Not very user friendly.
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Well, that sucks. Now you've gotten all that of your chest, are you willing to formulate a coherent question for us?
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@Necrobot20XX what specifically is the matter? In most emulators (the retroarch ones), select+X gets you to its settings mid-game. From here there are all sorts of video options to size the display how you wish, add shaders, etc.
Sorry it's not user friendly for you. Linux in general can be foreign coming from another environment, and it's a trade-off between flexibility and ease. The configuration tree may seem excessive, but they are organized like this because it's the result of a team of people trying to tie some 40 mostly-unrelated emulators together, all of which are written and constructed differently. If there's some better one that provides the flexibility that we crave with what ease it does at least have, let us know.
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@Necrobot20XX might I recommend recalbox?
also just as a note a majority of the emulation software RetroPie and consequently Recalbox use are from the libretro/retroarch team- and with their added funcionality come with the inevitable added features and configurations. RetroPie is simple enough to plug and play but prides itself on its versatility and options, Recalbox has much of the same underlying software but they have invested a lot of time in simplifying their interface to make it much more of a plug and play option- but that comes at the cost of the options retropie provides.
If you want the benefits of the options you need to be willing to invest the time to read the documentation. understand this is a free project driven by the community, not a fully funded corporate investment catering to the masses (there's always the mini NES come this fall ;) ).
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@Necrobot20XX It's too bad you are having a rough time. I setup RetroPie and I am actually amazed at how well so many different capabilities are integrated into a single setup for what is basically a device designed to be used as an educational tool (endless tinkering).
To each their own, but RetroPie has far exceeded my expectations.
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I understand what you're saying. But that's just how it is. It's a £30 computer. The great thing is the community here are happy to help when you're stuck. I was the same as you, but learnt from Google and people here.
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Sorry, my thoughts are a little unorganized. I was just hoping for something to make RetroPie more user friendly or even something totally different that was easier to use.
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@Necrobot20XX the documentation is a great place to start:
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@Necrobot20XX As far as I'm concerned you're working with hobbiests hardware and freeware software. If you are struggling with that then go back to retail consoles. ROFL
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You need to read manuals or even better check out some videos on YouTube which cover these subjects. Browse the help section there are many good topics over there. It's not hard at all, you only need to config a couple options and that's it. From there keep a backup of the config files and you're good to go. Also if you explore the main retroarch.cfg file you'll find a lot of cool options you can play with.
If you want to use RetroPie you are going to be forced to do some homework before you get what you want, in my opinion I really like it. It keeps those annoying wannabee "OMG CHECK THIS AMAZING 8BIT CHIP TUNE (while it's just some random crappy song done with modern synthesizers and uses more than 8 channels)" guys away so it won't become an another hype.
Beside RetroPie is freeware the developers behind it are doing it for free and as a hobby, I don't want to sound rude but if something is free you really shouldn't complain about it.
For your pixel problem, open up the main retroarch.cfg file, scroll all the way down to the bottom and add:
video_smooth = true
You can change the video ratio too, I saw this option once in the RGUi menu but I never played with it.
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@PetroRie said in Not very user friendly.:
It keeps those annoying wannabee "OMG CHECK THIS AMAZING 8BIT CHIP TUNE (...)" guys away so it won't become an another hype.
I had never thought this way, but I have to agree. This is one of the great RetroPie cool feature! :-)
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@PetroRie said in Not very user friendly.:
You need to read manuals or even better check out some videos on YouTube...
Heh, kids. "Back in my day they didn't have online video tutorials. You had to read things... no illustrations! Uphill in the snow, blah blah blah...
...All there was to watch on TV at 2:30pm was Designing Women and soap operas! And we watched 'em!
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Actually this is really helpful. I had a pie 1 for about 2 years and apart from turning it on and going woah! Thats all that i did with it. Then I found RetroPie and immediately ran out an bought a pie 3. I hit a snag with the controllers not working and got a little outraged like the OP, but stopping and thinking and reading the comments here, makes me see just how bloody mollycoddled we have become.
