Is your Retropie project ever finished?
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I am new to Retropie and Raspberry Pi and I am work in progress since one month.
@bobharris said in Is your Retropie project ever finished?:
- I've got all the retro games I ever wanted on there, from the early Nes and DOS games, to some quite advanced arcade games. It's a mixture of childhood favorites and hundreds of games across 19 systems that I've seen on top 10 charts on several sites/youtube.
Same here. I did a lot of research not to miss important games. Like you it is a mixture of childhood favorites, games I want to play or show my friends and what I could find through top chart lists on the web. I am interested in what others have hand picked and will someday upload such a list here. But I have less systems and no mouse and keyboard games included currently. I also tried not to get too many games per series or too many similar games, but ended up a little bit extended than I did want previously.
Do you use micro SD card or a harddisk/ssd? And most importantly, how do you control all games? Do you have a dedicated gamepad for different systems? Trackball? Mouse and Keyboard? An Arcade Stick? In example, I am thinking of getting a trackball in the near future, for some games which are designed for it. Is it setup as multiplayer or singleplayer system?
- The only thing I want to continue taking some time for is adding game manuals.
Me too, how do you interact with the manuals then?
I'd agree that tinkering and getting games to run properly is half the fun, but I'm looking forward to having more time now for actually playing all these great games. More importantly I've run out of ideas of what else I'd want..I'm pretty much satisfied. :-)
Me too, i really enjoy setting up everything, research and looking for things to improve. One of the things I want add later if I get bigger Micro SD card is commercial video files (and soundtracks and manuals too). Do you have video snaps? I suppose yes and it brings the whole project to next level. I saw 2 fake video snaps btw and had to replace them. Another video related thing is, intro video with approx. correct length to overlap EmulationStation logo and hiding all boot messages.
Also, I added some hacked and modded games too recently (besides translations).
And I found the site http://retroachievements.org, which is intregrated into Retropie too. Really cool site/service.Also I don't feel like updating anything anymore, because at the moment everything is working very well so I could only mess that up.
Do your backups! Even if you don't change much, in case of any problem your after created data like save data or screenshots, highscores could get lost.
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@thelostsoul That's a lot of questions! I don't want to hog the topic too much..I'm mainly interested in other peoples experiences. So I'm going to try to answer your questions as briefly as possible:
- I use a 128 gb usb flash drive for my games
- I had an arcade stick, but I grew up with consoles(=pads), not so much arcade, so I sold it as I rarily used it. All I use is a Sony dual shock 4, keyboard and mouse.
- It's mostly single player, but it only takes a second to hook up another controller.
- https://kodi-addons.club/addon/plugin.image.pdfreader/ works great for reading manuals through Kodi.
- I don't use any videos, I haven't seen the need for them. I did remove all the boot text to make it more clean.
- Yes I agree backups are important! There is so much time and effort put into my image, I've got it backed up on multiple hard drives.
Great to read about your experiences!
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Thats fine with me. I am just a person sometimes going into detail for no reason. Thanks for answering all those questions. :-) Btw, I am an console gamer too, so I can understand your decision. I am interested at the experiences of others too; in fact, I was about to create such a topic too.
I wasn't aware of Kodi beeing able to install plugins, especially reading documents, so thanks for pointing to it. I am forward integrating it too now!
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I never gave advice, I was distracted too much.
And I've played PoE and made PoE Currency too much
Poe Currency it's all my life, whe I woke up morning with blue moon in my eyes, then I go for exalted orb, 2 chaos orbs, 3 vaal orbs, other poe orbs and some currency for taste. It's like with eggs, you can fry PoE Currency with pan and eat it on breakfest, but first you NEED TO an HAVE to buy currency to Path of Exile PoE Currency -
The last several times I though I was finished, RetroPie just started back at me and laughed at my naivety.
I listen to some old games podcasts and I read some retro game websites and books, so every now and then there's one game I hadn't heard of or that I didn't remember that I think that I should try, so off I go down that path.
