moonlight: request for comments and testing

hhromic

Hi all,
I noticed that there isn't a modern/robust scriptmodule to setup the Moonlight Game Streaming engine in RetroPie. I did some research and there are old attempts, some look more complicated than necessary, others are not very cleanly integrated or simply don't support other than RPI devices. So I decided to give it a try myself and so far it looks stable and working well on my setup: a stock non-overclocked RPI 3B+ and a laptop with an Nvidia dedicated GPU, both over Wifi 5ghz.

I'm getting a very smooth and crisp streaming video at 720p/60fps with almost unnoticeable lag. I've tried Cuphead, Metal Gear Solid V (Ground Zeroes and Phantom Pain) and other fast-pacing games. Very convenient to play via streaming on the big TV using my PS3 controller configured from RetroPie.

However, before attempting to submit the scriptmodule to to the RetroPie main repository, I would like some testing and feedback from the community. Please see below.

Thanks all in advance for the testing and feedback! Hopefully this scriptmodule is useful for the community and RetroPie.

@BuZz, there is a very old supplementary/limelight.sh experimental scriptmodule in the current RetroPie repository that uses a very outdated version of moonlight based on Java. The author doesn't support it anymore and probably is very broken compared to this modern version in C language. I strongly suggest that limelight is removed for good.

WHAT IS MOONLIGHT?

From: https://moonlight-stream.com/

Moonlight (formerly known as Limelight) is an open source implementation of NVIDIA's GameStream protocol.
We implemented the protocol used by the NVIDIA Shield and wrote a set of 3rd party clients.
What does this mean for you? Moonlight allows you to stream your collection of games from your GameStream-compatible PC to any supported device and play them remotely.
Moonlight is perfect for gameplay on the go without sacrificing the graphics quality of your gaming computer.

This proposed scriptmodule uses Moonlight-Embedded, which is a version specially made for embedded devices such as the RPI and ODROID devices.

From: https://github.com/irtimmer/moonlight-embedded

Moonlight Embedded allows you to stream your full collection of games from your powerful Windows desktop to your (embedded) Linux system, like Raspberry Pi, CuBox-i and ODROID.

Please Remember: you need a COMPATIBLE GRAPHICS CARD for this to work and a good quality network connection, i.e. Wifi 5Ghz or wired, for good results. For older RPIs with only 2.4Ghz Wifi, an external USB Wifi dongle is highly recommended.

SCRIPTMODULE NOTES

The scriptmodule compiles Moonlight embedded from source, so it should work on multiple platforms, not only on the RPI. I am aware that there are Raspbian packages available from the original author, however I decided to compile from source instead for flexibility on where to install the binaries/config, support for more platforms than Raspbian and also is just easier to maintain and keep up-to-date.
The scriptmodule configures Moonlight to be usable out of the box easily. It adds Moonlight as an "emulator" for the steam system which is already included in popular ES themes, including the default Carbon Theme.
The scriptmodule installs (if not already installed) the avahi-daemon and libnss-mdns packages to enable automatic address discovery of the remote gaming computer.
The scriptmodule has a basic dialog-based GUI interface to configure the remote host pairing/unpairing, autogenerating config files for your remote games and to clear all pairing data in case of problems.
The scriptmodule enables the quitappafter option by default on new installations, i.e. when the global.conf file doesn't previously exist. This option enables automatically sending a "quit app request" to the remote computer when quitting the session, used to make GFE gracefully close the streaming session on the host/gaming computer.

The approach of this scriptmodule is to have moonlight configuration files in the steam roms directory, e.g. $HOME/RetroPie/roms/steam. There is also support for a global configuration file included from the game config files for common settings such as controller mappings, streaming resolution or video bitrate. This allows for creating different streaming sessions as "roms" that can be launched from EmulationStation directly. See more info in the USAGE section below.

Lastly, I only have tested this on my stock, non-overclocked RPI 3B+. I would highly appreciate people with other platforms, e.g. ODROIDs, Vero or OSMC, to give it a try and report back your experience.

