LR-Genesis-Plus GX Widescreen released

[pjft]

Hi all,

This dropped on my news yesterday:

https://www.libretro.com/index.php/genesis-plus-gx-wide-now-available-for-libretroretroarch/

The source code is at

https://github.com/heyjoeway/Genesis-Plus-GX

but from the description it seems to be far too detached from the main fork that a simple re-use of the current lr-genesis-plus-gx install script will likely fail.

I am currently without a development Pi, but I thought I'd share this with the broader community - some of the games running in widescreen look super nice, and I imagine others will enjoy it as well.

[pjft]

Actually, I completely misunderstood the original post - that was the wrong link. The repo is at https://github.com/libretro/Genesis-Plus-GX-Wide .

Here are the instructions to install this:

git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/libretro/Genesis-Plus-GX-Wide
cd Genesis-Plus-GX-Wide
make -f Makefile.libretro

Then you may copy the generated genesis_plus_gx_wide_libretro.so file to a folder to use it. What I did in my case was:

sudo mkdir /opt/retropie/libretrocores/lr-genesis-plus-gx-wide
sudo cp genesis_plus_gx_wide_libretro.so /opt/retropie/libretrocores/lr-genesis-plus-gx-wide/

and then added it to /opt/retropie/configs/megadrive/emulators.cfg , in this case as

lr-genesis-plus-gx-wide = "/opt/retropie/emulators/retroarch/bin/retroarch -L /opt/retropie/libretrocores/lr-genesis-plus-gx-wide/genesis_plus_gx_wide_libretro.so --config /opt/retropie/configs/megadrive/retroarch.cfg %ROM%"

If it doesn't compile at first, you may need the following dependencies:

sudo apt install libopusfile-dev
sudo apt install libjansson-dev

Then, in-game, adjust the "columns to add for widescreen" option. See recommendations in the original link.

To be honest, it is very experimental and, to be honest, a bit more "this sounds awesome in concept, but in hindsight it really becomes clear why this wouldn't really work". Sure, we get a wider viewport but it is often rendering things that are meant to be hidden from the user (so, when not in the game, it's placeholder text or gibberish). Also, even though in-game the viewport is bigger, most games don't render sprites there, meaning that animated enemies will not show in the "overflow"/"wider" area, only the background layer, or there will be massive pop-in. And, of course, you cannot move there.

But as an interesting experiment, it's there - by all means try it out.

[Crush]

I just found out about this while installing retroarch on my tablet, super impressed with it, i really hope this will be included into retropie sometime soon.
Thanks for the instructions of adding it ourselves.