lr-pcsx-rearmed won't run any games

josephxx

Hello world (first post by a new owner of a RPI 3B+):

To anyone who (like me) ended up here having the same problem/symptoms, the reason in my case was that I allowed my 4.4 Retropie to update everything.

Stock 4.4 image played PSX roms perfectly. When I read that a recent update to EmulationStation allowed the internal scraper to start working again, I did a full update. The scraper indeed worked, but lr-pcsx-rearmed never launched another ROM - black screen, starting, and back to the game list again.

What worked was updating specifically the EmulationStation package and nothing else.

mitu

@josephxx You can update from source the emulator and it should work.

hhromic

@BuZz said in lr-pcsx-rearmed won't run any games:

@hhromic possibly due to logic somewhere that would fail then if built on my chroot. Eg. Something that checks for RPI1 hardware info. I have a feeling there was something before we had as a workaround for a similar issue.

Actually that's for the standalone core. Maybe it's the same issue though.

Thanks for the info, will investigate that as I was having the same feeling. Libretro makefiles can be a bit hacky sometimes. Yes I think I saw the workaround you mention in the standalone emulator, however I will check passing variables to the makefile, e.g. HAVE_NEON=0, if necessary. I will be able to report shortly.

josephxx

@mitu said in lr-pcsx-rearmed won't run any games:

@josephxx You can update from source the emulator and it should work.

Thanks for letting me know. I am new to all this and the Linux mindset (and it's been 20 years since I took some Linux at uni).

hhromic

@buzz the build for RPI1 is now failing here for me as well doing the same i did before, so something changed upstream since I made the buildfix.

I will investigate what they changed and send a patch upstream as I believe our way to build is correct and we shouldn't use workarounds. They are rather quick to merge PRs for this core anyway. Will report back here anyway to keep you updated guys.

hhromic

Okay found the problem.

It is upstream but nothing they did recently actually. As you guessed @BuZz, when HAVE_NEON is not set by any of the checks the makefile tries to autodetect it using a compiler test. The problem is that when platform=armvalone, the makefile starts with HAVE_NEON unset, however for armv if neon is not set, then it will try to autodetect it using the compiler of the host in the chroot, leaving it enabled. The solution is rather simply to not leave the variable unset in the armv check block, i.e. set HAVE_NEON=0 explicitly in armv until NEON is requested explicitly. This way there is no autodetection, like this:

index 8899ed7..c6eb695 100644
--- a/Makefile.libretro
+++ b/Makefile.libretro
@@ -286,6 +286,7 @@ else ifneq (,$(findstring armv,$(platform)))
        TARGET := $(TARGET_NAME)_libretro.so
        fpic := -fPIC
        DRC_CACHE_BASE = 0
+       HAVE_NEON = 0
        ifneq (,$(findstring cortexa8,$(platform)))
                CFLAGS += -marm -mcpu=cortex-a8
                ASFLAGS += -mcpu=cortex-a8

If NEON is present in platform=armvneon then HAVE_NEON=1 will be set correctly.

I will send a patch upstream now. An alternative is to pass HAVE_NEON accordingly from the scriptmodule but that will make the logic unnecessarily more complicated when it can be fixed upstream very easily.

I don't know exactly why my initial test worked, perhaps the compiler check did work at some point. Will let you know when the patch is merged upstream so you can rebuild.

hhromic

Okay the PR is now sent upstream: https://github.com/libretro/pcsx_rearmed/pull/253
Once merged the build for RPI1 should be working fine without altering the scriptmodule.

jdriscol

I apologize in advance for my ignorance, but I also started experiencing problems with the lr-pcsx-rearmed emulator after doing an update from binary. I had several ROMs working perfectly fine, but after this update I get booted back to emulationstation. It sounds like my issue matches what's going on in this thread, so is there a fix yet? How exactly do I go about implementing? Thanks!

quicksilver

@jdriscol which model pi are you using?

jdriscol

@quicksilver 3B+

mitu

@jdriscol I just updated and don't have any issues - did you update your RetroPie script before installing the binary update ?

quicksilver

@jdriscol Update retropie setup-script first then update from binary. The binary was already updated I believe.

jdriscol

@quicksilver @mitu Pretty sure I updated setup-script also, but don't recall the order. I'll give it a shot doing the setup-script and then doing another update from binary in a few hours when I get home. The last attempt I made at the update was a day ago and haven't done anything since.

BuZz

@jdriscol Binary has been fixed since then for the RPI 2/3.

jdriscol

Re-ran the update, and now everything is back to normal (PSX ROMs working properly). Thanks for the help!

hhromic

The PR for RPI0/1 was merged upstream now, so this should be fixed for good now.

The binaries for RPI2/3 were already updated so there should be no more issues with these devices. For RPI0/1, the binaries should be rebuilt very soon and fixed too.

Apologies again for originally forgetting to remind @BuZz to rebuild the binaries due to the name change. Hopefully all is back to normal again. This core now is more aligned with how the other LR core are being built, hence more resistant to future updates upstream. Sadly this core is not receiving many nowadays :(

mitu

@hhromic said in lr-pcsx-rearmed won't run any games:

Sadly this core is not receiving many nowadays :(

Well, the Diablo music fix is an often reported bug here, so that's a welcomed change.

ivooc

hey, don't know if it is related, but the pcsx_rearmed_show_bios_bootlogo = "enabled" also apparently is not working. I used to boot with bios logo, now it boots directly into the game. It does work if I do a manual reset on the already loaded rom. Anyone mind to check this? I know it's a silly detail but I like the nostalgia that booting with bios gives me.

BJRetro

@ivooc at least on my version of lr-pscx-rearmed booting on bios is an option in the GUI - go to quick menu, options and you should see the option there and in parenthesis there is a note it breaks some games. I just tried it last night randomly for the first time by coincidence and it worked.

ivooc

@BJRetro said in lr-pcsx-rearmed won't run any games:

@ivooc at least on my version of lr-pscx-rearmed booting on bios is an option in the GUI - go to quick menu, options and you should see the option there and in parenthesis there is a note it breaks some games. I just tried it last night randomly for the first time by coincidence and it worked.

Yes, I know it's there. Mine's enabled and have worked fine with all the games I've played, until this buggy binary that broke the emulator. Now the emulator is fixed, but the show bios option doesn't work anymore, at least not for me. And I updated the packages today to be sure. I even checked the runcommand log to see if the option was being loaded correctly and it was.