Santa Claus exists!

Proof: A brand NEW Christmas Beta released, for all platforms!

Well, let's make this post simple and clear.
We are in the final stretch for the next stable version.
This time, it's not only about the 3B+ compatibility, it's more about the next release for all.

Unfortunately, bumping our linux kernel to achieve the 3B+ compatibility and provide more features had some unexpected side effects.
The most unenjoyable is the inability to update from the latest stable (18.07.13) to the new release.

Yes I know, it was still possible using the double-jump described in the original post.
However, it was really risky and we cannot evaluate how many Recalbox would die trying to reach the promised lands
So... we decided to make everyone restarting from a fresh install. From times to times, restarting from scratch is a very good idea.

Keep in mind this is still a beta version, with some bugs yet to fix, and maybe not the last.
Some little things are still avaiting internal validations, so you can expect even more in next beta / final release.
Don't hesitate to report bugs, anomalies, mis-behaviors, etc. here. You can also discuss with our admins/developers on Discord.

Ah... one last thing: DO NOT UPDATE THIS VERSION, EVEN IF YOU GET AN UPDATE POPUP! Or Santa Claus will know you've been a naughty boy/girl...
Disable updates in the appropriate menu. Until the final release is available, NO UPDATE AT ALL.

Images links:

Rasberry Pi:

• Pi 3B & 3B+ : https://mega.nz/#!rRwjFAiI!QgOv3lpiFNvPgm-nbpuWeod-oIUHipIAyrgLTePp53Q
• Pi 2 : https://mega.nz/#!SdoT1QIR!J4c8BL8uLfe8UWRle2vaJVi5GrLyc9R-4gXXxCbwevM
• Pi 0 & 1 : https://mega.nz/#!XcgHxSZA!AsMq4YEJYuICASIb51lWKbYMRoGWyv8GFjWqhOTgPow

Odroids:

• C2 : https://mega.nz/#!aAhz0CQC!znHmIJDpyGBUAohOvmSBGqdo8-QWIBT6_vgqp-XhN24
• XU4(Q) : https://mega.nz/#!3A5ASa5J!aRGNnvRbbUkw-JkIJT9UBAgemw4KT78H3e1HG8AW1y8

PC:

• 32bits: https://mega.nz/#!HVhCiYyR!4_suaF8Nn6ZOcz-T6IuE5SwANZHTzgMaqkG5oGYq9Tg
• 64bits: https://mega.nz/#!uBwRDSDa!lafdwsD1YyCOQuNGwppL1oSwQSVwVUW5s2bNrBnMvrU

Merry Christmas and Happy new Recalbox!

---

Known issues

• Roms not load on Dreamcast
• Scrap broken

**To those who have difficulties to save Recalbox configuration on external devices, please can you post more information:

• What is not saved?
• Configured from the Webmanager or from EmulationStation (or both)?
• What's the file format of your external device (Fat32, exFat, other, ...)?**

A ceux qui ont des difficulté à sauver la configuration de Recalbox sur les disques/clefs externes, pouvez vous donner des informations plus précises:

• Quelle config n'est pas sauvée?
• Configuré par le Webmanager ou par EmulationStation (ou les deux) ?
• Quel est le système de fichier du périphérique USB utilisé (Fat32, exFat, autre, ...)?

Changelog (from 18.07.13 until now):

• KODI bumped to 17.6
• Raspberry Pi3b+ and CM3 support
• Joypads management updated, mostly impacting joypads advertising as a complete keyboard. You have to reconfigure your pad if it is acting strangely
• Preconfigured gamepads file rewritten
• arcade GPIO driver upgraded: now support I2C and GPIO recopnfiguring from the command line
• x86 now requires a CPU that can handle at least SSE and SS2
• x86: add support for newer AMD GPU
• fix PS3/PS4 pads not working
• fix kodi configgen
• bump rpi kernel + firmware
• gpio arcadedriver works again
• fix bug on bluetooth discover
• Add Capcom RB video intro
• Bump kodi.plugin.video.youtube to 6.2.2
• Add support for Mayflash GameCube adapter
• ES: better cyrillic display
• Add ipega 9055 udev rule
• New upgrade procedure to prepare for the future
• ES: fix scraped folders display
• ES: improve image loading
• ES: now automatically reboots once the upgrade is ready
• Atari 8 Bits: Added Atari 800 and Atari 5200 support - Thanks to dubbows!
• MSX: Fixed Bluemsx core
• Add 7z file support for many libretro cores
• Docker build unified
• "overlays" folder and roms subfolders automatically created
• Fix bug on bluetooth discover
• ES: fix pads buttons detection and configuration
• Fix bluetooth detection on Odroid XU4
• Update version of Theodore core
• Add homebrew game Mission: Liftoff (Theodore)
• Fix BT recovery on XU4
• advmame: add overlay possibility
• MAME: Added mame2003-plus libretro core. A MAME078 version with added games support plus many fixes and improvements.
• PokeMini: Add Pokémon Mini support
• FreeIntv: Add Mattel Intellivision support
• FreeChaF: Add Fairchild Channel F support
• Add Atari Jaguar on x86(_64) platforms
• SNES9X: Add Satellaview and SuFami Turbo as own systems
• Neo Geo CD: Added support with fbalpha emulator
• Bump FBA libretro to latest version => Romset 0.2.97.44
• Bump AtariST emulator to december 2018 version

