Retropie setup - how easy was that!?! Thanks to EVERYONE

chubsta

Guys, I have spent years working on various mame setups (since 0.28!), as well as messing with console emulators, and i used to get so fed up with working on them and never having much time to play - it always seemed like whenever i would sort one problem out something else would come along or Windows would mess up.

And then a month or so back i bought a Pi to mess around with, tried retropie and now i am bored because everything works so easily...

In my living-room i have a 128gb Pi with all the games i could ever want to play, working almost flawlessly on my TV with a great menu and all in one easy to use package.

In fact i have spent far more time messing with themes than i had to to get everything up and running, and that includes Daphne which is a notorious pain to run. To start off with i downloaded a ready-made image but soon decided to make my own and thanks to the Wiki i never had a hitch.

So, thanks to everyone involved who made this all possible, from the people who wrote the emulators, to the retropie, emulation station and retroarch coders, the theme designers, but especially the people who wrote the Wiki - when i read questions on here so often i think that that is covered and it must get frustrating to those who have written it that people don't seem to read it, but from my point of view i think they did a hell of a job, easy to read and it seems like EVERYTHING is in there!

Really people, I hope you feel a twinge of pride...

PetroRie

You should install also Kodi and install the plugins which lets you watch movies and TV shows online. It's a great program, if you like movies and TV shows you really should install it.

Some people ask questions which have been answered many times, so people get tired and won't respond because the topic starter didn't use the search function. An another one is when people don't provide enough of information and post something like "My roms wont load". Well, which system? Whats the extension name of the rom file? The Wiki has everything you need to know from A to Z. There are also a couple users here who upload video tutorials on their YouTube channel which are related to RetroPie. You simply cannot go wrong with a video tutorial.

Indeed RetroPie on the Raspberry is freaking awesome. Its an "all in one Retro console" I spend a lot of time on it, my PS4 was collecting dust until Ghost Recon came out.

herb_fargus

@chubsta are you sure you're talking about the same retropie I work on?

Though statistically speaking: with over 2 million downloads if there were more issues we'd have much more posts on the forum (and even less if people read the docs in the first place ;) )

So I guess in this case the silence of the majority is a good sign that things are working as they should. I'm glad that you were able to get things working without too much trouble. Always appreciate people showing their appreciation :)

herb_fargus

@PetroRie no. You should not condone installing illegal software. That is not acceptable here.

PetroRie

@herb_fargus said in Retropie setup - how easy was that!?! Thanks to EVERYONE:

@PetroRie no. You should not condone installing illegal software. That is not acceptable here.

But Kodi isnt illegal right? And I didn't mention any name of a plugin. Kodi itself won't do anything without the plugins which needed to be installed separately.

chubsta

Just out of interest i did install Kodi, and it is almost the anthesis of retropie - complicated, bug-ridden, non user-friendly and very poorly designed! Im not saying that it doesn't have its uses, but i removed it pretty quickly from my set-up and it won't be going back on at all!

chubsta

@PetroRie

Indeed RetroPie on the Raspberry is freaking awesome. Its an "all in one Retro console" I spend a lot of time on it, my PS4 was collecting dust until Ghost Recon came out.

I was actually looking at buying one of those 'multi-emu' systems, you know, the 12-in-1 etc, but apart from being so very much cheaper, using a pi gives me the same performance and access to games, and it has also, thanks again to the wiki, given me an insight into other projects, such as case design, that i can't wait to get stuck into,

PetroRie

@chubsta said in Retropie setup - how easy was that!?! Thanks to EVERYONE:

complicated, bug-ridden, non user-friendly and very poorly designed!

Thats is 100% true. The thing that really annoys me is that the menu sometimes is laggy. On PC it's the same story.

@chubsta said in Retropie setup - how easy was that!?! Thanks to EVERYONE:

I was actually looking at buying one of those 'multi-emu' systems, you know, the 12-in-1 etc, but apart from being so very much cheaper, using a pi gives me the same performance and access to games, and it has also, thanks again to the wiki, given me an insight into other projects, such as case design, that i can't wait to get stuck into

I almost bought an Android handheld console which was like 180USD, before purchasing it I was searching on Google for retro gaming and I found an article about RetroPie. So I got my Raspberry. I'm glad I didn't buy that handheld console.

