RetroPie as KODI addon
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I'm currently in the progress of creating the perfect Raspberry Pi 2 streaming and gaming box. I once had a dual boot between OSMC & RetroPie, tried Raspbian with RetroPie & KODI and also RecalBox. I couldn't really fall in love with any of those configurations.
Now I'm running LibreELEC Beta and I like it. Since LibreELEC doesn't really have an "os" (in the sense that you can only use KODI and its addons) I tried different solutions and came across Gamestarter-Pi, a KODI addon which startes RetroArch/EmulationStation and has many precompiled cores.
So I asked myself if that approach could also fit the needs of RetroPie. There are already binaries for the Raspberry Pi on the server, so it shouldn't be difficult to load them on the Pi, so it seems like good solution.
On another note, I have a dumb question: What are the benefits of using RetroPie rather than just compiling everything on top of Raspbian. Are there any specific "hacks" or settings which make it better (since I doubt RetroPie has more up-to-date drivers and packages than vanilla Raspbian) or is it just the comfort of simply working and updating via
retropie-setup.sh? I'm not really a Linux guy so I apologize if this question is uninformed but I couldn't imagine the downsides from just using a KODI addon. -
You can install kodi into retropie and have have retropie load kodi upon boot up. It will act as if retropie is not there, and if you want to go to games, you just quit kodi. Retropie will have a link in the ports menu to go back to kodi.
As for your second question, to the best of my knowledge is while retropie is built on top of raspian, the devs stripped anything thats not essential to running games. There is no gui and is just the base OS, just to run the bare minimum for emulationstaion and the linux programs like kodi or the emulators. It saves on disk space, unlike if you were to do a full raspian install and then install retropie from there.
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@lostless said in RetroPie as KODI addon:
As for your second question, to the best of my knowledge is while retropie is built on top of raspian, the devs stripped anything thats not essential to running games. There is no gui and is just the base OS, just to run the bare minimum for emulationstaion and the linux programs like kodi or the emulators.
I mean you could go ahead and setup RetroPie on top of Raspbian PIXEL and then delete everything unnecessary via
retropie-setup.sh. And I guess there is the advantage of just using Install from Binary and don't care about the compiling settings etc. If there are no more benefits then thats okay, it gets its job done.@lostless said in RetroPie as KODI addon:
You can install kodi into retropie and have have retropie load kodi upon boot up.
I already tried that configuration but I had some problems with it and decided against it. I still use RetroPie in dualboot to compile the cores and put them into the GameStarter-Pi addon, but it would like it better if there was a addon from RetroPie in the first place. Are there any plans on doing so or should I just continue with my setup?
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@Anuskuss what I hear is the retroplayer will be incorporated in Kodi 18. Should be interesting
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@herb_fargus From a quick look this looks promising. I hope it'll work just like Advanced Launcher and close Kodi before running the emulators. The only thing I would desire is the simplicity of my addon approach. All files are in one place, and if anything fails, you could just delete the addon and reinstall it.
I guess that won't make RetroPie on small SBC obsolete but an official solution is (always) better ;)
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Retroplayer is a nice project, I don't know if you already tested the beta images for the raspberry pi, you can find them on Kodi forum. I only test them a little bit, but if you don't know, they make addons with the binnarys and they run them inside Kodi, is it really a "player", (hence "retroplayer") and it brings some advantages and disavantages. For me the advantages are the possibility of organizing everithing in Kodi, and just need that.
But RetroPie, at this time, offers a broader choice in emulation/retrogamming, more emulators/ports/etc and has better performance in all emulators, but this I think it would be obvious because of Kodi overhead. It is much better now but if you want the best perfomance, RetroPie is the choice. -
@Rascas What exactly do you mean by Kodi overhead?
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What exactly do you mean by Kodi overhead?
Emulation requires a decent amount of system resources. Running emulators on top of Kodi means the available system resources are lessened due to Kodi's own requirements (or "overhead"). This doesn't mean as much when you're running a modern desktop PC, but the Raspberry Pi often doesn't have the system resources to spare and emulation performance will likely suffer from Kodi's overhead as a result.
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@mediamogul But starting emulation with for example Advanced Launcher should quit Kodi and then there shouldn't be any overhead anymore?
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If Advanced Launcher quits Kodi entirely, then yes, it would eliminate the overhead. However, Retroplayer, when released, will work from within Kodi.
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@Anuskuss
Any more thoughts on retropie through Kodi? I love my retropie boxes, but with kodi coming full circle and officially now on xbone, I salivate at the thoughts of emulation possibilities...@herb_fargus
I have seen some pretty cool teasers of retroplayer on kodi lately as well... -
@dawtyne10 I've tested beta builds of it. It's cool how it's enabled by the Konami code. Still a bit gimmicky but promising to have the option at least
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@dawtyne10 RetroPie won't be available in Kodi, it is the module RetroPlayer, that will become available on Kodi 18. Although they are both about retro emulation, it is a bit different, RetroPlayer will include "only" the RetroArch core emulators.
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