Author Topic: ARM compiles?  (Read 7314 times)

dtyge

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Posts: 9
    • View Profile
ARM compiles?
« on: October 24, 2014, 07:00:38 PM »
Anybody compiled and running attract-mode and all of the dependencies for any of the current ARM archs?

Both the PI and the ODROID running Linux using retroarch seem to be pretty hot these days,  and I think attract-mode would be a sweet addition. 

raygun

  • Administrator
  • Sr. Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 393
    • View Profile
Re: ARM compiles?
« Reply #1 on: October 26, 2014, 07:38:19 AM »
I haven't been successful yet.

In theory it should work if you use the most recent development version of SFML (the future 2.2) which is supposed to add support for OpenGL ES systems (Android, iOS, raspberry pi).


The farthest I've progressed is to get Attract-Mode compiled on my raspberry pi.  It's pretty useless though atm because it's not using hardware acceleration for the graphics.  It's the X11 dependency in SFML that is tripping me up.  I might try again using wayland given the recent progress there on the raspberry pi.

dtyge

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Posts: 9
    • View Profile
Re: ARM compiles?
« Reply #2 on: October 26, 2014, 09:13:50 PM »
Thanks for the reply.  That was kind of what I guessed.  Good luck!

nitrogen_widget

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 307
    • View Profile
Re: ARM compiles?
« Reply #3 on: October 29, 2014, 03:44:44 AM »
That's how wah!cade went for me also.
It installed and ran but even the basest theme pegged the CPU.

bionictoothpick

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 320
  • He who laughs lasts.
    • View Profile
Re: ARM compiles?
« Reply #4 on: December 28, 2015, 05:35:19 PM »
Attract-Mode on an android stick would be a great edition.

tipoto

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 43
    • View Profile
Re: ARM compiles?
« Reply #5 on: December 28, 2015, 07:29:27 PM »
I compiled it on my rpi2 and it works great, but you have to use a different way to animate your elements than using the default animation modules.
Here is a video I've done about 2 months ago to show how it runs on the rpi2. I created a NeoGeo layout just to show the capabilities. The video is done with a DSLR camera in 24fps unfortunately, so you may think it's a little bit "slow" (24 fps), but it plays full speed for the videos and the animations are really smooth in real.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNVuFV9mfZA

I bought an Odroid Xu4 one week ago and I didn't manage to compile AM on it, I sent an email to Andrew Mickelson to ask him if he could help me to compile SFML and Attract-Mode on this board, I also created an issue on Github, to get an official support:
https://github.com/mickelson/attract/issues/169
He told me he will take a look at it when he will have a moment... Hopefully soon !
Right now, on my Xu4, I'm stuck with RetroFE, which is ok, but I feel sooo frustrated because there are so many options missing that we have on AM.
« Last Edit: December 28, 2015, 08:29:26 PM by tipoto »

JayRo

  • Guest
Re: ARM compiles?
« Reply #6 on: December 29, 2015, 01:55:40 PM »
Hi all. Apologies in advance if what I say doesn't make sense. I'm a total noob.
I found these instructions and compiled AM into my RPi2 without too much drama: https://github.com/mickelson/attract/wiki/Compiling-on-the-Raspberry-Pi-%28Raspbian-Wheezy%29
It missed downloading some of the dependencies which caused it to throw up an error, but I was able to manually download those and then re-run the step that had the error. I'm running it with Mame-4all-Pi, and it works great!
The only issue I have is that some layouts come up with a white screen. I have a feeling it has something to do with the animate module, but I'm still trying to figure it out.

Namachieli

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 33
    • View Profile
Re: ARM compiles?
« Reply #7 on: December 29, 2015, 07:19:05 PM »
Quote from: tipoto
Here is a video I've done about 2 months ago to show how it runs on the rpi2.

Can you go into a little more detail on how well PS1 emulation is working? Specifically for FF7 but also some other titles.

I'm about to buy a few RPi2 for multiple boxes and if these can easily do PS1 I would love to know!
Neon 18.04 x64. i5 4690k, 16 GB RAM, EVGA GTX 750ti, DS3 SIXAXIS via BT/USB, RetroArch/libretro.

tipoto

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 43
    • View Profile
Re: ARM compiles?
« Reply #8 on: December 29, 2015, 09:59:06 PM »
Can you go into a little more detail on how well PS1 emulation is working? Specifically for FF7 but also some other titles.
I'm about to buy a few RPi2 for multiple boxes and if these can easily do PS1 I would love to know!

The PS1 games play very well on the RPi2, for some reasons I just had issues with the F1 game serie, but all the other games I tested worked fine. I tested the beginning of FF7 and like the other games, it worked perfectly.
However, you need to know a few things:

- The RPi2 is good enough to play the PS1 games, but not good enough to play them with the enhanced resolution feature enabled, which makes the games look much better. Maybe the pi can handle it with some light games, but otherwise the frame rate will be too slow.

- The emulator I use to emulate the PS1 is pcsx-rearmed, you can find it in 2 versions, standalone and libretro. The standalone version is a little faster (maybe more games can be played with the enhanced resolution option), but I never managed to get the games displayed in their original 4/3 ratio (on my 16/9 screen), there is no option to change that. So if you have a 4/3 monitor or if you don't care to play with a stretched image (personally I hate that :) ), you can use it. Otherwise you will have to use the Libretro version, which is actually the version almost everyone uses I think, it's perfectly stable (the standalone one should be stable too, but I didn't test it a lot), it's easier to configure since it's a retroarch core, so you can easily integrate it with the other emulators of your system.

- FF7 is a multi-disc game, so you have to decide how you want to swap the discs, it requires some manipulations to do it during the game. I personally use the method that packs all the discs in one big pbp file, it's a lot of manipulations to create the file, but once you have it, everything is easier while you are playing, since you don't have to do anything to swap the discs. The only problem comes from the very big games like FF8, because the pbp file is bigger than 2GB, and the pi can't handle file bigger than 2GB (it's a 32-bit limitation), for example FF8 and Fear-Effect 2 are concerned by this issue and you will have to keep the discs separated.

FYI, as "emulator manager" I use Retropie (I start from the RetroPie image), as frontend I use AM (rather than EmulationStation).

bionictoothpick

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 320
  • He who laughs lasts.
    • View Profile
Re: ARM compiles?
« Reply #9 on: December 30, 2015, 05:40:00 AM »
"FYI, as "emulator manager" I use Retropie (I start from the RetroPie image), as frontend I use AM (rather than EmulationStation)."

After downloading the retropie image and booting it on the rp2, what do you do to make AM run instead of EmulationStation?

Thanks.

Namachieli

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 33
    • View Profile
Re: ARM compiles?
« Reply #10 on: December 30, 2015, 11:24:33 AM »
Cool, thanks for the info Tipoto.

I've been using Mednafen/libretro so if I have issues ill try pcsx.

Multi-disc is no issue :)

Neon 18.04 x64. i5 4690k, 16 GB RAM, EVGA GTX 750ti, DS3 SIXAXIS via BT/USB, RetroArch/libretro.