RetroArch Android Manual

User Manual:

Open the PDF directly: View PDF .
Page Count: 24

RetroArch Android (v0.9.9)

Hans Kristian Arntzen, Daniel De Matteis, Michael Lelli

May 27, 2013

Contents

1 Introduction 2

2 Disclaimer 2

3 How to run 3

3.1 Select a core .............................. 3

3.2 Select a game ............................. 3

4 Controls 3

4.1 Touchscreen overlay ......................... 3

4.2 Touchscreen menu navigation .................... 5

4.2.1 Gamepad screen ....................... 5

4.2.2 Quick Menu screen ...................... 5

4.2.3 Gameplay screen ....................... 6

4.3 Variations ............................... 7

4.3.1 Making your own custom overlays ............. 7

4.4 USB gamepads ............................ 7

4.4.1 Unsupported gamepads ................... 8

4.4.2 Notes ............................. 8

4.5 Bluetooth ............................... 8

4.6 Notes ................................. 10

5 Settings 10

5.1 Path Settings ............................. 10

5.2 System Settings ............................ 13

5.3 Video Settings ............................ 14

5.3.1 Notes on shaders ....................... 15

5.3.2 Notes on refresh rate ..................... 16

5.4 Audio Settings ............................ 16

5.5 Input Settings ............................. 18

6 RetroArch on other platforms 19

7 About Us 19

8 Troubleshooting 20

8.1 Audio choppiness ........................... 20

8.1.1 Likely culprit #1: Mismatch in reported refresh rate vs.

screen’s refresh rate ..................... 20

8.1.2 Likely culprit #2: Dalvik garbage collector cleanup stalls 20

8.2 Why don’t the input overlays show up when I try to select one

from the Settings menu? ....................... 21

8.3 Shaders make the gameplay unbearably slow ........... 21

8.4 Why can’t I ﬁnd PCSX ReARMed in the cores list? ....... 22

8.5 I have some other issue that is not addressed here ........ 22

9 Philosophy 22

10 Credits 24

1 Introduction

RetroArch Android is an app that has been designed to run and play:

•Games

•Emulators

•Tech demos (OpenGL and non-OpenGL)

Emulators and games that can be run on RetroArch come in the form of plug-

gable ’engines’ which are called ’libretro cores’. The version that you just in-

stalled already has most of the full library of ’cores’ preinstalled.

2 Disclaimer

RetroArch Android is released for free and will always be free. There are no

ads (push or otherwise), there is no ’spying’ going on in the form of analytics

or collecting stats, there is no ’paid DLC’, and on and on - all the unsavory

and bad aspects of this ’new generation of computing’ are not to be found here.

It will never be sold with a pricetag - not even disguised as a ’donationware

version’. If you happen to have ’paid’ for RetroArch Android or a derivative of

it, you have been scammed and you should probably demand your money back

from the scam artist in question (and scam artists they are).

Just because the GPL allows people to make derivative copies of RetroArch

for commercial purposes does not mean that we support it or even approve of it.

If you sell RetroArch or a derivative copy of it for any commercial purpose, you

are part of the problem and you need to be learnt a quick lesson in etiquette.

Note to any ’entrepreneurs’ out there that might be tempted by this ’easy route

to makin’ some money’ - I honestly wouldn’t bother - we will undercut you by

oﬀering this all for free and doing a better job at it to boot. That and I severely

doubt you can come up with many trinkets that will persuade people to throw

away their money on a derivative version when they can have it all for free to

begin with - just saying - save yourself the time and the eﬀort, because it isn’t

going to work out.

3 How to run

At startup, RetroArch Android shows you a list view of ’cores’. A ’libretro core’

supports games with certain extensions. To consult which core does what, you

should read the ’RetroArch Cores Manual’.

3.1 Select a core

Select one of these cores in the menu.

3.2 Select a game

Cores need data ﬁles in order to work. Most emulator-based cores will typi-

cally need a ’ROM’ image, game-based cores will typically need some kind of

’executable’.

