostalgia organizes and scrapes game data for the most part, but the Ouya in general has a lot of issues with Retroarch emulators, and just enough input lag to completely throw off my timing in SMB and games like it.
 
M

MRORANGE

Member
erotic grandpa said:
Hopefully not a dumb question here, but how does the Pi 2 perform compared to the Ouya?

I like the way Nostalgia organizes and scrapes game data for the most part, but the Ouya in general has a lot of issues with Retroarch emulators, and just enough input lag to completely throw off my timing in SMB and games like it.
Click to expand...

I'm going to say Ouya might be more powerful due to the tegra chip even if its 3 years old, but the development scene behind retropie and emulationstation is very good, I've only started using it for the last few months and its working like a charm, have not had major issues with RetroArch.
 
K

KennyLinder

Member
I've got mine coming today with a 16gb card (how cheap are these things compared to PS Vita storage cards!? Fuck).

Anyway, expect lots of questions this evening and over the weekend!
 
K

KennyLinder

Member
Will the Dual Shock 4 (or 3) work wired? I won't have a bluetooth dongle until next week now. I am hoping RetroPie will just pick it up and allow me to use it.
 
M

MiketheBSG

Member
Is there a Youtube video or website anyone can direct me to to show how I can scrape ROM metadata for box art and info on a Mac? I have tried numerous times to scrape directly on the Pi via EmulationStation and it keeps crashing, both Wi-Fi and wired connection, causing me to have to start all over again because EmulationStation won't boot after it freezes. My system will only crash when I try to scrape on the Pi. I really want the boxart/game description for my games.

I know that there is that es-scraper thing but I'm just having a hard time understanding how to work it. If there's a better tutorial online then I would appreciate it if someone could link it.

EDIT: Now that I keep watching the videos over and over again I'm beginning to get a better understanding of how to work this. I believe in myself. Wish me luck!
 
R

Rich!

Member
oops. went a bit overkill on overclocking. pi wouldnt boot (overclock protection)

thank fuck i can just edit config.txt to fix it lol
 
R

Rich!

Member
c0de said:
Why did you want to overclock it?
Click to expand...

to eliminate slowdown in Yoshi's Island. It's the only game I've played that has any, due to the SFX2 emulation.

Will have to stick to pi2 overclock, which is fine. Everything else on all systems I've tried runs at a perfect locked 60fps at that setting.
 
C

c0de

Member
Rich! said:
to eliminate slowdown in Yoshi's Island. It's the only game I've played that has any, due to the SFX2 emulation.

Will have to stick to pi2 overclock, which is fine. Everything else on all systems I've tried runs at a perfect locked 60fps at that setting.
Click to expand...

What about n64? I'm going to buy a pi 2 soon and while it won't stop me to buy it I would like to know how fast mupen is on the pi.
 
R

Rich!

Member
c0de said:
What about n64? I'm going to buy a pi 2 soon and while it won't stop me to buy it I would like to know how fast mupen is on the pi.
Click to expand...

Never actually tried. My SNES Pi is wired for SNES pads and my SNES Bluetooth pad. I can give n64 a go and map the stick to the dpad for Mario kart I guess.

Will give it a go.

Edit: runs like shit. Maybe I need to mess with the settings but its terrible.
 
D

despire

Member
Didn't even realise that his was a thing but now I'm super excited. Does the Pi 2 have enough power to run PS1 games at 1080p? What controller is recommended for the PS1 games? DS3?
 
P

pswii60

Member
Can you use a wireless controller on this thing? Like a DS4 or something?

Only thing putting me off jumping in. Don't want to use a wired pad.
 
K

KennyLinder

Member
Not a great start so far, I can't even extract the image from the downloaded zip file. Just keeps saying its incomplete :/ Downloaded a couple of times too.

Is everyone using the Beta 2 file?

EDIT: Must of been bad downloads (3 times in total!), got the torrented version from the site and it unpacked fine.
 
K

KennyLinder

Member
pswii60 said:
Can you use a wireless controller on this thing? Like a DS4 or something?

Only thing putting me off jumping in. Don't want to use a wired pad.
Click to expand...