INSTALLING/UNINSTALLING THE MOONLIGHT SCRIPTMODULE FOR TESTING

The scriptmodule is now part of official RetroPie. To install or uninstall Moonlight, go to the "Manage Packages" section, then to experimental and you will find the moonlightpackage there.

After installation, you will want to configure your remote host pairing and generate config files for the available remote games. See the USAGE section below for how to do this and configure your gaming computer.

USAGE

Please Remember: you need a COMPATIBLE GRAPHICS CARD for this to work and a good quality network connection, i.e. Wifi 5Ghz or wired, for good results. For older RPIs with only 2.4Ghz Wifi, an external USB Wifi dongle is highly recommended.

After applying the patch and installing moonlight, you need to do three things to start streaming your games to RetroPie:

Configure your gaming computer for streaming
Pair moonlight with your remote gaming computer for streaming
Generate config files for launching your games in EmulationStation

To configure and prepare your remote gaming computer for streaming, you can follow the following guide from official Moonlight docs: https://github.com/moonlight-stream/moonlight-docs/wiki/Setup-Guide#quick-setup-instructions
Please Remember: only follow the instructions to setup the GeForce Experience (GFE) software, which are Steps 1) and 2) in the guide.

Now, to pair your remote gaming computer and generate the config files for the games, you can use the GUI interface supplied with the scriptmodule (or you also can use the main RetroPie Setup GUI):

sudo ./retropie_packages.sh moonlight gui

To connect to your remote streaming computer, there are two approaches:

Automatic address discovery (recommended) will automatically find your gaming computer when pairing, generating config files and launching games from EmulationStation. Handy if your computer changes IP address from time to time. However, depending on your network and gaming computer setup, automatic discovery might not always work.
Manual addressing will allow you to manually supply the IP address or hostname of your gaming computer in case autodiscovery doesn't work for you. The caveat is that if your gaming computer changes address, you will have to regeneate the game config files again.

The first option in the GUI allows you to choose an IP address for your remote computer, or use automatic discovery (the default) if you leave it blank.

After choosing the addressing method, go to the "Pair to remote host" option. After a moment, Moonlight will give you a PIN number for pairing to your remote gaming computer and your computer should be asking for it.

After you successfully pair your gaming computer with Moonlight, you are ready to create config files for your remote games to be launched from EmulationStation. You can do this automatically from the GUI menu by choosing the option "Generate config files for new apps in remote host". Please note that this option will not overwrite existing config files, but will add new games discovered.

At this point you are ready to start streaming your games with the default automatic configuration and controller mappings.
To know how to customise your game config files, keep reading.

The format of the .ml config files in the roms directory is actually a standard moonlight configuration file. See the standard documented example here: https://github.com/irtimmer/moonlight-embedded/blob/master/moonlight.conf

The generated game config files first include a global configuration file located in /opt/retropie/configs/all/moonlight/global.conf with global options and then provide specific options for the game you are launching, for example the app parameter with the game name. You can override any option on a per-game basis, like the resolution or fps rate. You can even remove the global configuration loading (config = line)

Here are some example game configuration files:

A $HOME/RetroPie/roms/steam/Cuphead.ml file with automatic settings and autodiscovery of remote address (the simplest most basic configuration you need):

config = /opt/retropie/configs/all/moonlight/global.conf
app = Cuphead

A $HOME/RetroPie/roms/steam/Cuphead 720p60.ml file that forces 720p resolution and 60fps (still autodiscovery of address):

config = /opt/retropie/configs/all/moonlight/global.conf
app = Cuphead
width = 1280
height = 720
fps = 60

A $HOME/RetroPie/roms/steam/Cuphead 720p60 HBR.ml file that forces 720p, 60fps and a higher bitrate for video:

config = /opt/retropie/configs/all/moonlight/global.conf
app = Cuphead
width = 1280
height = 720
fps = 60
bitrate = 10000

A $HOME/RetroPie/roms/steam/Steam.ml file with automatic settings. Without the app option it defaults to Steam (in Big Picture Mode), and a manual IP address:

config = /opt/retropie/configs/all/moonlight/global.conf
address = 192.168.1.10

Don't forget that you can create any number of .ml config files and they all can be launched from EmulationStation independently and easily. Also, remember that runcommand is still used for launching the session, so you can customise the TV mode resolution from there too.

