Homebrew Official Retroarch WiiU (wip.)

september796 · Apr 26, 2020

Awesome discover! This workaround should be added to the original post.
I don't have my wii u right now to check it out but I'll definitely get rid of those folders (info and media/assets). Load speed has always been a big issue and I couldn't care less about losing the xmb theme.
One thing though, deleting the assets folder will turn the menu into a white screen, right? so how could we get back to the default theme? the one that the Wii's RA has.

depaul · Apr 26, 2020

september796 said:
Awesome discover! This workaround should be added to the original post.
I don't have my wii u right now to check it out but I'll definitely get rid of those folders (info and media/assets). Load speed has always been a big issue and I couldn't care less about losing the xmb theme.
One thing though, deleting the assets folder will turn the menu into a white screen, right? so how could we get back to the default theme? the one that the Wii's RA has.

https://ibb.co/g67rPWT
I am using Ozone theme and it still looks very good and practical despite missing icons.

But for playlists I think they will make loading times slower.

cugel · Apr 26, 2020

Also I don't think you need assets for the rgui menu.

ChiefReginod · Apr 26, 2020

Rgui seems unaffected by the assets folder removal. I don't know if anything is loaded in the background if they're there, but load times appeared the same with or without them.

For the other menu drivers I wonder if there's some way we could reduce the assets down to the bare minimum so they don't take as long to load? Or at least remove the icon entries entirely so they don't show the distorted squares?

jacobsson · Apr 28, 2020

Hi! I'm attempting to make a mod for wiiu retroarch with the ambition to make it see the internally formatted WiiU hdd (not everyone wants to rely on SD cards), but I can't for the life of me understand what's going wrong when trying to build from source (w/o changes).

I followed these instructions: https://docs.libretro.com/compilation/wiiu/
I get all of these "undefined reference" errors when trying to link the libretro_wiiu.a (in my root folder) -> libretro_wiiu.rpx.

Maybe I'm too stupid to understand the instructions, if anyone have some pointers I'm all ears!

EDIT: Now I'm really confused finding this file: retroarch\objs\wiiu\retroarch_wiiu.rpx.elf

depaul · Apr 28, 2020

jacobsson said:
Hi! I'm attempting to make a mod for wiiu retroarch with the ambition to make it see the internally formatted WiiU hdd (not everyone wants to rely on SD cards), but I can't for the life of me understand what's going wrong when trying to build from source (w/o changes).

I followed these instructions: https://docs.libretro.com/compilation/wiiu/
I get all of these "undefined reference" errors when trying to link the libretro_wiiu.a (in my root folder) -> libretro_wiiu.rpx.

Maybe I'm too stupid to understand the instructions, if anyone have some pointers I'm all ears!

EDIT: Now I'm really confused finding this file: retroarch\objs\wiiu\retroarch_wiiu.rpx.elf

Great idea and great project.
But just for information : no dev could use the Wii U formatted HDD for Retroarch so far... So you might be the first trying.

Devs succeeded in using FAT32 formatted HDD for Retroarch, with Mocha FAT32 CFW. It makes your FAT32 HDD act as the WiiU SD interface.

jacobsson · Apr 28, 2020

depaul said:
Great idea and great project.
But just for information : no dev could use the Wii U formatted HDD for Retroarch so far... So you might be the first trying.

Devs succeeded in using FAT32 formatted HDD for Retroarch, with Mocha FAT32 CFW. It makes your FAT32 HDD act as the WiiU SD interface.

We do have homebrew like ftpiiu everywhere that browses the wiiu filesystem just fine. Is there a known reason specific to retroarch that makes this a problem?

If so, you would save me from wasting my time, I eagerly await your response =)
Thanks man!

Incure · Apr 28, 2020

depaul said:
Great idea and great project.
But just for information : no dev could use the Wii U formatted HDD for Retroarch so far... So you might be the first trying.

Devs succeeded in using FAT32 formatted HDD for Retroarch, with Mocha FAT32 CFW. It makes your FAT32 HDD act as the WiiU SD interface.

Don't forget you can use a FAT32 HDD in combination with a Wii U drive (with USB Y split cables). I use the FAT32 HDD for USB loading Wii games but also for RetroArch which can access this drive when you set the directories in the options. My roms are stored on this drive.