You should check out the Projects section on this board, some people here have created some sick mods. I'm planning to buy a CNC machine, since I have a lot of copperclad boards which I use for my diy PCB's I got this idea to create a custom case, I'm still working on the design, I want to use it along with the 1TB PiDrive, create custom heatsinks, add fans to the case, paint the case; giving it an retro look like something that looks kinda 80ties.

mediamogul

@PetroRie

Kodi itself won't do anything without the plugins which needed to be installed separately.

That's a common misconception, but it's also a huge source of frustration to the Kodi developers that people believe this to be true. Kodi is capable of so much more than what those additional addons offer. To name just a few examples, it has better PVR capabilities than any commercial product on the market. After simply attaching a computer DVD/Blue-ray drive, it can serve as your physical media player. It'll also of course play all the digital movies that you may have purchased from Apple or Amazon. It was never even intended or designed to be used the way that most people do, the fact that it can is really more of a testament to how versatile and modular the software is.

chubsta

@mediamogul said in Retropie setup - how easy was that!?! Thanks to EVERYONE:

@PetroRie

Kodi itself won't do anything without the plugins which needed to be installed separately.

That's a common misconception, but it's also a huge source of frustration to the Kodi developers that people believe this to be true. Kodi is capable of so much more than what those additional addons offer. To name just a few examples, it has better PVR capabilities than any commercial product on the market. After simply attaching a computer DVD/Blue-ray drive, it can serve as your physical media player. It'll also of course play all the digital movies that you may have purchased from Apple or Amazon. It was never even intended or designed to be used the way that most people do, the fact that it can is really more of a testament to how versatile and modular the software is.

Actually, I think i need to qualify my criticism of Kodi as it is the plugins that are really the issue, for streaming from my Mac it worked fine but i don't really need it for that as I have an Apple Tv that does it all. I am sure that if it is just used for home network stuff rather than the dodgier ways it can be utilised it is a great piece of software, certainly better than anything i could produce.

Still way, way behind retropie though in terms of ease of use and flexibility...

mediamogul

@chubsta

Yeah, it's almost always the 3rd party addons that give Kodi a black eye. Kodi itself is tested so thoroughly that very few bugs make it into a "stable" release.

PetroRie

@mediamogul said in Retropie setup - how easy was that!?! Thanks to EVERYONE:

@PetroRie

Kodi itself won't do anything without the plugins which needed to be installed separately.

That's a common misconception, but it's also a huge source of frustration to the Kodi developers that people believe this to be true.

You made great points. But take RetroPie for an example, everyone who's involved in the development of this project and the emulators claims to be against illegal roms. You cannot talk about rom sources etc. But lets be honest, everyone who uses RetroPie or any other emulator got their roms illegally. We all know this, and the devs know this, lets say when was the last time you or anyone else here on this board bought a MAME rom? But at the end, is this really a problem?

About Kodi I think the devs are more worried about people selling boxes loaded with plugins ready to stream movies and tv shows. The same happend with RetroPie, there are a lot of people who're selling pre installed kits with roms online, and that's in my book a huuuuge no-no.

mediamogul

@PetroRie

But lets be honest, everyone who uses RetroPie or any other emulator got their roms illegally.

I certainly don't want to come off as a complete contrarian, but this is also a common misconception. I live in America and there is indeed a legal source to obtain just about any ROM you would ever want. I won't go into the specifics of how and where, as this does not carry over into other countries, but there are also a few other legal ways to obtain ROMs throughout the world as well.

About Kodi I think the devs are more worried about people selling boxes loaded with plugins ready to stream movies and tv shows.

This is indeed more troublesome from a legal point of view, but they've also gone on record several times about their disappointment and disillusionment in seeing something they've worked so hard on being almost universally mistaken for something that stands directly against their own personal beliefs.