Today I thought of adding some PSP Minis games as there were a few I had fun with, though I never thought of emulating then on the pi given the mixed reports.
And I'm also trying to add some features to the lr-fuse Spectrum emulator. So yeah. I don't think it'll ever finish.
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I barely ever even get. It started before I reflash it. I probably flash a new image once a week minimum
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@bobharris said in Is your Retropie project ever finished?:
I've got all the retro games I ever wanted on there, from the early Nes and DOS games, to some quite advanced arcade games. It's a mixture of childhood favorites and hundreds of games across 19 systems that I've seen on top 10 charts on several sites/youtube.
That's amazing that you limit yourself to a bare minimum of games.
Recently I discovered the PC Engine aka Turbo GrafX 16 system. Regarded backwards this system wasn't released in europa (I think a few found their way through france and britain). But it was a system with really much potential for a late 80's release. Imho much better than the NES and in some kinds comparable to SNES and MD/Genesis.
Why a RetroPie project never finishes? @pjft mentionied it already - you watch videos on youtube, you read books and blogs about retro. You visit this forum, you take part on the MAME RoWs just to try out some games... even some (in concept) try to improve their programming skills by learning a bit of coding or annother fraction takes part on the RetroAchievements system to get ladder boni on old games....
I think you have to decide between a "hardware" project - this will surly finish in function and design. Then you have some "software" projects .... this will take a bit longer (in experience) and then you have the ghost of retro gaming. It's a kind of fever but not a disease ;)
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@pjft said in Is your Retropie project ever finished?:
The last several times I though I was finished, RetroPie just started back at me and laughed at my naivety.
Haha I can relate to that! I thought I was finished quite a few times before. Even now I'm contemplating to add the entire 0.78 mame romset on my flash drive (there is space), which began by simply looking at a Mortal kombat arcade playthrough on Youtube (I currently only have the inferior console versions on my Pi). I thought it may be fun to have a sort of digital arcade, filled with so many 'cabinets' for you to randomly try out with a couple of virtual coins. (I already have some great Neo geo and FBA games.)
@cyperghost said in Is your Retropie project ever finished?:
That's amazing that you limit yourself to a bare minimum of games.
Recently I discovered the PC Engine aka Turbo GrafX 16 system. Regarded backwards this system wasn't released in europa (I think a few found their way through france and britain). But it was a system with really much potential for a late 80's release. Imho much better than the NES and in some kinds comparable to SNES and MD/Genesis.
Why a RetroPie project never finishes? @pjft mentionied it already - you watch videos on youtube, you read books and blogs about retro. You visit this forum, you take part on the MAME RoWs just to try out some games... even some (in concept) try to improve their programming skills by learning a bit of coding or annother fraction takes part on the RetroAchievements system to get ladder boni on old games....
I think you have to decide between a "hardware" project - this will surly finish in function and design. Then you have some "software" projects .... this will take a bit longer (in experience) and then you have the ghost of retro gaming. It's a kind of fever but not a disease ;)
Well for me my digital retro game collection started out about 8 years ago on a PSP 3000. I was limited by 32 gb of storage space, so I couldn't fill the PSP with romsets. I decided to try to only include games that were (considered by me or by a concensus on the internet) worth playing.
Now on my Pi those storage limitations are gone, but I still like the library on my Pi to be condensed to only high quality games, unlike the piles of crap you get with full romsets (which are harder to navigate as well).
When games cost money you buy only the ones you are interested in. When you download these old games, you can download as many as you'd like, but how many will you actually play, let alone finish? Limiting yourself doesn't have to be a bad thing, if you end up playing more great games.But I agree, unless you don't watch or read about retro games, you will always end up adding more games to your setup.
I guess it's a personal thing for me: I always get peace of mind by finishing my projects.
