libretro / ludo

A libretro frontend written in golang

ludo

Ludo is a work in progress libretro frontend written in go.

It is able to launch most non GL libretro cores.

It works on OSX, Linux, Linux ARM and Windows. You can download releases here

Dependencies

• GLFW 3.3
• OpenGL >= 2.1
• OpenAL

On OSX

You can execute the following command and follow the instructions about exporting PKG_CONFIG

brew install openal-soft

On Debian or Ubuntu

sudo apt-get install libopenal-dev xorg-dev golang

On Raspbian

You need to enable the experimental VC4 OpenGL support (Full KMS) in raspi-config.

sudo apt-get install libopenal-dev xorg-dev

On Alpine / postmarketOS

sudo apk add musl-dev gcc openal-soft-dev libx11-dev libxcursor-dev libxrandr-dev libxinerama-dev libxi-dev mesa-dev

On Windows

Setup openal headers and dll in mingw-w64 include and lib folders.

Building

git clone --recursive https://github.com/libretro/ludo.git
cd ludo
go build

For more detailed build steps, please refer to our continuous delivery config.

Running

./ludo

ludo's Issues

Genesis Plus GX crashes on LoadGame

Some ROMs are not scanning, even when the checksums are in the DB

We get only 4 SuperGrafx ROMs in the playlist. There should be 5.

Missing atari800 on arm-neon-hf

These cores are not in the libretro buildbot.
They fail to build for arm-neon-hf various reasons.

ChaiLove blank screen?

Unsure why I'm getting a blank screen. It runs just fine, but the video is black....

> go-playthemall git:(master) ./go-playthemall -L ~/libretro-chailove/chailove_libretro.so ~/ChaiLove-FloppyBird/main.chai
2018/09/14 21:03:34 Can't load game database: open /Users/kivutar/libretro-database/rdb/: no such file or directory
[ChaiLove] Initializing ChaiLove
[ChaiLove] retro_load_game
[ChaiLove] [libretro] update_variables()
[ChaiLove] ChaiLove 0.26.0
[ChaiLove] [filesystem] Mounting /home/rob/Documents/ChaiLove-FloppyBird as /
[ChaiLove] [filesystem] Mounting /home/rob/.playthemall/system/ as libretro/system
[ChaiLove] [filesystem] Mounting /home/rob/.playthemall/savefiles/ as libretro/saves
[ChaiLove] [script] joystickreleased() Error: "Can not find object: joystickreleased" 
[ChaiLove] [script] mousereleased() Error: "Can not find object: mousereleased" 
[ChaiLove] [script] mousemoved() Error: "Can not find object: mousemoved" 
[ChaiLove] [script] keypressed() Error: "Can not find object: keypressed" 
[ChaiLove] [script] keyreleased() Error: "Can not find object: keyreleased" 
[ChaiLove] [script] exit() Warning: Error: "Can not find object: exit" 
[ChaiLove] [system] Version current:  0.26.0
[ChaiLove] [system] Version targeted: 0.24.0
[ChaiLove] [system] Version 0.26.0 > 0.24.0
[ChaiLove] [system] Version 0.26.0 !~= 0.24.0
[ChaiLove] [system] Version 0.26.0 ^= 0.24.0
[ChaiLove] retro_get_system_av_info
2018/09/14 21:03:34 [OpenAL]: Using 4 buffers of 4096 bytes.
[ChaiLove] retro_unload_game()
[ChaiLove] retro_deinit()
[ChaiLove] Attempting to destroy ChaiLove
[ChaiLove] Destroying ChaiLove
[ChaiLove] Destroyed ChaiLove

It works just fine with fceumm and megaman2.

git clone https://github.com/libretro/libretro-chailove.git ~/libretro-chailove
make -C ~/libretro-chailove
git clone https://github.com/RobLoach/ChaiLove-FloppyBird.git ~/ChaiLove-FloppyBird
go-playthemall -L ~/libretro-chailove/chailove_libretro.so ~/ChaiLove-FloppyBird/main.chai

BlueMSX core is running but not displaying anything on macOS

Hello, I have a Mac with macOS 10.14.2 (Mojave) and with an Intel HD Graphics 5000 with 1,5Gb of VRAM.

Premise

All the libretro cores I'm using have been downloaded by using RetroArch and its "Online updater" function; Then I have just changed the settings in Ludo to point the core folder to the same core folder of RetroArch.

I'm trying to play some old MSX games by using the BlueMSX core, and when I try to launch a game under RetroArch with BlueMSX core, I can see that it works properly.

My issue with Ludo

When I try to launch the same MSX game under Ludo, even if I can notice that BlueMSX core is running underneath and I can hear audio unfortunately I cannot see anything but a black screen. If I try to exit from the game and go back into ludo, I can do it successfully usually just once. The third time I try to load a MSX game, ludo crashes. Colecovision games are giving me the same behaviour and, if I'm not mistaken, they're also using BlueMSX core; Other emulation cores I've tried are working properly AFAIK.
I'm having this problem with both Ludo 0.3.1 and 0.3.2.

