Is a 64-bit Retropie planned in the near future?

[yserra]

Hi all,

Is a 64-bit Retropie planned in the near future?

More precisely, do you plan to publish a new release with this kind of expected features:

• 64 bit Linux (It's official now: https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/raspberry-pi-os-64-bit/)

• an up-to-date version of Amiberry (the one in Retropie is 18 month old now. People keep asking regularly for the new one in the forum, staff keep answering "yes soon" for more than a year)

• no more libreto emulators for computers (Amstrad CPC, C64, Thomson...) since they all break the keyboard compatibility ("use your real keyboard to show a virtual keyboard on screen...", ahaha, no, seriously)

• Find a way, any way, make a miracle I don't know, to change the horrible look'n'feel of the RGUI RetroArch menu Interface

• configuration files moved from /opt/retropie to /home/pi/retropie, so we could at last have all the personnalized data on a USB drive and migrate/change easily to a new version of Retropie without loosing anything (especially customized keyboard mapping in emulated computers to erase the non-sense default mapping)
  ?

I'm this kind of user who puts his Retropie machine inside a vintage machine to get a pure retro-experience. I don't put it in an Arcade cabinet, nor in an old console-box. I put it in an old computer enclosure, with the original keyboard transformed to USB thank to an Arduino board. That's why I'm so concerned by the usability of a real keyboard (for instance, when I press a letter, I expect a letter on screen, not a shortcut to accelerate the emulator or snapshot or emulate a joypad. And I don't see the point of switching between keyboard modes, it's a bad experience, as bad as the RGUI look and feel, I mean).

Many thanks for all the great job you do.

[yewox50273]

@yserra said in Is a 64-bit Retropie planned in the near future?:

• 64 bit Linux (It's official now: https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/raspberry-pi-os-64-bit/)

and what advantages (as far as current supported emulators are concerned) would that give?

(please don't say they will run faster.)

[windg]

• You can change the menu theme from RetroArch menu,
  Settings > Drivers > Menu.

• With the curent hardware, a RetroPie 64 bit will not make difference , because the problem is with the GPU bandwidth not the CPU.

• You can easily copy/paste important files with the file manager included in RetroPie.
  To have the configuration on usb is not a good idea in my opinion, because if a configuration is not correct or is an old version, you will always carrie it in the fresh installation and it will be difficult to identify an issue.

[yserra]

@yewox50273
Apparently Amiberry runs much faster in 64 bit mode. Yes, that's a computer thing: when you emulate a machine for games, you are looking for cycle-exact experience and I bet 64-bit won't bring something new on that point. When you emulate the full environment of a computer, you expect its GUI softwares be accelerated, as they were in the 80-90's with a faster CPU.

Believe it or not, rendering images faster, play Open source 3D tools faster on Amiga environment is part of the fun.

I'm only aware about the Amiga. But I think 64 bit could bring the same acceleration with Hatari (Atari ST) or DOSbox (PC).

[yserra]

@windg "You can change the menu theme from RetroArch menu,
Settings > Drivers > Menu."

Yes. For some reason, I have never been able to save this settings. Change it every time I open the RetroArch menu is a pain.

By the way, there is the ugly appearance of the default GUI, but also the complexity of the hierarchy of the menus. My experience is that you need to browse menu/sub-menu/sub-menu/sub-menu to change simple things.

And when your menu items are approximatively translated into another language than English (I'm French), it's an additional pain to follow tutorials.

[dankcushions]

@yserra said in Is a 64-bit Retropie planned in the near future?:

Hi all,

Is a 64-bit Retropie planned in the near future?

More precisely, do you plan to publish a new release with this kind of expected features:

• 64 bit Linux (It's official now: https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/raspberry-pi-os-64-bit/)

you can already run 64-bit retropie. i have been running it on raspberry pi OS buster for over a year. it won't run in bullseye until retropie has bullseye support, but the 64-bit side of things is not an issue.

• Find a way, any way, make a miracle I don't know, to change the horrible look'n'feel of the RGUI RetroArch menu Interface

https://retropie.org.uk/docs/Configuration-Editor/ - change menu driver to XMB or whatever. BTW i personally think the RGUI has the best(most appropriate) look and feel of the available drivers. it's also the most performant, and matches all the documentation screenshots.