Please note that because of the loading speed issues, I tested the USB drive for loading everything for RetroArch but it made everything much slower. The USB drive should be the faster device, so it might be a driver speed problem and using Mocha to let the drive act as an SD makes it faster. Or who knows finding a way for using the Wii U formatted drive will make it faster, but be aware that you need to FTP the RetroArch files to it because the drive isn't readable from a PC.

pedrobonfim · Apr 28, 2020

Does anyone know if the Nintendo 64 emulator works?

depaul · Apr 28, 2020

@jacobsson You're right about ftpiiu sorry I don't have technical details just that Retroarch devs have always been using SD for cores and roms.

@pedrobonfim Retroarch WiiU doesn't support N64 better use WiiU VC injection

pedrobonfim · Apr 28, 2020

depaul said:
@pedrobonfim Retroarch WiiU doesn't support N64 better use WiiU VC injection

Tks, I Try converting Diddy Kong Racing but this game not work in VC Injection

.

depaul · Apr 28, 2020

pedrobonfim said:
Tks, I Try converting Diddy Kong Racing but this game not work in VC Injection .

Try using this tool
https://gbatemp.net/threads/release-phacoxs-injector-nes-snes-n64-gba-nds-for-wii-u.554521/

Edit: as you said this game doesn't work using injection. You can try vWii emulators Wii64 or Not64.

ChiefReginod · Apr 28, 2020

I've been playing Mike Tyson's Punch-Out on the gamepad and it actually feels pretty responsive with Run-Ahead enabled. I can dodge Sandman and Tyson's uppercuts with some consistency. I could probably even beat it if I was up to practice. Amazing that this is even possible.

Quick question... has anyone had any luck turning the gamepad screen off so it only displays on the TV? It feels a bit wasteful to leave it on if I'm just playing n the TV with the Pro controller. I've tried holding the gamepad power button for a while and it does go off then, but then the system itself powers off after a few minutes.

EDI: Ok, I feel kind of stupid now. You can turn the gamepad display off from the Home menu before launching. The only setting I had to change in RetroArch to make switching back and forth seamless was Input > Menu Controls > All Users Control Menu > On. That way I can change the Port 1 bindings to whichever controller I'm actually using regardless of which RetroArch sees as controller 1.

MikaDubbz · Apr 28, 2020

pedrobonfim said:
Tks, I Try converting Diddy Kong Racing but this game not work in VC Injection .

Use Wii 64 Rice with overclock (sign_c2w_patcher) game runs great there. If you install it properly you can still play with with your Wii U pro controllers and the gamepad as well.

QuarkTheAwesome · Apr 29, 2020

jacobsson said:
Hi! I'm attempting to make a mod for wiiu retroarch with the ambition to make it see the internally formatted WiiU hdd (not everyone wants to rely on SD cards), but I can't for the life of me understand what's going wrong when trying to build from source (w/o changes).

I followed these instructions: https://docs.libretro.com/compilation/wiiu/
I get all of these "undefined reference" errors when trying to link the libretro_wiiu.a (in my root folder) -> libretro_wiiu.rpx.

Maybe I'm too stupid to understand the instructions, if anyone have some pointers I'm all ears!

EDIT: Now I'm really confused finding this file: retroarch\objs\wiiu\retroarch_wiiu.rpx.elf

I'm not sure if those instructions are up to date. Not sure how to interpret this post - you do have a libretro_wiiu.a? what particular errors are you getting?

jacobsson · Apr 29, 2020

QuarkTheAwesome said:
I'm not sure if those instructions are up to date. Not sure how to interpret this post - you do have a libretro_wiiu.a? what particular errors are you getting?

Hi Quark, thanks for replying!
Firstly, I'm sorry my confusion causes even more confusion but I have now manage to build cores now. I have some questions below if you have some time

Also, my error I meant to link this for the instructions in my prior reply:
https://libretro.readthedocs.io/en/latest/development/retroarch/compilation/wiiu/

Baseline
To clear things up:
Q1: Retroarch cannot be build/used as stand-alone app on the WiiU, i.e.
all cores is built with RA "bundled" into them, so when starting RA it has to have core loaded on as default in order to work?

Compiling cores
My plan was to make changes to retroarch and not a specific core, but since it's says to be statically linked that seem to change stuff.