After you have selected the core, you will now need to select a compatible

data ﬁle from the ﬁlebrowser. It will then attempt to load the core with that

speciﬁc data ﬁle (in most cases - a game image).

4 Controls

4.1 Touchscreen overlay

RetroArch Android uses an overlay as a ’mock’ gamepad to play with. The

’overlay’ controls will always be bound to Player 1.

The gamepad abstraction that you see here is what we call the ’RetroPad’.

When you make a libretro core and when your core supports a gamepad, it will

always use as its gamepad model this pad.

Figure 1: Select a core from this menu.

Figure 2: After selecting the core, you will need to load a game.

Figure 3: ’RetroPad overlay’ screen.

The RetroPad has the same face and shoulder buttons as a Super Nintendo

gamepad. In addition to this, it also has the L2/R2/L3/R3 additional buttons

and the twin analog sticks from a Sony DualShock gamepad.

4.2 Touchscreen menu navigation

Each touchscreen overlay has a couple of screens that can be navigated to. To

go to the next screen of the overlay, you press the ’circle’ icon at the bottom.

Most of the overlays that come bundled with RetroArch Android have the

same screen order.

4.2.1 Gamepad screen

You can control the game with this screen. It can also be used inside RGUI for

navigating the menu.

4.2.2 Quick Menu screen

The actions on this screen have various eﬀects on the game currently running.

•LOAD STATE - Load a save state from the currently selected save state

slot.

•SAVE STATE - Save state to the currently selected save state slot.

Figure 4: ’Quick Menu’ screen.

•STATE MINUS - Go back one save state slot.

•STATE PLUS - Go forward one state slot.

•REWIND - Rewind the game in real-time. Note - the ’Rewind’ option

needs to be enabled at the Settings menu or else this option won’t work.

•SLOWMOTION - Press and hold this button to let the game run in slow-

motion.

•RESET - Resets the game/system.

•FAST FORWARD - Fast forward the game in real-time.

•NEXT SHADER - Load the next shader in the folder (NOTE: only if

shaders are enabled)

•PREVIOUS SHADER - Load the previous shader in the folder (NOTE:

only if shaders are enabled)

4.2.3 Gameplay screen

This screen is useful for when you are playing with an USB or Bluetooth

gamepad but you would still like to have access to the Quick Menu or Gamepad

Figure 5: ’Gameplay’ screen.

screen without outright disabling overlays. If you press the ’icon’ at the bottom

of this screen, you will go back to the ’Gamepad’ screen’.

4.3 Variations

RetroArch Android comes packaged with a number of diﬀerent-looking overlays.

Below is an image showing the diﬀerent overlays:

You can select between a number of diﬀerent overlays from either the Settings

menu and/or RGUI.

4.3.1 Making your own custom overlays

You can make your own custom overlays for use with RetroArch Android. If

you want to learn how to do this, you should read the ’Overlay Guide’.

4.4 USB gamepads

Next to the standard touchscreen input, RetroArch Android autodetects and

autoconﬁgures various input devices automatically. Most of these are USB

joysticks/gamepads.

A list of the gamepads that are supported by autodetection can be found

inside the app. (go to Help).

Figure 6: All the default high-resolution overlays packaged with RetroArch

Android.

You connect the device to your tablet/phone. You press a button while

ingame. If your pad is supported, it should bring up a message saying: “RetroPad

#? detected: “ and then the name of the device it found. Buttons and control

layout will then be autoconﬁgured and mapped to the RetroPad layout.

4.4.1 Unsupported gamepads

If your pad is unsupported, it will likely show “Unknown HID” instead. If you

want this pad supported, contact us.

4.4.2 Notes

If a USB gamepad that is listed above does not work immediately, your controller

may require a powered USB hub or perhaps a HID driver may be missing of

sorts.

4.5 Bluetooth

RetroArch supports Bluetooth right now only through the use of IME apps. A

couple of IME apps are supported by RetroArch Android - if you use the default

key layouts with the IME apps listed below, your pads will be automatically

conﬁgured:

Figure 7: Setting an IME app from the RetroArch menu by clicking on the

’Settings’ icon.

