[garbear]

I think the confusion's in the first sentence. "RetroPlayer is a custom branch of XBMC". XBMC is the emulator, so the exe you need is a custom XBMC.exe. This can be obtained by compiling yourself (recommended), or downloading a build that another user has kindly provided.

Hope this helps!

[bornagainpenguin]

I think the confusion's in the first sentence. "RetroPlayer is a custom branch of XBMC". XBMC is the emulator, so the exe you need is a custom XBMC.exe. This can be obtained by compiling yourself (recommended), or downloading a build that another user has kindly provided.

Hope this helps!

That was what I had thought when I installed the Win32 version of Retro Player, but then it looks like I need to configure Rom Collector to use something and there are all those emulators in the repos, so I thought I needed to use those to make everything work.

{...}

Damn, I was reading through the threads and I finally saw what drivesoslow was trying to point me to. Damn. My bad. All I can say as an excuse is that I'm tired from a day of data entry and riding three and a half miles by bicycle afterwards to wish my Dad a happy birthday. I'm not thinking straight.

--bornagainpenguin

PS: Thanks for the work you're putting in on this, I can't wait to see how smoothly it all comes together once you polish it all to the point it hits the main branch. I mean as good as the whole thing seems now, I can't even imagine how good that's going to end up being!

[garbear]

Glad it worked out. Speaking of pollish, if you see any room for improvements, especially in the general setup experience, feel free to post ideas here!

[celedhrim]

retroplayer 5 for windows available at http://celed.ielf.org/retroplayer/

enjoy testing !

[bornagainpenguin]

Glad it worked out. Speaking of pollish, if you see any room for improvements, especially in the general setup experience, feel free to post ideas here!

Well, if I can say this without offending anyone--maybe Rom Collection Browser shouldn't even be packaged with this until either it is more integrated with the system or a 'default' configuration is already available that allows it to run on par in the Library like scraping and adding TV shows does or Movies does?

Using the default skin (Confluence) I can scrape my roms, but once that's done I'm still having issues with getting artwork to show up unless I have RCB running. And I still haven't figured out how to work around the Catch-22 of configuring RCB without an external emulator available. That's the first thing it asks for. The configuration file doesn't even seem to see the line <useBuiltinEmulator> until after you've scraped at least one rom directory. And it won't do that until you add an emulator...

That said I found by accident what you intended by xbmc being the emulator when I clicked on one of my roms just to see what would happen and watched bemusedly when it started playing the intro sequence.

Maybe my problem is simply that I never really bothered with Advanced Launcher or Rom Collection Browser before and this type of configuration is such an old hat to the rest of you, that it gets done automatically, without thinking? Or maybe you've been copying over your perfectly configured collection from several years back with each update and I just need to put in the time and figure it out? If it's the last one, fair enough--I'll do my homework--I don't mind saying though that it feels like I'm walking into the middle of a calculus class without having even passed algebra!

Could someone please point me towards some HOWTOs?

EDIT - Actually, having played with things some more, I'm convinced that RCB should be removed until someone manages to make it completely as integrated in XBMC as adding a television show is now. In 'File' mode everything I've tried so far seems to work just great. I miss the artwork\thumbnails and I wish there were a way to get the names automatically filled out, but otherwise things 'just work' for me in File mode.

[garbear]

Thanks for staying on top of builds, celedhrim!

To mark this momentous occasion, the branch has been bumped to "retroplayer5". Devs should do

Code:

git fetch origin
git checkout origin/retroplayer5 -b retroplayer5

New devs can do git clone git://github.com/garbear/xbmc.git and retroplayer5 will automatically be checked out.

The two changes are the Suspect/Resume fix for joysticks thanks to Romanlum (see PR:7), and RetroPlayer has been rebased on XBMC Gotham alpha 2 (march 31, retroplayer4 was branched from march 20, so retroplayer5 includes those 11 days of bugfixes).

[celedhrim]

Thanks for staying on top of builds, celedhrim!

Thanks to you for RetroPlayer, I only compile your code

[garbear]

Hi Kandungo, the log snippet shows that XBMC knows its a game, but I can't see the emulator core selection logic. Can you upload a full debug log to xbmclogs.com? That'd be helpful. Thanks!

Thanks for the prompt reply, in all honesty i checked the log and theres nothign other then that that pertains to the emulator, whether i try to launch a genesis or snes game it asks me to install an emulator... i think something is not right with file asociations and emulators? It donest even look like the emulator runs, it keeps telling me to install an emulator, so for the genesis there is only one emulator, once installed i get the error "no compatible emulators found for file mygame.md" i have a part of the log that states what i am seeing.

Hey Kandungo, is it possible for you to reproduce the error and post a full debug log? When you hit enter on a rom, XBMC is faced with a decision problem involving lots of variables. Inferring the answer takes evidence, some of which is collected on xbmc startup and while the program runs. Trust me, something will pertain to the emulator

Secondly, users aren't meticulous when reporting bugs. For example, when was your xbmc compiled? Did the change I made on March 19 affect your problem? The date in your log lets me see this, as well as other things that most users don't think to include in their bug reports.

[malte]

Actually, having played with things some more, I'm convinced that RCB should be removed until someone manages to make it completely as integrated in XBMC as adding a television show is now

AFAIK RCB is just listed as Game Addon, nothing more. You are still free to use it or not. If you have trouble to set it up you are welcome to report your issues in the RCB thread and you may get help.