---

The following block of the original post is still true, except tou cannot upgrade

---

REMINDER / DISCLAIMER

This what we expect from you:

• never use your main SD/USB stick for testing purpose (unless you're feeling very confident and know much about Recalbox)
• know the very basics of Linux:
  • remount partitions as RW
  • connect through SSH, browse through the filesystem, edit files, understand for example what cd ~/configs/retroarchmeans
• can run commands on demand
• can properly use the markdown syntax for reporting on the forum
• understand that we can software-brick your Recalbox and you don't mind because it just needs a format + install
• know how to make a support archive
• you MUST speak english
• make sure you made all the required backups

Whatever happens to your Recalbox, it's for the good sake of everyone, so just don't blame me if something ever fails.

What's this all about ?

This update is a major system upgrade for all boards (pi, PC, odroid):

• new upgrade procedure
• pi3b+ support
• KODI 17.6
• the mk arcade gpio driver is configurable, and can be used with I2C. I'll give specific infos for people who wish until I definitely add some doc in the recalbox.conf
• updated kernels for all pi and x86 (which mean a much better hardware support for PC). Odroids are a different story (the C2 kernel is hardly maintained, the XU4 had a big kernel upgrade, but it's not yet part of Recalbox)
• unified buttons detection between SDL2, Retroarch and Kodi. This is extremly important : your pad may not fully work once you've updated, emulators/kodi may also crash. Just remap in ES
• part of the next stable release (the correpsonding changes are listed below the [Unreleased] tag in the changelog. Everything above is part of the system upgrade)
• and many many many other small details which are too long to list

---

The following block of the original post is no longuer required and is kept for archive purpose

---

So what now?

The upgrade is done in 2 steps:

1. upgrade to a branch which has the new upgrade process
2. upgrade to the version

REMAP YOUR GAMEPAD

After upgrade, please remap your gamepad, and post your archive support. Not remapping your pad will mostly result into emulators/kodi crashing

Known issues

• virtual keyboard can not appear at first time in ES. Leave the screen, and try again
• Some 8bitdo pads trigger both an axis and a button on L2/R2. So far the button was returned first, now it's the axis. Retroarch may not like it ... If this happens, ping me
• some AMD GPU can have a glitched output, should be fixed in a coming release
• so far, couldn't add the amdgpu driver (see this link for the GPU list), i'll try to fix this later
• no overclock settings for pi3b+, so don't fool around yet with it
• the FANon my GTX 750 runs at full speed all the time. Good thing to kick dust, but not to play at night when the wife and kids are sleeping

Time to thril

You need to edit your recalbox.conf and set updates.type to:
1. First update with: https://review-master-slwsz0-archive-review-prod.recalbox.com
2. Then update with https://review-507-bump-b-0jn0c0-archive-review-prod.recalbox.com

A pi3 SD card works on a Pi3b+. Though, I know some people don't have a pi3 anymore, so there is a direct link at the bottom of this post. There is no need to make any upgrade on this img, but still, set the updates type to the 2nd link to get updates during the beta. If you update while on the stable branch, you'll simply brick your Recalbox. Now you're warned. I'm pretty sure some smart @$$ will spread this image forgetting its beta state, those people are making a big mistake.

What you should test

1. The upgrade procedure is crucial. I had to change quite some stuff in it, it's the only warp to the next Recalbox generation, so to say
2. Use Recalbox "as usual" : with your USB key NAS share etc ... Just make sure you made some backups
3. xbox and PS pads feedback is welcome
4. Kodi and kodi pad autoconfiguration

The most important thing is to use this image "as usual". I just couldn't test everything by myself , that's why I made this open beta.