ASSIGNING/MAPPING CONTROLLERS

You may notice that sometimes the connected controllers to RetroPie are not assigned or maped correctly to the moonlight session. Fortunately you can force (or select) which controllers to connect to moonlight in the game configuration files (or global config) as well.

For this, you first need to first find the /dev/input/event* device files corresponding to the controllers you want to use:

$ evtest
Available devices:
/dev/input/event0:      soc:shutdown_button
/dev/input/event1:      Sony PLAYSTATION(R)3 Controller Motion Sensors
/dev/input/event2:      Sony PLAYSTATION(R)3 Controller

If you don't have evtest installed, you can simply do sudo apt-get install evtest to install it in your system.

As you can see, my PS3 controller is assigned to /dev/input/event2. With this information I can assign only this controller to moonlight using this in an .ml file:

config = /opt/retropie/configs/all/moonlight/global.conf
app = Cuphead
input = /dev/input/event2

Of course, you can assign more than one controller by simply adding more input = /dev/input/event* lines in the .ml config files.

Moonlight includes a big database of controller mappings for many popular controllers, you should not need to map your controller. However, you still might want to create your own mappings. Fortunately moonlight supports this too. To create a new mapping, execute the following commands (replace /dev/input/event2 with the right device for you):

cd $HOME/RetroPie-Setup
sudo ./retropie_packages.sh moonlight exec map -input /dev/input/event2

Then use your connected controller to assign the buttons as requested. On finish, Moonlight will give you the new mapping as a string. Save this string into a file with any name you wish, e.g. /home/pi/mycontroller.map.
Edit: I will check in next iterations if I can automate this further.

After the mapping file is created, you can use it into your .ml files like this:

config = /opt/retropie/configs/all/moonlight/global.conf
app = Cuphead
input = /dev/input/event2
mapping = /home/pi/mycontroller.map

Finally, don't forget that you can add input and mappingconfiguration to the global config file as well to apply it to all your configured moonlight games.

ABOUT THE QUIT APP AFTER OPTION

It is a well-known issue that GFE doesn't gracefully close the streaming session on the host/gaming computer if the connection is abruptly terminated by Moonlight (and possibly any other GFE streaming client). Normally, GFE expects as "quit app request" message from the client before the connection is terminated. This request makes GFE to release audio/video devices back to the host computer and can be typically sent using Moonlight manually using the quit command, however doing this is not very convenient, specially if you don't have a keyboard around.

For this reason, a newly added option (quitappafter) in Moonlight exists to automatically send the quit app request to the remote computer when quitting the streaming session, i.e. using the quit button combo. To enable this option, you must add it either to the global config file or to your individual configuration files like this: quitappafter = true.

For your convenience, the scriptmodule automatically adds this option to the global configuration file in /opt/retropie/configs/all/moonlight/global.conf on new installs, i.e. when that file doesn't previously exist in your RetroPie system. If you already have this file, you can add it manualy (highly recommended).

Edit: added configuration example for Steam's Big Picture Mode.
Edit2: updated guide for the improved scriptmodule with autodiscovery functionality and proper config file support.
Edit3: fixed typo and added information about the new quitappafter option

BuZz

Thanks for this. I've been wanting to remove limelight.sh for some time. Happy to receive a PR when you are happy with this - I don't have a compatible gfx card to test myself.

hhromic

Will do. I've been testing with different games and so far so good. Will send when I'm convinced is stable.

