Not very user friendly.
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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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I watched hours of YouTube and read lots of tutorials and things online. I have everything working, it's just not how I want it. A lot of the menu options to tweak things just aren't easy to understand or it only applies to one system instead of all. If the option were easy to understand and quick to get to (like the Retron 5) I would love it. Right now it's just easier to run different emulators on my PC because the options are easier to understand and the menus are easy to get to. I was just hoping that with the pi I would be able to have a dedicated all-in-one retro emulator system that was also easy to take on trips or to a friend's house.
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I don't understand the statement. I dump the image, copy a few roms, disable overscanning, configure a controller and I'm done.
And I've built many RetroPi's for other people. There is a group on FB that provides images that are pre-setup but every config is slightly different. I'm also pretty sure they also include roms (tisk tisk) but each images is 32 or 64 gig. Not a smart way of spreading it around. This distribution is just lazy if you ask me
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I like to believe that half the enjoyment is getting something so small and cheap to do so much with so little. I never delved into Linux or coding until the Pi and now find myself doing it as a past time. As was mentioned earlier, perhaps Recalbox or even Lakaa would be more to your liking.
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@Necrobot20XX said in Not very user friendly.:
I watched hours of YouTube and read lots of tutorials and things online. I have everything working, it's just not how I want it. A lot of the menu options to tweak things just aren't easy to understand or it only applies to one system instead of all. If the option were easy to understand and quick to get to (like the Retron 5) I would love it. Right now it's just easier to run different emulators on my PC because the options are easier to understand and the menus are easy to get to. I was just hoping that with the pi I would be able to have a dedicated all-in-one retro emulator system that was also easy to take on trips or to a friend's house.
I keep seeing you compare RetroPie with Retron 5...
(For those that do not know Retron 5 is a retro console)
The argument is flawed right away because Retron 5 is all its own programing... RetroPie is not.
In the RetroPie 3.8 for example you have a board and base operating system from Raspberry Pi Foundation, then you have EmulationStation which is its own group, RetroArch in its own group and the RetroPie.... None are part of the other so its impossible to do the things Retron 5 does... even using Emulators on PC cant do the same as Retron 5.
Because RetroPie uses emulators that are compatible with the ARM Architecture the selection is limited.... It is also easier to use other emulators known to work, than to program ones... and because RetroPie is done by people in their free time, not as part of a corporate company...
If you need experience with this, work on a minimal Linux build to get a sense of the backend program...
also, the reason some configurations are universal is because they are not the same emulator
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@Necrobot20XX said in Not very user friendly.:
I am an above average computer user and have been using emulators for years.
This is hard to believe as I know there isn't a single emulator that would work for all systems RetroPie has or even half of it...
Also Above average Computer user would know the difference between a console and computer board...
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