I believe you can, with a BT dongle obviously. I'll be trying that part of it out early next week, didn't buy a dongle when I ordered it.

I am assuming you can at the very least plug in a wired DS4 and it should pick it up. Hopefully, maybe! I'll report back on that later, gotta go out now :/
 
C

Card Boy

Banned
pswii60 said:
Can you use a wireless controller on this thing? Like a DS4 or something?

Only thing putting me off jumping in. Don't want to use a wired pad.
Click to expand...

I got my PS3 controller (official one) working. I just bought a $2 Bluetooth adapter and ran the PS3 Controller drivers included in the setup, just make sure you have sufficient power to the Pi. There wasn't an option for DS4 so i can't comment on that.

There is a dude on RetroPie version 2.2 that managed to get it working.
 
R

Rich!

Member
Just installed Kodi/xbmc and set up a section on emulation station for it!

Connects to our home NAS and all films and shows work great on it! Watching a 30gb 1080p rip of LOTR fellowship of the ring and it is handling it superbly

So now my SNES plays HD films and music too! Only issue is that I absolutely cannot get kodi to recognise my SNES pads or the Bluetooth gamepad. Ah well, the android remote control works fine with it for now.
 
O

outunderthestars

Banned
Watching a video about loading roms and it says I can stick a USB memory stick into the Pi and it will create the folder structures. I keep doing that and nothing is getting written to the usb stick. AM I missing something?

edit: Nevermind. It seems that in 3.0 you need to make a folder named retropie for it work. Problem solved!
 
K

KennyLinder

Member
Rich! said:
Just installed Kodi/xbmc and set up a section on emulation station for it!

Connects to our home NAS and all films and shows work great on it! Watching a 30gb 1080p rip of LOTR fellowship of the ring and it is handling it superbly

So now my SNES plays HD films and music too! Only issue is that I absolutely cannot get kodi to recognise my SNES pads or the Bluetooth gamepad. Ah well, the android remote control works fine with it for now.
Click to expand...


How did you set it up on emulation station?
 
M

MiketheBSG

Member
I have an update regarding the constant crashing I'm getting after scraping the games. I have figured out how to scrape using command lines and good Lord, why haven't I done that sooner?! It went from taking 5-7 hours of failed scraping efforts to under 20 minutes!!!

Anyway, it does me no good because even though Pi scrapes all my games, it still crashes no matter what. Again, it runs fine before scraping but runs like crap afterwards. Based on some other threads I read online, and the scripts being ran after I finish scraping, it appears Emulation Station is somehow running out of RAM as it loads the game data when you select a system from the GUI, especially if you have a lot of ROMs. I have found no remedy for this online. I'm hoping that the folks that made this program can find some way to correct it soon because it sucks I can't maximize the presentation of my project with box art and descriptions.
 
C

checkeredknight

Member
Decided to finally give up waiting for a decent build of Ignition, and instead installed Retropie 3.0 BETA 2 on my Pi 2 today.

All is working well except for one crucial step. I cannot expand the file system (SD card.) As such, it's crazy small and doesn't give me much space to play around with.

I run raspi-config and select the top option, bit the error I receive says:

there was an error running option 1 expand filesystem
Click to expand...

Great. What error? Does anybody know what the deal is with this?

I'm reinstalling my SD card image now. I don't really want to go back to 2.6, but eh. This is a big problem. :/

EDIT -

Alright, ignore me. It works if you expand the file system only if you do so before going into Emulation Station and setting things up (like pads, a couple of games etc.) It has to be the first thing you to:

Boot
F4 (quickly press any key when the terminal appears so it doesn't go back into Retro Pie)
sudo raspi-config
Hit option 1
Reboot
Click to expand...

Boom.
 
D

Drillow

Member
I'm thinking on upgrading to a RPi2 since SNES emulation on model B+ is okayish at best.

How does the Pi 2 handle PSX emulation? Does it run at full speed without audio cracking? I would plug it on a CRT, so I don't care about filters.
 
D

despire

Member
How hard is it to set up a wi-fi adapter and bluetooth adapter to Raspberry? Thinking about buying something like this to get DS3 and the SNES30 controller working.

Also something like this to get it in the same wlan with my PC. Though I'm not sure if it would just be easier to use an ethernet cord when/if I want to add something..
 
