Thank you to the community (and noob guide) :)

sad_muso

Hey everyone,

I just wanted to say a huge thank you to everyone involved in this wonderful project and to all those folks who have assisted me in the forums over the past few weeks. This has been my lockdown project and I've loved building my setup, refining it and learning along the way. I had absolutely no prior Linux experience, and even though I have a long way to go I feel much more confident in tinkering now.

At this point I thought it might be good to share my tips and tricks to date so that it may have others, so here goes...

MY SETUP
Pi Model: 4 B 4GB
Case: Flirc (this is great as it acts as a heatsink so no noisy fans required)
Power Supply: LABISTS Raspberry Pi 4 5.1V 3A
RetroPie Version: 4.6 Buster
USB Devices: 2.0: Wired keyboard / Plugable USB Bluetooth 4.0 adapter, 3.0: External Crucial 275GB SSD drive in ORICO caddy
Controllers: 8bitdo SFC30 / 8bitdo Lite

WIFI
Don't forget to set your locale and WiFi country first!
If you have still have issues connecting then add wifikeyfile.txt to boot partition (see official docs) and import them

DISPLAY
If using a 4k TV you will probably want to force the resolution to 1080p for better performance. Add following to config.txt in boot partition:

hdmi_group=1
hdmi_mode=16

SSD DRIVE
Highly recommended - I use an SD card for the main OS and an SSD drive connected to a USB 3.0 port for the ROMS, scraped media etc.

BLUETOOTH
One downside of the Flirc case is that because it's aluminium, the Bluetooth signal seems to be poor. I added an external dongle, popped it on a short USB extension cable and velcroed it under the TV so that I could get line of sight. It works like a charm without any lag. Just remember to disable the onboard Bluetooth first- add the following to config.txt:

dtoverlay=pi3-disable-bt

TERMINAL FONT
I couldn't read the terminal/menu text on my TV so I increased the font size: RetroPie Setup > Configuration > consolefont > large VGA

RETROACHIEVEMENTS
These are awesome, and really add to the replay value; check 'em out

GAME LOADING SPLASH SCREENS
These look much better than the standard screen and can be easily added. These are my favourite; they are rad: https://github.com/ehettervik/es-runcommand-splash

SCRAPING
My favourite tool is Skraper, as I can scrape on my PC, back it up, then copy it all over to the Pi

SHADERS/OVERLAYS
I've done a lot of testing with various combinations and my findings vary somewhat between cores/systems, but generally using shaders AND overlays simultaneously caused screentearing for me. If you want scanlines then go for the zfast shaders. I have been able to use overlays with GB/GBC/GBA/GG and they seem to be fine, but don't currently bother with consoles

RETROARCH MENU
I prefer using the xmb menu to the oldskool RGUI - you can change this in retroarch.crg
Change menu_driver in retroarch.cfg

NETWORK
I use CX File Explorer and RaspController on Android to access the filesystem and have complete control of the Pi. Super useful if you want to make a change to config files etc. on the fly and revert it back

BACKUP, BACKUP, BACKUP!
Make regular backups of your entire SD card, especially before you are going to start some risky tweaking. I've spent countless hours on my setup now and I would hate to lose it all!

N64
Still seems super flaky right now, so am going to put it on the back burner until things get more stable or I find a good workaround

That's just a few things to get you going, but Retropie is infinitely customisable so get in there and have fun!

Cheers,

sad_muso