LeSabotageur

Thanks for your work on this, I'm using moonlight a lot on Retropie and I've still some gripes about it, so anyone spending time on fixing stuff with it is OK in my book :) .
I'll try to test your implementation soon (I hope tonight, if not I'll try this week).
In the meantime, here is my configuration to use moonlight as best as I can :

First, I've used joeglhill set of scripts : https://github.com/joelghill/retromoonlight . It installs all the recognized apps from Gamestream as games in Retropie, along with a refresh script. It works quite well (and it allows to play games outside of Steam Big Picture, as your scripts seem to do).
I've never really liked the controller part of moonlight (I have several types of pads, mostly SNES and XBOX 360 types, and they don't play along well), so I've used virtualHere's solution : A virtualHere server is started with Retropie on my Raspberry, and on my computer a client is present at startup as well with autoconnect to the Raspberry server. This allows me to use my Xbox 360 Wireless Receiver connected to my Raspberry with moonlight without much configuration, and with vibrations, hotkey recognition and everything. It's very specific to my setup (I use SNES pads for old emulators on Retropie and XBOX 360 for moonlight) but I'm quite satisfied by it.

That said, it's just my personal use of moonlight on Retropie. I'll be sure to try your scripts soon to see how they can make this stuff more confortable !

EDIT : as for my setup, my Pi is wired to my network (my Wifi being too unreliable for this use), I'm playing with 1080p and 60 fps parameters, and I've a 970 GTX graphics card. With moonlight and virtualHere used, I don't have any noticeable lag input and everything runs quite smoothly.

hhromic

@LeSabotageur great to hear from an active user of moonlight! Your input is much appreciated.

The current scriptmodule I'm proposing aims to make the installation and configuration of moonlight as simple and straight-forward as possible. In particular:

It does not scan the remote gaming computer for available games to create entries in ES. However the idea feels interesting and with the current approach I am using it might be easy to implement something similar. Will think about it. Because of this, you will have to manually create the .ml "rom" files for each game you want to stream, or create one to use the Steam Big Picture Mode launcher.
It does not make any assumption on controllers. As you mention, handling controllers can be very tricky so I preferred to leave that to the user via the -input and mapping capabilities. Should be simple enough the way is done, but open to suggestions for improvement.
It installs moonlight in /opt/retropie/supplementary/moonlight instead of /usr or /usr/local system directories. This is the recommended approach for RetroPie modules. To make things easier, the module creates a wrapper for the moonlight executable that points it to the correct data directories (gamedatabase and configuration). For this to work you should call moonlight either by using:
sudo $HOME/RetroPie-Setup/retropie_packages.sh moonlight exec <any_moonlight_args>
or
/opt/retropie/supplementary/moonlight/moonlight.sh <any_moonlight_args>
The directory with pairing configuration (and recommended for mapping files too) is in /opt/retropie/configs/all/moonlight.
Keep this in mind when experimenting.

Regarding virtualHere, it is an interesting alternative. Basically you take away from moonlight the transport of the input data and use virtualhere. However I don't feel this has anything to do with moonlight directly so I wouldn't include its configuration/setup in this scriptmodule. Perhaps a separate module can be proposed later for it.
Edit: at least on my setup, using a PS3 controller via bluetooth directly with moonlight it works out of the box nicely. Perhaps this newer version includes your controller in the database (I expect this is the case as your controller is very popular). Let me know how it works.

I checked the script you mentioned from joeglhill. It installs the jessie-packaged version of moonlight, which might be not suitable for recent RetroPie versions based on stretch. This scriptmodule in contrast installs from source directly.

Thanks again for testing and looking forward for your experience and feedback! I'm open to improvements of course.

LeSabotageur

@hhromic Thanks for all the information !

Yeah I think the autofill would be appreciated, because even if it's easy to simply add Steam on it and just play everything with Big Picture, some games don't like it very much (for instance Helldivers doesn't work with Big Picture, but works when launched as a GameStream app; YMMV).

I've tried your script a bit, but I've been unable to make it work, for a simple reason (which took me a while, but that's because I'm not that linux-savvy - nor pi-savvy for that matter) :

The compilation uses OpenSSL V1.0.2 which is not available in jessie, therefore it needs Retropie V4.4 (and stretch) to work. The error raised :

CMake Error at /usr/share/cmake-3.6/Modules/FindPackageHandleStandardArgs.cmake:148 (message):
  Could NOT find OpenSSL, try to set the path to OpenSSL root folder in the
  system variable OPENSSL_ROOT_DIR: Found unsuitable version "1.0.1t", but
  required is at least "1.0.2" (found
  /usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/libssl.so;/usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/libcrypto.so)

Being in Retropie V4.3, I can't test it for now, and due to my extreme laziness, I don't think I'll install it before this weekend, as it's suggested to start fresh before installing 4.4...
If you have any workaround for installing with an earlier version of OpenSSL I could give it a test drive.