Thank you testers, and let the beta begin!

Beware!

Once the two-pass update process has completed, or once the direct image has been flashed, you must either disable updates in the appropriate menu or set the >updates.type to https://review-507-bump-b-0jn0c0-archive-review-prod.recalbox.com in recalbox.conf.
Failing to do so and running the default update will brick your Recalbox!

Time was missinf for the blog post ... This is mainly a fix release :

• Bump desmume to desmume2015
• fix: SELECT as hotkey sometimes messy with arcade
• ES: Arcade roms fullname in Netplay GUID
• ES: No game launch if core doesn't match
• ES: Game not listed in lobby if password protected
• ES: remove netplay popup to prevent some crash
• Wifi: options were not saved with nfs cifs or configurations - fixed
• Daphne: joystick improvements / bug corrections
• N64 rice: fix blank screen
• N64 GlideN64 and other plugins: also fix blank screen
• pifba: make sure it's only available for systems supporting it
• Set the recalbox tag for netplay elsewhere

@tofbx le mieux est que ce soit moi qui réponde à ce genre de sujet, puisque qu'il n'y a que moi qui connaisse tous les tenants et aboutissants de cette histoire de 3b+. Je l'ai répété bien 100 fois depuis le début ... Allons pour la 101-eme :

• Il faut mettre à jour le kernel de recalbox
• Pour mettre à jour le kernel de la Recalbox, il faut changer le processus de maj de Recalbox
• Si on ne met pas à jour le.processus de maj de recalbox, on brick toutes les recalbox lors d'un upgrade

Le 3e point n'a rien de rejouissant hein ? Je n'ai pas envie de me faire insulter par un demi-million d'utilisateurs de recalbox, je pense que tu peux le comprendre ... Sinon, autant que je rende mon tablier et me mette à la poterie ou la faïence.

Maintenant que le contexte est expliqué, on a quoi comme solutions ?

• Le nouveau process de muse à jour est écrit. Il doit etre parfait (participe passé, pas adjectif), testé de long en large parce que le jour où il est déployé, j'aimerais autant qu'il marche sinon toutes les recalbox redteront surnle carreau sans pouvoir se maj
• L'autre problème c'est la mise en place de la maj qui supportera le 3b+ ... Elle est loin être anodine parce que c'est un chantier que j'ai commencé en Novembre, et qui concerne une mise à jour d'à peu près tout ce qui compose Recalbox. Il n'y a donc pas le pi de concerné, mais toutes les architectures actuellement supportées. Je pense même qu'on pourra suppirter la tinkerboardet la rock64. Donc ca représente une très longue phase de test pas encore commencée (à cause de cette histoire de maj)
• Il faut, au final, que l'infrastructure de maj qu'on a faite soit capable de dire "tu n'es pas à la version qui a la maj du script, je ne te propose pas la dernière version". Et c'est aussi là que ca coince : le seul capable de faire la maj sur la config web impactée n'a pas le temps (ca fait juste 1 mois que je réclame)
• L'équipe Recalbox a pu tester la version pour 3b+ qui marche parfaitement sauf la psp. Une broutille ...

Reste la dernière question qu'on me pose tout le temps : "mais pk tu ne diffuses pas cette version de Recalbox ?" Simple :

• Je ne travaille pas dessus en ce moment, donc ne la maintiens pas
• Elle passerait par un circuit de bidouillage pour les maj
• Elle n'est pas finalisée
• J'en fais déjà bien assez sur Recalbox (plusieurs heures par jour hein ... Entre le support, le dev, et l'animation de l'équipe Recalbox, je crois qu'aucun d'entre vous ne realise que passer facile 5h par jour dessus tout en ayant un boulot et des enfants, c'est ultra chronophage)

À l'égard de TOUS ces points, je ne vois aucun intérêt à diffuser une image beta, et suis incapable de te donner une date. Pas pour vous énerver hein, juste parce que je ne maitrise pas le temps libre des autres membres de la.team. ils ont une vie, font leur choix, je n'interviens pas dedans pour dire "mec, t'as 4 jours pour me finaliser l'infra web pour la grose maj" ...

Voilà, fin du débat, tant pis si ca ne vous plaît pas.

@dragu Thank you for you kind words !