J

JSR_Cube

Member
I've got a PS3 controller working fine wired (which doesn't bother me). But, I can't get the second controller to work. Any tips? Should I try a generic USB controller instead?
 
M

MiketheBSG

Member
Anyone know how to get Neo Geo controls working? It seems I can only get the keyboard to pick up controls. I'm using the iBuffalo SNES style controller. It appears the emulator is Final Burn Alpha which I understand doesn't have a menu like other systems. Please help! It's the only system not working correctly.
 
D

dfa records

Member
What's the barrier to entry on a Pi? I've never worked with any code before and I'm on a Mac.

I've seen the starter kits going on sale on Amazon lately and I'm very interested. I'm not a total dum dum and can handle learning/would enjoy learning. Just wondering how much configuring is required from out of the box to getting RetroPi/Emulation Station running? Thanks for any beginners help!
 
Ecto311

Ecto311

Member
Does amazon or a similar place ever do just the bare kit for $35? Is the other kits on amazon worth it or is there a lot you would need for a arcade machine to be built using one of these?
 
B

Bacon

Member
dfa records said:
What's the barrier to entry on a Pi? I've never worked with any code before and I'm on a Mac.

I've seen the starter kits going on sale on Amazon lately and I'm very interested. I'm not a total dum dum and can handle learning/would enjoy learning. Just wondering how much configuring is required from out of the box to getting RetroPi/Emulation Station running? Thanks for any beginners help!
Click to expand...

It's super easy. There are videos in the OP that explain how to get it up and running, just follow those and you'll have no problem at all.
 
R

Rich!

Member
MiketheBSG said:
Anyone know how to get Neo Geo controls working? It seems I can only get the keyboard to pick up controls. I'm using the iBuffalo SNES style controller. It appears the emulator is Final Burn Alpha which I understand doesn't have a menu like other systems. Please help! It's the only system not working correctly.
Click to expand...

heh easily solved - the issue is that you are using pifba, not libretro-fba. Put all of your roms in the fba roms folder (neogeo too, dont use the neogeo folder).

now go to the config folder for fba. open emulators.cfg. make sure it says this:

Code: 
default="lr-fba"

boot your game, now it runs in retroarch with the libretro core and your controls.
 
M

MiketheBSG

Member
Rich! said:
heh easily solved - the issue is that you are using pifba, not libretro-fba. Put all of your roms in the fba roms folder (neogeo too, dont use the neogeo folder).

now go to the config folder for fba. open emulators.cfg. make sure it says this:

Code: 
default="lr-fba"

boot your game, now it runs in retroarch with the libretro core and your controls.
Click to expand...

Thanks! That did the trick! But I'd love to be able to pick Neo Geo as my section for Neo Geo games vs. the "F" if you know what I mean. Is there an explanation for why they make it so difficult allow Neo Geo games to work from the actual Neo Geo folder?
 
R

Rich!

Member
MiketheBSG said:
Thanks! That did the trick! But I'd love to be able to pick Neo Geo as my section for Neo Geo games. Is there an explanation for why they make it so difficult to work from the actual Neo Geo folder?
Click to expand...

dunno

lol. you could always set up your own category or edit it to have one for neo geo and one for fba with them both running on fba-libretro.
 
M

MiketheBSG

Member
Sorry about all these bumps but I'm really pumped about this project. I've put a ton of man hours in but I like this even if I make mistakes or don't understand something.

I'm curious to see if anyone has had success in installing the new N64 plug-in recently released. I'm not sure which files from the download I need and where to place them in the retropie. Anyone?
 
R

Rich!

Member
MiketheBSG said:
Ah, similar to how I changed MegaDrive to Genesis from the es_systems.cfg. Makes sense.
Click to expand...

Easier than that.

Just go to the config file and set emulators.cfg to point to lr-fba. Done. All games in the neogeo folder will load with FBA and its config, and they will be sorted separately on the main menu.
 
E

erotic grandpa

Member
Okay, I'm getting in on this.

Is it hard to set it up to run games off a USB drive? I'd rather just rip my 128 GB drive off my Ouya than buy another microSD card.
 
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