When launching Games in Android Launchbox, the screen turns white briefly and it says "Retroarch side loading" and then the screen turns black. No gamey fun time just Black, every time.

[Kurtastrophe]

Hi everybody, long time Launchbox user here.

I have searched up and down in the forums as well as Google search. I have tried every single suggestion given that I could find.

I am using a Samsung Galaxy Z fold 6 running Android 14 (One UI 6.1.1)

I am also using an external 2 terabyte Samsung USB-C - SSD Drive. All of my games are on this ssd.

My mame roms are a full set updated to the latest 2.72.

Every single game on the SSD works just fine as is on my desktop version of Launchbox with Retroarch.

Retroarch was downloaded from their site and I installed the nightly android version and not the Google play store versions. I have tried all other versions, just in case anybody was wondering.

I also have installed the latest Launchbox for Android.

Each time I have made an attempt, I have installed all cores in RetroArch as well as core system files and Retroarch updates.

I am using the proper core - Mamearcade_libreto.so - (Arcade (Mame) - Mame (Git) as shown in RetroArch as the associated core.

The Mame Bios and drivers have been tried in various combinations both zipped and extracted in different attempts (one way at a time or in some attempts with both) into the rRetroarch system folder as well as my Mame rom files.

The bios and drivers are also the latest version 2.72. I have also tried with no downloaded bios and drivers as well.

Upon failure I have cleared both the data and cache for both installs and then uninstalled both of the apps, also deleting the remaining folders.

Also, when trying to have Launchbox install RetroArch and its cores, instead of downloading from RetroArch directly, I get the same results.

As an extra troubleshooting measure I even installed a copy of the RetroArch system folder into the RetroArch folder that Launchbox makes in the LaunchBox\Emulators\RetroArch folder where it copies the cores when launched. 

I have tried everything I can think of including:

Copying all the files to the external drive and also changing the Launchbox data file location. This results in a white screen telling me Retroarch cannot find the LaunchBox\Emulators\Retroarch\Core folder location. Probably because RetroArch cannot access the external exfat formatted USB drive shown as "mnt/media_rw/xxxx-xxxx" instead of how android sees SD cards as "storage". 

Also I have edited the configuration file of retroarch and changd the line "GUI_browser location" from "Default" to exactly where my games are.

I have even utilized  the app "Shizuku" to access the "Android\Data\User\0\com.retroarch" folder to copy the config directly inside. Within, Retroarch the changes do show when I goto  "Directory\FileBrowser" in the GUI, but if i click into it, it says" No Items".

No matter what I've tried, my results remain the same as the Topic Title shows unfortunately. Except that after the first attempt of running a game, the White Retroarch sideloading message doesn't appear anymore, it just goes straight to black. Probably cause it sees the core in the Launchbox folder. Why it uses the cores downloaded and stored in Launchbox instead of it's own "com.retroarch\cores\" folder is beyond me, as it uses them when I run it standalone.

So please I am racking my brain at this point and just want this to work.

A whole week, day and night whenever I had time, I used all of it messing around fussin about and I am beyond annoyed at this point and probably just going to give up on Retroarch Android and install stand alones, but i really don't want to go that route, as I want a file system I can just easily copy over to other devices, such as my new Retroid Pocket 5.

Waiting on the Android export from LaunchBox now to export to an SD. Which there's a whole lot of fixes that are needed in that export system as well. That's a whole nother f*** fest waste of my time. Really, no pause button? can't add into a Launchbox folder to continue after an error occurs? Jeesh, anyways that I will get into elsewhere, for right now I just want this to work.

Btw, just to be clear, If I copy a game file to the internal memory and point Retroarch to it, it works fine but never through Launchbox.

Interestingly when I dared choose to extract the zips in the Lauchbox emulators option, on certain systems, like Super Nintendo for instance, some of those games will run just fine with RetroArch. I am assuming because  it extracts the game to a local internal folder. However this is not the case with Mame roms and others.  When installing both apps I did in fact give permissions as requested. I think what Launchbox could do as a workaround is maybe copy the game to the internal local folder as an option and keep unzip as a second option and then maybe it would work. I guess maybe even a third option to either delete the local stored game from the temp after play as well, as copying a game into temp takes time and maybe you don't want to do it every time, you play a certain game. IDK.

So, finally In an effort to save time in further explanation, but to be as complete as I can, I am now going to copy and paste, the very best basic  instructions I used, which was posted in the forums by user @kimonde to install everything.

Posted December 28, 2023 (edited)
Hi there!

These are my steps and it worked for me, which I have done on the Nvidia Shield Pro 2019.

1.) First uninstall Retroarch and LaunchBox and delete the leftover folders for Retroarch and Launchbox including your License.xml (get the license if you haven't as the developers more than deserve it!) file as well. So you should have nothing installed at this point.

2.) Get LaunchBox v1.11.apk and download RetroArch.apk from the following website:

Under the Android section select the RetroArch.apk.

Don't download the 64-bit or 32-Bit, I think the RetroArch.apk has those elements as part of the install.

3.) Install RetroArch.apk first then update all your cores.

Main Menu>Online Updater>Download Cores (all of them with # against)>Update cores again, it will updated a couple after you have down all the others initially.

Then select>Core Systems File Downloader>Downlaod these .zip files.

Configure your joypad and any other settings and save your settings to the global, Main Menu>Configuration File>Save Current Configuration

3.) Install LaunchBox and add your License.xml file.

4.) I am using the Mame 0.261 merged romset. You can find it with a little digging online...

5.) Create a folder on your external device or wherever and copy all roms to this folder. In my case I created a folder called 'mame' on my external ssd and copied all there. This is of course connected directly to my Nvidia Shield.

6.) Run  LaunchBox and import the games by pointing to the folder you created where you copied all the mame roms to.

The other settings I used were 'Arcade' and 'World' for the import then let it dop its importing stuff.

It will then restart LB and you can then select the games.

7.) Now the important bit! When you launch your first game it will ask you to select a version of RetroArch and a specific core.

By default it selects 'RetroArch64', change this to 'RetroArch'

Then for your core select 'mamearcade_libretro_android.so'

Launch your game and it should work, it did for me!

I'm pretty sure I could have just said what I did in step 7 but hopefully this will help someone else as I have been doing this for hours...lol.

Good luck and hope it works for you!

 

Edited December 28, 2023 by kimondevil

 

This should work without question, but for reasons that may even be Android 14 related, don't work for me. It's 2024 yaa'll this should be a simple process and LaunchBox for Android and RetroArch should be the way but it's not there yet. If I did something wrong or haven't tried something outside of giving up on these two apps, please let me know. I bought me a Gamesir G8+ just to enjoy my new setup and this has completely bombed thus far. 
 

Edited December 29, 2024 by Kurtastrophe
Spelling and context

[Kurtastrophe]

Well I can confirm that there is nothing wrong with my hard drive or setup as far as its ability to be used as an external drive on Android 13. So this is an Android 14 issue. However there has to be a workaround. I found this out by plugging this hard drive into my new retro pocket 5 which runs Android 13 Loading up launch box and the games run great. Also, I can access the usb drive from Retroarch just fine. So, it's good to know that I'm not crazy and incapable LOL. I guess I will just have to run all the games that I would like to run through Retroarch on the Retroid pocket and all the larger, harder to run games using standalone emulators that can access the external USB on my phone, for now. I really hope there is a fix for this but this probably means not to update to UI 7 when Android 15 gets released. Cause if this isn't fixed it on 14 yet, then it's doubtful that it'll work for 15, if at all, for quite some time. 🤷‍♂️