Box86 and Wine on RPi4

[George]

@chado21 probably what you'll need to do is run RetroPie Setup and then hit S for Update RetroPie-Setup script.

[chado21]

@george did that just now, it shows 4.7.2 . then says script up to date. just clicked the "update" now its running an update... not sure if its for 4.7.7 or just updating the OS...

[chado21]

@chado21 same song and dance.... 4.7.2

[George]

@chado21 That's odd. Perhaps there's an error while it tries to perform the git update?

If you SSH into the Pi, try the following:

cd ~/Retropie-Setup
git fetch origin
git pull origin
sudo ./retropie-setup.sh

Also, can you send us the output of uname -a as well.

- George

[George]

@chado21 The box86 script does check to make sure that RetroPie is on version 4.7.7 or later. This is because 4.7.7 introduced some new function calls for dependency checks, which is used by the Box86 script.

[chado21]

@george

still seems to be the same. i wish i knew what to fix....

[George]

@chado21 Ok, you're on the right kernel version, which is a good sign. But what about the output of the other commands I mentioned? Can you send that as well?

- George

[TedMaul]

Hello, I've been persevering with trying to run through Wine explorer (still can't see how to make shortcuts for ES to run directly...). I've got Sonic SMS 1 Remake working (great fun btw!) and audio is fine but gameplay is very laggy. Are there any options for speeding up, if that isn't a silly question? Cheers.

[mth75]

@tedmaul

Overclocking is your best bet.

[George]

@tedmaul If there are any options in the game to change the screen resolution, that would be something to try as well, though if I remember correctly, you might have an issue doing that through Wine Desktop.

Are you using Wine through the ES Ports menu, or did you update to the branch where I added Wine as an emulator?

[TedMaul]

I don't have any active cooling so not sure if I'll go for overclocking just yet... it already feels too hot half the time in my standard Pi case...

@george I'm using it through the Ports menu at the moment - if I want to update should I get rid of what I've already got, or will the setup take care of it?

Thanks both for replying btw!

[George]

@tedmaul The only major change is that Wine is listed as an emulator instead of as a port. That said, you'd probably need to update your themes for it to be usable also. I've made an entry for the Pixel theme (which is my favorite) on my own fork. You should be able to get it with the following:

git clone --branch rp-box86wine https://github.com/GeorgeMcMullen/es-theme-pixel /home/pi/.emulationstation/themes/es-theme-pixel 

The benefit to using Wine as an Emulator in EmulationStation is that you don't need a script that would essentially install another script that would run your game.

I also did update the Box86 script so that it pulls from Box86's master branch. There are several performance improvements that are quite amazing.

Hope that helps!

[VictimRLSH]

The biggest problem I have trying to get things to run on Box86 (or even compile if that is needed) is I can't install i386 architecture libraries because apt-get and all the package managers won't allow them because the current architecture doesn't support them (but box86 will if you point them out to it)

Is there an install script to install x86 architecture libraries so box86 can use them?

[George]

@victimrlsh You shouldn't need i386 architecture to compile box86. You might want to try the Box86 Discord though if you're seeing a particular issue compiling Box86. https://discord.gg/Fh8sjmu

[VictimRLSH]

@george The issue isn't Box86 itself, but the libraries that apps running under Box86 need. The reference to compiling is that some apps running under Box86 need to be compiled and need even more libraries than at runtime.

[George]

@victimrlsh Hmm. Yes, trying to compile something under box86 probably isn't going to work very well. It would probably be easier to compile it on a true x86 machine and then copy the binaries over Of course, if the source is available, I would also look to see if someone has already done the work to make it compile on ARM based devices. It would run much better that way.

[TedMaul]

@george sounds interesting / promising, thanks! I'll give it a go and report back.

[TedMaul]

@george I'm having trouble getting the new version to work; tried this:

pi@retropie:~ $ git clone https://github.com/GeorgeMcMullen/rp-box86wine/tree/emulator /home/pi/RetroPie-Setup/ext/rp-box86wineemu/
Cloning into '/home/pi/RetroPie-Setup/ext/rp-box86wineemu'...
fatal: repository 'https://github.com/GeorgeMcMullen/rp-box86wine/tree/emulator/' not found

Apologies, but have you got any pointers?

Separately, I tried creating a shell script from the file that is in that branch (rp-box86wine/scriptmodules/emulators/wine.sh) and put it into a roms/wine folder, and a new system in es_systems.cfg, pointing to it, but then I was missing a file in runcommand (which, with hindsight, makes sense...)

[George]

@tedmaul Try this instead. Just need to call git in a different way.

git clone --branch emulator https://github.com/GeorgeMcMullen/rp-box86wine /home/pi/RetroPie-Setup/ext/rp-box86wineemu/

You'll want to remove the any other clone you might have already done, or RetroPie Setup will complain about duplicate scripts and won't load one of them.

Hope that helps.

- George

[TedMaul]

@george Brilliant, thanks - I've got my emulator entry now! Wine desktop etc is running directly from that just fine - my first attempt at a shell though...

#!/bin/bash
wine /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/wine/Files/claw/CLAW.EXE

... resulted in a black screen with no way of exiting. I may have missed something...