Emulator Cores - An open letter to the developers

[robwired]

I have to admit that I didn't understand the ramifications of what I was asking for previously. Not only would it be a completely different project to "own" an emulator but there are a lot of other considerations behind doing so, including legal issues. It's with this understanding that I actually no longer think that in the short term that the focus of Launchbox should be to become an emulator.

My New Hope (Sorry, Star Wars Geek here) is that even if the Libetro cores don't get integrated into the code, essentially creating an emulator, that at a minimum the focus on Launchbox making it easy to setup emulators is taken to a point where no one has to think. 

Launchbox already does this to some extent but it's not seamless. I'd love to see it as simple as dragging and dropping the Libetro app into Launchbox and it just takes what it needs from the zip file and we are done. What I'd like to see is that no one has to actually install Libetro, just allow Launchbox to use the files contained within. Other options to dragging and dropping would be to have an import emulator screen that does the same thing, but again, without the actual installation of Libetro, just importing the cores. 

This would expand the userbase significantly since for everyone of us emulator enthusiasts there are a hundred newbies.

Maybe another project could be started that would act as a Front-End Installer! That program would allow you to download the emulators, it would collect the files it needed, sort them into the appropriate folders and then let you choose a front-end.

We certainly have gotten granular here, haven't we?

 

[Lordmonkus]

No, it's not seamless and it never will be without writing the emulators directly into Launchbox which you already agreed that that would be a huge undertaking.

And I get what you are saying but the reality is that is a pure and simple pipe dream.

If someone wants super simple and not worry about anything at all then they need to go buy a Mac and use OpenEmu or get a Pi and use EmulationStation. But like discussed before about those solutions, you are locked in with the emulator choices.

The fact is here in a Windows PC environment there are countless different hardware configurations and multiple versions of Windows and compatibility issues will arise. For this reason people need the options to customize and configure everything at a lower level which Launchbox does an absolutely amazing job at. Launchbox already makes things much easier to setup than any other front end out there and is constantly being worked on to add new features on a regular basis. On top of that we got @SentaiBraddoing tutorials which I swear at times no ones takes a single second to ever watch, those tutorials walk people through the emulator install and game import process as simple and painless as possible. Then on top of that you got people like myself, @Zombeaver, @CriticalCidand others making written and video tutorials.

You also have to take into consideration that what we are dealing with here is a grey area in terms of legality. Not that anything about Launchbox is even remotely close to illegal but things like roms and bios files are. Hell, people cannot even pay for Launchbox using PayPal because PayPal considers Launchbox to be emulation related and therefore in their eyes an illegal activity so they block Jason from accepting payments through them. Can you imagine how hard companies like Nintendo would come down on Jason for making money off a product that allows people to play their precious games without going through them directly ?

Then on top of all that you got pissy whiney emulator devs to deal with. Take some time to read /r/emulation and you will see the cry baby pissing contests that certain emulator devs get into with each other over there. If all of a sudden Launchbox suddenly starts importing their emulators and Jason is perceived as making money off them they would have a conniption fit.

In the end Jason, Brad and the community here as a whole can help you to a certain point but somewhere along the way the end user has to take some responsibility on their own end to read and educate themselves on getting certain things to work. There is always going to someone with some weird little niche problem and everyone has their pet feature that only they want, Jason only has so much time and has to pick and choose which features get implemented and when. So until he gets a dump truck load of money to hire a full time dev team we get what we got which is already the best damned front end out there.

Like I have said previously in this thread, if you want super simple there are other options out there but your control over how it works is severely lacking. Launchbox gives it's user the customization options that most people need (there is always going to be that weirdo that needs even more) and at the same time makes it relatively easy when compared to something like HyperSpin and RocketLauncher.

Anyways this ended up way longer than I intended and if it came across as a rant I really don't care. It's emulation, it's not some plug and play console so people need to do some work on their own end. We can reduce it drastically but we cannot eliminate it.

[Jason Carr]

It's worth noting that for the bartop arcades that we're going to be selling here soon, they will come preconfigured so that it is as easy as drag and drop to add your ROMs. This is relatively easy to do when you can control the hardware, but of course it gets more hairy otherwise. But I do think this will be a step in the right direction for ease of use.

[Lordmonkus]

Yeah if you can control the hardware and you limit the use of emulators to use ones that do not require any bios files it is very doable. I would also be wary of any emulator that doesn't allow its distribution on hardware for sale. This is where Hyperkin got itself into some trouble using libretro cores in the Retron 5. Now of course the devs of the libretro cores didn't have the money to fight this issue and of course Hyperkin being a bunch of shader pricks didn't care.