I'm attaching a partial copy of my console log: ludo.log

Video recording

I've also recorded this strange behaviour on video, here is the link to a unlisted YouTube video I've just taken:

https://youtu.be/K9rPOhuvWkc

P.S. : BTW Great work with Ludo. I'm sure that once you'll publish it officially, everyone will love it.

Faster font drawing

The current font lib doesn't use a font atlas, and drawing labels is super slow.

Natinusala was pointing that we could pass string to a shader that would take care of drawing a full sentence.

OpenGL Cores

Allow running OpenGL cores, like Mupen64.

Could use SDLArch as a model for how to set up tthe contexts: https://github.com/heuripedes/sdlarch

Controller Database

I see a whole bunch of controller mappings defined in /input....

Could this be a place to use GLFW Controller Database? Unsure what it would really accomplish that the definitions do right now, however.

Found SDL_GameControllerDB too, which has similar goals.

Input not working on PCE SuperGrafx

It's the only core affected

Fullscreen (F key) doesn't work on OSX with Retina screen

It's related to GLFW 3.2 not returning the right framebuffer size.
Should be fixed when switching to GLFW 3.3.

Implement screenshots

Implement savefiles

Implement saving game sram to the filesystem.

See content_save_ram_file and content_load_ram_file in RetroArch.

We need to improve the binding with:

/* Gets region of memory. */
RETRO_API void *retro_get_memory_data(unsigned id);
RETRO_API size_t retro_get_memory_size(unsigned id);

Better unit testing with github.com/petergtz/pegomock

Create a windows installer with nsis

Nsis can create windows installers from a .nsi script

We can integrate this with appveyor to get an installer generated on each commit.

Appveyor already has nsis installed in their containers.

Note: We may not need this if we pack the assets in the binary with gobindata. We can then distribute the .exe directly.

GLFW 3.3 Beta

Discussion about GLFW 3.3 Beta:
https://bit.ly/2nTqRQJ

It's not quite out yet.

When launching a second game, mednafen_psx resets the first game

Instead of running the second game, it runs the current game instead.

RDB scanner skips some entries

For example, Secret of Mana (France) in the SNES rdb.

(Menu) "Start Core" for non-content cores

Cores like ScummVM or Mr.Boom can be run without content. Once a Core is successfully loaded, cores that support no-content should be able to use "Start Core".

QA

1. Load ScummVM, or via the command line ./ludo -L scummvm_libretro.so
2. See that the ScummVM GUI pops up

Add popular joypad bindings for Linux

Predictable release

The Makefile currently downloads the latest cores from the libretro buildbot during the build.

These cores may be at some point in time buggy.

We need to find a way to always pull an exact version of these cores.

In Ludo, the user shouldn't be in charge of testing and choosing the right cores and core versions. We have to do it for them in a reliable way.

Allow navigating to all the drives on Windows

Windows is not like Linux where everything is under /.
There can be many drives, and if a user prefers to keep his ROMs somewhere out of C:\ he should be allowed to.
Find a clean and non intrusive way to navigate all the drives when on Windows.

GOReleaser

This looks like a pretty handy tool to bundle binaries:
https://github.com/goreleaser/goreleaser

Worth a shot for building and releasing it?

Reload tabs when scanning is finished

Mac OS X issues

Doesn’t work on Mac OS X Mojave,
Failed to find suitable pixel format

Use as a library

I'm new to libretro in general so this question might be misinformed or misplaced. It seems like a front-end is responsible for loading the core and interacting with the main program running within the core; with this in mind Is it possible to use ludo as an API to interact with a core programmatically? In the same way that gym-retro uses libretro

Prevent reset when launching the same game

Currently, while browsing playlists, if I launch the same game that is currently running, it will relaunch the game and lose the progress.

We should just resume the game instead.

Notify when the core is not found

Playlists have default cores.

If the core dir is empty, Ludo will crash.

Instead of this, check if the core exists at the right path, and display an error message, and don't start the core.

open32AL.dll missing when launching on Win7

Core options are buggy

How to reproduce:

Launch a gambatte game, then launch a FBA game.

Go to the core options, you will see the core options of gambatte.

Audio Callback

https://github.com/libretro/go-nanoarch/compare/kivutar-audio-callback

Pitch bug when launching a second game

When launching a NES game, followed by a SNES game:

The pitch is wrong.

It doesn't happen all the time.

Ubuntu 18.04 fullscreen wrong Resolution

If I set fullscreen on Ubuntu 18.04 Bionic I only get a wrong resolution of 1280x720

Better flags with github.com/jessevdk/go-flags

This library allows defining long and short flags.

It also displays a very nice usage.

Switch to a better playlist format

We're currently using the old playlist format from RetroArch.
RetroArch now supports a new extensible JSON format.

Switching to the new JSON format has been considered, but would be painful because of the closing ] at the end of the file, preventing us to append easily. We would have to keep all of the playlists into memory, which may be a lot of memory.

Something like CSV would be a good compromise.

Inject a quick menu when launching playlist entries

This way, when the user toggles the menu after launching a game, he will have access to savestates and all.