•https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.dancingpixelstudios.

sixaxiscontroller Dancing Pixel Studios SixAxis Controller

•https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ccpcreations.

android.WiiUseAndroid ccpcreations.Wiiuse.Android

Remember that you will have to change your Input Method to the needed IME

ﬁrst before starting RetroArch. This can also be done from the menu by clicking

on the top righthand side ’Settings’ icon and then selecting ’Input Method’ (see

image).

4.6 Notes

When using PS3 controller via Bluetooth, use SixAxis adapter app and after

you’ve got the controller setup, make sure to go to menu then preferences and

then Game pad settings, and enable Gamepad. This turns it into a native

android controller and no IME switch is needed. Same for the MOGA controller

via bluetooth, make sure to use the MOGA Universal Driver and not the one

that MOGA recommends. In the app, make sure ’Enable left analog input’ is

checked, and that it’s in System Mode to make it a native gamepad for android

and no need to switch IMEs.

5 Settings

You can conﬁgure many aspects of RetroArch. To go to the Settings menu, click

on the ’Settings’ icon at the top righthand side of the screen and then select

’Settings’.

5.1 Path Settings

•ROM Directory

Set the directory that will be used as a default starting point for the

ﬁlebrowser.

•Save Files - Enable custom directory

Enables use of custom save ﬁle folder. (.srm) save ﬁles will be saved and

loaded to the conﬁgured directory. if not enabled, save ﬁles will reside in

ROM folder.

•Save Files - Saveﬁle directory

Sets directory where to save and load game save ﬁles.

•Save States - Enable custom directory

Enables use of custom save statefolder. (.state) save states will be saved

and loaded to conﬁgured directory. If not enabled, save states will reside

in ROM folder.

Figure 8: ’Settings’ menu.

Figure 9: ’Path Settings’ screen.

Figure 10: ’System Settings’ screen.

•Save state directory

Sets directory where to save and load game save states.

•Enable custom directory

Enables use of custom system folder. Cores will look for system speciﬁc

ﬁles, like BIOSes, in this folder. If not enabled, it will look in the ROM

folder instead.

•System directory

Sets directory where system ﬁles are loaded from.

5.2 System Settings

•Auto load state

Loads an automatically created savestate at startup.

•Auto save state

This will make a save state when you exit the game. This auto savestate

will be automatically loaded the next time you start up the

game. Useful for on-the-go gaming.

Figure 11: ’Video Settings’ screen.

•Rewinding Enable

This allows you to rewind the game in real-time to undo ’mistakes’ you

made while playing the game. (NOTE - this is very CPU intensive - you

should only enable this if the core is running at least 2x realtime on your

system).

5.3 Video Settings

•Vsync

Unchecking this will cause screen tearing but faster performance.

•Auto-rotate

Will auto-rotate the screen for vertically oriented games.

•Scale integer

Scales video only in whole steps of game resolution. useful when playing

without bilinear ﬁltering.

•Aspect ratio

Select the aspect ratio to enforce.

•Threaded video driver

Uses a multi-threaded video driver. It is likely to improve performance

at the expense of slightly more latency and jitter. Use this if you have

troubles getting good video and/or audio.

•Forced refresh rate (Hz)

Force a speciﬁc refresh rate to be detected. Only use this if auto-detection

of refresh rate reports wrong refresh rate.

•Calibrate refresh rate

Attempts to ﬁnd the true refresh rate of a monitor. Updates value in

’Force refresh rate (Hz)’ option. To help ensure accuracy, make sure no

intense background services are running, and avoid triggering screensaver.

•Set OS-reported refresh rate

Sets refresh rate equal to OS-reported value. This might not be accurate

for your device.

•Shaders (1st pass) Bilinear ﬁlter

Applies bilinear ﬁltering, smooths out edges (setting still apply even if no

shader is selected).

•Shaders (1st pass) Enable

Enable the currently selected shader.

•Shaders (1st pass) XML Shader

Select this option to select a shader from the ﬁlesystem. RetroArch comes

prepackaged with a collection of shaders.