After all the time we spent on that version, all the work @digitaLumberjack has done to prepare the releases after 4.1, everything we've done that is not purely emulation related (moving from github to gitlab, setting up Continuous Integration / Continuous Deployment, set up test branches, relieve digi from the merging process, test test test and test ...), make sure the community keeps its trust in us when we say we're not dead and we're still actively working on 4.1 (the release was a blast by the way, so many people migrated in a short time), and finally, spend countless hours of support during the 3 weeks following the release of 4.1 ...

Now things are so much easier since we release every few weeks ^^ less changes, bugs are detected much faster, it's a good thing

One thing that you can't know, is that the Recalbox team is a great team. We hardly have any fights (well, they hardly have any fight with anyone but me :D), we all trust each other, and we're all really glad to work in this team for this project we do love

Yo !

New release today, I won't list the details here, but hurry and head over to the blog for the general info and here for more details :)!

For impatient people, have a look at https://youtu.be/-TtzRFInKqc for the new features

Edit: the video is not telling everything about the update, do read the blog

Hey merry retrogamers !

Time for a new upgrade ! And what an upgrade !!!

Head over to the blog to know all about it !

@gameboy What a rude way to welcome me back from my holidays ...

Whether you hate me or not ... well ... let it be !

As the forum states on the 1st page: we're working on pi3b+! You may not believe it, but in real, this is ready since ... May, or maybe june I'd say, but only for the recalbox team. But as it's been explained numerous times, there were a few prerequisites:

• new upgrade procedure: this one too is ready for a long time. But as this is EXTREMLY critical, it has to be throuroughly tested, I'll talk again about this point later, and it must go along with the next point
• new infra structure deployment to make sure people won't make a "too big" upgrade that will break their Recalbox. This is ready since June too
• gather all this, prepare the upgrades, beta tests, deployments, upgrade URL for public testing: this could have been done before my holidays, but what's the point of starting an open beta if I can't manage bug reports because I'm on holidays ?

You've probably noticed there were 2 releases for the last month, which of course had an impact on the timetable for the open beta we were hoping to start sooner. Well, that's part of the game, we had to make a quick fix release, we (in that case it was solely me) make errors sometimes.

The open beta with pi3b+ should start in the coming days I hope (less than a week for sure, depends on the time I have).

Now regarding the overall tone of your last posts ... it's not this way you will get people's sympathy, nor will you motivate the Recalbox team to keep spending countless hours every week. We get tens of messages everyday asking us to be pi3b+ compatible. Even 2h after the pi3b+ release, some people were already asking us if Recalbox was compatible (whereas even raspbian WAS NOT yet compatible) ... Jesus Christ ... People's impatience and ungratefulness' only limit is becoming even bigger than the universe itself ...

Now you're a grown up, you make your decisions, you can do whatever you wish on your pi3(b+), you can hate me as much as you want (do I assume correctly that you're the one who opened the issue on gitlab?). Butthis is in no way a reason to tolerate your behaviour on this forum, so please mind your language, once for all.

@jackalpret as you definitely have absolutely no understanding of what a few lines of code + merging this into the recalbox version of ES + adding VLC to recalbox

Do you know how often we've seen people just copying/pasting this code into our source code, making a pull request and when we ask them how they tested it they just answer "i have no idea of what i have done, i just copied/pasted and pushed it, i don't understand a single line of what I've added, and i don't even know how to compile", we can't accept such a contribution.

fieldsofcows made some very amazing job to retropie's ES, it can't be backported to recalbox by just c/c. And anyway, we'd rather not include VLC.

So, yes, it is a problem. You need to :

• manage themes evolution
• manage fallback to pictures if no video exists
• resize the video and keep its aspect ratio
• thouroughly test
• take care of memory leaks

Please, just don't say "it's just a few lines of code" unless you're in IT and know C++ better than us Such a sentence is very irritating you know ...

Allez j'en profite pour raconter un peu l'histoire derrière les videos de splash ^^

Bon, le 2nd degré du bonhomme de neige en février avec la musique de Noël, ça a moyen plu ... Pour la petite histoire, on avai prévu une release vers Noel, mais pas eu le temps de nous en occuper, la video cependant était déjà prête. Et je n'ai pas voulu l'enlever pour la 18.02.09.