If its not plug and play we freak out, but back in the days of 640k base and 1000k extended we made boot disks, fiddled with settings until it worked (im looking at YOU alone in the dark!) I have totally forgotten this.
Of course we had our mates to chat to, but no youtube, google or access to the entire planet in a second. We seem to have lost the delight of a bit of effort to make something work.
I totally lay the blame for this with Microsoft and Apple. (/joke)
Thumbs up to the OP and the replies to this thread, you have made me see things better today. Now, who is going to fix my Joysitck issue!?!
SS
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@SpeedStar said in Not very user friendly.:
If its not plug and play we freak out, but back in the days of 640k base and 1000k extended we made boot disks, fiddled with settings until it worked (im looking at YOU alone in the dark!) I have totally forgotten this.
Dude, remember TSRs?
In all seriousness, I think there was a golden age of computing when, as you alluded, getting the computer to work was half of the fun. People didn't complain about learning how to use it because the natural response would have been "WTH did you buy a computer you didn't want to learn to use?"
I personally feel it's a shame that people buy Pi's for a plug-and-play solution, it mostly works, and that leads many newcomers to never diving into the underlying OS. With just a little bit of Linux understanding, and really just getting a handle on how things tend to work in *NIX land, the mystery of how RetroPie works disappears, and the experience is much more pleasant. I'd have stopped using RetroPie at least 5 times already if I ran into the problems that I did and had no concept of how to fix it myself. And the real shame is that while being easy for end-users is not the top priority, it's free software, developed online in public, with lots of documentation, lots of discussion. It's BEGGING to be understood and learned.
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@bazmonkey said in Not very user friendly.:
getting the computer to work was half of the fun
Nowadays you can get this feeling using Arch Linux! :-)
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@bazmonkey said in Not very user friendly.:
Dude, remember TSRs?
I try my hardest to forget...
DOS I can do but Unix is a bit of a mystery to me...
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You need to invest some time reading and maybe watch a few Youtube videos. Got my Pi3 running great everything configured the way I want it. Even Dragon's Lair on Daphne is up. Good luck.
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@Necrobot20XX said in Not very user friendly.:
I was just hoping for something to make RetroPie more user friendly
It couldn't be more user friendly! You get a free image provided for you, burn it, drop in roms and play. For those interested, it is infinitely tweakable. Bizzare statement. Takes 10mins to get running after reading the very clear wiki page. If you don't like reading, watch you tube where there are setup guides that also take 10mins.
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@bazmonkey said in Not very user friendly.:
@PetroRie said in Not very user friendly.:
You need to read manuals or even better check out some videos on YouTube...
Heh, kids. "Back in my day they didn't have online video tutorials. You had to read things... no illustrations! Uphill in the snow, blah blah blah...
...All there was to watch on TV at 2:30pm was Designing Women and soap operas! And we watched 'em!
Haha, I hope you got my point. I'm not saying that everything was better in the past I'm just saying I don't like the hype that so many people started to love 8 bit oldskool stuff just out of the blue. People getting all crazy about 8 bit music, while in reality it isn't even 8bit just some random notes played on a synthesizer, added some crappy arpeggio chords and that's it. Real 8 bit music was composed in a tracker, and usually it's just 4 channels like they used in the majority of the amiga cracktros and demos.
@plasmah77 It is true what you said but can you imagine if the RP had Windows on it? "Please download the updates", lol you have to buy an external harddisk just only for all the updates.
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I have to disagree as someone who builds PCs including at times configuring them at the code level... RetroPie is easy, though I have to sometimes ask for help, this distro can be equated to ubuntu as it has a vast and dedicated community...
the board on the other hand is another story as its not built to be easy, but the documentation is endless. (I currently have a Pi3 in a custom built case, Pi1B in limbo, and another Pi3 that is being turned into a home server)
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