Retroplayer (Kodi 18)

herb_fargus

Just wondering what peoples thoughts are about retroplayer's inclusion in the upcoming Kodi 18.

If you're not familiar with it it's basically Kodi merging with retroarch/libretro where you can install cores, launch games etc. It's a simpler implementation than retropie but functions. This is a video of it in action:

If you're really interested in testing it there are test builds with librelec but it's definitely experimental in it's current state

lilbud

I tried something similar with libreelec Kodi 17, it was...okay to say the least. Could take a few seconds to load a game, scraper didn't work, and you had to make rom collections manually.

HurricaneFan

I guess having it built into Kodi would be neat for some people but not a fan of that interface myself. I think Retropie is so much nicer.

Rookervik

I think it's really nice. ES is my go-to since you can create any "system" you want. Whereas this Kodi thing, and Retroarch, will only load games that it recognizes with a core. Retroarch more-so... with it's annoying CRC checks and difficulty in customizing. But...

Yeah I like it. I don't often play games that aren't supported by libretro. This could be a really slick all-in-one solution for a lot of people.

herb_fargus

I personally like the simplicity of controller configurations as you have a visual diagram of each system's pad.

But yes I feel like the menus are slow and its a bit sloggier than retropie's implementation. There is something to be said for the simplicity but its definitely got room for improvement.

HurricaneFan

@herb_fargus Yeah, the controller screen was a neat interface.

Rookervik

Kodi's pretty fast on my Pi2. Still use the Confluence skin. No way am I going to make a theme for Kodi. Way too many elements, way too much code. But it runs real nice on Pi2. Can also reduce the "updates" to the GUI while a game or movie is playing. That reduces the framerate of just the menus, allowing the system to not get overloaded.

Whenever it comes out, I'll definitely be interested in a kodi-only image to try out. See how well it works.

jonnykesh

Looks like an interesting inclusion for Kodi. I'll be sure to check it out when there is a stable 18 release. But I think I'll be sticking with RetroPie, it's just so versatile.

EctoOne

I just tried an OSMC build (because the version of LibreElec I tried first had no emulators preinstalled and I wasn't able to figure out how to get them) with Retroplayer because a few nights ago I also tested the Android and Windows builds.
OSMC has some Libretro Cores and I only tried SNES yet. But Beetle bsnes and bsnes-mercury crashed right away (Same for ScummVM by the way). I only tried Super Metroid and NBA Jam TE on Snes9x and Metroid had some serious slow downs starting during the Intro. NBA Jam had some minor graphic issues.
At first I also had some controller issues (wrong mappings) but I can't tell if I fixed that by setting the driver to udev or by manually installing the SNES controller profiles from the windows build (seems like the Kodi Addon Repo is broken on the OSMC build. I wasn't able to install anything from it.)
Otherwise I have nothing major to say yet. It still has no support for Metadata/Images yet, so currently there is just the default lists available.

I can't wait to see how well it will perform in the feature.

Edit: Deleting the Addons27.db file from the userdata folder solved the download issues from the Repo.