J'avais pensé depuis longtemps à un "détournement" de vidéos de boot de consoles pour Recalbox ... J'en ai parlé à notre Mister video @ian57 en lui demandant de me faire le boot de la SMS. Il me l'a faite en 1/2 journée à peine ... De là, on a épluché youtube pour voir les boot videos des consoles, on a fait un premier choix et tac : neo-geo, GB, N64, PSX, Dreamcast Avec volontairement une réso pas belle parce que bon, en 1080p tout lisse, ca ne le fait pas

Donc un grand merci à @ian57 qui a bien bossé là-dessus, c'est un truc que nous en interne avons eu beaucoup de plaisir à préparer

If it was dead, i wouldn't spend that much time on it, damn ...

So I know that from a user point of view, nothing new seems to be coming. But I can swear we're working pretty hard on our free time to release 4.1 in some good conditions. For example : you may not remember how our download servers were overloaded when we released 4.0.1, or 4.1 unstable ... So, working on this infrastructure is also part of recalbox, despite it doesn't sound as a shiny new feature

Pi0-w is working fine on our dev build (I did it myself, wanna know how ?). We have to take time now, and make the good steps so that we can fulfill our promise of releasing much more often. This will happen once 4.1 stable is released.

And we already started some pretty nice features for 4.1.x or 4.2, no idea yet what will be the next version revision.

1.5 an voire plus ? non ca ne fait meme pas 13 mois ...

@rob1 le rapport Lxh d'origine est préservé, le but n'est pas d'étendre l'image et la déformer

@rob1 mmhhhhhh ... Vu que je n'ai pas touché à Recalbox depuis que j'ai quitté, je ne sais pas si ca marche toujours, mais tente un n64.videomode=auto. Le mode auto (et ses variantes) devait justement devenir la norme mais ...

sinon, n64.videomode=default

ha, ma signature a été modifiée à l'insu de mon plein gré ... c'est qu'on s'en permet des choses ici ...

allez trêves de digressions, have fun avec les drivers nvidia moisis, qui sont l'apologie de l'obsolescence programmée (oui, les mecs dégagent régulièrement le support de certaines cartes pas si vieilles que ca, ce que ne fait pas nouveau ...)

@arkheno o/

@strodown o/

@lolodebordo Alors là j'applaudis, super audacieux ta façon de procéder ! Ce qui me fait sortir un peu de mon hibernation parce que tu mérites un vrai coup de main.

Alors, plein de petites remarques, mais une seule sera vraiment importante : je ne sais pas si tu as déjà fait joujou avec le web manager de recalbox, mais il est capable de lancer des roms. Pourquoi ? Parce que @sevenX et moi avions implanté un mini serveur web dans ES qui permet de lancer des roms justement !

Si tu as un linux sous la main, essaie echo -n "START|nes|BladeBuster (High Level Challenge).nes" | netcat -u recalbox.local 1337. Je détaille :

• START c'est la commande attendue, et la seule implantée actuellement
• | est le séparateur de commandes
• nes est le système tel que défini dans le répertoire des roms
• et enfin, le nom de la rom telle que visible depuis l'OS (ca prend en charge les chemins)

Comme c'est ES qui lance, ca résout 90% de tes problèmes dont celui expliqué par @voljega mais ca en introduit un autre : ca lance le python de base, pas ta copie. Donc il te faudra gérer la présence de emulatorlauncher un peu différemment, rien d'insurmontable.

Maintenant plein de petites remarques si tu me le permets :

• liste des roms : parse le es_systems.cfg pour obtenir les extensions supportées pour chaque système
• pas netcat/nc sur Recalbox, donc tu devras t'en remettre à python pour ca (tu peux le faire inline en une seule ligne)
• utilise recallog pour envoyer tes infos dans la log de recalbox, c'est plus sympa qu'un echo
• custom.sh est traité comme un script d'init, donc il reçoit le paramètre start ou stop à minima, ca serait bien de le gérer
• feature pour ta v2 : laisse tourner la démo genre 2 minutes, tu quittes l'émulateur (il y a déjà un peu de python capable de çà qui traine dans recalbox, avec les scripts de gestion des boutons GPIO genre https://gitlab.com/recalbox/recalbox/blob/master/board/recalbox/fsoverlay/recalbox/scripts/rpi-pin356-power.py#L124), et hop, on relance un nouvelle rom

Bon courage !

@barbudreadmon aucune idée vu que j'ai quitté le projet

@barbudreadmon nope, substring ne s'occupe plus de recalbox

Faut surtout s'assurer de non redondance avec les différents tmpfs créés.

Après pour en tester l'efficacité, simple : une recalbox blindée de fullsets avec un thème 1080p, et tentez de lancer de la psp, vpus serez rapidement fixés sur les performances de la gestion de la ram.