jzintv emulator for intellivision

[MarcoTurconi]

Hello,

I would like to use recalbox to build a complete intellivision emulator.
I already have che "Ultimate PC Interface for Classic Consoles" to connect the original controllers, and I also have 2 spare original controllers.

Recallbox does support an intellivision emulator, freeintv, but this emulator is not the best: it does not support the original controllers and some games really cannot be played with a modern joypad.

So, I'm asking: is it possible to add support for jzintv emulator? Is it already planned?

Thank you.

[Zing]

@marcoturconi said in jzintv emulator for intellivision:

So, I'm asking: is it possible to add support for jzintv emulator? Is it already planned?

I believe there are no plans for that.
I don't know about this emulator, but researching quickly, I saw that there is no active development, and that there is no libretro core to integrate with Retroarch.
In Recalbox only open source emulators are added, and preferably libretro cores.

[MarcoTurconi]

@zing

Hi

The emulator is open source, license GNU Version 2.
The author sometimes adds some new features, mostly bugfixes. Last ones one year ago. The emulator is also used as a developing and debugging tool for now homebrew intellivision games, and it is somewhat the reference emulator for the intellivision.

But, yes, this emulator is not based on libretro, even though the author himself decleared he would be pleased if anyone would add libretro support, in this message (see intvnut posts):
https://forums.libretro.com/t/hi-ever-consider-jzintv-to-libretro/13295/5

I'm a professional developer, mainly java, but also c and c++ in the past, I could try to add libretro to it, but it is not a short and easy job for sure. Also the main problem is available time.

Maybe it's easyier to learn how to add it to recalbox; is there an updated guide on how to add new (non-libretro) emulators you can point me to?

Thank you.

[Zing]

@marcoturconi Recalbox does not allow an ordinary user to install anything, this goes against the idea of the project.

But, as you are a developer and are interested, as Recalbox has open source code, you can try to do this yourself, in the repository there are instructions for this:
https://gitlab.com/recalbox/recalbox

Please understand that the forum does not provide this kind of support, the forum is meant to support regular users with problems with Recalbox (and I wouldn't even be able to support it, I'm not a developer, and the developer team is small) .

[MarcoTurconi]

@zing

I will try, thank you.

[MarcoTurconi]

@marcoturconi
I managed to make it work in batocera, but it should be able to work inside recallbox too.
I tried with that because I had already installed it.
Basically I did the following steps in batocera (I'll write a more precise description on a forum there):

• downloaded compiled version of jzintv: jzintv-20200712-linux-x86-64-sdl1.zip from the official site
• unzipped those files inside the userdata directory
• added all missing libraries
• added all system missing libraries into a subdirectory
• patched the executable through patchelf (a linux tool to change the executable loader to the system library subdirectory I added before)
• made a launch shell script which sets all needed environment variables (LD_LIBRARY_PATH, SDL_NOMOUSE, etc...)
• copied /etc/emulationstation/es_systems.cfg to /userdata/system/configs/emulationstation/es_systems.cfg
• modified /userdata/system/configs/emulationstation/es_systems.cfg so that, for the intellivision, the new emulator to be used is my shell script

I confirm that the "ultimate interface" needed to use the original controllers works perfectly.

I configured the normal joypad used also for the other emulators to exit/reset/pause the intellivision games; so you use the standard joypad to select the game, then the original controllers to play, and the standard joypad to exit.