•Enable on-screen fonts

Enable rendering of on-screen fonts for system messages.

5.3.1 Notes on shaders

•The shaders that come prepackaged with RetroArch Android come from

the PS3 and Xbox 360 ports of RetroArch. Unfortunately, most Android

GPUs are very weak compared to the ones inside the PS3 and 360 - so

most of these shaders will run extemely slow on nearly all Android devices

right now. To make these shaders usable we will have to wait until GPUs

on Android-powered devices catch up with PS3 and 360. They will make

for good GPU benchmarks in the meantime. These shaders are far more

intensive on the GPU than the trivial ’shaders’ used in commercial games

- which are mostly used for menial tasks instead of applying an expensive

image-enhancing algorithm to the entire screen like the ’shader ﬁlters’ seen

here.

Figure 12: ’Audio Settings’ screen.

5.3.2 Notes on refresh rate

•Some devices (like the Samsung Galaxy S3) erroneously report that the

screen refresh rate is 60Hz. For these devices, it is recommended that you

set ’forced refresh rate’ manually to a lower rate until you ﬁnd the right

value that gives you good audio/video with no audio pops.

5.4 Audio Settings

•Audio Enable

Uncheck this to disable sound.

•Dynamic Rate Control

Dynamic rate control tries to prevent sound pops by dynamically adjust-

ing samplerate. It is recommended that you leave this on for RetroArch

Android.

Figure 13: ’Input Settings’ screen.

5.5 Input Settings

•Back behavior

Select how you want the Back button to behave. You can either have

the Back button behave like a ’Quick Exit’ button from RetroArch, or to

make it a ’menu toggle’ where it will toggle the builtin menu (RGUI) on

or oﬀ.

•Conﬁguration Autodetect Enable

This will attempt to preconﬁgure various gamepads and/or IME apps that

you connect.

•List of autodetected devices

Shows a list of all devices that should be autodetected and autoconﬁgured.

•iCade proﬁle Pad 1

Select the iCade proﬁle to use for Player 1. You can choose between several

pad conﬁgurations.

•iCade proﬁle Pad 2

Select the iCade proﬁle to use for Player 2. You can choose between several

pad conﬁgurations.

•iCade proﬁle Pad 3

Select the iCade proﬁle to use for Player 3. You can choose between several

pad conﬁgurations.

•iCade proﬁle Pad 4

Select the iCade proﬁle to use for Player 4. You can choose between several

pad conﬁgurations.

•Debug Input Reporting Enable

This will report keycodes onscreen generated by your input device(s). You

should use this option when you want us to support a gamepad that you

use. You should use this option then to see which keycodes are generated

by all the buttons on your gamepad/input device and then report this

back to us.

•Touchscreen Overlay Enable

You can disable the overlay system entirely by disabling this.

•Input overlay

You can select a diﬀerent overlay by choosing this option.

•Overlay opacity

Set the opacity of the touch overlay.

•Custom Binds - Player 1 Custom Binds

You can set custom keybinds for your gamepad (Player 1) in case it is not

automatically detected and conﬁgured.

•Custom Binds - Player 2 Custom Binds

You can set custom keybinds for your gamepad (Player 2) in case it is not

automatically detected and conﬁgured.

•Custom Binds - Player 3 Custom Binds

You can set custom keybinds for your gamepad (Player 3) in case it is not

automatically detected and conﬁgured.

•Custom Binds - Player 4 Custom Binds

You can set custom keybinds for your gamepad (Player 4) in case it is not

automatically detected and conﬁgured.

6 RetroArch on other platforms

RetroArch isn’t only available for Android. It is available on other platforms as

well, including:

•PlayStation3

•Xbox 1

•Xbox 360

•Wii/Gamecube

•Raspberry Pi

•PC (Mac/Linux/Windows)

•iOS

•Blackberry (10/Playbook)

And it will be ported to even more platforms in the future. You might even see

the libretro cores running in the oﬃcial mainline version of XBMC shortly.