Sorry for not being able to test your solution, as I commend every effort to make moonlight easier to use with Retropie. I hope I'll get back to it soon !

hhromic

@LeSabotageur Ah that's a boomer indeed. I didn't mention that the script is developed/tested for Stretch. Be warned that Jessie stopped receiving support from the RPI foundation since a while, and recently also stopped receiving support from RetroPie (no more updates). I've been using Stretch for a while now and works really smooth, definitively it would be worth your time to migrate when you can.

However, moonlight has a small patch upstream that is used to compile their jessie packages. You can use it in the meantime. However, I would really appreciate more feedback using Stretch. Nevertheless, this is what you can do to compile in Jessie. Note that we are going to go manually over the different steps that otherwise go automatically with the RetroPie GUI. The steps also assume you already patched my scriptmodule into your RetroPie folder.

$ cd $HOME/RetroPie-Setup
$ sudo ./retropie_packages.sh moonlight clean      # clean the build directory
$ sudo ./retropie_packages.sh moonlight depends    # get dependencies (if needed)
$ sudo ./retropie_packages.sh moonlight sources    # fetch the upstream source code
$ sudo patch -d tmp/build/moonlight -p1 < <(wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/irtimmer/moonlight-embedded/raspbian/jessie/debian/patches/openssl.patch -qO-)  # patch to source for jessie openssl version
$ sudo ./retropie_packages.sh moonlight build      # build the patched moonlight source code
$ sudo ./retropie_packages.sh moonlight install    # install moonlight
$ sudo ./retropie_packages.sh moonlight configure  # configure moonlight
$ sudo ./retropie_packages.sh moonlight clean      # clean all after finishing

After that last step, you should have moonlight in the same state as it would be in Stretch. The rest of the scriptmodule should work normally (pair, unpair, etc)

Regarding the auto generation of session files, I already got a good idea on how to do in my scriptmodule. I'm half-way implementing it, I hope to finish by tonight. After is done, you don't need to reinstall moonlight, just update my scriptmodule.

I'm also re-thinking the approach for handling the .ml files because the current format has some limitations that I didn't consider initially. Nonetheless should be still simple.

Thanks again for your testing and feedback, looking forward to hear back from you.

hhromic

Update
I finally had time to improve the scriptmodule further. The following new changes are in place:

Support for both, autodiscovery and manual IP, of the remote gaming computer via avahi-daemon. Configurable in GUI.
Support for proper config files for game configuration, including global config support. You can have globals configs for all games and override options per-game.
Automatic generation of game config files from a remote computer. You can now scan the remote computer and generate game configs for newly added games. Accessible from GUI.

Instructions for the new improvements are in the original post.

@LeSabotageur now is a good time to update the scriptmodule and test it. Hope you have some time to experiment! Looking forward for further ideas.

liquidsnake34

Hello. First wanted to thank you for making the script possible and ultimately trying to simplify the integration within RetroPie Setup.

I am currently on a Odroid XU4 with Team Ora (based on Retropie 4.4) and the scripts fails related to FFMPEG. See below it references these errors in both the Building and Installation stages.

CMakeFiles/moonlight.dir/src/video/ffmpeg.c.o: In function ffmpeg_get_frame': ffmpeg.c:(.text+0x248): undefined reference to avcodec_receive_frame'
CMakeFiles/moonlight.dir/src/video/ffmpeg.c.o: In function ffmpeg_decode': ffmpeg.c:(.text+0x2f8): undefined reference to avcodec_send_packet'
collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status
CMakeFiles/moonlight.dir/build.make:570: recipe for target 'moonlight' failed
make[2]: *** [moonlight] Error 1
CMakeFiles/Makefile2:68: recipe for target 'CMakeFiles/moonlight.dir/all' failed
make[1]: *** [CMakeFiles/moonlight.dir/all] Error 2
Makefile:127: recipe for target 'all' failed
make: *** [all] Error 2

hhromic

@liquidsnake34 thanks for the support! and also thanks for helping debug the scriptmodule for ODROID, I don't have such boards and surely it's a great platform to support moonlight from RetroPie too.

