LaunchBox for Android 0.25 Released

[Jason Carr]

Hey all, version 0.25 of LaunchBox for Android has been uploaded to the Play Store, and should go live very soon. Here's the change log:

• Added support for sideloaded versions of Retroarch (both 32-bit and 64-bit); this is very useful if you want to use a recent version of MAME on Android, as recent MAME cores are currently only available in the 32-bit version of Retroarch

• Added support for MAME4droid emulator for MAME/Arcade; keep in mind though that it expects a very old MAME ROM set, so sideloading Retroarch 32-bit is recommended instead

• Added better logic for platform-specific default extract archives settings

• Fixed some rare error messages not displaying correctly and crashing instead

The main purpose of this release is of course MAME support. MAME is a tricky beast on Android, but I wanted to at least make it possible for those who want to jump through the hoops. The current best solution for MAME is the following:

• Use the sideloaded version of 32-bit MAME that is available from the Retroarch main download section (download and manually install the 32-bit APK)
• Use the mame_libretro_android.so core
• Use an up-to-date MAME ROM set (requires around 65 gigs of space)
• Also have the CHDs available (requires an extra 500 gigs or so)

So obviously, if you want full MAME support, you're going to need a lot of space, and you'll need to tinker a bit. You may also run into performance issues of course with some games, but many games will work fine on modern devices.

Sideloading Retroarch is required because the Play Store release is 64-bit, and there is no recent MAME core available for 64-bit Retroarch. Don't ask me why; I do hope that the Retroarch team can get a 64-bit mame_libretro_android.so core up soon.

Disregarding all of this, it is possible to get up and running with some games using MAME4droid and/or older MAME cores for Retroarch, but you'll probably run into a lot of games that don't work if you use an up-to-date MAME ROM set, as they are designed for really old sets.

Finally, a new desktop beta will be out shortly that makes exporting MAME sets work properly, so you'll need to use the new beta exporter in 10.2-beta-5, which will be out shortly. Otherwise, the entire MAME set will not be copied over (this can be easily fixed, however, by just manually copying your entire MAME set of ROM files over to your device into the right folder). CHDs will currently need to be manually copied over anyways.

[Soxbrother]

So between an old mame set and the latest mame set, the only difference is the number of total games ?

I've used mame4droid in the past, but everybody seems to want to use the latest set, so the difference must be huge.

Edited September 26, 2019 by Soxbrother

[Jason Carr]

Just now, Soxbrother said:

So between an old mame set and the latest mame set, the only difference is the number of total games ?

I've used mame4droid in the past, but everybody seems to want to use the latest set, so the difference must be huge.

Game support is much better with recent versions of MAME. Things update slowly, but MAME4droid uses a really ancient set.

[Soxbrother]

2 minutes ago, Jason Carr said:

Game support is much better with recent versions of MAME. Things update slowly, but MAME4droid uses a really ancient set.

Ok, thanks for the info.

What is the best mame version I should download then ?

[Jason Carr]

4 minutes ago, Soxbrother said:

Ok, thanks for the info.

What is the best mame version I should download then ?

If you're talking about ROM set, the latest one should work well. Whatever the current version of MAME is.

[PiperCalls]

I've been using Mame4Droid on my STV for ages and it works pretty well. It uses the 0.139u1 set which has most of the games I want to play. For the newer games I use RA with the FBNeo core, works great on android. One note, the last STV update messed up something with some apps (Mame4Droid is one of them) that when you exit the game it goes back to the STV home screen instead of the launcher app. I'm sure it will get fixed but for now that's what we have.

Cheers...Piper

[Soxbrother]

So if I where to have some 500gb of Mame goodness, what is the best way to play it from a portable drive then, because my phone holds only 128gb internally and another 128gb with my sd card,

so nowhere near the 500+ gb required. 

[Jason Carr]

On 9/28/2019 at 2:27 AM, Soxbrother said:

So if I where to have some 500gb of Mame goodness, what is the best way to play it from a portable drive then, because my phone holds only 128gb internally and another 128gb with my sd card,

so nowhere near the 500+ gb required. 

