Apple2e: AppleWin Libretro Scriptmodule for RetroPie

[Lolonois]

I was looking for a lean successor of linapple, the currently recommended Apple2 emulator for RetropPie. The successor should support SDL2 and/or libretro and should detect/reuse my hardware and joystick config. The long running AppleWin matches this, more precisely, the frontends implemented at this fork [1] of AppleWin.

The installation of the scriptmodule is described in the gist [2]. The gist contains also the scriptmodule itself.

With the latest changes upstream in audetto's AppleWin you can toggle the game focus feature of RetroArch with a button. Most likely you have to adjust input_game_focus_toggle_btn in /opt/retropie/configs/apple2/retroarch.cfg. Mine is currently mapped to Y button (Nintendo layout).
Also you can quit a game and return to EmulationStation with double press of Select.

That's it with installation! Now you should be able to select lr-applewin in the runcommand start screen ("Press any button to configure...").

Some background information about the past and future about linapple can be found in here [4].

I also tried lr-mess as suggested here but setup felt like building a diary farm when all I wanted was a glas of milk. Plus it is very picky about the roms thrown at it, and even with the proper roms it failed to load the content of the rom from the zipped rom and I was not able to figure which paths are used.

Anyhow, finally I can use the actions dig left and dig right in the game classic Loderunner (I use GPIO attached controllers) :-) Additionally, as libretro supports display rotation (which linapple does not when running in the upcoming bullseye/full KMS Pi OS) this AppleWin fork is a solid base for me to play apple2 games also in the future.

FYI: Button L1 toggles the scanlines, R1 switches trough the videomodes and 1P Start does reset the emulator.

Please raise any issues with the scriptmodule here and any issues with the libretro AppleWin core at audetto's repo [1].

Cheers

[1] https://github.com/audetto/AppleWin.git - see also heading "ra2"
[2] https://gist.github.com/Gemba/9dff49492c3ad1d2d3fbb15bfb3ebc4a
[3] https://github.com/libretro/RetroArch/pull/11868
[4] https://github.com/linappleii/linapple/issues/150

[Lolonois]

Update (reflected in first post):

1. No more need for triggerhappy
2. PR for GCC8 compilation applied upstream [1]
3. Double Select quits game and returns to EmulationStation

[1] github.com/audetto/AppleWin/pull/72

[ExarKunIv]

@Lolonois im giving this a try, so i can add it to "Extras" and it is not working for me

it is saying that a patch file is missing, but i followed what is posted in #2.
any thoughts

[Lolonois]

My bad @ExarKunIv, I forgot to remove line 42 in the gist. I will update the gist shortly, if you remove the line in your copy of the script the installation should work.

Update: I removed the offending line in the gist, thus manual editiing is no longer needed when starting from scratch.

[ExarKunIv]

@Lolonois thanks
I will do that

[duglor]

Is there an lr-applewin.sh installer that will install the lr-applewin emulator using RetroPie-Setup version 4.7.1 ?

[ExarKunIv]

@duglor
There's no way that I know of to have different scripts for different versions of retropie version.

It would end up getting too confusing. And I try to keep the extra scripts up to the current way that the main Retropie scripts are.

Not all of mine are, since there are a lot to go through.

[Lolonois]

@duglor said in Apple2e: AppleWin Libretro Scriptmodule for RetroPie:

Is there an lr-applewin.sh installer that will install the lr-applewin emulator using RetroPie-Setup version 4.7.1 ?

No. But you may get it working with a hack. However, I strongly discourage it (RP 4.7.1 is from late 2020), you may run into other issues with retroarch for example, even if it installs. You will have to find your way from there. That said, you may try to edit the line in the lr-applewin.sh scriptmodule and add explicitly the repo url (the _HEAD is only for the diff, the green line is what you should add (and remove the red line, obviously) in the lr-applewin.sh):

--- scriptmodules/libretrocores/lr-applewin.sh_HEAD	2024-04-06 21:40:54.876849027 +0200
+++ scriptmodules/libretrocores/lr-applewin.sh	2024-04-06 21:43:10.955595196 +0200
@@ -37,7 +37,7 @@
 
 function sources_lr-applewin() {
     gitPullOrClone $md_build/../libslirp https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/slirp/libslirp.git
-    gitPullOrClone
+    gitPullOrClone $md_build https://github.com/audetto/AppleWin.git 
     # make sure resources/ will be looked up at /opt/retropie/libretrocores/lr-applewin/
     sed -i s,CMAKE_SOURCE_DIR,\"$md_inst\", \
         $md_build/source/frontends/common2/gnuframe.cpp

[duglor]

@Lolonois It installed. Do i need specific Bios files in a certain directory on the pie as the game kicks right back out, super fast, to ES when i try to launch a game/disk with lr-apple2win.