Anyone uses Raspberrypi3 and retropie for emulation?

Ladic

[H]ard|Gawd
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Mar 30, 2006
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Seems like its extremely easy to set up, however has anyone been able to play the roms of an external HD? And what is max size SD card the Pi3 will recognize?
 
i have one set up and things run fine. All roms must be put onto the microsd card on the pi befire you can play it. Not sure what is the max size but I use a 64GB class-10 microsd card. For games like nes, snes, atari etc, those games take up almost no room... you can probably store the entire nes + snes roms ever made onto less than 3GB's... its only psx, dreamcast and n64 that starts taking up room. But each game is like 200 ~ 500 MBs
 
My burning question, is how does the Pi3 handle N64 emulation. I've heard it was hit-and-miss.
 
i have one set up and things run fine. All roms must be put onto the microsd card on the pi befire you can play it. Not sure what is the max size but I use a 64GB class-10 microsd card. For games like nes, snes, atari etc, those games take up almost no room... you can probably store the entire nes + snes roms ever made onto less than 3GB's... its only psx, dreamcast and n64 that starts taking up room. But each game is like 200 ~ 500 MBs
I "acquired" the entire SNES,N64,Genesis and NES library and its only about 5 gigs if not less.
 
Can someone explain why anyone would go the raspberry pi route for this I am just curious. In my mind for emulation I was as much power as possible which means shield tv or shield tablet.
 
Can someone explain why anyone would go the raspberry pi route for this I am just curious. In my mind for emulation I was as much power as possible which means shield tv or shield tablet.

From what I understand (I don't own a Pi) but the fact that the Rpi can do this for a fraction of the cost of a Nvidia Shield device, and that there is an active community constantly updating code for the emulators to run better on Pi, its just a better option all-around.
 
Can someone explain why anyone would go the raspberry pi route for this I am just curious. In my mind for emulation I was as much power as possible which means shield tv or shield tablet.
Look at something like the pitendo. Its a tiny cube thats has like 30 emulators on it for like $130. or you can do it yourself for a lot cheaper.
 
My burning question, is how does the Pi3 handle N64 emulation. I've heard it was hit-and-miss.

I have a pi 3 with retropie installed.. honestly, it's playable but not as fluid as i like. Imagine playing a game with like 20 fps. And I cant seem to find a n64 emulator that runs roms w/o sound crackle. Surprisingly, psx is fantastic...

dreamcast is trash
 
On mine I somehow lost the ability to see what save slot I'm using in the lower left. I can still select+left right but nothing is displayed. Any ideas what I did?
 
click here for N64 compatibility chart

You can indeed play games off an external USB drive

IME raspberrypi3+retropie hasn't been great, a little too choppy and a little too much latency compared to laptop/PC counterparts... but that may very well be fixable with some tweaking... depends on the games, if they need super-tight response... so I use this mostly for KODI and some older/slower games...
 
On mine I somehow lost the ability to see what save slot I'm using in the lower left. I can still select+left right but nothing is displayed. Any ideas what I did?
Have you tweaked the configs at all? There is a setting to adjust where that info is located... my configs also got borked once and I have no idea why, but resetting everything to defaults (removing any custom themes/configs) fixed things
 
My burning question, is how does the Pi3 handle N64 emulation. I've heard it was hit-and-miss.

It's not worth it to try to get N64 emulation working.

Mario 64 can run at playable speeds but there are graphical oddities everywhere. Fiddled with other games too, like Smash Bros. and Star Fox but ultimately, after trying different video settings, renderers, etc.., I just figured the Pi hardware just isn't up to task. In my experience, games either run too slow or run fine but don't look good at all.

PS1 and below is where you'll get near 100% perfect emulation.
 
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Have you tweaked the configs at all? There is a setting to adjust where that info is located... my configs also got borked once and I have no idea why, but resetting everything to defaults (removing any custom themes/configs) fixed things
I only made two tweaks by changing the graphics api and disabling video threading to see if that helps input latency. I do not remember making any other changes.
 
It works well enough for me to not bother waiting in lines or camp out for either of the Nintendo Classic releases. Doesn't cost much more, but does so much more. RetroPie is what I'm using.
 
I have had much better results from those cheap android boxes. Bought a beelink gt1 box that has a s912 CPU+2 GB ram and it runs amazing, box cost I think $60 and it's now my primary retro game box.
 
I have had much better results from those cheap android boxes. Bought a beelink gt1 box that has a s912 CPU+2 GB ram and it runs amazing, box cost I think $60 and it's now my primary retro game box.

can it run N64 well?
 
My biggest problem with my RetroPie setup on a Pi3 is the lag with Bluetooth controllers. I was using a PS3 DualShock controller before, and switched to an 8BitDo controller. That helped a little bit, but there still is a noticeable lag that is difficult to deal with when playing games.

N64 games are hit or miss, usually miss. I've been having better luck playing Playstation 1 games than N64. I only have a 32GB SD card in mine right now, haven't needed to switch it out for a 64GB one yet.

I'm still tinkering around with it, if I decide I want a more permanent setup I might spend the money on more powerful x86 based hardware and run RetroPie on that instead. That will probably solve my controller lag problem. I'm pretty sure that's due to the Raspberry Pi's terrible USB controller.
 