And fast forward the animations, to not have a display bug.

Publish releases on Snap or Flatpak

It would be wonderful if you could set this up as a snap or a flatpak application. It would help with making it easier to test and use on different distributions on Linux. Really great looking project btw 👍

Black screen on OSX Mojave

Since the update to 10.14, the app displays a black screen until we move it.

Related to:

glfw/glfw#1334

Vsync issue (high speed menu) on Windows

@Zewwy reported

The menu system on my gaming machine is tooo responsive, when I press one key it'll move the menu 2-3 places, however when I was navigating the menu on my slower laptops it seemed fine.

Which may indicate that there is a lack of Vsync on some Windows system.
I've not been able to reproduce this on my Windowds 10.

How do you make a Libretro core in Go?

This project prompted my curiosity; I am surprised that Go can interact with Libretro!

What would I need to do if I want to use Go when writing a Libretro core, especially if I were to write one that does not use OpenGL (in light of the current capabilities this frontend has)?

Automate RPi releases

Using travis if possible

Vsync issue (high speed menu) on OSX Mojave

glfw/glfw#1337

If they don't fix this, we can still implement delta timing in the menu.

Failed to load Core on Windows

When I try to load a game in Ludo, it asks me to load a core first,

this kind of sucks compared to the logic of Lakka, which asks to pick from a list of cores after selecting a game to load.

So ok, go to cores, pick any core from the list, and you'll simply be greeted with failed to load core.

Vsync issue (high speed menu) on XWayland fullscreen.

Only in the menu. Not when a game is running.

Doesn't affect Windows and OSX.

Improve scanning

So it doesn't insert entries that already exists.

About the new playlist file format (tab-delimited CSV)

Hi. I see that starting from v0.3.5 you've chosen to generate CSV files with tab-separated fields for the playlist. Correct me if I am mistaken, but in the CSV files for each entry you're storing these three information:

1. The path to the file
2. Game name
3. The ID number used to recognize the game in the database

I didn't see a fourth parameter to specify the core to be used to emulate a specific entry, or at least I tried to specify it at the tail of each row but Ludo didn't recognized that.

I was wondering... what would happen if one day you'll decide to implement a "favorites" tab, just like RetroArch where everyone can put their all-time favourite games taken from different systems?

Because in this case, if I'm not mistaken your file format wouldn't work. Feel free to correct me if I am wrong, but I tried to create manually a "favorites" playlist named favorites.csv with three games taken from three different systems (Atari 2600, NES and Sega Megadrive). It resembles this imaginary one:

/path/to/roms/Atari 2600/Space Invaders (1978) (Atari) [!].a26.zip	Space Invaders (USA)	2800248755
/path/to/roms/Gameboy/Lock 'N' Chase (JU).gb.zip	Lock n' Chase ~ Lock 'n' Chase (World)	3669564538
/path/to/roms/Sega Megadrive/Sonic The Hedgehog (W) (REV01) [!].gen.zip	Sonic The Hedgehog (Japan, Korea)	2950717166

When I launch Ludo, it recognizes the playlist and displays it. However when I try to launch a game, I'm getting a default core not set error. In the old playlist format you could specify a specific core for each entry in a playlist, however with this format you can't.

This is just IMHO and you probably already have a better idea about how to manage this issue, but maybe you could add a fourth field in your playlist format where you specify the default core to be used for each entry. Eventually you could also avoid to enter the fourth field or put the value "DETECT" (just like RetroArch) to let Ludo guess would be the most suited emulator core to use.

By adding a fourth field you can also solve another problem:
What happens if a core can emulate properly 99 games out of 100?
Someone could leave the default value for the 99 working games and use another core for the problematic game, for example:

/path/to/games/Balloon Fight (U) [!].nes.zip	Balloon Fight (USA)	3415201714	DETECT
/path/to/games/Contra (U) [!].nes.zip	Contra (USA)	3305800452	DETECT
/path/to/games/Donkey Kong Classics (U) [!].nes.zip	Donkey Kong Classics (USA, Europe)	401345735	DETECT
/path/to/games/Duck Tales (U) [!].nes.zip	DuckTales (USA)	3703128897	DETECT
/path/to/games/Elevator Action (U) [!].nes.zip	Elevator Action (USA)	3558168351	nestopia_libretro

Frame Time Callback

ChaiLove depends on having the frame time callback.

https://github.com/libretro/libretro-common/blob/master/include/libretro.h#L686

Done in SDLArch over at heuripedes/sdlarch#7

Fix label glitch on Windows

On Windows, the labels are glitchy.

We need to contact the glfont dev, he may know how to fix this.

Implement delta timing

Delta timing is a technique widely used in video games to achieve frame rate independence of animations.

Calculate the delta time between two frames, and multiply every speed or acceleration with it.

Zip Loading

Allow loading through compressed files.

PhysFS would allow mounting zip files, and then loading them without having to unzip.

Go-PhysicsFS could use an update...
https://github.com/DeedleFake/Go-PhysicsFS/

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