Launchbox on Android

[skepticalsith]

I've installed new Launchbox for android on galaxy tab 10.5. Imported mame games  and installed retroarch downloaded cores but still not loading games. what am i doing wrong? 

[C0ntrA]

I am having trouble with both mame and neogeo games. They launch no problem through retroarch without launchbox, but through launchbox...they don't work.

Is this what you are experiencing? I have yet to hear of or find a resolution.

I am on a Nvidia Shield 2019 pro fyi.

[bigsmall999]

I have the same issue on LB 0.41 and 0.42b1, on a Shield 2017 Pro. Tested with multiple Genesis and SNES games. Games load and work fine in RA, but not when launching via LB - RA opens, but it's just a black screen.

I've tested with RA sideloaded 64/32 bit, and play store RA/RA plus. Tried all combinations of emulator settings within LB too.

I've tried deleting all config and data files in case there was something corrupted.

Here's a log from RA:

 

--libretro argument "/data/data/com.retroarch.ra32/cores/genesis_plus_gx_libretro_android.so" is neither a file nor directory. Ignoring.
RetroArch 1.9.11 (Git a9125ff)
=== Build =======================================
Capabilities:  NEON VFPv3 VFPv4
[INFO] Built: Oct  9 2021
[INFO] Version: 1.9.11
[INFO] Git: a9125ff
[INFO] =================================================
[Input]: Found input driver: "android".
[Core]: Frontend is built for dynamic libretro cores, but path is not set. Cannot continue.
Fatal error received in: "init_libretro_symbols()"
[Core]: Content ran for a total of: 00 hours, 00 minutes, 00 seconds.
[Core]: Unloading core symbols..
jni_thread_destruct()
Pause: 0x5192dd80

 

I've also tried setting the cores dir in RA to

/storage/emulated/0/data/com.retroarch.ra32/cores/

and that didn't help. It looks like the path used in the argument is incorrect - /data/data?

Edited October 13, 2021 by bigsmall999

[Jason Carr]

MAME/Arcade can be difficult to set up, especially if you're not familiar with MAME. However, it works fine in my testing if you do the following:

1. Sideload the latest version of Retroarch: https://buildbot.libretro.com/stable/1.9.11/android/RetroArch_aarch64.apk
2. Download the Arcade (MAME - Current) core in Retroarch after installing it
3. Use a modern/recent MAME ROM set
4. Import the ROMs into LaunchBox as the Arcade platform
5. Choose the Retroarch (64-bit Sideloaded) emulator and the mamearcade_libretro_android.so core in the platform emulator settings in LaunchBox

I just tested all this on my Shield and had no problems launching the games. I don't recommend using an old ROMset or using the MAME 2003 core. I have gotten that to work in the past, but we've heard from various users that there are potentially issues with it. I don't believe LaunchBox for Android has any bugs related to any MAME/Arcade game launching issues. I think the issues are all either Retroarch bugs or configuration issues.

[Jason Carr]

@bigsmall999 We have lots of people launching SNES and Genesis ROMs with Retroarch with no issues (including of course myself on my Shield TV Gaming Edition that I purchased in 2019). I know that's not very helpful, but it's certainly odd that you're running into issues with those common and easy to setup platforms. The /data/data is not likely the issue. Maybe try the relevant parts of what I recommended above? You shouldn't have to change any Retroarch settings at all (other than downloading the cores) in order to get things working.

[bigsmall999]

26 minutes ago, Jason Carr said:

@bigsmall999 We have lots of people launching SNES and Genesis ROMs with Retroarch with no issues (including of course myself on my Shield TV Gaming Edition that I purchased in 2019). I know that's not very helpful, but it's certainly odd that you're running into issues with those common and easy to setup platforms. The /data/data is not likely the issue. Maybe try the relevant parts of what I recommended above? You shouldn't have to change any Retroarch settings at all (other than downloading the cores) in order to get things working.

Thanks. I did try the clean install as you described, but it didn't help.

However, I've now managed to fix the problem...

The error log from RA got me thinking about the paths to core files within the Shield. And I realised that I'm using an external SSD to extend the Shield's storage (with app data by default stored on the SSD). So I tried moving the RA appdata to the internal storage (using the Android menu) and now it works! 

Hopefully this can help others who might come across this - as it seems to be common for people to use SSDs with their Shields.

[Jason Carr]

1 minute ago, bigsmall999 said:

Thanks. I did try the clean install as you described, but it didn't help.

However, I've now managed to fix the problem...

The error log from RA got me thinking about the paths to core files within the Shield. And I realised that I'm using an external SSD to extend the Shield's storage (with app data by default stored on the SSD). So I tried moving the RA appdata to the internal storage (using the Android menu) and now it works! 

Hopefully this can help others who might come across this - as it seems to be common for people to use SSDs with their Shields.

Thanks, that is good to know. Glad you got it working and thanks for the update.