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Author Topic: Front-Ends & Emulators on Linux  (Read 35603 times)

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retrostark

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Front-Ends & Emulators on Linux
« on: April 25, 2013, 09:25:57 am »
one thing i do that has worked good for me is going and getting old computers at garage sales, and working from there, although how many front ends and emulators actually work with linux? because i might decide to install that on the machines instead.
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404

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Re: Front-Ends & Emulators on Linux
« Reply #1 on: April 25, 2013, 03:12:03 pm »
wahcade works on linux. so does lemon launcher.

Honestly though, I have never personally had a good out of the box experience with emulation on linux in general. It's always been something that has bothered me quite a bit. The arcade distros that are out there also never really seem to satisfy everything that i would want out of a distro either.

keilmillerjr

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Re: Front-Ends & Emulators on Linux
« Reply #2 on: May 02, 2013, 12:46:45 am »
QMC 2 has a rom management app and an arcade front end app, but the arcade app still needs polishing.

I've run into issues/bugs with wahcade/mahcade.

I wish I could recommend using linux. Its fast, free, and easy to customize. Support with mame people just isn't there though. That needs to change. Unfortunately, I'm probably going to be using mala or Maximus arcade with windows. :/ I wih I had the time to learn how to make my own linux front end.

Ansa89

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Re: Front-Ends & Emulators on Linux
« Reply #3 on: May 02, 2013, 05:06:11 am »
« Last Edit: January 26, 2015, 05:04:53 am by Ansa89 »
Earth could be the hell of another world

keilmillerjr

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Re: Front-Ends & Emulators on Linux
« Reply #4 on: May 06, 2013, 02:26:16 am »
Cabrio looks awesome! Thanks for the link! It worries me though that the last commit was 8 months ago. I'll try it out anyways. I have a ton of virtual OS installs on my iMac. ;)

Ansa89

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Re: Front-Ends & Emulators on Linux
« Reply #5 on: May 06, 2013, 04:52:36 am »
Cabrio looks awesome! It worries me though that the last commit was 8 months ago
Yes, it looks cool; sadly it also seems discontinued :( .
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General_Faliure

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Re: Front-Ends & Emulators on Linux
« Reply #6 on: May 06, 2013, 09:16:21 am »
I'll stick with Mahcade, which is a fork of Wahcade, it is still in active development.
Here is the link: http://www.mameau.com/mahcade/
I use Lubuntu, because it is lightweight and fast on my old hardware, you have to add some software sources (PPA's) to get the newest emulators.
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Re: Front-Ends & Emulators on Linux
« Reply #7 on: May 14, 2013, 08:26:07 am »
I have some experience with ubuntu and emulation.  The stopping point for me was not frontends or emulators, it was video and sound issues.
AdvanceMenu is still being updated, I like it because it is a simple list, which can be decorated.
Also, nobody has mentioned mednafen, an awesome multi-emulator.
Finding PPA's for software is nice, but it seemed to me that compiling it myself worked best.
As with windows, linux emulation on my pc was great up to PS1 era games.  Dolphin was a bit slower than windows, and PCSX2 is daunting to set up in a 64bit linux environment.
Linux is about learning, and it takes time to get results.
The negatives are video/sound drivers and quite frankly, commercial PC games.  Most just don't work on Linux.
Never met a game I won't keep.

demeth

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Re: Front-Ends & Emulators on Linux
« Reply #8 on: May 24, 2013, 07:43:39 pm »
Only posted about it in the [software forum] part of the forum before, but Arcan ( http://arcanfe.wordpress.com ) is mainly developed on / for Linux.

Arbee

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Re: Front-Ends & Emulators on Linux
« Reply #9 on: July 03, 2013, 06:24:58 am »
The negatives are video/sound drivers and quite frankly, commercial PC games.  Most just don't work on Linux.

Note that your video/sound issues are mostly due to Ubuntu.  Other Linux distros do a better job of auto-configuring in my experience.  That and other reasons are why I develop MAME on Fedora.

