Tag: lakka

Lakka 4.3 released

Just read the news about the new release from the Lakka team: Lakka 4.3. Looking at the release summary, the biggest update since 4.2 is the new new RetroArch v.1.14.0 integration and updates for many platforms supported:

Release summary

  • RetroArch updated to 1.14.0
  • Cores updated to their most recent versions
    • fake-08: added new libretro core (Pico-8)
    • mojozork: added new libretro core (Z-Machine)
    • puae2021: added new libretro core (Amiga, less demanding version of the core)
  • Mesa updated to 22.1.7
  • Added image for Orange Pi 4 LTS (Rockchip RK3399)
  • Added support for more Nintendo Switch variants (Hekate 5.0.1+ is required, on Nintento Switch Lite use touchscreen to change the default input device: Settings → Input → Port 1 Controls → Device Index → top most item)
  • Updated Linux kernel
    • mainline: 5.10.123
    • raspberry: 5.10.110
    • amlogic: 5.11.22

If you are interested in the full details, jump over to Github and have a look here.

To download the latest release, head over to the Lakka download page to grab your build.

Don’t have a Lakka machine yet? Probably the easiest (and cheapest) way to give it a try is using a Raspberry Pi. Get one here and download the image here.

Tutorial on how to install Lakka.tv.

Lakka 2.2 Christmas Release

Happy new year everyone!

The team over at lakka.tv released their new version 2.2 over the holiday season.  This includes RetroArch 1.75, which comes with the new menu “Ozone” (highly recommendable), a fixed PPSSPP core and many more changes.

To update your Lakka box simply use the online updater, download the new release package, reboot, let it install and enjoy the new release. I updated mine and it worked flawless. Big thanks to the team.

Head over for more Lakka news to the project’s website.

Lakka 2.1.1 with Raspberry Pi 3 B+ support

After quite some time the Lakka team released the new version 2.1.1 which – as you probably guessed from the headline – supports the new raspberry Pi 3 B+. Great news for these owners. Some updated and also some new cores like Higan, nSide, Cannonball, MAME2003 and much more.

Here is the changelog:

  • Important updates
    • RetroArch 1.7.3
    • LibreELEC 8.2 fixes
    • XU4 kernel update to 4.14
    • Rockchip kernel upgrade
    • Allwinner kernel upgrade
  • New cores
    • Higan, the famous SFC emulator from byuu
    • nSide, a fork of higan v106 with additional features
    • Cannonball, an enhanced OutRun engine
    • MAME2003 plus, updated 2018 version of MAME (0.78) for libretro. with added game support and improvements
    • Snes9x 2005 plus, Snes9x 1.43 plus BLARRG APU
    • FreeIntv, Mattel Intellivision emulator
    • Game Music Emu core
  • Core updates
    • Citra, the 3DS emulator
    • ChaiLove, the chaiscript game engine
    • MAME2003, the multi arcade emulator
    • PPSSPP, the PSP emulator
    • Sameboy, the Game Boy emulator
    • Desmume, the Nintendo DS emulator
    • and many more
  • Fixes
    • Keyboard fix for ARM based devices
    • Bluetooth fix for S905/S912
    • H3 boot
  • Bonus
    • Support for more gamepads (Zeroplus based gamepads)
    • Support more Commodore cores
    • Libretro overlays are now exposed in SAMBA
    • Project cleanup
    • XU4 fix display of the partition resize messages

For more information, head over to their blog post.

To update, use the internal update feature of Lakka. Download and reboot.

Lakka 2.1 Stable release

The Lakka team released their latest stable build marked as version 2.1.

What is new? From their blog post:

 

After 6 month of intense development and bugfixes, the team is proud to announce the stable release of Lakka 2.1!

This release is a huge step forward in many aspects: UI, emulator cores, and supported hardware.