7 About Us

Homepage: http://www.libretro.org

IRC: #retroarch at freenode

Github (libretro organization): https://github.com/libretro

RetroArch @ Github: https://github.com/Themaister/RetroArch

Libretro @ Twitter: https://twitter.com/libretro

Libretro @ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/libretro.retroarch

8 Troubleshooting

8.1 Audio choppiness

8.1.1 Likely culprit #1: Mismatch in reported refresh rate vs. screen’s

refresh rate

If you are experiencing audio choppiness in games, the most likely cause is the

refresh rate of your Android device’s screen. RetroArch uses static synchro-

nization which requires that the RetroArch side is correctly informed about the

exact refresh rate of your screen.

There are two methods to ’query’ the refresh rate of a screen on Android:

•Through the use of an API function call provided by the Android SDK

•Through ’inferring’ the refresh rate by way of some video display test

The problem with the ﬁrst method is that certain manufacturers ’lie’ about

the exact refresh rate of the screen. Samsung for instance reports incorrect

refresh rates for its Galaxy S3 and Galaxy Note II models. Therefore, if the

API function reports ’60Hz’ but your screen’s refresh rate is in actuality 58Hz,

then this will lead to a mismatch of refresh rates between the frontend app

(RetroArch) and your device’s screen. This will lead to stuttering video and/or

audio.

For these problematic devices, we created a second method to ’detect’ the

refresh rate - this is our ’Video synchronization’ test. You will be prompted to

run this the ﬁrst time RetroArch is installed, but you can also run the same test

later on by going to the ’Video Settings’ menu. The refresh rate you get back

from this video synchronization test must be regarded as an approximation- it

might be oﬀ by a little bit. If you ﬁnd that you are still experiencing audio

crackles after running this test, it can help by manually adjusting the new

’refresh rate’ by a small amount (either higher or lower) and seeing if that

helps.

8.1.2 Likely culprit #2: Dalvik garbage collector cleanup stalls

There is a second and even more serious problem that might lead to stutter-

ing/choppy audio and unfortunately this seems to be an architectural problem.

Due to Android being Java-based (and due to the native activity being a basic

’C/C++ glue layer for Java’, there is a big chance that the Dalvik garbage col-

lector cleanup routines will run from time to time during the runtime state of

RetroArch Android. When this happens, it will create stalls amounting from as

low to 2ms to 10ms or more.

Speculation that a second core could ’pick up the slack’ has turned out to

be unfounded when even quad-core Android phones produce the same audio

crackles whenever the garbage collector cleanup is running throughout your

game.

This is obviously hazardous for any app that relies on static syncing. What

is even worse is that there seems to be no way to ’instruct’ Dalvik not to do

this and that it can be totally unpredictable if/when this happens. The garbage

collector cleanup stalls might be caused by some innocuous weather app service

running in the background that does some server queries or it could be caused

by a mail check interval by some e-mail app service. Google Play Store services

have also been conﬁrmed to have periodic scan intervals which kick the garbage

collector cleanup routines into gear, and they can be bad for performance.

The only way I have been able to get around these issues has been to forcibly

remove/disable these services that are kicking the garbage collector into gear.

Unfortunately, by doing this you would also sacriﬁce Google Play Store and lots

of apps that do this for which there seems to be no way to disable the periodic

intervals at which they ’scan’. For most this won’t be an acceptable compromise

and therefore we are stuck between a rock and a hard place.

One conceivable route would be to rely on frameskipping - which we ﬁnd to

be terrible. For version 0.9.9 we have included a ’frameskip’ option in PCSX

ReARMed as an experiment. If this produces good results for people we might

be tempted to include a similar frameskip option in all cores. We deﬁnitely

advise that you do NOT set frameskip higher than 0 except if you are experi-

encing severe performance issues (such as audio crackles) - it will deﬁnitely run

less smooth and you can easily tell the diﬀerence between non-frameskipped

gameplay and frameskipped gameplay.

Another ’solution’ would be to use threaded video - unfortunately, this ’so-

lution’ suﬀers from the same drawbacks as ’frameskip’ in that it is impossible

to get ’smooth’ vsynced graphics by doing video rendering in this manner.