Regarding the issue you found, I don't have any experience with ORA builds, however I went to research a bit and it seems the functions undefined are present in FFmpeg 3.1 onwards, but ORA comes with FFmpeg 2.8.6, which causes the issue.
I don't have an immediate solution as I don't have any experience with ORA, however I wil investigate to see what can be done. An alternative is to disable ffmpeg/sdl compilation as it's not needed AFAIK.
If you have no reason to have ffmpeg installed, a temporary solution should be uninstall any "-dev" package related to ffmpeg and try to build again.

Sorry to not have a prompt solution, but hopefully we find one. Thanks for the help!

Edit: I'm very humbly tagging @reesk92, @fnkngrv who seem to be maintainers of the ORA RetroPie images. They might have better ideas/insights on the issue. I read in the ORA website FAQ that moonlight is a requested feature, maybe we can make it work cleanly. Thanks!

LeSabotageur

Good job on the recent improvements ! I didn't have much time to give it a try lately, but I think I'll install retropie V4.4 from scratch on a new SD Card and install your script to see if I manage to use it correctly.
Sadly I still can't put a timeframe on when I'll do that :/

LeSabotageur

OK, so I've installed it on a fresh install, and I've managed to install it without any hurdle.

I've just noticed that the script has problems with getting games with colons in their name :

Generating config file for 'The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim' ...
touch: setting times of '/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/steam/The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.ml': No such file or directory
sed: cannot stat /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/steam/The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.ml: No such file or directory
/home/pi/RetroPie-Setup/scriptmodules/inifuncs.sh: line 82: /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/steam/The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.ml: Invalid argument
touch: setting times of '/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/steam/The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.ml': No such file or directory
touch: setting times of '/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/steam/The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.ml': No such file or directory
sed: cannot stat /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/steam/The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.ml: No such file or directory
/home/pi/RetroPie-Setup/scriptmodules/inifuncs.sh: line 82: /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/steam/The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.ml: Invalid argument
chown: cannot access '/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/steam/The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.ml': No such file or directory

Other than that, every game in GameStream was added, and I've managed to play a game through Steam as well as Broforce directly from EmulationStation.
In conclusion, good job ! It's really easy to install and configure. I've not fiddled with the controls so the shoulder buttons on my X360 controller were behaving weirdly, but other than that, it's successful on my part !

hhromic

@LeSabotageur thanks for the feedback. I will take a look on the issue you are reporting.
I'm very glad that, apart from that issue, moonlight is working good for you and is you find it easy to configure as is my objective.
Regarding the controller mapping, do yo happen to be using a wireless X360 controller? There is a yet non-merged PR in upstream about it: https://github.com/irtimmer/moonlight-embedded/pull/686.
You could try the mapping offered in the PR and confirm it is working, then we can try to push the author to merge the PR :)
Thanks for testing and the support!

LeSabotageur

@hhromic I'm indeed using a wireless controller, and no need to worry about it, I've made it work before I think but I didn't have time to look in the gamecontrollerdb file there; so yeah apart for the minor colon bug, it's alright for me ! Thanks again for your work, I'll keep watching its future improvements and I'll let you know if I can think of any of those :) .

hhromic

@LeSabotageur let me know how it goes with your controller, if the pending PR in moonlight solves your issue, definitively is worth trying to push it to be merged upstream =).

Regarding the generation of config files for games that have a semicolon in the name, I'm afraid I haven't been able to replicate the issue on my side. I do have games with these characters in the name and they are working fine here.

The closest I could get to replicate the same error you are getting was when there is no roms/steam folder previously created, so no config files could be created and I get the same error than you, no matter if they had semicolons.

