Timeline for Retropie on Raspberry 4

saccublenda

A lot of people (including me) have bought a Pi4, and we all look forward to try RetroPie on it.
A timeline for the release of RetroPie on Pi4 has been asked A LOT of times, and the answer has always been the same: adapting RetroPie for Pi4 is quite tricky and requires a lot of work, a timeline cannot be provided and we just have to be patient and wait until it is released.
The developers work on it in their spare time, and keeping asking when it will be released or even insulting them is not going to speed up the process whatsoever.
If you want to try your Pi4 you can use Lakka which provides retroarch for Pi4, but for RetroPie we just have to wait.

bricksprickly

@bombshelboy said in Timeline for Retropie on Raspberry 4:

I bought a Raspberry Pi4 2 months ago not realizing Retropie wouldn't work on it. He asked for so much as a progress report about a month ago and got a snarky remark.

I really hope the dev team isn't as terrible as I'm being led to believe they are with how things are being handled.

Have you donated even?

You act as though the RP4 was solely made for retropie and the developers are doing you a disservice. This is free software, the devs owe you nothing. Be happy they continue the job at all while people such as yourself complain.

The rp4 has other uses, why not explore them instead of riding the people you should be thanking instead.

an appreciative end user

sirhenrythe5th

@bricksprickly: thumbs up for your posting.

Clyde

@bombshelboy said in Timeline for Retropie on Raspberry 4:

I really hope the dev team isn't as terrible as I'm being led to believe they are with how things are being handled.

I can't follow your reasoning here. Let's look at both cases:

A user asked something that has been asked (and answered) many times before in this forum.
Another user pointed that out in rather direct way (that I personally don't find offensive, but that's my own subjective opinion).
What does this say about the devs?

Someone bought new hardware without doing enough research about its support by a particular software.
The devs of the software never promised that support. On the contrary, they often said that they're still working on it.
What does this say about the devs?

I don't mean that offensively. Please feel free to correct me if you think that I'm wrong.

edit: Here're some links if you or someone else wants to follow the progress of Retropie.

https://retropie.org.uk/news/

https://retropie.org.uk/forum/category/1/announcements

https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup

https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/22660/the-new-raspberry-pi-4-is-here

sirhenrythe5th

As the one that wrote this "offensive" answer:
it was not my intention to be rude!
I just wanted to say that there is no timeline and a simple search within this forum would have answered this question without opening another thread.

I have to add that english is not my native language, i am german (as the thread-opener i guess, "Tobias Häcker" sounds like a german name) .
So maybe my words are not those that an english native-speaker would use for this kind of answer.
If so, i am sorry about that, i did not want to harm anyone.

chubsta

My question is 'why is it taking so long'?

And I don't mean that in any sort of bad way, as in people should hurry up and get it fixed, I am interested in what is so very different about the Pi 4 as against the Pi3B? I thought the 4 was merely an incremental update, a faster processor etc, and kind of presumed that retropie would need merely a few bits and pieces changing and it would all work fine. I used to do iOS stuff as a hobby and each new iteration of the iPhone/ipad didn't really require much work, so what is causing the issues here? I don't understand emulation at all so forgive me if the answer is obvious...

mitu

@chubsta The PI4 is not an incremental upgrade - the CPU and especially the GPU are totally different and most of the standalone emulators and infrastructure are not 100% compatible.
The 3B+ was an incremental upgrade and that was handled with just an OS upgrade, everything else was just the same.

As for the 'merely a few bits and pieces'... that's just a simple view of how software works. You have to know which ones need changing and how to change them.

I used to do iOS stuff as a hobby and each new iteration of the iPhone/ipad didn't really require much work, so what is causing the issues here?

The change of the GPU video APIs for the Pi4, which are no longer using the Broadcom legacy drivers, but the open source Mesa drivers.

herb_fargus

@mitu plus an OS update to buster as well ;)

chubsta

Thanks for the clarification, I’m merely a user in all this and can’t even get my head around modifying themes so the logistics of updating RetroPie are well beyond me!

Clyde

For anyone who stumbles upon this thread: Here's an unsupported (!) way to install an early version of Retropie-Setup for the RPi 4.

https://retropie.org.uk/forum/post/200661

(Thanks to @Darksavior for posting it and to @psyke83 for mentioning it in another thread.)

sirhenrythe5th

@Clyde just to get sure: this way (and all the other "unofficial" releases from 3rd partys) kind of "force" exisiting cores and emus for the Pi3B / Stretch to run on PI4 / Buster?
As i understand it the only advantage is given by faster CPU, you wont have any benefits from the new GPU / OpenGL3.x, or am i wrong?
So it is like driving a car with pulled handbrake? :)

mitu

@sirhenrythe5th said in Timeline for Retropie on Raspberry 4:

@Clyde just to get sure: this way (and all the other "unofficial" releases from 3rd partys) kind of "force" exisiting cores and emus for the Pi3B / Stretch to run on PI4 / Buster?

No, the fkms_rpi4 branch is not 'forcing' or 'faking' anything, it's geared towards RPI4/Buster support and at the same time keeping compatibility with existing RPI models.

As i understand it the only advantage is given by faster CPU, you wont have any benefits from the new GPU / OpenGL3.x, or am i wrong?

If you use that branch on a Pi4, you'll be using the new Mesa drivers with OpenGL ES 3.0/Open GL 2.1 support.

sirhenrythe5th

@mitu thank you Mitu for this clarification.
As a non-pro i would suggest: ok, the main Job is done, now it is all about the several details i guess 😉

saccublenda

@mitu
Will it be possible to update a fkms_rpi4 branch installation to a stable Pi4 release when it will become available?

mitu

@saccublenda Probably yes, though I'd still recommend using a fresh start when the Pi4 image becomes available.

Swampy

One question about the apple2 emulator:
Is it in principle possible to compile the apple2 emulator with rpi4 as platform? Someone tried it out yet?
Or is there more work to do, to make it compatible?

Thank you for your great advances in the pi4 compatibility. Most works already great.

roslof

@Swampy,

As of today, the Apple II emulator (linapple) compiles without issue. It does run in a 1:1 pixel ratio in the upper-left of an HD screen. You'll likely want to edit the configuration file (linapple.conf) and tweak the "Screen factor" setting in order to make the window large enough to be enjoyable. I'm currently using a value of 2.5 and it looks just fine.

Mosaad-20

are there any updates for supporting raspberry pi 4 and what is the the supported emulators?
because I am planning to buy raspberry pi 4 but I am waiting for the image to release.

ferhound

It will never be released ok? stop asking.

mitu

@Mosaad-20 You can try the manual installation method - https://retropie.org.uk/docs/Manual-Installation/ - on a Pi4 mode. Work on the PI4 support is still ongoing, but most things should work.