01-28-2018, 07:03 AM
Good Day Fellow Contributors,
It has been over 2 Years now since I first got a "beta" tester board, and started messing in the Pine eco system.
I decided to get out that same board, and see if it still works. I've gotten Debian Stretch to boot with little to no issues.
I'm interested in the retro gaming market, and will be possibly making an emulator for certain retro consoles for ARM.
If any of you guys are interested in the Emulator project, leave me your suggestions.
Also how long have you been a contributor to the Pineverse?
~ Beard
01-28-2018, 07:11 AM
(This post was last modified: 01-28-2018, 07:12 AM by xalius.)
Hi beard,
Luke has been working on retro gaming quite a bit and made a Retroarch image, check out his posts on the forum, I think a lot of people would be interested in that :-)
I got my original Pine64 from the kickstarter and went from there... all in all I have maybe 25-30 different SBCs atm in the board farm 
Hey,
If you'd like to pick up where pfeerick and I left off that would be great. In its current state the image/script offers perfectly functional emulation for 8 and 16-bit systems, but 3D emulators for N64, PSX, etc., do not work. I do not have the skill, insight and time to make them work so if you would like to take a look into it then that would be great :  original thread.
As a side-note, if you would be able to build an image with emulation station, now that would truly be something.
Cheers
(01-28-2018, 01:56 PM)Luke Wrote: Hey,
If you'd like to pick up where pfeerick and I left off that would be great. In its current state the image/script offers perfectly functional emulation for 8 and 16-bit systems, but 3D emulators for N64, PSX, etc., do not work. I do not have the skill, insight and time to make them work so if you would like to take a look into it then that would be great : original thread.
As a side-note, if you would be able to build an image with emulation station, now that would truly be something.
Cheers
Thanks for this.
However; I feel it was due to the restrictions more or less with the Mali 400 MP2
https://developer.arm.com/products/graph...li-400-gpu
No official support for things like DirectX/OpenCL; which a lot of games hang on DirectX support.
Also for things like Anti-Aliasing
4x Multi-Sampling with virtually no performance drop.
16x AA outperforming all implementations of comparable quality.
As for the recent announcement of the RockPro64 with the new Mali T860s MP4.
https://developer.arm.com/products/graph...-t880-gpus
Hardware implemented Full Scene Multiple Sample Anti-Aliasing.
4x MSAA.
8x MSAA.
16x MSAA.
API Support
OpenGL® ES 1.1, 1.2, 2.0, 3.1, 3.2.
Vulkan 1.0*.
OpenCL™ 1.1, 1.2.
DirectX® 11 FL11_1.
RenderScript™.
We should be able to get away with 3D emulation.
I'd love to head at this with a RockPro64 board with 4GB of RAM.
~ Beard
The A64 will do fine in 3D emulation of PSX and with some N64 titles.
(01-30-2018, 01:43 AM)Luke Wrote: The A64 will do fine in 3D emulation of PSX and with some N64 titles.
If you're talking about the original Pine64 boards like the one I have.
I'm sorry to say but N64 for most of the games I ran either had total sprite issues, or no launch at all.
Also my emulator project isn't just for a few old consoles.
I'm talking about mostly everything up to 6th generation consoles.
Just one emu, and a single board computer for all your childhood memories.
Was thinking of making a thread for the project here too with a link to slack for those who want in.
~ Beard
Quote:Just one emu, and a single board computer for all your childhood memories.
Why not just use Retroarch ? it has (almost) all the cores you'd want.
As for PCSX2 and Dolphin (pretty sure there isn't a Xbox one, is there?) - only the RockPro64 will be viable. But some games (e.g. Soul Calibur 2) also stutter on the shield which is more powerful. Honestly, why not just use a X86 PC for those emulators?
Personally, I am much more interested in PSX and N64 as well as 8-32bit consoles. And yes, N64 is inherently more difficult to emulate than PSX, but some games - such as Mariokart64 - should work fine on stock resolution on the Mali400.
(01-30-2018, 11:11 AM)Luke Wrote: Quote:Just one emu, and a single board computer for all your childhood memories.
Why not just use Retroarch ? it has (almost) all the cores you'd want.
As for PCSX2 and Dolphin (pretty sure there isn't a Xbox one, is there?) - only the RockPro64 will be viable. But some games (e.g. Soul Calibur 2) also stutter on the shield which is more powerful. Honestly, why not just use a X86 PC for those emulators?
Personally, I am much more interested in PSX and N64 as well as 8-32bit consoles. And yes, N64 is inherently more difficult to emulate than PSX, but some games - such as Mariokart64 - should work fine on stock resolution on the Mali400.
You just made a great point-array in my projects point.
Quote:As for PCSX2 and Dolphin (pretty sure there isn't a Xbox one, is there?) - only the RockPro64 will be viable.
This was one of the reasons why I was asking for the big board with 4GB of RAM that way we have headroom, and can work our way down by optimizing the emulator.
Quote:But some games (e.g. Soul Calibur 2) also stutter on the shield which is more powerful. Honestly, why not just use a X86 PC for those emulators?
Again another great point seeing as we will have challenges in things like SIMD etc.
However; the pay off is well worth it when your having a thing the size of your wallet run most of the games (including 3D-Acel games) from your childhood. Another thing is power efficiency, and getting rid of mechanical operations like DVD/CD Drives, and Mechanical hard drives which die quickly (DVD/CD drives are more or less for replacing your existing game consoles for this one device instead of 9+ devices)
Which brings us to our closure.
Quote:Personally, I am much more interested in PSX and N64 as well as 8-32bit consoles. And yes, N64 is inherently more difficult to emulate than PSX, but some games - such as Mariokart64 - should work fine on stock resolution on the Mali400.
I'm a huge fan of the N64, and PS1 too. When I tried Donkey Kong and vividly remembering that yellow/gold looking cartridge I instantly went back in time (but sprite issues.) Another area you touched on is that you have all of these different systems to choose from, and with the way I'd like to implement game-pad/layout support it would be a good competitor.
~ Beard
Thanks for the detailed response In any case, do keep us posted on how things unfold. If I may suggest, perhaps its worthwhile to reach out to RetrOrangePi guys; they too will surely be developing their spin-off of RetroPie for the rk3399 in the near future. Not sure if it will be compatible with the RockPro64, but there may be some aspects where your interests overlap.
Best of luck!
Great achievement so far. All the best.
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