As far as commercial PC games, that situation has improved greatly with the release of Steam for Linux.  Now you can play all of Valve's big name games (Portal 2, Left 4 Dead 2, Team Fortress, Counter-Strike) plus pretty much any "indie" game released in the last year.  This includes well-known ones like Hotline Miami and Legend of Grimrock.

rpgposer

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Re: Front-Ends & Emulators on Linux
« Reply #10 on: July 23, 2013, 08:23:23 am »
Only posted about it in the [software forum] part of the forum before, but Arcan ( http://arcanfe.wordpress.com ) is mainly developed on / for Linux.
Demeth, you have piqued my interest.  I'll give Arcan a shot in windows.  Thanks.
Never met a game I won't keep.

rpgposer

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Re: Front-Ends & Emulators on Linux
« Reply #11 on: July 23, 2013, 08:30:04 am »
The negatives are video/sound drivers and quite frankly, commercial PC games.  Most just don't work on Linux.

Note that your video/sound issues are mostly due to Ubuntu.  Other Linux distros do a better job of auto-configuring in my experience.  That and other reasons are why I develop MAME on Fedora.

As far as commercial PC games, that situation has improved greatly with the release of Steam for Linux.  Now you can play all of Valve's big name games (Portal 2, Left 4 Dead 2, Team Fortress, Counter-Strike) plus pretty much any "indie" game released in the last year.  This includes well-known ones like Hotline Miami and Legend of Grimrock.
I am always willing to try something different.  My sound issues were caused by ALSA and Phonon competing after removing PulseAudio for another issue.  Video issues were garbage on the screen using mame and mednafen and slowdown with ATI propietary drives.
I am happy that Steam has finally been released for Linux, but most of the games I play are older windows games.
When I get some time, I'll install Fedora on a spare partition and see how it goes.  I really like the idea of having a non-windows gaming system.
Never met a game I won't keep.

demeth

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Re: Front-Ends & Emulators on Linux
« Reply #12 on: July 23, 2013, 03:12:56 pm »
Only posted about it in the [software forum] part of the forum before, but Arcan ( http://arcanfe.wordpress.com ) is mainly developed on / for Linux.
Demeth, you have piqued my interest.  I'll give Arcan a shot in windows.  Thanks.

Just uploaded a testing package of the next (sometime in August) version ( http://sourceforge.net/projects/arcanfe/files/0.3.1/Arcan-0.3.1alpha-win32.exe/download ) the "ArcanLauncher" tool included there might make initial setup / configuration less intimidating (or worse, havn't tested it out fully yet).

I'm experimenting with something a bit "different" currently:

rpgposer

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Re: Front-Ends & Emulators on Linux
« Reply #13 on: August 07, 2013, 08:13:04 am »
demeth,
Love your video, way cool.
I have downloaded the FE for windows and am in the process of trying it.  I love the idea, this is a very flexible tool that lends itself to creativity.  Have created symbolic ntfs links for a few things in the targets and resources\games folders, but no go so far.  ArcanLauncher  and manual bd build don't appear to do anything.  I will take a look at your site to see if I can puzzle it out before bothering you further.
Never met a game I won't keep.

raygun

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Re: Front-Ends & Emulators on Linux
« Reply #14 on: August 08, 2013, 01:57:09 am »
Hi all,

Just want to point out the Attract-Mode emulator frontend I've been working on which runs on Linux.  It's getting to a pretty good state and is designed specifically for use in arcade cabinet-type setups... 

The website is at: http://attractmode.org

Happy to get feedback if anyone is interested in checking it out.

demeth

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Re: Front-Ends & Emulators on Linux
« Reply #15 on: November 14, 2013, 08:38:22 pm »
Arcan 0.3.1 pushed,
details: http://arcan-fe.com/2013/11/15/arcan-0-3-1-released/
youtube:

sairuk

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Re: Front-Ends & Emulators on Linux
« Reply #16 on: November 21, 2013, 06:05:40 am »
Just to throw another one into the mix, thinking about developing this a bit further as an experiment. Was only written last night (video is running on windows  ;D)