[ckp]

@jason, i think that the preconfigured bartop is AWESOME. i'm only concerned that the cost will be too prohibitive for a lot of people for personal use. it should be sweet for those company rec rooms, businesses, vacation rentals, dental offices, etc. 

i looked at Monsterarcade for my future cabinet vision and I think they have the premium bartop out there. i would love a bartop from them myself that already has the controls, graphic stickers applied, monitor installed, etc (but not with computer because i'm way too picky on that part! and maybe even the monitor too).

however, i know 100% my wife will never let me spend that kind of money on games!! hahahaha! and sadly, i just do NOT have the time to buy their DIY bartop (good price!) where you do the t-molding, stickers, controls, monitor, computer mounting, etc. yourself.

i would love to get a DIY bartop and complete it myself, and I also love to work out the finer aspects of how I want LB and emulators working for me, BUT my wife is just killing me when she walks by and finds me working on LB, emulators, and games so much (i've spent a lot of time guys)! i have to sneak in time. you can easily bury yourself for a very long time in this stuff.

i just started all of this emulation stuff fairly recently and it's been so fun. i remember when i still had no idea what to do with a Mame (my first one) emulator and a "rom" file!

i have wife, kids, kids sports, dog, job, etc, so i like anything that helps me move along faster, so i can play some games!  . 

 

 

 

[robwired]

Sounds like what we need is an Open Source Plug-In format for Emulator Cores that could then be plugged into any Front-End.

Would something like this work?

[Lordmonkus]

More explanation needed.

[robwired]

If the emulator cores were distributed with the understanding that they would be used as plug-ins then it would be the responsibility of the emulator developer to write them so that they would work with the various front-ends.

This would also deal with any legal issues as the purpose of the emulator core is to work with the front-end and would be appropriately stated in the terms.

If this plug-in eco-system existed then not only would Launchbox benefit but the entire community would including other front-ends, users, developers, etc...

Just now, lordmonkus said:

More explanation needed.

[Lordmonkus]

I don't even know what to say to this anymore but it sounds more like a solution in search of a problem.

I am really at a loss here for where to start so I will just do my best and spit it out as I think about it.

What you are suggesting is basically OpenEmu and Retroarch which already exists and does a damn fine job at what it does but naturally it is limited to only what it can do and does not go beyond this.

All of these cores are opensource and you are free to take them and use them in a frontend as long as they are not sold for money. That is not something simply "worked around".

Now if you somehow did manage to get around the opensource cores for sale in a commercial product such as Launchbox you are again locking yourself into certain cores and you essentially eliminate all the other choices in emulators that are not opensource and freely available. I don't know how familiar you are with some of the personalities behind some of the more popular emulators out there but I can tell you that some of them have egos the size of a freakin house and anything that they don't like they will shit all over it, again take a look over on /r/emulation sometime.

Do you really think Jason has the money (forget the time) to get a lawyer who is going to spend a pile of time (which will cost money) to get in contact with devs of emulators like Higan, ePSXe, Mednafen, PCSX2, Dolphin and on and on and on ?

One of the major strengths of Launchbox is its flexibility to handle pretty much any emulator you throw at it, some require a little more effort than others but it is still a strength that very few other frontends (if any) offer.

I really do get and appreciate what you are saying and the idea behind it but it is something that would require a ton of time, money and a full time dev team. And for what ? Something that is already doable right now with just a tiny bit of effort and the ability to read and or watch a youtube video ?

Let's just say that somehow you manage to have all of this that you are saying. There is still 2 major hurdles and probably the 2 biggest ones at that, roms and bios and no matter how much time and money you throw at that those will not go away or be made easy.

I can tell you right now from spending a great deal of time on here helping people out the most common problem by far comes from people needing bios files or they have bad rom files. Hell, you even have people out there selling pre made hard drives with front ends, emulators and roms already on them and guess what ? They still don't work and require a lot of fixing.

[ckp]

Hi Guys, from my point of view, I think the point of this entire thread is just aimed at making an easy thing even easier to use, without crippling anything else. That's OK.

People don't have to agree on any specifics of anything here. In my opinion, it's just good conversation that may or may not go anywhere. 

[Lordmonkus]

That's my point this whole time though, there is only so simple it can be made before you end up crippling what is already there. And by crippling I mean you either limit or eliminate the features, functionality and customization that is already there or you are spending a whole pile of time and money which simply is not there.

There just comes a point when the end user has to take some responsibility on their end and put in a tiny amount of effort. Jason, Brad and the volunteers here on the forums can help out in a lot of ways and we are happy to do it.

Trust me when I tell you that I only wish I could package up an emulator with all the roms and bios files have a person download it and have it just work. But I can't even openly tell people where to get roms or bios files, it's just how emulation is.

[robwired]

Let's break it down:

* OpenEmu and RetroArch are fully contained emulators which have the Libetro Cores already installed, right? 

Are the Libetro cores available for download by themselves? If so, could Launchbox simply allow those cores to be dragged and dropped?

If so, then they wouldn't have to be distributed with Launchbox so there aren't any legal issues, but Launchbox could make it dead simple for them to be imported.

If they are available separately then that's the end of that issue for those cores.