Changelog

  • Merged LibreELEC 8.2 stable
    • Kernel updates for PC, RPi and more
    • New wifi drivers and fixes
    • Samba 4
    • RPi firmware updates
    • Switch back to OpenSSL
  • RetroArch updated to 1.6.9
    • Updated cores to latest upstream versions
    • Updated shaders (clearly improved compability on some graphic cards)
    • Completely new game engine by Rob Loach: ChaiLove
    • Kiosk mode: Enabling the kiosk mode will prevent users to access the settings. You can setup a password to disable the kiosk mode. This work is provided by Brunnis.
    • Updated game database and metadata
    • Updated joypad autoconfigs
    • More beautiful animated background, we are now using additive blending to make the ribbon shine
    • Icon sets more complete
    • Font selection fix, useful to set a font that supports simplified Chinese
    • Record config selection fix, it will make it easier to use recording and streaming from the interface
    • Simplified netplay menu, we removed the old netplay menu from the main menu
    • Updated translations
    • Scanner fixes, scanning for Gamecube CDs
    • Favorites ROMs tab
    • Parallel-N64 (Nintendo 64) with multithreaded Angrylion
    • Completely new cores:
      • Citra – Nintendo 3DS (only PC 64-bit image)
      • Dolphin – Nintendo GameCube / Wii (all images)
      • OpenLara – Tomb Raider (all images
      • Redream – Sega Dreamcast (all images)
      • MeowPC98 – PC98 (all images)
      • MelonDS – Nintendo DS (all images)
      • SameBoy – Nintendo Game Boy/Game Boy Color (all images)
      • MAME2003-Midway (all images)
      • px68k – Portable SHARP X68000 (all images)
  • Support for S812 Amlogic TV Boxes (thanks to Ntemis)
  • Fix for the boot arguments of Odroid-XU3/4 (thanks to gouchi)
  • HDMI audio fixes on WeTek Play 2
  • Ability to use the Raspberry Pi as a Wi-Fi access point (thanks to duduke)
  • Audio support for the RGB-Pi SCART adapter (thanks to the Recalbox team for the donation of this adapter, and to vik for the donation of a CRT screen)
  • Support for twin joypads like the Xin Mo
  • New Rockchip based boards: ASUS TinkerBoard, MiQi, ROCK64
  • Allwinner images: We now have completely new builds for Allwinner boards, based on the mainline kernel and u-boot. With this new project, we can support many new boards with very little efforts. Being based on a recent kernel increase compatibility with newer joypads and dongles. These new images will replace the a10, a20, H3 and Bananapi images.
  • OdroidXU4 update: A kernel and u-boot update fixes the eMMC boot, improves TV detection and adds more resolutions. Special thanks to Hardkernel for gifting an XU4 device and the new eMMC modules.
  • U-boot on Rockchip and Allwinner updated to 2017.11 stable
  • Netcat packaged, useful to use network commands in RetroArch
  • Sixpair packaged
  • Kernel highlights:
    • Rockchip images: 4.4.99 LTS
    • Allwinner images: 4.14 LTS
    • More gamepad modules enabled
    • Real time kernel for PC and RPi, should reduce input lag
    • Performance governor for PC and RPi, should stabilize framerate

Known issues

  • DualShock 4 input bugs on some controllers
  • Keyboard input bug on Parallel-N64 on PC
  • Parallel-N64 crashes on PC 32bit
  • Animated background and audio issues in Shared Context mode (with Dolphin)
  • Typing Wi-Fi password with a keyboard on RPi is broken, use a joypad instead

Installing or upgrading

You can upgrade from Lakka 2.0 or 2.1 by dropping the img.gz into the Update folder and rebooting.

Except for the new Allwinner and S802 and S812 images, where you will have to do a manual upgrade.

Lakka 2.1 RC6 released with new Allwinner and Rockchip images and Kiosk mode

The Lakka team just released the newest release candidate for version 2.1 including support for the Allwinner boards and boards with Rockchip. Also very interesting feature is the new kiosk mode, which prevents users from changing settings. From their blog post:

Lakka 2.1 RC6 is available for download. It’s a very important update that brings support for a lot of new boards and fixes many compatibility issues.

You can download the builds from http://le.builds.lakka.tv

Changelog

  • Allwinner images: We now have completely new builds for Allwinner boards, based on the mainline kernel and u-boot. With this new project, we can support many new boards with very little efforts. Being based on a recent kernel increase compatibility with newer joypads and dongles. These new images will replace the a10, a20, H3 and Bananapi images.
  • OdroidXU4 update: A kernel and u-boot update fixes the eMMC boot. It also improves TV detection and adds more resolutions. Special thanks to Hardkernel for gifting an XU4 and the new eMMC modules.
  • Kiosk mode: Enabling the kiosk mode will prevent users to access the settings. You can setup a password to disable the kiosk mode. This work is provided by Brunnis.
  • New Rockchip Images for the Tinkerboard, ROCK64 and MiQi boards, using the latest 4.4.96 LTS kernel and mainline 2017.11 u-boot, provided by Ntemis. With future plans to switch to mainline v4.14 LTS.
  • Parallel-N64 emulator with multithreaded Angrylion.
  • Scanning for Gamecube CDs.
  • Minor UI fixes.
  • Core updates.

Known issues

  • DualShock 4 input bugs on some controllers
  • Keyboard input bug on Parallel-N64 on PC
  • Parallel-N64 crashes on PC 32bit
  • Animated background and audio issues in Shared Context mode (with Dolphin)
  • Typing Wi-Fi password with a keyboard on RPi is broken, use a joypad instead

Future plans

  • An Allwinner 64bit project

Installing or upgrading

You can upgrade from Lakka 2.0 or 2.1 by dropping the img.gz into the Update folder and rebooting.

Lakka 2.1 RC5 released with improved Dolphin support and experimental ASUS TinkerBoard support

The Lakka team released their newest release candidate RC5 with many improvements for Gamecube fans and users of the Asus TinkerBoard. Directly from their blog post:

We are proud to announce the release of Lakka 2.1 RC5!

This version required a lot of teamwork. We merged in LibreELEC 8.2 Beta changes, updated RetroArch, and updated all the emulators and other libretro cores.

