[dickalan]

It's my fault for not understanding what's happening. I have been passively following Retroplayer since it was announced years ago. How long has it been? 5? 10 years by now? I don't even know. But it seems like forever ago this feature was announced and was attempting to be incorporated into Kodi. Since that time it seems like it's been one foot in and one foot out of the main branch of kodi. Why is that?? It was the most exciting new development about Kodi, which makes Kodi 19's lack of new features sting that much worse. I get that there's branches that are probably further along. But why is a games library not native to kodi 19 by now? It's been almost a decade.

Again, I feel like I'm misunderstanding or not tracking the progress of this very well. Which has led to my frustration and rant. Please correct me and point me to better info. Why is there a branch for retroplayer and development not just handled in the main branch? Why one foot in and one foot out? What is the state of the "Games" feature in Kodi 19? What am I not understanding?

Sincerely,
Ignorant user

[matthuisman]

It was added in Kodi 18...
https://kodi.wiki/view/Games

[dickalan]

It was added in Kodi 18...
https://kodi.wiki/view/Games

https://kodi.wiki/view/Game_management

"Kodi does not have a game-library yet, although one is in development. Currently, games are managed using a basic file browser, and artwork is not yet supported."

[matthuisman]

it still plays games....
Library just means "scanned in".

It seems like you haven't even investigated or attempted it.
Put a rom in a folder and try clicking it for example.
Or reading that wiki on how-to get started.

You asked about Retroplayer
Retroplayer was added in Kodi 18
It plays retro games and roms and allows controllers.

Not sure what your expecting....

[zachmorris]

it still plays games....
Library just means "scanned in".

It seems like you haven't even investigated or attempted it.
Put a rom in a folder and try clicking it for example.
Or reading that wiki on how-to get started.

You asked about Retroplayer
Retroplayer was added in Kodi 18
It plays retro games and roms and allows controllers.

Not sure what your expecting....

To be fair, games doesn't behave like the rest of Kodi currently. The user really can only interact with games via an addon or the file manager, which is not in Kodi's normal media browsing workflow. As a user, I think the default is to expect games to behave like videos or music does within Kodi, which it does not.

The current state as I understand it:

• v18 and v19 can play games, via the file browser or using an addon. The getting started here covers the basics.
  
• Development is ongoing, and is headed (solely?) by developer garbear (his development branch on github is a good place to browse and see whats being worked on) - I think this is likely the main issue in that development in Games and more specifically any game library functionality doesn't have a large number of developers.
  
• There is some discussion of it in the development portion of the forum here. If you're reading this, and your a C developer (sadly, I am not) and interested, I highly recommend getting in touch with the Kodi team.
  

[dickalan]

it still plays games....
Library just means "scanned in".

It seems like you haven't even investigated or attempted it.
Put a rom in a folder and try clicking it for example.
Or reading that wiki on how-to get started.

You asked about Retroplayer
Retroplayer was added in Kodi 18
It plays retro games and roms and allows controllers.

Not sure what your expecting....

To be fair, games doesn't behave like the rest of Kodi currently. The user really can only interact with games via an addon or the file manager, which is not in Kodi's normal media browsing workflow. As a user, I think the default is to expect games to behave like videos or music does within Kodi, which it does not.

The current state as I understand it:

• v18 and v19 can play games, via the file browser or using an addon. The getting started here covers the basics.
  
• Development is ongoing, and is headed (solely?) by developer garbear (his development branch on github is a good place to browse and see whats being worked on) - I think this is likely the main issue in that development in Games and more specifically any game library functionality doesn't have a large number of developers.
  
• There is some discussion of it in the development portion of the forum here. If you're reading this, and your a C developer (sadly, I am not) and interested, I highly recommend getting in touch with the Kodi team.
  

Thank you this was the point I was trying to get at.

[kuiper95]

here are some tools and add-on for gamers for kodi. this may help you out

[RockerC]

To be fair, games doesn't behave like the rest of Kodi currently. The user really can only interact with games via an addon or the file manager, which is not in Kodi's normal media browsing workflow. As a user, I think the default is to expect games to behave like videos or music does within Kodi, which it does not.

The current state as I understand it:

• v18 and v19 can play games, via the file browser or using an addon. The getting started here covers the basics.
  
• Development is ongoing, and is headed (solely?) by developer garbear (his development branch on github is a good place to browse and see whats being worked on) - I think this is likely the main issue in that development in Games and more specifically any game library functionality doesn't have a large number of developers.
  
• There is some discussion of it in the development portion of the forum here. If you're reading this, and your a C developer (sadly, I am not) and interested, I highly recommend getting in touch with the Kodi team.
  

@dickalan As already pointed out; Kodi's core application already has a native Game API and a "game player" (RetroPlayer), but it is still missing a "games database" and "web scrapers" which are both needed to present/display metadata in a nice looking "gaming library" mode inside Kodi's GUI (graphical user interface) similar to Kodi's existing video library and music library experience. 

FYI, someone else in a other thread recently asked a specific question about progress on Games DB in Kodi which started this very related discussion -> https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=357018 (last news there is that Wintermute0110 has started on a design proposal for a Kodi games database).

Tip: If you just want to keep track of the cutting-edge experimental RetroPlayer builds then check out https://github.com/garbear/xbmc/releases (which also contains links to ongoing work on major new features and functions related to native gaming support in Kodi) and if you are interested in tracking on code progress then keep and eye on each commit to https://github.com/garbear/xbmc/commits