[garbear]

I've been busy this week Just wanted to keep you guys posted. Here's a rundown of what's been going on:

• Rewind support - Thanks to Themaister, you can time travel 60 seconds into the past using the seek bar.
  
• Add-on manager - emulators can be installed directly from within XBMC. Win32 and linux x64 only, for now.
  
• Controller support - Added profile for Xbox 360 Controller. If you want to help with other controllers, see <FullScreenGame> in joystick.Microsoft.Xbox.360.Controller.xml . Also re-worked keyboard input
  
• Audio delay - I was able to push it down to under a third of a second without buffer underruns. Still, better than the > 1s before.
  
• RCB "support" (technically, RCB supports RetroPlayer) - can launch games internally, avoiding external emulators
  
• RetroPlayer - Refactored the RetroPlayer core; video and audio are optimized to avoid unnecessary memory allocation and thread blocking
  
• libretro - Updated to latest API
  

Current agenda

• Emulator selection process
  

Future work

• Real-time rewind (a.k.a. Baid style) - Instead of mouse seeking, hitting R will rewind smoothly until the Play button is hit.
  
• YUV444p support - Themaister demonstrated experimental YUV444p rendering on linux OpenGL (commit: f124788 ). Adapt this to win32 DX and GLES, and fallback to YUV422 for uncooperative renderers.
  
• RGB support - YUV444p is really just a stopgap until full RGB support is implemented. DVDPlayer overlays might be the solution here.
  

feedback

I'd like some input on this. After revamping the emulator selection process, what other features would you guys like to see implemented first?

GIT testers and debug-log-uploaders are appreciated

[LSU Jonno]

garbear,

What will be the purpose of addons like RCB and advanced launcher (as they relate to launch roms) once this project is finished? I've heard you talk before about building a complete game library for XBMC so it seems like for those of us who have never taken the time to set up RCB or Adv Launcher we wouldn't need to because the game library would function just like our existing movie library.

Also, I won't pretend to know what priority certain features should be arranged in, but it would be cool to be able to import/export the game library in the same way we can with our video and music libraries. It will make it easy for people with huge collection of roms to scrape the data once and use that for multiple XBMC installations.

---

forgot to add...

keep up the great work!

[dr88dr88]

Hi garbear,

What would be cool if game input controller could be provided via JSON-RPC API and also have the option witch input controller is required for the current game.
The IOS and android apps could then supply an emulated game controller for every type of console game and popup up the correct controller for the current game.

[Mettbrot]

Hi garbear,

What would be cool if game input controller could be provided via JSON-RPC API and also have the option witch input controller is required for the current game.
The IOS and android apps could then supply an emulated game controller for every type of console game and popup up the correct controller for the current game.

I dont think thats possible due to the delay. I don't think it is that intuitive either. You cannot realy safely hit control "buttons" on a touchscreen without actually looking at it. (I think its even hard with games you play on ios/android to hit the right button. Very much prefer games with acceleration control for that reason :-P )

[Majin]

Just wondering, I'm probably doing something wrong, are savegames/states supported as yet?

Started Link's Awakening, did a Save and Quit from inside the game then closed it down. On reopening, there was no save game listed.

The audio also seems to 'judder' causing performance issues, but xbmc is running steadily between 25 - 60 fps with low cpu utilization as well according to debug view anyway

http://pastebin.com/01buDGjw

This log is opening xbmc, starting Link's Awakening via RCB, saving a game and exiting then closing xbmc

Also, regarding the rewind feature, it's quite easy to knock the left stick and rewind 30 seconds by accident! This is probably covered under your future work stuff though

---

The audio also seems to 'judder' causing performance issues, but xbmc is running steadily between 25 - 60 fps with low cpu utilization as well according to debug view anyway

Just changed my audio to output via DirectSound rather than Wasapi and all became smooth so I guess some kind of AudioEngine magic happening there

[st graveyard]

garbear,

What will be the purpose of addons like RCB and advanced launcher (as they relate to launch roms) once this project is finished? I've heard you talk before about building a complete game library for XBMC so it seems like for those of us who have never taken the time to set up RCB or Adv Launcher we wouldn't need to because the game library would function just like our existing movie library.