And I still haven't figured out how to work around the Catch-22 of configuring RCB without an external emulator available. That's the first thing it asks for. The configuration file doesn't even seem to see the line <useBuiltinEmulator> until after you've scraped at least one rom directory. And it won't do that until you add an emulator...

You are right with this one. RetroPlayer support in RCB is not included as official feature because RetroPlayer is not yet included in XBMCs main line. So there are no GUI options to configure it and the guide that I have written some weeks before has in mind to edit an existing rom collection to work with RetroPlayer instead of adding a new one. I will update the guide to reflect this.

[bornagainpenguin]

Actually, having played with things some more, I'm convinced that RCB should be removed until someone manages to make it completely as integrated in XBMC as adding a television show is now

AFAIK RCB is just listed as Game Addon, nothing more.

I finally figured that out when I saw that it was possible to launch games simply by selecting them. Up until that point though I was convinced that it was necessary to do something with RCB to make the whole thing work. My logic was like this--

• RCB is the only add on listed in Game Addons
  
• the games lack art
  
• all references to scraping mention RCB
  
• the emulators from the repos lack options
  
• RCB is said to have many many options for configuration
  
• thus it must be that I'm supposed to do something with RCB and I'm simply too dumb to figure it out...
  

You are still free to use it or not. If you have trouble to set it up you are welcome to report your issues in the RCB thread and you may get help.

Well like I said, I wasn't thinking there were issues so much as I was missing something obvious...

Now that I know there are issues, I will probably post there some time tomorrow asking if there is a better way to do these things.

And I still haven't figured out how to work around the Catch-22 of configuring RCB without an external emulator available. That's the first thing it asks for. The configuration file doesn't even seem to see the line <useBuiltinEmulator> until after you've scraped at least one rom directory. And it won't do that until you add an emulator...

You are right with this one. RetroPlayer support in RCB is not included as official feature because RetroPlayer is not yet included in XBMCs main line. So there are no GUI options to configure it and the guide that I have written some weeks before has in mind to edit an existing rom collection to work with RetroPlayer instead of adding a new one. I will update the guide to reflect this.

If you've got a guide, could you please link it to me? Even in its current state it might be useful to me! I will be looking forward to seeing the updated n00b version when you have the time to get to it.

Seeing something that starts from the perspective of someone used to roms but whose never even tried to use the Advanced Launcher addon or even so much as specified an external player would be incredibly useful here. Something that doesn't have to start from scratch, just "So you installed the RetroPlayer branch of XBMC and don't know where to go from there to get the best experience using the Rom Collection Browser (RCB) addon? Well it's easy, first add your rom directories by..." would be great!

--bornagainpenguin

[Bstrdsmkr]

@bornagainpenguin, You're zeroing in on it, but I think you're still missing a couple of things, hopefully this will help.

RCB is an addon that makes it possible to launch emulators from standard xbmc, and has been around for a few years.
Garbear's branch (which is what this thread is about) is a custom (modified) version of xbmc which attempts to implement the functions of RCB into XBMC natively.

Since Garbear revealed his custom branch, malte has been updating RCB to "hand off" some of it's features to xbmc while adding features that aren't yet implemented. Obviously Garbear's branch is a work in progress so things are constantly breaking and being fixed on both sides

[Kandungo]

Hi Kandungo, the log snippet shows that XBMC knows its a game, but I can't see the emulator core selection logic. Can you upload a full debug log to xbmclogs.com? That'd be helpful. Thanks!

Thanks for the prompt reply, in all honesty i checked the log and theres nothign other then that that pertains to the emulator, whether i try to launch a genesis or snes game it asks me to install an emulator... i think something is not right with file asociations and emulators? It donest even look like the emulator runs, it keeps telling me to install an emulator, so for the genesis there is only one emulator, once installed i get the error "no compatible emulators found for file mygame.md" i have a part of the log that states what i am seeing.

Hey Kandungo, is it possible for you to reproduce the error and post a full debug log? When you hit enter on a rom, XBMC is faced with a decision problem involving lots of variables. Inferring the answer takes evidence, some of which is collected on xbmc startup and while the program runs. Trust me, something will pertain to the emulator

Secondly, users aren't meticulous when reporting bugs. For example, when was your xbmc compiled? Did the change I made on March 19 affect your problem? The date in your log lets me see this, as well as other things that most users don't think to include in their bug reports.

Thanks for looking into this! This is the full log, this is usign yoru latest and greatest 5 branch.

http://xbmclogs.com/show.php?id=11180

[garbear]

The data in your log lets me see this, as well as other things that most users don't think to include in their bug reports.

Like... i dunno... the fact that you're trying to load 64 bit binaries on a 32 bit OS

Go to Settings -> Add-ons -> Get add-ons -> Libretro Emulators -> Add-on repository -> Libretro Emulators (32-bit) -> Install. (Or grab binaries from my github repo.) You can delete xbmc_install_dir/addons/repository.libretro-linux. The work-in-progress PR2230 is hoping to make this process easier. Until then, you may have to compile linux emulators yourself. See libretro-super on GitHub.

Until PR2230 becomes a reality, I think the short-term fix is to automatically disable the add-on when the DLL fails to load. 560aff530ab0f649f083c87ed868c154aa7b9925 should take care of this

[celedhrim]

Hi all

Just for fun read the commit of retroplayer in epic mode !

http://starlogs.net/#garbear/xbmc

[miappa]

LOL

And its true. Cannot get more epic than that. LOL