Ntemis added support for some Rockchip boards, including the ASUS Tinkerboard. These new images are still experimental.

You can download the builds from http://le.builds.lakka.tv

Changelog

  • LibreELEC 8.2 Bêta merged
    • Kernel updates for PC, RPi and more
    • New wifi drivers and fixes
    • SAMBA 4
    • RPi firmware updates
    • Switch back to OpenSSL
  • RetroArch updated to 1.6.7
    • RetroArch is now able to run Dolphin without having to manually switch to shared context
    • Scanner fixes
    • Favorites ROMs tab
    • UI Performance improvements
    • Playlist entries can be renamed
    • Updated translations
    • Countless minor fixes
  • All the libretro cores updated to their latest version. A few notable changes:
    • Important Atari 800 improvements
    • Important Dolphin update, improved performance
    • Reicast now builds for i386 and ARM (but still unable to run ROMs)
    • SameBoy fixed
    • FB Alpha update
    • Important Beetle-PSX update
    • New game engine by Rob Loach: ChaiGame
    • Important Citra update
    • Nestopia fixed
  • New Rockchip based boards supported (experimental)
    • ASUS TinkerBoard
    • MiQi
    • ROCK64
    • RK3328

Known issues

  • DualShock 4 input bugs on some controllers
  • Keyboard input bug on Parallel-N64 on PC
  • Parallel-N64 crashes on PC 32bit
  • Animated background and audio issues in Shared Context mode (with Dolphin)
  • Typing Wi-Fi password with a keyboard on RPi is broken, use a joypad instead

Future plans

  • Merge all Allwinner projects (A10, A20, BananaPi, OrangePi) into a single project
  • Switch to the open source GPU driver on Raspberry Pi
  • DragonBoard port

Installing or upgrading

You can upgrade from Lakka 2.0 or 2.1 by dropping the img.gz into the Update folder and rebooting.

Source:  Lakka team log post

 

Retroarch – How to add or play games?

Even though Retroarch is a really great frontend for emulators using libretro API, it can be a bit confusing for beginners to get started and play a game as it is not a simple File->Open as most people are used to from other (standalone) emulators. At least it was for me, until I figured it out. Hence a very quick tutorial on how to

Play a game instantly with Retroarch

Once you got Retroarch installed on your system (this might be worth another article) and started it up, you look at its frontend. By default this is XMB which looks similar to the Playstation 3 (PS3) interface with horizontal and vertical aligned menus. To load a game from your device, which needs to be supported by Retroarch obviously, go to

  • Main Menu
  • Load Content
  • / (3rd item, depends on the Operating system you are using (eg. Windows, Linux, OS X, …..)
  • Then browse to the directory where your game is located and select it
  • if the game is zipped, select Load Archive
  • If the filetype is not yet associated with a core, the you can select the core here. Give it a try, which one works best on your system. (If a core is already associated, the game starts immediately.)
  • Now the game should start

Load and scan your game library

Probably the preferred option of everyone is to scan the whole library and then easy select the games from each of the systems available. Including a nice boxart.

How to do this? Lets have a look.

Preparation: In my experience it works best, if you store all your roms within folders separate by systems: So have a SNES, NES, Gameboy, … folders with each of the games in it.

Steps to scan a folder:

  • Go to “Import content” (the + sign)
  • Scan Directory
  • Browse to the folder you like to scan.
  • Once in the folder, select “Scan This directory”
  • Depending on the number of roms within the directory to scan this can take quite some time…. Retroarch shows the progress in the bottom left corner.

Once finished, a new icon with the system(s) scanned shows up on the right hand side on the horizontal menu axis. Go there and select the game you like to play. Have fun.

Hope this helps some newcomer. Questions, comments or any feedback in general is very welcome.

 

Upgrading OpenELEC to LibreELEC: check size failed error

Not directly a gaming topic, but one or the other might use OpenELEC, resp. LibreELEC now. When I tried to upgrade to the latest LibreELEC I got a “check size failed” error message, and the upgrade failed.

Background: OpenELEC used a small FAT16 partition (128mb?) as the system partition which is now to small for the new versions, hence the size check fails.

Solution: You have to increase the partition size of the system partition. I tried to use GParted unter Linux which is an excellent tool, but failed on this exercise due to missing support of FAT partition being smaller then 256mb in the library used (libparted).

Workaround:
– Use any partition tool you like; I used an Ubuntu live disk and used GParted, but I remember Parition Magic from my windows time as example
– decrease your data partition (2nd) to get some additional storage before your data parition, right after the SYSTEM partition (1st)
– copy the content of the system partition to a backup storage (like USB stick, SD card, whatever)
– delete the system partition
– create a new primary partition with 512mb (or more)
– label it “SYSTEM”
– and format it with EXT4 (thats what I did)
– Copy the content of your backup storage bak to the system partition
– Reboot

Hope this helps.

Joe

(migrated tutorial from phpBB)