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@bobharris
At this point in the game, sd card storage is so cheap, you dont need to use flash drives or external drives anymore. You can fit every sing cartridge game ever made on an sd card. Someday, when its even cheaper, maybe ill want to build up a complete collection of disc based games... After scraping everything and finding the right theme, the question is always, what more can you add, I remember finding a thread somewhere about adding your own background music to the menu screen with a python script, Hunting down the most memorable menu themes became a task for a while. Getting Kodi,Chromium, and deadbeef (an mp3 player) to work in the ports section was useful. I want to add more, but now ive moved on to Kodi addons. I feel that its an underutilized platform, everything i find online is about streaming tv or whatever, but they actually have some pretty cool useful apps for shit i use on thew internet, which i wish i could run from the retropie main menu, but i think i might just add retropie to the kodi menu and just use that as the main thing to boot from. -
I have been working on it for about 13 months now, and I am not close to being done lol.
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My pistation 1 i consider done, but my apple pi IIe is never done. Hardware or software. Im constantly adding new dos games and hardware wise i have + $1500 dollars in it
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I started building 2 arcade cabinets almost 3 years ago, along with a friend of mine. One for him and the other one for me. They've been on 'almost finished' status for a while xD Now it's a matter of software tweaking :)
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It's never complete...
I've built three different arcade cabinets, and want to do a forth... and I've just built a tankstick with a Pi built in. In fact my forth cabinet will allow me to drop in the tankstick as the control unit, so when at home I have a full size cabinet, but I can also take the experience around people's houses for parties and lad's nights.
As for the images, it's about finding the right art, snaps, marquees for the ROMs you have... that is getting quite time consuming now. And of course finding new ROMs, and keeping everything unique, so removing dupes.
The other thing I'm slowly doing is creating new groups and a better UI experience. I use attractmode and giving people an option to search for filenames, and or skip through the alphabet are nice touches, and I've written my own layouts for the Dragon32, and working on a good Z Maachine layout.
I have seperate areas for hacked roms for different systems, Super Mario World for example, and a section to go and code on old home computer platforms from the BBC Micro to ZX81, and there is a good Kodi setup too.
I've also just purchased a 256GB microSD card and will now remove my USB stick from the system; with most of the space to be taken up by snaps and CD games.
Finally, a better way to sync/backup my ROMs and settings is also required.
And when this is done, I'm sure they'll be new emulators, a new Pi version, a better retropie base build, and the want for an even better arcade cabinet... it will never end! But it keeps me busy some evenings :)
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It's a neverending project, both for developers and users alike.
The software will always keep getting better in addition to new systems being supported, the visual aesthetics and themes never cease to improve, the hardware gets minor and major updates perpetually, while new cases and accessories will always be a thing.
When it comes to personal collections, none will ever be completely happy with it. New material (both homebrew, hacks as well as previously unreleased titles) will always appear and most people will want them in their collection.
I believe that only a small minority of users will be "just happy with it" and leave it alone. It's most likely those who bought a Raspberry Pi with pre-made images and only need a casual game session every now and then and really have no idea about the hardware and especially the software behind their "Pi console".
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@matchaman I guess I belong to that small minority then (at least a small minority on this forum). My goal has always been to make a 'Pi console', not unlike all the official Mini systems that are coming out. But then of course including all the systems, games and music that I want on there, not what Nintendo/Sega/Atari wants to provide you with.
The only thing that was still bugging me was I didn't have controller support for Dos games (like Prince of Persia and Raptor), because it seemed daunting to configure. But I succeeded in mapping all buttons for all games in one configuration so it actually was very easy. With this final accomplishment, for me the project is finally finished and I couldn't be happier with it. I have no interest in other consoles that aren't supported yet, because for me it's all about the games from the late 80s and from the 90s.I'm not really into computers and tinkering. It's fun, but I like to spend my free time playing games more. But it's interesting to read how everyones views differ.
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My revision after getting new electrical tools...
My board has been 90% finished for a year now... but software wise will never be finished
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Never! 😊
I always find something to do or to optimize.
And actually i have to create a new build based on stretch from the scratch.
At least the renaming of my arcade roms (use to sort them by manufactor, i.e. "Atari - Xybots") will take lots of hours.
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