As for the other emulator developers, if they want to write to Libetro compliant, that's up to them, no one has to chase anyone and I'm not suggesting that Launchbox pull its support of other emulators or get into fights with anyone, just to make those cores import easily. This is something that Launchbox is already working towards, right? I saw a video of Jason showing that he was going down this path already so what's the big deal with making this even simpler?

To me, Launchbox is the perfect front-end and Libetro has the cores solution so they seem like a match made in heaven. Again, this isn't to say that other emulators shouldn't  be supported or that Jason should be fighting any battles. Nor does this affect roms or bios files, these are all separate issues.

 

 

 

 

[Lordmonkus]

The cores themselves need a "frontend" of sorts to configure them which is where OpenEmu and Retroarch come in. The cores themselves are simply the backend and without all the config files and other stuff the frontend part of it does they are useless. This is where all the extra time and work would have to come in from Jason or the money to hire people to do it for him.

 

[robwired]

I agree that there would be a little time involved as there is with anything that Launchbox decides to do but allowing the use of Libetro cores would probably be worth it on so many levels.

Ultimately this is probably the roadmap for emulation in general, to me it's all about having a standard. I think if you asked newbies, they would echo this logic.

So what we come down to is simply whether or not it would make sense to take advantage of these open-source cores or not.

Jason, could you please speak to how much time it would take to make Launchbox work with the Libetro cores? 

 

[CliveBarker]

7 minutes ago, robwired said:

how much time it would take to make Launchbox work with the Libetro cores? 

I actually never thought about this, it would be nice if this ever happens in the future but I don't really know the implications behind that.

[Lordmonkus]

I'm sure getting something to simply load the cores and run a game wouldn't be all that difficult and is probably the easiest part of it. But when you take in all the other functionality that Retroarch and OpenEmu provides that is where the real time consuming things comes in.

Things like input mapping for all the different controllers, the audio back end, the shaders, video rendering and all the other little settings you see Retroarch is where the real work really piles in. Like the old saying goes "the devil is in the details", simply loading a core and a game is the least of the problems.

And once again we are back where we started, why in the world waste all that time and energy into reinventing the wheel when we can just install Retroarch or any other emulator and use that in Launchbox ? It is so much easier to do things as they are and provide tutorials and support on getting it to work together like we already do.

And of course this also bears repeating. This would also cost money for lawyers because you cannot simply use libretro cores in a commercial product like Launchbox because of its GPL licensing. This is where Hyperkin (Retron 5) got into shit but because they are a bunch of shady pricks they just did it anyways because they knew the libretro devs didn't have the money to defend themselves. Are you really willing to piss off the entire emulation community just because you want an "easier to use" product ?

I am now done banging my head against the wall on this one.

[robwired]

Don't give up on us yet my friend, what you are saying is making sense. I'm just not as technical as you are... but sometimes that's not a bad thing. When I ask my own developers to do things for my company it's the fact that I'm not a developer that sometimes gets them to think outside of the box. At the end of the day, if you all decide that it's too much work then I really appreciate at least getting an understanding of why. 

Let's put aside the licensing issues because I'm not suggesting that the cores be distributed with Launchbox, just that they could be imported the same way that bios and rom files are and we also don't know if Libetro would or wouldn't want their cores to be used with Launchbox, let's just say that's a separate discussion for now.

It's actually an interesting concept they have though, isn't it. The idea that you would just drag and drop emulator cores, roms and bios files and any compliant front end could run them? While it might be a little more competition for Launchbox the upside to the community would be incredible and this would create a standard. I could imagine the entire emulator community just writing to be retroarch compliant and that being used for many front-ends.

Now onto the time consuming things like input mapping, audio back-end, shaders, etc... could we get an idea of the man-hours that we are talking about?

If let's say 50000 hours were going to be put into Launchbox this year, are we talking about a few hundred hours or a few thousand?

I'm also curious if the Libetro coders might donate their code for those things or if that project could be open-sourced as well?

 

[Lordmonkus]

Like I have said in this thread before, I fully appreciate the idea but until someone backs a dump truck load of money into Jasons backyard and says "here, make it happen" it's an unfeasible idea.

If you want an idea of time maybe ask over on the Retroarch forums because they have been working on that a long time now.

I really am unwilling to discuss this any further.

[robwired]

I actually just posted the question on their threads so we are on the same page.

I'd love to hear what Jason thinks though, let's give him an opportunity to weigh in.

If it's correct that it wouldn't be that hard to get the roms working maybe things like the input mapping, shaders, etc.. could just be things that could be done in time.

[Lordmonkus]

@Jason Carrhas already replied to this thread on page 2 back when you started it and his response was:

"the amount of extra effort required in order to make that happen is massive. Sure, the code is written for the cores, but we'd basically have to code an easier version of Retroarch itself in order to make it happen. So sadly, it's not feasible in the short term. But longer term, it is something exciting to keep in mind. I still shutter at the likely licensing and legality issues of it all though, too."