Issues like these are the big Achilles Heel when it comes to Android - until

Google makes a serious attempt at resolving issues like these and gives us more

power over the kind of periodic scan intervals that apps are allowed to do (plus

more control over Dalvik’s GC behavior - plus ﬁx the horrendous audio latency

of AudioFlinger) - we have to regretfully conclude that iOS and Blackberry

QNX are far superior platforms for RetroArch. Which is also unfortunate since

said platforms/ecosystem do not allow us to ’exist’ oﬃcially whereas Google’s

ecosystem does.

8.2 Why don’t the input overlays show up when I try to

select one from the Settings menu?

We have seen this problem manifest itself on a Samsung Galaxy S3 - it appears to

be some rights issue to do with accessing the application-speciﬁc cache directory.

If this happens, please report the bug to us on your speciﬁc device and we will

put even more eﬀort into getting this issue resolved.

8.3 Shaders make the gameplay unbearably slow

This is to be expected as most shader developers target PS3/360/PC-spec

GPUs, and mobile devices are lightyears removed from reaching that stage yet.

The situation might start to change over time when SoCs come out with

more powerful GPUs like Tegra 4 and the next-gen ARM Malis. For now, if you

ﬁnd any (if not all) shaders are simply too slow on your device, just don’t use

them.

8.4 Why can’t I ﬁnd PCSX ReARMed in the cores list?

You possibly have an Android device with a MIPS or x86 processor. PCSX

ReARMed is only meant for ARM-based devices.

8.5 I have some other issue that is not addressed here

Please consult RetroArch Android’s built-in Help Menu for more information.

It attempts to address a lot more possible issues than this PDF manual can

hope to do.

9 Philosophy

We do RetroArch Android’s distribution this way because:

1. We don’t like this ’monetization’ drive of these newfangled app stores.

2. We don’t like the ’hucksterism’ - we don’t like the ’MBA meets brogram-

mer’ movement, we don’t like the slime, we don’t like the cynical ’pre-

tending we are a business providing a service’ angle.

3. We don’t like the ’rebranding’ of apps to make it look like these are ’sepa-

rate’ programs that are somehow ’diﬀerent’ from the apps they are based

on. Most of the time they are just direct ports with zero substantial

alterations - I won’t name names although it would be easy to do so.

4. We don’t like lots of ’e-mails’ ﬂooding our mailboxes with things like ’Max-

imize your revenues from your app!’ and/or ’do a better job at monetizing

your app by downloading our monetization SDK!’. I have a nice backcata-

logue of that shit already ﬂooding my mailbox everyday - unwanted. And

least of all, we don’t want to be a ’part’ of this racket. Pardon my French,

but screw this entire cottage industry of shit - and everybody in it.

5. We think it’s intellectually dishonest to make a big stink about Nin-

tendo/Sony/Microsoft wanting to ’pull’ emulators from an app store when

you are simultaneously charging users for the privilege of running ’copy-

righted’ ROMs. Therefore, we don’t engage in that intellectually dishonest

doublethink altogether. As soon as you sell your wares - you are fair game

- everbody and his lawyer knows this, and frankly, everybody who does

this will get what is coming to him/her - there is no free lunch.

6. We believe that a future where you have to ’pay’ for every little ’app’ that

is out there and where Google/Apple/Blackberry/Microsoft decide what

you can run and where every ’dev’ can just push ’ads’ to you and ’steal’

your personal information is anathema to what computing was supposed

to be. Once this was an industry where information was supposed to be

’open’ and companies like id Software and others went out of their way to

’share’ code (and even cutting-edge information on engines as soon as the

game was complete) in the spirit of training future generations and stand-

ing on the shoulder of giants. That is what ’science’ is supposed to be

about - it’s not about ’conformity’ or ’knowledge hoarding’ or ’diﬀerential

’advantages’. Now stuﬀ just gets locked up in a vault because of ’diﬀeren-

tial advantages’. Once patents were made so that after the patent had ran

its course, it would be released into the public domain. Fat chance of that

happening now when companies can just arbitrarily extend the copyright

by an arbitrary amount of years.