This is how I managed to build my cores now (I fetched from the libretro-super-repo), (but it's easier to just download the compiled .a-files from wiiu nightlies instead):

Build a core within a core-folder such as libretro_snes9x2010: make platform="wiiu"
Rename the libretro_snes9x2010_wiiu.a -> libretro_wiiu.a and place it in the root of the project
Linking the libretro_wiiu.a to elf and rpx, from the root: make -f Makefile.wiiu
$Profit: Get a libretro_wiiu.elf or .rpx file

[Resolved] Error during step 3 making eld2rpl: too old GCC++:

make[1]: Entering directory '/home/my_user/projects/wiiu_RetroArch/wiiu/wut/elf2rpl'
g++ -c -o main.o main.cpp -O3 -Wall -std=c++14 -DNDEBUG -I.
g++.exe: error: unrecognized command line option '-std=c++14'
make[1]: *** [Makefile:24: main.o] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory '/home/my_user/projects/wiiu_RetroArch/wiiu/wut/elf2rpl'
make: *** [Makefile.wiiu:308: wiiu/wut/elf2rpl/elf2rpl.exe] Error 2
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
File 'elf2rpl.exe' does not exist.
File 'main.o' does not exist.
Must remake target 'main.o'.
g++ -c -o main.o main.cpp -O3 -Wall -std=c++14 -DNDEBUG -I.
g++.exe: error: unrecognized command line option '-std=c++14'

The makefile of elf2prl wants c++14 but my GCC++ 4.8.2 is too old for that.
Updated my old GCC++ 4.8.2 to 8.1.0 (download here and replace your C:\devkitPro\msys2\mingw64
and check that you've added the environmental path correctly, e.g: C:\devkitPro\msys2\mingw64\bin).

Result: Success
I will try to attempt my mod during this week. I'll post my progress here of course!

depaul · Apr 30, 2020

Congratulation @jacobsson. Good luck with this interesting idea! If it works I might move all my Retroarch files to Wii U HDD via FTP.

Just I believe there is some difficulties regarding encryption if you install to HDD, unlike SD card.

Maybe we could use the same principle as injection? i.e Convert Cores .rpx + Roms directory into WUP installable format? and then install everything to HDD with WUP installer..?

Good luck!

jacobsson · Apr 30, 2020

depaul said:
Congratulation @jacobsson. Good luck with this interesting idea! If it works I might move all my Retroarch files to Wii U HDD via FTP.

Just I believe there is some difficulties regarding encryption if you install to HDD, unlike SD card.

Maybe we could use the same principle as injection? i.e Convert Cores .rpx + Roms directory into WUP installable format? and then install everything to HDD with WUP installer..?

Good luck!

Thanks and I appreciate your idea, it's certainly a must for end-user packaging!
I just want to say that I'm new when it comes to C/C++ and WiiU-hombrewing so just don't have too high expectations of me

Thanks for the support , I'll keep you updated!

QuarkTheAwesome · May 2, 2020

jacobsson said:
Baseline
To clear things up:
Q1: Retroarch cannot be build/used as stand-alone app on the WiiU, i.e.
all cores is built with RA "bundled" into them, so when starting RA it has to have core loaded on as default in order to work?

Correct. Instead of having an app that's "just RetroArch" which loads cores into it, every core also has a full copy of RetroArch linked in. So snes9x_2010.rpx has the menus, overlay drivers, music player, etc. as well as snes9x. On PC, that file would only have snes9x in it.

RetroArch wiiu can technically run standalone - this is called a salamander build - but all that version does is load up the last used core with no menus or the like, and most of the code is very different. Judicious #ifdefs, woo.

jacobsson said:
The makefile of elf2prl wants c++14 but my GCC++ 4.8.2 is too old for that.
Updated my old GCC++ 4.8.2 to 8.1.0 (download here and replace C:\dev-64\mingw64\).

Glad you figured that out! I'll make a note of it for when I look at doing some toolchain upgrades.

ShadowOne333 · May 2, 2020

@QuarkTheAwesome I was wondering if you could help me out with a commit I made recently.
Here's the commit:
https://github.com/libretro/RetroArch/commit/34d3641d0a61f486035abf7656ef2c2601603546

Basically it "fixes" the text parsing in the meta.xml file by removing the whole DOCTYPE line.
However, the only drawback of doing that is that the XML file won't get the "version" string properly.
But if I leave the DOCTYPE line in, NOTHING gets parsed when you open RA on the WiiU's Homebrew Launcher.

So with the changes I did, the RA info is now parsed, with only the "version" string being a dummy.

I was wondering if you could perhaps find a more elegant so,ution to this.
One that parses the proper info I added, but also adds a proper version string on each buildbot compilation.

Homebrew Official Retroarch WiiU (wip.)

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