I wonder if you have the latest version of RetroPie-Setup updated?
Maybe something got screwed up. When you have time (no rush!), could you please completely remove moonlight, the scriptmodule and the config files in roms/steam, then start over with building and generating the config files again?
Just to confirm it is not something spurious on your side?

Something like this should do:

cd $HOME/RetroPie-Setup
sudo ./retropie_packages.sh moonlight remove  # remove moonlight
rm -rf  scriptmodules/supplementary/moonlight.sh  # remove the scriptmodule
rm -rf $HOME/Retropie/roms/steam  # remove all the config files
patch -p1 < <(wget https://github.com/hhromic/RetroPie-Setup/compare/master...add-moonlight.diff -qO-)  # re-add the scriptmodule
sudo ./retropie_packages.sh moonlight clean  # clean the build directory
sudo ./retropie_packages.sh moonlight  # re-build, install and configure moonlight
sudo ./retropie_packages.sh moonlight gui  # start the configuration GUI

Thanks again for the testing! appreciated!

reesk92

@hhromic im not officially on the ora team anymore but i still maintain close ties with them and will help and assist where i can

reesk92

im not sure what your trying to do but as for having ffmpeg installed it is my understanding we have ffmpeg installed for video rendering of video snaps because omxplayer or whatever pi uses is unavailable for odroid so we use that atleast thats what i think we use it for

that or we use it for something to do with the lcd screen on the ogst case that our board supports

either way im fairly certain considering the minimal image we started with that we wouldnt install anything that wasnt absloutley neccesary to the running of the image

ill see what i can do for passing this along to someone who can better assist you

hhromic

@reesk92 many thanks on trying to help, really appreciated !

Just to clarify, I'm not a direct user of ORA, but I'm trying to help another user to get moonlight to build in his ORA ( @liquidsnake34 ).

What is happening is that @liquidsnake34 tried to build moonlight on his ORA installation and the build failed because moonlight references an updated ffmpeg API (3.1+) than what is apparnetly installed (2.8.6).

Apparently, moonlight doesn't need ffmpeg on ODROID as it can use the chipset directly like it does on the RPI. I say "apparently" because I can't test myself.

The options I can see are to (1) disable detecting/using ffmpeg in the moonlight makefiles or (2) update ffmpeg in ORA. The second option would be prefered if it is relatively easy to do, and that is what I don't know for sure and would require advise from ORA seniors :)
In case that the first option is necessary, then I would need to test if moonlight still runs fine without compiling ffmpeg support. According to what you just said, it might be necessary after all if it does hardware decoding.

Thanks a lot for wanting to help and if you are not the right person, I look forward to be refered to someone that can further help.

fnkngrv

If the version that is compiling is lower than what is needed most likely a kernel level issue. Someone would need to verify the latest version of ffmpeg supported on the 3.10 kernel. Whatever is showing as installed on the build is what compiled with the original RetroPie installation itself. RetroPie official has very basic support for the XU4 and we have not done anything specific to the installation of ffmpeg itself. I am assuming its installation is tied into VLC. We actually leverage mplayer for most video related media on the build. We are for the most part the most concerned with retrogaming systems. We have not spent any cycles on things like Moonlight, Attract Mode, or Kodi.

hhromic

@fnkngrv thanks for the heads-up!
I agree upgrading ffmpeg is not a straightforward action and probably it is best to leave it alone because of the hardware acceleration and the coupling with the kernel version/state.
I also understand ORA is all about the retrogaming more than side projects like moonlight, no problem.

I was researching further and indeed the best solution would be to disable ffmpeg support (and attempt to compile aginst it) in moonlight, which is only used for software-only decoding. Moonlight seems to support a number of embedded chipsets directly: Broadcom, Freescale, Amlogic and Rockchip.
I'm not sure which one is picked for XU4 (or if any supports XU4 directly) as I don't have that board and can't compile/test myself. I will try to debug with the user and see what can be done for moonlight to compile/work in XU4 natively (if possible).

Thanks again for the help and clarifications!