Also, I won't pretend to know what priority certain features should be arranged in, but it would be cool to be able to import/export the game library in the same way we can with our video and music libraries. It will make it easy for people with huge collection of roms to scrape the data once and use that for multiple XBMC installations.

---

forgot to add...

keep up the great work!

The import/export feature would be a must for me.

Regarding RCB. I don't know, I still would like these new features to be supported by RCB. Lot's of us already have build great offline libraries (artwork, nfo files, videos ...), it would be cool to be able to keep on using these.
Or even better, maybe the layout and features of RCB can be integrated into the XBMC standard? As an example I mean the linking of more pieces of artwork to a game (front and back scan, title screen, in game schot, video, logo's ...).

Incredible progress Garbear. Please keep up the great work! This is so cool ...

[nimrod77]

Any chance of your work bring merged into mainline XBMC set any stage? Would love this feature but I don't want too Bork my setup now when the wife is happy....

[spiff]

in half a year (guesstimate) when it's mainline worthy.

[garbear]

It looks like WASAPI gives audio errors. DirectSound is recommended for now. Increasing the buffer would fix WASAPI errors but add even more delay to the audio. I'll make it an advanced setting soon.

Left-stick rewind can be disabled via joystick.xml. Look for section <FullscreenGame>. More info here . I don't know how joystick axes work, you might be able to change the limit="" part for less sensitivity.

@LSU Jonno, for the foreseeable future the only way to play ROMs is through the filemanager and RCB. RCB has the advantage of being able to launch external emus, so it'll be around for a long while.

@dr88dr88 JSON-RCP can already send keypresses, now all we need is the app

@Majin no savegames/states yet. Savestates are already used for rewind, so this will probably be hooked up before savegames.

@st graveyard artwork and metadata is RCB-only for now, so import/export will have to be handled by RCB.

@nimrod77 we'll see. Binaries should be available soon.

[garbear]

in half a year (guesstimate) when it's mainline worthy.

this is clearly justified by math: add up AE dev time + PVR dev time, divide by 100 and you get half a year hence the 14.0 "H" working name, XBMC "Hell Fucking Yea!"

p.s. eyes are eagerly on RP:2230

[DeathFire]

garbear and everyone who is working on this project. Thank you so much! This was my last big wish for XBMC.

Wow.....just wow!

[Eldorado]

@garbear, hopefully you don't mind, if you do just let me know and I'll remove the link

I decided to learn how and do my own Windows builds and compiled from garbear's latest as of yesterday:

http://180upload.com/k1nbf3jiznej

I wanted to help out a bit to get some more users testing as this is THE coolest thing I've seen go into XBMC!

If you have issues post up detailed information, system information, hardware being used, steps to reproduce and debug logs that garbear and others can use


I'll echo sentiments that I'm sure all dev's have with these types of things

- If you don't know what you are doing don't install it!
- Don't fill up this thread with questions on how to use it or how to configure RCB to work with it, all the information has been posted/linked.. I figured it out,so can you!

[garbear]

@Eldorado, Please provide a zip file with the executable and a NOTICE.txt, with something similar to this NOTICE.txt

[Eldorado]

Done, updated my link!

[paendorz]

Oh man, haven't checked this thread for a while. Great to see its coming along nicely.

@garbear, hopefully you don't mind, if you do just let me know and I'll remove the link

I decided to learn how and do my own Windows builds and compiled from garbear's latest as of yesterday:

http://180upload.com/j07leyo1fz2i

I wanted to help out a bit to get some more users testing as this is THE coolest thing I've seen go into XBMC!

If you have issues post up detailed information, system information, hardware being used, steps to reproduce and debug logs that garbear and others can use


I'll echo sentiments that I'm sure all dev's have with these types of things

- If you don't know what you are doing don't install it!
- Don't fill up this thread with questions on how to use it or how to configure RCB to work with it, all the information has been posted/linked.. I figured it out,so can you!

Awesome. It's been a few months since I moved to VS2012 and I can't be bothered reinstalling VS2010 or making the necessary changes to make the project compatible, so thanks.

I'll do some testing and report if I find anything. Just tested FCEU-Next and right off the bat, the sound delay from previous builds seems like its mostly gone (and my XBox wireless controller got recognized right away, fucking awesome).

Also, I've been wanting to try this on my Raspberry Pi but haven't tried to compile it there yet. Anyone had any experience on that area?