Yeah, that's a major challenge. It may not be possible at all with your device. Micro SD cards actually exist up to 1 TB, but older devices may not support the largest cards. You might just be out of luck. One option is to export all the ROM files, but skip the CHDs, as most games will run, but not the most modern stuff.

[Soxbrother]

9 minutes ago, Jason Carr said:

Yeah, that's a major challenge. It may not be possible at all with your device. Micro SD cards actually exist up to 1 TB, but older devices may not support the largest cards. You might just be out of luck. One option is to export all the ROM files, but skip the CHDs, as most games will run, but not the most modern stuff.

Maybe in the future Launchbox can be used with a network drive or something. I'll probably won't copy all the games to my phone then. I got myself a merged 0.213 set. So I'll put that in my pc Launchbox program.

[Jason Carr]

14 minutes ago, Soxbrother said:

Maybe in the future Launchbox can be used with a network drive or something. I'll probably won't copy all the games to my phone then. I got myself a merged 0.213 set. So I'll put that in my pc Launchbox program.

That would work for your local network, but not really over the Internet, so you couldn't use it if you left your house. But yes, I do plan on adding that in eventually, assuming Android doesn't make it an impossibility.

[outlaw]

I cant seem to get package to upload when it is added to internal storage or external drive on Nvidia shield

 

[Jason Carr]

1 minute ago, outlaw said:

I cant seem to get package to upload when it is added to internal storage or external drive on Nvidia shield

 

What issue specifically are you running into? Any error messages?

[Soxbrother]

9 hours ago, Jason Carr said:

That would work for your local network, but not really over the Internet, so you couldn't use it if you left your house. But yes, I do plan on adding that in eventually, assuming Android doesn't make it an impossibility.

If one really would need the full Mame experience on the go ( alongside many other systems offcourse ), maybe something like a wifi hard drive would be a possible solution ?

[Jason Carr]

8 hours ago, Soxbrother said:

If one really would need the full Mame experience on the go ( alongside many other systems offcourse ), maybe something like a wifi hard drive would be a possible solution ?

Lol, I've never heard of a Wifi hard drive before...

[MesonW]

Hi there, forgive me if I've missed something, but when trying to export only a few MAME games it starts to copy the entire set of ROMs. I have a non-merged 2010 set and would love to try a handful of older games with a 2010 RA core if possible. Is it still too early days for specific ROM exporting in MAME?

PS. Very cool to have Launchbox on my phone btw

On Launchbox 10.3, Windows 10 64bit

Edited September 30, 2019 by MesonW
missing version info

[Jason Carr]

6 minutes ago, MesonW said:

Hi there, forgive me if I've missed something, but when trying to export only a few MAME games it starts to copy the entire set of ROMs. I have a non-merged 2010 set and would love to try a handful of older games with a 2010 RA core if possible. Is it still too early days for specific ROM exporting in MAME?

PS. Very cool to have Launchbox on my phone btw

On Launchbox 10.3, Windows 10 64bit

This is by design. Depending on your set, MAME ROMs require various other files from the set. So there really isn't any other option, unless you specifically have what's called a "merged" set. We may add an option for that later on to the exporter, but I imagine that is likely to cause some significant confusion.

[DOS76]

Jason I think you mean Non-Merged.

[MesonW]

 

5 minutes ago, DOS76 said:

Jason I think you mean Non-Merged.

Which is what i have, but fair enough, if it can't do it, it can't do it. I have a 4 year old Android phone with only a few GB spare space. I guess I'll have to stick to other platforms just now.

[Jason Carr]

Lol, it's so confusing. Yes, apparently you need a non-merged set in order to pick and choose files, which results in a lot more space being used for the whole set.

[Soxbrother]

On 9/30/2019 at 6:19 PM, Jason Carr said:

Lol, I've never heard of a Wifi hard drive before...

I think it's wifi.

These are wireless drives, with a built in battery, you can access the drive from a number of devices at the same time.
There are wifi thumb drives as well

Edited October 1, 2019 by Soxbrother