I get the lag too with my 8bitdo over bluetooth (have you tried it as a USB controller?)... I did play with settings last night and found some things that helped noteibaly...

some of the things are mentioned here:
 
PS1 and down works fine, N64 some games are ok others not so much. I love mine but use it mostly for old 8-16 bit systems.
 
Did you do any settings changes to get N64 to work well? for me it's been hell and I haven't really touched anything
 
I've been trying to help a friend get a rasp pi 3 inside a simpsons arcade cab to play mame titles but keep running into joystick issues. I've found a few resources online but nothing that seems to offer a decent fix. I know mame can be real tricky as far as using the right emulator with the correct rom which I get but the Fn joysticks just keep acting like they aren't there. They work fine in menu's and other systems, I've even found having a keyboard attached to get the arcade game started(ex:pressing 1 or 5 on kb) can help but it's not an ok solution. Any links or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
 
My 8bitdo controller d-pad stopped working properly, after just a couple months of use... I went to give it a review on amazon and it says

Sorry, we are unable to accept your review of this product for either one or both of the following reasons:
Your previous review of this product did not comply with our Customer Reviews Guidelines. Amazon does not permit reviews from customers whose relationship to the product or seller may be perceived as biased.

ah.... what? I never reviewed this product before... very strange...

anyways, still a nice controller, but my logitech f710 has stood up for much longer (a few years and still kickin)
 
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Did you do any settings changes to get N64 to work well? for me it's been hell and I haven't really touched anything

N64 emulation has always been a mess, in part because the console is near impossible to emulate well on a PC. It's always been a matter of finding the emulator/plugin combination that works "good enough" on a game-by-game basis. As a general rule: Mupen64 works with the most with the least amount of hassle, though you may need other configs for specific titles.

There have been some decent advancements in the past few months though, thanks to the Angrylion plugin being made multithreaded. The Angrylion plugin is the highest performing software rendering GPU plugin that is pixel-perfect, and plays ALL titles without issues (aside from performance; sub-60 FPS is still common, but at least in the high-50's now). Within Retroarch (I use PC; can't speak for RP3) I use Parallel N64, Angrylion Graphics Plugin, cxd4 RSP plugin, plus a GPU shader to get all titles working properly, but even my highly OC'd 2600k/1080 can barely maintain 60 FPS like this. For things that don't require this setup, I stick with Mupen64 for higher quality graphics at higher FPS.
 
I'm not convinced the Retropi input latency is CPU related on the Pi. You can monitor the CPU utilization and it just sits at like 30 or 40% while NES games are running.

After I made some tweaks it seems to be better.
 
so far so good on raspi3 and retro, i play games across an NFS mount to it and its great. The working N64 titles run great. I mostly stick to NES/genesis/SNES era games anyway tho.
 
I'm not convinced the Retropi input latency is CPU related on the Pi. You can monitor the CPU utilization and it just sits at like 30 or 40% while NES games are running.

After I made some tweaks it seems to be better.

It's not the CPU. It's the piece of shit USB controller they're using on them.
 
I had lag on the RetroPie, so bad it was unplayable. I reached out and found that I was not using gaming mode on my input on the TV. Once I did this the lag subsided.
 
Yeah I also read that. USB protocol adds a lot of latency.

It's not the protocol, it's a combination of the USB controller and the drivers on the Pi's themselves. People game just fine with USB keyboards and mice on PC's.
 
I had lag on the RetroPie, so bad it was unplayable. I reached out and found that I was not using gaming mode on my input on the TV. Once I did this the lag subsided.

I thought about this for my lag problems, but I just realized I'm playing my XBox just fine on my monitors non-gaming mode.
 
It's not the protocol, it's a combination of the USB controller and the drivers on the Pi's themselves. People game just fine with USB keyboards and mice on PC's.
I'm not saying you're wrong, but PC games are built with USB latency in mind. NES games did not. Just saying.

The truth is somewhere in the middle.
 
I'm playing my XBox just fine on my monitors non-gaming mode.
maybe because the games are designed with lag in mind, so it's not as noticeable. I'm thinking this is one reason why key/board mouse control in FPS consoles never took off, because it's just too huge a difference in feel due to the additional & unavoidable latency.
 
maybe because the games are designed with lag in mind, so it's not as noticeable. I'm thinking this is one reason why key/board mouse control in FPS consoles never took off, because it's just too huge a difference in feel due to the additional & unavoidable latency.

One problem with that line of thinking is that USB latency is still tiny compared to your screen refresh rate. Remember screen updates occur every 16ms, which is going to be orders of magnitude worse then whatever latency exists on the USB protocol.
 
I was talking about the lag from modern TVs, not the usb protocol
 
Anybody have the joystick lose its saved settings during boot up and getting out of a game? It keeps happening and I can't figure out why! :( Otherwise great concept and I agree the USB joysticks seem to work best over the PS3 bluetooth, etc!
 
I think the Pi3 may be great for emulation. You get a lot for what you pay for.
But the shield console is so much better. Specially if you want to play PSX, PSP, GameCube and Dreamcast games.

I mean, by the time you get the Pi3 working, you'll be spending close to $100 maybe more. So the price difference is lower and you get so much more.

I run CEMU on my PC so my kid can play Zelda at 4k, but I use Dolphin, PSXemu and PPSSPP on the Shield and they all run great.
 
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