LR- emulators

number4jazz

Hi guys .. I have been retrogaming with Retropie for quite some time now .. but I still wonder what the different emulators starting with "lr-" are different from the other.

Searching the web didn't give me an answer .. anyone can explain me please ? Thanks, appreciate :)

greetings, Jasper.

ballboff

they use the libretro api, mainly in retroarch as "cores".

Cybrasty

@number4jazz To expand on what @ballboff said.

The lr-prefix indicates that that emulator is part of libretro project. The aim of this project is to get different emulators working on different platforms out of the box and provide a unified way of configuring it. You can read more about the ideas behind libretro and its sister projects here.

For example, there are both lr-nestopia and nestopia emulators. The difference is that lr-nestopia is incorporated into libretro, so it has unified controls and has access to all the other config and options that libretro provides (shaders, rewind, etc.)
Nestopia (without lr) is standalone emulator. It doesn't require the rest of libretro, but also will not all have those fancy libretro options. The advantages of this approach are how much hdd space it takes (pretty much irrelevant nowadays) and it might be updated faster (because nestopia has its authors which will make the changes. Only after changes are incorporated into the main emulator libretro version will get updated).

The lr- and non lr- version of the same emulators are pretty much the identical, but the lr- version gets some extras from being part of libretro.

mitu

As @ballboff said, all the lr- emulators are Libretro based emulators, running from RetroArch.
RetroArch is the frontend starting the emulators (cores) underneath. Retroarch handles the input (gamepad/joysticks/keyboard/etc.), the output (video), saving the games (when supported by the core) and lot of other features (recording, streaming, cheats, shaders, bezels, etc.) while the emulators (cores) handle the emulation itself. This way, you get a unified interface for the things RetroArch handles:

configure your gamepad only once to be able to be used by the emulators.
configure your video resolution, bezels and shaders
configure the emulator options (core options) from the same interface.
have a unified interface (XMB/RGUI) to do all confguration and load/save it.

There's a lot underneath, but the info above might give you an idea of what lr- stands for (Libretro).

number4jazz

@mitu @Cybrasty so I discover that there is even more to explore. Thanks for the detailed answer and additional links to get to know more. Much appreciated.