[mitu]

Some of the forum users already weighted in with their responses, so part of my reply will just add to their information.

Is a 64-bit Retropie planned in the near future?

RetroPie support for 64bit is beta, just as the RasPI OS 64bit was until this week's release. We don't have an image-ready 64 bit install, but you can use the RasPi OS 64bit beta for Buster (here) and install RetroPie manually. Some of the packages will not be available, but the main components should be ok.
After RetroPie will add support the latest Raspi OS 'bullseye' release, on which the newly 64bit RasPi OS is based, support for 64 bit will improve and exit out of beta.

More precisely, do you plan to publish a new release with this kind of expected features:

64 bit Linux (It's official now: https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/raspberry-pi-os-64-bit/)

This will likely happen after we add 'bullseye' support. I don't know if it will be just a manual install or there will be an image ready to use.

an up-to-date version of Amiberry (the one in Retropie is 18 month old now. People keep asking regularly for the new one in the forum, staff keep answering "yes soon" for more than a year)

Yes, unfortunately it's taking a bit more than usual to add the new Amiberry release, partly because the new version is not just a drop-in replacement for the older version, some configurations are incompatible.

no more libreto emulators for computers (Amstrad CPC, C64, Thomson...) since they all break the keyboard compatibility ("use your real keyboard to show a virtual keyboard on screen...", ahaha, no, seriously)

You have 2 options here:

• choose a standalone emulator - when available.
• use the Game Focus feature in RetroArch and this will disable all input hooks in RetroArch, passing all keys to the underlying emulator core. Newer versions also have a toggle to enable this by default, so you don't have to do anything to enable it. It's called Auto Enable 'Game Focus' Mode - see more info here.
  Now that you mentioned it, this would be a useful addition to the Configuration Editor so it can be easily toggled by users without using the RetroArch menus.

Find a way, any way, make a miracle I don't know, to change the horrible look'n'feel of the RGUI RetroArch menu Interface

If you don't like the default RGUI menu driver, you can switch to ozone or xmb, as other users mentioned.

configuration files moved from /opt/retropie to /home/pi/retropie, so we could at last have all the personnalized data on a USB drive and migrate/change easily to a new version of Retropie without loosing anything (especially customized keyboard mapping in emulated computers to erase the non-sense default mapping)
?

The main issue I see with the 'config on the USB drive' idea is the fact that a Linux native partition is needed in order for symlinks to work, so the same approach used for keeping the ROMs on USB is not going to work.
Backing up the config folder before an upgrade and then restoring it on a new system is easy enough though. Maybe adding a dedicated 'Backup/Restore' menu/script will be easier for users which don't have a dedicated PC available and an existing USB drive with ROMs ?

[yserra]

@mitu Thank you very much for these encouraging answers.

[Unknown]

@yewox50273 64 bit may not make the raspberry pi run faster for emulators (yet). However it does open the door for more emulators and ports to be added. Unfortunately not all of them will run at playable speeds until we have better hardware.

[sirhenrythe5th]

@unknown said in Is a 64-bit Retropie planned in the near future?:

@yewox50273 64 bit may not make the raspberry pi run faster for emulators (yet). However it does open the door for more emulators and ports to be added. Unfortunately not all of them will run at playable speeds until we have better hardware.

Glad you made that clear.
Sometimes i believe some people think that their Pi would evolve to a 3000$ gaming-PC once Vulkan and 64Bit are available :D

[navi87]

@yserra said in Is a 64-bit Retropie planned in the near future?:

Yes. For some reason, I have never been able to save this settings. Change it every time I open the RetroArch menu is a pain.

I find its best to open up retroarch from the retropie settings and then make the change to ozone or whatever, saving the config of course too.
If that fails, I manually edit the retro config files via ssh whilst emulationstation is shutdown.

[Unknown]

@sirhenrythe5th Yes we can certainly see that with all the annoying “no retropie for raspberry pi 4 yet” posts that happened.