Rather than being part of the problem and going with the catch-all ratio-

nalization ’people are paying for convenience’ like so many cowards that

went before us, we have decided instead to ’not’ be part of the problem

and to do everything that is the total diametric opposite of what this new

age of ’app stores’ and ’convenience devices’ are doing to software devel-

opment, homebrew and free and open source software.

Let it be said - everybody that rationalizes this stuﬀ to themselves by go-

ing ’oh well, GPL was never about ’free’ as in libre AND ’free’ as in beer”

is either lying to themselves rationalizing the evil this is bringing forth or

is just a plain coward and/or a sell-out opportunist - if the shoe ﬁts, wear

it. I don’t care how you people rationalize this to yourself - if you don’t

see what the ’monetization’ of apps and this whole ’convenience’ era is

bringing forth then frankly you never had any wits about you and you are

just being used as a useful tool by pragmatic opportunists and companies

that are employing their own brand of ’Embrace, Extend and Extinguish’

on your FLOSS movement and the products it brings forth. No, bringing

up ’RedHat’ as a justiﬁcation doesn’t ﬂy either - we have heard all this

crap before, and it still doesn’t ﬂy. Not to mention that honest devs who

release their own code under the GPL license will feel less and less moti-

vation to do so in the future because they don’t like to see everbody and

his dog running away with ill-gained proﬁts. Rather than help ’build up

the GPL’, this is actually destroying the GPL’s desirability.

For pragmatic reasons, RetroArch is and will likely always be GPL. But

that doesn’t mean we don’t see what is clearly happening before our eyes

and how it has become the ’plaything’ of cynical wannabe MBAers pre-

tending to be ’entrepreneurs’, and we don’t like it one bit. While the

FLOSS zealots are going into technicalities about their ’license’ and how

it allows for all this and how we should all approve of it, cynical mon-

eymen are laughing their arses oﬀ at this childish naivety and running

up those cash (and donation) registers. GPL software is now regarded as

’easy to steal - easy to make money oﬀ - while we contribute nothing of

any signiﬁcant value to those things and hoard everything we do of any

value ourselves’. That is the stark reality of what most ’mobile startups’

think to themselves but would never admit in public, whether you like it

or not - and it’s time to come to grips with that reality and make your

own move as to how to proceed - because this clearly isn’t working out to

your movement’s advantage and reeks of a co-opting.

7. We provide all the means to any and all devs to make their own builds/packages

from source - unlike others everything we do is immediately committed to

Github so whatever you can fetch from source on our Github repositories

is exactly the current state of development.

We know this leaves us wide open to the same kind of ’abuse’ as other

projects have suﬀered - RetroArch being GPL alone sees to that. But we

hold the overriding belief that by being both ’free’ as in libre and ’free’

as in beer, we can undercut any and all cynical moneymaking ’copycats’

that pop up that have their entire code based on RetroArch. That and

’naming and shaming’ should do the trick. It is hard to beat this non-

compromising strategy, and they know it - being ’free’ of ads and being

’free’ itself is a hard winning combination to beat for an opportunist who

only cares about raking in money.

10 Credits

RetroArch Android

Hans-Kristian Arntzen (Themaister)

Daniel De Matteis (Squarepusher2/Twinaphex)

Michael Lelli (ToadKing)

RetroArch Android contributions

Meancoot

Opium2k (overlay images)

Thanks to

Notaz (PCSX ReARMed libretro port - RetroArch ARM Linux patches)

FBA Team (for adopting libretro upstream - FBA)

Ekeeke (for adopting libretro upstream - Genesis Plus GX)

CaH4e3 (for adopting libretro upstream - FCEUmm)

Rdanbrook (for adopting libretro upstream - NEStopia Undead)

XBMC devs (for adopting libretro vis a vis RetroPlayer)

Zeromus

RetroArch Android Manual

Navigation menu

Versions of this User Manual:

Views

Navigation