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Re: Front-Ends & Emulators on Linux
« Reply #17 on: November 30, 2013, 08:45:36 am »
I've been playing with libretro/retroarch over the last few weeks.  Amazing project!

http://www.libretro.com/
http://themaister.net/retroarch.html

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Re: Front-Ends & Emulators on Linux
« Reply #18 on: November 30, 2013, 08:55:27 am »
I don't catch the main intent of the project.
Could you briefly explain how to use it and how it works?
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Re: Front-Ends & Emulators on Linux
« Reply #19 on: December 01, 2013, 05:17:01 am »
I don't catch the main intent of the project.
Could you briefly explain how to use it and how it works?

From what I gather, it uses existing emulators as modules for a main set of wrapper code.  Like MAME and MESS do with their various drivers, except using existing emulation projects like SNES9X, BSNES, Dolphin, FCEU, FBA, and dozens of others:
http://www.libretro.com/?page_id=218

What most emulators out there seem to do is offer great core emulation code, but everything else sucks.  They have limited command line options for front ends, crap ini file management, bad input/control mechanisms, no advanced output options for low res RGB CRT monitors or neat GLSL features for high res LCD monitors, etc, etc.  I know I cringe every time I fire up some of my favourite console emulators when I've been spoiled by the advanced options MAME gives me.  Similarly, I hate composite TV-out options from regular PC video cards because they spit out an interlaced picture.  I've got RGB->SVideo converters, and would love to use a console emulator that allowed me to generate real console modelines out of a video card (like AdvanceMAME/GroovyMAME do), push that through my converter and play games in low res progressive modes on my CRTs.

libretro takes all the really awesome bits from console emulators (their core emulation code), and wraps it up in a very cool common configuration library that seems to be modelled quite a bit on MAME.  It offers a single, consistent way to configure input (joysticks, mice, lightguns, etc) and output (screens/monitors, effects, audio, and even capture to a video stream via ffmpeg).

Anyone can code for libretro - there's even a handful of original games that use the framework (i.e.: not emulators, but standalone titles).

RetroArch is just one implementation of a simple frontend for libretro.  No doubt others could make their own, or just very simply use existing frontends like Wahcade to power RetroArch straight off the command line.

MESS obviously does a lot of this already, but what libretro does is combine a lot of existing emulation engines into one consistent and very awesome tool.  MESS and MAME also stick to their firm commitment of accuracy above all else, which is great, but means things like offloading 3D to a GPU will never happen in those projects.  libretro takes existing emulation engines for 3D consoles and arcade games that allow GPU offloading of 3D (less accurate, but often prettier and fast enough to play realitime on cheap hardware) and gives a MAME/MESS-like interface.

I don't consider it a MESS-replacement, but rather a supplement.   Tinkering so far has shown it to be quite an awesome little package.  I'm considering building a Linux "Steam Box" next year for the living room (on top of my existing MythTV setup), and RetroArch would be an awesome addition to that.
« Last Edit: December 01, 2013, 05:22:30 am by elvis »

General_Faliure

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Re: Front-Ends & Emulators on Linux
« Reply #20 on: December 29, 2013, 06:26:43 am »
You got me interested.
I already have an arcade cab, but i am going to try this on a test system
My Arcade cab: https://goo.gl/photos/yE1KACHryQjCaaCj7
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Re: Front-Ends & Emulators on Linux
« Reply #21 on: January 26, 2015, 04:47:42 am »
After struggling with getting wah!cade to look nice and do exactly as I wanted, I recently discovered Attract Mode which runs very well on linux and is being actively developed.  Anyone else frustrated with the lack of decent front end options for linux should check it out, you can get some very polished results out of it with a little work.

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Re: Front-Ends & Emulators on Linux
« Reply #22 on: January 26, 2015, 09:49:40 am »
You might as well want to have a look at http://emulationstation.org/
(which is used in retroPie, but works nicely as well on an arcade machine)

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Re: Front-Ends & Emulators on Linux
« Reply #23 on: January 26, 2015, 03:15:51 pm »
In addition to AttractMode retrofe is a newish frontend for windows & linux.